Swept Away By Emerald

“What moves you?” So begins “No Such Thing,” the lovely Emerald’s latest publication at one of my very favorite erotica sites, The Erotic Woman. Emerald had mentioned that this story had special meaning to her—and believe me, there’s no better story foreplay for me! I suspect I may have been even more anxious than the author herself to see the story up on the site.

Now, I like to think my work moves readers in some way or another. On the most basic level, I’d like to think it “works,” that is, passes the zipper test or the wet test, depending on what you’re wearing. I also entertain fantasies that my stories make people think about sex and the human condition. But I don’t usually dare to hope that my writing will make it as far as the highest and most difficult rung on the literary ladder—that it will touch them emotionally.

This is precisely what “No Such Thing” achieves. Yes, it is lusciously poetic and arousing. It definitely makes you think about sexuality and repression and the human spirit. But it left me with much more, a certain easing of the breathe, an almost floating sense of peace—perhaps I’d best describe it as a literary afterglow?

Okay, I just have to give you one tiny “amuse-bouche” from the story, words that capture my own feelings in such moving rhythms:

Sex. Sex was what moved her. Not just the act, but the pure, profound, inherent power of sexuality, that force which encompassed the deepest realms of humanity, spanned the spectrum of life and held within it every possibility of human existence. Sex was life force embodied; it was strength, it was beauty, it was joy, it was….

Well, I don’t want to give the ending away! Go read this story. You’ll be swept away.