A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire

by Ogi Ogas

  Werewolves are also alphas—even when they’re not. In most paranormals, including the works of Stephenie Meyer, Charlaine Harris, and Keri Arthur, werewolves operate in packs. Every pack has a true designated alpha wolf. However, any werewolf has monstrous strength and ferocity and refuses to back down from a challenge. They are intensely loyal to protecting anyone who is part of the pack, including human girlfriends.

  Most supernatural heroes, whether storm-calling wizards, fire-breathing demons, or mind-reading psychics, have the kind of strength, competence, confidence, and willingness to defend women that sends Miss Marple into happy fits of fast-track approval. Particularly considering that paranormal heroes offer especially sweet emotional centers inside their tough supernatural shells.

  In J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series of erotic paranormals, the vampires are led by the blind vampire prince Wrath, a super-alpha who is introduced as follows:Wrath was six feet, six inches of pure terror dressed in leather. His hair was long and black, falling straight from a widow’s peak. Wraparound sunglasses hid eyes that no one had ever seen revealed. Shoulders were twice the size

  of most males’. With a face that was both aristocratic and brutal, he looked like the king he was by birthright and the soldier he’d become by destiny.

  Wrath is an erotical illusion. The description of Wrath comes close to the exaggerated caricature of an impossibly broadshouldered, improbably thin-waisted hero on the Cartoon Network, but since Wrath is a mythic being it makes this impossible blend of cues possible—and highly exciting to his female audience. The Amazon Kindle allows readers to highlight passages in their e-books and displays the passages that are most frequently highlighted by all readers of the same book. The above description of Wrath is one of the five most popular passages in Dark Lover.

  Wrath has other cues that enrapture the Detective Agency. He is a thousand years old, immortal, the leader of an elite, internationally influential brotherhood of vampires, controls a kingly amount of investments in banks across the globe, and has killed hundreds of human men who pissed him off for various reasons. He’s an erotic concoction that hyperstimulates female psychological cues of experience, wealth, competence, and Miss Marple–swooning dominance.

  Though vampires turbocharge cues of masculinity, the erotical illusions are only complete when these invincible heroes are brought to their knees by the irresistibility of an ordinary woman and her ability to unlock his secret heart. In the Dark Lover excerpt that opens this section, the half-human Beth has a Magic Hoo Hoo that dumbfounds Wrath, even though his palate has been jaded by “cozying up to lightning.” Another J. R. Ward vampire, named Rhage, has been cursed so that he possesses an unchecked lust for blood and women. When roused, his beast within is only satisfied by merciless, mindless sex with women he can hardly remember. And yet this formidable vampire ends up being vanquished by his deep and instant love for an averagelooking cancer survivor named Mary who volunteers at a suicide hotline.

  Mary’s very first utterance enraptures Rhage:

  Rhage shivered, a balmy rush blooming out all over his skin. The musical lilt of her voice, the rhythm of her speech, the sound of her words, it all spread through him, calming him, comforting him. Chaining him sweetly.

  The paranormal allows for the irresistibility cue to take even more fervent forms. In Twilight, the vampire Edward Cullen doesn’t just lust after Bella’s body . . . he lusts after her blood. Because of his vampire nature, his heart pounds and his mind gets dizzy whenever he’s close enough to smell the sweet red platelets pulsing through her carotid artery. He has a voracious hunger for her—but can’t let himself give in, producing one of the most famously angsty alphas in all of paranormal romance. As a result, Bella gets to be desired forever with a supernatural longing, by a boyfriend who continuously proves how much he loves her by controlling himself. Bella has the ultimate Magic Hoo Hoo.

