Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
His lover longs for the very exposure they cant achieve anywhere else.
This kind of self-revelation is what Chee admires in great sex writing and all writing.
you’re able to read the excerpt below, followed by Chees thoughts on it.
Then R. stepped up onto the bench, he grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him.
Greenwell wrote this piece in anattempt to write about happiness its a really interesting exercise.
And I was drawn to the focus on joy throughout the story.
The thing about queer sex is that it really is a revolution based in the bodys pleasures.
Because sex is communication.
Its a combination of those things as well as more than those things.
In this scene, the narrator and his boyfriend are worried about being seen kissing each other in public.
But it soon becomes clear to the narrator that exposure is the point.
The narrator is discovering that his lover has a kink for exhibitionism, and the narrator might share it.
He might, as Greenwell puts it, want to meet that daring.
Theres a tumbling quality to how this scene is written.
The moment is broken into its component parts, but its also felt in the body.
One of the things I really appreciate about Greenwells writing is his focus on bodies.
What are the bodies doing?
Why are they doing it?
So much contemporary writing is bodyless.
As the kiss begins, you dont know where its going to go.
The moment goes a little further than a bus-stop kiss is expected to go.
Theres a playfulness to it.
This time, they can be themselves.
Theres no sense of being on display for an audience.
It was assumed that pain was material.
If something bad happened to you, the response was, Well, congratulations on your material.
But if it wastoo bad, then you could be accused of exploiting your pain.
We talked about pain easily.
But no one ever told me how to write about joy, as Greenwell is doing.
My first novel has a great deal of sex in it.
At the time, it was not trying to think,Why did I include it?
What was I doing?
I think I was trying to write about the ways sex can recuperate.
The way sex can return you to your body after sexual violence.
