Dear Sugar,

I’m a freshman in high school, and everyone knows how high school is–drama, drama, drama. And my best friend (let’s just say her name is Jill) is at the center of it.

See, Jill’s dating this guy (let’s call him Jack) who has a girlfriend who goes to another school. As Jill’s best friend, I already don’t like Jack. He doesn’t want to break up with the girlfriend for Jill (he and his girlfriend have been together over a year, and his girlfriend is his younger sister’s best friend, so their families are close), but, in my opinion, this situation is unacceptable. Jack seems like a nice guy, but there’s that underlying scumbag quality that I just can’t get past. It’s obvious that Jack really likes Jill, but he just won’t drop the girlfriend–or Jill.

I don’t know which way I want it to go. On the one hand, I want Jill to be happy, so I want Jack to break up with the girlfriend. On the other hand, I want to punch Jack in the face and I think he would do the exact same thing to Jill that he’s doing to his girlfriend. I’ve been thinking about having a “talk” with Jack, but I’m not sure if that would help the situation.

In short, Sugar: how the hell do I make at least one of them see the light and realize that what they’re doing is wrong?

Worried Friend

Dear Worried Friend,

Jiminy Cricket, as my grandmother would say. Drama, drama, drama indeed! Oh, but this one’s easy, sweet pea. And hard. But best to learn it now, since, as a freshman in high school, you’re only at the very beginning of these sorts of hijinks. Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “hell is other people,” which is true enough, but truer still is hell is other people’s boyfriends (or girlfriends, as the case may be).

I’ve been witness to those I care about cheating and being cheated on, lying and being lied to, emotionally abusing and being emotionally abused by their lovers. I’ve consoled and counseled. I’ve listened to long and tedious tales of spectacularly disastrous romantic woe that I predicted from the start because that same friend chose the same wrong person yet a-fucking-gain. But the sad news is that this is the way of the world, darling, and there isn’t a ding dang damn thing you can do about it.

Have you read Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” yet or are they saving that for your junior year? People die because they want who they want. They do all kinds of crazy, stupid, sweet, tender, amazing, self-destructive things. You aren’t going to make anyone “see the light and realize that what they’re doing is wrong.” You just aren’t.

And you shouldn’t even try. What’s happening between Jack and Jill is between Jack and Jill. Jill knows that Jack is involved with someone else. She chooses to be in a romantic relationship with him anyway. Jack chooses to deceive a young woman he presumably cares for and string along another. These are not pretty things, but they are true things.

Don’t get me wrong: I sympathize. I know I sound calm and collected, but the truth is I rather regularly come at least internally unglued over some buffoon or scoundrel that one or the other of my idiotic intimates have deemed to “love” (see: hell is other people’s boyfriends). It’s dreadful to watch a friend make choices that you fear will cause her pain. But this is where boundaries come in, my dear Worried Friend.

Do you know what boundaries are?

The best, coolest, sanest people on the planet do, and since I have no doubt that you will become one of those sorts of people, you might as well learn about them sooner rather than later. This little pickle with Jack and Jill and the young woman at the other school has given you just that opportunity. It’s clear to me that the emotions that have arisen in your concern for Jill and your subsequent dislike of Jack have blurred your ability to understand appropriate boundaries. Your impulse to swoop in and set these lovebirds straight tells me that you’re over-estimating your power and influence and you’re also disrespecting Jill’s right to romantic self-determination—which she absolutely has, no matter how maddening her decisions may be to you.

This isn’t to say you should remain silent. Another thing that the best, sanest, coolest people on the planet do is they have the guts to tell the truth. You should tell Jill what you told me—that you want her to be happy, but because Jack is a two-timing tomcat you fear he will someday treat her the way he is treating his other, “real” girlfriend. Listen to what she says with an open heart and a critical mind. Love her even if she doesn’t do what you hope she does once you point out the fact that her paramour is a scumbag. Wish her the best without getting yourself emotionally tangled up in a situation that has nothing to do with you. (Remember those boundaries? Her life is not yours. Yours is not hers. Etcetera. Yes!)

