Big Ed's Place

We’re cleaning out the basement and I came across the framed European quad poster of sex, lies, and videotape that appears in Friends and Benefits. Boy, did that bring back memories.

The full story starts in college. My then-girlfriend was a big movie buff–something I stole for Tina. She saw 1-2 movies a week, and often saw the same one several times. We were dating the year sex, likes, and videotape came out and I think we saw it three times in the theaters before she moved on to the next film to seriously grab her interest.

As for me… I loved it. The movie spoke to me in many ways, which I’ll cover in a review soon. It stuck with me as not only an amazing movie in and of itself, but at a personal level. I was a confirmed voyeur by then and I knew that the only thing that stood between me and being James Spader is that I had no deep emotional scars to lead me to choose video over real life relations.

But that was coming. When the college girlfriend and I broke up, it was one of those wrenching splits that leaves jagged scars for all to see. The type that ooze and often fester, as this one did.

It was shortly after we broke up that I walked into a poster shop in Tucson and saw the European quad poster. The clerk was a cute Hispanic girl who was very friendly. She liked the movie too and we had a great conversation. Much like in Friends and Benefits, I dithered about asking her out then, so I bought the poster to give me an excuse to come back. When I picked the poster up, I did ask her out. She said yes, gave me her phone number, and then said no when I called her to make the arrangements. My character “Tina” gained her superficial characteristics from that exchange.

The poster became the second piece of framed art to hang in my apartment; the first being a Nagel print that had been a gift from the college girlfriend. The Nagel remained in a discreet location whereas the movie poster held a prominent position on my wall in my living room. It would continue to hold a similarly prominent place for another decade even through two moves.

It finally came down when my wife moved in, as we had other things to hang on that wall. However, I’d been thinking about replacing it for some time, but never found something I liked that fit the space (a quad poster is quite large). That desire to replace it came from a conversation I’d had at my open house.

An acquaintance had noticed the poster and asked, “Do you realize what message you’re sending with that poster?” I said I didn’t think there was much message, and he said, “Are you sure? What would women who come over and see that think?”

A female friend sitting nearby said it would make her think twice about dating me. It certainly caused me to stop and consider what the poster meant to me.

And what I realized, is that, in many ways, I’d come to live the movie. I’d spent years obsessing about an ex, just like Spader’s character. My voyeurism had gone from minor to full blown, and while I didn’t have videotape, I did have photos. Furthermore, I’d wound myself so tight in controlling myself and my sexuality that I was missing out on a lot.

It’s not a good thing to wake up and realize you’ve been living a movie, even loosely, unless it’s a very happy movie. sex, lies, and videotape doesn’t qualify. But I did wake up, and the next few years were a great time of exploration that culminated in me meeting my wife.

I’ve always been skeptical about personality profiles. It doesn’t matter if it’s Myers-Briggs or any of the variety of typing that gets done in business seminars, or something simple like horoscopes. My skepticism largely stems from three things.

First, I am aware of how personality profiles can be created so that people easily say “this is me!” There’s a famous psychology experiment where the entire undergraduate lecture class took a personality typing test and then had to say how well it matched their personalities. They all agreed that the resulting descriptions fit their personalities pretty accurately. Except they’d all been given the identical result and it was taken from a horoscope. Phrases like “You’re outgoing but occasionally shy” get lauded even though they’re meaningless.

Second, I believe people have a tendency to live up to their self labels. If I think of myself as outgoing, I’m more likely to act outgoing. Again, this has been backed up by experiment–tell people they are stupid before taking a test, and they do worse. So how does a personality profile help, other than reinforce behavior that one may not want reinforced? Am I really an introvert, or am I just making myself an introvert because of my self-label?

True story–my father is incapable of knowing when he’s hungry. If a meal is late, he gets irritable and grouchy and snappish and lacks the self-awareness to understand why. His solution is to maintain a rigid schedule for meal times. Well, I had the same behavior until I was in college. Then I discovered that it was learned behavior. I’d spent years telling myself I was ‘just like dad’ when I could easily say, “okay, I’m hungry, but let’s not let that affect my mood.”

Third and finally, I don’t think people are static. Sure, someone might be an introvert today, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be an introvert in five years. Yes, it might be hard for them to make that change, but personality typing assumes they won’t change. Strength changes (with weight training). IQ can change (seriously–the tests are normalized for age). Why not other aspects of who we are?

But where personality profiles come in handy, in my opinion, is actually in fiction. An author can make a character fit a profile and, if they do it realistically, the character will feel real to most readers. My Shakespeare Professor used to point out how the Bard did it with characters such as those in Romeo and Juliet. And who am I to say that it’s not good enough for me if it was good enough for Shakespeare?

