Poole created Filthy E-Mails because she was disheartened by the realization that, unlike her, many people didn't save their sexy emails. "I save them in a little email folder. The really, really nice ones I might print out," she says. "I think they're romantic." Though: "I romanticize really dirty shit."
The blog provides a guilt-free way for nosy voyeuristic types to get their fix. If you're interested in hearing the fantasies of others, head to A Night of Filthy E-Mails at Plutonium Playhouse, November 29 at 8pm, where performers will read selections from the site. Poole understands the urge to snoop all too well---the experience of hacking into an ex-partner's email (she's not proud of it), spurred the blog's creation. Though Poole doesn't condone poking around in a partner's inbox, she finds there is something seductive about the act of snooping.
"Snooping is really exciting and you're really nervous," she says. "It's interesting to see how people talk when they don't think they're talking to you."
Poole has plenty of experience hearing the secret desires of strangers. Between stints running The Bus Stop Theatre and coordinating the Sex Festival at Plutonium Playhouse, she worked for six months as a phone-sex operator. "You can look at it as an incredibly fortunate position to be that anonymous person at the other end of the phone that gets to hear these things that human beings would not say to another individual at any other time," says Poole.
Her callers' fantasies often shocked her, though. Around half of her callers had pedophile fantasies, while the rest had fantasies ranging "from bestiality, adult babies, BDSM, vanilla, financial domination, sometimes piss play, scat play" to anything she "could possibly think of." Though many callers' fantasies would be morally reprehensible if acted out, Poole draws a clear line between sexual desire and sexual acts. "You truly cannot judge anyone's thoughts or fantasies. You can only judge their actions."
Visitors to Filthy E-Mails, which gets about 300 hits a day, will stumble upon a wide variety of sexual fantasies, including bondage fantasies and someone expressing their love for fisting their partner's ass as a joyous ode to scat play. Unlike most smutty sites, there aren't easy categories to help browsers. Anyone looking for softcore couples' erotica will have to sift through hardcore BDSM and parent/child fantasies to find it. Poole finds putting different fantasies together pushes users out of their comfort zones. "If you read through all the emails, there will be some things that you'll find disgusting, some that you think are hilarious," she says, and some you'll find "incredibly sexy and erotic."
A Night of Filthy Emails, Monday, November 29, 8pm, $10, 423-4653, filthyemails.org
