february 1–14, 2021 | new york 71
want to. I have no desire to
pursue the fetish IRL. I’m not
into the smell of vomit. I’ve
never made it happen in real
life, but I have spent a large
quantity of my life thinking,
feeling, and fantasizing
about this proclivity.
The thing I like about
this particular writer is
that she is committed to
her characters. There’s a
specific type of vomiting, and
a specific type of embrace,
that makes it so effective.
I’ve gotten off to this story
a thousand times because
there is something so hot
about the self-consciousness
of the vomiter. There are
a lot of stories where the
characters do consummate
after the vomiting; in this
story, the vomit is the sex.
It’s also extra disgusting:
Mira burps up wine-tinted
bile. Bile is basically come,
the most interior substance
being released into the light,involuntarily laid out for
this other person. Mira has
no control; she’s completely
powerless—and not only
does Maggie embrace that,
Maggie wants to fuck it.
How do you judge literary
merit? Do I want to read it
when I’m not horny? No.
Maybe. But there is a kind
of beautiful honesty to the
writing because it’s written
purely in the service of
pleasure. How powerful is it
that certain words can just
immediately change our
physiological state and get
us there? In this passage,
the writing is incredibly
visceral. “Her belly clenched
and lurched.” In a lot of
vomit erotica, they’ll literally
spell out the sounds, but the
writer doesn’t employ that
device here. The language is
assonant. It’s third-person
omniscient, but there’s
definitely an interiority to
the prose. Each of thesewomen has a character
arc. Even though Maggie is
not the vomiter, she, too, is
experiencing shame—she’s
ashamed of being turned on.
They’re both self-conscious.
Ultimately, through Maggie’s
embrace of Mira at her most
disgusting, Maggie embraces
herself and her own desire.
There’s not a lot of
intentional vomit erotica
in literature, but I do see
some echoes of Gertrude
Stein here. Probably the
hottest fragment of all
time is from Stein’s poem
“Lifting Belly”: “Lifting belly
is so strong / Lifting belly
together / Lifting belly oh
yes / Lifting belly / Oh yes.” In
the act of orgasm, or
the feeling of being turned
on, there’s a lot that goes on
in the guts and in the belly,
a lot of warmth and energy.
There’s secretiveness, too,
right? The lifting of a curtain.
Something covert. “LiftingBelly” is an incantation. In
emeto-wlw’s work, there’s
not a lot of white space. The
power of “Lifting Belly,”
on the other hand, is in
what is not said and what
is imagined. Both works
employ repetition, though.
Repetition is very sexy—like
that moment before orgasm,
when you repeat the same
word over and over again.
Some people have
difficulty writing sex. I
have difficulty not writing
sex. Having read a lot of
erotica, and having used a
lot of erotica, influences the
way I approach the craft.
This passage on Tumblr
is my favorite sex writing
because it’s very utilitarian.
It’s a product I have used.
Knowing that words can do
that—that’s how I write sex.
I always feel very flattered
when someone tells me that
they jerked off to my book. I’m
like, My work here is done.