And then, Worried Friend, just let whatever happens between Jack and Jill happen. Laugh if they end up proving you wrong. Be there for Jill if you got it right. And in the meanwhile, cultivate an understanding of a bunch of the other things that the best, sanest, coolest people on the planet know: that life is long, that people both change and remain the same, that every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we’re all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

Sugar

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This year, according to my careful calculations (or at least according to the bracket I just hastily filled out), Syracuse University will win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. And when I think of Syracuse, the local basketball powerhouse of my upstate New York childhood, I think of past college greats who played for the Orangemen: Carmelo Anthony, Earl “The Pearl” Washington, and of course nineteenth-century novelist Stephen Crane, although hoops wasn’t his game.

Crane briefly played baseball for Syracuse in the late 1800s. I learned this over the weekend, from a Times article claiming that Stephen Crane’s experiences as a young athlete were directly responsible for the uncanny, chaotic momentum of his war writing. This might be difficult to believe if the author himself hadn’t said as much when The Red Badge of Courage came out in 1895. “I have never been in battle… I believe I got my sense of the rage of conflict on the football field,” Crane admitted, which makes me wonder, Did nineteenth-century novelists feel less secretive than contemporary writers about the tricks and quirks of their approaches to writing fiction? And also, more importantly, have we lost our sense of the role imagination plays in making stories about war?

A look at the opening passage from The Red Badge of Courage gives a sense of what the author learned from competing in team sports:

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

One thing that fascinates here is Crane’s deftness with group psychology—the army immediately becomes a single character with a collective point of view. There is also the echo of “eyes” and “eyelike,” which actively imagines the looking that must take place before this sort of battle, capturing how young men feel when confronted with visible evidence of their rivals. Of course the rivalry Crane describes is a deadly one. Much more is at stake here than in any football game; when the army gazes at “hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills,” the hills are monstrous, not merely threatening. But there is something in this description that also resonates with the way players on the same sports team sometimes see with collective eyes, the way teammates fight for a common goal on the field even when they may not know each other very well outside the confines of the game.

Taking Crane at his word about the influence of football on his literary imagination—and knowing that he wrote his novel decades after the Civil War ended—makes me wonder about the emphasis our culture places on writers being “embedded” with military personnel in theaters of war. I believe that the work of embedded war reporters is often very important, and I’ve read excellent fiction that’s come from the experience of writers witnessing the lives of real soldiers (Tom Bissell’s recent long story “Death Defier” comes to mind). But I find that stamp of approval—“embedded”—troubling somehow. It calcifies this sense that soldiers go and fight for us, while war reporters go and witness for us. Therefore the rest of us—well, we’re given images from the front lines, and some very memorable reporting, it’s true. In some ways this reporting helps us envision what it’s like to be involved on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what about our own role in witnessing and imagining what the wars our country is fighting must be like?

I didn’t love the movie The Hurt Locker, and the fact that the screenwriter was an embedded journalist for Playboy (oh God, yes, the articles!) doesn’t exactly make me trust the movie’s point-of-view. But one thing I have to say for it: maybe because of the filmmaker’s role in transforming the material from script to screen, there are moments in the film that go way beyond reporting, that force us to participate in the weird mix of boredom, discomfort, fear and exhilaration that soldiers live through. I can understand why some veterans’ groups object to the things that the movie gets wrong. But their demands for documentary realism are in some ways a big problem. The Hurt Locker’s fictionalizing is at times contrived and shallow, but there are stretches of real poetry in the film as well, moments the filmmakers’ couldn’t have made without giving themselves permission to stray from agreed-upon facts. We need excellent journalism and documentary films to help us understand war and its human consequences. We need imaginative attempts like The Hurt Locker too.

***

Civil War photograph by Mathew Brady.

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing abracadabra.

This has got to be one of my favorite words. Even more so than tuxedo. Not only does abracadabra look like a palindrome, but it makes the speaker sound worldly and sophisticated. Abracadabra dates back to the 2nd century, but was made popular by modern magicians, mostly cartoon magicians, who would speak the phrase when performing a magic trick.

I’ve tried working it into conversation as often as possible, but not being a magician myself, few opportunities present themselves. Recently, when my neighbor asked if I’d seen her dog, I replied, “abracadabra!” She looked up at me, wiped the tears from her face, smiled slightly, looked around, then behind her, and then finally back at me, confused. There was no dog to be found, but my use of this phrase had misled her. Then she asked if I was implying that I had taken her dog. I had, because that dog needed to be set free, but that wasn’t at all what I meant. Needless to say, this word can easily lead to confusion.

