Hang in there, it’s going to heat up! Natalie-Ann Roy signs a collection of erotic stories, quite naughty thank you, enjoyable to read and aptly named Enjoyable. If they are certainly deliberately festive, in parts even very explicit, the texts collected are above all part of a process of repair, downright healing. Explanations.
“I want to warm the cottages, that’s for sure!” », confirms the author, a graphic designer by trade, to whom we also owe the very skilful and suggestive illustrations of the book, published by QuébecAmérique. After leading the collectives Release anger (2018) then Free the panties (2021), Natalie-Ann Roy dares here with a daring, embodied, assumed and frankly uninhibited solo project. Prude minds refrain.
On the menu, therefore: 24 short stories, located somewhere between “vanilla and three-quarters explicit porn”, laughs the main interested party, met at her home earlier this week. Or 2 or 3 peppers out of 5, if you prefer. A series of “sexting breaks” or heated exchanges of a heterosexual couple in the making, completes the sulphurous portrait.
The texts and other incarnations of fantasies are very diverse, some more conventional (“The construction site” and its sculpted construction worker, yes!), others frankly less (“L’été de Camille”, full of ardent surprises …).
Note that while most depict heterosexual female fantasies, informed consent always obviously included, some flirt with bicuriosity, or even bisexuality. One text is even narrated in the masculine gender. “It’s 80% straight because I’m pretty straight,” explains the author. I also wanted to explore what a man is, just as I wanted to explore what a bi or lesbian person is. I can have fantasies of that: writing opens me to a world of possibilities. » No non-binary or trans text, that said. “Maybe I was afraid of making a mistake? I don’t want to offend. I want to respect. »
The luxury of exploration
Natalie-Ann Roy agrees, her book testifies to a sacred “act of courage”: “I am doing a project alone, of this nature, by making myself vulnerable, and by putting forward a festive, renewed and embodied sexuality », she confirms. All the more courageous when we know that the project was born while she was in “burn-out”, and also pleasantly came out of it. This explains that ? “I had been burned out for a year,” she confirms, “and there is so much heaviness in that…”
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Natalie Ann Roy
I wanted to get my head above water and it came through sexuality, in part.
Natalie Ann Roy
If you want to know everything, it was by taking several naps, “burn-out” obliges, that Natalie-Ann Roy found herself with a lot of time to “explore”. Or rather “explore yourself”. “I had the “luxury” of exploring my body freely, without judgment, without having a grocery list or 9 to 5 to manage. And it’s as if I had found myself and reclaimed my body. » And if this reappropriation came with blissful enjoyment, it was also accompanied by creative inspiration: these texts!
That’s not all. You should also know that Natalie-Ann Roy is a “survivor”. “I experienced sexual violence at a young age, at daycare. » Violence that she dared to explore, for the very first time, in Release anger, at 36, to put an end to the shame and finally aim for a cure. “Before, I had never talked about it…” If she does not wish to delve too far into her traumas (Natalie-Ann Roy has a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic shock), the author explains that she was inspired by this “ very dark space” to bounce, not nearly. “It’s like a change,” she illustrates, “we remove the layers of shame, towards repair. » Hence the angle, the tone and the subject, exclusively positive, as we have said. There is no darkness here, not even a shadow of a sense of shame. What joy.
If she knows that her readers will undoubtedly be more female readers, men would also have every interest in reading her, she believes. “Maybe to build bridges? Porn is cool, but it’s not just that! […] There is also talking, care, “checking if we are still correct during the act”, there is joyful consent! »
Moreover, she does not hide it: Natalie-Ann Roy would not mind causing a few “small revolutions” here or there: “I think that many of our sexualities are experienced in taboo or shame,” she laments. Especially among women: we are always too much or not enough of this, even in our fantasies, I think we limit ourselves in our heads. Me, I would like it to generate a little freedom, a little breath. Because the human experience starts from there! »
His speech is militant, as we will have understood, and above all proud of it. “Post-#metoo,” she continues, “women, we take our place. We are tired of scripts that tell us how to live our lives and how to live our sexuality. There is militancy, for sure, there is something political. It is a space of courage and speaking out. »
Speaking of courage, does she feel a little healed? “It helps,” she concluded, smiling. I think it’s a life process. »
Enjoyable
Quebec America
189 pages