Goines On: A red marketing plan

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Goines’ friend Red asked him to read the novel he had just finished drafting. Red was concerned about the fact that both his wife and his and Goines’ mutual friend Pavel had read the draft and both of them thought Red should exclude the sex scenes – too risqué. But Red himself felt that the sex scenes were necessary to the story, so he wanted Goines’ opinion. Goines said sure, he’d read it, why not? Email it to him.
    But he was surprised that Pavel recommended removing the scenes, because Pavel liked to joke and talk about the great sex he had had, and was still having – he was some years younger than Red and Goines.
    Goines soon discovered, in Chapter 2, that the word “risqué” hardly covered it. The sex scenes were quite explicit. Goines was of course no stranger to sex scenes, not only from having read such classics as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place, but also from watching films and TV series with Mrs. Goines, a significant percentage of which included scenes depicting characters (if not the actors) having sex. Sex was definitely in.
    But almost never as graphically explicit as in Red’s novel. And Goines had barely begun to read it. There were over 30 more chapters. And it was hard not to be sexually aroused reading some of what little he had already read. Reading more might be going to be an experience, something far surpassing anything in Nabokov, Lawrence, or Metalious.
     But why fight the arousal? That was silly. Being aroused felt very good, and Goines wouldn’t be reading Red’s sex scenes in public.
    Goines mentioned to Red in an email thread that included Pavel that he was being aroused by his reading. The three friends had been discussing the recent snow storms each of their three towns had experienced, and Goines said he wasn’t going to risk hurting himself by shoveling snow. Red said that was wise, because shoveling snow caused a significant increase in heart attacks. Pavel agreed that shoveling snow was a physically demanding and often lethal activity. But it helped if you almost constantly thought about sex, because thinking about sex was like a moderate cardio workout that keeps the revs up and the blood flowing.

    Goines couldn’t tell whether Pavel was serious, though, because he also said it would keep “the bs piling deeper and deeper.” But even Pavel occasionally flubbed up, so Goines decided that the wording was probably a typo for the snow piling deeper (even as you shoveled it).
    Anyway, Goines was in a playful mood, and he found himself proposing an experiment to see whether thinking about sex significantly increased a person’s blood pressure. Since Goines already took a BP reading almost every day, he proposed to take it TWICE each day, once in a thoroughly relaxed, abstinent frame of mind, and then again, after reading a sex scene from Red’s novel – to compare the readings. Pavel even predicted the difference: 12 systolic points.
    The difference in his very first day’s two systolic blood pressure readings was amazing – 17, even 5 more than the 12 that Pavel had predicted.
    Goines of course realized that this was but a single set of readings, by a single experimental subject – himself. A valid experiment would call for a statistically valid population of subjects, and a huge number of BP readings.
    And he noticed something else about the day’s experiment, although he hesitated to reveal it to Red and Pavel: He found himself really, really wanting to read the next sex scene. Were Red’s sex scenes addicting?
    Just enrolling a statistically valid number of experimental subjects to read Red’s book to determine whether it was addicting would guarantee the book more readers than any of Red’s other books had found. And if addictiveness could be confirmed, the novel might prove to be Red’s break-out book, rocketing it to the top of bestsellers lists around the world.
    And if someone’s Facebook page (or something) serialized the novel without the sex scenes (which would probably be disallowed anyway), but told readers they would find them all in the published book, Red could sell even more copies….
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* The background image is a “Lady Parts” illustration from a Medieval prayer book.

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