Sex, Kink, and the Erotic: “Tears” by Mordecai Martin

Tears 

This is a love story, but you’ll have to wait.

I don’t like writing about sex. I’ve done it, of course. I mean, yes, I’ve done IT and I’ve done it, that is, write about it. And I’ll probably do it again, write about sex, I mean. But I don’t like to. I’m not entirely certain why that is. Here are some possibilities, weighed:

1) That there is something reflexively prudish in me. I suppose this might be true, but it doesn’t seem to fit. I have as foul a mouth as any, and fouler than some, even. I’ve had a wide array of sexual partners and friends with whom I discuss sex, and I think they’d agree I can let my hair down, all the way to the floor if need be. While there was an unfortunate period where DARE propaganda terrified me into abstinence, I’ve ingested a fair number of psychoactive substances since those days and feel confident to say that I can hang when things get weird. So at least as far as I can tell, I’m not a hung up sort of person.

2) That my own sex life will be judged badly for it. This one does occupy a fair amount of my thoughts, and therefore is credible. We live in a lambasting age. Cancel culture is fake, but it is true that your social media mentions can fill up with all sorts of hostility at the drop of a hat. What if I write about sex and someone responds judgementally, as if they were a lover I had failed? What if I say “I did such and such and she enjoyed it” and someone hits me with an “I doubt that.” Sick burn! I look stupid! No good. Not fun.

3) That I will be bad at writing it and then judged to be bad at sex. Little different from the last one, but related, certainly. What if I write what I think is a tender, loving depiction of sex, and someone responds with “Ow. Really? Gross.” Or what if I write a sex scene of bad sex, sex between two people, let us say, who do not love or enjoy each other or the fact that they’re having sex, what if I write a scene of abhorrent misery in the bedroom and next thing you know, I’ve been criticized (or praised!) for my thinly veiled “autofiction?” Atrocious. Unbearable. 

4) That I believe we don’t need more writing about the sex I have had. This one is maybe the most true. I do not believe we need more writing about the sex I have had. I know I just said I don’t write about the sex I have had that much, and that’s true, but other writers who have sex like me have. They write it often, they write it passionately, and sometimes they even write it well, though I’m sure we can all think of counter examples. Have I really done anything so remarkable, in the bedroom or in prose, (not to mention verse!) that I can join the ranks of those who have written of love?

5) That I will betray the trust of my sexual partners. Listen, there’s no need for mystification. It’s not always love, and it’s not always a sacred thing. Additionally, writers do have a standing right to cannibalize themselves for craft. But all the same, there’s some privacy allowed, isn’t there? Just because ten years ago someone answered an OkCupid message, had a nice time, and decided “what the hell” doesn’t mean that she signed a damn waiver, does it? 

All that being said, some things call out to the page, in spite of me.

After the first orgasm you had with me, you cried. Then you apologized. I wished you hadn’t. Apologized, that is. Crying I have time for. After all, all feelings are welcome at a funeral, a laying out of the body, a tiny death. Not that I’m French. Jewish actually, though of course they’re not mutually exclusive. We spent most of that first date talking about me being Jewish. You hadn’t met many Jews, despite having been in New York awhile. You asked me if we’re as funny as you had heard. I hemmed and hawed around an answer. I had made you laugh already, seen you laugh, and so I was probably halfway in love already. But how do you tell someone not all Jews are funny? We talked about survival, and what it does to you. You nodded and apologized. I wished you hadn’t. I didn’t really need it. We are a bit funny, you see, and besides, I knew there was no malice in it. In any case, you agreed to come back to my place, where we stripped and I stroked your hair and kissed your eyes and lay next to all of you and touched you. That’s when you cried, and I fell the rest of the way in love. It wasn’t that you were moved. It was that you were brave enough to show me, a stranger, your lover, that you were moved.

About Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin (he/him) is a bisexual Psychiatric survivor/Mad man and an Ashkenazi Jewish writer working from Philadelphia, New York and Mexico City. In his fiction, he strives to chronicle and capture the peculiarities of voice, the miraculous nature of event, and the depths and edges of Jewish humanity. In his non-fiction he writes to explore family, history, place, and mental illness. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Catapult Magazine, Longleaf Review, Peach Magazine, Autofocus Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine and The Hypocrite Reader. His fiction has been featured in Identity Theory, Timber Journal, X-Ray Lit, Gone Lawn, Knight’s Library Magazine, Funicular, and Sortes.  You can find him online at mordecaimartin.net or on Twitter and Instagram: @mordecaipmartin.