[Greta Christina] On Writing Porn in Public
I’m not usually a fan of exhibitionism. Not the secret kind, anyway. I worked as a stripper years ago and enjoyed the work — erotically as well as professionally — and I’m perfectly happy to strip for a lover, pose and perform for them, etc. But the sort of sneaky, secretive, “fingering under the restaurant tablecloth/ fucking on the picnic table that you hope nobody can see” sort of exhibitionism has never done it for me. I’m not comfortable with the consent issues raised by involving people in my sex life who didn’t agree to be involved. And besides, the fear of being caught doesn’t make me excited. It makes me anxious, distracted, unable to concentrate on the business at hand. It’s one of those kinks that I more or less understand intellectually, while being totally baffled by it emotionally.
But I’ve been discovering an exception.
That exception is writing porn in public.
Like countless other writers with laptops — and like countless writers with typewriters and pens before us — I’ve discovered the joy of writing in cafes. It’s a great way to avoid both the claustrophobia and the easy distraction of working at home all day.
And I’ve discovered that there’s something uniquely hot about sitting down at a cafe, opening up my laptop, and setting to work on a dirty story. Something that makes me finally get what it is that turns people on about secret exhibitionistic sex.
Part of it is that, without actually feeling unethical, it feels sort of naughty and bad. Like I’m getting away with something.
Breaking rules is almost always exciting . . . an excitement that can easily be turned sexual if you squint at it just right. And when you grow up in a culture that condemns almost anything sexual as wicked and forbidden, it’s hard not to think of the wicked and forbidden as naturally sexual. But when you live in San Francisco in the sex- positive community, it’s awfully hard to feel like anything you’re doing is wicked or forbidden. We’re all so damned accepting.
But writing porn in my neighborhood cafe? That definitely feels naughty. I love writing about ex-Catholic women seducing their priests, and sex workers being drawn into sadomasochism by their customers, and high school slumber parties gone wrong . . . when, as far as anybody knows, I’m just working on my Ph.D., or my manifesto, or my screenplay, or whatever it is people do on their laptops in cafes. (Yes, I know. Some of them are probably writing porn, too. Don’t harsh my buzz. Anyway . . . that’s also kind of hot.)
Add to that the fact that I almost inevitably get turned on when I write porn. If I’m not, it’s a clue that I’m not doing it right. So you take the “secretly writing dirty dirty porn in broad daylight in a public place” aspect, and you add the “getting wetter and wetter by the minute in broad daylight in a public place” aspect . . . and it definitely makes me feel hyper-sexual, like an insatiable slut getting fingered in the back seat of a car because she can’t wait ’til she gets home.
There’s something else going on though, too. In an odd way, even though the public-ness of a public space is somewhat distracting, it also provides a curious focus.
See, when I’m writing porn at home alone, there’s nothing to stop me from reaching for the vibrator when I get turned on. Which is a good time, of course — writing porn puts my sex fantasies into sharp, intense focus, and I love jerking off when I do it — but it does tend to derail the writing pretty damned fast. My porn is always better if I can hold off on masturbating to it for as long as I can. It’s frustrating . . . but the frustration amps up the intensity of the scenario I’m trying to create, makes me focus extra-hard on the details and the motivations and the subtle emotional shadings.
And when I’m writing porn in public, I don’t have a choice. I can’t just jerk off as soon as I start getting turned on. (Not if I want to go back to that cafe, anyway.) I have to keep my attention on the writing. I have to channel my arousal away from my clit and into my story. Writing in public forces me to have the discipline that I don’t always have at home.
Writing porn in public gives me focus in another way as well. When I get deeply involved in a raunchy fantasy, deeply turned on by it — and then remember where I am, and take a sip of coffee, and look around me at the barristas and the cafe art and the people playing chess — the contrast is like diving into a cold pool after sitting in a hot sauna. And getting back into my dirty story is like climbing back into the sauna. The shock of it wakes me up, makes me pay attention. It makes me feel intensely conscious of how I feel in my skin, intently present in the here and now.
