[Originally appeared in Tidbit, October 2006]
It’s pretty hard to distance yourself from your own preoccupations when dealing with erotic performance. The more conservative and prudish you are, it’s safe to say, the more risqué and outrageous you’ll find the performance; the more inspired you are by open sexuality, it would seem, the more you’ll find the performance both liberating and, uh, pleasurable. It’s a little more complicated if — like me — you look at erotica from the vantage point of a prudish upbringing, a strong intellectual concern for freedom of expression and a slightly repressed appreciation for erotic performance.
