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This story is in the Ebook. It will give you a good idea of the kind of flash fiction you will get if you download the Ebook. Don’t let the $6.00 price tag scare you off. Use the Ebook as a reference. Not only does the Ebook have 31 flash fiction stories in it, but it also contains a short novel that shows how the “show don’t tell” method of writing can also work in long form fiction.
Plus, there is a lengthy essay on how and why the “show don’t tell” method works. The Ebook will not only inform but it will also entertain.
Now for our feature presentation.
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Pittsburgh (1983)
The warm summer night waited outside. Inside, these two sat in the air-conditioned low lighting near the dance floor. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and now sat looking down at her hands holding the tall glass of crushed ice and mixed fruit juice on the table top. Several couples danced.
She said, “I’ve never had a stranger ask me to come home with him.”
He said, “I’ve seen you around.”
“I’ve seen you around, too.”
“We have one thing in common.”
She looked up. He nodded at their drinks.
She said, “I hate the taste of alcohol.”
“I don’t, but that’s another story. How old are you?”
“Twenty two.”
“No boyfriend?”
“We broke up.”
She took a swallow of her drink, watching him over the glass.
Six steps lead up to the dance floor. Colored lights flashed under the dancers’ feet. A DJ in a glass booth played the music.
She said, “Any more questions?”
“Ask me some.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Children?”
“I’m thirty-three but no children. At least none that I know of.”
“Everyone here seems to know you. Is that what you do? Come here to pick up college girls?”
“I don’t do one night stands anymore.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re looking for something steady.”
“Sure. Aren’t you?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know you and I’m definitely not in love with you.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Once,” she said.
“And?”
“He couldn’t pass up any freebies.”
“How old was he?”
“At the time twenty-one. We were both juniors.”
“Well, you can’t expect–”
“Why not? Why is it so difficult for you men to keep your cocks in your pants?”
He took a drink, putting the glass back down gently.
She said, “I like you a lot less.”
She got up, picked up her drink and walked away. She walked in between the empty tables, down the two steps, across the aisle to sit at the bar.
He got up with his drink, went up the six stairs, through the dancers, down the six stairs to sit at the bar on the other side. Some people he knew came in. He sat with them at the tables. By ten o’clock it was crowded. He danced. By last call he was ready to leave.
Forbes Avenue was full of students, walking and driving. His car was in the shop and he didn’t have the money to get it out; but he started a new job Monday and he was sure he could keep this one. He had a two-year plan to get back on his feet. He was at the corner of Forbes and Bouquet when someone called, “Wait up!” He turned to see who it was. The young woman from the bar came running up to him. She didn’t look straight at him. She tried to catch her breath.
She said, “If I agree to stay with you tonight do we have to do anything?”
He thought a moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t get any sleep.”
“Does it have to be all your way? Don’t I get any of what I want?”
“What do you want?”
“To be with someone. To know someone’s there. Just to have–” She looked away and wiped at her eyes.
Students kept streaming past. Cars made Forbes Avenue a river of lights.
He said, “What’s your name?”
“Janette. Janette Mitchell.”
Later, that night he was in his briefs on his back on the bed in the dark. She was on her stomach in her bra and panties with his arms around her and her head on his chest, an arm of hers over his midsection and one leg between his two legs. They ignored the bulge in his briefs.
She said, “Did you actually kill anyone?”
“In artillery you don’t want to be close enough for them to see you.”
“Women and children, too.?”
“Sometimes we wasted villages.”
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Do you think about it?”
“Sometimes I dream about it.”
“I could never kill anyone.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I could never.”
“You’d let them kill you?”
No answer.
He stared at the faint shadows playing on the dark ceiling. It was Sunday morning. A comforting breeze blew through the window screen. She stayed motionless against him. The heat of her body was making him uncomfortable.
He said, “When I got back to Pittsburgh I broke up with my fiancée.”
She raised her head. “Why?”
“She wanted to live in her nice safe world with all her nice safe possessions.”
“So?”
He didn’t answer.
“Didn’t you love her?”
“Oh, I loved her. I just couldn’t live with her.”
