Thanks thmilin. I get it (I guess).
Aside from some nagging suspicion, I really didn't see the sex as particularly icky (and I am not a seeker of icky sex, myself). Maybe I'm just too familiar with the character. He's been around for a while. He grew on me.
I can clean up the graphic details, but no, I'm not going to change who and what he is for the sake of publishing in a certain market (ah, the famous words that mark me as an unpublished writer).
if your skeletal human is physically corporeal - someone can touch him, feel flesh, hear the rumble of his voice, run their fingers through his hair - when he is not "skeletal" you should be fine. however, if someone has sex with him when he is skeletal - what does that mean? are his bones on the outside of his flesh (he's inside out)? or does he simply become bone and ether, or goop? if so, again, this will turn off most readers because it will be equivalent to having sex with autopsy remains or something exhumed from a grave. this is not sexy to most people, and will only turn on a very very tiny portion of readers.
Y'know I
am capable of writing some really disgusting stuff in the way of goop and carnage, but this (I hope) isn't it.
I spent a lot of the first part of the book - before any revelation at all - first showing how the alien (Cecan - he is a species called SCAP) is playing with the MC (Dean Gomeric) - even call the seduction a "game." Then I show how this guy gets to him, making him kind of pitifully smitten. By the time he is exposed it is pathetic. It is disturbing, but the Gomeric behaves accordingly and splits.
This is it:
***
It is strange, Gomeric thinks, disturbing. “This look you have is not you,” he offers.
“It is me.”
“But it is really the prince Cecan, right?”
There is no response to this. Cecan just looks at him with those steady black eyes.
“It changes all the time,” he says. “You are constantly skinny, then muscled. Something must be the base for this, and the rest, what? Growing tissue? Can you open it up? Can I see inside?”
Again no answer. If anything, Cecan looks scared.
“Don’t be like that,” he says, irritated at both the overly touchy SCAP and his own stupidity that brought him to this point. “I only want to see who you really are, what you really look like.”
The SCAP has risen from the nest. He stands beside the computer, naked and pale, watching Gomeric carefully. “That’s just it. You would not see what I look like in any other shape, either. You would see just another version of the thing I am not. It will not be good for you.”
His shirt is almost tucked in. This morning routine is suddenly anything but. “Don’t tell me what’s good for me. If you really want any chance to have a relationship with me you are going to have to stop hiding.”
“I don’t want a relationship.”
“Oh, that’s bull.” This has become a little more important. He is even more curious. “You’re just saying it to get out of this. Don’t be such a crybaby. Show me what you look like. I need to know, now.”
Cecan says nothing. He does not move, either. This moment is sticky with fear and the disgrace of who he is. It has come to this on several occasions, just not with lovers. Always then with the Amaat, or the Kuipe authority. He has never cared so much as today about how a person will feel upon seeing him.
“Let me see for myself,” Gomeric demands, a growing worry in his voice.
The SCAP wants to beg him to drop it, to not pursue this command he has given. He cannot. It is obligatory now. It is a direct order from a human, and none of the carefully constructed distractions are available.
He allows the soft tissue around him to fade, first to clear, then to slip away. His hair melts into the fine whispers of strands, and then disappears completely. He becomes translucent, losing all his color. Then from behind the foggy thinning form, the bones emerge. First the skull, and the bones of his wrists and ankles - wherever the skin is already close to bone. Gradually, though, the entire structure is revealed. He is completely reduced to a skeleton.
In a graceful, pleading gesture, he reaches out his hand to Gomeric. But the man backs away. He did not expect this. There is no way he can imagine he could have been prepared to know he has been having sex with a corpse. This moving horror is the truth behind his lover. This dead thing is what has been so intimate with him. This is what makes the crew laugh so much when he talks to them. This is what they mean by all their snide comments on food and life.
“I--” he chokes on his rising revulsion. “I thought…I thought it was a model.”
He backs away from the contact he knows will bring the manipulative hum. He has to leave. He cannot let himself be fooled again into believing that this is somehow right. “I’m sorry,” he says, darkly. “It’s too much. I’m going to be sick.”
Then the Earthman is gone. The room is left empty except for the silent cry of Cecan’s soul. The walls seem to peel away with the crush of it. Behind them is only blackness. He sinks to the floor in jumbled bits. No will exists to keep him together as a man. He is not a man. It has again become his doom to face that truth. For the thousandth time since his death he wishes for the transition into dust.
