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I publish porn under my own name. Other writers I know find this puzzling. "Aren't you afraid," they say, shaking their heads, "that people won't take your other writing as seriously once they know you write porn?" Over the years, I have thought about this question, pondered it, looked at it from both sides, up and down, front and back, and it always comes down to this for me: why is porn not taken seriously? I know many writers who dabble in sex writing from time to time who use pseudonyms for their own reasons, but to the best of my knowledge it isn't out of sense of shame about their porn. The question usually comes from writers who don't write about sex, "serious" writers who would never condescend to write about something as low and shameful as sex. For many years, I myself never wrote about sex, desire and passion. It wasn't out of a fear of not having my work taken seriously; it was more from a sense of shame. Shame of my own sexuality, shame of my desires and fantasies; a fear of sharing too much of myself through my work. My sexual fantasies were my own, something to keep to myself and not share with the world. I felt, from my earliest memories of my desires, that they were wrong, sick, twisted; revealing them would expose me to people as a freak, and they would recoil from me. Part of this was because I wasn't attracted to girls as society told me I should be; I was more interested in boys, and this was wrong. It took years for me to conquer and defeat this societal brainwashing and to realize that there was nothing wrong with my desire for other men. Coming out of the closet was the first step; little did I realize that it was only the first of many, many closets I would be coming out of in my life. The closet of desire was the hardest, and it was only through writing porn that I was able to take the necessary steps to kick that door down and step out into the bright sunshine. When my friend Dan Cullinane urged me to try writing porn, I was reluctant. For one thing, artistically I had never been able to master the short story form. My short fiction always disappointed me, and I could never think of ways to rewrite or edit them to make them workable. The second, and most telling, thing was that I was afraid to write about my fantasies. My favorite fantasy (it still is, to this day) was wrestling; and while over the years I had discovered other men who shared my fantasy, discovered pornographic videos built around the wrestling fantasy, it was still something I felt slightly ashamed of, feeling that it was slightly demented and twisted. Around this same time, I had a long talk with a wrestling buddy of mine about our wrestling fetish. Rarely had I ever really talked about it, even with other guys who were into it; just the fact they were also into it was enough for me. But after we had showered and as we were getting dressed, I started asking him questions. His answers stunned me; he too, had, for years, considered the wrestling fetish as something sick and twisted, something to be ashamed of, something that needed to be hidden. Then (just as I had that very day) he started talking about it with another wrestler, who convinced him there was nothing wrong with being into wrestling. "I started mentioning to friends that I was into it, and they were more than supportive--they thought it was cool! Some of them even admitted they had the fantasy themselves, others were interested in giving it a try. So I don't hide it anymore." He shrugged. "You'll be surprised how people react to it." The door opened, and I stepped out into the sunshine. I wrote my first porn story that week, "The Wrestling Match." Working on that story was a bizarre experience. I found myself getting embarrassed as I typed, my face flushing and reddening. I was even more embarrassed when I would get a raging hard-on while typing to the point of having to stop and take care of it. I could see the entire scene in my head; the beautiful tall sexy lean blonde wearing a black jock, the feel of his skin, the smell of his armpits, the sweat on his forehead, the way the muscles rippled beneath his tan skin as we fought for dominance. It was a complete fiction, a fantasy, but it seemed so real in my head as I typed that it flowed easier than anything else I had ever written to that point. "The Wrestling Match" was the first short story I ever sold for publication. At my last count, I have written ten porn stories and I have sold every one of them. Some were based on my personal experiences. The others were fantasies, situations I would like to experience. Knock on wood, I have yet to write a porn story that I wasn't able to publish somewhere. Along the way, there have been stories turned down in one place, but I have always been able to find a home for them somewhere. My porn track record is better than any other form of writing for me. Along the way, I have moved beyond writing about just wrestling. My story "The Porn King and I", published in Best Gay Men's Erotica 2002, was not a wrestling story; in fact, it was about a guy sitting by himself in his apartment beating off to a porn tape. There are actually three sex scenes going on simultaneously; the character masturbating; the scene playing in the video; and the scene playing in his own head with one of the stars of the video. While I don't consider myself an expert on gay porn by any means, I had never read a story like that before anywhere. I read the story at an erotica reading a few months ago, and the response to it was overwhelmingly positive. Someone came up to me afterwards and said, "I think the audience needed a cigarette after you were finished." I know I did. The ultimate irony is that writing porn has made me a better writer. I have a better understanding of character and story structure. After all, porn is rather formulaic: setting up the scene, the sex itself, and the conclusion. One day it struck me, like a brick in my forehead. I literally said aloud, "DUH!" There, in its simplest construct, was how to write a short story: beginning, middle, end. In my fevered brain, the connection was never there before as I made the all-too-typical distinction between porn and "serious" writing. For a story to succeed, it had to follow that structure--just like porn. A story I was working on at the time to submit to Jay Quinn's anthology Rebel Yell 2 suddenly all fell into place. I went back to work on the story. Suddenly everything clicked and fell into place; I finished the story that very day and mailed it the next. A few weeks later, Jay called to tell me he was going to use the story. Even then, I still made that telling distinction; this was my first REAL story publication. A few months ago, I received my contributor's copy of the book, and there it was: my name on the table of contents. I was a real writer after all. A few weeks later, a close friend who also had a story in Rebel Yell 2 called, and we basked in the almost erotic glow of having a story published. "I loved your story," he said. "It was so you---the scene at the end where the boys wrestle; and I said to myself, yep, Greg wrote this story." After I got off the phone, I took the book down and read it again. Yes, it was all there, couched into a story about a thirteen year old gay boy in a small Alabama town. Desire. Passion. A wrestling scene, and then the glory of young boys indulging in sexual experimentation in the beauty of its innocence. I laughed. Another sex story. I figure I will keep writing porn as long as I can get hard and as long as there's something out there to explore. Besides, there's nothing like saying to another guy, "Would you be willing to try something a little weird? I'm writing this porn story and I want to know if this will work.” It's amazing what an aphrodisiac research can be. © 2003 by Greg Herren |
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