My brother was much more adept with abracadabra. As children, he would take something of mine, and when I would inquire as to the whereabouts of my allergy medicine or my glasses, he would say, “abracadabra” with a big smile on his face. That was his way of explaining he was responsible, and I would never see whatever was missing again. I always told him he’d make a good magician. He always told me to stop telling him what to do.

During my senior prom I left my date, Norma Crutchley, briefly, to get some punch. When I returned she was in a deep embrace, kissing my brother. He opened one eye, looked right at me and said, with his tongue still in her mouth, “abbrrkdbbr.” I could never have enunciated so well under such circumstances.

His clever use of this phrase continued well into adulthood. Before he vanished, my brother emptied my bank account. I suspected him immediately because he’s the only person that looks just like me (we’re twins, lightly conjoined, and separated soon after birth). He pretty much confirmed my suspicions when I called to confront him. “Abracadabra,” he said, before hanging up the phone. That was over thirty years ago now. It was probably the greatest disappearing act by a non-magician ever.

If it weren’t for all the difficult memories associated with this phrase (and my inability to use it effectively), I would probably give it a full five stars.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Jimmy Fallon’s face.

The Rumpus, Tin House, and Flavorpill Present:

A Night Together

April 6 at The Highline Ballroom

Featuring Authors: Sam Lipsyte, Colson Whitehead, and Lorelei Lee

With This American Life’s Starlee Kine and comedians Michael Showalter and Dave Hill

Plus music by Jeffrey Lewis and Alina Simone

Doors at 6pm, show at 7pm

431 W. 16th St, New York NY

Tickets: http://www.highlineballroom.com/bio.php?id=1403

Dear Writer:

Thank you for your interest in our publication.

We publish literary fiction, poetry, and occasional prose, in the form of criticism and essays.

We also occasionally publish interviews with writers, but it’s so occasional that we hesitate to mention it here. In fact, we take it back. Interviews with writers are annoying. Also, we almost never publish personal essays about addiction or abuse. If your submission is about cancer, please don’t send it to us.

Regarding literary fiction, we should mention we only publish short stories and short-shorts. We do not publish flash fiction, not counting the couple of times a few years back when we did, but it was because we weren’t clear on the distinction between a short-short and flash fiction. We figured it out.

Under no circumstances do we publish novel excerpts, except those by famous authors or authors in under-represented groups (i.e. minorities, teenagers, and political prisoners). We most definitely do not publish excerpts from forthcoming debut novels if those novels are under contract with major publishers for ridiculous sums of money. That goes double if the author is under 28. Seriously, just…fuck off.

As for poetry, we tend not to like narrative poetry, or poetry that tries too hard to be “poetic” and/or poetry that contains the word “pomegranate”—it’s just a thing we have. For us to publish a sestina (yawn), it would have to be really, really exceptional. It has happened. That is, it happened once because one of our exceptional editors wrote it and she can do whatever she wants.

Please familiarize yourself with the kind of material we publish before submitting your work, preferably by subscribing to our magazine for several years. We do check subscriber accounts, and we give preference to submissions by subscribers. The only addiction/abuse essay we’ve published in the last three years? Yep. Subscriber. The only pomegranate poem? Just kidding; we really never publish those.

We also don’t publish so-called “genre” writing. That means romance, thriller, mystery, western, science fiction, vampire stories, or anything else that lacks weight, meaning, or artistic merit and/or that we wouldn’t display proudly on our bookshelves. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t submit it, however. We actually love receiving this kind of crap, because it gives us a good chuckle and makes us feel better about our own writing, especially late at night when we’re drunk and/or stoned. Mostly stoned.

Above all, we are looking for writing that’s fresh, incisive, and possibly subversive but not gimmicky. We do not publish experimental writing because we find it pretentious. We also do not publish bland, derivative, workshoppy-type stories, full of relationship angst and bourgeois ennui, unless you are a successful, well-known author, because it makes us look good, and it helps us get funding and more subscribers who have money but can’t write worth a damn.

Above all, we’re looking for writing that draws us in, challenges us, and tells a good story. (Except in the case of poetry, since, as you may recall, we do not like narrative poetry. In fact, we’re sick of poetry altogether. Poetry submissions closed.)

We do not publish writing that in any way includes or alludes to wolves.

