Writing About Panties: Part 1

We call them by different names: knickers, panties, briefs, undies, smalls.  But whatever we call them, these items of clothing are a basic fact of life for women everywhere. I guess the only places where this doesn't apply are those little corners of the planet where people don't wear many clothes at all, except maybe a loincloth dangling from a piece of string. For the rest of the female population, a pair of panties is de rigeur, an essential item  (except, of course, on those occasions when we choose not to wear them). It's probably true to say that most of us regard panties (whether our own or somebody else's) as fairly ordinary things - like socks - and not particularly worthy of special attention.

So why, after saying all this, do I write erotic fiction about panties?

It's an interesting question (for me, at any rate). I've tried to answer it a couple of times, in emails and in face-to-face conversations. The question usually comes from women, not from men. Those who ask it are usually people I know quite well. They know I don't conceal the fact that I write explicit erotic fiction about lesbian sex. Some of them enjoy reading my stories, and these are the people who'll turn to me and say: "Hey, Yasmin, what's the big deal with you and panties?"

My answer is always the same: I write sexy stories about female underwear because I feel the subject is an unexplored kink in lesbian erotica. By 'unexplored' I simply mean that not many authors of lesbian erotica write about it. Plenty of these authors mention panties somewhere in their stories, but the mention is usually brief (please excuse the pun!). The panties tend to get removed soon after they appear in the story. Not many authors use panties as the main theme in a lesbian tale, in situations where underwear becomes the focus of erotic attention for the main characters. It's different, of course, in some parts of the spanking fiction genre, especially in stories where a female character is an adult 'schoolgirl' getting spanked by a dominant 'schoolmistress'. But I think a lot of these panty-spanking stories are written by male authors, or for male readers who get turned on by the idea of adult women wearing traditional school uniforms. I don't see many stories by female authors in which a lesbian spanking scene puts panties at centre stage.

When I first started writing lesbian fiction, I decided to concentrate on three sub-genres, as specialties through which I could build up collections of stories grouped by theme. One sub-genre I chose was bondage, both consensual and non-consensual. Another was the bi-curiosity of heterosexual women, leading inevitably to temptation and seduction. The third was panties.

All three sub-genres were chosen by me after email conversations with my friend Jen Saunders, a fellow-author of lesbian erotica. Jen advised me to focus on specific themes, because this is what she did herself: she reckoned it helped her to write better stories. Bi-curiosity and seduction held an instant appeal for me anyway, because of my own relationship experiences, but bondage wasn't something I would have considered without strong urging from Jen. She said bondage fiction was always in demand and would get me noticed by the online reading community, so I chose it as my second sub-genre - albeit somewhat reluctantly. To my surprise, I began to enjoy writing about bondage. But it has never made the transition from my computer screen to the bedroom I share with my girlfriend.

My choice of panty-related fiction as a sub-genre of lesbian erotica felt a bit weird at first. Also, I figured I couldn't write anything new on the subject because Jen seemed to have it pretty well covered. Stories about lesbian panty fetish were her main output in those days, and she seemed to have the market all to herself. I mean 'market' quite literally, because she was making money from writing custom erotica for private individuals. Her clients were mostly men who paid for kinky tales about lesbians indulging in various kinds of panty play. In some of these stories, Jen and her real-life girlfriend Karen turned up as principal characters, in situations where they seduced the customer's wife while all three of them kept their panties on. Jen often added bondage to the mix, some of it quite heavy and sadistic. Her clients really loved this stuff and couldn't get enough of it. Some of them even wanted to buy Jen's unwashed panties, but she never went down that route.
 
The first piece of erotic fiction I ever wrote was a softcore lesbian story called Train Ride which was essentially about British school uniform panties, or 'school knickers' as we used to call them. Jen Saunders had originally asked my sister Trish to write this story, but Trish passed the assignment to me. I enjoyed writing it, and Jen went totally wild about it, and I got plenty of feedback from readers after it was published online in 2005. What I liked most about the story was the challenge of making panties seem as erotic to female readers as they obviously are to large numbers of men. Judging by the very positive comments I got from women, I succeeded in this objective.

