Personality Quirks: F is for Frotteurism

Are you a writer looking for some interesting personality traits and quirks to create characters? Or maybe you’re a logophile, someone who loves words, and wants to collect more of them. Either way, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s leave the phobias today and instead focus on a different type of personality quirk not triggered by fear. This one gives me the willies, so I think it has limited application, but if you like kinky, frotteruism might be your ticket to an interesting character and situations for an erotic romance.

This is from my online dictionary:

In art, frottage is the technique or process of taking a rubbing from an uneven surface to form the basis of a work of art; a work of art produced by taking a rubbing from an uneven surface.

I can't call up any fiction or real characters except for those subway creeps I try to keep my distance from. Maybe I should have more sympathy? Nah!

Frottage comes to us from 1930s French meaning “rubbing, friction”. Well, frotteurism can move away from the art world to the second definition in my online dictionary:

the practice of touching or rubbing against the clothed body of another person in a crowd as a means of obtaining sexual gratification.

Your frotteuristic character might be a rural resident who is restless and wants to live where there are crowds and the concomitant anonymity. Perhaps heesh is unaware of why heesh stands so close to people, touching them “accidentally.” Perhaps heesh has a reputation for being clumsy since heesh is always bumping into others. Some might even find shim creepy. In the big city, riding the subway to and from work keeps the frotteurist very happy. How will you have others discover this is a condition? Will heesh get help for the condition or be continually moving as others become aware of shis condition?

Your frotteurist might go another route. Perhaps heesh offers the service of being rubbed against or of being able to rub others as a sex trade business. Since there is no penetration or nudity, the police might be stymied about whether or not this is a sex trade business and how to deal with it. I can see an investigating police officer intrigued by it and maybe even drawn into an episode.

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Frotteurism is a real thing and writers can use it for character development from @RomanceRighter http://bit.ly/2nLGef0