The age-old argument: What's worse, a slut or a whore?

Before you get all up in arms about my rabid misogyny, I'd like to clarify that a bit. I'm referring to myself, and in an entirely literary way.

Here's the story: A few years back, a good friend of mine recommended that I check out www.literotica.com where amateur writers can post erotic stories. I wasn't that floored by what I found, (I was shocked SHOCKED! to find that much of it was really, truly awful) but I was intrigued by the thought of putting some of my own stuff up there.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with pornography and erotica, mostly because I've never found anything which I've really liked. I love sex, of course. In fact, I think sex is widely underrated. (Ha ha.) Sex is beautiful but porn, for the most part, is really ugly. Worse yet, it's generic. People say it's degrading to women, but I would submit that it's more degrading to men. Reducing male sexuality to an unaesthetic and depressingly repetitive commodity is really an insult. Male sexuality is every bit as complex and intriguing as female sexuality, but you wouldn't know it by watching or reading pornography. Big boobs, shaved pubes, the conquest of a sexually voracious female, 3 different types of penetration rotated for meager variety, "cum shot," rinse, lather, repeat. Boring.

Then there’s the genre called "erotica." Better, but I’ve still had a hard time finding erotica which does what I believe it’s supposed to do. That is, turn me on. Sometimes the very "artistic" nature of the piece serves to distance me from the sexual charge it should carry. Sometimes erotica over-compensates for the sins of pornography by being too staid, too implicit. And then sometimes, what passes for erotica is just "porno-lite," the same hoary cliches dressed up and toned down.

When it comes down to it, any distinction between the two is arbitrary at best. "I know it when I see it" is the famous non-definition of what constitutes porn. Assuming the nom de porn "Christian Black," I set out to create something in between. Call it "erotic pornography."

My first attempt was a story called "Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead," about a bisexual woman who has a fling with her step-father at her mother's funeral. I thought it turned out fairly well. It was a decent mix of dark humor, pathos and, you know, an explicit blow job scene.

I posted it on the site and the response was short of overwhelming. For one thing, the site administrators in their infinite wisdom placed the story in their disturbingly popular "incest" category. (But they weren't BLOOD relations!) For another, there is a little "feedback-o-meter," where readers can rate the story on a scale on a scale of 1-5. "Ding Dong" topped out at a disappointing 3.72.

Still, I was hooked. The Christian Black thing is gratifying in many ways. For one thing, writing pure sex is a lot of fun. Second, I actually have an audience. Some of the more popular stories have more than 50,000 hits. Nothing else I've written can claim to have been seen by that many people. Plus, the comments and feedback are always interesting. Sometimes friendly and helpful, sometimes downright scary, but always interesting. And lastly, the stories that average more than 4.5 from reader-scored feedback get a sexy little 'H' (for 'hot') next to them in the site listings. At last count, I have 11 'H' stories.

So, flash forward a few years. I'd been happily posting my little pieces of smut, never expecting anything to come from it, when out of the blue I got an e-mail from a Canadian publisher asking for permission to reprint a few of the stories in their fine print publications. For previously posted stories, they would pay only in copies, but for any original submission, they'd pay the princely sum of $20. Saying "what the hell," I signed their on-line release form and promptly forgot all about it.

A few months later, I received a proverbial "plain brown wrapper" in the mail. Lea immediately demanded to know when I ordered porn and I was at first as baffled as she was. Then I remembered. Sure enough, in the pages of the quality publications, "Bedtime Stories," "Wicked Fetishes" and "Rough Boys," (don't ask and I won't tell about that last one) I received the rare thrill of seeing my work in print for the first time.

Of course, the thrill was somewhat mitigated by the fact that these were some of the cheapest, bottom-of-the-barrel smut mags I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen my share. Cheap, B/W pulp stock, the stories illustrated by generic, stock image skank-o-rama porn shots (the kind where the models are paid in crystal meth.) But still, kinda cool.

A while after that, I received another e-mail from the publishers, saying that they were now looking for novels. I have a few serialized stories up on Literotica, and they were all set to publish the one entitled "The Education of Lisa." Payment: One Hundred and Fifty Dollars! They didn't even seem to care that the story wasn't finished. In fact, based on comments in their e-mail, I don't think they'd read it at all.

I responded that I'd need a few weeks to edit and complete the novel. That was about five months ago, and I'm just now gearing to finish it. Perhaps you can sense my lack of enthusiasm.

That's where the slut vs. whore argument comes in. I've been slutting around on Literotica for years now, squandering my "talent" on cheap and meaningless, but fun, little flings. Now here's a chance to "go pro." Squandering my talent for pay. Becoming a whore. (And a cheap whore, at that.)

I have considered the fact that people make a living doing this. I'm sure that there are outlets out there which will pay more than $150 for a porno novel, $20 for a porno story. I just don't know if I want to expend the time and energy that could be spent on my "real" writing by pursuing this. But then again, maybe getting a little bit of income from even a dubious source could actually free up time to "really" write. Could pay for day care, just for example.

I go back and forth in my thinking on this almost constantly, but it always comes back to the "slut vs. whore" question. I'm not a producer of cheap porn, dammit. I'm a writer of erotic pornography. I don't want to be ashamed of anything I write, and I think I would be ashamed to see something I've labored over on a rack next to "Splat" magazine.

If you've read this far, and you're still interested, the erotic pornography of Christian Black can be found here:

http://english.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=111531&page=submissions

To save you a little time, these are the good ones:

"Biomechasexual" is probably my favorite story on the site. Pretty decent sci-fi erotica that I feel does justice to both genres. A long-distance space traveller and two perfect sex robots. If science is not working towards the development of the perfect sex robot, I ask you what the hell good is it anyway? http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=109318

"Third Person" is an erotic horror novel which I started to serialize here, but stopped due to lack of response after the first few chapters. I will finish the novel someday, just not here. The first chapter contains some of the best "erotic pornography" I have yet to write, and Chapter 3 contains a (hopefully) better-than-Shyamalan plot twist. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=47815

The "Cassandra" and "Emma" cycles are both pretty good, featuring recurring female characters. Cassandra is the archetypical "crazy chick" psycho ex-girlfriend. You know, where the sex is great but you're afraid of waking up in the middle of the night to find yourself Bobbit-ized. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=54269 Emma was the star of "Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead," http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=47328 and she has developed into a very sexually aggressive, dominating she-wolf with a gayboy fixation.

The "Four-Play" series is like the "Rashomon" of bisexual porn. A four-way orgy told from four different points of view. http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=48835

"The Strange Case of the Quigley Twins" http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=204813 and "Pyro" http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=210662 are "straight" stories with some sexual content, posted here just so someone will actually read them.

'The Education of Lisa" series, my soon-to-be novelistic debut, is wildly uneven (an attempt to write each chapter in a separate category.) Chapter 5, the "Erotic Horror" installment is the best one. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=49947

"Awakening Amelia's Malomar" is straight-ahead porn, with a little twist of humor. http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=104209

"A Philosophy of Porn" is an essay which contains many of the points I've already made here.

Have fun.