And for me, as a writer, the delight of challenging myself to inhabit another’s skin and see the world through her eyes is profoundly satisfying.

Someone reviewing “Royally Fucked” said, “Definitely written by a woman”. That’s the highest compliment. That’s what I’m aiming for.

If you have a fantasy you’d like to see filtered through my erotic mind please contact me through this blog and if your fantasy inspires me the world might see the result (your part will be acknowledged only if you wish it to be).

Whether you have a fantasy or not I’d love to hear from you.

Now, a year and a half later, the world of ebook publication is breaking loose.

I began reading J.A. Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, a little over a month ago and his reports on the successes enjoyed by many indie writers has revived my enthusiasm for publishing, and writing, my erotic fiction.

At the moment I’m in the process of uploading all my existing stories to Smashwords, Amazon, and Xin Xii (which distributes ebooks to Europe). As soon as this is accomplished I will begin writing new stories and update this blog on a more consistent basis.

Sometime in the early 80s I began answering, and placing, ads in swingers contact publications. I’d been aware of these publications for several years before then but was more interested in reading the ads, looking at the pictures, and fantasizing about meetings.

I don’t recall exactly what spurred me to take the next step but I began answering some of the ads that seemed especially appealing.

I was doing this as a single man. Single men in the swinging lifestyle have difficulty finding women interested in meeting them. The main problem is that there are so many other men, single and otherwise, beating around the same bushes. And it doesn’t help that single men have a reputation for being pushy, socially inept, and rude.

Personally the social inept shoe fit me pretty well. Still does, to some extent. So I started out with the odds against me.

I persevered and ended up answering a lot of ads, hundreds I’m sure. And after very limited success with answering ads I began placing my own; it seemed like there would be  less work involved if I knew from the start that I was responding to someone who’d already expressed an interest in me. It was, in fact, less work. Very few women expressed any interest in meeting me.

But there were those, most often some distance away from where I was living, who wondered if I would like to be their penpal. They had secrets. Secrets they wanted to share with someone. Someone they could feel safe with because we were never going to meet.

Slowly I began to focus on these women; answering their ads and publishing ads directed at them. I connected with about a hundred women over the course of nearly fifteen years. As the Internet evolved I sought correspondents there. Some of these exchanges lasted for only a letter or two; others lasted for years.

 I learned a lot about the secret lives of women. They told me about affairs they’d had or were having. About early sexual experiences or abuse. They shared their feelings of clandestine joy, hidden pain, surreptitious wonderment at their own newly discovered sexuality, suppressed anger at those who abused or constrained them, and, sometimes, the buried guilt of having to hide so much from the people close to them.

 At first my primary interest was in learning about their real-life experiences and sharing mine. But after a while we were sharing our fantasies as well. I found myself imagining what it would be like to enter into a particular woman’s fantasy and writing her about my ideas. Some wanted me to continue and create more elaborate scenarios. This is how my erotic writing began.

The conventional wisdom about women’s fantasies is that women prefer their erotica to be less than explicit, almost fluffy; the stuff of popular romance novels. This was not my experience. I don’t know how representative my correspondents were of women in general but they quickly became impatient with my “sensitive guy” approach and requested more explicit language with edgier scenes. As I mentioned in an earlier post one of my most popular stories, based on a correspondence I had with a woman in Georgia, involved a situation very close to rape.

This was an extreme case. But many did involve behavior that, no doubt, would have shocked my penpal’s friends and family; public sex, multiple partners, Black men, bikers, and incest. To name a few.

That’s how my correspondences started and gives you an overview of the subject matter. I’ll explore this theme further in future posts. 

For the sake of full disclosure I have to say that I prefer my ladies bare naked. Bared of any shred of lingerie not to mention stiletto armored shoes or fuck me pumps.

So, just what is it about all this porn with women wearing heels to bed? Shouldn’t there be some sort of government agency warning about the dangers of wearing lethal weapons in intimate circumstances? Jeez. The cameraman could get his lens punched out when he came in for a close up.

I actually had, swear to God, a female Pakistani correspondent of mine ask if all American women wore high heels to bed. She’d seen some of our porn and thought it might truly reflect our sexual habits.

Now, granted, there’s a certain artificiality about many erotic practices. And some of them make sense to me even if they don’t have the slightest effect on my libido. But high heels in bed? That totally loses me.

