Having people read your work can be daunting. This is particularly true of sex scenes, especially explicit ones. Thankfully, I got the embarassment out of the way pre-publication.
I back up everything I write, via email at the end of each session. Obviously, but unfortunately, my Ma shares the same second name as me. When I’d just finished writing the most graphic and lengthy sex scene in my book, I clicked on her email address instead of mine before pressing send. So she received an email from her son with an attached file containing an ebullient description of frenetic love-making. With no explanation. No doubt Freud would have had plenty to say about this incident.
Mortifying as this mistake was, it meant that when it came to publication I had absolutely no reservations about people’s response to the material. Nevertheless, the only recurrent criticism from reviewers was of my portrayal of sex. “Repetitive and gratuitous”, “chauvanistic” and “uncomfortable to read” were some of the verdicts. Water off a duck’s back after me Ma reading about the sexual predilections of an 18-year-old, working-class male (a boy who I’m coming to accept might not be a million miles away from a young me).
For example, Rob Doyle (whose own novel Here Are the Young Men doesn’t spare any blushes) reckons Dublin Seven was “the first Irish novel to include an anilingus scene”. Doyle described this dubious honour as “a curious instance of the interplay between tradition and the individual talent”. This affords me far too much credit – I’m just dirty minded. Yet I do disagree with the critics’ assertions about my depictions of sexual activity.
Evolution by natural selection has designed us for two things: survival and reproduction. Having been a youngfella like the protagonist of my book, I can assure you that a healthy teenage boy will risk the former in pursuit of the latter. I wanted my book to be as faithful to reality as I could. If I had to edit Dublin Seven again, I’d include more sex.
Instead of railing against the criticism, though, I decided to use it to my advantage. We took to the streets to canvass the opinions of regular Dubliners – not the literati – on the sex scenes in Dublin Seven, by asking them to read bits aloud. The responses were surprising. People who agreed to read at all, when confronted with a sex scene, generally read on – even if certain words, or acts, did cause them to giggle or blush. Remember, this is not reading in the privacy of their boudoir, this is aloud, in public, in Ireland.
Readers enjoy sex because people enjoy sex. A lot. As one contributor told us, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of”.
Dublin Seven is published by Liberties Press
