I must confess, my sexual awakening was not found in day-dreamed dalliances with strapping farm-hands from the well-worn pages of Penguin classics. My childhood taught me to understand books as tools of mind-expansion, soul-enrichment and exam-passing, not, alas, groin-engorgement (a-hem). I guess things can change.
Who is my favourite fictional fittie then? Well, the classical heroes are not for me: Achilles’ prowess is hampered by a pushy mother and crippling arrogance; Odysseus’ cunning and strength are dampened by eyes (and other more troubling portions of his anatomy) that wander as far from home as he and his Greek chums.
The warrior-heroes of this fair isle hold little more allure. No doubt Beowulf’s biceps would bulge breathtakingly (and I am sure I could find some use for his legendary grip), but hour upon hour of monosyllabic self-aggrandising tales would wear the libido a little thin methinks.
Perhaps not a hero from the days of yore then, but surely those sexually repressed lascivious ladies of Georgian and Victorian literary circles bequeathed men to tantalise and titillate me? Alas, no. You can keep Darcy with his sexless reserve, his moral fibre and soggy breeches, and though I’d happily make room for Heathcliff’s brooding, dangerous passion, he is too wild a stallion. Gaskell’s men are all eclipsed by their more striking and impressive female counterparts, and Eliot’s are all well-intentioned, intellectual also-rans.
The only rich hunting ground populated with men you can really sink your teeth into is – no, not Bram Stoker’s Dracula – but Shakespeare’s drama. There are so many men in Shakespeare’s work with whom I could tussle the sheets all midsummer night long making the ‘beast with two backs’ (forgive me), because the way to this man’s heart is one of words. Who can deny the sexiness of Iago’s mastery of both language and man? Certainly not me; that menacing, wordy malignancy, balanced at once dangerously and deliciously with such poise and confidence, is beyond my power to resist. And ‘what a piece of work’ is Hamlet! I could forgive a man almost anything if he could talk to me as Hamlet does when declaring his indifference to humanity. I don’t care if ‘man delights not’ him, give me his ‘quintessence of dust’ any day. Then of course, there is Benedict with his suave, acerbic wit, and Oberon with his jealous passion and mystical power, and Othello with his noble presence and physical grandeur…the list goes on. Shakespeare’s men are the men for me; they are, most definitely, fit fiction.
