Peep Show author interview with Nobilis Reed

How did you come up with the idea for your story, “Glass,” in Peep Show?

The story started life as the first segment, all by itself, an inspiration that drew from my job during college as a security guard. Part of my job included manning a camera bank and making recordings of anything I saw that would be of interest to my employers, basically anything illegal or unethical. There was a good deal of debate on the security team about what that actually meant and what we should be recording.

Ever since then I’ve had little fantasies dancing around in the back of my mind.

Did the story change as you were writing it from your original conception of it?

I dislike stories that don’t have some kind of twist in them, and I tend to avoid writing stories that have a clear-cut “victim.” Those two influences, together, guided my efforts in completing the story. Once the inspiration dawned, writing the rest of the rough draft was fairly simple. The fact that I could add in a little meta-voyeurism was a bonus.

What’s your favorite line or paragraph from your story?

The last one, which unfortunately I can’t reproduce here without spoiling the story!

Is your Peep Show story similar to or different from your usual erotic writing style?

Usually I write more “speculative” fiction, that is, science fiction or fantasy. I probably could have set this story in a “total information awareness” society but it wasn’t really necessary. In retrospect it’s probably a better story for having left that element out. The focus on the thoughts and feelings of the characters involved is very much my style, however. Aside from the speculative elements I don’t believe this story is much different from what I usually write.

What do you think is sexy about exhibitionism and/or voyeurism?

For the exhibitionist, there’s a kind of validation to it. “If a complete stranger likes me like this, then I must be really hot/macho/whatever!”

For the voyeur, it’s more like “This person is putting on a show just for me!”

If you care to answer, are you more of a voyeur, exhibitionist, or neither?

Both. I’m not paraphiliac about it — I don’t need to be engaging in it to get off — but there’s definitely a charge for me both in being watched, and in watching. The “shower scenes” from the movies Porky’s and Private School were some of the first times I saw naked bodies on screen!

Do you think there’s something inherently exhibitionistic about writing, especially writing erotica?

And yes, there’s definitely an exhibitionist quality to writing and publishing erotica. One of the most fulfilling qualities about it is putting aspects of my own sexuality (fictionalized and disguised, of course) out for public consumption, and having them accepted, praised, and even rewarded. It’s an incredible rush!

What are you working on next?

Currently, I’m writing the outline for my second novel, Pirates, while I gear up for the publication of my first novel, Scout, which will be coming out in mid-2010 from Logical Lust.

Nobilis Reed (”Glass”) takes care of his disabled wife, teenage kids, and too many cats, occasionally taking flights of erotic fancy that then become enmeshed in his brain until writing exorcises them. His career in smut has so far produced four novellas, which you can find at www.nobiliserotica.com.

Below is an excerpt from “Glass” by Nobilis Reed. To read the whole story, check out Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. Read excerpts from all 18 stories in Peep Show by clicking here.

The glass dildo, this time. Yes, definitely the glass. Mira unlocked the bottom drawer and selected the hard transparent shape from the jumble of torpedoes and plastic phalluses and laid it on the desk in front of her.

A gentle curve, a pleasant shade of blue, a few tiny bubbles trapped inside: it could almost pass for a work of art. She smiled at the thought of just leaving it on the shelf alongside the walkie-talkie and the heavy ring of keys. Would anyone say anything? She doubted it.

The couple on her monitor stopped kissing and pulled at each other’s clothes. Mira looked up. It wouldn’t be long now, but where was that damned lube? Bit by bit, their bodies came into view. They were beautiful, both of them. Every Friday they showed up, performed their pas de deux, and left again. She had invented a hundred stories to explain their presence in the depths of the darkened parking garage. Not for the first time, she thanked the nameless engineer who’d invented night-vision video cameras.

She leaned back in her chair, pulled open two buttons of her blouse, and moved one hand into the gap.

Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists to be published in November

Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists is edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel at gmail.com) and will be published by Cleis Press in November 2009.

