Your Ideal Lover

Your Ideal Lover: Why I Prefer Written Erotica to Porn

I think I first started reading Literotica around 1998. I have trouble remembering the exact year, but I do remember being at college, and walking into my professor's office as he clicked off the light blue literotica browser screen we all know and love. I was well familiar with it by then.

I'm part of what I assume to be the last of the American men who grew up in an age where internet porn was slow to load over a modem, and the free porn was limited to low resolution static images. At that time one rational reason to prefer text over images was load speed. I'm also "old enough" to have co-discovered my friend's father's porn magazine stash. Another rite of passage that will be going the way of the horse and buggy. I have no porn magazines and I bet fewer people do every year.

The best stories are like the best real life seductions. They take a while, there's a steady build, and then there's a reward for following along. There are bad stories, but they're not as bad as bad porn.

Cumshot on her face: I can't speak for others out there, but I've never done this, no lady I've been with has asked for this, and I don't know why people would find it hot. It's the worst porn cliché of all porn clichés. The best part of penis-in-vagina sex is how nice it feels when I come; I don't know why I would give that up. I can't recall ever reading a story where the guy decides to pull out and shoot on the lady's face.

Fake boobs: Maybe I've had more than my fair share of natural, large boobs in real life, but I'm just done with the enormous fakes. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones that are as big as the lady's head, and jut out at weird angles with no sag. I'd much rather see porn with a flat chested natural lady than with enormous fakes. When I read stories, I get to imagine the boobs, and I imagine them the way that I like them. And the way that I like them is the way that bodies naturally form, thank you very much.

Sad or over-serious acting: I can't speak for other guys, but I'm pretty happy when I'm getting laid. I don't put on a grimace like I'm fighting rush hour traffic, and I don't look like my dog just died. Why do people think it's so crazy to smile in porn? In Western culture we smile for photos, but apparently sex is wildly unpleasant. When I read stories I get to imagine the facial expressions if not the emotions, and a good author guides us through that.

Neck-down alopecia: Other people have noticed that there are too many shaved vulvas in porn, but let's be fair and point out that everybody is shaved including the guys. I have better things to do with my time than shave my entire body. I've done it before. It took a long time and clogged trimmers to get it done. If I'm shooting an ad for a fitness program and I need the "Week 15" shot, okay, but I have only met a handful of people who actually shave like this. They all work as personal trainers or in the fitness industry. I've never read a story that talked about how the man's hairless chest was vital to his powers of seduction. Some ladies enjoy dragging their nipples through chest hair while they're on top. Hey, that gives me a good idea for a story.

More blondes than Minnesota: I spent my childhood in the American Midwest, populated by the offspring of immigrant western Europeans. We had plenty of natural blondes, and because it's what I grew up with I don't find blondes particularly exotic or enticing. Too much of one thing makes you want something else. There were almost no natural curly Italian girls, or curly Irish redhead girls, or straight black haired Asian girls. I think I would faint from surprise if I ever saw porn with white women who weren't bottle blondes. At least they don't have to dye their pubic hair to match, since they shaved it off. Most stories I've read don't mention the hair, which is nice because I get to avoid focusing on being turned off by hair dye.

I'm obviously being deliberately harsh to make a point. Porn is fake, and so is erotic fiction. It's difficult to fake having a real human connection, and it's difficult to have fun when you're having work sex under bright lights in front of a crowd. But having to acknowledge this reality because of the poor porn production breaks the fantasy for me. Erotic fiction is so much hotter because my brain gets to fill in the details that porn should have left alone, or avoided as much as possible. And let me say there is some brilliant, wonderful porn.

The older-than-me porn from the days when porn was shot on film and shown in theatres had amazing production value and well lit scenes. There would be some kind of premise and story line that strung the scenes together, even if it was ludicrous. Emmanuelle was primarily shot outdoors, in natural light, on film, in Thailand. The film is beautiful cinematography; get it from Netflix if you haven't seen it before.

There is still excellent porn being made now. I'm a fan of the work of Petter Hegre. He uses plenty of light, knows how to frame scenes with closeups and establishing shots, and focuses on nudity and beauty first, sex second. Ultimately we want the sex, but please make it beautiful. Find "In Bed With Ksenia By Petter Hegre". The model jumps up and down in a bed, her hair and breasts flounce around, and surprise, she's not a blonde. Another excellent pornographer is Abby Winters. Her models have natural bodies and they smile. If you are patient, you can dig through sites with uploaded amateur porn. The quality is inconsistent, but the human connection between the partners is often clearly genuine.

Everybody I've ever talked to spends very little of their alone fantasy time thinking about some unattainable stranger from television or the internet or porn. Instead, we fantasize about people we saw at the grocery store, or maybe a coworker. In our fantasies, everything is perfect and the way it should be according to ourselves.

Ultimately the point of porn and the point of reading erotic fiction is to place ourselves in the position of the actors or characters. Erotica is more intense because we control the imaging and our power of imagination never gets it wrong. We get to script the intimate encounters in our head as we would have it. Every chance an author leaves for us to fill in the blanks the way we want them to be allows us to engage in our fantasies in a way that porn never can.