I was reading a trash romance novel on my lunch at work. Someone in my building saw me reading it and said, “Aren’t you a writer? I thought you would read something uhm, a little more, er… literary.”
I burst into laughter.
Allow me to esplain the long and honorable tradition of smutt.
When I was 15 I discovered the book exchange at my local public library. Take a book in, and swap it with one of the swapper books and keep it permanently or read it and swap it out. The swap stacks were mostly trash romance or mass market horror and sci-fi. Typically there were about 300 books to choose from in swap and they were kept separately in the basement to prevent them from being confused with actual library books.
One summer I scrounged a paper bag of books from around the house and took them to swap, where I exchanged them with a paper grocery bag of historical trash romance. Perhaps 12-15 books total. I stored them under my bed like dirty porn and read them all summer long between jobs and playing in the Alaskan wilderness. That first summer I swapped the entire bag three times or more meaning I probably read upwards of 50 books in 3 months.
I continued this for the next two years all year long. Sometimes I would dump a paper bag in the library basement and see that someone else had swapped out a set of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman ‘Dragon Lance’ novels and I’d claim them permanently in turn buying a few cheap copies of smutt to keep the volume of swap going. But for the most part, I’d read the mass market trash which I called “popcorn” and then would exchange it with a dozen books that someone else had just dropped off.
It was a good system, until my very Mormon mother found my dirty romance stash under my bed.
It was a surprisingly short talk, that ended with my mother asking to borrow a few books. I was surprised. And grossed out. And amused. And grossed out. And ultimately, I did offer to let my mom pick which books she wanted to read and then we never spoke of it again.
Like it never actually happened.
The last few years of high school I read nearly two books a week. I could burn through a 300 page smutt in about 9-10 hours and then I’d take my time with a heavier book of fantasy fiction, such as a Robert Jordan or a R.A Salvator.
Whenever I’d go on road trips with Meme, she’d usually drive while I picked a sufficiently titillating or shocking and I’d read it out loud on our way to Denali, or Healy, or Anchorage. In fact, the year Meme and I both drew the lottery for Caribou licenses, we drove to Healy to go hunting with her dad.
Meme and I camped out while her dad actually when scouting for the herd and for four days, Meme and I sat around the stove in the tent and read each other trash romance. Also known as pictureless porn, bodice rippers, bosom heavers or smutt.
Harmless getaway breaks of totally erroneous ideas about what love is. There are very few well written romance novels. In fact the only ones I think that balance literary potential with sex, and character evolution as well as historical potential are done by Diana Gabaldon. I’m not even sure if it’s safe to say that ‘Dragonfly in Amber’ even counts as smutt, but I could pull several arguments for such things so I digress…
Anywhoo, historical trash romance grabbed my imagination. I was already big in to fantasy fiction but romance added a human emotional element that much fantasy fiction lacked and the combination that swept me away from everyday life in the wilds of Alaska.
To be fair, reading smutt that young did actually give me a somewhat skewed perception of certain things, such as the first time I saw a man’s genitals I blurted, “That does not look anything like a lance!”
Even as a grown woman when I was married I sometimes needed a break to imagine what it would be like to live a life of powerful romantic adventure. It was a much needed escape from the dreary day to day of being a housewife.
Now, even as a single woman occasionally want to be reminded of my fantasy for ridiculous romance. I generally read one a year now, just to remind myself what first inspired me to write erotica – to remember where I came from, where I first started to wonder about complex relationships. Sometimes I just need to read one to remind me why I am determined to be a better writer and express stories with quality prose, graceful imagery and gripping human evolution.
Sometimes I need to read “popcorn” to appreciate the heavier, harder and more emotionally depleting stories that are called literature. I read biographies when I want to learn about a person’s life, fantasy when I want my imagination to be filled, mystery when I want to be puzzled and history when I want to learn. Smutt just lets me forget for a moment that my life is not going the way I planned.
So there you have it. I read smutt and I’m proud of it. Trash romance. Bodice rippers. I read them in one or two sittings and I feel better when I close the cover and toss the book in a box for goodwill. Like I’ve had a vacation.
And isn’t that also sort of the whole point of reading? Escapism?
What do you read when you need to get away?
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