When I settled down to read Sunny Leone’s fourth instalment in her book of erotica, Sweet Dreams, I confess: I was more than a little hesitant. I had already established within the course of the last (first?) three chapters that the first-time author understood the writing of sex; she just didn’t have a screenplay to punctuate it.
Which is why, when I finished scrolling through my (smartphone) copy of Call Centre, I looked up, well-pleased and perfectly satiated. Miss Leone, we are happy to announce, has broken the code; she has cinched and doled out a delicious dish of erotica!
What draws you to this one almost immediately is its sheer lack of pretence and its refusal to be drawn into Mills and Boon-esque clichés. There are no stories, thus, about a hapless sexual goddess, who must be ravaged by an animalistic and completely unbelievable prototype of a man.
This is the subtlest and sweetest form of literary porn. Call Centre is about your Average Joe: a rather inconspicuous call centre executive – whom Sunny manages to bring to life with some delightful punches about his clumsiness and over active imagination. She manages to sell him to us not as some wink-happy sleazeball, but as a highly believable (and rather unremarkable) trainee, enamoured by his senior’s charms.
No extraordinary curveballs are thrown your way in terms of plot denouement. Mr Average Joe, as must happen with all happy endings in erotica, finds himself in his senior’s cabin by the end of night and the duo have equal, mutually satisfying sex (a welcome relief from glorified rape fantasies that erotica almost necessarily serves). There are no awkward turns of phrases in this one, no forcing the images of two sex-starved adults down our throats. You are touched by the nonchalant allusion to the male protagonist’s ‘first time’ and his ‘inexperience’ without the story allowing it to become a big deal. The sexual encounter too is painted as naturally as words will allow, and spares you the feeling of watching very bad porn.
All in all, Sunny Leone’s fourth chapter is just how good old erotica should be. Earthy, raw and entirely believable. It also demonstrates, once and for all, the possibility for erotica to be written for both sexes, and for it to be - equal and mutually satisfying.
(You can read Call Centre and the remaining stories in Sweet Dreams on the Juggernaut app for Android phones.)
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