Writtens

As tasty as a chocolate

At this stage of life and of this collection, I am not going to talk about the eroticism a holiday like St. Valentine’s may have; a holiday in which love, or falling in love, or both, are celebrated. About this, I only regret that this date, together with many others, don’t evoke more erotic and spicy images. For example, many years ago, when that day was getting nearer, I remembered that song, the one called “Hoy es el día de los enamorados” (“Today is Lovers’ Day”), and fragments from films came to mind. Yes, it was definitely related to the cinema for me. Now, I confess I only see cakes, roses and boxes of chocolates in the shape of a heart everywhere.

While we are at it, I’ll say that, once, a friend asked me whether I could think of anything original to give his girlfriend as a gift on St. Valentine’s Day. I think I advised him to get something that went beyond what is normal, probably something erotic. Now, if that friend asked me again, I would advise him to get her this volume of “Cuentos eróticos de San Valentín” (“Erotic Tales for St. Valentine’s Day”). I have always thought that eroticism is in the mind. You have to feed it, and then it manages to put the ideas into practice by itself. What good is an erotic toy if one doesn’t know what to do with it, if one doesn’t have any ideas, scenes, perversions or fantasies, especially fantasies, one needs to fulfil?

However, I have always known exactly what I would like to get as a present for St. Valentine’s.

My present is as tasty as a chocolate, but I can’t eat it yet. I started to salivate as soon as I saw it, wrapped in a huge red silk bow which covered all of it (well, it covered all of her), except for three strips that allowed very white, pale patches of skin to be seen. She is as tasty as a chocolate, but she moans, and she will moan even more, until she is ready. Under the bow, she was naked, ready for me to start to dress her up, which is, as I have said repeatedly, one of the most eroticising things for me. I have dressed her in fine fish-net stockings, which are very fine and soft, mid-thigh. Bright red, high-heeled shoes with a seventeen centimetre heel (I know they exist because I saw them a short while ago in a fashion show by a well-known clothing label), which give the instep a strange, hardly natural curvature. A red, openwork garter belt, joined to the stockings with small heart-shaped buttons, because it is St. Valentine’s. The corset, made of red leather too, very tight over the waist, so tight she can hardly breathe and which leaves her breasts exposed. A leather collar, which brushes her skin just under the jaw, and below, at the beginning of the shoulder curve, when she moves her neck. Leather gloves till mid-forearm, and finally, a blindfold over her eyes. What excites me most, however, are the cords I have tied her with, which go round her most unsuspected parts and make all the parts of her body which are not hidden stand out. Of course, in a few minutes I will spank her, because it is St. Valentine’s.

But first, I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the stories of these ten writers who have dared to tackle St. Valentine’s Day from points of view which were unthinkable till now. Their stories and characters stand out, some because of their voluptuousness, some because of their wickedness and insolence, others because of their originality and spontaneity, others still because of their reflexive or mysterious way of approaching sex, and others, precisely because of their absolute uniqueness. I think that, thanks to them, from now on the reader will think of St. Valentine’s Day in a different way; I don’t know exactly how, but I do know it will be different.

All the stories confirm what it is said in one of them: “Everything is eroticism, or nothing is: everything falls under the umbrella of eroticism for a mind which is geared toward the erotic, and nothing does for those who are not predisposed to it”. Perhaps, after reading the stories one feels already a little more “inclined”.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day.

Luis García Berlanga

Madrid, October 2006

* Prologue to “Cuentos eróticos de San Valentín”. Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, 2007.