In this review of Kenny Wright's book, I muse on the Alpha Male character.
Man, what a hot hot hot story. The sex is sizzling and naughty and fun but
that’s not all there is to this expertly crafted work of fiction which demonstrates
what makes erotica not pornography.
Kenny Wright is a finely balanced writer who doesn’t waste
more words than he needs to on scenery;
he saves them up for hot action and detailed accounts of the gorgeous
bodies rippling around each other in his stories. That’s not to say he only writes detailed
sex. Character is King for Kenny. Leap
has two male and a female character and, as in Moving Mrs. Mitchell - which is a massive favourite of mine - the
two guys are distinctive people not just interestingly different shaped inside
their boxer shorts. In the end, Sarah –
the female lead, becomes more a cipher than a character but that’s not
necessarily a problem. It’s about the
kind of story that this is. This is a
masculine dream and although Sarah is realistic and her feelings are
sensitively explored throughout, she is the pivot around which the story
revolves and the story is Jack’s. That
this is a masculine dream means that it’s a muscular, sexy, riproaring ride for
women readers as much as for men readers.
Sexuality is where I believe we constitute much of our
identity, particularly slippery gender identity which postmodern feminists such
as myself argue we make up as we go along (yes yes, one day I’ll write a
blogpost to explain postmodern feminism!).
A piece of erotic writing offers an unparalleled opportunity to iterate
and assert gender identity. Leap does this in a particularly
ingenious way.
To be cuckolded is potentially one of the most destructive
ways to have your identity undermined.
When some other man or woman manages to engage your woman or man in sex,
you can only wonder what it is that they didn’t find satisfactory about you and
the body parts that make you man or woman.
Yet in this story Jack fantasises desperately about his wife Sarah being
taken in sex by her younger and physically fit co-worker David. Kenny plays an exquisitely finetuned
torturer’s game with his character, ramping up the pressure by having Sarah do
things for David which she has refused to do for Jack in an extraordinary two
fingers up which Jack finds all the more
exhilarating because it takes him closer to the jealous edge than he had
expected. Yet he loves the thrill which
is offered in flirting with losing the woman who secures his masculine identity
by being so beautiful and so his. The
reassuring crux of the story is cleverly situated before the main action, when
Jack tells Sarah in a manner which makes plain his physical strength, that at
the end of the night she will come home and she will be his again. This allows the reader to play along with
Sarah and David in the comfortable certainty that the core relationship
securing male/female (Jack/Sarah) will not be undermined. David is physically fit but Jack works out
too and in the end he proves that the pull he exerts on Sarah is stronger than
David’s in more ways than just the physical.
The fun and games of the extramarital sex are just a game in the
end.
The macho ego of the Alpha Male is problematic in its
fragility, sometimes in ‘real’ life leading to domestic violence. However machismo is wickedly sexy because in
pretending to masculine superiority it secures both male and female
identities. In Jack, Kenny has created
the wide-eyed girl’s dream Alpha Male.
Sensitive and responsive to Sarah’s wishes (although he likes the idea
of screwing other women, he never will because it would make her unhappy), the
moment when the power glints out of his eyes to say to her: You’re
mine, is super titillating. Machismo
is exciting because it’s out at the extremes of gender identity, offering the
delusory promise that it might be possible to be, or fuck, a Real Alpha Man and
to be a Real Woman if you are fucking the RAM.
If this was all there was to the story, Leap would be a nice bit of stuff to put in your Christmas stocking
and forget when Kenny turns out his next piece of work. But at its heart is a moment so poignant that
I burst into tears while reading it, when Jack reminisces about all that Sarah
is to him, someone who secures his identity well beyond fragile male sexuality
in a way that means she may be his because of his strength but he will always
be hers. Forget the multiple orgasms and
many moments when Jack and Sarah tease each other physically and mentally in
their Leap Day game. This mundane
domestic moment is the climax of the story, reminding us of what in the end is
the happiest heart of human life and the end towards which sexuality
strives: home, family, lover/friend, the
essence of humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment