Discordia Reviewing famous writers' sex letters

It's like "Rate My Dick Pic" for literary titans.

Previously, Eris wrote a review of John Updike’s collected letters, which he found largely annoying, taking special pains to highlight Updike’s terrible correspondence with his lovers. What we learned afterwards is that, because of this, we’re man-haters or something, a brush that is used to tar every critic of Updike by his undying legion—albeit a legion getting smaller by the day as they, well, die—of sycophants. Where do you get off, they said, scrutinizing a person’s intimate correspondence like that? about a bunch of letters that were recently published for public scrutiny.

So we thought: hey, why not run a bunch of the Discordites through a gauntlet of sex letters by famous writers and artists and see what everybody thinks? Let’s begin!

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Charles Bukowski

I love you, your pussy hairs I felt with my fingers, the inside of your pussy, wet, hot, I felt with my fingers; you, up against the refrigerator, you have such a wonderful refrigerator, your hair dangling down, wild, you there, the wild bird of you the wild thing of you, hot, lewd, miraculous.

Gwen Aube: Oh the Bukowski one is cute!

Eris: I think the sudden focus on the fridge is a nice touch, a coy little tease. The repetitiveness has this throbbing, driving quality to it that I think makes it kinda sexy. No thesaurus in sight, it’s simple crude Saxony. I think that in English the shorter, simpler words of Germanic origin tend to outscore the ostentatious, flowery Latinate words every time when it comes to sex talk. “Fuck me harder, daddy” is always going to be hotter than “fornicate me rigorously, father.”

Sire: The fridge line is good in a poem. In a fuck letter, you’re kinda tipping your hand that what you’re doing is at least a bit of a put-on / performance. Though if you’re Bukowski and you’re getting laid, probably it is because she is turned on by your Great Writerness, so she’s probably gonna roll with it even if she rolls her eyes first.

Andrea Findlay: It does read as a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I think there’s also something to being so horny you start having thoughts like that, the fridge thing. I can relate to that. The other reading is that in the heat of the moment your thoughts are racing and your attention is temporarily diverted to the refrigerator, and yeah, at the peak of ecstasy the fridge really does look like the most wonderful fridge you've ever seen.

Sire: While that’s a great exegesis of the text, I don’t really buy it as true spontaneity—that’s the type shit I do writing horny because I can’t help showing off, and I don’t think Bukowski can shut that impulse off either. It’s an overall great sex letter though, the type a woman keeps even if she decides not to fuck you again and has to explain to her grandkids when they find it folded in her jewellery box.

Tara McGowan-Ross: I like that he gets a little cutie patootie pilled near the end. I think that really good sex writing is always about the melding of “you are an eminently fuckable meat-object that gives me an erection” and “the way you laugh makes me understand why I haven’t killed myself yet.” The hairy pussy / wild bird of it all.

Gwen: Yeah the balance between erotic wild charge and sweet vulnerability is good writin’.

Sire: No one who sexts this good is gonna be there in the morning, unfortunately.

Gustav Flaubert

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports… When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

Eris: [Roger Ebert impression] I think that bit about gorging you until you faint and die is commanding, direct, not really all that wordy by 19th-century standards. Flaubert wasn’t one to waste a word, and here he lines it all up and delivers. I think this does the job.

Sire: [flexing his recent French course] In French it’s more like Je souhaite te garder dans une cage pour t’empêcher de te lécher l’arrière-train, à la manière d’un jeune taureau. Ensuite, je te nourrirai de protéines jusqu’à ce que tu sois gorgé de sperme grâce à mon pénis qui t’impressionne.

Gwen: Bataille-ass mother fucker, that’s crazy.

Tara: “Gorge” not a hot application of that word here imo, “all joys of the flesh” also too vague. Pass!

Sire: If there’s a flaw in it, it’s in that midsection about Flaubert’s fantasy of being the world’s best lay, which somewhat distracts from the force of his ardour—he wants to prove his skill like an athlete. I absolutely love the dry bones quivering line, but this is another one where it tells you more about how the guy sees himself than what he feels for his lover.

Eris: The midsection is certainly its weakest part, although I’m not against aggrandizing in sexting. Sometimes you’re trying to sell a fantasy of yourself during sexting or sex—I think part of being a dom, for instance, is playing the part of someone commanding and powerful who isn’t necessarily who you actually are in your day-to-day life.

Sire: Sure, but “I want you to be amazed by me” actually reveals the wimpiness of the guy. A dom would say, “You will be amazed by me,” or just say what he’s going to do and trust that the sub will pick up on how hot and impressive it is without him being like, “Oh just you wait till you see what I’ve got in store! I’m pretty sure you’ll like it!”

Eris: Focusing on the second order of things, of the desire to rather than just being, is definitely a weakness here.

Andrea: Okay, me though. “No worries if not though!”

Sire: In fairness, the construction might have a different connotation in French.

Gwen: But of course a moment must be paid to Joyce—

James Joyce

I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

Tara: Joyce is so GOATed for that I swear to God. I think that this is a level of down bad we should all aspire to. Especially because sex is gross due to bodies also being gross. And that’s a beautiful thing! I found this on the internet when I was like fourteen and it broke my brain. There is a bit of “little naughty farties” in everything I write.

Gwen: Don’t worry, it shows.

