Moments from the Day 1/27

Yesterday, the first thing I saw when I left my building on the way to work was a small, dead rat lying by the curb. It looked uninjured, but it was lying on its back in the street, totally intact. I think a stray cat must have killed it, then spooked when I came out the door and left it lying there. I wonder if it ate it later or if a car came along and smashed it.

When I got to work, my fresh cup of coffee spilled all over my new dress and my desk, destroying my papers and the carpet.

In the evening I reread two poems I'd written recently. I need to do more of this, I thought. I'm going to try to record these things in this journal for a while. They'll stack up.

Deeeeeep breaths

The past two and a half months have been mountainous, ups and downs, crevices and chasms, my brain and heart and desires have been opening up and vehemently snapping shut, flying and falling in quick succession. I haven't been able to make sense of any of it.

I'm trying to find a space in my head where I can calm down and consider everything that's happened. There has been pain--so much pain that I haven't figured out what to do with it. I haven't had time to DO anything with it, and the time I have had, I've been so exhausted that I haven't even tried. There's been elation and possibility and hands stretched out to help me up, but the pain bites at my heels so steadily that the elation quickly transforms itself into fear--the synapses get confused and the signals get crossed until all I can feel is stress bearing down. I think I need to clear out some space for myself, just a big expanse in my head, or on the floor at home, to spread it all out like so many magazines and slowly, carefully, quietly, organize and redistribute my impulses until there is a structure to the madness around me. Or at least some kind of integration of it into my self, not my heart or my head alone. I need silence, candle light, solitude.

I don't know how to get that.

Crappy Coincidences, or Bad Omens?: or, how to tell you're going to have a bad day.

When I woke up today, I absolutely could not convince myself to get out of bed. It was warm in the bed and cold in the room, it had snowed all night and looked soft and quiet outside, and I knew that today would be a very long day of sitting in a chair in various places if I did get up. It didn't look promising. But I told myself I'd been so productive the past few days and had so many things to accomplish that getting up would be worth it. So I did.
And then the shit started happening. Small at first, but escalating slowly. I had slept in too late to yoga, which I've been trying (somewhat successfully) to do every morning to help keep my energy up. Instead I got in the shower to soften up my skin so I could give myself my two weekly injections of anti-joint-hurty medicine, but then remembered that I'd left the refill of Enbrel at work because they have to be kept refrigerated and I hadn't gone straight home after they were delivered yesterday. So I gave myself the other shot when I got out of the shower. When I was done with that, I set about making eggs to go with the Korean-style kimchi-fried-rice bowls we had half-prepared the night before, but all the frying pans were dirty. So I had to wash one, and of course I chose the one that had the most stubborn grossness in it, which took me a good ten minutes to clean out of the pan, only to get it dirty again, which seemed wrong and made me angry. As I set about cooking the eggs, the ferret came up and started giving me the most mournful, "I-know-you're-going-to-leave-me-all-alone-here-all-day" looks and pawing at my leg, which made me feel really shitty. And then, for no reason at all as far as I could tell, both the eggs I broke into the pan had broken yolks.
I had no time to eat breakfast after this, and left my house later than expected. On the way to the subway, I got dripped on three times, all over my face, the makeup I had just put on, and the hair I had just blown dry. I told Connor I was sure this was going to be a bad day, and he told me these weren't omens. I disagreed.
Once at work, I realized how little money I have when I glanced at my banking account. Then it turned out that my coworker had called out sick, which will make it much more difficult for me to leave here in time to get to my first night class of the semester. Showing up a half hour late for the first class would be embarrassing and unpleasant.
Just now, I decided that I'd give myself my second shot in the bathroom on my lunch break. Giving oneself an injection in the work bathroom is not fun. Not only because this particular injection hurts like a motherfucker and then stings for hours afterward, but also because the bathroom here is like a middle school bathroom. A row of four stalls and four sinks and no way to lock the door to keep out the constant stream of other women who need to use the loo. So there I was, with my shirt rolled up and my pants pulled down so I could see my stomach, where I was preparing to inject my Enbrel subcutaneously. I'd brought a cotton swab and alcohol in a plastic bag, and as the woman in the other stall made the usual preparing-to-pee noises, I was standing creepily in the other stall and crinkling a plastic bag a whole lot. I'd already gone to the bathroom a half hour or so before so I couldn't even fake like I wasn't doing something shady by popping a squat. As she left the stall to wash her hands, I actually injected myself and bit my lip--hard enough to really hurt--to keep myself from sucking in a breath at the stinging pain of the medicine going into my body. I think it might be one of those things where the molecules in the medicine are too big to fit in with the molecules in the blood stream or something, but I'm really bad at remembering science-y facts so maybe I made that up. Whatever the case, injecting this shit hurts really bad and I had to try really hard not to make some noise that would fit the context, but to someone else in the bathroom minding her own business, would sound really, really creepy. It hurts so much that no matter how much I try to inject the very small amount of liquid into my fatty tissue, I just cannot push the plunger down very quickly. At home, when I'm being more of a baby about it, it can take me up to a minute to get it all in. This time it took me maybe half that long.
Finally the other woman left the bathroom, I finished injecting, and I put the used syringe on the makeshift 'shelf' I'd fashioned out of the toilet paper holders. I got all my clothes back to where they were supposed to be, and as I reached up to put my instruments of torture back in the plastic bag, I accidentally knocked the syringe into the toilet.
GOD DAMN IT.
There was nothing else in the toilet, and our toilets get cleaned every day by the building cleaning guy, and I've heard a billion times that the water that comes into the toilet is just as clean as the water from the tap, but... There are like 20 women at the gallery who use this bathroom every day. I did NOT want to stick my hand in there.
Luckily--I thought--the air in the syringe and the plastic of the stopper and hand-grippy-thing at the end were keeping the syringe floating, needle-down, in the potty. If I could reach in and just grab the very end of it, I might be able to avoid getting wet.
I grabbed a paper towel/napkin I'd been using to set things on and folded it up so it was long and thin, then bent over the toilet. I balked the first time, and rearranged the way I was holding the paper towel, then reached for the floating end of the syringe. As soon as my hand brushed against it, the entire thing stopped floating and landed with a soft 'chink' at the very bottom of the toilet bowl.
No words for my frustration. The skin on my stomach burned and itched where I'd injected it (this happens every time... actually, it still does...), but it was really annoying right now. "Fuck it," I muttered, plunged my entire hand into the toilet bowl, brought out the dripping syringe, stuffed it in the bag, and stormed out of the stall.
Thank god nobody saw me come out, all wet, and stuff a plastic bag into the garbage, muttering obscenities to myself. I washed my hand for a LONG time and went back to the desk, where I'm writing this now. If you don't hear from me for a few days, rest assured it's because something even STUPIDER happened to me, and I am hiding out in my bed until the bad days pass.

Baby, It's Cold Outside: or, winter shennanigans in NYC

Ah, my lovelies, life has returned to normal after all the holiday jibba-jabba and the ensuing travel to exotic locales (Vegas and Boston). I've slept a lot for the past week, and now things are returning to their normal, frantically-paced rhythm. This week is outright insanity, and next week looks like it will be about the same, but my birthday is coming and I am gritting my teeth and determined to stay chipper.

The city is also settling back into its usual, bat-shit insane self. I've been seeing and hearing some interesting stuff lately, which I thought I'd share with you:

1) Last Wednesday, after a panicked morning of almost-guerrilla-style-because-it-was-so-low-budget filming for pornocracy, I was on my way to work at about noon. The subways at noon on a weekday are pretty deserted, so there weren't many people on the platform at 86th Street. I walked down toward the end for some seclusion, but as I walked I heard singing from behind me. I slowed down to hear it, then turned around. Two men, one on either side of the platform, were making music together. One, who I couldn't see because he was behind a column on my side of the station, had turned on some sort of background music, I'm assuming on a boombox, and had begun singing "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)" in a slow, jazzy style. Another man, on the uptown side of the station, stood and lazily beat the snare drum he was carrying, and sang back-up vocals. It was beautiful. Even as the trains came into the station and cut them off, they kept singing. I could see the backup singer's face through the flashing windows of the train.