***
There is a long reconciliation and I really hope I wrote it well enough that the reader comes along with Gomeric to care for Cecan and all his 206 parts.
Still - and this is how I write, anyway - sex with bones is kind of specific or it's just glossed over. The one time that the details are provided is intended to be tender as well as erotic (they are both hurt, Gomeric is recovering and Cecan is trying not to interfere with that). I'll leave out the graphic part, but this is how it begins:
***
It is only a few moments later when Baby speaks up once again. “Cecan is at the door.”
“Let him in,” Gomeric responds. He has twisted around in the nest as best he can, trying to look relaxed and alert despite the pain medication.
The cabin door opens and closes without any other sound. Cecan does not come forward past the edge of the cleaning station. He may not even have come in. “Cecan?” Gomeric calls. “Cecan? Are you there?”
“Dean.” It is a quiet voice that seems to be a release of held breath.
There is still no movement. The cabin feels haunted, as if the voice came from nowhere. This is the same fearful person he has chased all over this ship and Lan. He thought they were past this. “Stop being so damned dramatic,” he says impatiently. “Come around here where I can see you.”
When the navigator comes into view he is nothing but bones, walking slowly toward the desk against the far wall “Dramatics,” it says, clacking its mandible up against its stiffly held skull.
The sight is disturbing despite his belief in his newfound acceptance. “What happened to your face between there and here?”
“Apologies,” A filmy face stretches itself across the cheekbones of the skull. As it does so, the rest of the skeleton becomes looser, the bones further apart and less coordinated. “Better?” it asks, leaning its collection of rattling bones against the desk. “Is about energy use. Lowers ability to maintain the projection of skin.” A pause while it holds up a delicately balanced hand, wavering atop its forearm. “You know that.”
“It’s…okay,” Gomeric says, worried that he has insulted him. “I - if this is a test, I don’t --”
“Please stop.” The mandible moves only slightly. The scapulas scrape against the ribs as the back sinks. “Not a test. Respect. Is what is.”
Just like in space, Gomeric thinks. “You’re still weak.” He wants to crawl out of the bed and hold him; bring him back from this skeletal state. “What can I--?”
“Part of who I am. I am not in danger.” The skeleton does not move from its perch, but still seems to approach the nest, an outreach of something else that Gomeric is only barely aware of.
A moment goes by with only the black socket eyes and his own growing tension in his awareness. He realizes that his tension is once again tied to a rising vibration that radiates from Cecan. “The hum,” he says
“I am trying to reduce it.” The skeleton stands stiffly. It looks as though it might back out of the room.
“No,” Gomeric says, panicked. “Come here.” He stretches out a hand.
The skeleton is ready to bolt, he is sure. Cecan has left this scene so often that he can almost see the pattern of movements - even with just the man’s bones for clues. He wants his lover back. He wants the comfort of Cecan’s touch, the nearness of the source of the vibrations that run through him. “Please?” He taps the mattress. A carnal shiver shoots up his body. What if the skeleton comes to him?
For response it only settles again on the edge of the desk, gripping the counter with clattering finger bones. “I love that hum,” Gomeric says. “I don’t care if its addictive, or manipulative or whatever.” He moves his hands through the air as if to brush at particles suspended there. The motion seems to attract more of the bones’ focus so he smiles and does it again. “It has your attention, too. Damn, Cecan. We don’t need to spend all our time resisting this.”
“You do not understand. We are barely able to stand here.” The joints between the bones move further apart making the skeleton seem larger, wider. The ghostly face on the skull stares miserably at the nest. “I am a monster, Dean. I could hurt you.”
***
All in all, my boy Cecan's got depth. Am I wrong?
the other thing is if the bones lose the humanoid shape - ie, become a literal pile of bones that is able to think/speak/feel, and the sex act is someone picking a bone off the pile and doing whatever with it - this is too much, again, for most readers. this dehumanizes to the point where a standard human being would feel extremely horrified, uncomfortable, and too focused on the lack of humanity to be able to believe that your other main character is actually having sex with bones and enjoying it.
it is, ironically, too "alien" to see your alien having sex in this way.
You are undoubtedly right. I wonder when it became just quirky to me. It is only quirky to the few friends who have read the book, too. But they have read lots of Cecan stories before.
I think I should probably find a reader who is not so close to me to give me more of a reader's/editor's insight. I haven't figured out how to properly seek a beta reader for a long, dark, SF, apparently edgy, gay erotica novel. <sigh> I will set about doing so immediately after my current edit is done.
