Ai me ...

[blamebrampton]

I've always had Chinese friends, and also English, these days generally Anglo, friends who live in China. That said, the one thing I can say in Mandarin is 'Aiya!' Follow around any Chinese grandmother while she is watching her teenaged grandchildren and you'll hear this expression. It's one of those fabulously adaptable phrases, but, as I learned it, is often used to convey deep frustration. 

(I tried to get aiyo down, which is, I believe, 'Ouch!', but I have never met a Chinese grandmother willing to admit to pain, and my friends have always been so busy laughing at my abysmal attempts that they have been useless to teach me anything. Bastards.)

This is all preamble to explain why I have been exercising my one piece of Mandarin this evening. I have been working on a fic that is Giving Me Issues. When I say fic, it's really one scene. Which I will probably cut. But I have been trying to write sex. I am not good at this. The good news is that the Literary Review has its annual Bad Sex Award, the historic highlights list of which is full of sex scenes that are FAR worse than mine!

The worst of all was last year's winner from Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones:

Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: 'What are you doing, what are you doing?' and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything.

I will probably still end up deleting the one I am working on, but I would like it to be known that it is nowhere near that bad!

Also, I would like to share this video of my new favourite North American. Madam, I salute your neck strength! And the Book Club tonight had a whole show on great film adaptations of great books and did not once mention To Kill A Mockingbird! Madness!

Finally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY marinelle24 , may your day be wonderful and lacking in both bad sex and very naughty cats!

Comments

[chantefable.livejournal.com]

You know, I have read this passage several times, in different languages and in different translations, and it just never stops being... whatever it is.

I know he wants to go all Freud on us with Polyphemus, but confusing mommy issues with Big Brother is obviously not a good idea.

And anyway, he failed at Freud because all this paragraph proves is that the character is gay. Here he is, supposedly trying to force his way back into the womb, son-mother incestuous desire and all that jazz, but the all-seeing eye and the blinding (sublimated castration, anyone?), all this penetrating to the marrow and his botched-up erections, these are all references to the father figure. (Yes, Dr Freud, we remember how it ends: dominating father cuts the son's bits off and sends him away, angst, exile, emo emo.) So inexplicably, the character is suddenly existentially lusting after daddy.

*Umbridge cough* Correct me if I'm wrong, but I somehow doubt the author blended the mother and the father in an attempt to create unisex metaphysics. This is neither here nor there. I think he just forgot what he was trying to say and hoped no one would notice.

Well, we did.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

*Cannot reply, have died of giggling*