2) A few days later, I was once again on my way to work, around 10:30. I'd ducked into a Starbucks, which I rarely do, to grab some coffee and yogurt for breakfast. I'd just been poked with needles, drained of blood, and told to take more medicine, so I was not oh so very happy. As I was stirring some milk into my cuppa Joe, "My Girl" by the Temptations came on the store's sound system. I don't know about you, but that song has got to be one of the best songs ever recorded, in my humble opinion. It gets me dancing, or swaying, or toe-tapping most the time, and it gets me singing every time. So there I was, singing away in Starbucks, stirring my coffee. One of the baristas came over to inspect the counter and supply situation; she was singing, too. We stood side by side for a moment, singing, before she stopped and looked at me with a huge smile. "You're singing, too!" We laughed and I left for work in a better mood than I'd been for days. Music really is amazing.

3) On Friday night, I watched "Bukowski: Born Into This," probably one of the best documentaries I've ever seen in my life. I was pretty drunk and I talked through a lot of it because I was in such a good mood, but the long stretches of Bukowski reading his poems jagged into me like a fishhook. I'd read Bukowski before, and I could recognize his genius, but sometimes the brutality, the alcoholism inherent in his poetry and especially in his novels, got to me and made it difficult. But hearing him, really, for the first time. His slow, nasal but very soft, very quiet, very measured voice, the rhythm of his poems, the bare and shocking truth of it. It really got into me. I spent the remainder of the night talking about what it is that makes real art, and how Bukowski's pain was the mark of art. And how the scary thing about Bukowski was that he was such a gentle man who longed only for peace and quiet and above all for love, but could not find it on this earth and so was turned into a nasty, violent, belligerent old man—and yet how, at any moment, he could burst into a beauty so fragile, in tears or honesty, that he could lure in a butterfly to his fingertip.

4) On Friday night, I went to see my favorite singer/songwriter/poet/novelist Simone Felice. He was doing his first ever solo acoustic set of whatever songs and poems and prose he felt like performing for us, in the tiny back room of the tiny Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. It was... Well, you know what, I'm not even going to try to describe it. Because some things are better kept locked up inside to keep warming you up than aired out so they can lose their flavor. Like soda in a bottle. I want this to stay bubbly in me. But, suffice it to say, all my musings on art and what makes it real were there in front of me, singing away and bringing the whole room together in a way that was stunning to experience. We sang together, and I got so deeply hooked that I almost had to get up and go cry in the bathroom for the beauty of it all, but I stayed where I was and soaked it up. Afterward, I gave Simone a vial of Fairy Dust and this poem by Bukowski. It's exactly like that soda-bottle feeling. It was the first full moon of the decade.

New Years Eve Wrap-up: or, ramblings from an early morning couch

So I just woke up on New Year's Eve, a vacation day for me, and saw that it has snowed about an inch and a half since I woke up to turn my alarm off at 7:45. The weather people had been predicting rain. This made me so happy that I got up before 10:00 (I know it's 10:00 now, but I had to get situated) with the idea of recounting how great this year has been, and with an earnest wish to the Universe that my 2010 can be as good.

This year:
-I rang in the New Year '09 at the Slipper Room watching pretty ladies do burlesque with some of my best friends in the world, on one of the coldest nights I can remember. We kept it warm with booze and dancing.
-My mother and little sister came to visit shortly thereafter, on the coldest weekend of the winter. But we still had fun by eating tons of sushi and peanut butter. (Not together.) And my mom came to my apartment and loved it, even though she had to acknowledge that the double bed is not only used by me.
-I went to New Orleans for the first time, and while there spent some time with some of the coolest people in the world, AND heard Old Crow Medicine Show and the Felice Brothers play Ziggy Stardust--on my BIRTHDAY. It really doesn't get better.
-I became a citizen in a country led by Barack Obama, in whom I still place a lot of trust. I think we're gonna come out of things ok, people, although I DO wish the public option hadn't been hacked to bits. There goes my hope for an independent future...
-I developed and indulged a very public terror of robots and slime molds.
-I got a story published in an anthology from Pergola Publishers!
-I got several stories and articles published in The Whiskey Dregs literary magazine.
-I celebrated St. Patrick's Day by walking around in the dark somewhere on Long Island only to be welcomed in by a family of super-Irish people who gave me beer and let me pretend to know the words to a bunch of Irish songs with them. In the morning they gave me cheeseburgers. It was magical, like a leprechaun.
-I met Phillipe Petit, the Man on Wire.
-I tried waxing my private bits for the first time, and I loved it! But it's pricey so I stopped.
-I gave into the trend and bought myself some skinny jeans, which I now love because they let me show off my awesome shoes.
-On a sadder note, my favorite cowboy boots bit the dust in the spring and have not been replaced yet. I must find the perfect pair. Along with them, the car that I drove to Chicago in from South Dakota to buy the cowboy boots in, then later drove to Chicago to live there, and in which I spent countless hours driving around playing loud music trying to overcome wicked bouts of depression... Also bit the dust...
-On sad notes, since we're going there, two of my great uncles and two of my cats died this year. Also, Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Swayze, and David Carradine.
-One of my best friends moved to Kansas, of all the weird-ass things to do.
-On brighter notes, however, I went on two trips to North Carolina this past year. one just to visit my dear friend Gert, who showed me an excellent time, and again later to go on a beach vacation with my best, best friends in the world, Gert, Mich, Lib and her amazing babies, and Connor. Because I have always had to know better, I was one of the few who escaped without a horrendous sunburn.
-I started taking classes in publishing at CCNY, nailed the class I took in Copy Editing, and now may have a future in publishing if the writing thing doesn't work out.
-I went to Centralia, the eternally-on-fire town in Pennsylvania, and had whacky adventures.
-I did some really cool modeling projects, which you can check out if you'd like at http://www.modelmayhem.com/864844
-I stopped taking the anti-inflammatory pills I've been on since elementary school, which had been working on giving me a stomach ulcer, and started on the much-more-painful self-injected Enbril, which has made me feel like a human being again, even though it sucks when I inject it. YAY!
-I started writing a column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
-I told my parents about this column, and thus about my involvement in the smut biz. They didn't disown me!
-Before telling them about the smut thing, I organized and brought into being a gigantic 60th birthday party for my parents.
-I started writing for Whack! Magazine.
-I went to my first-ever porn convention, where I met and was fondled by Ron Jeremy and hung out after-hours with Jenna Haze, Lexi Love, Sean Michaels, Mr. Marcus, Joanna Angel, and on and on and on...
-I did a presentation on swingers at Nerd Nite at Galapagos Art Space which was very well received (and attended a bunch of other Nerd Nites, at which I met some really cool people like Shyaporn).
-I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, after drinking for free at Nerd Nite for about five hours. I skipped most of the way and sang songs from Newsies with a girl I had never met before.
-I saw many concerts--I'm sure I'll forget some. I have seen the Felice Brothers twice (and will see them again tonight!), The Duke and the King at least four times (and started up a sort-of working correspondence with Simone Felice), Skinny Puppy, Cat Empire, The Dead Weather, and who knows what else. I also saw "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Live on Stage: The Nightman Cometh" and kinda-sorta met Charlie Day and Rob McElhenny.
-I fell in love again!
-I almost got punched in the face by a random guy on the sidewalk in Brooklyn on Halloween because he was threatening my girlfriend and I was NOT having any of that shit. I was told by friends later that I was screaming obscenities at him, but I say I was just telling him to leave us alone.
-I bought a new computer.
-I got an internet stalker, and heard from my old real-life stalker! Whoopie!
-I learned to make ramen at home, and learned how absolutely mind-blowingly awesome ramen can be, thanks to places like Momofuku and Ippudo.
-I celebrated Christmas with some of the best people in the world--my friends and my family.
-I learned to really call myself a writer and believe it when I did. I failed to get a book deal, and I lot one of my magazine jobs, I still think I'm on the up and up. It sure is a lot of work though.
-I got reading glasses!
-I kicked ass, took names, and hope to continue the trend in 2010. I'll be going to Vegas for more porn performer canoodling next weekend, then to Boston for much-needed girlfriend canoodling the next weekend.

