A SEX WRITER TAKES A THIRST TRAP Let’s get one thing out of..

A SEX WRITER TAKES A THIRST TRAP

Let’s get one thing out of the way. I am a sex writer.

Call my work whatever you want: porn, erotica, romance, sex scenes, adult literature. Supposedly there’s a difference between gratuitous pornography and art. Dick around with definitions all you want. I don’t care. I write about sex.

Sometimes my work turns people on. Sometimes it makes people think. Sometimes it does both.

Sometimes it does neither. I never called myself a genius.

At some point during the last five years I began to use the title “sex and culture critic” instead of “sex writer.” I made this shift for a number of reasons, some genuine and some shallow.

I am less interested in the physicality of sex—in sex toy reviews or tips about positions—and more compelled by the emotional residue left in its wake by our sex-negative culture. My nonfiction work has evolved to focus on sexual violence and abuse, which clashes with the saucy expectations that people have of sex writing. It feels more accurate to call myself a “bad sex writer,” which creates more questions than answers.

In search of a new descriptor, I borrowed from writers I respected. “Sex and culture critic” replaced “sex writer” in my Twitter bio. But this snazzy turn of phrase did nothing to solve the real problem: my embarrassment.

My boyfriend at the time was a regular at several of Manhattan and Brooklyn’s private social clubs. I found myself at a lot of cocktail parties with people who worked in finance, or technology, or did not have to work at all. Whenever I introduced myself as a “sex and culture critic,” I was met with uncomfortable silence. There was also the occasional assumption that my date had purchased my company for the evening. The slut-shaming I faced in my teens and early twenties morphed into a strange new form of whorephobia. While I did not do sex work, my writing placed me in a sex-work adjacent category.

The more time I spent clutching $4 glasses of watered-down Diet Coke, watching as faces twitched when I mentioned my chosen field, the more my conviction bled away. I began to feel shame about my craft for the first time as an adult. It didn’t matter how many pearls I wore, or how high I raised my neckline. I could never desexualize myself enough to be taken seriously. The respectability dance was unending.

Exhausted, I began introducing myself as a “digital strategist.”

And then, because COVID-19 respects no one at all, there were no more cocktail parties for several years.

The problem was never my writing. The problem was the cocktail party. I’d been in the wrong rooms.

Call it whatever you want: a quarter-life crisis, or a mismatched relationship, or a valuable life lesson. It doesn’t matter what brought me to those private clubs and literary salons, or what kept me going back. For whatever reason, I made myself button up and socialize with people who didn’t share my values. I could describe myself a “critic” all I wanted, but I broke the rules by talking about sex, =, mental health, and disease. My whiteness and class privilege got me through the door, yet no amount of Connecticut prestige could overcome my Google search results.

I am not respectable.

Thank goodness. Respectable people throw terrible parties.

A few months after my breakup, I took a picture of myself in a black lace bra. In it, I am not smiling. I am not even at home—I sit on the floor of my friend’s apartment surrounded by her plants. My hair falls loose around my face. My crisp summer tan line cuts across my cleavage. I look surprised. I look like myself. I look hot.

In college I modeled topless for the student pornography magazine. When I became its editor, I appointed myself Miss May in the soft core calendar. I sold copies in the cafeteria, grinning as I counted change and accepted compliments. Students hung me up on their dorm room walls. I printed out my favorite still from the shoot and taped it above my bed. As a student I felt no shame or fear sharing my body with my small liberal arts campus.

Now twenty-nine years old, I looked at this black lace selfie. What was stopping me from posting it online? Was I afraid of being sexually harassed by strangers? Would a conservative blogger include it in some rant about feminism? What if my ex-boyfriend saw it and thought less of me?

Did I care if people took my writing less seriously because I posted a lingerie selfie? It could close doors for me.

I’d rather those doors stay closed.

Once or twice a month I do my makeup. I set up my ring light and declutter the corner of my bedroom. I diffuse my hair, teasing the curls and pinning them away from my face. I lay out some tops—velvet, sheer polyester, lace. And then I produce, photograph, and star in a thirst trap photo shoot.

I take hundreds of photographs. I smile, pout, glare, gasp. I bite my lower lip, knowing my lover likes those selects the most.

Then I change into pajamas and swipe through the results.

It doesn’t matter that these images are taken in my childhood bedroom, where I now live. It doesn’t matter that I weigh more than I ever have. It doesn’t matter that my ex-boyfriend gave me the tripod as a Christmas present, or that he is now dating someone else. It doesn’t matter that I bought most of these outfits at Forever21. It doesn’t matter that I am healing from abuse. It does, and it doesn’t.

I love my thirst traps. I love how I look in them. I love who I am.

I am a sex writer. I am a romance novelist. I am an artist.