My Secret Life

In the early days of the internet (by which I mean the early 1990's after web browsers had been created, and the internet suddenly threw its doors open to non-academic or technological people—the public) there was huge excitement. Great discoveries were possible, the reach into remote data sets, libraries, stores of knowledge suddenly became vastly easier. Horizons expanded. Enthusiasm for this new development was infectious, alluring, and the upside (as for almost any and all new technologies) seemed limitless.

Yet it did not take long for the kinds of problems humans have eternally been creating create to surface, often in surprising ways. Communication on listservs and chat rooms could be wildly mind expanding, but similarly to "road rage" while driving, the distance from person to person expanded—one could rant and call names and pick fights without the usual face-to-face inhibitors in place. Communication could grow ugly quickly. The expression "flame wars" was coined to describe the violent emotional up-welling that was thereby enabled. This same sort of behavior has a daily presence on the Literotica forums and in readers' comments on stories.

Turkle was surprised at how this all happened. Over the course of several decades, her enthusiasm for online life reversed course, especially as revealed in the second half of her book Alone Together. The internet was a wonderful tool but also a prodigal warper of emotional expression. On-screen communication introduced a tangible gap between people. Individuals, more than in face-to-face life, could present a "curated" persona. Social media in particular posed problems for many participants, who found addictions built into online life. The world changed with this internet-enabled view. Turkle is not alone in pointing out the deficiencies of online life and urging moderation for participation on social media platforms.

So why write sexually themed stories on Literotica? I suspect you might get a wide range of responses if you asked a dozen authors. For me there are multiple reasons.

Sexual activity, behavior, and arousal constitute one of the most fascinating arenas of human life. Like many others, my own experiences cover a huge range of emotional states and actions: they exhibit confusion, wonder, awkwardness. They can be fumbling, joyous, rushed, or languidly pursued. Most important of all, desire involves anticipation. When I think about some of my happiest moments I return to the excitement phase: Thursday night in college looking forward to meeting up with my sweetie at her place on Friday night, after a week's separation. The look in my spouse's eyes when I realize that her arousal matches mine, and indulgence is just around the corner. Reading, or even better, writing, a story where anticipation plays the major role: imagining a partner's body to feel and fondle and pleasure, a first penetration, a sensual experience of unexpected type or duration. That makes for a sweet spot.

The second major appeal for me is plain exploration. I know what my arousal data points are, might I be able to imagine those of someone else? The triggers for excitement are nearly infinite, and many I cannot wrap my head around. (Sure, a handsome foot is enticing enough, and although I don't go overboard on that, many do.) I am in a monogamous, hetero marriage, but my fantasies can run to other males, a roomful of aroused people, being in charge, being charged. What are these experiences like in specific instances?

By writing I get to create people for whom erotic aspects are dominant parts of their life, write out a scene, even better, turn it into a story with an arc and a human or two who experiences change.

Nabokov insisted that a good writer must do three things for a reader: teach, tell, seduce. Any good story requires teaching, the reader will need to learn something (about the character, about the situation, an emotional state, a way of thinking.) The reader lusts for a story to be told to them, and readers generally prefer a confident, sure-handed writer, not a sloppy or careless one. The author must set the pace, the rhythm, choose the music for the dance, and the reader, far from being passive, gets involved, often in ways the writer does not anticipate.

Most of all, Nabokov insisted that the writer must perform the essential act of seduction. The writer must lure the reader in, give them a reason—right at the front doorstep—for why they might want to venture inside. It can be plot driven (what's going on inside? what's going to happen next?) but it is essential that it involve sentient beings of one sort or another—individuals with desires, confusions, questions—who face impediments or wrinkles to life.

As a reader, I am extremely partial to setting. I find most works in Literotica to be severely lacking in this quality, and am always pleased when authors establish their settings decently. I grow weary with the random "Anywhere" town or city, usually in the USA (letting you know your writer is American and defaulting to what they know best/assume the reader will understand.) Please give me a clue as to where we are. At least the SciFi crew does this well. A well described setting can accomplish so much for a story.

So why list three immense novels as influencing works when all I write here are short tales? Each of these writers handles aspects of their craft in extraordinary ways: Melville the teacher and storyteller; Nabokov the master of extreme detail, a narrator perceptive to an extraordinary degree; Pynchon for his descriptions and ability to capture a mood and sustain it through complex plots and characters.

I suspect that many Literotica readers do not guess how much work and time go into a story that gets posted here. Many authors possess perfectionist tendencies (I confess), as well as a perhaps unhealthy measure of narcissism. We are often pleased when a new story garners a good reception amongst readers. A great deal of discussion on the Author's Hangout section of the Forum is devoted to metrics: the scores, views, comments from readers that imperfectly reflect a story's impact on the Literotica readership. On a platform where the "content creators" are basically unpaid, the site's analytics tend to represent the currency of success.