Eulogy for my Euth: or, mindless self indulgence

There is a steady stream, almost a triumphant parade
Of stumbling buffoons like crumbs along the sidewalk,
A constant flow of retards in whom
I have no interest, no common thread.
I would like for them all to learn how to walk
Or, better, to evaporate into a cloud of subpar intelligence,
Then rain back down, purified into sophisticates.

I remember when this happened,
When this lack of romanticism became a real void in my soul.
It was down that long, empty, straight line of two-lane highway outside Pekin,
When I was trying to force myself to cry,
Expecting that those tears would send up some kind of primordial beacon;
Expecting my phone to ring.
But had he called then, as I wept myself away from him,
It would have been just the other side of too late. It wouldn't have really hurt.
I'd have flown back to him, dried those homing beacon tears,
Curled up inside him if he'd let me,
And settled into his chest cavity,
A blight and an emptiness already, but trying to force the sweetness he'd used up,
Wanting and working to recreate a childhood whimsy
With no whim to build on.

It had been a long time coming, this stony gaze of mine.
Chinks in my soft, fleshy armor had appeared long before.
The bitter Midwestern winters had whipped away the baby smoothness,
And the abandonment of a dear friend had formed a few scales.
But the coldness in my blood was just cooling down;
I was tepid, I guess.

But those wild moments in the middle of the blackest plains nights,
The feel of him near me, the memories crashing into foam against the present...
It was enough to make me feel again the the rush of my unfettered self,
To cry and to mean it. To want something so deeply I felt myself cave in around its absence. To explode into pinpoints of starlight with someone. Or even alone. To wonder at those stars, and try to discern them.

I nursed the possibility of keeping myself as raw as he made me.
I thought of it as I walked to work.
I wrote feverishly, painted nightly.
Listened to out-of-control music too loud.
Even as he drew away, and the coldness of my lonely living room floor stared back at me, so beige it made me spill paint all over it to love it again,
I relived those moments on the wide open prairie, wedged a lump in my throat to keep myself wide open, too.

But the baby-soft skin was shed, the scales and reptilian slowness were creeping in,
Along with an indifference I felt in return for him but pushed down beneath the joy.
I needed this feeling, this ululation and terror, I thought. It kept me young.

And then that night, alone and frightened in a foreign room, it snapped.
The grey force of reverse evolution, the fighting force in my genes overtook idealism,
And down came the high hopes, stifling the wind in my hair and plugging up the leaks in my eyes.
I stopped crying for him. I stopped crying for anyone.

Unexpected phone calls and the occasional reverie
Will bring a far-away tension in my guts even now,
A kind of echo of something that once was,
And was something that is far past the word "glorious,"
Up there in the realm of Biblical awe.
There was this feeling in me, for him, for the world through all that I felt.

But these days,
With the idiots bumping into me in the almost-as-bitter New York winter,
The crush of holiday crowds drowning out the sparkles of expectation,
I feel it really only now and then, in goosebumps,
And often, ice-pick-like, in the glittering of her eyes.

Pitfalls of Porn Writing; or, my first stalker fan

Well. I had a great holiday weekend. I took two days completely off from all writing- and work-related things, then spent two days working on several projects. I felt good. Somewhere in there I got friend requests and messages from TWO, count 'em TWO, fans of my column, who found me on Facebook! Yippie! Fans! Who sought ME out based only on my pen name! Awesome.

Until, today, I got this (I'm x-ing out his name). Please don't feel obligated to read the whole thing. Really, just glancing through its ridiculous length to pick up a few key words should do the trick:

"XXXXX sent you a message.

--------------------
Subject: hey

So you added me as a friend. I wasn’t sure if you would but I’m glad you did. Obviously we aren’t friends but maybe we can be some version of friends if you are interested. Why, you ask (I’m assuming you are asking that, so if you aren’t then hmmm lol, I’m going to go with it anyway) ? It’s a legitimate question I guess, and so I will attempt to answer it to get things moving a bit. With that said, this email will probably either be the beginning of our “friendship” or the end of it, so it’s probably good to get that out of the way up front. Also, it is good to note that I am feeling somewhat “serious” in tone right now, so it will probably seem that I am that way, although you should also realize that behind almost everything I say or write there is always an awareness of my own absurdity or the absurdity of the context or situation or basically of existence generally, and that I am always “playing around” or “joking” or better yet, laughing at myself, and want to communicate my recognition of that. For example when you look at my quotes around the words “friendship” and “serious” a couple of sentences back my intention in using them was to invite you to know that I am not taking myself or the situation very seriously even when it’s hard to imagine that I am not (this becomes important to say since we are communicating in writing and since you have no prior experience of me to use as a reference point). Anyway, enough of this for the moment, I think, you might be very tired of reading already and I need to get to the point. But I find that difficult because to me there never really is only one – point that is. But, I will stop, and go on.

First, I will say that while I was looking at your profile after you added me I noticed a comment that one of your friends left in response to your posting about you having a fan (which I’m pretty sure was me ). He was kidding around and responded “Call the Police”, but of course a joke is not the same thing as saying something without meaning, so I will address this quickly. I am only interested in reciprocal relationships, no matter what the degree of role playing involved (I say this because as we both know to some degree all relationships contain role playing but I am also not averse to actual role playing, although I am not stuck on it either lol). Anyway, in other words I am not “The Fan” from that bad movie with Wesley Snipes in it that I don’t remember very well. I am not going to be involved in your life unless invited so there is not much too worry about along the lines of what I think your friend was “joking” about. If at any time, even let’s say if we were married or something along these lines (I use this word “married” to make a point only because I am not particularly interested in the idea of marrying) and you were to say “XXXX, I no longer want to be involved with you – in any way” I would probably say “OK”. Well, maybe I am exaggerating, I might have many other things to say, in fact, I know I would because I am not dead of spirit, however my point here, my one point here, is that I have no interest in forcing myself on anyone because it is just too much trouble for me. I am a simple man and cannot be bothered. “I am a reasonable man get off my case”, to quote RADIOHEAD.

Second, and probably more to the heart of the matter here, is that I am fascinated by you due to what seems to be your fascination with pornography. Now, that was a very dangerous sentence for me to type because you might have now taken it to mean that I am only fascinated by this aspect of you and no others. Or that I have only the capability to be fascinated by pornography and nothing else. You might have taken this to be the one point, the definition of me or of my “relationship” (notice the quotes) with you, when in fact it is only one of the points of either of those things. Labels leave out more than they include (my analyst said that to me the other day and I was like “yes, that is very simple and easy and sums up quite nicely what had seemed like an overarching component of my personality or experience but that seemed impossible for me to articulate - and she said it one little sentence. She’s Cuban) In other words, I will say this to add to my explanation…Your art work is amazing. And I generally admire your style of social living because it is quite foreign to me from what I can gather by the very very little I know about you . It is foreign to me in the social aspect, however not in the creative. On the creative side we are neighbors. Hmm, where have I wound up here? I have to re read. Hold on.

OK. So, yes. I will leave the particulars about the fascination, or better yet the intrigue and curiosity and interest I have in both you and pornography for now. You are also very pretty. Have a nice day. It's nasty out."



...oh, good. He's fascinated with me. And pornography. And mentions marriage.

Why can't I just have a few nice folks who like my column send me fan mail? Is that so much to ask? I'm gonna. I dunno. Go shiver in the corner or something.

