Short Story: "She Shoots, They Score"

I couldn’t believe my luck.

I was on the Snag a Seat app, which shows last minute, available tickets for sporting events and concerts. Someone posted that they had a ticket to the Kansas vs. North Carolina basketball game here in Las Vegas—one of the biggest games of the year. And they were asking for an impossibly low amount for the seat. I filled out my information quickly and snapped it up.

I got to the arena with plenty of time to spare. I got through security without a hitch and wandered the concourse looking for the right section. I grabbed a beer, double checked the ticket on my phone, located the right section, and made my way to my seat on the end of the row.

The seat was perfect: lower bowl of the arena at center court about halfway up. Why was this seat so cheap? I wondered to myself. Did I get scammed?

“Excuse me,” I heard a voice say. “I need to get to that seat next to you.”

I was snapped out of my thoughts and turned to look at who was speaking to me. I found myself staring at a zaftig woman with curly brown hair that ran partway down her back. Her brown eyes gazed at me from behind a pair of black framed glasses. She had a small ring piercing her nose. She moved a couple of loose strands of hair behind her left ear as she gave me a quizzical look.

It took me a second to respond; my brain stopped working as soon as I saw her. I’m an idiot like that sometimes when it comes to beautiful women. And I definitely thought she was beautiful.

“Sorry. Um, here, let me get up,” I said as I stood up. I was a good seven inches taller than her. She squeezed past me, her plump ass accidentally grazing my crotch as she slid by. I gulped and started to cough to cover up the audible sound that gulp made.

Coming to Terms with Below Average Attractiveness

A few years back (and every now and then) I tried to make a bit of a go as an amateur video performer. I set up my clip store, shot a few solo videos (and a few with a co-star) and tried to sell them.

I admit to being bad at the promotional aspect of things, so that obviously limited my earning potential. Not being able to show my face for personal and vanilla job reasons also limits me somewhat. I get that. I understand that.

But I admit to a larger concern, and it is one of the things that has vexed me and kept me from trying to set up more possible trade shoots.

The larger concern is that I feel that I am simply not good looking enough to work with others.

Dear Ms. Fantasy (2019)

When I first started blogging off and on about porn 11 (!) years ago, one of the first things I committed to digital memory is a piece in which I honored the beauty of some women in the industry. I called it, at the time, "Dear Ms. Fantasy" as a pun of sorts; a play on words of the Traffic song, "Dear Mr. Fantasy".

From the start, I was skewing older. What are you gonna do?

via GIPHY

When I brought it back later, I renamed that post, "The Lust List". Those posts have consistently been the ones that have the highest click rates of anything that I write.

But I have shied away from those posts in recent year because of time. And not wanting to just paint women as objects to be lusted after. And the fact that the world has kind of gone to hell in a handbasket recently.

But sexwork is essentially under attack now. With Tumblr and their bullshit about taking porn down in Decemeber. To FOSTA/SESTA affecting escorts and companions and essentially doing the opposite of what it was intended to do. To guys basically not knowing how act online when engaging with performers and escorts...it is all just too damn much.

So I realize that this post probably amounts to nothing more than the equivalent of "Thoughts and Prayers". And I acknowledge, again, that the best way to support your favorite porn performer is to buy their content or get them items off of their wishlists that they can use on camera.

With all that being said as a preamble, I should just get to the point of this post:

The resurrection of Dear Ms. Fantasy.

Brief Thoughts on Beauty and Expectations

(Editor's note: This post initially appeared on my Tumblr. But since they decided to kill that site by removing erotica, porn, etc. I just decided to move a couple of my commentary pieces here.)

As an solid, hardcore introvert, I find people watching at remove to be a fascinating hobby. And the amateur sociologist in me has been pondering this conundrum recently:

The expectation of an attractive person being good in bed is somewhat paradoxical, no?

The theory is that we are usually attracted to others by what we see first; usually we have to be interested in what we see in order to engage. As a 5 on a scale of 1-10 I concede that I am guilty of this every damn day. And I am really not in a position to judge.

(I'm probably being generous in calling myself a 5 as well.)

Anyway, what I wonder, though, is how often does the rating on appearance match up with the ability to actually satisfy a partner in bed.

Like, we drool over women (or men, for those who swing that way) all the time that might be gorgeous/handsome...but how disappointed would we actually be if we got them into bed and found out that they were horrible?

Addendum to a Prior Post on Fetishizing People

(Editor's note: This post initially appeared on my Tumblr. But since they decided to kill that site by removing erotica, porn, etc. I just decided to move a couple of my commentary pieces here.)

So I wrote this yesterday at my other spot on the web. But I wanted to add a brief thought.

One of the things that led me to post this was seeing a few profiles on Twitter where there were women and couples very much trying to live the “Queen of Spades”/cuckold lifestyle where the black dick is good enough to fuck, but god forbid they care about the life of the actual man attached to the dick. A whole lot of MAGA-type propaganda mixed in with the tweets bragging about taking black dick and loving black dick on the profiles of some of these folks.

I find the cognitive dissonance fascinating and frustrating.

Basically, they just want a flesh dildo.

Navigating Companionship as a Client of Color

Hopped on the Twitter machine earlier today and saw this post lingering:

It’s sad that some men have to ask if a provider will see their race. I couldn’t image having to deal with that type of discrimination. I can’t image why some ladies would deny a client based on race. Shit has got me fucked up 💔

— Emma Lee (@EmmaLee_Riley) September 6, 2018

I wrote a brief reply tweet, but thought that it was worth expanding my thoughts a bit.

I first started seeing providers as a client when I was in college in the mid 1990s. The small town that I went to school in had what was, for all intents and purposes, a brothel on the northern edge of town. I didn't know what it was at the time; I was a horny 18 and 19 year old when I learned about the place from the nascent internet and was riding my bike five miles one way to receive some companionship.

I was young and in much better shape, but I was also black. And in a rural college town, especially on the outskirts of said town, I still felt like I had to be careful. And I was always wary of possible rejection.

Preferences Are Fine. Fetishizing People Is Not.

I’ve seen it mentioned recently in a couple of tweets that “People are not a fetish”. I agree with the sentiment behind that statement, although I would refine it to read that “People should not be a fetish.” Because the reality is that people’s racial and ethnic backgrounds are, unfortunately, fetishes for some.

Since I’m a big nerd, though, let’s go to the dictionary (Thanks Merriam-Webster!):

fetish

noun  fe·tish 

1a : an object (such as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner; broadly : a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence

b : an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion : prepossession

c : an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression

2: fixation 

3: a rite or cult of fetish worshippers

Speaking as a black male, there are multiple subcultures where black men (and our skin color) are the focus of somewhat irrational reverence or prepossession; where our bodily parts are viewed as an object of fixation and the presence of certain parts are necessary for the sexual gratification of some individuals/couples.

Is that correct or nice? No. No one should be reduced to being viewed as a collection of discrete parts. And yet it happens a lot; too often in fact.

(Porn is guilty of doing this. All the damn time. In all kinds of different fucking ways, by the way).

Let’s move on to another word, though, that might make more sense in the context of some of the things we see bandied about online: