This post is about my story for Alison Tyler‘s anthology Morning, Noon and Night: Erotica for Couples, just out this month. There is one story for each hour of the day, plus one extra for lagniappe!
The first things I thought of when I was assigned 8:00 pm were: television, prime time, appointment teevee. The silly thing is, I don’t have television anymore. I don’t have cable or streaming capabilities at home, so I generally watch things on DVD, months or years after they’ve aired, with the only exception being Dr. Who – friends with BBC America keep me caught up on that. It was my present state of tv-watching that resonated with the 8:00 pm time slot; it was the nostalgia factor.
The last shows I watched every week on live television were The X-Files and Buffy:The Vampire Slayer. I didn’t have cable even then, and because I live in the midst of a lot of tall buildings, it was often tricky to adjust my antenna just right. I would swear a lot. Sometimes, I could only tell characters apart by their voices (Robert Patrick!). But I watched, faithfully, because I cared deeply about those characters.
My story for Morning, Noon, and Night is not only a love (and sex) story about Martha and Sven, it’s also a love story about people and the television shows they love, and the sometimes absurd-seeming ways that love is expressed. It’s about how a shared activity like tv, and being a fan of a particular show, brings people together. After all, if you can love a tv show that much, then what can happen when you love the person next to you on the couch, even more?
