A Poem For Thursday

Confessions of a 26-year-old Female Porn Writer


I write porn for a living.

I am not talking about erotica.
I am not talking about literature.

Oh, I write that too, the serious stuff
the literary stuff
the stuff I can't show my mother but I can take to class
the stuff, sex stuff, that I can put on the net
that I can sign my name to
that I can be political with
that I can try to change the world with
try to get people talking
about sex
get them thinking
about sex
get them hot and bothered and hard and dripping and
admitting
that they like sex
like reading about sex
like thinking about sex
like talking, out loud, about sex.

That part's easy.

All right, it's not easy.
It bothers some people
and shocks others
and my mother now has something she can hold over me
until the day I die -- look what you're doing to your father!
But I have literature on my side.
I have a book in respectable bookstores
I have a reading at B. Dalton
I have an ISBN number
I have this book in the Library of Congress
and so I can tell you with confidence that this is serious literature
serious shit
and the ACLU
and the feminists
and the lesbians
and the whole left-wing is pretty much on my side.
That is a formidable army.

The porn is another story.

Let me tell you about the porn.
I write it for Puritan, for Sizzle, for Red Light.
I'd write for Penthouse if they'd buy it;
I might even write it for Hustler.

The porn is not about sex and character
The porn is not about sex and stylistic variation
The porn is not about literary explorations of sexuality.

The porn is just about sex.
The porn is just sex.

The porn is cocks and cunts and breasts and thighs
The porn is thrusting and dripping and pinning her down
The porn is holding her hands up above her head while
he fucks her brains out
and she fucks her ass
and you, yeah, you, fuck her mouth and then come on her face
The porn will fuck her until she is used up and exhausted
and still wet, still dripping, still hungry for more.

The porn is not politically correct.
The porn is not ethically correct.
The porn that gets me off
is hard and strong and dripping wet
and is emphatically
non-consensual

The porn is unsigned, unnamed, practically unknown
The porn is a cursed untouchable in the civil rights world
the ACLU shuns it
the lesbians read it in the dark, under the covers
the feminists want to burn it
and the left wing is embarrassed that it exists.

That is the kind of shit I write.
That is the kind of shit I don't put my name on.
That is the kind of shit that I do mostly for the money
which would make me the worst kind of whore
the kind who'll fuck anything, anywhere
if it pays well enough, no matter how dry her cunt is...

But my cunt is not dry.
My cunt is dripping.
I am rocking in my chair,
writing those fucking words,
those devoid-of-literary-aspirations words
those mostly for the money, but partly for the sex
words.

And I am hot
and wet
and eager
and dying

And that
is what makes it all
worthwhile.

*****
M.A. Mohanraj
May 18, 1998