I soon had a little portfolio of lesbian panty fiction and discovered, again to my surprise, that the topic offered enough ideas for new stories to keep both Jen and me happily scribbling away. Jen sent one of her custom erotica clients over, and I was soon giving this guy what he wanted: stories about gay and bisexual women enjoying sex while their underwear stayed on. Like Jen, I agreed to appear as an occasional character in the narrative, in scenarios where I made love to the customer's wife or girlfriend. But I went a bit further than Jen and agreed to write myself into explicit scenes in which the customer himself was part of the action. So in some stories the guy had sex with me, and then with his wife (both she and I would still be wearing panties!). It all got very kinky and a bit messy, but it was strangely amusing and I had no problem with it at all. The guys in question paid a nice amount of money for this stuff. One customer even paid extra after I agreed - after some hesitation - to bring my sister Trish into the storyline (not only as co-writer, but as an additional character in the sex scenes). Trish helped me write some of the scenes involving her and me but we couldn't take the assignment seriously. Although we're not in a real-life incestuous relationship it's a taboo we've discussed without fear or embarrassment in the past, most notably 23 years ago when a particular situation arose, so it's not like we suddenly became shy about writing ourselves into a sibling incest tale. Writing those scenes was just one big laugh for us, because Trish peppered the narrative with lots of in-jokes that only she and I would recognize. I think the customer noticed our little game, because he asked for certain parts of the story to be rewritten. He was, however, extremely happy with the final version and (allegedly) showed it to his wife. Later, he asked for a sequel, but Trish and I had already agreed between ourselves that one story about 'lesbian panty incest' was enough. In any case, Trish had her own erotic fiction project involving elves and orcs and sexy Xena-type characters.

So, although I write in the genre of lesbian panty fiction, I'm not actually a panty fetishist. For me, panties are functional rather than erotic. I put them on in the morning, and I take them off at night. I like wearing them on cold days because they keep my butt nice and warm. I like buying new ones from my favourite brands, and I like receiving them as presents. Nonetheless, it would be a lie if I said panties don't turn me on occasionally. I have to say I do enjoy looking at attractive women in their underwear, whether in real-life, on TV or on the internet. Hardcore visual pornography doesn't do much for me, but a picture of a cute female ass in tight panties is very sensual and can often push my buttons. And it goes without saying that I adore the sight of my girlfriend Bobbi in her 'smalls', especially when she doesn't realize I'm staring at her. But the crucial aspect for me is that the panties must have a woman inside them. On their own, they're just items of clothing which don't give me any kind of sexual buzz.

Jen Saunders is different. She is a most unusual lady. I am not quite sure what to make of her. She is the only woman I have ever met who has a genuine panty fetish. And I do mean a full-on fetish, not just an occasional kink. I could say more about this. One day, I will say more, but I'll need to get her permission first. The key point is that Jen, unlike me, writes lesbian panty fiction because she finds it massively arousing. It's not just a literary sub-genre - it's a big part of her sexual existence. She boasts that her fetish is the reason why her stories were so much in demand from her customers - those panty-obsessed guys knew she was just like them, but a rare female version. They knew she enjoyed doing weird stuff like sniffing underwear from a laundry basket (something she openly admits to). They knew she enjoyed writing panty fiction as much as they enjoyed reading it, and this gave them an extra thrill. When she sent a client a customized story, she often included a little note describing in graphic detail how she masturbated while writing certain scenes. She once told me in an email that she only added these notes to keep the guy on the hook, to ensure that he came back for more stories. She complained that it was such a big effort for her - a gay female with no heterosexual experience - to share such intimacy with men. But she said it was necessary, a surefire way of holding on to her clients, whose payments funded her excessive drinking and smoking. She often told these men other intimate things, such as what kind of underwear she was wearing while writing their stories, and I think she rather enjoyed doing it. I suggested (half-jokingly) that she was a hypocrite, a closet bisexual who enjoyed teasing men via email. She wasn't amused.

In another blogpost I hope to include a sample of Jen's lesbian panty fiction, and also some samples of my own.

[to be continued....]

My e-book anthology of lesbian panty stories is available for download. Click here.

