Saturday, November 22, 2014

Undressing for Love

By David S. Russell (Guest Blogger)

Greetings. I am a writer in the genres of translation, journalism, poetry and fiction. As a journalist, I have had many critical articles published in the online magazine  Poetry Express Newsletter. My translation of the 16th Century Spanish epic La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla, is published by Amazon. I have one collection of poems and proses, Prickling Counterpoints in paperback, and much more published online and in anthologies, including those produced by Forward Press. Some of my speculative prose and verse has appeared in the online International Times.
I am also a visual artist, and there will be an exhibition of prints of my artworks at the Gallery Atlantis in Jackson, Tennessee, USA, in the spring of 2015. 
 
In addition to that I am a guitarist-singer-songwriter, with many CD albums, including Bacteria Shrapnel and Kaleidoscope Concentrate, plus many tracks on YouTube under David Russell. The most downloaded tracks there are Microscope and Symbiotic Suffocation.

I was stimulated to write romance/erotica by a close friend who produced some beautiful work in that idiom. I find writing romance is soothing and uplifting, a good counterweight to my struggles with the speculative and the critical. I had to overcome many inhibitions to enter this area; in some ways I had been brought up to be a prudish Victorian. What emerged from my efforts has been labeled as ‘soft vanilla’ or literary romance by some of my reviewers. To this date I cannot write in the fully explicit mode; to me these matters should be described obliquely and poetically – so much more of a turn-on. My characters are intellectual and introspective; they carefully premeditate their scenarios.

I think I have a wardrobe fetish, as the article below will demonstrate:
Undressing for Love
For me, sex is nothing without refined, dramatic foreplay. Dressing and undressing are the kingpin of that foreplay. There are five basic kinds of unrobing which can be brought into any encounter.
Girl undresses in front of boy: any girl that takes the disrobing initiative can get really proud and confident, and pre-establish her control over the love scene. Girls: do a self-striptease in front of the mirror; love the sight of your bodies. say – however great you look in any outfit, you look ten times lovelier with your clothes off.
Boy undresses in front of girl: come on: get over your shyness, boys. Do your own self-striptease: do as the girls do.
Boy undresses girl: every boy should know how to disrobe a girl properly, and make her feel great as her gorgeous body is revealed.
Girl undresses boy: be liberated, girls. How many boys, deep inside, want to be your beautiful hunks, your sex-objects. (And they also have their feminine side).
Boy and girl undress each other: great to alternate – each partner taking off each other’s garments in sequence (OK: the alternation can be made with 1 & 2).
Any couple fancying each other should first get a mutual eyeful at a workout centre or a swimming pool. Swimsuits proclaim beauty and allure, They have an air of mystery; they get the imagination going. Arms and legs moving in the water evoke the pulsing rhythms of love. I imagine beautiful girls doing the backstroke giving themselves to me in total love.
Great to go through a few wardrobe changes within one love session. Start off both comfortably dressed for preliminary necking and petting. Skin-tight gear is really uncomfortable for this, so try something looser. Girls: make sure the zip on your jeans us easy to handle, or wear a skirt that is easy to lift during petting. You must offer some token thigh to lead your boy on, and help clinch your control of him.
Great to start the ecstatic process while your French kisses are really hotting up on the sofa, getting longer, breathier, deeper. Girls: hold the crown of your boy’s head as he curls tongues with you; unbutton his shirt, feel down his torso and back, start to undo his trousers. Boys: put one arm around your girl’s waist; with the other, gently raise her skirt, feel her thighs, unbutton her blouse, feel her back, press her breasts inside her bra. don’t undo it yet. and if you can do all this while holding a kiss, it’s fabulous.
You’re probably lying on the sofa at this point. Now stand and face each other. Let skirt and trousers fall. Show yourselves to each other as if you were modelling. Have a really tight embrace in your underwear; keep it on for the moment. boys: now undo your girl’s bra, and do it gently, delicately – watch those flimsy shoulder straps. Girls: lift your arms in the air as he does it. You conquer him through the gesture of surrender.