Like most writers here, I write to my own standards and for my own reasons, but I am invariably pleased when someone enjoys a tale. The writer/reader relationship is one of the oldest in the history of humans, exceeded by the storyteller/listener connection present in early preliterate societies. Writers need readers; readers require writers. It is a primal relationship.

Many Literotica stories suffer from not being stories, but merely descriptions of scenes. Sometimes these are plain fantasies, or the relaying of real life experiences (disguised or exaggerated) but unless there is a change in one or more character, some arc of experience that means the character coming out the end of the tunnel is different from the one entering it, then all you have is a flat scene, a one act play. Depending on the reader, maybe that is all it takes to be satisfied, but I have striven, after some initial fairly crude tales in my corpus, to create real stories that have movement, answer questions, exhibit change.

I love my characters, Suzanne, Rupert Booker, Rachel, Lisa, Sophy Eastern, Roger, even the sentient, speaking, opinionated penises that inhabit a couple of my works (one a riff off of the 'Vagina Monologues.') All of them are garrulous at the right moments, have stuff to say, ponder about life elements large and small. My job is to give them room to move, and learn, and take pleasure in their journeys.

In real life I have gained a tenured position in a small department at an American public university, so academic writing is naturally an important facet of my portfolio. I've written three books and dozens of articles or papers that appear in conference proceedings. Nowhere else save Literotica does my fiction appear however. This indulgence is a part of my life quite separate from work, family, and community endeavors. I am keen to keep it that way.

The rules of engagement in academic writings vs. erotic fiction tend to be quite different, but some elements remain constant: attention to detail (grammar and prosaic things like spelling), logic, consistency, arrival at a conclusion. For me, writing incorporates a huge range of my favorite human activities.

I became married two years before Literotica's birth (itself a square) while my own marriage anniversary is a cube. My spouse is immensely tolerant of my foibles: my need to write, my privacy and necessary solitude for sanity, the demands of work.

Sex is private. Sex is selfish. Pleasure has multiple facets, and as far as I am concerned, best when shared. In writing combinations of desires, fantasies, personalities, situations make for a nearly infinite matrix, and I take a great deal of pleasure in exploring the possibilities.

Literotica readership interests span a wide world, and in fact I am astonished at the variety of sexual flavors here. I used to think my interests were fairly broad spectrum: hetero, bisexual, otherly transgressive, but they end up fairly tame when compared to the far ends of the Literotica spectrum.

My early erotic life is best summarized in the words of one of my characters:

"I should perhaps have mentioned that my sexual activities back then at university were elastic, confused, fluid, enthusiastic, eclectic, opportunistic, and inclusive."

I write in a broad range of categories, and so far there only a few I haven't touched (some are highly unlikely—my mastery of other languages in insufficient to write other than in English; certain formats won't ever fly [audio]) but I have a minor goal to write something for every category. Can I make my mind go where it hasn't gone before? Maybe learn something about persons other than myself? Worth a try.

Only twice in my corpus have I consciously tried to "imitate" another author's style (the only other exception was for the Mickey Spillane event.) It proved to be a challenging exercise, and instructive, but I cannot but recognize the gap of ability, talent, and sheer brilliance between my efforts and the original.

Helen McDonald (H Is for Hawk) was an easier effort than Borges (The Library of Babel and The Book of Sand), and despite the execution gap, I am pleased with the results, and learned a thing or two. I believe that often one of the best learning tools is to observe a master at work, and try to imitate them, not to become them, but to note the details that make for an accomplished creation, and try to tap into your own strengths as a writer.

For good or evil, my writings exist at the mind/body boundaries. My characters tend to think too much, apply cognition to situations often better served by instinct, have ambiguous feelings about their urges, wondering whether they are deviant or just confused. Most of the time they find a way to enjoy themselves, although often not without a struggle or two.

I raise my ale glass to a quarter century of Literotica.

Prost.

May it continue for at least another twenty-five years.

Works mentioned:

My Secret Life, ca1880

Batuman, Elif: The Idiot,2017

— The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, 2010

Hart, Sarah: Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature, 2023

Borges, Jorge Luis: The Book of Sand, 1977

— Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, 1962

Lahiri, Jhumpa: The Namesake: A Novel, 2003

Macdonald, Helen: H Is for Hawk, 2015

Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick, 1851

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich: Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle, 1969

Pynchon, Thomas: Against the Day, 2006

Turkle, Sherry: Alone Together, 2011

— Life on the Screen, 1995