  Edward Cullen exerts such influence over the brains of his female fans that he is the frequent subject of sexual searches on the Internet. In fact, one woman professed her love—and lust—for Edward Cullen in a series of dozens of Dogpile sentence-length searches in 2009:i’m a single woman in her 44 years old and i love edward cullen’s like a sex object.

  ok edward cullen i’ll go down on you if you can give into me and my clit is going out of control for you

  you fucking people edward cullen is not gay he totally love’s bella to death and i love him cause i’m not gay either

  edward cullen please let me do naughty and dirty things to you all night long you wouldn’t let bella do

  The art of erotical illusions also allows paranormal romance authors to write rape scenes that aren’t quite rape. In Laurell K. Hamilton’s series of books about a female necromancer/vampire hunter named Anita Blake, an evil wizard forcefully infects Blake against her will with a metaphysical hunger called the ardeur. It is a forced violation not of her body, but of her very psyche. Its erotic nature is emphasized by the fact that the ardeur compels her to have sex with all manner of supernatural beasties.

  In vampire romances from Stephenie Meyer to Charlaine Harris, savage male vampires sink their fangs into the bodies of human women, changing them against their will into bloodsucking creatures of the night. Often, these paranormal coercion scenes are written in a way that leaves little doubt of their status as erotical illusions, such as this scene from J. R. Ward’s Dark Lover:As the last shudder left his body and went into hers, at that moment when he was finally spent, the balance of his desires was thrown. His bloodlust surged forward in a wicked, consuming rush, as powerful as the lust had been.

  He bared his teeth and went for her neck, for the vein deliciously close to the surface of her pale skin.

  His fangs were about to sink deep, his throat dry with thirst for her, his gut spasming with a starvation that cut to his soul, when he pulled himself up short, horrified by what he was about to do.

  If Japanese anime offers the greatest creative freedom for erotical illusions that titillate the male brain, then the paranormal romance is its match for the female brain.

  RIDING THE EXPRESS CUE TRAIN

  Back when men had to trek all the way out to a gritty downtown movie theater in order to watch a 16mm skin flick, the money shot landed on a variety of places, including—once in a while—a woman’s face. In Internet porn, however, facials are the most common money shot by a wide margin. On Fantasti.cc, out of the one hundred top rated videos that show ejaculation, fifty-four of them are facials.

  The facial is an erotical illusion that merges the visual with the psychological. Specifically, facials juxtapose three sexual cues within a single stimulus: the penis (a visual cue), the ejaculation (which may be a sperm competition cue or possibly a cued interest in some men), and—most important—the woman’s emotional reaction, which may be a psychological cue of female pleasure (if she expresses delight) or a psychological cue of sexual submission (if she expresses surprise or dismay).

  It’s a way of adding an emotional commentary on the ejaculation, a kind of pornographic emoticon that guides and enhances the reaction of the male sexual brain. In contrast, ejaculating on a woman’s stomach, chest, or butt does not provide the same psychological cue, even if a woman is moaning with pleasure.

  This juxtaposition of psychological cues with visual cues has been developed into a cinematic technique adopted by more sophisticated pornographers, such as the French director Hervé Bodilis. He frequently uses split screens to simultaneously show close-ups of female anatomy or male ejaculation on one side and a close-up of a woman’s facial expressions on the other. In his Russian Institute series, there is a scene where the left screen shows a close-up of two women’s hands masturbating a large penis, while the right screen shows the two women’s faces pressed together, smiling with delight at the unseen man—a Mona Lisa–like erotical illusion that induces a perceptual shift depending on exactly where you look.

  One type of porn intensifies the effect of the facial
erotical illusion: bukkake. Bukkake consists of multiple men simultaneously ejaculating on one woman’s face. Bukkake offers the same sexual cues as a one-man facial—namely, the penis, the ejaculation, and the emotional reaction of the woman—but adds two more. First, bukkake repeats the same set of cues each time a new man ejaculates on the woman, repeatedly activating the novelty cue in quick succession. Second, the multiple men likely trigger sperm competition cues, and perhaps the copious semen does as well.

