We all like to look, to some degree. How far do you go? Anyone who is sighted probably spends some time eyeing up potential partners. No shortage of people appreciate barely clad models on book covers. The internet is full of erotic images, easily found at no cost. There are plenty of films out there, catering to all the kinks you can think of (and probably a few that most of us would never imagine). Do you like to watch your partner doing sexy things? How about professional striptease or lapdancing? If you stumbled on a couple having sex, would you be embarrassed, or turned on? Would you actively seek scenarios in which you could watch other people expressing themselves erotically?

Somewhere, there is a line to cross that moves a person out of the realms of ‘normal’ visual interest and into the world of voyeurism. I once read that the definition of a perversion is something that you do instead of having sex. For some, watching can indeed be a viable substitute. In many ways it seems safer, being outside of the action, not being asked to perform, respond, or feel. You don’t have to engage. You don’t even have to come. Those on display do not even, necessarily, need to know you are there. And at that point I think it gets a little bit sinister, and has the potential to become more like stalking than sex. Voyeurism as part of an active sex life can be a lot of fun. For people uncomfortable with relationship, it can offer alternative ways to find satisfaction. As with many kinks, taken to unhealthy extremes, it can get messy.

 The darker aspects of voyeurism are something I’ve explored a bit in Heaven and Hell, where the possibilities of cameras and short circuit television for illicit watching come into play. It’s also a theme Jon Michaelsen took up in his short story Voyeur, where watching has dangerous consequences. The story explores obsession, and has some great twists. Talking about this subject, Jon told me, “The idea for the story actually came to me when I used to travel a lot for business, and while in New York one evening and staying in a high-rise hotel, I happened upon a couple having wild, passionate sex while looking out my window and seeing their shadowy images in the highrise across the street.” Accidental seeing can so easily lead into intentional watching. We can impose our needs, desires, fantasies on the people we watch.

 New lyd author Barry Lowe also has a voyeuristic tale coming out soon – he told me, “My next story in the queue (I think) is Four on the Floor which is a voyeurism story (as well as cuckold and gangbang). Concerns a couple whose relationship has gone stale to the extent that one partner, Steve, spends more time jerking off while watching a neighbour through binoculars than he does he does with his lover, Billy.” Like Jon, Barry has considered the more troubling possibilities around voyeurism. He describes this tale as ‘taking an ominous turn’ in a direction that moves his character out of the relative safety of just looking.

 I think there’s an escapist element to voyeurism, getting away from yourself, and your own limitations. Friends who are actively into porn tell me that part of the kick is imagining yourself in the scenario. It allows a person to explore things they might be unwilling, or unable to do in person. It’s also a scenario on which the watcher can feel that they are totally in control of themselves. A feeling that proves illusionary in some of our stories. Consequently, voyeuristic kicks may seem a lot safer than they really are – both physically and emotionally. But, if things were always smooth, easy and happy, we wouldn’t have any stories to tell!

Australian author Barry Lowe is a red hot new addition to loveyoudivine. I thought it would be good to find out more about him, so I pounced on him for a blog interview.

 Bryn: How would you describe your writing style?

 Barry: Horny humorous smut.

 Bryn: That’s some attention grabber! Have you always written that combination, or did you slide into it?

 Barry: I started out as a journalist and got into sex writing in the early 1980s when a local free gay paper, The Sydney Star, asked me to write a column which became Lowe-Life, about the wonderfully diverse sex/love life of me and my lover, Wally. From there I went on to write sex comedies for theatre, an independent romantic film called Violet’s Visit, and later short erotica for print anthologies. I’m back to writing about my sex life again for another gay bar rag in Sydney. So I’ve come full circle.

Bryn: Which form of writing do you enjoy most out of those?

Barry: It’s a real cliché but I love the immediacy of theatre. Sitting in an audience listening to people laugh out loud at what I’ve written or else groaning at the filth they didn’t think anyone would have the guts to put up on a stage. Not that all my plays are like that, any more than all my writing is. I also write film star biographies and McFarland published Atomic Blonde, my book on 1950s blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren two years ago and I have one coming out later this year on Deanna Durbin.

 Bryn: Who’s influenced you most?

Barry: I’d love to say Shakespeare, Moliere, Jean-Paul Sartre, Doris Day and all that pretentious bullshit but basically I’m a sponge and soak up an impression here, a feeling there, an emotion somewhere else. I can’t say I’m an original but what I was writing when I started was different to anything else that I knew of. Later I discovered people like William Burroughs and Jean Genet, and then the wonderful world of gay porn. So, I guess the easiest answer to that is everyone and no one, and anyone I’m reading or watching at the moment.

 Bryn: I have to ask, what are you reading and watching at the moment?

 Barry: Anything and everything Josh Lanyon writes, the crime novels of Arnaldur Indriđason, habu’s Death in Key West, Sarah Masters’ Grave Findings, and a travel guide to Iceland. Watching: a delightful English series called Ladies of Letters, the second season of Glee, the new Doctor Who, and the new season of Foyle’s War. And rewatching the films of Doris Day.

Bryn: You’re clearly very ecclectic in your tastes. Does that show through in the fiction writing as well?

Barry: Oh, I have my obsessions but it’s probably true, although it probably is for a lot of writers. My subject matter  ranges from steampunk, science fiction, Victoriana, exotic but real locations (I love travel being stuck here at the arse end of the world in Australia), mystery and detective fiction, and comic fiction while my style ranges from comedy through that icky feeling in the stomach romance through to sleaze. I’m a bower bird writer, I peck at whatever entertains me.

Bryn: What have you got coming out at lyd?

 Barry: Already in the schedule are the short M/M eroticas Carbon Dating [a young guy in lust with his best mate’s dad] followed by Marine Biology [a U.S. Marine gangbang], Let the Games Begin [What goes on at the Glory Hole Games after the main Olympic competition is over], and Stocks and Shared [bondage and revenge in the Wall Street financial sector]. Then there’s a few more in the queue that we haven’t started editing yet. Plus I’m working on, The Major and The Miners, a five-part series set in Sydney during the 1930s involving a doctor and two coal miners, and a cook book series that involves M/M erotica and recipes.

Bryn: Wow! And, where can people find you online?

Barry: Problem is that I’m Downunder and our online hours only coincide early morning when I’m not awake and late night when I’m tapping away at my computer trying to turn out the first eBook short story that earns $10 million. I’m on Facebook. And people can contact me via my website www.barrylowe.net. I’m happy to chat, I can procrastinate with the best of them.

 Barry’s first release at lyd is out now, so do have a look at Carbon Dating.