Reading an Erotic Novel at a Late Age *

Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed by Anna Campbell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After I set up my Kobo Mini e-reader, I was surprised to see this title among the books synced from my desktop app. I didn't recall having purchased it. A title like that? Surely not! But it had been some time since I'd used the app. Maybe I'd just forgotten. Maybe it wasn't what it sounded like.

So I opened the book and started reading. I hadn't read it before (I definitely would have remembered) and it was not something I would have chosen to buy if I'd known what it was. It was an erotic novel. I now know (from the Kobo catalogue) that this is the correct term; at the time I was thinking "soft porn" or maybe just straight-out porn.

It's not that I'm a prude. It's that I would have expected pornography to be a boring read. I saw some excerpts from "Fifty Shades of Grey" online and thought they were incredibly boring, largely because they were so badly written.

This one isn't.

The plot is fairly unbelievable, but there is a plot. I have since learned from friends that erotic novels can be very lacking in story line. This one not only has quite a complex story, but it is also an historical novel set in an aristocratic milieu far removed from our present experience — which makes it easier to suspend disbelief in the improbabilities.

And the writing is good! The sex scenes are explicit without being crude or sleazy. Nor are they embarrassingly silly. In fact they're gorgeous, and very exciting. Not kinky like "Fifty Shades", though the hero does have one (fairly harmless) idiosyncrasy. For the most part the descriptions are of normal sex at its wonderful best. I admire and envy anyone who can write sex scenes well. I can only manage it in metaphor. Luckily I'm a poet, not a novelist, so that works for me. Erotic novels, however, need to be a lot more realistic.

"Seven Nights" was convincing enough to get me hot and steamy — and to remind me that I haven't missed out on much in that department, over the course of my life. It's good to realise that descriptions of superlative sex could be accounts of one's own unforgettable experiences! I'm grateful all over again to my excellent lovers.

I have since realised that Kobo gives you a free book these days when you set up a new e-reader, so that's how it came to be in my library. I have also discovered that they are now offering a lot of free books in any case — always the first of a series, in the hope that if you like that you'll buy the rest.

Yes, I do intend to buy the rest of this series! And soon.

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* The title of this post is a reference to a poem by Barbara Giles, with the same title.

Writer's Journal (exercise): Out in the garden where we planted the seeds, there’ s a tree that’s as old as me

and I’m always embarrased and disappointed at what a scrawny little thing it is. Evidently my Mum and Dad didn’t know at the time that it would be so slow-growing. It should be lofty, a giant, don’t you think? I should be able to gaze up at it and say proudly, ‘This tree is as old as me, just think!’ But now, I stand beside it while they tell visitors, ‘We planted this when she was born. And I cringe. It is gnarled and twisted. It is never going to be lofty and spreading if it lives to be hundreds of years old. It’s a crab apple, a miserable thing with nasty little fruit. I hate it. ‘Why did you pick that to plant for me?’ I asked them once. ‘We thought it would be so lovely when it was in blossom.’ they said. It has seldom blossomed; when it does they are scarce. The only good thing about that is fewer of those nasty, shrivelled, dark so-called apples which no-one could ever eat.  I so hate it when they refer to me as Blossom, their pet name for me. 

When I grow up, I am going to get my own place and I am going to plant a tree in  honour of my dear parents. What will it be? What’s most poisonous? Perhaps oleander. That has wonderful blossoms, but you better not touch.  When they ask me why that tree for them, I’ll say, ‘I wanted to return the favour’.

Writer's Journal (exercise): How am I ever going to get out of it?

I would — I bloody would — specify the foot had to fit the slipper, wouldn’t I? Well, she was a pretty girl in that fancy getup she wore to the ball, and my parents seemed so approving. Of course she looked rich, with that carriage and all; that helped. And I was half pissed anyway, the night being so late by the time she made her entrance, and me under pressure about having to choose.

But you know, I’m basically a simple sort of a bloke. I really rather fancied that plump little thing in yellow. Not a great beauty maybe, but she had a wicked sense of humour, a downright nasty streak really — refreshing after all those simpering little tarts. As for Glass Slipper Girl, I don’t think she could string two words together; at least she didn’t say anything to me while we were dancing, not even when I slid my hand down to her bottom just to see how she’d react. She might never have noticed, for all the response I got. Dumb, if you ask me.

