The difference is one of degree. When I was writing the Laura story just for myself (roughly the first 170 chapters or so) I had several motives: Passing the time at work. Possessing sexually certain women I saw there (e.g., Yvette) whom I couldn’t have but wanted. Doing the same to women I saw in various magazine spreads (e.g., female body builders like Brandi). Exploring impulses toward bondage and mild sexual sadism that I knew I had but was reluctant to broach as a possibility with current sexual partners for fear of what they might think of me. Indulging my deepest yearnings for romantic love coupled with steamy sexual interaction.
One thing is true of fiction. It is better than life. (And worse, I suppose.) All the boring dreck of everyday existence can be winnowed out and the rest concentrated and focused intensely in fiction, so that the way we react to it is acutely more real in some ways than ‘real’ life itself. This is why people who can still read still read it.
I frequently get asked if the people in Laura’s Story are based on real people, but that is almost beside the point. Yes, many of them are based on real people, but they have been so reified and re-imagined into their fictional life that whatever resemblance they have to their physical existence, apart from certain traits that might remind one of it, is purely notional. They are ‘better’ than they are in real life even, because all the annoying or boring parts of their natures have been subtracted, leaving only the enchanting part.
And so when I began to ‘publish’ the story in the real world and attract readers to it, I had to change my approach somewhat, and also go back and edit some of the earlier chapters to make them seem less like masturbatory fantasies, which they were, and more like fully realized scenes from real life, where certain things are possible and certain things aren’t. For a woman to have six orgasms in one session is not impossible, or even unusual, but sixteen is stretching it. For a man to have a gargantuan erect cock is an honorable tradition in a certain brand of erotica, but in real life pretty rare (I would surmise).
It might almost have been better for me if I had started over at that point, since some of the earlier stuff, especially the BDSM between Laura and Karen, or the frequent double penetrations, surely drives some readers away prematurely. (Of course, others love it, and beg for more, but we’re not talking about them.) As it happens, I simply modulated the tone a bit as I moved forward, leaving behind the rough stuff mostly, concentrating on the love angle, and getting so entangled there that I also had to extricate Laura from those complications too, as much as possible.
The simple fact is that Laura herself began to turn into a real person, which changed the auto-erotic content of the piece subtly. After all, for auto-eroticism to work, the main character has to be like you, or at least like you see yourself. That’s how you inhabit your fantasies. But when she begins to grow into a figure that may have some resemblance to you but really has a life of her own, you have to get your thrills in other ways, the ways potential readers are going to get them, through identifying with her, but not through being her.
When I started getting emails telling me how Laura should change, or how she should handle particular relationships, or what sexual practices she should avoid or adopt, or how her colon was going to be ruined for life if she kept taking it up the rear, I began to see that I had succeeded more than I had thought in creating this character. People feel for her. They give her advice. They commiserate with her. They scold her. I can tell you it’s a lot of fun to receive those emails, but it is the farthest thing from what I ever expected. And it certainly takes us miles away from a private little sex fantasy. For so many people, Laura is real, and not a simple erotic fantasy.