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The Debt: a tale of lesbian bondage

It was not supposed to be like this. Sarah knew this was not the kind of game she wanted to play. The knots were too tight and the thin leather cords bit into her skin. She had agreed to indulge in a bit of kinky bondage with Nikki and Jade but it was not turning out how she had expected. It just didn't feel right. In fact, it was starting to feel quite scary.

Her arms and legs were already aching from being stretched to the corners of the X-shaped cross. Every muscle, every sinew, every sensitive nerve in her body was hurting. Her limbs were pulled so taut that her breath came in short gasps which made her shudder all over. She was completely naked. Never had she felt so vulnerable, so exposed, so utterly helpless.  Between her splayed thighs her pussy was lewdly displayed, its flesh-lips gaping like the open petals of a summer rose. Her pubic hair had been shaved off with a dry razor which had left her feeling sore and tender. The shaving had been done after Nikki and Jade crucified her. Each of them had taken a turn with the razor, giggling as they drew it slowly across her skin. They had deliberately chosen a blunt blade so that the tiny blonde hairs were ripped from her crotch. 

The cross was fixed to a gray concrete wall in the basement of an old warehouse on Ricken Street. In the dim yellow glow of a single lamp Sarah noticed that she was in a large, square room with a bare floor. It was empty except for a long wooden table in the center. To her dismay she saw that the table had metal handcuffs fitted to each corner. Upon the tabletop, arranged in a neat line like a workman's tools, lay ten strange-looking implements. Three were shaped like long, thick penises made of hard black rubber. She reckoned they were at least fifteen inches long, with bulbous tips pointing menacingly towards her. The largest was thicker than her wrist, longer than her forearm and had a raised brass ring halfway along the shaft. Merely gazing at it, and wondering what it would feel like inside her body, was enough to chill her blood. The other items were similarly disconcerting: a leather whip with five thongs, each of which terminated in a sturdy round knot; a thin bamboo cane; a ball-gag; a shiny metal rod with a rubber handle connected to an electric cable; a small hairbrush with stiff bristles; a pack of latex gloves; and a big tube of lubricant.

She had been left alone in the room for nearly an hour and she was stating to panic. Fear spread through her veins like poison as her mind raced with terrible thoughts. What if Nikki and Jade decided not to come back? They were supposed to be her friends, so surely they would not simply leave her in this awful place? On the other hand, why would anyone treat another person in such a degrading way, if they were truly a friend? After all, nice people don't strip their friends naked and tie them to crosses. Sarah now bitterly regretted her willingness to participate in this strange game. The only reason she had agreed to play the role of slave-girl was to please Colette, her lover, who owed money to Nikki and Jade. The session of kinky role-play was meant to pay off Colette's debt. It was supposed to begin with a couple of hours of light bondage, with Sarah being tied and spanked and gently flogged. This was to be followed by a sexy threesome - with Sarah still playing the submissive - and maybe later a foursome if Colette decided to come along after work. Sarah had refused to spend the whole night with Nikki and Jade. They were beautiful women and she certainly felt attracted to them. But she did not share their passion for extreme kink, nor did she want to spend more than a few hours alone with them. She reckoned they were slightly crazy. They were notorious around the local lesbian community for pushing the sexual boundaries too far, and for taking too many risks. Many of the things they reputedly did to each other went far beyond what most people regarded as acceptable.

Sarah began to shiver uncontrollably. Not because the room was cold. Indeed, the steam pipes running across the ceiling made the air hot and humid. Her nude, splayed body already glistened with sweat. But she was shivering nonetheless, because her tightly stretched muscles were going into spasm. The pain in her wrists and ankles was growing. She wondered if Nikki and Jade had left her alone to increase her discomfort, to make sure she was already hurting when they eventually returned to resume the role-play. She hoped they were intending to come back soon, even though she was not relishing the prospect of being whipped and abused. Her greatest fear was that they might not come back for a long time, and that she would be left in the basement, all alone with her pain and thirst. So she hoped they would return sooner rather than later, to do whatever they wanted to do, to have their fun with her, and then to release her as soon as it was over.

She wondered if she would be able to endure the ordeal without crying or fainting. Terrifying images flashed through her mind as she gazed at the table. Although not a person of vast sexual experience she possessed enough knowledge to realize what the latex gloves were for. The thought of being subected to such humiliation made her catch her breath. Her main hope was that the lubricant would be used generously, to ease the inevitable discomfort, and that the degrading ritual would stop if she screamed.

