30 DAYS OF SMUT

A daily series of smutty flash fictions and photos by Susannah Breslin

#1: THE PORN ADDICT

In the underground parking lot, the porn addict considered his life as he took turns taking sips from the Americano with two shots of espresso and one Splenda and bites of the sausage, cheddar, and egg sandwich he had purchased in the grocery store. His wife: gone. His savings: depleted. His life: imploded. Or imploding was perhaps a better word. It was as if he was watching the wholesale destruction of everything for which he had spent so many years working fall apart in slow motion. And for what? A series of women on the other side of the screen who, for all he knew, were not so much real but the product of digital image effects and sophisticated artificial intelligence programs. Secretly he hoped that there was someone out there who might understand him, a meatspace human who might see in him something worth saving, who could look past the terrible credit rating and underwater mortgage and surely costly divorce to come, and know that all he had been trying to do all along was find her. At that moment, a car pulled into the space next to him. He turned his head, hoping that it would be her, coming to save him.

#2: THE MANNEQUIN

Dolores, who was a mannequin, wanted to sit up to stretch her back, but she couldn’t, seeing as she was fiberglass and also an inanimate object. In the factory, as she had traveled down an assembly line while being assembled by strangers, she had envisioned a stationing somewhere other than this. Perhaps she would model couture gowns in a window display of one of those boutiques on Rodeo Drive in front of which an armed guard stood. Maybe she would find herself featured in the background of a music video starring one of her favorite singers who was famous for wearing sequins. Possibly she would have a close and loving relationship with a young woman who sold vintage clothes on Etsy and always added a note at the bottom of the listing: MANNEQUIN NOT FOR SALE. Instead, she had wound up here, hawking crotchless panties in the glassed storefront of a store on Ventura Boulevard that sold vibrators, blowup dolls, and bachelorette party gifts like straws with penises where your mouth went. She longed to sigh but failed to do so, having no functioning organs, among them heaving lungs and a beating heart.

#3: THE WOODSMAN

Everyone thought it was easy to be a male porn star, but it wasn’t. It was hard. Everyone thought you had sex all day, but it wasn’t like that. It was more complicated. Everyone thought you were a sex god, but it wasn’t so glamorous. It was reality. Hugh Strong sat on the edge of his bed, feeling tired, more tired than he had in his whole entire life. How many scenes had he appeared in? He had lost count. How many costars had he had? He no longer knew. How many days had he wondered what his life would have been like had he become, say, a plumber, or an electrician, or some other performer of an honorable trade, and not a guy who got it up and got it off for a living? He couldn’t begin to fathom. In the small, under-furnished bedroom of his not-very-spacious apartment in North Hollywood, Hugh sighed deeply. Soon, he knew, he would get up, and he would study the crow’s feet around his eyes in the bathroom mirror, and he would confront the fact once again that he could not do this forever. Then he would push the thought out of his head, pull on his clothes, and walk out the door to attend whatever audition was next on his docket.

#4: THE PHONE SEX OPERATOR

The phone sex operator talked a lot, which was a good thing, since that was the basis of her profession, and she liked it, talking, that is, and her profession, too, the way the light would flash, or the screen would illuminate, or the object would vibrate, and she would experience a certain silent thrill, a jolt, an electric current that something was about to happen, and you never knew what, or who, or how, only that it was unpredictable, and then she was saying hello, and there was a voice on the other end of the line, a man, usually, middle-aged, mostly, but sometimes young, and at other times old, a deep voice, or a high voice, or a monotone voice, but the same thing behind it, like an echo, which was the pulse of them wanting something, which was her, but not her at all, her being the thing they wanted her to be, whether that was a nurse, or a cougar, or a dominatrix, because in the end, mostly, and she didn’t mean this in a bad way, only in a truthful way, men were the same, all of them, fundamentally, people who wanted to love and be loved and sometimes had freaky fetishes to which she was happy to cater.

#5: THE VOYEUR

It wasn’t creepy if they didn’t know you were looking. It wasn’t an obsession if you were able to control it. It wasn’t a bad thing if you were the person who was doing it. It was a matter of adjusting the Venetian blinds so you could peer through the slats. It was a daily ritual to which you dedicated yourself. It was convenient that your unit overlooked the kidney-shaped swimming pool. It was sheer luck that your neighbor liked to swim. It was an absolute blessing that they were your type. It was a wonder that they had no idea you existed even though you lived in the same apartment building. It was a miracle that spring had come and while it triggered your allergies it meant that your neighbor would be swimming more often. It was right now that you were preparing for your next session. It was a good thing that the pool was close enough that bearing witness did not require binoculars. It was their door that you could hear opening and closing. It was the beckoning call of the water splashing. It was late afternoon, and the golden hour would be later, but in this interstitial time it was just you the invisible spy and your aqua lover.

#6: THE SEX WRITER

The sex writer was bored, which was her default state. Easily bored, her dating app profile read, with a star with a tail emoji after the second word, as if she was daring people to connect with her. This was why she wrote about what she did. Because you could say a lot of things about sex—that it was base, that it was primal, that it was messy—but you could not say it was boring. Of course, boring sex itself was another matter entirely, and something she avoided fastidiously, but the subject of sex wasn’t boring. It was interesting, relentlessly so, and provocative, overtly so, and a window into the human soul, or that’s how she looked at it anyway. That she was a sex writer had been the source of embarrassment to various people with which she had had relationships over the years. Who could blame them? No one wanted to take her home to their mother and say, here is my new girlfriend, the one who writes about bukkakes and gangbangs and CGI futanari. It was awkward. Not for her, but for other people. The sex writer sighed, feeling bored by herself. She knew what this meant. It was time to go write another story.

#7: THE DOMINATRIX

Contrary to popular belief, the dominatrix didn’t hate men, although, to be perfectly honest, she had a book with that very title on her bookshelf somewhere. She just had a talent for causing physical pain, and men were the ones who were willing to pay to be on the receiving end of her gifts. The flat end of the black leather riding crop landed on the pale, exposed bottom of the tech entrepreneur prone in front of her with a satisfying smack! If her dead mother knew that all those horseback riding lessons she had paid for when the dominatrix was growing up would turn out to deliver an extraordinary return on investment, her mother would be proud, or so the dominatrix wanted to believe. The tech entrepreneur whose name she could no longer recall because there were so many of them walking through the front door of her discreetly anonymous dungeon these days emitted a noise that sounded like a cat being strangled. In her towering heels, the dominatrix strode around to the other side of the tech entrepreneur’s trembling form, raised the crop again, and smiled slightly as it sailed towards its target once more.