None of my fans knew that during my first year of writing smut I was a virgin.
It was a strange explosion of interest in my work, almost right away. Middle-aged men, old couples, young women, middle-aged women, very gay men, very straight men, extremely pansexual elaborately non-binary people, and closeted curious types sent me messages thanking me affectionately for my alleged expertise with penises. They absolutely loved hearing my opinions, stories, and creative ideas for all the things penises could do and all the cheeky things it's fun to do to penises. "Cocks", "Dicks", what-have-you, they liked it even more that I called them penises.
And there I was, straight college-guy who had only made out and grinded with women, who every now and then and at inconvenient times had a strange spell-like transformation into an enthusiastic fan of penises, an admirer who would very much like to find one to pleasure. And yesplease, someone to pleasure mine.
I had absolutely no wish to date a man, but when I thought of blowjobs in particular I was just as exuberantly excited for a man to be between my thighs than a woman. In fact, those were different niches. Emotionally they felt completely different in my mind. But I often wanted one and at other times wanted the other, both quite badly.
But this was all theoretical. I was in college, hadn't dated since early highschool, and now spent my evenings studying and my days in the library writing erotica. (Strangely backward but there it was.) I didn't make money off it but I couldn't get over how happy I made people just by writing for entire pages how individual penises looked, for several pages how to touch each kind of penis. Most gay smut just focused on power relationships. I focused on sex as physical adoration. This niche was for some reason bizarrely empty.
So I was in the library again. But a different library this time. A different college. It's called The Lit Summer Program, you go to a college in another country for a semester and take courses that show you perspectives from different parts of the world. The library was huge, not just with books, but with sitting areas. Lots of them. It had worktables, hand-me-down armchairs, hand-me-down couches, and some sort of rotunda with extremely cushy benches, beside an enormous window looking over a forest halfway up our mountain. That's where I was now, my favourite spot. Half of the time students or even professors were there to nap, and I never minded a bit, it was a strange intimate camaraderie between academics.
I spent a lot of time here, especially on the colder days. I had a secret probably-obvious crush on the girl with the bandana who did poetry on open mic night, and was just beginning to be accepted as an insider by that group. I knew I wouldn't do anything about the crush, I'm a relationship person and I knew I couldn't stay in town for very long.
I opened up my laptop and went through my readings list. It was easy to get distracted, especially there, and I would sometimes spend an hour just staring out the window between sentences. And I was exhausted, after two nights of intense studying and one night of prolonged gaming. It was time to catch up.
But that transformation happened, and once I settled into the cushions and breathed in the scent of a thousand previous people and a thousand books, I knew I wasn't going to study.
I promptly opened up my secondary browser with my more personal favourites, started a document, and within five minutes I was well into describing an intense passionate sexual affair between a middle-aged man and a comparatively young man. Considering how many acts I storyboarded for them to do, and how elaborately I described what the young man did to his companion in the car on the way over to their secret lovenest, it's surprising how far I got into the plot.
It was easy: it was based on a true lie... it was a real man that had really propositioned me during my cowardly cyber-slut phase, chatting online but never following through. It was a real plan and a real penis I really saw I was describing this time. A wonderful one I would always wonder about. The young man was who I should have been that Sunday, bold and willing and casual. But the things I wrote I had never, could never, say out loud. It just felt weird to use my voice to say certain things. I'd tried saying them to empty rooms sometimes, to see how it felt.
I wrote the two men into the house and then gazed out the window. I saw a real deer and watched it. And I leaned back into the cushion.
Because I get distracted like this I have my laptop set to not enter "sleep" mode before an hour has passed.
So before I knew it I suddenly woke up.
To a still active screen.
And the guy now beside me, his own laptop in his lap, now in "sleep" mode, had long since abandoned subtlety and was, for one very long second after I stirred, very plainly staring across to my screen.
I have such good eyesight, mind you, that I had my text-zoom settings very fine... he had a lot of plot to consume on that screen alone. Not just plot... but theme. That screen described enthusiastic and hungry enjoyment of performing acts on another man.
Between us, there was no denying he had been very interested in the words, and no denying I was an eager enthusiast of the subject matter. We had simultaneously been faced to each other. All that was clear even just as I woke up. I wasn't sure what to do about that fact, but he acted first.
"Sorry to peek man. That's really well-written. Um, hope you enjoyed your nap."
He was maybe about my age, a tiny bit younger, a tiny bit plumper. He had a soft face and glasses. He was blushing a little, and not all of a sudden.
He had said I was a good writer. About THAT. Okay, he didn't mind about smut in the library, he didn't mind about 'gay stuff', and he had nothing macho to prove, he spoke gently. He was even a bit close. There was really nothing to do but be casual.
"...Thanks!"
"Sure. That's a Word doc, are you just reading, or is that yours? Like, that you made?"
"Um... it's mine? I'm a writer. In my spare time."
"That's cool. You're good at it. You submit anywhere?"
"Uh, yeah..."
"That's really good. It sounds like you get into people's heads. Like you know how people think. I mean, I don't know everything, I can't speak from a lot of experience... Oh gosh, I just realize what I just said, sorry! Hah. You don't need to know about that history from some guy."
I suddenly had a sense of self-awareness. That I was alone but not alone in an abandoned section of a library with a young sweet-looking guy who was awkwardly chatting me up about sex. I spent a long moment deciding whether this made me feel safe or unsafe. He was a peer, he didn't seem dangerous, he didn't seem aggressive or entitled or perverted.
Actually, we were both trapped in this conversation topic: I had been caught writing smut, he had been caught liking it, and we both obligated ourselves to rationalize it with awkward friendliness.
But the discomfort never came.
My self-awareness expanded. I'm a college boy away from family living on my own, not a minor anymore, not beholden to nearly as many rules of conduct while under anyone's 'roof'. I thought and thought and thought, and realized that neither this person or I had actually done anything illicit or even really egregiously weird.
But this moment was probably going to vanish forever in a second.
With that understanding, there was only one answer I wanted to give.
"That's okay. I'm not speaking from experience either."
"...What?? You obviously are. I mean... look at that!"