Tara: I feel like the apex of erotic wisdom and capacity is “I am going to prickfuck you arseways until I know the exact tenor and register of your farts.” That is peak male performance.

Sire: It’s obviously spectacular in its attention to detail and specificity. It kinda grosses me out in that it feels like the kind of horny I associate with people who would today spend a lot of their time wearing fursuits and saying things like “yay for cummies!” when someone nuts. I’m also not a quote “fart guy.” But good for them!

Eris: I feel bad that Joyce wrote one fart letter and became “the fart guy.”

Tara: If you’re not willing to potentially be “the fart guy” you’re not taking big enough risks in art or love.

Simon Hanselmann.

Frida Kahlo

Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mirror of the night. the violent flash of lightning. the dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. my fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.

Sire: You get these kinda texts from a girl and you’re either heading over directly or getting a new ID and leaving the country.

Eris: You know what, I complained that Updike’s shit was too wordy, but this overcomes that hurdle. I think part of it is I just believe it so much more, it doesn’t have the unbearable self-impressed smugness that infects every single sentence Updike pens. I believe she wants to fuck him and not just herself.

Sire: Her rage letters also have incredible shit:

I am not afraid of pain and you know it. It is almost inherent to my being, although I confess that I suffered, and a great deal, when you cheated on me, every time you did it, not just with my sister but with so many other women. How did they let themselves be fooled by you? You believe I was furious about Cristina, but today I confess that it wasn’t because of her. It was because of me and you. First of all because of me, since I’ve never been able to understand what you looked and look for, what they give you that I couldn’t. Let’s not fool ourselves, Diego, I gave you everything that is humanly possible to offer and we both know that. But still, how the hell do you manage to seduce so many women when you’re such an ugly son of a bitch? […]

That is all, I can now go to be chopped up in peace.

Good bye from somebody who is crazy and vehemently in love with you,

Your Frida

This is a god damn wrestling promo.

Eris: If a woman texted me this I would simply show my friends, say “this bitch is crazy,” and never respond out of fear for my life.

Macho Man Frieda Kahlo:

Eris: Hahahaha.

Tara: Frida fucked so hard, man.

Sire: May I also submit—

???????

Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest. Drink from me Love. I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. I'll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. 'Dont spill a drop'. I am a river You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love.

Tara: Bitch, who is this? …and is he single?

Sire: RFK Jr.

Tara: Please tell me you’re joking.

Eris: With special thanks to Ryan Lizza.

Andrea: They’re calling him America’s most eligible disabled—worm in brain—bachelor.

Tara: I don’t want to live on this planet any more.

Andrea: Look, Tara you could definitely hit that, he obviously has a thing for much younger writers. The texts are one thing but imagine him struggling to whisper them to you?

Tara: I hate you. I don’t like knowing how much I would like sexting with RFK Jr.

Sire: In all fairness, I think he’s a good sexter. Every sext sounds awful if you don’t want to receive it, but if you are Down you want The Weird Stuff.

Andrea: I've definitely had sext conversations where like if they were leaked I would have no choice but to immediately lock myself in a Cybertruck and set off 800 fireworks.

Tara: Yeah, that’s also why the fart one is so great. I heard a ProDomme talk about how like half of domming is just finding out what someone is insecure about and then approving of it. I believe there is a parallel with the move of: identify something specific/mundane/kind of yucky about lover and then put it in mouth.

Sire: What you want is for your lover correspondent to be so next level horny for you that they make activities that are pretty normal sound like they should be recriminalized. RFK also does some good stuff with his diction there that really sells what people tend to fantasize about with older men specifically, which is basically this sense that they are Of Another Time and have some sort of access to a richer vein of horn than the men of your own cohort. I love that construction “I mean to flow through you”; it sounds like how a samurai expresses his intentions or some shit.¹ You’re about to get railed in a manner that was last seen depicted on an ancient vase.

Gwen: Okay [ABOUT TO BE CANCELLED POET’S NAME REDACTED], chill out.

Eris: I want to turn our attention to one of the Updike letters I didn’t get to in my review—

John Updike

I’ve fucked you twice out of four opportunities, which is a poor average but something to build on. It makes my cock un-scarey, at least. Not that a cock would frighten you. […] I think a mayonnaise jar might be inhibiting. I went to bed at eight last night, woke up at 3:15, after some deliberation (who am I saving myself for? I asked myself) jerked off a fully-developed hard-on day’s worth of sperm, all of it spilled into you, travelling at the rate of 14,000 miles per second. Fell asleep until 7. If you had been here wouldn’t have slept nearly so well.

Eris: Having read through this book of letters, I’ve gotta say, Updike really needs to stop apologizing for his erectile dysfunction. It comes up in more than half of his sex letters. Wolcott in his review takes time to boast on Updike’s behalf about how he had had a threesome with “a pair of Australian roommates” but at this rate I can’t imagine he did anything with them other than mope and pull rope. Like, man, if it’s that bad there’s other things you can—of course, this is a guy who also admitted he couldn’t find the clit, so...

Sire: If he’d have shut up for half a second maybe it would’ve finally found him.

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We’re actually pretty interested in reader input here—what’s hot dirty talk look like? What do you think of these excerpts? Got any other writer sex letters that come to mind? Let us know in the comments.

AND ON THE SUBJECT OF BUKOWSKI:

1. Sire: Actually, it’s this—Ai uses this phrasing at the end of one of my favourite poems.