1/28/24
Primary and Secondary Research
This is number forty-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“CAN YOU SAY ‘DEVON LAYNE?’” I asked Alluring Allie at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo a few years ago. It wasn’t quite as out of the blue as it sounds beginning a blog post. We’d been talking for a few minutes and it was near the end of the day. She’d told me she loved to read—especially erotica.
“Devon Layne?” she said.
“That’s me and you just won a free signed copy of my book, Art Something.”
“Are you kidding? For me? You can so touch my tits!”
That was an offer I could not turn down. It was one she repeated the next day so we could get a picture.
To me, that’s ‘primary research.’ When I write erotica, I describe a lot about the females of the story. Remember my comment about ‘old men’s erotica?’ They need detailed descriptions. So, I consider it a duty to my art to collect research that will help me describe a variety of women. One of my favorite places to investigate is at the annual Adult Entertainment Expo, and it seems appropriate to mention that on the weekend it is in Las Vegas.
Sadly, I’m not. I planned to attend this year, but have been held up in Seattle having a pacemaker installed in my heart. Part two of that procedure was on Friday when I should have been chatting up my favorite porn stars on the show floor. Well, next time.
I have collected tactile experiences at the show from a variety of sources and I try to jot down something about the experience soon afterward so I can describe what this boob felt like or looked like. What is Alex’s ass like when I hold it in hand as she embraces me for a photo? What scent was Aimee wearing when she rubbed her butt against me at the firepit? How slim is Kendra with my arm wrapped around her waist and my hand all the way onto her stomach? How hard is Molly’s body, towering over me?
“Ari, you’re here!” Casey said, rushing around the counter so she could hug me against her thin 6'2" frame with my face tucked between her modest breasts so I could kiss the rise of them.
The “Wonders of My World” series is a highly exaggerated record of my travels around the United States in a pickup truck pulling a travel trailer. That’s an adventure I started in 2013 and am still on today, though I’m putting on fewer miles each year, it seems. In US Highways, I record the meeting with my muse, Alice. Alice is a composite of several women I met in various strip clubs around the country. But I owe most to Mia.
I met Mia at the Los Angeles Sex Expo in 2015. A chain of strip clubs in the area had a space set up with couches and half a dozen poles. Dancers were performing on the poles and others were inviting onlookers for lap dances on the sofas.
I was standing near the fringe of the onlookers when one of the performers stalked across the dance area, out into the crowd, that parted before her like the waters before Moses, and put her arms around me. “I’ve been waiting to dance for you,” she whispered.
I have been around enough to recognize that this was one of the smoothest professionals I’d ever encountered. I never deceive myself into thinking an approach by an exotic dancer is about anything but the money. If you listen to her, she’ll make that clear. But as long as you have the money, she will be anything you want her to be.
In this case, for $10. In addition to two dances at $10 each that were as intimate as a sneaky performer could be in a public room, Mia offered me a pass to get into the club she danced at without a cover charge. She gave me the hours she worked and asked me to please get to the club when she was working so she could dance for me.
Mia taught me a lot in my quest for primary research. I learned how stiff her nipples got when I sucked on them. I learned how she liked the little barbell piercing through her clit hood twisted. I learned the flavor of her lubrication. Yes, Mia was a font of intimate knowledge.
She also taught me how to approach dancers in clubs to further my investigation, something I have continued to do to this day.
US Highways is available with the rest of the Wonders of My World series on Bookapy.
It’s fairly easy to get primary research on physical attributes of young women if you can afford a moderate fee. And if you are respectful and abide by her boundaries and expectations. (In that, it’s sort of like dating.) But how do you get a look inside the mind of a woman?
I don’t profess to be an expert on this subject. I’ve been married three times, and if I were an expert on what women want and how they think, it would have either been married only once or not at all.
I found a fairly new resource that at least helps.
OMGyes is a research-based collection of women’s thoughts about sex that covers a wide range of topics from foreplay to faking to rhythm, layering, and surprising. It is women discussing sex with other women. As a primary source, it might be considered secondary. There are written pieces and video segments of the women talking, but it doesn’t (like most secondary research) try to encapsulate the results in a series of graphs and tables. It is almost unfiltered women of all shapes, sizes, races, and ages, talking about their sexual experience.
Don’t think that you’ll go to this site to get off. That’s not going to happen. What you will find here is information that might make you—or at least make your characters in erotica—a better lover or a more genuine person.
For the experience that will get you over the edge as well as inform you, try the series of videos called ‘Get Up Close’ from Girlsway and Adulttime founder Bree Mills. In this series of fifteen- to thirty-minute videos, Bree interviews women on what their sexual journey has been and then films them masturbating to orgasm.
Okay, that’s very entertaining, and several of the women will give genuine insights about their sexual journey. But understand that these women are all industry professionals. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the language of the porn industry is male-based. The women use male terms when discussing body parts and their feelings. They are performers and there is a bias toward performing in what they say.
This month, I’ve talked about the difference between men and women, building a character of the opposite sex, and research on sex attitudes and physical characteristics. The very real question is ‘What difference does it make?’ Next week I’ll delve into that.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