Then again, we’re open to almost anything. Surprise us. Unless it’s with any of the things we already went over. (Which, we suppose, would be surprising for you to send, in a way. But still, don’t send them.)

Your submission should be double spaced, with standard margins, and 12-point type. Handwritten submissions will be ignored. Submissions typed in Apple Chancery, Papyrus, or any “handwriting” font will be burned. Please include a brief cover letter with your submission, noting previous publications or awards. We’ll be more inclined to respect you and read at least one page of your work if you have credentials. At least some of us will. Just don’t be braggy about it, you know?

Please include a SASE with your submission. (If you don’t know what that is, you probably shouldn’t be submitting to this or any other literary journal.) We receive hundreds of submissions every month, and our response time varies from one month to one year. Please do NOT call or e-mail us to check on the status of your submission. We will be really, really annoyed, and will probably tack your submission up on our “Asshole Wall,” right next to the “Wall of Shame,” where we tack up the first pages of awesomely bad genre fiction and shitty amateur poems about horses, depression, break-ups, Jesus, etc.

Simultaneous submissions are discouraged, but we realize that it’s kind of obnoxious of us to expect you to wait for up to a year, possibly more, to hear back from us before submitting elsewhere. So, do what you have to do, but at least have the decency to contact us if your submission is accepted elsewhere so we can take a look at it with the knowledge that someone else actually thinks it’s publishable.

Thank you and good luck! We look forward to reading your work.

***

ALGERNON Cover Letter
by Alexa Dooseman and Elissa Bassist

Harry Miller
1246 Journey’s End
Cincinnati, OH

Prose & Poetry Literary Journal
1225 15th Street
New York, NY

Dear Fiction Editor:

I’ve read your submission guidelines and think you’ll be delighted to publish me.

Please consider my 12,323 word short story, entitled A L G E R N O N,  THE UNTOUCHABLE  KNIGHT, for publication. It is a well-written, touching, enthusiastic, complex, and thrilling story that spans many genres, but largely devotes itself to epic lore, myth, the exploration of the body/mind continuum, fantasy, and some interspecies erotica.  I know that your journal doesn’t usually concern itself with these “less prestigious” genres, but I think that you’ll like this . . . a lot. I use these genres literally, but also ironically–I feel like that is right up your alley.

In the story, the knight Algernon is put up against many tests, and is adored by Kings and Kingdoms. In short, he is the best Knight ever. He practically is the head of the round table, of all the round tables. BUT, in the course of this story, Algernon is severely challenged, and although he is thought to be untouchable . . . he is touched (mostly violently, but also sexually/emotionally).

It gets even better, seriously, you have to read it . . . no, seriously, keep going.  There is some Sword-in-the-Stone action, some Tolkien shout-outs, pre- and post-pubescent vampires, an ass-load of fiery dragons, perchance some musical dance numbers, and of course, thousands of–wait for it–damsels in distresses.

When my friends read this story, they were like, “This story is fucking rad, Harry.”  I think, nay, know, your readers will have a similar experience.

And, I don’t want to ruin the ending . . . but, let’s just say that in the end, Algernon is actually an avatar.  Yes, that’s right–it’s a parallel-universe type thing. Very complex and mind-bending. Like, Algernon is not really Algernon, but someone else who has an avatar named Algernon. Read it . . . it’s so deep.  Even my friends were like, “Harry, I did NOT see that Avatar-shit coming.”

A little bit about me: I’ve written a crap-ton of fiction, yet to be published. You could be the very first to publish me, which I feel is an exploding offer not to be turned down. I’ve also written a few plays, self-published a zine, and have a private blog.

I graduated from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to your response. I haven’t even attached an SASE because I think that you shan’t be rejecting A L G E R N O N. (Oh, and by the way, if you like the “perchance” and the “shan’t” that I’ve thrown in this letter, then you’ll love my story. All the characters talk like that–that is, when they’re in the mythical world [not in the pre-avatar world]–you’ll see . . . it’s so good. . . .).

Until next time,

Harry Miller

P.S.  When you publish A L G E R N O N, I think that I’m going to use a pseudonym (almost like an avatar for myself, which is pretty meta). So, when this goes to print, please put: Written and illustrated by Lord Esquire Cunningham, the VI. Thank you again.

***

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: the real Funny Women Submission Guidelines.