I am ignoring my responsibilities this week because I can't really handle the idea of them, much less tackling them. Far from feeling ineffectual, I've been writing more of what I want to write. It's liberating. But I know I'll regret it later.
But.
I am also at the end of my rope with this gallery. Suddenly it's like the epicenter of f-ing midtown. I have had a bowl of ramen here (awesomely delicious Korean ramen from the place across the street) for an hour and a half and I'm about halfway through it, and I've been trying to watch a 3-minute video on YouTube for about the same amount of time. I've gotten 30 seconds in. Because every time I put the phone down some moron walks in and stares at me so I can't be stuffing my mouth with noodles. And when that person passes, the phone rings again, and when I put it down it rings again, and when I put THAT down, the same moron is back at the desk asking some inane question, and then when the moron walks away again, another moron comes in, and then someone from the back office comes walking past and because I can hear them before I can see them, anytime someone from the back office approaches I have to assume it's a Big Boss, which means, again, that I can't be stuffing my face with noodles. It's like a three-ring goddamn circus in here.
I should be happy because the busy-ness means that we're selling art, which means that my job is secure and that the Big Bosses are in better moods than usual (seriously, yesterday TKR offered me cookies [which I refused because I hate her; when I said no thanks, she looked taken aback--haha, take THAT you scum!] and today Mr. Levai told me he was 'excellent' when I asked how he was doing). But the truth is, I don't give a CRAP about the gallery's sales, and I have a horrendous splitting headache that won't go away. I like it when it's really, really quiet and nobody is buying anything, because then I can eat my lunch in less than two hours and get some work done, if I want.
Hm.
But I was going somewhere with this.
Writing....
Hm.
Oh well, it's gone.
/rant

Skinny Puppy: or, my anger management issues

I want to be there in the thick of it, protecting, holding fast against what might hurt her. I want to be bashing in skulls. I'm always like that. At concerts I jump into mosh pits and get beaten down unless I'm held back by someone bigger, wiser, less prone to starting fights. There's this thing in me, some kind of tribal being with no regard for personal safety or the convention of nonviolence. Sometimes people deserve to be kicked in the face. And I can kick pretty high. I kicked someone in the head once, after ample warning, and he was still shocked.
And yet, there are always cops around, watching. Or crowds with their disapproving glares. Or reasonable folks standing nearby, talking me back from ripping off my shirt and plunging in--reminding me I am not really the Incredible Hulk. I am Lynsey. I am small and weak.
I remind them that I've got the crazy in me. My temper flares are like sunspots. They can cause all kinds of problems.
But, yes, I can hurt too. And I do, when I watch the melee going on around me, when I stand on the sidelines and watch and tremble with this fury that seems born into me. Instead I smash things, non-living things, and when I was young I learned to imagine that alarm clocks and mirrors had feelings, like all of my toys. Not so I could talk to them or feel like I had companions, but so that when I broke them, I would feel more triumphant. "Just punch your pillow," said friends when I told them my rage had gotten me in trouble again, when I broke the sliding glass door. "But pillows never seem like they feel it," I'd answer. "They bounce right back."
I wanted to jump into the fray last night, pound my fists into you and watch you reel back. Rip off these damn chains and unleash the fury of my purple pants. Dance like the devil was in me.
But I remembered, thank god, that no one was holding me back this time. That guy with the meathead might really pummel me. I held myself back.
Or, maybe I'm just old and lazy.

Lord, I was Born a Ramblin' Man: or, androgynous, confused self-reflection

Some days, when the time drags by slowly with busywork, as I watch my hours of productivity fall away unused, a sadness begins to steal in around noon. Quietly, pad-footed, cat-burgling my energy in slow steps, until sometime in the mid-afternoon I look up and realize my heart is wide open. I want to turn on slow songs, quiet songs, about honey and childhood and remorse, and stare quietly at falling rain and think about candles dripping. I feel tenderized, as if someone had beaten me with one of those big wood meat pounder things with the blunt spikes, as if the smallest prick of emotion aimed my direction could stab a fork in me. I see flashes of all the beautiful eyes I've known in my life, the big, wide brown ones and the long-lashed hazels and the occasional stunning blues. I feel heartache coming on, a rip working its way up from my stomach along the very back of my trachea and expanding every time I shift in my chair. I want be very, very still, let myself feel the waves of nostalgia and yearning and mystery of where I am now. I feel tricklings inside, as of raindrops on a window pane but perhaps it's just the pane of me, being as transparent as ever. The past few weeks have been emotional but mostly for other people--I'm just on the periphery watching the action. But the contact with intense feeling has brought about my weakness to the seduction of abandonment to those whims. To feel so deeply, to lose myself in the blackness of it, the shutting down of thoughts, to weep or to scream or to swoon... It's been a long time. And I miss it. Adulthood sucks out those wild moments and replaces them with routine, comfort, calculation, practical considerations and those occasional breakthroughs of sordid passion through the mud-caked armor... They are real and close and loud, and we shut them out, shut them down, shut ourselves away. But I've gotten a taste and I'm fiending for more.
I suppose it's just a matter of an empty day. Not a quiet one or an easy one, but one during which my brain has had little to do but sit still with itself and let its thoughts roam inward. But here I sit amidst the bustle of the gallery, with my heart pulsing for everyone to see, just hoping someone will notice and break it.

Ponderings: or, possibly I am now a criminal

I... have not blogged.... for a week. And so now, it's time to blog. And yet here I am on Monday morning with a frustrating lack of things happening in my brain. I tried to Gchat a moment ago and nothing happened. Just no words.
Sooooo....
I just wrote this article for Whack! which was horrendously underdeveloped and kind of badly put together in the first place, but which I didn't have enough time to fix. And which I feel really weird about having written. Because in the article I make a case for people being less hysterically panicky about child molesters, aka sex offenders.
Because, here's the thing, I'm not in any way condoning really messed up things that people might do to children. We're not living in a day and age where forcing a prepubsecent child into a sexual situation is ok. I don't know that there would ever be a day or age where that would be ok. It skews the child's understanding of sex and what it means, turns it into a dark and painful thing rather than a joy, as it should be. Warps the growing-up process. Hurts everyone involved. It's wrong.
But I also think that because as a culture we're so terrified of the prospect, we've also gone a bit overboard with our definition of it and our desire to catch the bad guys responsible. I mean, I understand that the age of consent is high in most industrialized countries in hopes of preventing young people from being taken advantage of by older people. But there was a kid recently locked up for TEN YEARS on a statutory rape charge, because when he was seventeen he had oral sex with a fifteen year old.
That's not ok with me. He didn't really do anything wrong. Sure, she was fifteen and probably didn't really know what she was doing in the grand scheme of things, but, A) he was seventeen and he probably didn't really know either, and B) nobody EVER really knows, and C) he was only two years older! That is not the same as 35 year old man preying on a five year old child. It's not the same at all. And yet this guy will be forever labeled a sex offender. His life is ruined. For no good reason.
Consider the fact that there are cops posted to the ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Taskforce who are undergoing serious emotional trauma because of the things they're forced to see at work. Consider that there are cops across the country posing online as young kids or the guardians thereof, offering sex with minors to perverts online. Consider that guys responding to these offers are often arrested without having committed a crime.
Consider that we are so terrified of child molestation that we get suspicious of any adult male near our kids. If a kid falls on the playground and a man is there to help them up and dust them off, we think "pervert" instead of "helpful." It's weird, isn't it?
And, in another vein but still under the general premise of this conversation, consider the fact that a fifteen year old "girl" in this day and age has probably been getting her period for three or more years, developed a fully functional adult body, and is horny as all hell. She is probably not really mature enough to understand or interpret her horniness adequately, but those are the facts.
Also consider that there is a thriving industry based on "barely legal" female porn performers who 'just turned eighteen.' Many of these girls might not be eighteen yet, and many others are barely over the line. It's ok to jerk off to them, though, because they're 'legal.'
Furthermore, consider that as animals, we are biologically programmed to find young adults attractive. Younger females tend to be healthier and more able to have healthy babies. Younger men tend to have more energy, be faster and stronger and more able to bring home the bacon. While TOO young is obviously not ok from a moral, social, OR biological standpoint, the fact that lots of guys get off to 'barely legal' porn isn't so much gross as biologically expected.
Of course there's a line between what's ok and what's not, but it seems to me that we are so terrified of people crossing it that we've made the line a thin, solid black one separating the adults from the children in a world where it's a much more grey, fuzzy line that covers a whole lot of territory.
And I think we need to figure out a way to be less panicky and more comprehensive about it. I don't have any anwers to the problem, but it's been on my mind and it bugs me.

