On Speaking the 'Unspeakable' part 2

 

 

       Those were some of the questions that led me to write "Unspeakable," which began with the idea of a group of people whose sexuality has somehow been linked to certain 'fetish words.' I didn't want the words to have anything to do with sex. They needed to be just ordinary, run-of-the-mill words, just as a pair of shoes is a run-of-the-mill object to anyone except a shoe fetishist.

        How could such a thing happen and how would the various characters react? I thought shame, the debilitating kind that might make a person want to avoid sexual contact altogether, would certainly be one reaction. That's the case with the protagonist Christine, who narrates the story.  Shame also factors into the suicide of Christine's brother Andrew, whose death provides the occasion for her to reconnect with the wild and wooly Ricky Calloway.     (to be continued)

 

On Speaking the 'Unspeakable'...Part 1 of 4

         Years ago, I knew a guy who couldn't begin to function sexually unless his partner wore towering stiletto heels in bed. He kept a walk-in closet stocked with high-heeled shoes, each bought in several different sizes. When he brought a woman home, she had only to go into his private shoe store and find something that fit. His fetish, a not uncommon one from what I've heard, seemed pretty straight forward. Buy shoes, ask willing woman to put them on, and go to it!

         What about less common fetishes? A lot of people, of course, love dirty words and where else to scream or moan them but during the inebriating release of great sex? But what if the fetish words weren't dirty? What if they were banal, normal, every day words that we use all the time? And how could such a fetish come to be?

        To be continued...