So how can I get out of it, is what I want to know. Everyone thinks it’s a match made in heaven. The ceremony has been planned, etc, etc, etc. I’m supposed to send her naughty, plump sister and her other sister and their mother far away out of the kingdom for being mean to old Dummy. If you ask me, there are natural victims and she’s one.

Writer's Journal (exercise): What If Rhett Butler Had Given a Damn?

There would have been no more story if Rhett had given a dam. They would have reconciled and lived happily ever after. Isn’t that what we want, according to Michael R [whose writing course we looked at]?

Well no, not in this case. We leave Scarlett collapsed on her staircase, but with somewhere still to go tomorrow, She’s a resourceful bitch, she’ll figure it out. And besides, I think we all know he really does give a damn, he’s never going to get Scarlett out of his system. But he has to storm off just at that pointy, so the story goes on working in our minds after we leave the cinema or close the book. (Yes, I did both in my time.) Part of the fascination is wondering what Scarlett will get up to next.

Also Rhett has to be a strong character; he can’t just succumb weakly. If he had given a damn, he wouldn’t be the same old swashbuckling, roguish Rhett, Not a very nice person, really. If he had not given a damn, neither would I. As it is, we care very much that Scarlett, having finally seen the light, is left on her own to nut it all out again.

Writer's Journal (exercise): Walking Down Wellington Street

You are 10. Go out your front gate, turn right, and tell us about your walk.

It’s the first time I’m allowed to walk to the shops on my own — the big shops down in town, not the little one on the corner where I have always been allowed to go. Mum has given me an errand; I am to bring back nails from the hardware store. She has an air of suppressed or restrained impatience as she gives me the instruction. It’s momentous that I am being trusted with this task, and it’s even a kind of test. I know this and she knows it, and we both know that the other knows, but we are not saying so; we pretend it's all casual and normal.

As I go out the gate and turn right, it is as if the very air is holding its breath. Well, it is quite a warm day, not much breeze. There is that stillness of summer afternoons, beautiful afternoons with the warmest part of the day still to come. I walk swiftly, feeling self-important and indulging it now that I’m away from Mum’s eye and the pretence. A magpie struts on the nature strip, its beak raised. It’s a fine, plump bird and seems to know that by its stance. I start to feel excitement, and give a little skip. The magpie warbles as if in accompaniment. A breeze begins, a very light breeze, just enough to ruffle my hair and the leaves in the trees in the gardens I pass.

Wellington Street is a long street, but ‘your little legs are younger than mine’ adults always say when they want me to fetch something for them, so I rejoice now in my young legs and walk along almost singing with happiness (except I never sing in case someone hears me and tells me to keep in tune — I never know what they’re talking about when they say that. I am in tune to me.) But I sing inside my head, and smile secretly to myself as the clouds ripple across the sky in the breeze, and change their shapes.

The sunlight sparkles, the lawns in the gardens I pass are a fresh, bright green. The flowers nod and bob gently in the breeze. I touch all their different colours. A little dog rushes a fence, behind which he is safely shut in, not aggressively but with playful little barks, his stumpy tail wagging. ‘Hello, boy,’ I say to him as I go on past. I think that on the way back I might see if he’ll let me pat him. I know I have to get him to sniff my fingers first.

I straighten my back. I am alone, I am responsible, I am confident. I walk int the hardware shop and go straight up to the counter. When it is my turn, I speak in a strong voice. The man smiles at me. I am 10. I am big now. I am almost grown up.

Writer's Journal (exercise): Who Is That Man?

(Imagine a person, and watch him walk along a street.)

Who is that old fellow there? I watch from the Balcony Café as I sip my long black, lazily observing the passers-by. Something about this bloke intrigues me. He shuffles slowly, so I have time to watch him a while. As well as being bent and slow, his gait tells me he is angry. Yes, he shuffles, yet his legs move in a jerky kind of way. And his back, bent as it is, is held rigid. It is his arms which give away the most. The fists are clenched, and I don’t think it’s from arthritis. As he gets closer, I see that his lips are moving silently and his forehead is creased in a frown. I wonder what he is muttering to himself, but there is no sound coming from those moving lips. However they are very busy, as if he is almost spitting the silent words.