Now – to build up more suspense, a wardrobe change. One of you stay in the bedroom or lounge to change, the other go into the bathroom.

Some wardrobe ideas – swimwear. This can be great, bringing the beach into the bedroom. Boys: build up a collection of boxer shorts and trunks of different shapes and sizes. don’t be shy: try them on in front of the mirror. See which you look/feel sexiest in. Girls are turned on by boxer shorts – but trunks, right proportion in the right light, can give that second wave.
Girls: try on your one-pieces, bikinis, lingerie and bodystockings in front of the mirror; get high on your auto-erotic kicks. See which is really you, at your strongest and sexiest. (I feel that 40s and 50s retro one-pieces still have the edge; interested to hear readers’ opinions. Or how about wearing swimsuit under lingerie? One extra layer gives more suspense, and a bit of see-through more still.)
Put on tee-shirts and shorts. Imagine you meet and fall for each other on the beach. Peel off each other’s shirts, tops and shorts – strip each other for glorious athletic action. (Girls: you may prefer a bathrobe to a tee-shirt; that’s fine.) It’s great to feel the adrenalin pushing against your costumes and against your partner’s body as you’re poised to plunge for the swim of love. do plenty of hand play around the edges of your suits. Boys: run your hands down in sweeping curves over your girl’s bra and cleavage, and down her back. Feel inside her bra if it’s not too tight. Do the same on her hips. Girl: feel your boy’s hips and thighs by the edge of his trunks.
Turn the lights down low as you finally remove your costumes. Good to stand up and do so before you finally go to bed. Boys: taking off a glamorous one-piece takes a steady hand; cultivate one. Girls: some sexy trunks have knotted waistbands; be practised with knots.

Other ideas:
Boys: uniforms and period gear. Girls: if you can get flowing ball gowns, that’s marvellous. It’s one of my favourite turn-ons to see a girl stepping out of a voluminous, or a skimpy, gown to show off a swimmer’s body. Schoolgirl gym slips are wonderful for petting.

A really good two-way strip can lift either/both of you up to a great androgynous feeling, break down your barriers with each other. So, macho woman and feminine man, get it together. Great, beautiful sex can free you from the constrictions of your gender categories.

Enrich your love lives with a good (un)dress sense.

Dreamtime Sensuality by David Russell

Many a dream can be realised with a little forethought. The characters in this quartet of stories are intelligent, sensitive and literary. They are also supremely voyeuristic and open-minded. Their intelligence is counterbalanced by inhibitions, which they can only lose by premeditated seduction scenarios, which relate intimately to their professional, creative and cultural lives. The great effort each couple puts into arranging a scenario seems to enhance the quality of the experience. A great source of inspiration for this and other works has been the novel The Girl Beneath the Lion by AndrĂ© Pieyre de Mandiargues.

Seductive Semaphore: Fashion Designer Bethesda and journalist Hector live opposite each other, with windows facing. They make initial contact through visible, provocative gestures. Soon afterwards, they get direct contact when Hector assists Bethesda with her folio. She invites him round to model for some of her fashion creations, and proceeds to seduce him. The seduction continues with a ritual visit to a sports centre, and then to a beach. They leave it open as to whether their relationship could ever become long-term.

The Heroine and the Author: Dreamer Hecate discovers she has a terminal illness. She wants to make the most of the time she has left by being celebrated in literature as a charismatic, legendary figure. She meets Ferdinand, a ghost writer, who is happy to undertake this massive project with her. In the process, she gets an idea of his physique through jogging and the fitness centre. Then there is a seduction scene inspired by the literary models of Sappho and Donne. Being ‘open-minded’, they make a pact for each one to go and have a sexual adventure – his hetero, hers lesbian. Their relationship is enhanced by this extra dimension.