Which brings me to my favorite personality profile: think-feel-act. When something happens, people respond at three levels: intellectual, emotional, physical. However, most people don’t react to them at the same speed. When told of a death in the family, one person may immediately break down crying (feel first), while their sibling immediately starts making funeral plans (think first) and the third sibling may immediately jump in the car to head to the scene of the accident (act first). Action heroes tend to be “act first.” Hamlet was the archetypical “think first” (and think and think and think). There’s basically a pattern or habit that a given person or character will follow. They may be ‘think-act-feel’ or ‘feel-act-think’ and that response pattern will be at the ‘habit’ level of behavior–almost automatic.

So it’s something I consider when I’m creating a character. I can use it to help with realism and consistency, but I can also use it as a path for growth, like Joe in Friends and Benefits. And even if I don’t establish a hard pattern, it’s worth thinking through. How will this character respond to events? What mix of thinking, feeling, and action will they tend to respond with?

It’s a case where personality profiles actually do serve me well.

Well, it wasn’t a bad week for writing, but then I banged into reality.

I managed 507 words on Love’s Labor Lost. That two lunch hours, which is far more than I’ve managed recently, but still short of the pace I’d ultimately like to be at. When I was writing Friends and Benefits, I managed 3-4 times that in a given week. Of course, I didn’t have a toddler or other evening distractions, but it’s still a nice goal.

What slowed me down this week is I got to the point in the Crappy First Draft where I was going to have the characters go to a real place that had a real feature. The near-term plot relied on that feature. So as I was writing, I went, “hmmm… better make sure it’s still there.”

Well, it’s not. In the six years since I’d been there, the place has new owners who changed things. So my writing ground to a halt.

The choices for moving forward are pretty obvious. I can move the scene to a fictional locale, a different locale, or I can rework the plot. None of them immediately appeals to me, so I’m mulling my choices. In the meantime, I’m stalled. Kind of just rubbing the bump on my head that banging into reality caused.

It’s been quite a ride.

This story started because I wanted to explore the concept of “friends with benefits” and particularly I wanted to explore that grey area between being clearly friends and being clearly lovers.  I’ve had a relationship like that, and several of my readers have commented that they, too, have had such relationships.

Once I’d picked that concept, the rest fell into place.  Some of it draws on my own experiences, though not to the extent that The Ugly One did.

When I realized I needed a catalyst for Joe’s growth, I immediately thought of Sherri, from The Ugly One.  Her philosophy and business plan are drawn from a tantrika (female tantra teacher) I’ve known socially, but am no longer in touch with. The tantrika believed in sacred prostitutes, and had intercourse with some of her male clients if she thought it would serve them, despite identifying as a lesbian.  I had her in mind when Sherri appeared in The Ugly One, and realized she was just too much fun to not expand into a major character.  Her mentor Susan is indeed from Nick Scipio’s Summer Camp, and the references herein are with permission.  I’m still having fun with Sherri, so look for her to appear in future stories.

The rest of the characters and the plot are the usual amalgam of pure fiction and past experiences, swirled together.  Pulling it all together was usually a joy, and sometimes quite challenging, particularly when real life intervened at times and forced me to slow down my writing.

My wife’s support was invaluable in getting through those times.  I wouldn’t be able to write what I do without her.  In addition, one of the things that helped keep me going was the supportive fan mail.  Thank you, everyone who wrote.  It’s been quite a ride, and one heckuva journey.

I’ve been cleaning the basement the past few days. Not the general sweeping and such, but the type of cleaning that involves opening boxes that have sat undisturbed and undusted for nearly a decade. Of course, that means subjecting myself to waves of nostalgia, both good and the bad.

If I step back, I find my reactions somewhat amusing. Why are the pangs of regret over missed opportunities and bad misdeeds so strong? My life is in a good place, and I seriously doubt that going back in time and ‘doing things over’ would meaningfully improve them. In a couple of cases, mostly around past relationships, I know I’m far better off with my wife than I ever would have been with those women. It’s not that they were bad women, or even necessarily bad fits with me. It’s just that I am a better man now, and a much better husband, than I think I ever would have been with them.

