As I write this I am scheduled to leave in somewhat less than 9 hours for Las Vegas, Nevada and the 2014 Romance Novel Convention Pre-Convention Book Signing! I’m sure you can imagine I’m really excited, a little nervous, and slightly anxious all at the same time, as this will be the second major author event I’ve been a part of and the fourth such event I’ve attended.
Sitting here, I asked myself, “How do I explain to the random strangers who will certainly happen by my table how a straight male came to write romance?” It’s one thing to bare your soul with a monitor and God knows how many zillion miles of Internet between you and whoever’s on the other end. It’s something else again to have someone staring you down, waiting for an answer.
The answer that occurred to me is so simple and so elegant that it took my breath away. Subtract all the bluff and bluster of the last several years. Strip away the unfortunate political overtones that any acknowledgment of gender invariably creates and the assumptions that follow them around like lost puppies. It’s so bloody simple, at the end of the day, that few people who don’t know me will believe it’s real. And yet it’s the fundamental base for everything I do in the romance and erotica genres.
The question that started me reading and writing romance has actually been posed a billion times over the course of human history, perhaps most notoriously by Sigmund Freud.
What do women want?
After some years, 20 releases, and a hatful of romance novels in every conceivable subgenre, I realize in a lot of ways I’m still pretty clueless about what women want. Do they really dream of being carried away by a Highland Scotsman wearing nothing but a kilt and a menacing scowl? Ravished by a pirate captain? A diamond-in-the-rough biker, a coarse but boyish baseball player, a tough but tender billionaire?
No, not really.
I mean, sure, there’s a lot to be said for a man who makes his own rules and lives by them, and to hell with everything that stands in his way. Of course the financial security of being with a billionaire is a fantasy pretty much universally shared by men and women, especially in this roller-coaster economy we’re slogging our way through. But very few modern women want to be raped or owned in the “classical” romance manner, and the modern literature shows this over and over again.
What women want is just as basic. They want to be seen for everything they are, and loved for everything they’re not just as much as what they are. It’s fine to see a pretty girl near a college campus who looks like a beer calendar model and remark upon her beauty, but is it just possible that behind that amazing rack and that luscious ass is a woman who’s working two jobs, subsisting on three hours’ sleep a night and catnaps, and pulls down a 3.8 while taking Honors classes and being an active part of student government?
Unfortunately, we don’t see that as a society, and that’s where the modern romance hero has it right. He can be a blithering idiot upon first meeting, even a complete asshat. What he cannot and must not be is irredeemably Neanderthalic. Before he can truly have the heroine, he must first see her as greater than the sum of her parts and not an aesthetically pleasing conglomeration of secondary sex characteristics for his own pleasure. He must see her the way society demands we see men: as a complete, discrete individual in her own right, with desires and goals beyond being a baby factory or a bedroom slave.
Now, if the woman aspires ONLY to be these things, that’s certainly her choice and good on her for knowing what she wants. By the standards of many modern feminists, she is a traitor to her gender, to her body, and to the millions of women who suffer under the figurative or literal lash of patriarchal repression. The problem is that such a viewpoint by definition ignores her basic, God- or Goddess-given right to choose not to uphold a particular rhetoric.
Generally speaking, this particular woman is rarely to be found in the pages of romance. There is a reason for that, and it’s so stupidly simple people overlook it.
Much has been made of who’s reading and writing romance in the last forty years. There are a number of snide stereotypes assigned to the genre that fit just enough to draw a grudging admission there might be some truth to them, but these stereotypes are not the be-all, end-all. A woman doesn’t necessarily want a man to step in and take charge of her life and body, certain he knows better than she herself what she desires and needs.
What she does want is a man who is capable of recognizing those moments when she chooses to surrender control and take it, but who is willing to relinquish control once her need to let go has been satisfied. Now, granted, this does not apply to every woman in every circumstance. I am painting with a very broad brush and pure intentions here. This expression of surrender does not automatically mean weakness, nor does it necessarily equate to submission. But, let’s be honest here: There are times when you want to ride him like a champion Thoroughbred in the Kentucky Derby, and times when you want him to throw you on the bed and have his way with you, isn’t that right, ladies? Soft touches, kisses, that agonizing slow build…all of these have their place, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for getting right down to it and to hell with foreplay, manners or gentleness. Just fuck me, already!
“Look, I said it’s fine. Now lose the fig leaf and use that thing on me already!”
Guys have a version of this too. We don’t always want to be the initiator. (I use that word instead of “aggressor” for a number of reasons, not least of which is the unfortunate connotations associated with it. God forbid I should give any appearance of condoning rape under any circumstances or in any gender combination.) Sometimes we want to be seduced as well, even if most guys don’t know how to ask for it or would rather have our tongues ripped out with dull kitchen shears than admit it. Our collective problem as a species is that men are generally woefully ill-equipped to say, “I want you to take me tonight. I want you to use me for your pleasure.” It simply never occurs to us to string those words together that way and be honest about what we want. (I say “never” advisedly and in full admission this is a stereotype that does not apply to every man, anymore than every woman really wants a Highlander.)
This is why I started reading romance: I wanted to know what women want. In doing so, I had to start overcoming three decades of societal and social programming about what guys do and don’t do. I also had to start thinking for myself, something that has never been a problem for me but that needed a certain amount of direction. Inevitably, I wanted to see if I had the chops to write it.
Four years after my first story got published, the response seems to be a resounding “Yes!” Whether I’ll keep that or not depends entirely on how sympathetic I continue to be to my female readers and how well my own personal vision of “What women want” tallies with that posited by the flesh-and-blood women for whom my work is mostly intended.
However, as a parting shot, I say this to any guys who might be reading this post and thinking I’m crazy: Try reading what your woman is reading. See if you can find a commonality. It’s just possible she wants something from you that you could give her so easily, without having to live at the gym or take a bullet for her, but that you’re overlooking. If you find that commonality, then it’s up to you to try to fulfill that fantasy for her. Trust me when I say the sexiest thing you can do for a woman, more than giving her diamonds or a new car or a chocolate fountain that never runs empty, is to try to understand her from the inside, from the heart and soul, out.
Try it, and then tell me how it worked out. If you’re not more in love with her than ever and vice versa, then something’s very, very amiss. However, if you suddenly find yourself understanding her on a level you never thought possible and feeling more like “her man” than you have since the first time you made love to her…
Well, then, you’re welcome.
And with that, I’m going to call it a night. 6am comes early, and tomorrow I and my fellow authors invade Sin City!
Until next time,
Best,
J.S. Wayne
