Fictional Menages vs REAL Menages

By A.J. Llewellyn

We romance authors know what's hot. Our publishers let us know and so do the top ten lists at every romance publishing house. Some authors defy the trending genres and sell their pants off regardless of what is considered currently "hot".
Some authors jump on the new, glowing tide with mixed results.Menages is hot. Paranormal menages, even better. Some are frankly ludicrous...even frightening.
What kind of a REAL menages involves one women and say three, or even four men where the guys don't touch each other? That's not a menages it's a gang bang and in reality would make for one sore woman.
I am gay and I write gay menages. I have also written two books with men and women (My Hawaiian Song of Love, Quartetto) the latter of which featured three men and a woman.In romance writing parlance it was a M/M/M/F which indicates the men get it on. I've noticed a new genre cropping up: M/F/M which signifies the girl gets lucky with the guys but the guys don't get lucky with each other.
Now, I've talked to many friends who are het and who swing. They tell me in real life, this is possible. However, in real life, the fantasy acted out in reality is often one man and two women. For a guy, for example, who wants to see his wife taken by a hot, hung stranger, he might sit by and watch and join in...but not every single day.I have a friend who wanted to swing and she and her husband went to a sex club.
Her sex partner was apparently a very free and easy guy who grabbed her husband and as she said to me, "he got my husband ready for me. It was a total turn on."
"For you or for him?" I asked her.
"For me...and later on, he admitted he was taken by surprise, but he liked it. Would we do it again? I don't know. He wants another woman with me, but I'm not interested."
As for three or four men taking on a woman and not even getting near each other, I am told, and as I suspected, it is highly improbable.
My friend Leslie who performs in and directs straight porn tells me that when she and her hubby play with others, some guys love the feel of another man's cock, especially when it's just been inside the woman they're playing with.
"My husband is great for playtime with other women, but would never touch another man," she told me last night.
I asked her about a scene in a book I described to her, one that I had just read where three men took turns having sex with the woman. I found it unbelievable that they placidly took turns er...enjoying her and nothing else was going on.
"That sounds like a damned dreary party," she said. "I can't imagine that happening."
Leslie is heavily involved in the swinger scene and has shot a couple of orgies for camera.
"What you are describing is an orgy and is borderline gang rape," she said. "If it goes on for hours and the chick is spent and still the guys are doing her...in real life, she'd be in a lot of pain. Besides, Ive been in a real orgy and there is nothing like them. There is an urgency...a pure picnic of pleasure. It would take at least two women to entertain a few guys. I'm a porn actress and I wouldn't want to take on three or four guys on my own. I mean, come on."
So I am curious.
Why do you think this genre is now hot to the point of being a little...er, ridiculous? Maybe they're written for women by women who have a fetish for being the center of attention, but is it even remotely realistic?
Or am I the one who's eating crazy pie?
I'd really value your thoughts.

Aloha oe,

A.J.

The Colors of Death

By A.J. Llewellyn

Many authors depict death in their works and since I am an erotic fiction author I think long and hard before killing off ANY character. I have done it a few times now, the first with Kimo, my hot Hawaiian Kahuna killing off his ex-wife by returning her own death-curse to her in My Hawaiian Song of Love and secondly, well, I've offed a few bad guys - always bad guys in my Waikiki Vampire books and my Blood Eclipse books with D.J. Manly.

I never linger over the killings, I don't glory in death. But it's a subject that interests me, especially since witnessing the passing of a friend this week.

He had been diagnosed with Stage-4 colon cancer and his sister, one of my dearest friends flew him to Los Angeles to be with her once he was given three months to live.

It's been anguishing to see his rapid decline, especially in view of the fact that this is the same disease that killed my mother.

My friend was in Hospice in the final weeks of his life. The staff were wonderful and very loving They kept him heavily medicated so that he was comfortable, but when I went to see him, he'd stopped eating and drinking and refused to lie in his bed.

He was sitting in an armchair and smelled terrible. I won't go into details but he wasn't taking trips to the bathroom...

"If I lie down, it will mean death," he said.

He began to hallucinate after 72 hours of no sleep and the heavy drugs to control the pain of the disease eating away at him.

His sister called me, frantic, saying he appeared to be talking to himself. "He's waving to somebody," she said.

"The angels have come for him," I said. "Maybe he sees your mother."

My friend became hysterical and I went to the Hospice and her brother, looking absolutely skeletal, but strangely at peace, lay perfectly still, only his hand rising from the bed. He was so out of it at this point that the staff were able to put him to bed and monitor him.

"I see colors, such beautiful colors," he said and I nodded. My mother had told me the same thing. Only she fought to stay on this planet because she had three small children.

My friend's brother never fought until the very end. He feared death until it claimed him at 5.03 PM when he saw his mother and grandfather waiting for him.

"I'm going home," he said.

I have thought about his passing since it occurred two days ago. I don't know if I can convey the horror and heartbreak, and yet the mysticism of what he saw in his final hours.

I wonder if I will be ever able to put this scene in a book. Do writers really think about the emptional weight of their death scenes? I know I've resisted overt and gratuitous dispatches and I feel now that it's unlikely I will write one again in a lets-get-this-over with way.

Death, when witnessed is a profoundly upsetting experience. I've yet to read a single book that pinpoints the sheer horror.

Nothing in life prepares us for the moment. Nothing anyone writes can do that. I don't wish this experience on anyone. I do know though that this encounter with the colors of the benevolence of 'the other side' has convinced me more than ever that only love is real because it is so much stronger than death.

Aloha oe,

A.J.