Welcome to Pleasure-Seeking: a column about desire, sex and modern culture

From Camille Sojit Pejcha, a writer published in The New York Times, Document Journal & more

Photo by Michael O’Donohue (@m_odonohue).

Hi!! Camille here with a fun, flirty little life update. After 5 years of writing and editing features at Document Journal, I’m excited to share some new projects I have in the works, one of which is this newsletter. You heard me: I’m relaunching my column Pleasure-Seeking on Substack, where I'll be using sex as a jumping off point to discuss pop culture, sharing stories about my own romantic experiences, and examining cultural trends through the lens of desire. More than anything, this is a space for me to publish unfiltered, personal writing on the topics that obsess me, free from the regulations of Big Media™️ and the tyranny of SEO.

As a subscriber, you can expect to receive essays, cultural criticism, personal reflections, scene reports, and interviews with artists, thinkers, and writers I admire. I’ll be publishing about once a week, instead of once a month, and am expanding to new formats including a sex/relationship advice column, personal recommendations, and photo diaries from my wildest nights out. I’m also experimenting with audio and video, and subscribers will get first access to the exciting multimedia projects I’ve been cooking up.

If you’ve read my writing, you know I’m always taking readers along with me on wild and frankly ill-advised exploits. I’ve infiltrated a $12,000 sex party, interviewed my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends, been tied up and suspended by shibari experts, and provided a window into the subversive queer nightlife scene still thriving at New York’s Chelsea Hotel. I am, according to genius culture critic (and my completely unbiased friend) Rayne Fisher-Quann, “The one person who has an actual claim to being the modern-day Carrie Bradshaw.” And the more support I get on this platform, the more time I can reasonably dedicate to exploring New York’s sexual underground—which means that by LIKING AND SUBSCRIBING, you are pretty much keeping the beating heart of culture alive!! If you are a true patron of the arts, you might even consider paying $6/month to support the project, or sharing this newsletter with your followers, friends, lovers, and enemies. In the coming weeks, I plan to experiment with different kinds of content to find out what you guys are most into—so if you get in early, you’ll not only be spicing up your inbox, but getting an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help me shape this newsletter into something you love to read.

As you may have heard, the media ecosystem is crumbling, and platforms like Instagram and TikTok are cracking down on sexual content. So while I’ll still be freelancing for outlets like Slate and The New York Times, I’m really excited to have a place to foster discussion that isn’t censored by social media networks, and to share the kind of unfiltered personal writing I love. I think about what I want, and why I want it, all the time—and as I untangle my own desires, I hope I’ll help you make sense of your own. 

xoxo
Camille