How to successfully write a secret sex blog and not blow up your life or be a total dick – a manual

Hyacinth wrote an excellent post recently on the challenges of writing a sex blog and living a life – keeping the blog secret from the people from whom it’s supposed to be secret, telling those you want to tell, and sharing the right amount of information all around. Her post seems to have been in response to/instigated by/occasioned by the demise (and subsequent password-protected resurrection) of another blog, whose author was outed by a troll.

I don’t know that I’m an expert on this subject, or that I necessarily have a whole lot that’s interesting or new to say and, if I were smarter, I’d set this up as a wiki, so others could join in, but here’s my attempt at a manual on how to successfully write a secret sex blog and not blow up your life or be a total dick:

1) How to successfully write…

Um, this part is either really easy or really hard, depending on one’s definition of success. (For the record, mine probably includes not splitting infinitives unnecessarily, so if I weren’t quoting, it would probably be “how to write a successful secret sex blog….”) But back to the question at hand: in my case, success has everything to do with me and precious little with you. This blog is successful if it captures my thoughts – particularly, but not exclusively, those about sex – and in so doing, makes me feel better for having aired them out. By that measure it’s a rousing success. It doesn’t have a lot of readers, couldn’t generate more than a few pennies of revenue if I tried that route, and hasn’t been noticed by any real opinion-shaping (or opinion-amplifying) web sites or writers. So by those measures, it’s definitively not a success.

2) … a secret sex blog…

Secret? Secret? Well, mine’s hardly secret. What it is (for the most part) is ringfenced off from my “real” life. Though some of my real life friends and family know that I have a blog, they don’t (to my knowledge) know that this is it, except in a very few instances. Where Hy has written extensively about a relationship she has with someone who doesn’t know about her blog, this isn’t my M.O. Though my real name isn’t “N.,” the lines between N. and his alter ego are fuzzy at times.

What is secret is that alter ego’s name. I’ve done what I can to keep that so – primarily because I have a wife and son, and would prefer that they not have to confront some schmucky colleague or friend saying, “I know who your husband/dad is.” Not out of shame, or embarrassment. Just out of consideration. If I were single, and had no kids, I like to imagine I’d have no compunction about having my name out there. Of course, given my own professional life, that might not be too wise, but that’s another story.

3) … and not blow up your life…

So this gets to the keeping it secret part. How to prevent folks from learning about my alter ego. Well, to a large extent, I think I probably rely on the kindness, respect, consideration and sanity of readers. Maybe this is unwise. I’ve done what I can to make it hard to connect the dots, but I don’t for a minute imagine that I’m smart enough to outsmart the smartest detective. So god forbid that what has happened to at least two people I know happen to me: that a troll become heavily invested in harming me, harassing me, simply out of misguided malice (or imagined benevolence toward another). This could happen, and I don’t imagine there’s a whole hell of a lot I could do in that instance, other than (I guess) try to disappear. Quickly.

It’s a funny thing, this sex stuff: it gets to people. Very intense emotions tend to be triggered very easily. And so I guess it is possible that one day, “a reader [could become] obsessed and track… [me] down based on the loosest of details [I had] shared… as a friendly gesture,” as happened to the author of “Creative Noodling,” the blog Hyacinth described whose author was outed.

4) … or be a total dick….

I think this might well be the key. It is my key: I behave honorably. Always. I try really hard to be respectful, polite, kind, to my readers. Everyone who e-mails me, I respond to; everyone who comments, I respond to (except very occasionally when a very regular commenter comments in a way that there’s no real response that’s appropriate other than “thank you for commenting on my blog”). If I’ve failed to respond to a comment you’ve posted, I assure you, it’s an oversight and not intentional. Maybe one day I’ll have to revise this policy because I receive so many e-mails, so many comments, but for now, it works for me.

And I am trustworthy. There are a fair number of women who’ve entrusted me with very intimate details of their lives. Sometimes, this has been in words; other times, in photos; others, in sound files; and I even have a few videos. I think people who read this blog closely know that I wouldn’t dream of sharing, posting, publicizing, or (honestly) even writing about any of that without the explicit ok of the person who provided it.

A quick example: just about a year ago, I had a one-night stand with a woman. We met in a bar. We went for a drive. She sucked my cock. We parted ways. We never saw one another again (at her wish). I sent her a write-up of our encounter that I proposed to post here. She replied, essentially, “Please don’t, and no thanks to another date.” Six months or so later, I pinged her one more time: “It’s been so long, I wonder how you’d feel if I posted it.” And she replied, “Please don’t.” So this woman, whom I’ve met once, who blew me off unceremoniously (admittedly after sucking my cock, for which I was, and am, quite grateful) didn’t want me to post the details of our encounter. And I didn’t. More than this. A year later.

I have a very simple policy: if I write about you here, I do my best to give you prior approval of anything I write, and if I fuck that up and write/post something without your approval, if you don’t like it, I pull it down promptly. (I’ve done that a few times.) I like to imagine that even those who feel I wronged them by something I wrote feel, at least, as if I handled that fuck-up honorably.

I wouldn’t dream of sharing anything intimate anyone had shared with me in trust, even if that person mistreated or hurt me badly.

I’m a strong believer in karma. Not in the popular “what goes around comes around” sense, but in the more traditional, “cause and effect” sense. I believe that behaving dishonorably results, usually directly, in bad outcomes. And behaving honorably, in good ones.

I have some considerable trust and hope that I’m right, that this blog – which is valuable not just to me but to at least some of you – is itself a positive contributor to the universe, and that, by virtue of behaving honorably, I buy myself an effective insurance policy against vindictiveness.

I hope I’m right.

8 comments

  1. Hear hear! The secret part I fear I am often too cavalier with, trusting whatever gods may be listening that the separate identities in my head do not go down in flames. And I do try not to be a dick. If I write something, and it is at least partially true, I do run it past the person involved. Yet, I write as fiction, and anyone who is in the life of a writer knows that they may end up on the page, it goes with the territory. As you say, I don’t use any identifying information, not even my own (especially not my own?), so hopefully I will not offend. But, if you can’t handle being a muse, rotten luck to fuck me.
    Thank you for a thoughtful post.

    1. Yeah, that TOTALLY doesn’t work for me. It’s not the writing, it’s the publishing that makes it valuable to me. (See my post of just an hour or so ago.)

  2. I have thought about posting Naughty pics on the net. One of my distant buddies of mine even thought about doing a blog together but getting outted is not something I would want to deal with.

    I think your blog is a success. You get the ladies to send you audio orgasms. Success in my book!

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