Hello! Intimate Intercourse is a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. Previously we’ve talked about phone sex,Daddy Dom/little girl kink, and erotic hypnosis; this time we’re discussing what it’s like to date a sex writer! I’ve split this interview up into 3 parts, which will go up over the course of this week. In this first part, we touch on his history consuming sex media, how he felt about my work when we first started dating, how we initially navigated consent in my writing, the perils of dating people who don’t want to be written about, and how he feels now about the stuff I’ve written about him. Hope you like it!
Kate Sloan: We’re gonna talk about dating a sex writer. Me! That’s me! I’m a sex writer.
Super Sleepy: You are a sex writer.
KS: So, you have a long-standing history as a consumer of sex writing.
SS: It’s true. I have been reading sex writing as long as I have been interested in sex, because I was a kid that had access to the internet, and when I started thinking about wanting to have sex or masturbation or whatever, I naturally gravitated toward it. So I’ve consumed lots of different types of sex writing. I always remember having a category in my RSS reader of sex blogs, sex webcomics, sex podcasts, and erotica.
KS: Did you ever envision yourself dating or fucking a sex writer?
SS: In fantasy, yes. Definitely when I would read some of the more erotica-heavy sex blogs, I would jerk off to, and fantasize about, dating/fucking the authors of those things. But never thought about it as a realistic thing.
KS: Why did it appeal to you?
SS: I think because I was somebody that was interested in sex not just from a perspective of “I’ll have it and then it’s over and then I’ll never talk about it” – I was, and am, somebody who wants to talk about the sex that my friends and partners are having, and want to talk about it beforehand and afterward, and want to know more about it from a scientific perspective and experiential perspectives… I think the fantasy of fucking somebody that was really good at it, knew a lot about it, and would be able to write really eloquently about it was just hot for me.
KS: Yeah. I think that the fact that you and I are similarly analytical about sex is one of the things that makes you a good partner for me, because I don’t feel like I’m bugging you or inconveniencing you by asking you really weird detailed questions about the sex and kink we do together for posts and stuff, because you’re always happy to talk about it.
SS: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not at all inconveniencing me. In fact, that’s a really important part of the experience for me. When I talk about what I need in terms of aftercare, it’s mostly the recapping and talking about it is the most important thing.
KS: When we went on our first date, were you conscious of the possibility that I might write about it?
SS: Let me think about that… In the back of my head, I suppose. There was a lot going on that day. I was not 100% sure if it was a date. I thought it might be. [giggling] It was in the middle of the day, so I didn’t think that there would be very much worth writing about. And, from following your tweets and reading posts on your blog, I didn’t get the sense that you would write about it without talking to me about it first, so I wasn’t nervous about that.
KS: And then we got to the Breather and I, for some reason, was like, “I wanna take pictures of this.” Did I say “for a post”? I don’t remember.
SS: You said they “might come in handy for something someday.” I don’t think you said “for a post” but I intuited that that’s what it would be useful for.
KS: Did that seem weird to you?
SS: No, that didn’t seem weird to me at all.
KS: [laughing] Okay. But you still didn’t want to be in the pictures.
SS: No, I didn’t want to be in the pictures, because, if you were gonna use it for a post, I didn’t want to be outed by it.
KS: Right. Yeah, I know. We’ll talk more about that in a bit… Do you remember the first thing I wrote about you?
SS: The first thing you wrote about me was that post. “Slow Burn.”
KS: Yeah. How did you feel about that?
SS: I was elated. I was over the moon when I read it, not just because it was about me, although that helps, but because it was so well-conceptualized and executed and it was beautiful. It made me smile really big and I wanted to send it to everybody in the world, but I had to pick and choose at that point. And everybody else that read it felt the same way.
KS: I was very careful about having you read it before I published it. I was very nervous about it, at that point, that you might feel uncomfortable about it.
SS: Yeah. Do you remember what you said to me?
KS: I think I said that I wanted you to check, in particular, the direct quotes, because it would be bad to get those wrong.
SS: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. Do you remember our conversations about consent around my writing?
SS: Yeah, I do. I remember us talking about it first in the abstract – like, how do you approach this? As a curious consumer of this stuff, I wanted to know how you approached this, just in your life, not assuming that it would be super relevant to me, necessarily. And then, as we got more into it, figuring out, oh, this might actually be a thing that applies to me, so I should think about how I feel about it. What am I comfortable having written about me? I remember I said that I don’t want you to only write positive things about me. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t write negative, true things about me – which I think some people might struggle with. But I think it doesn’t feel real to me if you’re only writing the good stuff.
KS: Yeah. I appreciated that a lot, because I’ve had so many people in the past who would be mean to me and then say, “Don’t write about that,” which feels insulting on many levels, one of which is like… I kinda feel like they knew what they were getting into. Not to victim-blame… but at this point, I only want to be with people who understand what I do and are at least somewhat on board with it and with being part of it.
SS: So at this point, you don’t think you would date somebody that said, “I don’t want you to write about me”?
KS: I think that even if I said okay to that initially, the amount of resentment that that would gradually breed would be too much.
SS: I think so too. I mean, maybe there’s a person who it’s not under their direct control, and they would want you to write about them, but they would get fired, or whatever, where it’s more of a grey area, and I don’t know how that would go.