Dreamtime Sensuality: Romona, highly literary and highly inhibited, goes to an exotic island location. She deeply desires a passionate encounter. At the Pension where she stays, she meets Stefano, who fulfils her requirements exactly. The proprietress of the Pension picks up on Romona’s shyness, and gives her reassurance, including some practice in the art of kissing. Romona orchestrates an elaborate beach seduction scenario, and they are both fulfilled. They never meet again, but their exchange of emails and text messages goes on indefinitely.

Dancing with Danger: Verona is a scriptwriter and Gareth an archaeologist. They both have ‘retreats’ near the coast, and discover their common interests. Verona contrives a half-seduction on a deserted beach, wearing 18th century retro gear – related to their common interests. After some further encounters, they give each other a ‘dare’ to go and have a really risky encounter with someone really dodgy. Gareth finds a young woman on the run. Verona has a rapturous encounter with someone who gets hauled in by the police, suspected of terrorism. She uses her charm on the interrogating police officer to extricate herself. So Verona and Gareth both meet up again, to tell their respective tales.

Excerpt

Hecate read some verses of Sappho, which she felt totally appropriate to his slender grace, so nearly androgynous. She quoted a phrase demanding his fixed, concentrated stare into her eyes. The eye contact was clinched Hecate’s introduction was a quote from her.

Ferdinand responded to the prompt; he knew what he had to do—gradually, at intervals, he removed his garments one by one as she breathily read the hypnotic, seductive phrases.

His garments came off with ease and grace, he obviously had some long-repressed desire to do this. At last, he stood before her, beautiful, naked, and slender. Somehow, his spirit prevailed over his earlier reticence, he shed his shyness with his clothing. Since she saw him in trunks, Hecate anticipated this moment with such relish. If the pool had been empty when they were there, she would have taken them off there, or in the shower. Perhaps something could happen, or even be premeditated in the future, on a deserted beach, secluded amid the dunes. 
 
She handed him a volume of the collected poems of John Donne. “Now, I think you know which one I want you to read me. Hmm…while we’ve been working together, I bet you’ve had some reveries of me undressing, you undressing me.”

“I have to admit that is so and I know which poem you mean, it’s Elegy Nineteen—To His Mistress Going to Bed.

“We really are on the same wavelength darling. I had learned of that poem as a young girl, with a desperate desire one day to enact it. Every word of it struck home as I disrobed alone, for years I yearned for that lovely partner to give me those instructions live.”

Ferdinand beamed, then quoted from near the end of the poem referring to the poet’s nakedness at the beginning of the action. Then he proceeded to read, with his lovely, hypnotic voice.
He really made Hecate’s girdle feel like Saturn’s rings As she undid her sash and cast it down, she felt her abdomen was bathed in heavenly light, visible only to spiritual eyes.
The request to remove her ‘breastplate’ gave her an etheric shudder. Taking off the brooch at the top of her dress felt like casting away a shield, affirming that strife and combat had been replaced by love. 
 
In response to the exhortation to unlace, she felt deliciously nervous as her fingers twitched on her zips and buttons.
As the gown went off following the next command, Hecate felt she had emerged from a perennial cocoon, that she was the sun liberated from the constricting veils of night.
As for a ‘coronet’, Hecate was only wearing a slide, but removing it certainly helped her locks flow freely.
 
It was great to feel liberated from footwear; earlier on her high heels had felt so sexy. But now her stockinged feet tingled with electric desire.
 
With her underwear, admittedly she found nylon, calico and silk sexier than linen, but the word, so sensually uttered, really relevant. (from The Heroine and the Author – Story 2)

Book Links: 
www.barnesandnoble.com/s/edmunds-r-david-russell-david







1 comment:

Lisabet Sarai said...

Welcome to Beyond Romance, David.

You are a man of many talents.

Good luck with the book. I saw you had some favorable reviews over at Amazon.

Post a Comment

Let me know your thoughts! (And if you're having trouble commenting, try enabling third-party cookies in your browser...)