I never really pictured myself as a sex writer. I never really pictured myself writing porn. I had had a gig editing porn for a while, but while I enjoyed shaping other writers’ sex writing (editing in a fuck rhythm, for example), I was never tempted to write my own. There was this one guy I was seeing once who I would write really filthy emails to, some of them fairly elaborate fantasies, and sometimes right before I hit “Send,” I’d think, “You know, this is really good, this is really hot. You could publish this.” And then, in a morbid epiphany, the thought that I was seriously thinking about publishing my emails made me realize that perhaps I was at a creative ebb. I pulled myself together. I wrote another play.
A few years later I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to write another play again. I was about eighty pages into a new one, but it lacked energy. I shifted over to essays for a while, which I enjoy, but I enjoy essays because they’re quick—at least compared to writing a play. Writing a play takes forever. Writing a play is like taking tiny sips every night from an aged liqueur. Essays are like amyl nitrate. So I enjoy them for the rush, but still: I wanted something I could sink my teeth into, something new. But I had no idea what. I put the word out to the universe that I needed a little guidance here, I needed to know what to write next. I needed a little help. I was frustrated. I was confused.
And, I guess, horny. I was cruising Craig’s List one day, not looking for anything in particular, just bopping around the postings, seeing what caught my fancy, when I saw a header that said “Tell Your Story” or “Write for Us” or something like that. It was posted by the Fanny Press folks and led, as can be seen, to the publication of my first book—and my first sex writing. Baby’s first porn. I asked the universe what to do next, and it said, “Write something really filthy.” And so I did.
And I love sex writing. I love writing porn. It actually wasn’t any big shift at all. Writing to me is a lot like music, and the same way a composer would shift from symphonies to chamber music to choral works, I shifted from plays and essays into porn. It’s just another way of writing, another form. It has its own problems—in this case, to find some kind of arc in the material to keep it from just being a list of fucks—and, obviously, its own pleasures. I like to think I solved some of the problems; I also like to think I conveyed some of the pleasure.
At any rate, I did what was next. And just as I finished the book and wondered what I’d do next after that, I got a gig translating a German sex guide on anal sex. (The vocabulary part of my brain is like: buzzing.) And I’ve gone back to the play. I’m rewriting a lot of it. It has more energy now. It has more sex.