The Dark Romance Genre

chris suggests:

Heartiste, you’re a good writer, given the current popularity of dark-romance novels (i.e. 50 shades of grey, twilight), have you ever considered taking your own shot at writing an erotic romance novel for women, and seeing just how dark and twisted the female sexual psyche is, just for the fun of it?

Examples: Jack the Ripper, a misunderstood man who just loved too much. [ed: i laughed.]
or

SS Nazi Officer, blonde haired Ubermensch, whose steel cold and ruthless determination would give way to heartfelt whispers of love and tenderness.
or

Jaws, a tale of unrequited interspecies romance.

My guess is the second one might actually prove popular if done right.

Have I considered writing a dark romance novel? Who says I haven’t already? 😉

The time is clearly ripe for it. Millions of Western women, removed from the emotional grounding of real struggle, surrounded on all sides by lapdog betas, inflamed to uncontrollable passions by the rare aloof alphas, are screaming out for quenching of their suppressed desires (suppressed, in part, by women’s own lifestyle paths).

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that sketchy pulp romance porn like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Sadism are currently very popular with women. The contours of our fantasies are most starkly delineated when feeding desire that is least fulfilled in reality. A society of more seductive men would dampen women’s inner world of secret desires. A society of beta males stokes it.

Women, of course, have never been sugar and spice. The female sexual psyche shades and twists in degrees, ebbing and flowing according to social or ecological pressures, but it never ceases being a land of shadow and maze. A subversive romance novel that humanized some alpha male monster via a woman’s love and hamstering genuflection would simultaneously satisfy female desire and send it up. I like the second one, too. SS officer shows soft side, woman who loves him sets out first to win his trust and kill him in his sleep, but can’t help following her heart. He implants his Hitler youth in her womb. Fin.

Here’s another idea:

Unusually cute feminist who writes pointless blog liberating fatties and cunts from bowel-shaking judgment is seduced by lacrosse playing frat boy son of a Republican bigwig. She finds out he has murdered three black prostitutes and buried the bodies in a remote Virginia wood, but by that time her heart swoons for his hot-cold-hot-cold, dread-inducing relationship acumen, and her vagina struggles against her conscience for dominance. One night he takes her to the spot where the bodies are decomposing and asks if she wants to be tied to a tree. Fear and tingles grip her, and she relents despite her misgivings, overcome with hot lust to fulfill a long-held fantasy of getting “play”-raped against a stately oak. He asks increasingly demanding questions, to which she answers affirmatively, her vagina glowing hotter with each reluctant submission. A French poodle trots into the scene, film noirish, and it triggers a lost memory from her youth, when a niceguy beta with a good job and kitchen skills loved her and promised her a life of domestic contentment and backrubs. A single feminist tear creases her face, now ripped by agony and pleasure as frat boy’s turgid paddle rends her furrow. He is wearing a Zorro mask. She mewls like a cougar in the throes of post-meal delight.

Months of dangerous sex punctuate a rise in feminist stardom, but she keeps her secret well, suffering the endless indignities of his increasingly deranged intrusions upon her body and claims on her womanhood, going so far as to construct a locket for her to permanently wear as reminder of his love. The spiral of passion imprisons and releases her, until one day he unceremoniously dumps her after she catches him anally boffing her radical feminist co-editor. Now presumably freed of his inexplicable power over her, she makes plans to reveal his crimes, but every time, just when she is about to pull the trigger, she steps away from the brink to collect her thoughts on long eatpraylove straycations, the last one to Morocco, where a swarthy fellow selling exotic wool carpets that cost five cents to manufacture in a Chinese factory accosts her in a dusty alley and introduces her to sexy jihad. From there, she comes down with an extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome and follows him on a pilgrimage to London, where she is initiated into the chain migration family through one-sided arranged marriage. She becomes a zealous Muslim convert, and feels a love and emotional calm she has never felt before, except when memories of that one man sidle into her dreams…

A tall, blonde-haired figure in an extra-tight European blazer slips into the used book shoppe she now runs with her Moroccan sister/aunt/cousin-in-law. He places a dog-eared tome on the counter: “My Secret Garden”. Her fingers tremble and dance along the spine of the book. A nerve shake sends ripples along her flesh. She peers vainly for his eyes under the fedora with the rim pulled down low. All she sees is a studded metal plate covering half his face and a whimsical smirk.

“It’s you?”

The man taps the book cover with a sinewy index finger. She stumbles at the cash register and rings him up. A knife sits gamely in the pence slot. She stares at it for a second, before composing herself.

She gives him the change. He lets his hand linger in hers as the currency empties into his palm. He taps the book again, and walks slowly out the door. She opens the book and finds a marked page. Nestled between the pages is a skeleton key. She collapses to the floor. The iron locket that has pierced her for ten years presses sharply against her pubis. A note flutters from the book and lands in her lap.

“I forgive you.”

She weeps as a powerful orgasm paralyzes her. The key waits for her. She picks it up, caresses it, and throws it into the trash.