And that’s always a good place to write from. Porn or otherwise.
So now I’m curious. Am I the only one? If you’re a sex writer — professional or amateur — do you ever write porn in public? And if so . . . what is that like for you? Is it harder than writing at home? Easier? Some of both?
And those of you who do like secret exhibitionism — the actual sex kind, not the “writing porn in cafes” kind — is this at all how you feel about it? Does it make you feel hyper-sexual and slutty? Intensely focused and conscious of the here and now? Frustrated in a way that winds up your arousal? Like you’re getting away with something naughty? Something else entirely?
Prurient minds want to know.
This entry was posted on Friday, 31 October 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Friday, 31 October 2008 at 11:20 pm Elf Sternberg wrote:
Hi, Greta! A friend of mine recommended that I visit your blog because almost all of my porn is written in public. As a father of two children with a full-time job, my only writing time is during my commute, on a laptop on a public bus. I have about 40 minutes each way, and in each period I manage somewhere between 400 and 1000 words, often more on the ride home than on the way out. Maybe I’m just not awake enough in the morning. Last year I saw a magazine photo essay on writers and their workspaces, and I even photographed mine.
Writing on a bus isn’t like writing on a cafe’. The people aren’t self-selected; many of them use the bus by necessity. Buses, even the freeway-capable ones that roam the outskirts of my Seattle, are often crowded. Sometimes I have to deal with someone reading over my shoulder.
A few years ago I was seated next to a rather nosy woman. The bus wasn’t even full and she had to sit next to right next to me. She was the sort of woman who thinks she looks good in faux leopard prints and who thinks she smells great wearing half a bottle of eau d’ urinal cake. She was reading a book called We Who Are Called: Forgotten Heroes of America’s Christian Heritage, and the chapter she’s reading was about John Birch. She kept trying to read over my shoulder. It was a nice, quiet scene between two characters, wasn’t even up to the sex yet. I don’t mean “peeking.” No, she was leaning in to look closely.
I finally had enough. I said, “Miss, if you don’t stop looking over my shoulder, I shall start writing violent homosexual pornography. If that doesn’t put you off, I shall add bestiality to the plot. If that doesn’t put you off, I shall have to ask for your phone number.”
There were some shocked looks, and one woman who knows me reasonably well laughed. She’s seen how frustrated I get when people read over my shouder.
The other happened a few months ago. I was writing this scene in a story I had tentatively labeled “Catboys of Brokeback Moutain” when this kid got on the bus and sat next to me. Probably a high school senior, he was reading a magazine read by rock star wannabees, full of reviews of software that’ll make you “sound pro.” He kept looking over my shoulder and I said, “It’s gay porn, kid. I’m about to write the first sex scene. Do you plan to keep reading?” He decided not to keep reading.
The circumstance is different. Some people just can’t look away from a screen; I’m one of them. I don’t invite people to read my stories on the bus; many are probably not in my target audience. Obviously, I can’t keep plowing away at a heavy BDSM scene of human/centaur love when kids sit next to me.
Circumstance has led me to writing porn in public. I don’t feel particularly hypersexualized by the setting, no. It’s just the one place I have where I can write continually, where I know I won’t be interrupted for 40 minutes by family or office, where I have no Internet access to tempt me to distraction.
on Saturday, 1 November 2008 at 7:40 am Pat wrote:
I’m not a writer at all, but this story made me want to become one so I could also write porn in public. ;-) The “getting away with something” aspect definitely adds to the hotness level.
on Saturday, 1 November 2008 at 8:54 pm Distracted wrote:
I write smut in class sometimes. I get overwhelmed and distracted by the thoughts in my head and have to get them out. From the instructor’s perspective I must look like I’m taking notes with a such dedication! I had some filthy ideas scratched in the margins of my real notes last month and absentmindedly shared said notes with a classmate. Either he didn’t see, or was too timid to comment.
on Sunday, 2 November 2008 at 8:48 am The Uncredible Hallq wrote:
Interesting. I sometimes read the stuff in public, mostly because I’m into an online serial story that sometimes turns sexually explicit. But the motive is usually “I want to know what happens next, dammit,” and the simple thought that if someone reads over my shoulder and doesn’t like what they see, it’s their own damn fault.
on Sunday, 2 November 2008 at 11:20 am Joreth wrote:
I’m probably not typical of the secret public sex crowd, because I’m not an exhibitionist, but I’ll answer your question anyway.