Ok. So that's the premise. Does this make me a bad person?

I Can't Write Poetry Anymore: or, why journalism sucks

I realize it every time I read something poetic that someone else has written, but it hits home even more when I listen to music or--good gracious--try to write a poem myself. It's the reason I've always told people I hate journalistic writing. It sucks out the soul. And sure, nobody wants to read about my piddling emotional turmoil, but it sure used to feel good when I wrote it. It was my release all through high school, some college, on the reservation. To take my pent-up everything and spew it out on paper in such a disgustingly drippy fashion that I can't even stand to look back through my own journals. I guess I'll have to burn them when I feel death coming on; couldn't bear to have anyone look into my pencil-scrawled soul and realize that, yes, I really was--am--that shallow.
I've been writing informative (I should put that in quotations: 'informative') articles and op-ed pieces and columns and even straightforward fiction for two years now, for different outlets, and it's made me take the focus away from my poetry, my painting with letters. And that's probably a good thing. I need to know how to say what I want to say in language other people can understand, or at least read without wanting to vomit up adjectives. But. Still.
Now, if I want to come up with a beautiful phrase, I have to conjure it from thin air. Cause that's the thing about writing facts for meager pocket change: you forget to feel. For god's sake, this blog is about my made-up paranoia about robots and slime molds, and even that has devolved into a vessel of promotion for my other writing projects! I can't force myself to write something deep and profound even when I try. I decided to make this blog about something besides me--the real me, the tormented dark soul that used to scrawl itself out in pencil all over everything at its disposal--so nobody would get bored reading my weird and personal bullshit.
But. Now I look at it. Do I even HAVE any weird personal bullshit anymore? Am I so busy being a 'writer' who writes things for other people because that's the only way to be a success these days that I've lost the part of myself that wanted to write in the first place?
When I go to parties for research now I don't write later about the crazy euphoria of drunkenly watching other people or of the breathless walk back through the watching night of the Bronx. I don't remember those feelings. I get home and I sit down and I write the facts, like minutes from a meeting, like a fucking PTA Secretary. When I sit down to the computer I start searching for news stories. When I write I use verbs and nouns. I'm sardonic. I'm sarcastic. I'm straight-forward-all-the-facts-all-the-time.
Probably because I could never explain to my parents, those knowers of all things, why I wanted to write. They loved my stories, sure. But they wanted me to be a Something with a Big Paycheck, a Solid Part of the Community. A scientist or an athlete or a something useful. So I never showed them the poems. I never commented on the feelings. I just bottled them up and became "dark" and wrote about my "darkness" in journals I then locked in a suitcase in the attic, which still bothers my mother because she can't get into it. And when I did get poems published, or feel good about them, they'd be the imagery ones. The story ones. Not the emotional ones, the real ones, the raw ones, the passionate ones... not Writerly enough. Not Good Writing. Can't be sent to a magazine because they were just me.
And now look where it's gotten me. I'm reporting back to you on my lack of poetry using concrete terms. Who, what, where, when, why, and how. What does the audience want to read? Will this sell? Will I get comments?

...all bullshit.
This is not ok.
I need more than all this.
That need is why I became a writer. To feel, to report back, to make it all beautiful. Not to inform or add to the wealth of human knowledge. Knowledge is overrated and nobody can ever have all of it. But all of us have all the emotion and the wonder in the universe. That's all we have in common. I should be writing about that.

Coming Out to My Parents: or, risking getting banned from Thanksgiving Dinner

Well, I came out to my parents last night. No, I'm not gay. Well, not in the strictest sense of the world. Girls sure are pretty though. But, no, what I mean by that is: I told my parents about my McSweeney's column, and in so doing told them I've been writing for porn magazines for two years and am working on a book about swingers that I hope to get an agent for any day now.
And... miracle of miracles... they didn't disown me! Or even tell me not to come home for Thanksgiving (thank GOD, cause my mom's food is so good)! They pretty much said that it's my life and whatever, just as long as I don't start talking about porn at Thanksgiving. Which is a bit unfair, considering they always sit around discussing surgeries and weird medical issues, but whatever. I'll deal.
The point is that now that my parents know about all my crazy writing jobs, I no longer have to hide it. I mean, sure, someday I might want to try selling my children's book idea and then I might want to keep the porn thing under lock and key, but that's why I use a pen name.
I feel so unburdened, suddenly. I mean, sure, I've still got like a billion deadlines staring me in the face and a huge amount of work on my plate, but now if my parents call me while I'm in the middle of it, I can just tell them I'm writing a DVD review instead of making up some ridiculous story about pirates and ninjas storming the Bronx and running off to a friend's house with my sleeping bag to escape the melee.
I mean. That's a pretty cool story. But not really believable in any way. And telling the truth is just easier.
So.
Hello, world.
I write for and about pornography.
I feel so free!

Also, a heartfelt letter to any readers out there...

I wanted to address one of my side projects that hasn't gotten a lot of attention on the blog here: Whack! Magazine. I haven't spent much time on this blog lately because I've been so busy with Whack, the column, porn writing, networking, lit mag pieces, the book, a Nerd Nite presentation coming up on the 16th, trying to find an agent, but I was talking with my editor and cowriter last night about how we seem to be getting plenty of visitors at the site, but no comments. It got me thinking.

We agreed that our friends, who we'd like to rely on to support our ventures in porn satire and commentary, might be feeling stand-off-ish about commenting, and about the whole project in general, because many of them don't know much about the porn industry. Or they think we're just being horrible jackasses--that's also possible (but we wish they'd comment to tell us so!). Whatever the case may be, we haven't heard from many people about what we're doing, and we're hoping people are at least giving it a chance.

I realized I maybe haven't actually given anyone an explanation or background on it, so here's my shot at that. I wish I had more time to explain everything to everyone individually, but I think that would take like a day. So I'm going to write this up here and send it out as an e-mail to try to explain myself.
Ahem.

When I started writing for porn magazines, I'm sure people thought different htings, but I'm betting there were two leaders. One being: "Wow that's so AWESOME! She gets to be involved in smut!" But then, I'm thinking a lot of you who thought that maybe went and watched some modern porn, or bought up a magazine I wrote for, or even just asked me a few detailed questions about the DVDs I was reviewing. And you realized that the "awesome" thing was kind of conditional. You'd had this image in mind of 1970s style, bow-chick-a-wow-wow porn--the kind where the guys has a mustache and there's some cheesy dialogue and then like a 10-15 minute sex scene that's kind of gross but still sensual. But no, no. I was working for magazines that showed really truly, gut-reaction GROSS images, and the porn I was reviewing didn't have cute kitschy titles or funny but badly executed dialogue. It had titles like "Jailbait #15" and "Fuck Truck," the dialogue was replaced by gagging and choking and screaming, and the sex tended toward 45 minute marathons of jackhammer humping. And you suddenly no longer thought my job was awesome. You thouhgt maybe I was a terrible person.
Or, maybe you didn't bother checking it out. Maybe you thought, "Oh, geez, there goes Lynsey on one of her 'I'm doing something wild and crazy' sprees again. Well, she'll probably be out of it before long." And now it's been two years and I'm still doing it AND I'm also writing for a startup news, commentary, review, interview, satire and etc. web-zine called Whack! Magazine. I'm going to porn conventions and meeting porn stars and, Christ, now I'm writing a column ABOUT writing for porn. Christ, when am I gonna get up out of it?

