Russell Twyce

What is Porn in a Story?

I’ve been working on a new story and I recently read a portion of it to someone.

“That is porn!” This unofficial reviewer said but I don’t agree. I don’t write porn stories. Let me describe the story section more and I hope you’ll give me your opinion.

The story is fiction. The lead male character is in the process of rebuilding his life after a long ago incident that decimated his dreams. A major reason why he wants to start over again, is that he has hooked up with a new girlfriend – she is a prostitute.

The female love interest wants the hero to relate to her the details of what happened to him all those years ago. He wants to but the retelling will cause him to mentally relive the bad event. So he agrees on the condition that his girlfriend will give him a blowjob while he is telling of it.

Frankly, I was laughing out loud during part of the time I was writing it because the situation hit me as hilarious. The descriptions of the oral sex part is absolutely minimal – hence, I don’t see it as porn. Certainly there are no explicit descriptions of the below-the-belt action, as porn would have. The girl is largely just below the view frame of the story being retold, though she does look up from or leave off of her task at several junctures. Is that porn?

As I was penning the segment, I thought it provided an exceptional opportunity to remark on juxtaposition. Dragging the tragic occurrence up from his memory was painful but in the present moment the girlfriend was supplying him with sublime pleasure. Don’t you think that’s a cool idea?

Anyways, I’ll be posting the story when I’ve got it finished and polished more. Until I get some discussion or feedback, I’ll end with a stated view that porn is in the mind’s eye of the reader. If a reader’s imagination conjures up greater detail of the sexual side-event than I’ve written, then the reader has made a non-porn story into porn for them and that’s not my fault.

Here I’ll include an advance preview of that section for site members;
[private_Chevron]
Owen agrees and slides his pants right down to give her better access than just his zipper opening offers, “and I fully expect it to end much better too.”

“Ready, set – go!” The young woman goes down.

“Martin and I had managed to deliver the full order to Wal-Mart’s receiving depot. We gave each other high fives in congratulations of our amazing achievement.” Owen the driver has related the early parts already and now he gets to the crux. “Then the first check from Wal-Mart arrived. It was only a tiny fraction of the amount that was invoiced. We were on the phone with the accounts payable department within an hour.”

“We haven’t sold those other units yet.” Owen quotes in an assumed voice to show he is giving Wal-Mart’s response verbatim. “Please review your contract.”

“It seemed as just a standard boilerplate clause of any legal agreement but Wal-Mart was exercising it to the letter. They would not pay for the items until bought and if any were unsold after one year, all our merchandise was returnable to us.”

“Martin tried to put a positive face on it by saying – we produced a great product and it is attractively priced: they will sell like hotcakes. But our next check was for even less money than the first, so we went out to investigate where our units were being displayed for merchandising. It sucked! And not in a good way like yours.”

“Mmmm.” Trudy hums in appreciation of his complement and to show she is still intently listening.
[/private_Chevron]