There’s a new Sugar in town:

FAQ Redux

Q. What sort of advice column is this?

A: If you took all the by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage and the closeted Upper Eastside nymphomania of Miss Manners and crushed them down into a single diamond-hard gem of pedantic know-it-allism, that’s the sort of column that would make the old Sugar puke. But the new Sugar? Kinda digs it.

Q. Where did the old Sugar go?

A: The Fox News Desk in Reno.

Q: What does the new Sugar have to say?

A: Come back here every Thursday to find out.

Q: Every Thursday?

A: Yes. The new Sugar is a calendar-obsessed Virgo with a penchant for Thursdays, which may or may not have to do with a song by Morphine, a beer, and a game of pool.

Q: Are any questions off limits?

A: No.

Q: Can I ask my question anonymously?

A: Yes. Just fill out the form at the bottom. Sugar won’t see anything but the question. Promise.

***

Dear Sugar,

I dated this girl for a while only to reach the realization she was a self-absorbed crazy. Last year she and her best friend got into an argument and they stopped being friends. My ex’s friend called me up one night and asked me to hang out with her at her house. One thing led to another and I ended up sleeping with her. A few days later, this former best friend of my ex tells me she’s engaged. She wears this weird short-haired wig while she breaks off our friends-with-benefits relationship. The thing is, I connected better with her in the two weeks we hung out than I did with my ex in months. Please help me figure out if I should never talk to either one of them again. I’m not a smart man but I do know what love is.

-Gump

Dear Gump,

I’d rather be sodomized by a plastic lawn flamingo than vote for a Republican, but as I ponder your situation, I can’t help but quote the most bewildering right-winger of our times. Of course I’m talking about the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Shall we start with the known knowns, when it comes to your little triangular quagmire, Gump?

a) You found your ex-girlfriend to be crazy and broke up with her.
b) You fucked your ex-girlfriend’s ex-best friend for a fortnight and felt “connected.”
c) In spite of such connection, your ex-girlfriend’s ex-best friend donned a wig and announced that she has no interest in continuing to fuck you, claiming to be on the brink of a (presumably) monogamous and eternal connection to someone else.

Which brings us to the known unknowns:

a) Why the wig? And if the wig, why the unnervingly short hair?
b) Is the ex-girlfriend’s ex-best friend actually engaged to be married or is this simply a grandiose ruse to shake you from her disinterested but chickenshit tail?
c) How can it be that so many people’s ex-girlfriends are crazy? What happens to these women? Do they eventually go on to birth babies and care for their elderly parents and scramble up gigantic pans of eggs on Sunday mornings for oodles of lounge-abouts who later have the nerve to inquire about what’s for dinner or is there some corporate Rest Home for Crazy Bitches chain in cities across the land that I am unaware of that houses all these women who used to love men who later claim they were actually crazy bitches?

Lastly, there are the unknown unknowns, the things, Gump, that you don’t know you don’t know.

a) You have nothing for these women.
b) These women have nothing for you.
c) And yet.
d) And yet!
e) You are loved.

Sugar

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“The early messages in my family were that women are the source of power. They made the household decisions, held the purse strings, and if the woman of the house was not happy, no one was happy. “

In High school, Marzanna hung out with the geeky new wave crowd who smoked cloves, cut class and drank vodka. I was a blonde cheerleader who dated sexually ambiguous Mormon surfers. She was a year older so our social circles clashed, but I remember Marzanna’s black eyeliner, vintage coats and her hearty laugh. Marzanna and I’ve known each other our whole lives. We went to ballet together when we were five. Our Dads, both staunch Republicans, attend Rotary meetings in our small town. Hungry to escape the insulation of Humboldt County, Marzanna and I were both foreign exchange students. I found her twenty years later on Facebook and she agreed to do this interview about her career as a sadist, her personal relationships and her life as an ex-pat.

The Rumpus: You’ve always been a bright, theatrical person. Did you always know you would live a subversive lifestyle? How does a nice girl from Eureka, CA become a Pro Domme in Berlin?

