The year was 1970 B.E.L.J. (Before E.L. James) and I was a freshman in high school. Midnight Cowboy (1969) had just become the only X-rated movie ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, foreshadowing a decade of sexually bold expression. In literature, there were uninhibited erotic books like The Happy Hooker (1971), Fear of Flying (1973), My Secret Garden (1973), and Delta of Venus (posthumously published in 1977) that helped pave the way for the quality sensual writing available today. All of this explicit material sizzled on the page, but, like the films of that era, earned their mainstream success because of their intelligence and good writing.
During the eighties there was a wide gap between what was mainstream and what was underground. Thanks to the writers of the previous decade, if a book was erotic, well-written, and told a good story it would be marketed as a literary book. My first novel, Seesaw (1983), written using my real name, is a graphic recounting of a high school teacher's dominant/submissive affair with a student, yet it was released with the rest of the hardcovers that winter season, translated into two languages, and reviewed by the L.A. Times, Publisher's Weekly, and Library Journal.
At the other end was loosely plotted, explicit erotic fiction focused mainly on titillation, usually found in adult bookstores located in the seedy part of town, with mostly men slipping quietly through its side doors. This erotica, similar to some of the material published now, would sometimes have a pseudo-analysis included, written by a so-called psychiatrist, in order to avoid a pornography charge. Can you imagine Dr. Phil checking in at the end of your next erotic read?
In the early nineties I started a family, worked full time to make ends meet, while I labored on the side to write. Despite the financial struggles many experienced during this period's tenuous economy, the increasing affordability of home VCRs caused the near disappearance of XXX adult theaters, the flourishing of sex videos over books in adult bookstores, and the appearance of bold Main St. rental locations with large X-rated video sections. Mostly men seemed to support this hardcore side, perhaps because they tend to be more visual, or the material was targeted directly at them, or because there were fewer stigmas when a man rented a dirty video.
At the same time, chain bookstores exploded at malls and airports, many with discreet sections called Erotica, housing softcore fiction appealing mostly to women. The annual Best American Erotica (beginning in 1993) and The Mammoth Book of Erotica (1994) are two anthologies that helped inspire the numerous erotic short story collections that are still popular today. Although the female audience for this material widened, I suspect it was limited by the very public walk from the Erotica shelves to the cash register.
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At the other end was loosely plotted, explicit erotic fiction focused mainly on titillation, usually found in adult bookstores located in the seedy part of town, with mostly men slipping quietly through its side doors. This erotica, similar to some of the material published now, would sometimes have a pseudo-analysis included, written by a so-called psychiatrist, in order to avoid a pornography charge. Can you imagine Dr. Phil checking in at the end of your next erotic read?
In the early nineties I started a family, worked full time to make ends meet, while I labored on the side to write. Despite the financial struggles many experienced during this period's tenuous economy, the increasing affordability of home VCRs caused the near disappearance of XXX adult theaters, the flourishing of sex videos over books in adult bookstores, and the appearance of bold Main St. rental locations with large X-rated video sections. Mostly men seemed to support this hardcore side, perhaps because they tend to be more visual, or the material was targeted directly at them, or because there were fewer stigmas when a man rented a dirty video.
At the same time, chain bookstores exploded at malls and airports, many with discreet sections called Erotica, housing softcore fiction appealing mostly to women. The annual Best American Erotica (beginning in 1993) and The Mammoth Book of Erotica (1994) are two anthologies that helped inspire the numerous erotic short story collections that are still popular today. Although the female audience for this material widened, I suspect it was limited by the very public walk from the Erotica shelves to the cash register.
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