Note: Let’s just agree that this column is for mature audiences only shall we? If you continue reading, you are clearly over the age of 18 and don’t need your parents approval. We are serious, people! Words used in the most despicable manner is no laughing matter!!! Ok, well it is a laughing matter or we wouldn’t be here. Getting off course again. Sigh.

 It’s been a while since our last get together and you can chalk that up to the quality of the books I have been reading lately.  While they have run the gamut from middling fair to absolutely splendid, very few have fallen into the rainbow skittle of passionate prose that gets me going in eye blinking disbelief.  That choice of words worthy of a double take or three, the “oh no she/he didn’t” selection that begs the question “why, oh why did he say that?” It’s the mesmerizing moment you realize that someone actually put those words in a sentence in a paragraph on a page in a story that halts you in your tracks. But this particular topic has been running around my head  like a gerbil on a  squeaky wheel for a while now just waiting for something or some word to prod it into action. And a recent novella did just that. It shocked that gerbil into an all out sprint and here we are examining what makes some dirty talk sexy and others hysterical.

I realize that bed talk can be subjective.  What turns one person into a puddle of  goo sends another into paroxysms of hilarity or worse delivers a veritable cold shower to any sexy thoughts or actions that up until then had been looking pretty darn promising.  I get that, really I do! We have the school of “Harder, faster, deeper, there, fuck meeeeee  ” dirty talk.  Short bursts of words that spit forth from a participant’s mouth in the midst of a flurry of physical activity often imagining the verbal directions being given.  I find this can be really sexy if done right.  Say the author has written this vividly described sex scenes and the men are having at it in all ways sweaty and real.  Throw those words in to make the men frantic in their need for each other.  I get it (and so do they if they are lucky).  Done well, I find it to be very effective *waves a fan*.  But add a word or too, and hilarity replaces sexy in a heartbeat.  Example: ” Yeah, do it, do it harder. Fuck me with your big, hairy sausage, boo boo Daddy!” *cough, cough, cough* Sexy turns into spew event and the ambience is gone.

You can also find the “Give it to me now, I want it all, I can take it, make me want it, pound me into the mattress” format.  I call this type  the Drill Master of Smut Talk.  The person, could be a bossy bottom or someone topping from the bottom, is letting the other person know exactly what is expected here and woe to that person if they don’t deliver.  Again, in the right hands *snort*, this can turn up the heat and be informative, all at the same time. You get the how, when and where and a lesson on how to communicate better in bed.  What’s not to love?  Everyone’s a winner!

Some people despise the lack of pronouns from a partner in passion. For these lovers of all things proper and sentence structure, it ‘s all about syntax and semantics. Doesn’t that sentence  just make you quiver?  They shudder (and not in a good way) at “need you, want you, touch me, fuck me”, for those persons complete grammar is required. Who exactly “needs” what? And where do they “need” it?  I can see some frenzied folk getting confused.  Throw out that “fill me, fuck me”, and replace it with “Oh, I need you now, Alphonse.  Please take me to bed post haste, and have your wanton way with my beauteous form, you magnificent bastard.”  That just might be all some need to pole vault into the four poster, all sweaty and raring to have at it.

Others find certain proper nouns a complete turn off.  “Take it slut! You like a big thing up your hole.” Yep, the word causing a heap of “bleck” would be slut, although I do have problems with that entire sentence.  Whore, Daddy, boy, slut are terms that either delight or disgust when used in bed.  Papi was another. It’s almost fifty fifty with people coming (hah) down on one side or the other.  Personally?  Not big on the slut thing, but I won’t mark a book down for it when it comes to the review. If it works for the character, then it works for me.

Then we get to the sounds.  You know what I mean.  Two or more men are having a splendid time writhing about in as many positions possible.  And instead of words, it’s animalistic sounds urging them on to greater highs of sexual heat and prowess.  They moan, they groan, they growl and roar, purr and whimper.  Whew! *waves the fan madly* I am all about the animal sounds, love them in fact.  Except when the mewl turns into a mew, and I start to wonder where the kitties are hidden.  Some men apparently even “chirp” in  bed.  Huh. Hard to picture that one.  Bird fetish perhaps to go along with the whinny?

What doesn’t work? Stilted comments or comments so fatuous that just reading them makes me laugh out loud, never a good thing when the author is going for hot and heavy.  Take this sentence. “Mmm, can’t wait”—Randy lay sprawled on the bed—“to feel that dick of yours stretching my channel.” Again “Stretch my channel, stretch my channel.”  Umm, does that strike anyone as sexy? How about two idiots and a gun? Here they are  covered with lube,“The safety is on, babe! We’ll play a little more with that later. Right now, I wanna pump your ass full of my lead.”  Or perhaps it’s the would-be astronauts, where Rick wants Lance to “ride my pocket rocket into the stars”. And then for me the giggles start. I always want the author to take the time to say those phrases out loud, to take them around the verbal block so to speak.  If it sounds funny when saying it, the chances are pretty good it is going to read that way too.  I’m trying to be helpful here, folks!

Who knew talking dirty could be so funny? Well Jade Buchanen for one. Thank you, Tam, for this one:

From Jade Buchanan’s Del Fantasma: Duck Fart

“Drake let Bailey go just far enough to look at the other man. He wanted to hear more spilling from Bailey’s lips. “Come on, talk dirty to me, baby.”

A look of panic crossed Bailey’s face. Drake hid his grin. This should be fun.

“Uh…I want you to put your alligator in my love tunnel?”

Eyes wide, Drake started to choke. He could barely breathe, bent over the steering wheel now, laughing so hard his belly hurt.”

From hot to hurl, from sexy to snigger, dirty talk provides us with memorable moments in stories, from wonderfully realistic sexy scenes to the WTF smut verbalizations of a hominid in heat.  Authors, before you write it, say it, try it out!  Ask around, find out what real people are really saying or yelling as it were.  It might amaze you to find out what you think works in bed is far more suitable to Barnum and Bailey’s Circus or Cirque de Soleil than to two or more people getting their lust on.

If not, then your characters might just end up saying something like ” “I want you to stuff your massive demon cock in my tight, waiting hole.” Thank you, Julia, for that little gem.  And if they do, the chances are they might just end up being featured in a  Vocabulary Gone Bad.  I’m reading away, people, gobbling up page after page.  You’ve been forewarned and now it’s up to you.  If your characters “want it, need it, hurts so bad, Bunny Poo”, make sure its as sexy as you think it sounds, or the giggling you hear might be mine.