Erotica vs. Smut
Posted By Inflate123 on September 6, 2010
I don’t have any illusions about my interest in inflation; it’s sexual. I get turned on by it. It is what it is. But be that as it may, my personal tastes have never run to the explicit. Traditional “girlie mags” have never done much for me; when I pick up Playboy, I really do read the articles, which means stuff like Hustler has never been in my hands. My hard drive is not filled with photos of topless women, but girls in spandex or rubber or outfits of some kind, and the inflation is going on under that layer. I like a little more mystery than just a naked lady.
In the past I’ve said really nice things about the florid prose of Heliumgirl77 — to me, the sort of detailed, romantic writing seen in “Expectations” and the downright Kafkaesque “Nozzle” counts as inflation erotica. It’s racy, but the word choice is so specific and the situations she describes are so detailed that it just elevates the whole thing to above the level of what you would call porn.
So it’s with some surprise that I read tabackattack‘s latest story “The Inflation Part 1″ and found it extremely potent for me. If Heliumgirl77 writes like champagne, tabackattack pounds a beer. I recognize his stuff as well-written smut — graphic descriptions, well-established slang terms for anatomical parts, get-to-the-p0int storytelling. One of his stories, “Fill Me Up,” starts with what has to be one of the best first lines in inflation fiction: “They were fucking on the floor of his loft.” You can’t deny the direct tone, and I like that sometimes his endings are not clear — leaving it up to the reader is a narrative risk but one I appreciate. And while I didn’t personally connect with the inflation method of “Fill Me Up” or his blueberry-focused earlier stories, I always wondered what one of his stories would be like if it was purely an inflation tale. And as luck would have it, he was apparently thinking the same thing.
There’s an immediacy to it — it’s very intense. It’s vulgar in parts, and it’s unblinking when it comes to describing the physical elements. Normally I would have thought I’d be completely turned off by it…but I was completely enthralled. At that moment, champagne be damned, I didn’t want inflation erotica — I wanted inflation smut. There are parts I think could be improved in the narrative but I conveniently ignored them and just enjoyed the hell out of it. It was a very good beer.
I don’t know if it’s that my tastes are simply evolving to appreciate new types of stories or if it’s a one-off fluke where I suddenly liked wallowing in the gutter. But I’m curious to see what happens in his promised part 2.