These and other disturbing images were still floating around in her brain when she heard footsteps and voices outside the door. She recognized Nikki's voice, and Jade's, but a third woman was also there. Not Colette, whose French accent was distinctive, but someone else, someone unfamiliar. Sarah listened attentively. She could not hear everything that was said but the debt was certainly referred to a couple of times. Suddenly she froze. Her breathing paused. Her naked, sweat-soaked body turned rigid, like the polished statue of a crucified saint. She felt sure her own name was being mentioned in the conversation. Then she heard Jade's voice speaking loud and clear: 'Yes, Colette went away on a business trip. It was totally unexpected.' And then came Nikki's voice: 'That's right. Our plans have changed. Colette said we can keep the pretty slut for the next five days.'

Five days! The words tore through Sarah's heart like iron nails. Five days with Nikki and Jade! Five days of sexual torment and unspeakable depravity. Surely there must be some mistake? Colette would not abandon her like that, not without first retrieving her from the clutches of these horribly perverted women.

And then the door opened, and she heard Nikki's voice again: 'Hello, Sarah. Want to hear the good news?'

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The Debt. Copyright © Yasmin Cavendish 2012.

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Twist

 

(from my short story Desperate Measures)

Before Sunrise: an erotic story

I suppose I should call it 'flash fiction', but this is really about me and my girlfriend Bobbi.
Yaz  x

* * * * *

It's the perfect start to the day: being woken by her gentle touch in the early morning. She knows how much I love it. That's why she's doing it now, in the half-light of dawn, at the beginning of a lazy weekend.

Emerging slowly from a sleep of dreams I become aware of her soft caress. Through a drowsy haze I sense her fingertips on my thigh, tracing long oval shapes all the way up to my hip. Still drifting in the warm limbo between sleep and wakefulness I half open my eyes. I'm on my back. She's lying beside me, on her side, with her face resting on the pillow. My own pillow is almost totally hidden by my hair, a tousled black mane that frames my head like a dark halo.  

I roll onto my side, putting my back towards her. Not because I don't want to see her lovely face so early in the morning, but because I like it when she runs her fingers up and down my spine, and around my shoulders, and on the backs of my thighs, and over my ass.

We're both naked, of course. I don't like sleeping in clothes of any kind - not even nightwear.  Even though I'm now almost a year past 40 my hair is still long and thick, like it was 20 years ago, so my head and neck get hot and sweaty on a warm night. Maybe I should get my hair cropped short, like hers? Or maybe not. I know she likes touching it, and playing around with it, and brushing it after we bathe, and running her fingers through it.

I hear her breathing softly behind me. She's very close. So close, in fact, that I can feel the hard tips of her nipples pushing against my back. She's making a little purring noise, like a kitten. I want to turn over and kiss her, but then the caresses along my spine would stop. So, too, would the firm squeezing of my buttocks. Her pleasant stroking up and down the groove of my ass would also cease abruptly.

So I stay where I am, with my back towards her.

And now her middle finger is under my body, probing from behind, sliding along the narrow band of skin between my anus and pussy. I'm so sensitive there. I sometimes wonder if I've got more nerve-endings in that place than anywhere else in my body. Being stroked there, by someone who knows precisely where to touch, is almost unbearable. I start gasping frantically, like I'm drowning in deep water. And then her finger reaches the front. She touches my pussy-lips. Too heavenly!  But I don't want it to stop.

I'm nearly fully awake as she moves even closer. I can feel her breath on my shoulder. She whispers something but I'm too distracted to acknowledge it. Her middle finger draws back from my pussy, retracing its course until it reaches my butt-crack. There it pauses for a few moments, nestling in the dry heat, its tip resting on my anus. Then it slides forward again, going very slowly. When it reaches my pussy a second time I can't bear it. She's teasing me mercilessly, but she has gone too far. I'm awake now and I want more than a tease. Forget the gentle touching! What I need is Sex, and plenty of it. I want more than a couple of fingers moving around down there. A tongue would be nice, to really start the day. And then a pair of velvet-soft lips putting tiny kisses all over my pussy.