A woman standing in stiletto heels can create, I’ll admit, an appealing vertical line. But horizontal with her legs in the air? I don’t think so. Just looks weird to me.

The question is, I guess, are there really a lot of men out there buying videos and collecting photos for the specific pleasure of seeing a woman stick her heel clad feet towards the sky? Or is it some kind of historical erotic residue from the days when “a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking” to quote Cole Porter?

Or am I simply out of step?

Click, click, click, click.

But sexuality doesn’t partner well with political correctness of any stripe. Erotica has sexual lust in its heart. So, it seems to me, the erotic will gambol for all eternity outside the pale.

There was a time, following the success of Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door, when porn filmmakers sought to storm the gates of Hollywood. They envisioned mainstream movies laced with scenes of hardcore sex. But it was not to be. And, I believe, for very good reasons.

The roots of our sexuality thrust down into some very dark places full of fear, anger, violence, aggression and surrender.

I know women (and no doubt there are men as well) whose most powerful fantasies are fueled by the memories of their experiences of being sexually abused as children. These fantasies are often very dark and tangled. They wander, haunted, in the shadows of their abusers.  And those hauntings are hard to incorporate into a day to day persona.

I wrote my most well received erotic story, Win/Win Situation, which can be found in my short story collection Balls Of Cobalt Blue, for a woman who wanted me to describe her being raped by an escaped prisoner. That was a tough one. My imagination doesn’t tend to run towards rough sex. So, in the end, I fudged and implied the woman’s consent. But the result was still raw enough enflame the libidos of those who are drawn to this fantasy.

And yet the erotic, at the very same time, is informed with empathy, compassion, and the sweet intimacy of mutual pleasure. Not to mention just plain fun. It makes for a strange, and often irrational, brew.

And it’s this diverse combination of secret urges and shared pleasure that makes the erotic so powerful. And so private.

Something that will drive one person wild with desire can leave another untouched. Or repulsed. An act that one person interprets as aggressive and degrading can be stimulating and affirming to another.

This is where most of the attempts at imposing a general sexual morality break down. Trying to generalize about the erotic impulse is a lot harder than rounding up a passel of stampeding cats. Simply take a look at the societies that punish adultery by stoning women and men to death and you’ll see that even in the face of such a terrible penalty there are those who cannot, or choose not to, control their erotic impulses.

The erotic is akin to those blades of grass that push their way through the cracks in concrete. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/Drives my green age…” as Dylan Thomas put it.

Such a force is not to be trifled with. 

And it got me to thinking.

When I was young most of my elders seemed sexless. I know now that that could not have been the case for many of them. But, as I recall, the general perception of older people was that they were past the point where sex mattered. Sex was for the young.

But then in the 1950’s learned medical men were telling us that women didn’t fantasize about sex or have orgasms. It’s amazing how quickly that changed.

Now society’s view of the sexual lives of older folks is changing.

My real question is, “When am I going to have to stop?” I’m aware of people in their 70’s who are still swinging so I know I have a ways to go.

But I’m curious. Who IS the oldest active swinger?

A portion of my mornings was spent excising these pesky sales letters from my inbox.

One day, as I performed this tedious ritual, I began to wonder how successful these emails could be. Who in the world could believe these outrageous claims?

Okay. Granted. Male vanity being what it is the idea of having a really big pecker is a powerful motivating force. But give me a break! These assertions were absurd.

It got me thinking. What if? What if one of these potions did work? What if it worked too well and a man ended up with a monster shlong he couldn’t find a home for? And so my story, “A Huge One Could Be Yours,” was born.

The response has been mixed. Some people think it’s really funny and others think it’s just weird. The strangest reaction though has been the guys who think it’s true and ask me where they can get the cream I mention. So maybe those spammers made more money than anyone realizes.

Decide for yourself whether I have a keen sense of humor or I’m just very odd by going to the sample section of my book Balls Of Cobalt Blue. You’ll need to jump to page 78 to find the beginning of the story.

Here’s the link. It’s free!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3704?ref=jazm

A social, for those who don’t know, is a get together for couples and select singles where folks can sit around, or dance, and get to know each other. The understanding is that things of an explicit sexual nature will happen elsewhere. Often, though, there was some exhibitionism and friendly groping.

Over the years since then I have been in and out of the lifestyle depending, generally, on whether or not my partner at the time was willing to participate. For the past four years my partner and I have been attending lifestyle house parties about once a month.