  A similar effect is achieved through video editing. The seventh most common search on PornHub is for “compilations.” A compilation is an edited collection of brief clips around some theme, such as facials, large breasts, or anal sex. “Cumshots” are the most common theme for a compilation; the most popular cumshot compilation on PornHub consists of thirty separate ejaculations edited into a three-minute video. A compilation is basically a staccato succession of similar cues. It’s like getting the Uno’s appetizer sampler. You get a collection of highly cravable bite-sized morsels you can pop into your mouth, one after another: potato skins, nachos, chicken fingers, onion rings, chicken wings.

  The idea of enhancing erotic pleasure by duplicating cues is also found in a surprising kind of female erotica.

  DOUBLE THE PLEASURE, TRIPLE THE FUN

  “For me, gay porn has always been arousing because of its masculinity,” writes Wired columnist Regina Lynn. “The strength and power, plus the double dose of raw male drive and sexuality, add up to more than the sum of their parts.”

  Lesbian sex has been a mainstay of male-targeted porn since the nineteenth century. The sight of two girls making out in mainstream movies like Wild Things and Mulholland Drive (not to mention the Girls Gone Wild videos) is well known to stoke men’s libidos. But it’s not widely known that many women are just as turned on by watching two guys sexually satisfy each other.

  In the breakout indie movie, The Kids Are All Right, the lesbian couple played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening watch a gay porn video while having sex. Though the raunchy physicality of gay porn is too overwhelming for many women, this is exactly what appeals to its female fans. “What do you like to see in porn? More than anything, I like to see the people enjoying themselves and really getting into it,” writes one woman. “I have to admit, I’m a straight female, but my preference is for gay male porn—twice the dicks to enjoy looking at! And when the guys are really into it, and making all kinds of sexy noises, that’s my favorite stuff.”

  Over the past five years, gay porn has surged in popularity among heterosexual women and doesn’t show any sign of having peaked. But despite the growing numbers of female fans of gay sex, gay romance stories are even more popular. But these female-targeted stories are quite different from gay stories aimed at homosexual men. Below are two literary snippets: the first from erotic fanfic, the second from gay erotica.

  Draco took a quill from Harry’s case and, watching Harry with a sly, mischievous smile on his face, dropped it on the floor right under their desk. Draco slid down to reach it, and found himself between Harry’s unconsciously parted legs.

  He slowly unzipped Harry’s fly and stroked his stomach, asking him to relax and give into the provided pleasure. Harry obeyed and breathed in, shivering from the sudden sensation of soft fingers on his bare flesh.

  Glorious, Harry thought before closing his eyes and entering another row of Nirvana, unable to bear the slowlyness of erotic movements. “Draco, please,” he whispered under his breath, as low as he could so the teacher wouldn’t hear him . . . if professor Binns ever heard anything other than historical facts.

  “I bet my weapon’s bigger than yours,” the cop joked as he raised his nightstick for the boy to see. It was a thick baton, easily over a foot long. The cop gobbed on the end of the stick. “This is gonna go right up into your guts boy.”

  The boy moaned in fear as he stared at the stick. “Please, no sir. No . . .” The lad shook his head weakly.

  The cop tugged at the flimsy cotton briefs causing the lad’s heavy cock and balls to fall out. “Nice thick cock you have there; full loaded balls,” the cop moaned as he feasted his eyes on the lad’s equipment.

  The fastest expanding subgenre of EroRom is male-male romances. These stories didn’t even exist a decade ago—at least, not as a commercial genre. But now every major romance publisher has published or is planning gay love stories. Authors such as Erastes, Chris Owen, Claire Thompson, and Ruth Sims write about two male heroes and no heroines—but their books are most definitely targeted at women. The largest audience for the groundbreaking film Brokeback Mountain was not the gay community, but straight women eager to hear two alpha male cowboys say to each other, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” The movie was based on a short story written by a woman.

