Reading · Letters from the Edgelands

It’s 2007.

There are four of us sitting around my kitchen table. We each have a notebook, a pen, a mug of tea, and a plate that holds a licked-clean fork and a few tiny crumbs of the delicious German kuchen my friend lovingly baked and brought for the occasion. The smooth, creamy custard topping has left a lingering mouth pleasure that has us all smiling with contentment.

It’s the inaugural meeting of our self-titled “Success Team”. I feel we are off to a good start.

I initiated the group after reading a book by Barbara Sher. In it, she offered the “success team” model as a way to stay accountable and overcome goal paralysis. Just as the book instructed, we go around the table, each person taking a turn at sharing their dream and life vision, while the others offer encouragement and help brainstorm solutions.

We’re in our mid-to-late 30s, and each of my friends wants something bigger and better related to their career. One wants to leave academia to retrain in Shiatsu, another wants to turn her photography hobby into her day job, and the third aspires to be a non-executive director for an environmental charity.

By the time each person finishes speaking, they have a list of ideas and actions jotted down in their notebook. We’re taking our success seriously.

I go last.

“I want to quit my job and write erotica,” I say. “But I doubt I can make a living from that.”

“What about audio porn?” my friend suggests. “I reckon it’s going to be the next big thing. And you do have a lovely voice.”

I diligently write “erotica recordings” in my notebook and promise I’ll have a go at recording a story using my old tape cassette player. It’s the same one I used to record my band practices on when I fronted a group called “Wild Honey” in the late 1990s. It’s been a while since I performed anything.

^{Wild Honey, CC Blooms, Edinburgh, 1998}

…

I’ve stuck to writing smut and have dabbled in recording guided meditations, but I never followed through on the audio erotica idea.

(That industry really took off around 2018, thanks to the tech and apps that finally replaced the pre-internet phone sex lines and the later, amateur recordings hosted on erotic writing sites. I could have been ahead of the curve, but maybe now I’d missed the boat.)

My meditations reach over 100k plays on YouTube, and I get commissioned to write some more for the Breethe app. Someone in the comments jokes about the way I say “earth”. (I say “earth” the way any person with a Scottish accent does: with a rolled ‘r’ and a soft ‘th’. I think it’s beautiful.) Another commenter tells me my voice feels like a warm hug - offering some gentle respite in a harsh world.