So, those are my creds.

Terry Gould’s book, The Lifestyle, is an excellent and informative overview of what the swinging lifestyle is all about. His approach is that of a journalist and not a participant so, to my mind, a few of his pronouncements don’t quite have the ring of authority but, on the whole, he gets it.

What you’ll learn is a brief history of the culture of sex as a social activity since the end of WWII, an exploration of the current scene (as of 10 years ago), and an examination of how this sub-culture fits into society in general.

If this is what you’re looking for it’s a very good read. If, however, you’re looking for a how-to guide you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

Here’s where you can buy a copy:

The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers


The content is created by ordinary folks so some of the writing is quite good and some is terrible. But part of the fun is to work your way through the weeds until you find those special blooms.

Sometime in the late ‘80s I began contacting women through swinger’s magazines (remember those?). For a while I was intent on facilitating meetings but slowly my focus shifted to learning about their erotic lives through correspondence. Because of distance and anonymity they felt safe in sharing their deepest secrets and fantasies. In some ways I knew many of these women better than their significant others.

As part of these exchanges of snail mail (ah! the good old days) we’d begin to explore fantasies. At some point I began writing little stories, reflecting the woman’s fantasy back to her filtered through my own imagination. These proved very popular.

I didn’t think of these stories as anything more than a kind of hobby and a way to connect with specific women.

In late 2002 I joined Literotica. My primary purpose at that time was to read the stories of others. But after reading some of the junk, and finding a few of the flowers, I began to think about the stories I’d written for my pen pals. I uploaded a couple and got some good responses. One of the thrilling features of the website for writers is that you can see how many people have read your submission.

As I watched the number of readers of one of my pieces climb to match the population of the little town I grew up in (3400) my intentions became much more serious.

And my writing became better. There’s nothing like having an audience to sharpen your concern about the quality of your creations.

So my recommendation is for those who like to write erotic stories as much as for those who like to read them.

Let me know if you check them out. Tell me if you liked them or not.

He was a literary type so most of what I found involved the written word:
My Life and Loves
by Frank Harris,
Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D. H. Lawrence,
several books by Henry Miller,
and Fanny Hill - Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure (Illustrated)
by John Cleland.

Those works comprise the erotica I cut my sexual teeth on.

Henry Miller, I’d say, had the biggest impact on my life.

The scene in Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I
in which the protagonist engages in a threesome with his ex-wife and her landlord’s daughter made me wonder why in the hell anyone would want to be monogamous. I’m still wondering.

In general my fervent reading of these texts put me light years ahead of most of my peers in terms of theoretical sexual knowledge. Practical sexual knowledge, sadly, was another thing entirely.

Later my father joined some kind of erotica book club. I remember lugging book sized packages up from the mailbox wishing I had x-ray vision so I could catch a sneak peek at the contents of the newest addition to the stash. But soon enough my eyes were devouring those fresh pages of lurid text.

Among these books:
My Secret Life (Signet Classics)
Olympia Reader: An Anthology of Erotic and Literary Classics
edited by Maurice Girodias, two issues of “Eros,” published by Ralph Ginzburg,
Shakespeare's Bawdy
by Eric Partridge,
Eros denied;: Sex in western society
by Wayland Young,
as well as others I no longer can recall in detail.

“My Secret Life,” and “The Olympia Reader” were my favorites.  The first for the prodigious recounting of hundreds of sexual consummations and the second because it introduced me to a profusion of contemporary authors with a libidinous bent.

One of the odd wrinkles in our relationship was that we never spoke of his stash. Without a word I would suddenly find that his secret library had disappeared. The search was on! I would investigate every nook and cranny of our property until I’d found his latest hiding place. He knew I knew about his stash. And I knew he knew I knew. But neither of us broke the silence.

After he died, when I was sixteen, I found a stash of magazines he’d, remarkably, been able to sequester from my prying eyes. I’d seen Playboy and some nudist magazines but these were something different; here were naked women posing with their legs spread open for all the world to see.  There was a grittiness to the photography that, for me, revealed a more substantial sexuality. Playboy didn’t cut it anymore.

From then on I was on my own and began collecting my own stash.  I discovered hardcore magazines and movies. But that’s the subject for another post.

Does anyone else have any “stash” stories? Doesn’t have to be your dad. If I get some good ones I’ll devote a blog down the way to your submissions.