For example, I stumbled across some old letters from the woman who was the basis for “Tina.” Unlike in Friends and Benefits, there was no reconciliation with her, and I have not seen or spoken with her in thirteen years. That said, in the modern era of google and facebook, it wasn’t too hard to discover that she’s alive and married and living halfway across the country from where we had our romance. Sometimes I like to kid myself that we’d have continued having torrid sex if we’d stuck together, even though I know that is usually not a constant in any relationship. But at the same time, I realize I’m glossing over all the things that didn’t work between us, and led to our split. Would I have ‘grown up’ if she hadn’t thrown me out of her life? Somehow I suspect not. Or at least not with the same level of maturity and insight I now have.

Which makes it interesting to consider the subgenre of time travel that pops up at storiesonline and sometimes in mainstream fiction. If you could go back and do it all over again, would you? And if not, would you write about it? Numerous authors have come to varied answers to the first, while indulging in the second.

But me… even in these eddies of remembrance, I don’t feel the urge to rewrite my past. At least not more than I’ve done. Admittedly, I’m mining my past pretty heavily for my fiction, because ‘what if?’ is a great starting point for an idea that turns into a story. But it’s not a close what if, and it’s not personal. It’s more, “this would make a cool story.”

For example, I once had a date with a woman I met at a party. I asked her over dinner what she did for a living and she said, “Well, I’m a phone sex operator. I never graduated college and I found that phone sex was the most money for the hour.” Now I don’t need to write a rehash how the relationship went (good first two dates, bad third date, no fourth date). Nor do I even have to create a story where our relationship took off.

Instead… what if, instead of me sitting across from her, it was a shy, nerdy guy? Or a sexually conservative guy? Or a guy with a fetish for phone sex himself? Or what if, instead of meeting at a party, they were set up by a mutual friend? Or (gasp) a relative? Or they met through a chatroom online? And what if she was doing phone sex for kicks instead of the money? Or she wanted to get out of it, but didn’t know how?

The creative possibilities are far more interesting that simply rewriting what happened. And while this story isn’t in my queue, it’s the type of thing that often occurs to me when these maudlin moments hit. And so writing seems to be one way to help pop me out of the past and start thinking about what I might do (or write) next.

Online erotica is a funny field. Most of the writers who release stories are amateurs, not getting paid in any coin other than appreciative emails from readers and internal satisfaction. True, there are some pros around, and a fair number of semi-pros, who release both free material as well as writing for paying markets, but the dominant material is by pure amateurs.

So what’s the appropriate level of criticism?

I think newbie writers really need encouragement more than anything. This is in part based on my own experience. I posted my first erotica to alt.sex.stories back in 1992 and it got savagely criticized. Stung, I withdrew and didn’t publish anything more until I got some serious encouragement from Frank Downey and Girl Friday, starting with praise from Frank’s yahoo group for A Good Christmas.

Does that mean a newbie shouldn’t hear what’s wrong with their work? Not necessarily. But I think the overriding prerogative is to be kind. Weak writers will figure it out eventually, and either get better (like I did) or find other things to do with their time. Silence also speaks wonders. And if there’s a gem underneath the problems? Maybe a bit of encouragement will lead it to flourish.

I kept writing after my alt.sex.stories disaster because a female friend wanted personalized stories (a scenario I stole for Friends and Benefits). I got better. Then, thanks to Frank and Girl Friday, I started sharing my stories online again. And I think I continue to improve.

But back to criticism–if we treat newbies, putting their work online for free with gentle kindness, the other end of the spectrum is the pros. That doesn’t mean walking away from kindness, but fair toughness is much more called for. If an audience has to pay for a work, providing a fair assessment (a decent critique) is a service to the audience. I, for one, pay attention to movie reviews before I plunk down my dollars (and my scarce free time). I believe that part of ‘getting paid’ for something inherently means accepting that critics may evaluate it.

There’s a flip side to criticism for the pros as well. If a reviewer is known for being fair, a positive review can help increase the audience.

But what about the folks in between? The Frank Downeys and Nick Scipios of the online world? And all the popular authors on sites like StoriesOnline? They’re certainly not newbies, but they’re also not true professionals, since they don’t charge for their stories. Are they fair game for a hard review?

I’m leaning toward a qualified yes. The main qualification is permission. The popular authors know that they’re well liked and probably don’t need the encouragement that a newbie does. But at the same time, they didn’t a priori sign up to have some guy publicly pointing out the flaws in their writing, much less anyone commenting in follow ups to that critique. So I’m coming down on the idea that I can ask the authors if they’re willing to let me do a review, and if so, they’re fair game. If not, well, it won’t be public.

Story ideas are cheap. Time to write stories is dear. The result is a queue. Sometimes stories grab ahold of my imagination and jump the queue.

Of course, that’s a pretty simplistic statement, that hides a lot of details…

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