you can combine any two words into an evocative phrase, an idea that sounds cool or funny or intriguing but has no real concrete form. such is the case of "metafictional porn", found — as these things often are — in the replies of a tumblr post that was hard enough to find i almost thought i'd made it up.
now, metafictional porn isn't a hard thing to envision in some shape: just give it a loose framing device, like saying these are actors in a shoot, behind the scenes, and you've technically done it. you can add a fictional porno into any other story. but i wonder at something postmodern, more entrenched, where being a metanarrative is crucial to the erotic character of the work. we have blank narcissus (passion of the swamp) (2022), which pairs a fake 70s short with its director commentary, but my mind turns to the written word. what could that possibly be like? forgive me for being a borges freak — it will happen again.
borges is a good starting point for this interrogation: i like pseudo-essays and false documents, works where not writing the books being talked about is the whole point. however, if i bury my erotica within that fake work won't the arousal get lost?
a possibly inelegant approach could be inserting lush description into the essay — a format i have latched onto, mouth to neck, wet tongue against salty skin, a desperate bite, intense suction. maybe picture me not writing, but reading you these words, soft deep voice by your ear. my lips might brush your skin only slightly — maybe it's just my warm breath.
is this too much, too soon? too overt, lacking in proper delicate weaving of narratives? where's the fun, and more importantly, where's the fiction?
this makes me wonder about structuring it as a play, a format where shifting between action descriptions and verbal narrative is already codified, hopefully making it less jarring.
THE AUTHOR cups THE READER's cheek with a hand, tracing the jaw with their fingers.
THE AUTHOR — this still leaves me with the question: what is the play about? it cannot be about itself, like i'm doing now.
they are now caressing THE READER's neck, and keep moving their hands down towards THE READER's chest as they speak.
THE AUTHOR — not to mention that something about this just feels like writing y/n fanfiction, or roleplay. i force you to become a character in my essay, and i hesitate to become too specific: i don't want to risk alienating you. but vagueness is the enemy of the sensual. (in a lower, sultry voice) do you think i have a specific reader in mind when i talk to you?
THE AUTHOR pinches THE READER's nipple and leans in for a kiss.
STAGE MANAGER 1 — i suppose your problem is the essay and the play don't really mix. and when it comes to plays and metanarratives, things like the king in yellow and pathologic's nightly performances, they serve as part of a larger work.
STAGE MANAGER 2 — (playing with SM 1's hair) well, that's not entirely correct. there's something uniquely artificial about theatre that makes it quite easy to push the work into meta territories.
SM 1 — maybe so. but that's different.
SM 2 pushes SM 1 so they lie down, legs dangling from the stage, genitals in full view of the audience. SM 2 slowly runs a fingernail up and down SM 1's thigh.
SM 2 — i suppose. but there is something to be said about keeping the format in full view like this (they gesture towards SM 1's body, now visibly aroused). it feels adjacent to me.
THE AUTHOR — but it doesn't really answer the question, does it?
p. m. ferreira's encyclopedia of sexual fantasies is a tome accumulating 12 editions between 1958 and 1993, as she interviewed hundreds of people in her research of the erotic imagination. for many a teenager, a copy of the encyclopedia found in a library was their very first brush with erotic writing, academic dryness and all. a typical (if short) entry reads like this:
385.
fantasist: female, 19
fantasized: female, older, anonymous
the fantasist leans over to kiss the fantasized, as they sit side by side on a chaise longue. she grasps the fantasized's long hair with one hand, while the other rests against the fantasized's groin. as the fantasy progresses, she stimulates the fantasized's clitoris through her clothes, as she moans inside her mouth.
reading the books, neatly organized and indexed by types of fantasist, fantasized(s) (for the record, terms used to avoid the rather more charged subject / object pair), location, acts, and so on, one is left to wonder if any of their own fantasies could ever be unique. ferreira covered a lot of ground, but the entirety of human wet dreams is impossible to catalogue.
the encyclopedia is only half the puzzle, however. to make use of its format requires further thought: how do we get fiction out of it?
i suppose one route is milorad pavić's the dictionary of khazars: write an encyclopedia set in a different world (and the differences can be very slight, or very bombastic), and let the implications about the world, culture and so on bleed in between the lines and legs. what new sexual vocabularies can be constructed? if i categorize an entry as taboo, determining which parts make it so can only be determined through its relationship with other entries, painting a picture of the world in question through a legion of somewhat unreliable narrators — and, as with pavić's book, there's no need to be so constrained by the academic framing: there is room to include nested narratives, longer tales within tales, anedoctes, myths. the entries need only keep to a strict impersonal format where and when that's sexy.