Well. I can't blame anyone for thinking either of these things, or any number of other things you may have possibly thought. It's a weird decision. But, it's not another 'crazy' phase for me. It's not my dream job, either. Whack! is kind of the culmination of my involvement in porn writing.

Whack! is a weird little corner of the internet for several reasons, and I can understand it being a little off-putting to people who don't know much about the porn biz, or who aren't interested in watching my cowriters and I making fun of people they know nothing about, or who are too busy to read long articles about the state of porn industry health care and so on.

But, well... this is lame, but hear me out. I've gotten pretty deep into the porn biz these days, and sex writing in general. I've learned so much about sex, the industries based around it, and the many different attitudes held in our society about it, that I have come to believe very strongly that sex itself and the myriad accoutrements that go with it can tell us possibly more about ourselves than any other single part of life. Because sex is such a basic, universal drive that has been repressed and tied into morality, society, media, and everything else around us to such an extent that it's almost impossible for people to feel in any authentic way about it. I find the practice of picking apart our sexual attitudes and practices endlessly fascinating, and the more I find out about the whole thing the more excited I get about it.

The more conservative of you might be thinking that I should go into sexology if I find it so fascinating. Make it official, less salacious. But if you know me then you know that science and I, or really anything that isn't directly related to creative output and I, do not get along. I find spouting facts on paper or online, or theorizing about what they mean, much more interesting and satisfying than studying them. And I plan to do just that, in any format I can. Whack! is one of them--an industry specific one, yes, but one that I think can be interesting and enlightening and above all FUN for people to read.

Despite my philosophizing, though, Whack! really isn't trying to take itself too seriously. We know it's a mostly unecessary piece of journalistic boogers. But we also think that these days, with the porn industry limping down the path to death as internet startups offering free content take over our brains (which are so conditioned to think of porn as "bad" that we don't spend any time using them to THINK about the porn we watch) and private masturbatory moments, maybe someone making intelligent and funny and interesting commentary on what's left of it could be a good way of remdining people that it exists and it's not so terrible.

Furthermore, the people involved in porn these days, though they may be (as one of my editors said) "damaged people" with histories of abuse or drug addiction or who knows what other terrible things, are still people. And while we may make fun of them at Whack! for their bad grammar or horribly botched boob jobs or small brain size, we respect the fact that porn is the best and maybe only thing that these people could do with their lives. And we DON'T think that porn performers are some weird breed of combined political refugee and beaten animal that needs to be treated carefully to avoid breakage. They're people, and they're just as capable of doing stupid things as anybody else. We're just there to make a little joke when they do.

But we're also there to make people think about the porn industry. About what's going on with these people who make their living on lust. They're not just thirty second video clips you click on some virus-laden website while you're jerking off (oh c'mon, we know you do it, too!). They're real people living real lives. And once Americans forget about that completely in favor of totally anonymous, free, unthinking, dimly lit, 5 minuts and done so you can get on with your life stroke sessions, the porn industry is lost.

I'm probably over-intellectualizing here (surprise!). Whack! is also the publicity-stunt-turned-real-project leading up to the webisode I'm working on with my friend Joe. It. Is. Gonna. Be. AWESOME. It centers around two young people working at "Whack! Magazine," one by nature and one out of necessity. It's funny and very true to life, and it will appeal to everyone with a dirty sense of humor--which I know is most of you. It's in preproduction right now, and Whack! is our way of drawing people in before the fact.

Really, all I'm trying to say here is that you who read this blog are the people who I hope will be willing to support me in my many creative endeavors. Whack! may not be exactly your cup of tea, but it is a decent and intelligent and funny publication that I'm working my ASS of for. Even if you detest what we're writing, that's fine. Just please read it, feel something about it, and comment on it, or tell me. It would mean a lot.

I've Changed: or, the slow slide into degeneracy

This afternoon I was at work, sitting here typing away, when two of my coworkers came in from outside, flushed and breathless and giggling. "They're filming Sex and the City outside!" they grinned. "Kim Catrall was like 2 feet away! Up on 58th Street! So cool!" I smiled. "Oh, that's what all that equipment I saw them setting up was for. I thought they were done filming in this part of town," I said in response. "Well you should go check it out!" they cried, and went back to their offices to tell their other colleagues about their great fortune.
I shrugged and considered asking Kate to come watch the desk while I went and gawked. But then I just went back to work.
Yesterday afternoon, I got a call on the gallery phone from a familiarly deep voice asking for one of the directors. As is my custom, I asked who was calling. "Sylvester Stallone," he replied. "Ok, just a moment, sir," I said, and put the call through.
And then went back to work.
A year ago, I'd have been shitting myself over these stars. I'm still pretty impressed that over the course of two days I've had the chance to interact with at least two very major celebrities. But the thing is, I'm not dying over it this time. I've got other stuff to worry about.
And yet. And yet... last night I went to see the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia live on stage, performing "The Nightman Cometh." I paid an obscene amount of money to get tickets after they'd sold out in minutes. I laughed and grinned until my face hurt during the show. And afterward, I went and stood in a huge crowd, getting yelled at by security people and shoved into from behind, to see the stars come out of the theater entrance and go to their bus.
Granted, I actually had a purpose for this (I wanted to give one of them my card because I really think they'd like the webisode I'm working on, and getting an endorsement from Charlie Day, who took the card and flyer I thrust at him, would be pretty much UH-MAZE-ING), so I wasn't just being a crazed fan. But still, looking back at the past two days, I realized that I've gone from a reverence for slightly edgy feminine banter about relationships and big burly men in action movies... to practically worshiping a group of people who got famous by screaming about poop at the top of their lungs on TV.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.
But then, I look at the artistic and intellectual achievements of Sex and the City and, say, Rambo, and I don't think I'm far off in saying that It's Always Sunny probably has a lot more artistic integrity than either of them. I can't really put my finger on why exactly, but I think I'm right. Maybe it's because the writing and performing in Sunny is so utterly brilliant and smooth, and that the actors are also the writers and producers of the show. I have a huge amount of respect for people with that kind of talent and dedication and willpower (the amoutn of willpower, that is, required to turn your show about booze, rivalry, poop, and creepy sex into a runaway hit and be involved in it on every creative level). I think Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howard, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito are true artists with a vision so far off the beaten track that it can't be anything but brilliant. And I guess I feel good about them taking precedence over Sly in my life.

...Sorry, Sly. You know I love you. But what have you done for me lately? Next time you call, ask me out for drinks.

The kind of morning I have to write about: or, surreal as all hell...

I won't pretend to pass this off as a post that has anything to do with any kind of blog theme. Truth is, I haven't had much time for those lately, and even when I do I've been so brain dead from all my other projects that I can't come up with anything, and I've been so wrapped up in my work and thoughts that I haven't been paying much attention to what's going on around me. So the blog has been dry.

But then, this morning, some cosmic ray or something showed up in my life. When I woke up I was in the midst of a dream involving me, my older sister, my father, and some other random people being stranded on a tropical island of some sort and seeking shelter as a storm approached. We had to wade through a swamp, past a calmly dozing row of gigantic crocodiles, and when we hit land I turned around to realize that my father had been eaten by one of them while pushing my sister out of the way. The rest of us sat to discuss what to do from there, the storm suddenly hit and we all had to run for cover to avoid being hit by lightning. There was some sort of massive half-built structure that we aimed for until we realized that it had no roof, so we had to alter our course for the trees ahead as the wind whipped up around us and the rain started pelting down. Just then I woke up, but wanted desperately to go back to sleep so I could see what would happen next. It was like a movie.

