If you are acquainted with me at all online you will know that I pride myself on being openminded and maybe even a little edgy. I’m the kind of mother who lets her children ingest most any type media they choose, because I trust them to choose what they can handle. If they can’t handle it I trust them to stop ingesting it and think of me as their personal poison control center. We can talk about what bothered them.
However, I found myself writing an accidental sex scene a few days ago. I had no idea that my characters were so randy or that they felt that strongly towards one another. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was writing, but when I read back through the text I realized I pulled a classic fade-to-black.
Joel had never imagined her lips could be quite that soft. She broke the kiss and he wanted to cry out to her to continue kissing him. He needed to kiss her.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said.
Joel stood, Chrissy took her hand in his and led him to the bigger bedroom. They sank into the sheets, kissing, touching, free from the bad if only for a little while.
Later, as he fell asleep, he thought he heard Chrissy whisper that she loved him.
I did two things that I despise. I faded to black, and I threw in the love equates sex mindset. I think teens can handle sex, hell a lot of them are probably having sex, so why did I fade to black? I still have no answer to this question.
Also, being a woman of the 21st century I think that women and men can have sex just because sex is awesome. They don’t need to love each other, or spill the fruit of their loins in holy matrimony and produce a mini creature that symbolizes their love for all of time. So why did I equate sex to love?
I am the farthest thing from a prude there is. I am married to a Dutchman and we all know anything goes in Holland. I even read the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. You feel me dog? I don’t understand how or why my subconscious wrote this atrocity of a scene.
So what do you think? Should sex in YA equate with love and be fade to black?
