Lascivious made me shudder the first time I heard it as a kid; it seemed so elegant, sexual, and transgressive. Yet I thought it was far too advanced for the writing I wanted to accomplish as a ten-year-old author. How was I to use it and would I even use it correctly?
Little did I know that lasciviousness would come to define what I liked to read and write as an adult. I went about with intense sexual ardour and read books about anal beads as a metaphor, an actuator being rammed through the back of a ballsack, and a strange relationship with hand-jobs. Meanwhile, I wrote stories about a man’s penis falling off, and sweating too much during sex.
I also realized my fascination with sex was not rare, and in the face of a book like Fifty Shades of Grey my interest was actually quite tame. I suppose if romance novels are an indicator of what the masses like to consume, literature and sex will continue to hold hands during the gang-bang of readers’ voyeuristic forays.
It is not shocking considering the success of so many steamy movies, hot books, virtual women who rank high on my bang list, and the encompassing nature of sexual overtones in commercials, television shows, and advertisements. Too, because literature is the curious hand that pulls back the curtain on the asshole wizard, it remains enthralling and better discerns the relationship between sex and the surrounding world.
Kim Kardashian West is on the cover of that magazine again? Why do people even like her? She doesn’t seem like a nice person. It has nothing to do with her boobs or phat ass.
However, I enjoy transgressiveness not because I’m a pervert (maybe) but because it tends to be more groundbreaking. I think this goes for most readers, moviegoers, and gamers alike. Sex, though banal, seems to push the boundaries whether it’s run-of-the-mill missionary on a four-post bed, or two cannibal rapists eating and screwing each other to death.
Transgressive literature illuminates the unspoken desires that are kept under the bed, such as the fascination with performing a mating dance that involves a piccolo and a lot of string cheese (that’s not my fetish I swear). And, better understanding any topic creates a more open world.
Though, acutely, sexual desire is only an interim walk in the garden of cleavage, hardcore pornography, and things we want our girlfriends/boyfriends to perform before we egress through the Pearly White Gate. Life is brief so I understand the logic in lustful secrets.
No bother really though. I’ve finally put lascivious down in such a way that I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain with my ten-year-old self. It is high time for celebration. I’m going to drink a beer and attack my mouth with a wedge of cheese–maybe I’ll even pull out the piccolo.