72.
fantasist: female, middle aged, middle class
fantasized: female, middle aged, aristocrat
a storm rages outside, making the early afternoon dark as night. the fantasist lies face down on a velvet rug. the fantasized wears leather gloves, the brown and supple leather of sacred sheep whose complete bodies are only seen by the highest standing monks. they divide and process the bodies until the original shape is obscured and no mind could put the parts back together. the sheep parts surround their bodies and lives: the lamps burn their fragrant fat, the drinks on the table are made with their sweet offal, the rug where semen will spill is woven with their wool and silk. the fantasized wears leather gloves as she caresses the fantasist's cheek, neck, back and arms slowly, and it gives her goosebumps. the fantasized wears leather gloves as she penetrates the fantasized's anus, first with her fingers, then with a dildo made of metal and bone. the bone too is sheep, and so is the metal.
one of the hallmarks of an iconic work of art is the presence of porn parodies of said work, but those parodies seldom reach a status as iconic as their source material. that could not be further from the case of the subject of this section, penthouse of leaves, by genevieve davies. based on mark z. danielewski's novel, penthouse is a novella shaped as an erotic magazine. the format itself gives the work an added layer of complexity, as photographs and advertisements join the narrative. not to mention the handwritten notes on the margins, left by a person unnamed in the narrative, but that the author has dubbed jane doe (conveniently a similar enough name to her counterpart johnny's).
the novella opens with an editorial introducing the edition's theme: architecture. articles and interviews discuss the spaces we inhabit through revolutionary and feminist lenses, and specifically how our present and utopian future buildings relate to the sex we have (and could be having) — and jane comments on these with related media and her own thoughts. the photography is entirely pornographic, yes, but also puts great emphasis on the spaces the porn is happening in. this already makes the work quite unique, but it's not over yet, for the index has also promised an erotic short story at the end.
this is a turtles all the way down situation. the navidson record-breaking orgasm is itself a porn parody of the navidson record, a film that exists in-universe (and is talked about in one of the interviews). in it, our protagonist wren enters the door to the five and a half minute hallway camera in hand, butch in blue jeans and flannel. said flannel gets removed in no time as she walks the labyrinth of dark featureless corridors, revealing a thin white undershirt that clings to her breasts.
instead of dread or horror, the shifting corridors and alien architecture fill her with lust, and she stops to turn the camera on herself as she masturbates, her back pressed against a wall. she feels a presence, and doesn't know if it's a creature roaming the halls or just the effect of the camera (this passage is underlined, and jane cites john berger: "a woman must continually watch herself").
she moves on, reaching the bottomless stairwell. she sheds her clothes in the steps as she descends, and the photos and descriptions of wren's further orgasms are complemented by jane's fantasies of having sex on the stairs, a second sensory layer as she envisions ways to eroticize the seemingly barren architecture. warm breasts pressed against chill concrete, the strange air flow on sweaty exposed skin, and always that alluring presence of the minotaur, the growl getting louder.
the bottom is never reached. wren stops to rest, eyes closed, legs up the steps, and the minotaur catches up to her. this climatic encounter and the accompanying photos are beautiful and abstract, keeping the presence fairly ambiguous: this is entirely about the sensations she feels — she feels a touch on the sensitive skin of her wrist, clenches her cunt around the fingers deep inside — and could well be another autoerotic scene. meanwhile jane's commentary assumes the minotaur's point of view, fleshing out this beastly woman as she fucks wren, shunning the fear of being a predatory lesbian and replacing it with the pleasure of agency: i suck her earlobe, i grind against her dripping wet cunt.
shifting the "proof" of the minotaur into jane's notes means penthouse can have its pussy and eat it too: the original story (both in-universe and danielewski's original) doesn't get marred by something as crass as concrete evidence of a monster, but we still get hot lesbian sex for the climax. such is the beauty of metanarratives.
THE AUTHOR sets down the magazine. STAGE MANAGER 1 and STAGE MANAGER 2 fuck on the floor.
THE AUTHOR — and there you have it: some metafictional porn possibilities.
SM 1 — the play is back?
SM 2 — do you need us?
THE AUTHOR — oh, you can get back to yourselves. (they do). i got a little attached to the format, is all. it's a darling i couldn't kill. besides, and perhaps more importantly, this way i can close things off like this:
curtain.
2025