After a moment, she lowered her head back down on to his chest. They stayed motionless. He closed his eyes…He caught himself falling. He stared at the faint shadows that played on the dark ceiling…
She eased out of his arms, stood beside the bed and began removing her bra and panties.
“Hush,” she said.
The End
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Why Do Young Women Do Porn?
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Today, I’m re-running an article from the archives of the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette that I wrote in July about the growing attraction on American women of doing porn.
Hello hello hello, bloggers, writers and Flash Fiction Fanatics. It’s no secret that the largest number of sites on the Internet are porn sites. My own niece is a webcam stripper. She owns her own site. She makes very good money. Her name is Brianna Frost. I’ve watched her videos become more and more explicit until recently she did fellatio on camera.
I think that more and more women, especially young women, will go into porn. They will willingly have their bodies ravaged for money, notoriety, and yes, for uninhibited sex. Many of them will be college girls in need of money and getting what they feel is a life experience. Most of them will do only a few adult videos and then move on with their lives.
But the more I study why our wives, girlfriends, daughters and nieces do sex videos, I think it’s less about the money and more about the liberating intoxication of guiltless sex with no attachments. For many women, having an orgasm or two or three on camera is “hot.”
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Pornography was around long before the Internet. It was around before the invention of writing. It can be found in numerous scenes painted on the walls of caves by our ancestors. The internet has sent the production and consumption of porn into overdrive. An ever-increasing number of willing young women are showing up in porn videos. Why?
I have read reports that the porn industry makes more billions of dollars than the movie industry and the music industry combined. I have no doubt that the day will come when the porn-industry lobby will be one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington D.C.
The Old Soldier is no prude. My own niece has been a webcam stripper since she was 19. She’s in her early 20s now and makes more money each year than I ever made each year I was working before I retired. She doesn’t do hard-core pornography…yet.
It is my belief that the stream of young women into porn is only going to increase. Already, young women text pictures of themselves nude. They make home videos of themselves having sex. The logical next step is to get paid to do what they are already doing. And if that means having sex with one or more strange men, so be it.
Being in a porn video does not carry the sort of stigma it use to for many young women between the ages of 18 and 25, many who are in college. They use false names, withhold the names of their universities and then proceed to allow their bodies to be ravaged. For so many of them, it’s naughty and very exciting stuff, all those aroused men and all those video cameras pointed at them, all those flash cameras going off in the background. Often, the women have their own orgasms. It’s easy money.
Like any industry, some porn sites are run better than others. The smart porn sites make the shoots fun for the women.
There is one site that interviews the women before the shoot. The interview is done in an office, the women in their street clothes. The guy doing the interview has a talent for making these young women relax, to feel more comfortable about what is about to happen. The interview makes the women seem very human. They are definitely not porn stars. They are strictly amateurs. This site only wants amateurs. Many of the amateurs are articulate.
After the shoot the women are again in their street clothes in the office being interviewed again. They are asked what they thought of the shoot, what they did and did not like. You would be surprised at what many of them liked. A large percentage offer to come back and shoot another video. They agree to do things in the next video that they did not do in the first video. Some have such a good time in the first video that they end up recommending their friends to the site. You can’t buy that sort of publicity. In this way, the site has a never-ending stream of willing young women to have in its sex videos.
This can be easy money for the young women who do porn as a youthful experiment and then get out. The trick seems to be not to end up on poorly run sites and not to become addicted to the easy money.
I can see the day coming when it won’t be unusual for a happily married woman in her 40s to be having a morning cup of coffee with her best female friend and to confide in her friend that she was pretty wild in her teens and 20s, that she did five porn videos from the time she was 18 to the time she was 26; only to have the best friend ask, “Did you ever see any of ’Mary’s Hot Gangbangs’?”
“You mean…”
“Yep, that was little old me. I had the first orgasms in my life on those shoots. The site kept bringing me back because they knew I wasn’t faking. The guys subscribing to the site knew I wasn’t faking. I ended doing seven gangbangs in all.”
“Does Steve know?”
“He would die. Bob?”
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
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Here you will find flash fiction stories of sex, lust and love; stories of college students and Vietnam War veterans. These are stories full of the life of our time. Tell your friends about The Gazette.
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