(And speaking of, Hi, Elf! I remember you from alt.sex.stories about a decade ago. Good to know you’re still writing.)

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 …

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.

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.