Mme Marzanna Katorga: I didn’t know I would be a subversive person at all.  I was raised to be such a good girl. I had no real desires to be a particular thing when I grew up but I was instilled with a feeling that I was special and therefore something special would happen for me.  So, talk about a shattered illusion when I got out into the real world. I really feel like I was raised to be some sort of exiled aristocrat in a world where formality and aristocracy are mostly dead. I mostly wanted to be elegant and artistic and lauded for my creativity and loved. Either that or a veterinarian.  So I guess in a way I have become what I wanted. Without the animal doctor part, although I do use vet wrap and needles and I do enjoy treating men like dogs or pigs so maybe I got the best of both worlds. I knew the world was far larger than the few miles radius a small town offers.  Mostly I just kept pushing beyond those boundaries I felt in my household growing up.  I find fulfillment at the border or near the edge of society.

Rumpus: What were some messages you received about sex in your family and in our small town?

Katorga: The early messages in my family were that women are the source of power. They made the household decisions, held the purse strings, and if the woman of the house was not happy, no one was happy.  Things were done to assure the woman of the house was happy, comfortably situated, and she had the things around her just so.  Being raised that way and on ballet, opera, theater, and art as well as performing these things in the family living room for guests so that I could be praised for these skills raised me to understand a sense of power and control and femininity.  Feminine cruelty and fetishism came later. The messages I received early on were so deeply coded and hidden it was like trying to unravel the human genome.  Every hint of sexuality took on a spark for me, and those things that aren’t considered “sex” by most became my codex.  High heels that caught the eye of someone and made them double take, lipstick, the barest touch of one hand to another’s arm – these felt like “sex” because I was hyper-alert to human connection and like all young people I was seeking information I filled the gap in my knowledge with fantasy. I believe this has something to do with fetishism and fetishism has everything to do with my personal and professional life. Intimacy was a secret message to be decoded. Touch was electric.

Rumpus: What messages did you receive about beauty and desire? When did you discover you were sexually different than other people?

Katorga: Beauty was when my mother and my grandmother got dressed up to go out or had a dinner party with the table perfectly set and everything had a quality of elegance that masked any hostility or imperfections. There were conversations that were not about what was being said. True desire was hidden and finery replaced deeper urges. Beauty was a certain public appearance of being put together, of being comely.  Beauty was something classic and never garish.  Beauty was in control; out of control was bad. I spent hours and hours looking at records and photos of ladies in heels and hats and gloves and lipstick, at the heightened femininity of the 1950s. I took every kind of “lady” class imaginable. I was also playing baseball, mowed the lawn and was left to my own devices with mostly male playmates. I hated dolls; I loved army men. I was different from my friends.  I spoke using proper English for a start, I wore vintage clothing and I really didn’t know how to fit in very well so I often directed “we are going there” and “we are doing that”.  I discovered the power of fishnet stockings and high heels very young. When I was barely a teenager, my first experience with the reality of sexual intercourse was through an act of violence. This is where the strongest message about sex I have carried into my work came right through me, an undeniable message that sex was better as subtlety and under my control and that the act of being fucked lacked grace or complexity.

Rumpus: When and why did you begin doing sex work? What do you do now?

Katorga: People seem to think that if women spank someone or tie some boy up then, voila!  We became a Dominatrix!!  But that’s not true for me everything around me slowly alchemized to make me who I am.

I’m what I call a Lifestyle Professional Dominatrix.  This is what I consider my life’s work – this is my personal sexuality and also my trade.  In 1989, when I was 19, my dance instructor and I spoke about how we needed some extra money.  The conversation turned to stripping. This was in Portland, Oregon after all which was the strip club capital. Mostly, it was a bonding experience with this woman that I really thought was just the coolest person I’d ever met.  We practiced in her living room, drinking wine. This was the first time I had encountered a woman who was independent and empowered in her body.

She was about 15 years older than me.  This woman blew me away because she could say and do what she decided she wanted without worrying what others thought. We talked about sexuality and what men wanted and how to move our bodies. We went into “EJ’s” for an audition. I made the mistake of putting the 15 minute long dance mix of “Fascination Street” by the Cure on for my audition and had the longest and most wretched striptease of my life.  I really had no desire to get naked, let alone hustle, let alone dance that long to little praise or acclaim. There were about 6 guys in the bar and one of them maybe glanced my way.  She did a lot better, but the bartender told her she was too old.  Rather than it being a crushing experience, we had a great laugh. It was terrible; we weren’t strippers.  I’ve had respect for strippers ever since, it’s an artful skill. I discovered phone sex work in the back of a newspaper. In 1989 you could make some good money on the telephone.  I had a line at home and a switchboard sent calls to me.  I learned I was in control of their orgasm. I had an excellent memory for voices so I started making cards with details about each client that called me.  I learned how to keep them on the phone, how to get them confessing their secret lusts, to build the sexual tension to get to the release.  I paid for my apartment and bills this way while going to college. It was more than a little empowering.

