He’d just started reading a new BDSM-themed erotica (which shall remain nameless) and made the fatal mistake of giving me an overview of the first chapter. All was going well until he mentioned the dreaded word ‘contract’, at which point he found himself engulfed in a storm of virtual babble – okay, ranting – that probably made him extremely thankful that we live in different countries and therefore ensured he didn’t have to listen to it in person (sorry, Michael):

‘Wow, that’s a lot of information in a single chapter! But do you know what my eye went straight to? The mention of another bloody contract! Contracts, contracts, contracts! If one more author writes about a contract I am going to … Well, I don’t know what, but it will likely involve a judge’s gavel being used on the offending book in the same manner that Basil Fawlty uses that tree branch on his car.’

And just in case that last reference is a British ‘in’ joke (I’m not sure how many countries had Fawlty Towers), this is what I’m talking about:

Attention authors! I don’t want to read about legal documents! They don’t turn me on! You do not need one to convey that your characters are in a relationship that involves power exchange. Really. You don’t. Just as villains don’t need to be dressed in black in order to convey their ‘badness’ and heroes in ‘white’ to denote their ‘goodness’, people who engage in BDSM aren’t all running off willy-nilly to their lawyers and defining their relationships through legalese. And if I was that desperate to get off on legal jargon I’d visit the solicitor in my local village and get him to lend me a conveyancing agreement.

I WANT WELL-CRAFTED EROTICA – NOT PAGES OF CLAUSES.

My husband does not take me to bed and spout legal jargon to get me in the mood. Nor does he make me read the folder of deeds to our house.

I am not saying that contracts – not to be confused with limit lists and negotiation forms – don’t exist in power exchange relationships. I am sure they do and that they work perfectly well for those who draw them up. But having one is not mandatory and, as Molly Moore said so eloquently in her Myth Busting: the Submissive Woman seminar at Eroticon earlier this month, if they are used, they ‘are rarely a standard rent agreement’.

I think we all know who, or rather what, we have to blame for this bat-sh*t obsession with ‘erotic’ paperwork. Yes, That Book. That great, grey brick of a thing whose name I dare not speak, because, frankly, it’s becoming a little bit like Voldemort:

‘Who gave you that scar?’

‘E.L. bloody James with all her talk of legal agreements and protagonists who have to be ‘damaged’ to engage in BDSM, that’s who.’

If only I had an Elder Pen to wave – or perhaps an Unforgiveable Manuscript Curse to make all this silliness disappear. (What would that be called, I wonder? Editora Kedavra?)

Hmm. Maybe I should recreate the Basil Fawlty moment above with a copy of You-Know-What and a nice, long rattan can. If only my technical skills were up to the job and I could get over the idea of destroying a perfectly good book.

It’s tempting, though. Very, very tempting …

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