I’m not an exhibitionist - I don’t get turned on by the idea of being watched or getting caught.
But I do like secret public sex.
The reason is because I like getting so turned on and getting my partner so turned on, that the thought of where we are becomes irrelevant, or at least, less important than getting some nookie. I like having the power over my partner to make him throw away all sense of decorum and to just take me because he’s so overcome with desire that he can’t wait. The more inhibited he is about public sex, the more I like doing this to him.
I also like myself getting so turned on that I cease caring about who might see. I’m quite inhibited and self-conscious myself, particularly about what I look and sound like during sex, so I enjoy it when my partner can arouse me to the point that I can throw out that inhibition. It’s a heightened awareness of myself as a sexual being and it means that what we’re doing feels really, really, REALLY good.
So, it’s not the idea of other people watching me that gets me going, it’s the idea that the sex is just so damn good that I don’t *care* if other people are watching.
But for most of my exhibitionist friends, I’m told it’s actually the idea of people watching that gets them off.
on Monday, 3 November 2008 at 6:28 pm Fractal wrote:
Just reading your post about writing turned me on. Gotta try it as well!
When it comes to actual sex in (half)public places, I’m more like Joreth, I like it because the fact that I let go of my inhibitions and forget everything around me means - and proves - I’m way turned on. I don’t like the secret games so much, because it means I’ve got to hold something back which precisely is what I don’t want.
But when you write in Public, you don’t really have suppress something (except for the desire to masturbate), you can write whatever you like and get away with it. It’s like writing dirty emails at work, only a little less risky …
on Monday, 3 November 2008 at 10:32 pm j wrote:
there’s definitely the forbidden aspect, and also the cant-hold-back aspect someone else mentioned. But for me, i think more than anything it’s that sense you’re putting one over on people. Like sex is a secret between you and the other person that separates you from the whole rest of the world and thus makes you even closer. It just emphasizes what two people share by contrast with all the other people they don’t share it with.
on Thursday, 6 November 2008 at 7:15 pm anon (heh) wrote:
I agree that actually having sex in public raises uncomfortable consent issues, and for that reason if no others, I wouldn’t want to be *caught*. But sneaking around? Great fun. Aside from the thrill of getting away with it, it’s also reminiscent of being a teenager when sex and even just *making out* was all shiny and new.
(And speaking of, Hi, Elf! I remember you from alt.sex.stories about a decade ago. Good to know you’re still writing.)
on Wednesday, 12 November 2008 at 10:13 am V wrote:
I have never written in a public place, but I have written at work. I was participating in a yearly writing competition and needed to keep up with my wordcount, so I started writing during the slower times. I soon became quite aroused and had to ask for a break from my real work so I could go to the ladies room.
I didn’t think of this as a form of exhibition, because I was just keeping up with my word count, not realizing, until someone came to give me that break,that they could possibly read my notebook while I was away. And then it just felt naughty. And right lol. I’m looking forward to trying it in a real public setting at some point.
on Tuesday, 30 December 2008 at 2:27 pm [The Pro Circuit] Good News, Bad News: My Twenty Weirdest Moments in 2008 | Blowfish Blog wrote:
[…] Good News: It turns out that Greta Christina writes porn in public, too. She seems to be on some level titillated by the surreptitious exhibitionism of it; with me, it’s the only way I can keep my brain from providing my body a reacharound, in which case I will immediately stop having any interest in writing porn. Different strokes for different folks; huh huh, I said “stroke.” […]