Cliterature – sex and the written word

Books can be a gateway to powerful erotic fantasies. Cara revisits some of her favourite steamy reads

When I was very young, a mobile library van would come to our village and, despite my embarrassment when handing them over to be stamped with the return date, I would borrow teen romance novels. I devoured them - these sweet, chaste stories of first kisses and first love. I would imagine myself the heroine, the nerdy, studious girl who catches the attention of the high school football team captain. The prom queen and the rebel. The bullied new girl and the Head Boy. This escape into a world where I – not nerdy, not popular, just sort of average – could be someone other than I was at a time of crippling teen insecurity, was a wonderful thing.

A few years’ later, a girl in my class lent me a Mills and Boon novel. She handed it to me with a smile that I didn’t understand until I read it. My eyes were opened. Sex – not the functional, purpose-driven activity I’d learnt about with awkwardness and embarrassment – but the pleasure-seeking and –giving, rampant, glorious act that it could be – was revealed to me, and my sexual relationship with the written word began.

Photo by Yuri Efremov on Unsplash