He is lost in his own world of rage, I think. It’s a wonder he doesn't collide with someone or trip over the pavement, but he doesn’t. He seems to have enough awareness of his surroundings to avoid that. In fact he has a sort of purposeful air, with that energy that anger can sometimes give. Shuffling angrily and purposefully, what a contradiction. But he is walking in a very straight line. I realise that the reason he collides with no-one is that people are getting out of his way, giving him nervous looks as they navigate around him. He is not seeing them, or not with any great attention, as far as I can tell. Those fists are flexing, and his frown is ferocious. I wouldn’t like to be whoever he is going to meet. If he was a young man, I’d say he’d be on his way to beat someone up. As it is, maybe he is going to tell someone off. Or maybe he is already telling them, in his silent monologue, the things he can’t say to their face.

I wonder if he has dementia. Most of us don’t display our emotions so overtly on the street. Maybe he is a bit deranged. He is right below me now and I can see that his shoulders are twitching, in an apparently involuntary tic. Poor fellow! He must be very, very upset about something. Does he live alone? Has he got anyone to take care of him? Now that I look closer still, I see that his clothes are rather unkempt, don’t look as if they have been washed or mended in quite some time. But if he is alone in the world, if he is deranged, what is he doing wandering this street in such a rage? Has he escaped from a care facility? Or does he live with family?

Writer's Journal (exercise): What if the frog didn’t want the princess to kiss him?

It’s been such a disappointment! Yes, he’s a handsome fellow all right, what he’s turned into, can’t complain there. Never mind that his eyes are a bit bulging and he’s a trifle prone to warts, all in all he’s easy on the eye. And nothing wrong with his brain, nor his physical agility come to that. It’s his attitude!

‘Why did you do it to me?’ he moans in that distinctive voice of his. 'I’d really rather be a frog. I miss my nice pond, and the underside of the water lily pads. I can’t go there any more, do you realise that?’

‘But you have ME,’ I tell him, ‘And a crown on your head and everything. You live in a palace and you can eat real food.’

He just sniffs and looks longingly at a passing fly.

Perhaps it will be better when summer comes and he can go swimming in the lake. That might settle him down a bit.

‘It wasn’t the kiss itself,’ he explains to me, ‘That was nice,’ And he smooches up so I do it again and again. ’It was just the after-effects of that first one, see.’ It feels very odd to be in this body. And the way people stare at me when I crouch down and hop on all fours, as if there was something wrong with that. It’s really the most natural form of locomotion. You should try it some time.’

I can’t help sighing. You would think, with all I bestowed upon him, he’d try a little harder to be happy. Even the prospect of a child doesn’t seem to help. I have a dreadful feeling he’d prefer a handful of tadpoles to emerge from my womb!

I wish I knew the way to turn him back.

Writer's Journal (exercise): Spooky

Pale hands she had, long-fingered. I used to love the way they twined around my neck and stroked my hair. I used to watch for ages while she played the piano, those long white fingers moving gracefully over the keys. I found them mesmerising. It never seemed to matter that she was so silent, so self-contained.

I didn’t question how we came to be together, living in the great house, with its wintry landscape beyond the drawn curtains. We so rarely looked out. The trees surrounding the house were grey and gnarly; they looked somewhat threatening. We preferred to shut them out.

It was in the evenings that HE came. Loud footsteps always signalled his approach, so we had time to start shuddering a little, then try to master it so that when he entered we appeared cool, detached, statue-like. He never said much, though his few words were said in such a booming voice that they resonate with me still.

He liked her pale, long-fingered hands too. I watched him watching them as she played. Eventually he would stop her by closing one of his own great, dark fists over her hand and pressing down commandingly. She would flutter to a stop, turn and look up at him, into his eyes. I always wanted to yell to her not to meet his gaze, but of course I never uttered a sound, and of course she did turn and look, as he bent his head to stare back at her.

She grew paler as he held her fast with his eyes, and her frame would begin to get hazy around the edges, as if she was turning into mist. Or was that only because of my increasing faintness?

I never saw what happened next. I would lose consciousness and come to many hours later, alone. I spent my days alone until dusk fell. You could tell that the darkness had begun outside, as it deepened beyond the curtains. Then I would turn, and she would be there, sitting at the piano.