Had a beta chat re: “Household Lights” today, which reminded me of this amusing incident tangentially involving one of my other beta readers….
One evening last month, I was at a friend’s house for dinner with the spouse of one of my betas, and as we were going to our cars and waving goodbye to one another, I stopped.
Me: I’ll have to come over next week and tell you and S all about the sex scene I just wrote.
Him [ears congested from the weather]: Oh, yes, S would like to see you too, real soon!
Me: No, I said I want to tell you about how I wrote a sex scene.
Him: What? You wrote about seeing something?
Me: NO. I WROTE A SEX SCENE.
Him: What??
At this point K’s whole neighborhood knows I wrote a sex scene, and D still doesn’t. I go closer to him.
Me: Scene!! I wrote a scene!
Him: Oh, a scene!
Me: With sex in it.
Him: OH! Well, that’ll sell.
When I told S about this little tableau later, she laughed fit to kill.
Fortunately for my reputation in K’s neighborhood, none of my betas have seen fit to ask me to revise said scene. Even if they had, though, I think I’ve learned my lesson about throwing out references to sex scenes in the driveways of friends’ houses.