Blurbs:

“Peep Show takes you through the looking glass and into an erotic world of wonder where looking and being looked at creates hot encounters of the highest order.”
— Audacia Ray, author of Naked on the Internet

“”Rachel Kramer Bussel has, once again, assembled a top-flight collection. This naughty gem will appeal to both the connoisseur and the curious reader who just wants a peek.”
— Lily Burana, author of Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America

Introduction: Hungry Eyes and Sensual Show-Offs (see below)

Showtime by Susan St. Aubin
Clean and Pretty by Donna George Storey
Superior by Monica Shores
People in Glass Hotels by Jennifer Peters
Indecent by Lolita Lopez
Ownership by Craig J. Sorensen
Audience Participation by Elizabeth Coldwell
Now You See Her by Andrea Dale
Watcher in the Shadows by Cheyenne Blue
Glass by Nobilis Reed
Sleeping Beauty by Malcolm Ross
The Theory of Orchids by L. A. Mistral
Missing Michael by M. March
Busted by Kissa Starling
Satisfaction Guaranteed by Sommer Marsden
Rosse Buurt by Geneva King
I’ve Only Got Eyes for You by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Calendar Girl by Angela Caperton

Introduction: Hungry Eyes and Sensual Show-Offs

When the stories started rolling in for Peep Show, I was surprised to see that so many were about sex work: strippers, burlesque babes, and other professional show-offs and their customers. I had intended the title to be a sexy suggestion of the complementary fetishes of exhibitionism and voyeurism, not necessarily the main setting for the bulk of the stories. As I kept reading, though, I realized that peep shows and other forms of commercialized sexual displays are a major way we as a culture sanction the act of watching.

There’s a sense of the forbidden in many of the stories you’ll read here, whether money changes hands or not. There is the thrill of baring your body in exactly the place you’re not supposed to, which Lolita Lopez zeroes in on with her nude campus performance art protagonist in “Indecent.” As Lopez writes, “Trini couldn’t stop herself. The risk heightened the allure.” In Malcolm Ross’s “Sleeping Beauty,” the main character catches his gorgeous wife in repose in the middle of the night, and is compelled to keep on watching. M. March gives us a poignant, moving story of being watched over from above.

As for those peep shows, there’s plenty of very sexy jiggling to be seen here. Donna George Storey beautifully and, as always, utterly erotically captures a different kind of peep show in “Clean and Pretty,” in which an American woman in Japan soaps up in the shower, getting paid handsomely, while exulting in the one viewer who can look for free. Geneva King takes us deep inside Amsterdam’s famous red-light district, or “Rosse Buurt,” A woman is drawn to a woman she sees there, a woman who “stands in her window on the second story, not banging on the glass like the other girls, just standing, surveying the crowd, like she picks the customer and not the other way around, like she’s deciding who is lucky enough to experience any bit of her.” This is the kind of woman who sells her body in this book; one who’s knowing, aware, yet can allow herself to get swept away by passion, even when she’s on the clock.

Modern technology also plays a role here in the webcam-themed “Audience Participation” and “I’ve Only Got Eyes for You,” where private citizens become amateur porn stars. When you think of voyeurs, you probably picture the iconic image of the Peeping Tom, and he’s to be found in these pages as well, once, even wearing a trench coat. But rather than being the town creep, here the various peeping Toms (and Thomasinas) are more than just stereotypes. They see and hear things they aren’t supposed to, and sometimes, as with Sommer Marsden’s Jared in “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” they even get caught.

Neighbors, coworkers, spouses, and hotel guests all experience the power of looking, and being looked at. Even the most intimate relationships can get closer when one person opens himself up to being studied, caressed not with the hands but with the eyes. These stories honor the art of the striptease, the daring of the nudist, the boldness of the person who’ll go out of her way to get more than an eyeful. I hope the sensual visions these stories create stay in your mind’s eye for a long time to come.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York