I roll onto my side again. Her arms are around me. Our bodies press together. One of her hands is buried in my hair, holding the back of my neck. The other is behind my waist, crawling over my ass. For the first time since the teasing began I open my eyes fully, gazing straight into hers. Our eyes meet - mine and hers, dark brown and pale blue - sharing a feverish, hungry stare. We both know what's on the menu. Our mouths join in a hot, slippery kiss. We're smiling as we do it, because we're tasting the flavor of the night before, and we're remembering the things we did to each other.

She whispers again, and this time I hear it: 'I love you.'

These are the only words she needs to say, and the only ones I need to hear. I echo them back.

'I love you, too.'

No more words are necessary. It's time for deep kissing, and more touching, before the session really begins. I slide two fingers inside her. We'll talk later, when the sunrise turns the walls of our bedroom to gold.     

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Writing erotica

People start writing erotica for all sorts of reasons. Some come to the genre as fully-fledged authors of non-erotic fiction who decide to add more spice to their tales. Others just like the idea of creating a sexy story as a turn-on for their readers (and for themselves).

In my own case, I began writing erotica to relieve the intense boredom of convalescing at home after a long illness. That was in late summer of 2004, a few weeks after I returned to the UK to live with my sister Trish. I didn't have much prior experience of writing, except for a couple of months as a rather hapless freelance journalist, but I felt I was up for the challenge. It was Trish who actually nudged me into it, asking me to be chief proof-reader for her sexy stories about elves, orcs, dwarves and heroic warrior women. I enjoyed the task, and found it quite easy. Sitting up in bed, with a red felt-tip in my hand, I happily trawled through heaps of handwritten drafts, some of which went back fifteen years or more.

Then, one day, Trish suggested I should write some erotica of my own. She handed me the rough outline of a story she had been planning to write for a lesbian fiction website. I accepted the assignment and spent a lot of time on it. The result was Train Ride, a kinky little tale of female bi-curiosity, lesbian seduction and soft cotton panties. It was published  on the site and immediately received positive feedback from readers. Buoyed by this encouragement I decided to continue, so when Trish asked me to finish one of her fantasy tales (set in an imaginary Tolkienesque world) I was happy to do it. The storyline existed only as a rough draft but I rather liked it: a young female warrior seduces a sexually frustrated older woman in a roadside inn. I finished it in two days, gave it the title A Different Kind Of Meat, and presented it to Trish, who published it online alongside her own stories. Flushed with enthusiasm I carried on writing, and proof-reading, and putting stories on the web, even after I got well enough to take on a part-time job.

I decided at the outset to write fiction with exclusively lesbian themes. It's no coincidence that the default setting of my sexuality had been moving from 'bi' to 'gay' for several years, since the late 1990s. My most recent intimate relationship before my illness had been with a woman and I felt a deep yearning to stay on the same path, in both my writing and my personal life. My sister wanted me to broaden my horizons to include hetero fiction, but the genre held no real attraction for me, even though I had enough practical experience to describe in detail what goes on between a man and a woman. I did write a few stories with male/female sex scenes but these were specific assignments for a 'custom erotica' service where the reader defines the storyline.

Both Trish and I stopped writing at around the same time, five years ago, when our day jobs and other commitments left little time for anything else. We now no longer live together, nor are we even on the same continent. When we met up a few months ago, at a family occasion in Turkey, we discussed the possibility of publishing our stories in e-book format. This was how the Polly Patkin website started, taking its name from one of the more polite nicknames bestowed on me by my girlfriend, who calls me 'Polly Patkin' whenever I have a clueless, brainless moment. The site was originally to be called 'Lazy Lucy', a nickname I've had since childhood, but I'm not as lazy as I used to be (whatever anyone else might say!) so I ditched the idea.

Since setting up the website and beginning the long task of re-formatting our stories I've started writing erotic fiction again, in a small way, to see if I can still do it. It feels slow at the moment but if I get something finished I'll announce it here. I'm slightly rusty, like the Tin Man after the rain got into his joints. My girlfriend, who at 35 is six years my junior, assures me that an hour or two of creative writing is good therapy for a 40-something woman. 'You need to keep your mind active at your age,' she says, with a smirk and a sly wink. The trouble is, I'm not sure she's joking!