Waiter, there's Pr0n in my book!

You know, if I want porn, if I want to be stimulated in that way, I'll watch porn, or read erotica intended to be erotica.

Where do I NOT want to find gratuitous and graphic sex? In the middle of: action novels, sci-fi books, historical novels (the current source of my malfunction being Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver"), or any other book that isn't intended to be SEXY.

It's disconcerting at best to be wading through something filled with detailed explanations of mathematics and alchemy and astronomy, and suddenly stumble into a relatively graphic scene involving someone's hand up another's ass. EXCUSE ME?

I think it's a "suspension of disbelief" thing for me. You're cruising along in your book, secure in how the story is going, your disbelief is appropriately suspended to enjoy the story unfolding before you, only to turn a corner and be smacked upside the head with a force relative to having the Mythbusters team dropping Buster out of an airplane from 2000 feet. Terminal velocity, and it's the sudden STOP at the end of the fall that kills you. WHAM. Suddenly, the spell of the book is broken.

Most of the time, I just roll my eyes and skip through the book until the scene is over and try to ease back into the story. It just didn't happen with Quicksilver. After that point, I had trouble enjoying it. I had trouble reading and paying attention, because little things kept creeping on back and throwing the whole pacing off yet again.

Don't get me wrong. Sex, porn, graphic, what have you, it doesn't bother me for the most part. However, as far as I'm concerned, there's a time and place for it, and if I want graphic sex, I know where to find it. Hell, I probably have over a full gig worth of erotic manga on my computer. But I know where I don't want to be finding it.

Look, authors, it's pretty simple. If you want to write erotica, write erotica. Don't hide it, flaunt it, be proud of it. And for cryin out loud, stop hiding it where I least expect to find that sort of thing. Give me porn, or give me literature. Just stop combining the two already!