I got up and ran around crazily to get ready for work, somehow not having time for breakfast, but packing a huge lunch/dinner since I have my first session of a proofreading and copy editing class tonight at City College - my first in a series leading up to a Certificate in Publishing - and I won't have any time for dinner. So anyway, I started walking to the train very fast and heard a honk from a nearby car as it goes through an intersection. I assumed the driver was warning whoever might be at the stop sign going the other way that he was coming, but as he got up closer to me he slowed down and honked again. Ugh. Annoying. Eventually he took off again and I kept walking, only to catch up to him again as he was stopped further up the street at a red light. At which point he started shouting at me out of the window. What a nice guy. My name, however, is not "Mami."

So I got to the station right on time, only to find that my train had already passed. Way to go, MTA. Early trains are just as bad for most of us as late trains, you know. Running ahead of schedule will NOT make us like you more.

Anyway, I finally boarded a 2 train and found a spot next to an old, very angry looking Spanish woman who smelled like she was wearing an adult diaper, and that diaper was probably about due for a change. At Grand Concourse/149th I switched to the 4 train, which took its sweet time coming. In the meantime, I found a spot to stand right under the broken pipe that leaks water down into the train station all day every day, and wondered how long it would be before the ceiling caved in. I glanced down the platform to see a man with a big belly standing on the wrong side of the platform, shirtless, and talking to himself.

When the train finally came, I found a spot to stand right where a guy got on at the next stop, mumbling to himself. Great. Just what I needed. Turned out, this guy was a poet who had self-published 3 books and was selling them for $5 a piece on the subway. He spouted off some of his poetry, and it was GOOD. Not Pullitzer prize winning material, but good. I'd have bought a book if I'd had a $5 bill on me, but alas. One poem I remember is:

"The Quickest Way to Get to Riker's Island:
Take the D express train
Down to 34th Street,
And throw a brick,
Through the Macy's plate glass window."

Cute, right? So anyway, I was watching him walk down the car, selling his books and spitting poetry, and noticed as he passed a gentleman sitting, fast asleep, on one of the bench seats. He had that skin condition, the name of which always eludes me, in which his pigmentation varies in big blotches all over from black to pink. His mouth and chin and the tip of his nose were pinkish white, as was the skin around one eye, while the rest of his head was deep chocolate brown. The patterns gave him the appearance of having a muzzle, or a snout. But he looked peaceful. I noticed other people on the train looking at him, and I couldn't blame them--he was asleep after all, so he had no idea we were staring, and he was a singularly interesting looking person. I wondered if he was only pretending to be asleep to avoid the stares. Or if he was so used to them that he could relax enough on the train enough to pass out.

I got to work early, somehow, after being convinced I was late the whole way from the train. When I got in, the phone immediately started ringing and it's hardly stopped since, but I was told first thing by the guy who brings the newspapers to us on the second floor that our front desk man for the building, Steve, who has been a fixture of my mornings for 2 years now, died of a heart attack when coming up out of the subway on his way home last night. He was 54.

It struck me. Wow. No retirement party. No easy golden years. This guy who kept the building running, honestly, just stopped.

For some reason, every one of the weird events of this morning has just struck me as something significant. It's made me think about all the remarkable and weird things I've seen and done in my life. How everyone has these stories. How any moment, those stories could be silenced. It makes me want to call my parents and every person I love.

And of course it makes me want to blog.

The weirdness of my life escalates: or, it's been a while...

Well, my lovelies, it's been a while. And I don't think I've sat down for more than a few minutes of it. Well, aside from seeing "Inglourious Basterds" the other night, which I feel compelled to see again on the basis that it f-ing ROCKED. Although I have no time in which to do so. We'll see how it goes.

But, the weirdness of my life is escalating like a kid with no respect or fear for the escalator. I'm reaching dizzying heights of insanity here. I just got a TWITTER account for my new persona as a correspondent for Whack! Magazine, have been in touch with numerous folks in the adult industry about interviews over the past few weeks, have done more 'research' for my book in a very unexpected place, may have begun to be stalked by someone I met on a research outing (that has yet to be proved, though), and haven't really relaxed at all. I'm trying to figure out ways in which to get myself fired on good enough terms that I could collect unemployment, but haven't come up with anything yet. All my friends who are on unemployment seem to be living the good life, and having just spent the past two days being wildly productive at writing while at home, I think I may want to try their lifestyle. Only problem is, the gallery won't fire me unless I crap in the middle of their floor. They may be jerks about it, but they love me. It's an abusive relationship, but they do give me a kickin' health insurance plan, and if that ain't worth a little backhanded slapping from time to time, I don't know what is.

But anyway, I've been thinking a lot about porn lately, since I've been writing about it and planning to go to a convention next month (that's a whole other story). Last night I watched a documentary about John Holmes that featured a lot of footage from his films in the 70's and early 80's, and it really drove home to me the differences in the aesthetics of porn performers then and now. Back in the day you had lots of body hair, somewhat saggy boobs from time to time, flabby butts, and more or less real sex going on in skin flicks. These days it's often fake tans, fake dyed hair, fake nails, fake eyelashes, fake boobs, hairless genitals, and sex that, while real, isn't very often the kind of sex normal people are having. It's like a mechanical depiction of an act that carries in it nothing sensual, only sexual. It's like watching robots go at it.

No, seriously. I've been thinking a lot about the fake aesthetic of porn, and I've been wondering if the increasingly Barbie Doll appearance of mainstream porn stars is a result of the adult industry's typical tendency to take a good thing and go way overboard with it. Men like big boobs, in general, so porn takes the big boob ideal and turns it into a charicaturized monster-mammary fetish. Everybody likes looking tan and healthy, so porn gives us oompa-loompa orange stars. And so on. And the public watches it, maybe because we have to watch what we're presented with, or maybe--and here's where the robots come in--because we don't really like to think that these piston-like penises and hairless vaginas are really human. We don't like to think that the hardcore sex acts we're watching and getting off to are taking place between real people, because that implicates us in some kind of gross moral degeneracy, throws our own less-stunning sexual prowess into a very dim light indeed, and most of all, puts us and the people boning on camera on the same basic level as human beings.

So we buy up porn featuring people who don't look like real people. We go to strip clubs expecting the performers to be surgically enhanced Femmbots from Austin Powers. We hold them at a distance from ourselves, as something vaguely like ourselves and yet safely different, like robots who can have sex but with whom we have no fundamental similarities. It feels safer that way.

But it's not, obviously. I watch some of the porn being made today, both in big studios and for low-budget online enterprises, and it's all featuring intensely fictionalized faces, oversized cocks, spitting, gagging, violent humping, weird fringe acts that have become mainstream. And I think, these people are doing this because they know people want to watch it. We want to watch it because it seems fake. But the overlap is inevitable and it's got to be going on in bedrooms everywhere, and in the computer-lit basements of teenage boys everywhere, who are growing up thinking that this kind of behavior is normal. That these bodies are standard. That this is what a man is supposed to do to a woman, and vice versa. And that scares me in the same way that the idea of intelligent or morally informed robots scares me. It says something really terrifying about our view of ourselves and the things we create. We want them to be bigger, better, smarter, faster, stronger than we are, more than we want to be ok with what we've got and use it. Of course robots started as time and labor saving devices equipped to help us, but many robotics experiments out there are taking some of our basic human roles away from us because they are NOT us, like mechanized soldiers and battle bots, even companion robots designed to give the appearance of feeling love, or just to have sex with (see that picture above? that's what that is. a sexbot). We watch robot movies because they feature super-intelligent and super-sophisticated bots that are so human we must anthropomorphize them in order to villainize them in order to watch them, and again, there's that creepy overlap. And sure, porn started as a sexy alternative to our imaginations when we masturbate, but it's turned into this multi-billion dollar monster industry that caters to our cruelest instincts by turning its stars into nonhuman objects who just fuck and fuck and fuck away.

I'm not sure how to end this, but there it is. Food for thought.

Quick update: or, kind of unimportant ramblings after vacation...