  As the two passages quoted earlier demonstrated, there is no mistaking gay erotica written by a woman for gay erotica written by a man. Stories by men are designed to activate male cues. They feature hard-core sex (including anilingus and fisting), lots of obscenities, graphic descriptions of anatomies, physical roughness, and very few expressions of emotion or tenderness. They often delight in humiliating a character and are rife with gang bangs, anal rape, and enormous penises.

  Gay stories written by women have quite a different feel and tone. The emotional journeys of the characters are almost always the main thing, and a scene is rarely depicted without identifying the vivid feelings of the participants. Anatomy is not described in detail, the physical violence is markedly toned down, and even though there’s plenty of domination and submission, the stories almost always end with some kind of lasting emotional bond.

  Gay porn may also appeal to women by eliminating any interference from Detective Agency concerns about whether a scene involving a woman depicts misogynistic, dangerous, or degrading activities. Men are doing things to other men—there’s nobody to potentially feel bad for.

  Gay EroRoms are even starting to make their way into mainstream publishing lines like Harlequin and Avon. But the Internet is the real engine driving the surging popularity of gay romance, in the form of a subgenre of fan fiction known as slash. Slash takes its name not from any kind of violence, but rather from a punctuation mark. The content of slash stories is indicated by a particular pairing of two heterosexual men, such as Kirk/Spock, Harry Potter/Severus Snape, or Frodo/Legolas. Over the course of a slash story, the two “slashed” heroes will end up emotionally and sexually involved.

  There are more than a half million slash stories on the Web, across more than a hundred different fandoms, virtually all written by female amateurs in the privacy of their homes. Harry Potter, Twilight, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer boast the greatest number of slash stories. Though sex is often a key element of slash, the main focus is always how the two strong males share their tender side with each other. Though none of us can truly compare what it’s like to experience both a male erotical illusion and a female erotical illusion, it seems reasonable to assume that slash offers women an even more intense illusion than lesbian porn offers men. As Regina Lynn noted, gay romance is “more than the sum of its parts” because it’s the emotional interactions that activate female arousal, and having two alphas work out their inner coconut together builds more complex and engaging stimulation than watching two busty blondes gyrate together.

  Though sex is often a key element of a slash story, the main focus is always how the two strong males share their tender side with each other. Here’s a scene from “Happy Birthday,” a Frodo/ Sam slash story set in the Lord of the Rings universe:Sam smiled, love and joy and sheer bliss swelling so big inside his heart that he felt he would surely burst. He could easily recall the very first time he and Frodo had become intimate, finding love and comfort in each other’s arms while surrounded by the purest form of evil each had ever known.

  A love so deep and pure that it went far beyond mere friendship. Sam remembered gazing into those soul-weary eyes after that first time and seeing the blazing emotion lying just bene
ath the surface.

  “I love you, Mister Frodo,” Sam whispered.

  “And I love you, Sam Gamgee.”

  In slash, one of the men is usually portrayed as slightly more feminine than the other: smaller, physically weaker, lighter in coloring, more seductive, more in touch with his emotions, and quicker to perceive the development of mutual love. “One of the guys is almost always written as shorter, even if they were the same height in the fandom,” explains slash scholar Brita Hansen. “He usually ends up being the bottom.”

  Though many American fans of slash are somewhat reluctant to publicly disclose their interest, it is widely understood in Japanese society that women enjoy gay romances, which are often called yaoi (or “boy-love”), such as Fujimi Orchestra and Constellation in My Palm. The most popular comic books (known as manga) among Japanese girls feature handsome, slightly feminine heterosexual boys who have sex with one another. During the 1992 Tokyo Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, an estimated 80 percent of the audience were straight women who wanted to watch men have sex. As journalist Richard McGregor writes, “In Japan, almost anything homosexual can attract an all-female audience.” In a cultural variation of slash, whenever a Japanese animated television series or male-targeted manga series becomes extremely popular, the producers almost always issue a boy-love version, where the male characters have sex with each other. “It’s widely understood that the audience for these boy-love stories is women.”