Affection: An Erotic Memoir Book

Richard tied me to a pole because I asked him to. He used duct tape and and he secured my wrists with it. The mattress was within reach but only close enough to rest my head on.

... There was something strangely domestic about the morning. He filled up the sink and I could hear the clatter of plates in the soapy water. ... I imagined that he would look up from the dishes and watch me. I wondered if I looked ridiculous in submission, if he was grinning with the humor of it all. Perhaps he watched impassively, clocking the time by the fading heat of the water. I heard him empty the sink and fill it again. Time passing. The slow drip of dishes drying.

... I grew restless. I wanted to call him over to me. I wanted his hands and his body and some relief from this stretching out of my skin. I imagine that he spent an age over the drying because he wanted me to enjoy my time of longing, but I am not sure I enjoyed the long minutes of waiting. When he came to me finally, I could have ripped the duct tape off the pole and finished in a second but I did nothing. Said nothing.

He examined me. I felt his hands still dripping with dishwashing liquid, lifting, pulling separating. Of course I knew how this would end, but still there was this little shivery thrill as he traced the ridge of bone arcing down from the center of my back, slipping his finger over, but not into, my anus, and hooking it into my vagina, testing the viscosity there.

I thought of dissection tables, dead things tied down, paws and legs splayed, bellies exposed to the glare of fluorescent light. The fact that this aroused me was perhaps a problem. ... It was the idea of him watching me like that, the openness, the vulnerability. Here's your obligatory PSA for venturing out and trying a book you REALLY thought you'd dislike.

On paper, Affection is everything I hate in books:

1. It's a memoir
2. It has super short chapters (2-3 pages)
3. The chapters abruptly alternate between the 80s/90s and now
4. It has a LOT of sex that I was sure would pretend to shock in the pursuit of poignancy
5. It is frank to the point that I thought we'd end up in smugsville

Alas, I should have trusted Krissy Kneen because when have Australian writers let me down? This was BRILLIANT. No other author (or fictional character, for that matter) has laid themselves quite as bare -- seriously, EVER. If I had a grain of this woman's courage, I'd be satisfied. And it is intelligent, funny, despairing, illuminating, and hopeful all at the same time. As you can see, I'm quoting a ridiculous amount but I'm in love with this book and Krissy Kneen's thoughts about feminism, erotica as a genre, and gender bias in literature.I like the term pornographic. It is a more challenging word than erotic. Pornographic work is what it is. It clearly states the purpose that the work is used for. Pornography is stuff you are aroused by. I like how confronting the word is to some people and I think it speaks to the confrontation I am trying to cause by my work. It is another gendered separation. We often think of pornography as the stuff consumed by a man and erotica as stuff consumed by a woman to become aroused and we load those terms up with value judgements - erotica is softer, gentler, more concerned with love and relationships seems to be the general view (although not my own). Pornography is a term we often use when the sex is separated from love. Well that is the work I have been doing in Holly [her newest novel], separating sex and love and suggesting the pure arousal is powerful and different to a narrative of love. These are loaded terms although they shouldn't be.

Interview with Krissy Kneen, November 3, 2015I find most memoirs to be indulgent and uninteresting because either the author has something to say but can't convey it in a meaningful way, or worse -- the author deludes him/herself into thinking there's a story where there isn't one. Affection defies these pitfalls with its completely honest, vulnerable narrator and its subtle commentary on gender and sexuality of the modern female. That isn't to say that the narrator's honesty leaves her impervious to criticism; quite the opposite. The decision to expose herself physically and emotionally is why Affection shines.Part of this gender bias flows through to our relationship to sex writing. When I say a sex book is not going to win any awards I really mean that a sex book by a woman is not going to win any awards. In my opinion, writers like Philip Roth, Yasunari Kawabata and Ian McEwan and even at least one book by Marquez are just plain sex books. I'm talking In Between the Sheets, The Cement Garden, Portnoy's Complaint, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores and any Roth has written in his later period.

They are all concerned primarily with sex. Yet these writers are considered literary writers and not erotic writers. I don't see how my work around sex is any different and yet I am considered a writer of erotica. I think that there is a gendered perception that women writing about sex is somehow different to men writing about sex and is not treated as seriously. I haven't done an exhaustive study in this area but I would love it if someone did. I sometimes feel like I will never be taken as seriously as a male writer who is dealing with the same subject matter. My wonderful friend Christos Tsiolkas for example could win an award for his sex writing but I don't think I ever will. Happy to be proven wrong of course, but I feel like his work is every bit as concerned with sexuality as mine is and yet people don't think ,"Ah Christos, he is a writer of erotica". Perceptions are everything in this business.

Interview with Krissy Kneen, November 3, 2015A hidden gem, to say the very least. Even if you don't end up enjoying the book (it's inevitably polarizing), Kneen's philosophical thoughts about gender and sexuality are worth a look.