DLC and the rise of Mummy Porn

One of my protagonist’s main obstacles in her new Italian life is how to handle the language. She is fortunate enough to fall into the arms of a virile young agronomist, and begins to learn Italian in the oldest way know to woman – in bed. I won’t speak of specifics, but suffice to say that the young grammar teacher’s methods are so effective our heroine learns the lingo almost faster than you can say, Basta! Mi stai facendo male! – Stop! You’re hurting me!

This week I read of the runaway success of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, a bondage novel that has American ladies hot between the thighs. Not having read the 1200 page book, I can only guess that there is a lot of titillating and punishment going on, some blindfolding and leatherwear, steep heels and coolly sweating brows. Apparently women are rushing out to buy grey ties, and rushing home to tie their husbands to their beds.

So what is it about suffering in the name of erotic pleasure? Does it make the crux sweeter? More deserved? My prim protagonist Marilyn Wade, a woman who knew how to park a family car and prune roses, meets an immaculate man from Hong Kong on a dating site. At the end of their date the man pushes his tongue into her mouth and she skitters off up a Soho Street. Chapters later, our heroine is living under this man’s roof in Milan, wearing a catsuit with cheeky leather cut-outs as she swishes a riding crop in front of a mirror, about to go to her first kinky party upstairs. How did this happen?

As I was writing this novel I had no clear intentions whatsoever. Every day was an adventure for me. Haphazardly dragging Marilyn – my protagonist – from one scene to another, from one compartment of her life to another. There was pitiful Marilyn, abandoned by her philandering husband, Marilyn-the-mother, whose teens come the full circle and end up protective of her; Marilyn-the-best-friend, whose clairvoyant BFF predicts her future; and Marilyn-the-sexually-revitalised-woman, given the right to climax and howl that had been robbed of her. But I didn’t set out to write about steamy nightclubs or scalding grammar lessons. I wanted humour, I wanted a giggle. But I also wanted to point a finger at the botoxed dummies forty-year-old women become. I wanted to show a woman living beyond her boundaries, a woman recalibrating her senses, her expectations, her evolution.

This is what became my story.