Saturday, December 11, 2010

Life Blood - using eroticism to redefine the vampire mystique

"Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood" - Kahlil Gibran

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -Plato

"It's not too much to hope for things to feel all right. Nursing a drink till I get sleepy and go to bed and dream about sex and heaven, that's not empty shit." -Jonquil Florio

The above are not exactly the kind of musings one might expect in an erotic vampire novel. But each one appears in my new novel "The Blood Jaguar", released today from Passion in Print Press. In the book, I steer the Siobhan Bishop Erotic Underworld series into territory both new and very, very old. Vampires are the stuff of frenzy in creative media of all kinds these days; seems like everywhere you look on television, movies, books, someone is smiling back at you with bared fangs. A lot of those works repeat or revise themes popularized by Bram Stoker's classic "Dracula", or Anne Rice's wildly popular modern spin on the subject. But the human fascination with blood and sex (the essential elements in the tales of Stoker and Rice) goes back as far as human history, and has taken shapes from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other -- from fear to desire, from dark passion to bright exaltation.

For my own own exploration of the fierce sexual phenomenon of the vampire, I wanted to take things to a new and different place. So I rooted the story in a culture steeped in things that are quite the opposite of the dark and unholy night creatures of modern entertainment. Life, reverence for the faith and power in sacred things, love of the sun and delight in the day, along with intense eroticism, were the elements I wanted to weave into the vampire mystique. Not much like Dracula, I'm afraid.

I also wanted to bring things down to earth a bit. Most vampire tales are filled with fantastic elements like becoming "undead", having a strange form of immortality, possessing a form of sexual hypnotism to lure victims...right on down to sleeping in coffins or turning into night mist. Fun as all that is, I wanted to write about things on a level a little closer to our own. The fact is, there are real people who adopt a "vampire" identity as part of a lifestyle choice. In my current hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, one need only go down to the city park in the center of town to see young men and women who call themselves vampires, and they have little use for stereotypes, embracing an alternative lifestyle in which they mix blood ritual with their sex lives.

So I took those two basic approaches -- the "vampire mystique" as a source of life, energy, sex and health, and a subculture of realistic young people looking for an alternative way to have passion in their lives -- and wove "The Blood Jaguar". Among its characters, along with the regular protagonist occult book expert Siobhan Bishop and her lover Professor Richard Blake, are a young intellectual nihilistic woman working in the Central Florida sex trade; a highly successful Mexican couple of Aztec descent who run a high-end resort that offers the raptures of sexual enlightenment through "vampire" techniques; a devout Baptist pimp who is a sucker for hearts and flowers love; an equally devout Catholic woman who wears a silver cross given to her with affection by her vampire lover...let's face it, we're not in Transylvania anymore.

The eroticism of the story is intense, but under it is a theme I always strive to bring to works that explore sexuality: how does passion excite the soul along with the body? Without one the other can only be shallow and empty. Can the soul be excited by a wild closeness to our life-blood, and sex that is both savage and sophisticated? Ask the sangre angeles, the "blood angels" of "The Blood Jaguar", along with their kiss that changes both body and soul.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

To Be Naked

As a writer of erotic fiction and sensual poetry, the act of becoming naked is certainly one that I depict over and over again. But in every one of those scenes, whether it be an interlude in a novel or a stanza in a poem, I remind myself that the exposure of the body is basically empty without an opening of the soul to accompany it. And yet, how often during physical intimacy does this really happen? In my poetry collection, "Touch in the Bed of Light", I try to explore this in many ways. From couples who close themselves off to one another intentionally -- because of lack of fundamental trust, or fear, or the presence of cruelty in the relationship -- to those who have achieved the kind of love where the soul does indeed become naked. For men in particular, this seems to be something at times almost inconceivable. Why? One poem in the book takes the concept and looks at it head-on, and raises a question that perhaps we all should ask: have we ever, truly, shown ourselves to the one we offer our body to in the sharing of passion?

Naked

He wonders
how many grasping, clutching, hungry bodies, seeking solace,
seeking connection to life in the immensity of the warm night
have ever truly been together naked.
How many have spoken these words, which she says now to him?
More than just a fuck tonight, sweet love.
Open yourself, and I will lie open for you.

How easy it would be
to send the most vulnerable part of his soul,
that which feels the most,
into hiding; to send out his avatar,
well trained by him in the motions of tenderness and passion,
but with the core of aching light held back.
Men do it all the time.
He supposes that many women
believe that core does not even exist in men.

Her fingers deftly undo buttons, and her mouth opens,
gesture of anticipation,
tongue appearing for the briefest moment between her lips.
How many men have spoken these words, as he speaks them now?
When I touch you tonight,
that touch will be everything that I am.

The motions of pleasure, crafted by men and women
since water first sought the earth,
change only a little;
he wonders how often they become a pantomime,
feasting, without fullness achieved?
His tongue will enter her sex, soft circles inscribed
upon a flower seeking to unfold at the touch of true light offered.
He will harden it to let its tip pass into her, and he will listen
for her small cries that speak of an equal door
cracking open in her soul.

In the moment when she looks into his eyes
a tremor of fear appears within him, and passes.
He does not wonder any more
what it is like to stand in a sacred place.
He is naked.