Pornstar: Apologia

Hi, I'm Simon, and I write porn.

By which I mean to say, I've never particularly hidden the fact that I write stories, and most of them are more or less about sex. And I don't want to be embarassed about that. Sex is one of the most powerful driving forces in life, and issues around sex and power are teh key issues literature deals with. But anglo-saxon culture is very afraid of sexuality, and tends to hide away from it. Certainly, quite a lot of the people I interact with in different parts of my daily life would think differently about me (and would probably think less of me) if the knew I wrote 'porn'.

These days, the Internet provides many ways to be anonymous, or at least to some degree anonymous. I've been using the Internet for longer than most people, and I've always rejected these. My screen name is always, everywhere, just the name my parents gave me. I'm Simon Brooke on Usenet. I'm Simon Brooke on Slashdot. I'm simonbrooke on Source Forge and on Freshmeat. The searchability of the Internet makes it easy to tie all those things together and link them back to my home page, and find my geographical address and even my phone number (which, by the way, isn't in the phone book - inconsistent? yes, that's me). For me, philosophicaly, that's about honesty. That's about not hiding in the way the Internet makes it easy to hide. That's about saying I am who I am, this is who I am; as Cromwell would put it, 'warts and all'.

So, back to the point: why the soul searching now?

Like I say, I've never particularly made a secret of the fact I write stories; ever since I've had a home page, some of my stories have been linked from my home page, and, indeed, back in 1997, if you searched Alta Vista for the word 'cunt' (which many people did) the top link was to a page of my hypertext novel, The Rite of Spring. And among other stories linked from my home page since 1995 have been two, Train and Wood, which are purely erotica without any pretence of having any other literary purpose. They're quite good stories, I'm quite pleased with them, I don't try to hide them and I've never tried to hide them. But I haven't gone out of my way to expose them to a wider audience, either.

After all, my home page is just my home page, and not many people visit it; still fewer delve about in it. People on the internet looking for sexy stories will go to places like Clean Sheets and Literotica, and stories posted there will be seen by lots of people.

I've posted a story on Literotica before: a story called Workshop. It's a pretty dark story, involving the penetration of a non-consenting young woman with the hilt of a knife. But it is a story with literary pretensions, and, also, it's not a direct enough story to have much appeal with the Literotica audience.

I posted Workshop to Literotica under my own name: Simon Brooke, as usual.

Now I have another story - I was a Teenage Pornstar - which is finished, ready to show to people. This is a very different story. Firstly, it's much bigger in scope - 30,000 words, novella length. Secondly, it's essentially a romp: there is (I hope) character development and the story does touch on some serious bits of life but mainly it's just fun and it's mostly just about sex. Thirdly, the fact that it's mainly about sex is pretty much inherent in its title; post this to Literotica, and it's much more likely to get noticed.

It isn't even strictly my story: it started from a thousand-word outline which used to be on Jordan Shelbourne's home page:

I have an outline for a story here and I doubt I'll ever write it, so I'd be curious to see what happened if others wrote it. It's still soft and malleable, so twist it into whatever you want. Just send me a copy when you're done.

I came across the outline when I was feeling very blocked with the story I was then trying to write (and I've finished it when I'm feeling pretty blocked about a more serious story I'm now trying to write), and thought it looked like fun. It was fun. I've written it. It cleared my blocks. And I'm quite pleased with the result.

I could, of course, publish it on Literotica (or somewhere else) under an assumed name. After all, that's what virtually everyone who publishes sexy stories on the internet does. I could publish it on my homepage, being 'honest' but hiding behind obscurity. Or I could publish it on Literotica under my own name...

The very fact that I'm struggling with this indicates that I'm not wholly comfortable about it; that I'm not wholly comfortable with people knowing I write what is called porn. Which is another way of saying that I'm infected with and complicit in my culture's hypocrisy and confusion about sexuality.

But let's turn that on it's head: if you're reading this, if you've read (or will read) Pornstar and you think (or will think) less of me as a consequence, what does that say about you? If you choose to read porn, but think there's something wrong with people who choose to write porn, what does that say about you?

Me? I'll publish and be honest; that, or damned.