I write weird erotica because sex? Sex is weird. Let’s be honest here: when you get right down into the squelchy, heaving, multi-limbed mass of the thing, sex is weird. Hell, just being is weird. The fact that we are conscious entities parading around in flesh, and that flesh occasionally comes together to please itself and, when conditions are right, produce more flesh for other conscious entities to parade around in? Completely weird.

Most of the time, we simply don’t notice how odd this is, how utterly strange our existence has become. It’s my belief that our society and its obsession with normative behaviour is a symptom of that not-noticing, that willful ignorance of the outré nature of the human experiment. Of the life experiment.

So why does so much of what passes as erotica celebrate the normal? That’s the question I’m constantly asking with my stuff, ladies and gentlemen and assorted entities. Even the current crop of billionaire/fetish/BDSM/paranormal material does nothing but reinforce bland retreads of standard behaviours. I don’t get it.

You can’t spell paranormal without normal. And that’s the freaking truth.

It’s why I prefer the term weird erotica.

Weird erotica speaks to the inherent strangeness of the sexual act. It speaks to the attendant being-strangeness of that act in all it’s varied and multiple forms. Weird erotica points the way to something beyond standard sexualities and gender norms, and by norms I am including the queer norms that by their very existence shore up and validate the very sexualities they set themselves against.

Weird erotica points the way to the sex-practices of the future: an omni-sexual practice that recalls the Sufi’s ecstatic connection to something as basic and simple as, say, a glass of water. The omni-sexual being is drunk on significance. Beyond mere fetish attachment, the omni-sexual is turned on by conceptual items, ideas of transcendence, mutation, severe body modifications, soul-tweaking tantra. Omni-sexuality is transhumanist and transformative. Transformation through sex, and sex with whoever and whatever will trigger such transformation.

Dagon’s Teeth! Why else does anyone fuck? Sure, pleasure, I guess. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m weird.

Well, if you’ve read any of my Blackstone series, you know I’m weird. And getting weirder. Hell, if I could somehow fuck the Amazon algorithm, literally, then you know I would. Mathematical-styles.

But for those who haven’t, here are some of my tropes and themes. This stuff just keeps coming up, and again, it all comes down to transformation…

Dominance, often cruel, of that which should be dominated. I get the back-and-forth interplay of a good, respectful sub/Dom arrangement, sure, but strength is strength, and weakness, weakness, and I’m not sure we’re doing each other any favours by playing at something when it’s clearly not.

Consciousness alteration, through magic or sex or drugs, often at the same time.

The pure “this is it, you’ll never be the same again” ecstasy of body-horror, especially as it can occur during the sexual act. This can make for some icky stuff, but it’s down there in the muck that humans change the most, so I like to go there, see how far I can take it.

Synesthesia! This is the mapping of one or more sets of senses onto the others: hearing colors, tasting music, all that classic trippy stuff. Seeing frequencies of light outside the normal range, auditory extensions into the subsonic (where the real growling happens!) and levels of mental cognition that we just don’t hit during normal vanilla couplin’! My thematic code for this is the term “seawater and stars”: brine and burning hydrogen, black waters and solar winds, hot and cold… basically? Fire. Water. All that good elemental shit. Seawater and stars shows up in everything I write. You can hunt for it, if you like.

Monsters. Oh yeah. Leave your lycans and vamps and sad succubi at home, ladies. I’ve got no interest in that only-just-inhuman sphere of influence. I mean, c’mon! We are living nearly a century after Lovecraft (the Copernicus of modern horror) blew that paranormal junk out of the sky! How is it that we are still deigning to get off on these weak metaphors on two legs? Ha! Two legs. Please. I could go on and on and on, but that’s less interesting than this awesome panel from Brandon Graham’s (Prophet, Multiple Warheads) Perverts of the Unknown which sums up what I like about monsters way better…

Who doesn’t want to see the levels in their bedroom/orgy cavern/ritual altar atop a mountain jump by 300 points?! Transcend! Transform! If you’re going to do it, get it DONE. If you’re only worrying about how to get him/her out of your bed so you can sleep because you’ve got work in the morning, then you’re doing it wrong! You should be worrying about how much cosmic energy you’re going to have to channel through your ajna chakra as you come, because nothing less than ALL OF IT is going to keep the portal open long enough to get that extra-dimensional beastie you just fucked back through it!

ANGRY SEX MONSTERS! Bam.

And goodnight! Justine out! xoxoxo my lovely weirdos!

* * * * *

Editor’s Note: Justine G is the author of the BLACKSTONE Erotica series from Martian Migraine Press, as well as the gonzo sci-fi erotica novella ORGY IN THE VALLEY OF THE LUST LARVAE and (with fellow MMP author S R Jones) the experimental steampunk Victorian erotica and marine-engineering mash-up novella/manual Seawater & Stars: The Last Novel of Gideon Stargrave. She’s exactly what she seems: fucking terrifying. We love her. Buy her stuff.