Good Vibrations Magazine

Recently, I was invited to have dinner with a friend and her fairly prestigious family. I can’t quote the exact pedigree, but her father’s research team had once received the Nobel Peace Prize, her uncle is the head of one of the largest hospitals in the country, and her mother manages an upscale furniture store. Through dinner, everyone talked politics, discussed the latest breakthroughs in cancer treatments, and told stories about their recent trip to a remote area of Alaska. I felt as though I was keeping up my end of the conversation rather well, until the topic suddenly turned to careers, and to my career choice in particular.

The father: “And what do you do for a living?”

My friend: “She’s a writer.”

The uncle: “That’s great. What do you write?”

Me (nervous laugh): “Well, just about anything they’ll pay me for.”

The mother (also nervous laugh): “So, what did you write this week?”

Me (thinking furiously): “Um…”

Finally, I mumbled something about the school board meeting I’d covered and the business feature I’d written for the local newspaper, and everyone nodded and went back to their pumpkin pie. They weren’t all that impressed, but at least it sounded boring enough that no one asked for details.

In truth, I’d written a lot of things that week, but the thought of saying them aloud in a roomful of strangers was about as appealing as eating the entire plate of goose liver pate at the other end of the table. That’s because nearly everything I write about has to do with sex. And, I’m not talking about the “Oh, I love you so much… I want you, I need you” kind of sex. I’m talking about orgasms, body parts and whether that special lubricant really will work in the hot tub as it promised. That very week, I’d written two erotic book reviews, a poem on watching porn videos, and an informative article on choosing a vibrator — which, as you can imagine, took a great deal of lengthy research.

I didn’t start out to be a sex writer. In fact, I thought I’d write those long, involved literary novels that I loved when I was younger. But then, when I was 25 (okay, so maybe I was a little younger, but let’s say early twenties for appearance’s sake) I read a book on writing that changed all that. The main point of the book was “Write what you know.” That immediately cut down my writing prospects. At the time, I knew how to scrub the bathtub (my roommate apparently didn’t), I knew how to do laundry (my boyfriend apparently didn’t), and I knew how to have sex. So I chose the one that seemed like the least dirty of the three, and got busy.

Little did I know that writing about dildos and dental dams would become my life’s work. Don’t get me wrong. I write about other things as well: School boards and pet stores and how to decorate your car windows with preserved leaves. But there is something exciting about sex writing. Of course, it’s pretty hard work: I spend my days “doing research” by reading or watching the latest erotica. I spend my evenings “doing research” with my partner. And I have a valid excuse for doing all of those things that a young woman isn’t “supposed” to do — for example, own an autographed picture of Susie Bright, know the names of everyone behind the counter at Sir Loin’s video rental, and ask everyone I know about their sexual habits.

Some people are still surprised when they found out what I do. I think it has something to do with the fact that I look more like the girl next door than the high-heeled vixen on the front of Playboy. I’m a country girl at heart, still get carded if I want to buy a six pack of beer, and typical attire for me means jeans, sneakers and a blonde ponytail. I don’t know who people imagine is writing the erotica they’re reading at night under the covers, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t someone like me.

My first clue came last year when I visited a magazine shop near my house. I was browsing the adult magazine section, hoping to find a few new markets, when the guy behind the counter yelled, “Hey, are you old enough to be in there?” (”In there” apparently meant the roped off section that was, as the sign said, open only to those 21 and over.)

“I’m 28,” I offered with a wide smile, hoping he’d notice my laugh lines and wouldn’t ask any more questions. He ogled me over his bifocals for a few minutes, then shook his head. His overgrown belly pressed against the front of his T-shirt and he rubbed it as though it would help him decide how to respond.

“Humph,” he said finally, and went back to checking out the nice middle-aged lady with her copies of Good Housekeeping. When I got in line, he stared at me for a few minutes, as though he was hoping to embarrass me into buying something more appropriate — a copy of Cosmo maybe. “I’ll still need to see your I.D.” He looked from me to my license and back to me again. “You live right around the corner,” he said with surprise. I wondered if most people commuted from out of town to buy their porn.

Then he flipped through my choices. “Five copies of SpreadEm?” he asked. “What, one’s not enough for you?” It was obvious that he couldn’t decide whether to give me a lecture on decency or to ask me out on a date, so I gave him my cash, tucked my magazines (no bag, thank you) under my arm, and made a dash for the car.

Then there was the time that I made the mistake of asking the gentlemen at the video store what my late charge was for. “Let’s see…” He appeared to be having a hard time reading the screen, because he said each title v-e-r-y slowly. “The Art of Bondage? No, that was last week. Selfloving? No, you already paid for that one. Oh, it’s for — ” I could feel the people in line behind me leaning forward to hear.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll just pay it.”

My parents, of course, know what I do for a living. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say “of course” — I forget that not everyone was raised by hippies). Occasionally my father will ask what I’ve written recently (although he stopped asking to see my articles after I sent him that piece on buying S/M toys for the beginner). I still occasionally send him my gentler erotica. Recently I e-mailed him the address of an erotica web site that had published some of my poems, and he called me the next day.

“I tried to read your poem at work,” he said. “And it wouldn’t even let me on the site. That must be a good one!”

I often wonder just who is reading my work. Last year, while I was covering school board meetings for a local newspaper, I dreaded the day when some PTA mom would come up to me during one of the breaks and whisper “I know what you really do, and wait until I tell the superintendent!”

And then there was that guy who always sat behind me and watched the back of my head; I’m pretty sure he already knew what I did on the side, but I figured I was pretty safe. I couldn’t imagine him surrounded by fourth graders, saying “Hey Shanna, I read your erotic poem last night while I was surfing the internet for porn sites, and it really turned me on.”

Although my career choice sometimes puts me in an uncomfortable position (no, not that kind), I don’t plan to stop writing about sex anytime soon. If I can succeed in changing people’s perceptions and understanding of sex through my writing, then that’s enough for me. At the very least, I’m changing people’s perceptions about who writes about sex. And, besides, if I stopped writing about sex, then I’d have to send back that whole box of erotic videos I ordered last week.