Writing Sex Scenes

To be honest, I have written sex scenes in all three of my novels. In the first two, I later edited them out.
I have just finished writing a sex scene in my current novel so it is still there -- for now.
Here are the possibilities:
The sex scenes are gratuitous and don't carry the story so I cut them out.
I'm mortified by the fact that my children and parents may someday read the book with the sex scenes, so I cut them out.
I'm just not very good at writing sex scenes, so I cut them out.
I'm a prude and get embarrassed at the idea of sex scenes, so I cut them out.
For my latest sex scene, I tried to make the lead-in exciting and then jumped over the details. I mean, everyone knows how those things work, so I probably don't need to go into great detail. It's the emotion and the reason behind the sex scene that I want to focus on.
In my current novel, following great sex that involves chocolate mousse, the Frenchman tried to convince the stalwart Midwesterner to sell the multi-million dollar painting that her uncle took during World War II. So, is it a seduction for the sake of sex or for the sake of manipulation? See, it might actually play into the book.
At least, that's my story for now and I'm sticking to it.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave...

It all started with an email about writing submissions. I'm part of a writing yahoo group that used to be very active, but lately only sends emails when someone gets a successful publishing deal. An email came across about submissions for an erotica anthology.
Now, I've never written erotica. Whenever a sex scene pops into my novels, I inevitably tone it down, leaving the details to the readers' imaginations. This submission called for erotica of 1200 words. I mean, who couldn't write that? The only problem was that I wouldn't want it associated with me. How embarassing for me, my children, my parents... So, I decided to create a pseudonym.
It took some thinking before I came up with a name that I thought would be innocent, yet provocative. Think sexy librarian. No, I'm not telling you because what would be the point of creating an anonymous pseudonym and then telling everyone.
What I didn't realize was how many steps it would take to create this fake persona. I thought I'd start a Facebook page. Before I did that, of course, I had to have an email. So I went to gmail and created an account based on my pseudonym. Then I went to Facebook. My pseudonym might as well be younger, one of us should enjoy it. She's about 10 years younger than I am, in the prime of her life. Aaah.
Of course, I can't post a picture of myself. Next I had to create an account to make an avatar. Remember that the avatar isn't of me, but of this erotica writer person. Am I giving it away by posting it on my blog? I have no idea how people can track down other people on Facebook. I sent a message to a friend asking her to add me to a group and then I wondered if that message is posted to her wall so everyone will know that it's me, posing as this other person.
I have resisted Facebook as myself. I don't want to spy on my teenagers. Really, I'd prefer not to know what they do most of the time. When I want to communicate with my parents (who do have a Facebook account but have no idea how it was created), I just call them.
I have a webpage called paulitakincer.com so any old friends searching for me should be able to find me pretty easily.
I spent a couple of hours this morning creating my fake persona.
I haven't written any erotica. Yes, I know the deadline is Monday, and chances are that I'll never finish it, much less submit it, but I did have fun playing dress up. Isn't this really the equivalent of playing let's pretend when you're a kid?
Now I'll go back to being a teacher who has papers to grade, a woman who needs to go work out at the gym, a writer who is 200 pages into her next novel, and a mother who has to get her teenagers out the door to school.
The fantasy was fun while it lasted.