KS: That, I feel, is a different issue, because that’s an issue of me identifying them, which I do with hardly anyone. But if they just didn’t want to be written about, even in abstract or anonymized terms, then that would be an issue for me.
SS: Yeah. Good point.
KS: Do you think that when I write about you, I capture you well and accurately?
SS: Yeah! I do. I think the mode in which you capture me the most accurately is actually on Twitter [laughing], because you get these little tiny slices of how silly I am and how my sexuality works. Slices of my dirty talk, but also slices of my silliness and my desire to make you laugh and make you smile and take care of you. If you read all the tweets that mention me, I think you get a really good sense of all the interesting parts of my personality.
KS: Yeah. I enjoy live-tweeting you. It makes me happy. Have I ever written anything about you that you felt was unfair or untrue?
SS: No, I don’t think you’ve ever written anything about me that’s unfair or untrue, but sometimes… so, I have tweet notifications on for you, and sometimes I get a tweet of something and I have an immediate “Uhhh, I don’t know if that’s quite right” reaction, but usually it’s just a momentary thing while I re-read it and am like, “Okay, I see what she’s going for here.” It’s like a flash of insecurity about it. But I can’t remember of those in particular, because it fades so quickly, and I’m like, “Okay, I get it.”
KS: Yeah. And I would delete things if you thought that they were wrong or bad.
SS: Yeah. I think I’ve asked you to delete one or two things. It was very early on, but I don’t remember what they were.
KS: Yeah. I don’t remember any. When we go on dates or have sex or do kink things, are you thinking about how I might write about it, and does that make you self-conscious about it?
SS: It doesn’t make me self-conscious about it. I think about it sometimes as another reason to push into new areas, another reason to explore things I haven’t done before, or things you haven’t done before, because it might make a good, interesting experience and a good thing to share. But I think about that in terms of, like, going to new cities and trying new restaurants… Everything in my life is sometimes looked at through the lens of, “What’s a thing I haven’t done before that might be cool, that I might wanna try?” Like, if I’m looking at a menu and there’s a bunch of things I’ve had before and something that sounds good to me that I’ve never had, maybe I’ll pick that thing this time. And we also plan our sex more than maybe most people might. [laughing] So there’s some thought that goes into that, too. Like when we’re trying to decide how we want to fuck each other on a particular weekend – like, “Let’s do some stuff that we know we like, let’s do some stuff that we’ve never done, or let’s do that thing that we did a while ago but you haven’t written about yet, to see if we can find a new angle of it.”
KS: Yeah. This is one of the reasons that you’re such a great partner for me in particular. I’ve had partners in the past who either clearly were uncomfortable that I might write about them, or that wanted it, in a way that made me uncomfortable. I could see that they were sort of playing up their sexual persona or their romantic loverboy persona because they knew that I might write about it, and that artifice is really easy to pick up on. It also makes me feel sort of like, “Oh, you don’t like me enough to do this for me, but you like the attention or the thought of how you’ll be perceived by my readers, and so that’s why you’re doing it,” and that’s sort of gross to me.
SS: Oh, yeah, no, I don’t feel that way at all. What is an example of a time that you noticed that, or a thing that tipped you off to that?
KS: If someone who doesn’t ordinarily do a lot of dirty talk suddenly says something really dommy, in a way that almost feels scripted or rehearsed, that’s always weird to me. And I understand it. I think, honestly, that if I was dating someone who wrote about sex, that I would have a hard time shutting off that self-critical part of my brain that’s like, “Oh, is this good writing fodder?” So I get it. But I think it’s one of the reasons that you’re a good match for me, because you’re just more relaxed about that stuff.
SS: Yeah. I know that if we’re in a good relationship and having good sex, then the stories will come out of that. You don’t have to invent them.
KS: Yeah. I think a lot of people who I’ve dated wanted to seem really interesting in my writing, and the thing is, if sex or kink are really good, then they are interesting. They’re worth writing about. They don’t have to be wacky to be worth writing about.
SS: Right. Exactly.
KS: You mentioned earlier, showing my writing to your friends, which I find really interesting. What is your motivation for doing that?
SS: It’s similar to the feeling that I get when, like, I was interviewed on a podcast, or somebody quote-tweeted something I said on Twitter and it got a lot of likes. If I’m close with people, I want to share those types of accomplishments and appearances and stuff with them, so they can see where I’m at and what I’m up to. Texting a friend a new piece that you put out, that includes some stuff about me or is entirely about me and what we’ve done together, is a way to give them a window into a more private and vulnerable side of my life, and connect and discuss the things that happened in it, also, which is nice. Instead of just texting somebody, “I hypnotized my girlfriend the other night,” and then forcing them to figure out what that means and come up with all the questions, I’m like, “Here’s this beautiful thousand-word essay about it.” It gives you a million jumping-off points, you know?
KS: Yeah. It makes me happy that you do that, because I feel like a lot of people would be inclined to actively try to keep their friends from seeing stuff like that, and you’re just like, “Here, check it out!” It makes me feel like you’re proud of me and my work.
SS: I am!
To be continued on Wednesday, when we’ll discuss his decision to “come out” as my partner last October, why he made that decision, how he did it, and what’s happened since.