On a street in Edinburgh, a woman I’ve only just met is quizzing me on my sexual fantasies. “Do you want softcore or hardcore? What positions do you prefer?” asks Cameryn Moore, a former phone sex operator turned playwright from the US, along with other, less printable, questions.
Her business plan is simple: for £20, punters can tell Moore what turns them on. She will then bash out a piece of bespoke erotic fiction for them on her typewriter. “I listen to their content then spit it out on paper – no punctuation, very stream of consciousness,” she says. “I also offer to read it out loud to them – and they walk away grinning from ear to ear because nobody’s ever asked them what they like when it comes to sex. So that’s what I do every day at the fringe: sit down for four or five hours a day and crank out dirty shit.” She calls the service Sidewalk Smut.
