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WARNING: VERY X RATED
(SORRY I AM PROBABLY--DEFINITELY--A
PRUDE BUT TO HEAR WOMEN USING THIS KIND OF LANGUAGE IS A TURN OFF TO
ME--HECK I DON'T EVEN LIKE TO HEAR MEN USE THIS KIND OF LANGUAGE!!! BUT I
LOVE MUSTO AND THINK HE IS AN EXCELLENT, FUNNY WRITER!))
76-Year-Old Erotic Writer: "I'll Use the C-Word, but Not the Cruder Language!"
Desiree Holt's Fifty Shades of Grandma
By Michael Musto
Beth Coyle Photography
Stacked: Desiree Holt is never crude.
I get more pitches than Francisco Cervelli, but this one really knocked me into the dirt: "Gives new meaning to Fifty Shades of Grey: Desiree Holt, 76, could be the world's most sex-crazed senior citizen."
Two hot flashes later—mine—I was on the phone with Holt, "the
porn queen of Texas Hill Country" who has written 137 erotic-fiction
tales for "romantica" publisher Ellora's Cave while other people her age
play shuffleboard or star in catheter commercials. Her steamy new work, Bedroom Eyes—part of the Skin Deep anthology—is about a Navy SEAL romancing a woman who hides a facial quirk behind tinted glasses.
From page 30: "Oh, she definitely wanted her mouth on him. His chest.
His nipples. Every inch of his skin. His cock. . . . Tonight, she
wanted to act out every fantasy she'd written about in her erotic
romances." (Oh, granny!) Yes, the heroine happens to be an erotic writer
herself, and her facial problem, involving a congenital eyelid fold, is
something Holt herself had surgery for. The woman truly writes what she
knows.
(And yes, she still dates, though there's nobody that serious at the moment.)
The former music-biz agent got into writing when her late husband
encouraged her to live her (erotic) dream. When Holt found out about an
open submissions call for Ellora's Cave, hubby advised her to read one
of their books aloud, and if that felt comfortable, to go for it. "I
did," she told me. "And then I wrote Cupid's Shaft, and they bought it!" At the time, she was a saucy sexagenarian.
Our session—I mean interview—went like so:
Hi, Desiree. Were you at all self-conscious about diving into sexual writing at that age?
I thought I'd feel uncomfortable and stilted, but I wasn't. We use
graphic language but not crude language. And when you're writing an
erotic romance, the sex is part of the emotion, whether it's for a
one-night stand, a permanent relationship, or something in between. I
write relationship stories. I think that what you do sexually has to do
with degrees of what you have in your relationship. You start with the
sexual tension and the emotional connection until it grows to full-out
erotic sex.
Wait, let's go back to the graphic-versus-crude-language thing. Explain, please.
Well, I can tell you the words I use, and I use them a lot: cock, dick,
shaft, cunt, pussy, and fucking—but I don't use the cruder evolutions
of those.
Huh? What's cruder than "cunt"? You'd be surprised.
I guess I need to go out more. Do you write about rape?
Absolutely not. I don't write about rape or cruelty or scat and golden
rain, and I don't write male/male or female/female because it's a
personal preference, though I've written Menage (about two men
and a woman). And not incest or bestiality. To my publisher, those are
no-nos because that takes it into crudity and away from romance, and
we're writing romances, after all.
Hold on, it sounds like you're equating homosexuality with bestiality! No, I'm not. It's just not a particular preference of mine. You can't
write about something you haven't experienced yourself. I can't get the
emotion into it. Ellora's Cave does have male/male and female/female
stories, but they have authors who do it extremely well because they can
get into it emotionally.
Well, how did you manage to write Menage?
With a lot of imagination. I could put myself mentally in bed with two
men, but I couldn't share a man with another woman because I'm too
possessive.
Same here! Have you ever written about s/m? Yes. I've not been
in it, but I am fascinated by it. I have visited dungeons and bondage
clubs and have talked to people about the lifestyle. If my husband was
alive, and we were young and healthy, we'd definitely try it.
Good for you for being a hormonally vibrant grandmother. Society wants us to think mature people aren't sexual, right?
Yes. I want women to know they should embrace their sexuality. Sex
doesn't stop. The body changes, so you change to accommodate it. You put
a lot of thought into seduction and creating sexual desire. I try to
age my heroines. I don't write any stories about people in their
twenties anymore and hardly any in their thirties. I write a lot of
cougar stories. They used to say a woman's sexual peak was 45, but 55 is
a lot closer now because women take better care of themselves.
What reactions have you gotten as a mature writer of erotica? As my younger daughter says, "Yeah, my mom's out there writing about her
sex life." My three kids are actually very proud. They don't read
anything I've written—the ick factor is too big—but they promote me
everywhere. One weird response I get from people is, "At your age, how
do you know any of this?" I want to say, "I didn't spend all those years
in the closet!"
But is "Desiree Holt" your real name? It's just too good.
It's perfect for who I am now, let's put it that way. My late husband
was the one who came up with it. I put him into all my heroes.
Even the Navy SEAL? He was in the Navy.
Cupid's shaft works in wondrous ways.
Read more Michael Musto at La Dolce Musto