Well, it's my first day back to work in the Big Apple after almost a week at my parents' house in the country. I hesitate to call it an actual vacation, since I spent my time there alternately running around between friends' houses, doing research for my book, working on some copy due this week, corresponding with editors, trying to track down a certain adult performer who forgot about our scheduled interview, attending a 1 year birthday party, and planning, preparing for, and executing a gigantic surprise birthday party for my parents. It was, to put it mildly, not exactly relaxing.

But, you know, when I came back to the city yesterday afternoon and was immediately pissed off by a woman in the subway who barked at me to move into the car even though I had literally no room to do so, then returned to a laundry-ridden apartment and a noisy street outside that made it difficult to sleep, I realized that even when I'm busy and stressed at my parents' house, having those crickets chirping outside sure does get one relaxed at the end of a long day. I don't know if it's just because I grew up with cicadas, crickets, frogs, owls, and all other manner of night-time fauna singing me to sleep, or if there's something inherently soothing abou their song, but I slept like a ROCK every night I was there, and last night could hardly keep my eyes shut for more than an hour.

Maybe I'll get one of those noise machines I've always scoffed at people for having in the past. My block is really very quiet, comparative to some others I've walked down at night, but there are always cars going by with their music too loud, alarms going off somewhere, and the inevitable late night mron who thinks that doorbells and cell phones are too high-tech and that screaming somebody's name outside their building is the best way to get their attention. A nice white-noise machine with some crickets might help me keep my city tension under control...

But, in other news, I have a fun, kind-of-NYC story to relate. It's only fun now that it's over, but you might find it interesting. On my journey back to the big city yesterday, my train stopped for 35 minutes in Philadelphia while the engine was switched. Before we got going again, a friendly middle-aged guy came and sat down next to me. He was a bit fidgety, but was reading a book called "The Poet's Handbook" or somesuch, so I decided he was pretty cool, and drifted off to sleep for a bit. When I woke back up ten or fifteen minutes later, I heard the oddest sound. It sounded like a muffled, high-pitched, conversational murmur, and it seemed to be coming from the guy next to me. As if he were having a closed-mouth conversation with himself. I pretended to be asleep for a while, listening, then made a pretty big show of waking up, hoping that it would shush him, since the sound was decidedly creepy. It occurred to me that perhaps the murmuring was his poetic process; maybe he was reciting a developing poem in his head, or working through the cadence of a new piece. But to me, it sounded as if he was talking to someone with his mouth closed.

My movement did shush him, but only for a few minutes. He fidgeted madly for a bit, half-standing and then sitting again, clutching his book against his chest, waving it in front of his face and thumbing the pages distractedly, before starting in on his murmuring. I ignored it, opened my own book, and tried to lose myself in its pages, but within a few minutes, his agitation had grown, and from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of him slapping himself lightly on the cheek repeatedly, murmuring all the while.

This was getting a bit scary. The overall impression I was getting was that he was talking to a voice in his head, and was trying to slap it into submission, or to shut it up. Either way, I was not exactly comfortable sitting next to him. His fidgeting looked frantic, almost desperate, and the slapping was a bit over the line of what I'd like to call acceptable behavior on an Amtrak train. I briefly considered trying to talk to him, in hopes that it would distract him, but I was afraid that if I said the wrong thing or startled him too much, I'd send him right over the edge.

As it turned out, I just ignored him as well as I could for the hour and a half back to New York. It was not easy. When the train stopped, I waited until he'd already gotten in line to get off, placed a few people between him and myself, and waited until he'd already gotten to the escalator to get on it. All things considered, I suppose that if he
was hearing voices, he handled himself pretty darn well, but I was still just about as uncomfortable as I've ever been on a train. Poor guy. I hope he at least gets a poem out of it.

Musings: or, New York is a relaly weird place...

So today I was thinking about how I haven't seen that many interesting New York things lately. I like reporting on weird people and happenings, but nothing has stuck out in my memory lately as being particularly weird or funny. New York seems to have grown lethargic in the heat.

But then I realized I was just being stupid. It's New York. It's summer. Weird stuff is happening all over the place. I've just been so wrapped up in the craziness happening in my life that I wasn't paying enough attention to the following things I've seen over the past few weeks:

1) A man walking a miniature long-haired Dachsund and a Great Dane at the same time. This spectacle was so hilarious that I reached for my camera phone but didn't get it out in time to snap a picture. Trust me, it would have convinced you once and for all that if an alien landed somewhere and saw these two dogs sitting next to each other, it would have no idea they were of the same species.

2) A man in a wheelchair pulling himself along with his very-much-working feet, at 1:00 am in Harlem.

3) A man in a wheelchair with an American flag sticking up off of it and who was missing one leg, which was apparently being replaced by a traffic cone.

4) An old man passed out asleep on a bench in Astoria in 85 degree heat... first at 6:00 pm, when I walked by on my way to my friend's, and again at 7:30 pm, when I walked by again, on my way to the bus. How he could have stayed asleep in that position for that long, I have no idea.

5) Barbara Walters, who was crossing Madison Ave this morning as I was going the other way, on my way to work. Or, if it wasn't her, she could have been a body double.

6) A man dressed all in purple, with a purple wig, playing a purple saxophone in the subway.

7) A woman wearing spotless new dark blue jeans, a bright yellow and immaculately clean fleece shirt, and with a fresh French manicure, begging for change in the subway because she was reportedly "broke" and trying to get food for her family. Ain't nothing 'broke' about your manicure, honey.

I'm sure there are others, but they've slipped my mind at the moment. All told, though, I guess my past few weeks haven't been so ho-hum as I thought.

With that, I'm off to spend a week hiding out in Pennsyvlania and working my butt off on my new column, some interviews for a new publication I'm working on, and so on and so forth. I will also be feasting on fresh corn from the fields, whoopie pies, ham and bean soup, chicken corn soup, and tomatoes straight out of the garden. Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Big Friggin Announcement

Hello, loyal fans. Many of you think of me as a close friend, a confidant, perhaps a sex object. And those of you who don't know me personally certainly think of me as a bringer of news, a blogger, a paranoid whack job. Well, here's a new title for you to put by my name in your brain books' margins:

Writer.

Real, serious, honest-to-god-is-getting-somewhere Writer. I don't know if you all know this, but there's no time like the present to come out with it: I've been writing about sex and pornography for several publications and for my own book project for almost two years now, and it gets weird. Being a practical, if not radical, feminist, an intelligent, career-minded woman, and a porn writer all at once can be surreal and sometimes even difficult. But, as a writer, the money is what matters. And so is the chance to turn my experiences into a column or a book, that would maybe someday turn me into a capital-W Writer.

That day has come.

I have just landed, in no uncertain terms, a column at McSweeney's Internet Tendency. They announced it. McSweeney's is a great website, but also a prominent publisher of books by notable authors, including (I can't help it, I've gotta name drop here) Dave Eggers. And they LIKE ME! Gah!

I'll be publishing, starting sometime between now and mid-October, two columns a month for them on the subject of being a sex writer and a woman, and the issues/weirdness/hilarity that goes along with it.

I waited a few days to post this announcement because, honestly, when I got the initial e-mail I was at first too excited to type anything. I literally slammed my hands on my desk, got up and jumped up and down for a good minute, then danced around and tried to get my heart rate down to a safe level. For the next two days I convinced myself that I'd dreamed it and that it was, in fact, too good to be true.

But now it's online. And as we all know, once it's online, it's forever.

As for how this development will affect my blogging on this here site, I can't say just yet. This fall is going to be a big lurch forward for me as far as the amount of material I have to produce each month, and along with my many other projects, my blogging could be taken back a notch. We'll have to see what happens. In the meantime, I'm gonna just bask in my Writerliness. Is that a word? Hah! Who cares? I'm a Writer! I just MADE it one!

(PS - Also just got word that an anthology featuring a story of mine, which was supposed to be released in April originally, is finally finished. A buy online link with more info should be available soon. I'll post it when it is. GOD, I'm on FIYAH!)