JUAN SALANOVA
A YEAR
OF SEX
FANTASY TALES
"Casa el Molino" Collection
Juan Salanova
English edition
Publisher: Tektime
Translation Spanish into English: Mª Gloria García Menéndez
Revision: Juan Salanova
Cover image: The fisherman's wife's dream
by Katsushika Hokusai, Japan 1814
DEDICATION
These stories are aimed at....
people who have formed long-term relationships and remain happily paired although they are attracted to the problems of other people in unstable relationships.
people who throughout their lives have not been able to stabilize themselves as a couple despite continuing to believe that this is possible, and are still looking for their prince or princess.
people without love, who live an individualized life, centred on ephemeral sex and in a stable relationship with a group of friends with whom they can struggle with loneliness and social anxiety without sharing their bodies.
To all of them a warm embrace from a person who believes he has belonged to the three groups throughout his life.
REFLECTIONS
Desired life surpasses life,
and enriches it
of unknown experiences
when desire becomes action.
PREFACE
These stories are going to transport you far away, in a centennial journey, to countries near and far, to the coexistence of mythologies and very diverse religions, to hallucinatory states caused by drugs or unexpected mental stimuli, to the appearance of historical conflicts that are still alive, to a fusion of reality and fantasy that transcends our rational ways of living.
In one place or another, in one time or another, you will discover within these pages a naked, crude, palpitating, unsatisfied loneliness... that tries to confront itself with the achievement of a liberating sexuality. It is in this vital tension that the narrative pulse is established.
Of course, behind this subdued solitude, lies an unjust social structure, imprinted by the inexhaustible voracity of power, in the various ideological formats (from the more or less disguised dictatorships to the speculative absolutism of liberal society). The tormented protagonists of the stories shown here are victims of this global situation, with which the reader can easily identify at the beginning of the stories. Each in his or her own way, in the depths of the dead leaves, is searching for a place, although as the story unfolds, in an attempt to escape from the daily inertia, the characters usually enter into an unexpected and unusual adventure that we could not have imagined.
The liberation through an unknown and more savage sexuality, stimulates the action of these protagonists.
It is not the first time that Juan Salanova has faced, beyond fiction, in his daily practice as a teacher in Mesones de Isuela, in the early 1980s, the courageous confrontation with a regressive Spanish society in the face of a natural expression of sexuality, a hindrance to a Francoism still in force in many spheres and social customs. He tried to develop in his classes a lucid, practical sexual training, devoid of the classic censorship, too disturbing for the reactionary minds of a sector of the local families. The conflict originated in the town crossed borders, reaching a place in the multitudinous Spanish television of that time. Juan Salanova became a symbol of the path to be taken, within the educational sphere, towards a free and liberating sexuality.
These stories present the horizon of people who, in different cultural contexts and historical moments (including our country in 2015), do not manage to enjoy a harmonious, natural, full, integrated sexual life in the personal and social development they yearn for. Sex beats in them like a kind of erotic machine that needs to be refuelled periodically, if not like a sleeping, unpredictable or indomitable beast.
He encourages non-conformity in these pages, the rebellion against the society of virtual spectacle that floods us. This is because, according to what is written, it is possible to go beyond our small daily island of constrained sensuality, which is alien to shared intimacy and cooperation in solidarity with human beings and other living beings on the planet. It is possible to open our small stronghold of routine time and step-by-step renunciation to new horizons, almost without having noticed it.
Regardless of the current debate on the percentage use of the brain, the author proclaims - through the skills of his characters - that it is possible to develop our physical and mental capacities more and better (although they sometimes use psychedelic substances to achieve this). That it is possible to allow a freer, more original, satisfying and compassionate sexuality to emanate and be fulfilled. That it is possible to make a better world.
Juan Salanova has an extraordinary weapon, his imagination without frontiers as a writer, to achieve this. Thus, a certain confrontation takes place between the critically realistic and documented setting of his stories, with the irruption of dreamlike escapes and fictional elements that tend to provoke the outcome of an overflowing fantasy. All this wide universe shelters these stories, unique personal odysseys of the last century that have led us here.
Emilio Pedro Gómez, poet
NOTE.-
Text in italics by Zbigniew Herbert
INTRODUCTION
I begin these stories after overcoming two experiences of creative work, generating unreal characters, places and situations, all of them framed within a post-apocalyptic world.
The motivation for this literary genre was the intellectual enjoyment of making life of fiction emerges from nowhere, confronted by the white box on pale blue of MS Word, together with the need to give meaning to a solitary life of retirement, which would allow us to stop the mental decadence produced by age.
Reality has been and continues to be my source of inspiration. The books or films that marked my life, the people and events with whom I interacted, have been distilling the energy needed to expand the lives of my characters, their places of life and their interactions included in the plot.
These 12 stories represent the 12 months of the year, and each month there is a protagonist around whom the action takes place. 6 women and 6 men alternating each other will show us their lives, their existence that balances between reality and desire.
I am aware of the enormous power of sex as a universal attraction for humans, which is now definitely segregated from reproduction. That is why sex, even if it is not the main component of every story, will always be part of the protagonists' lives.
I have tried to avoid writing an erotic novel, describing sex-based existences, because I believe that, even knowing all their potential appeal, the meaning of life and human evolution to death is paralyzed if it is reduced to a progressive series of libido, orgasm and relaxation, which requires a continuous start, in a loop of obsession that limits and even stops other mental abilities.
The alternative complement to these sexual lives will be fantasy. Fantasy unlimited in time and, space and populated by diverse beings that live together in the same environment. Fantasy of the impossible, rejection of the usual reality such as exhausting monotony, coexistence of the conscious life, in solitude or in society, with dreams of pleasure, dreams of seduction, dreams of overcoming unsatisfied realities, dreams of conscious happiness during the day from night dreams ruled by the subconscious....
Don't look for real humans, people of your time,