We keep reading articles about how readers must be sick of vampires. (I'm not.)
They're switching from love for alpha males to swooning for the betas. (I like them both.)
How about we talk about a real issue for romance readers? It's time we came clean about cock fatigue.
Now, now, readers. Don’t worry. I’m not talking about performance issues by your favorite hero. Quite the contrary.
With the deluge of must-read ultra-sexy books releasing of late, it’s easy to jump from one romance to another. This should be a good thing, right?
Mostly.
The more we read back-to-back sexy, the less jaw-dropping some sex scenes become. What might have once made you dart glances across the room at your husband, now make you flip the page waiting for it to get really dirty.
More specifically, as romance readers we can reach a point where we’re sick of seeing the word cock. It loses its naughty value. Our tryst with that erotic novella feels more mundane because we’ve spent the last six books in a row seeing the word cock every few chapters.
Symptoms of cock fatigue include, but are not limited to:
- Apathy to the word cock
- Disinterest in aggressive hero
- Disassociation from reading emersion during graphic sex scenes
- Doubt at hero’s real ability to wield aforementioned penis
- Need for main characters to “get on with it already”
However, cock fatigue comes in many forms. Perhaps you get worn out by certain words a hero utters during coitus. I’ve heard others have issues with “mine,” but it still does it for me.
Maybe you’ve exhausted by all this fictional sex on the whole. Without stopping for a breather book between the ultra sexy titles, it’s easy to get burnt out on sex scenes. If I push myself too long on the graphic romance binge, I’ll find myself thinking, “shouldn’t we be stopping the bad guy?” instead of my more common thought, “I’d be kissing that guy if the world was going to end.”
If you’re experiencing cock fatigue, you have a few options. The first, and most effective, is to sit the book down when you start to sense apathy to visceral language within sex scenes. Come back to the book the next day. Even just a scant 24 hours can be enough to stop early-onset cock fatigue.
However, if you’ve been on a full sexytimes bender, you may need to switch your mind into another mode. Pick up a good non-romance book. Maybe try The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. Lovely characters, sexual tension but little of the dirty, dirty.
If you really want to be able to read another book filled with graphic sex, and can’t fathom stepping away to another genre for a book or two. The most drastic option is to ask your dear friends (or any H&Her) to recommend the most filthy of their favorite books. Not only should they be good reads, but if it gets dirty enough you will be shocked into appreciating the overwhelming cocks in your previous books.
Readers, this is a safe place, so feel free to admit your battles with cock fatigue and your best recommendations to persevere in the name of sex scene fans everywhere.
Rooster image by Natesh Ramasamy via Flickr
While Chelsea Mueller runs Vampire Book Club, she won’t turn down a sexy werewolf, demon or faerie. Her appreciation of Alexander Skarsgard is well documented. Bother her on Twitter — @ChelseaVBC — she likes it.