Rumpus: How did you learn about BDSM?

Katorga: About this time, I began to think about power, control, sex, and it keyed into some of my interests in leather and I began seeking information about domination.  Thanks to some glorious leather men – the real Tom of Finland types – and an era where if you were into leather, it didn’t matter if you were queer or a heterosexual femme. I was just another person into leather and these men took me in. I was so fortunate.  I learned a great deal about bondage, sado-masochism, and the details that a skilled top needs to know. Leathermen became my family. I was able to fulfill my tomboyish side once again learning about whip throwing and leather bondage, hanging out with daddies and their boys.

Rumpus: How does Pro Domme work differ from other types of sex work? What do you hope to accomplish during a session?

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing needlepoint.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, needlepoint is a way of making pictures and signs by weaving thread through cloth! It sounds sort of like sewing, but differs in that it serves no actual function. Needlepoint images can be of literally anything. Anything. Imagine the most beautiful painting you’ve ever seen, then imagine it drawn on a computer circa 1985. That’s needlepoint!

You know that famous phrase “Home, sweet home?” You can thank needlepoint for that. My mother was such a fan of that phrase that she rendered it hundreds of times in needlepoint. As she entered her final days, one can see the degradation of her mind reflected by pieces that became increasingly abstract and frightening. One of them my dad burned because he said it wasn’t meant for this world.

Needlepoint needn’t be restricted to mounted cloth. It can be placed on mobile cloth like pillows, jackets or blankets. It’s that versatile! One of the few things it can’t do is placate a home intruder. The phrase, “Please take my needlepoint, and leave my TV and money” has proven surprisingly ineffective on more than one occasion.

I wish more people valued needlepoint the way they should. Whenever I go to the museum I ask an employee where the needlepoint wing is, but I’m always met with a blank stare. To encourage the museum, I donated a bag of my mother’s needlepoint at their front entrance in the middle of the night. I included a note that read, simply, “You’re welcome.”

One of the most compelling aspects of needlepoint is that it can be done by anyone. Artistic skills or an imagination are not prerequisites! With countless patterns available, one can create the same preimagined scene as dozens of other lonely people. Still, there is room for customization – simply change a thread color or omit a cat. Needlepoint may take hours upon hours, but the results are so worth it.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Isaac Fitzgerald.

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the erection I had last Thursday.

As a senior citizen, my erections appear with less frequency than in the swollen days of my youth. It’s a combination of age, medication, and the fact that I simply put forth less of an effort. So when it happens, I take note.

The erection I had last Thursday could not have come at a worse time. I was taking a stroll through the woods. Alone. To some this may sound like an ideal time for an erection, but the last thing I wanted was for a fellow traveler to encounter me. Happening upon an old man alone in the woods with an erection is suspicious no matter how one looks at it.

I’m not sure what the catalyst was. It might have been the cloud that looked like a young Judy Garland or the plant that looked like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. Whatever the cause, the erection was there and was making no attempt to leave.

Of course, there was one sure-fire way to rid myself of it, but the risk was too great. Anyone who knows me knows how terrified I am of animal hybrids. If I left my seed behind, and a female coyote were to sit on it, probably nothing would happen. But what if? I could never be party to something so horrific. And if my unintentional offspring were caught and dissected, its DNA could be traced back to me. Everyone would know what I had done.

I stood waist-deep in brush for a full three hours, unsure of what to do. Although it waned at times, the erection never fully subsided. Being subject to the whim of my body made me feel so powerless. Like how I imagine rape victims feel, only this time I was both the rapist and rapee. I felt so angry and wanted to punch myself, possibly even down there. But soon I was so overwhelmed that I began to cry. It turns out crying is a big turn-off for me. Before I could wipe the tears from my face the erection was gone.

Learning to adapt made me feel empowered, which made my erection come back slightly. Now I carry in my wallet a list of things sure to make me sad.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing The Iceburn Collective.

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It’s midnight, and I have to tell you about The Death of the Heart, and how Elizabeth Bowen is clever, and tragic, all at the same time. You’ll notice this isn’t the reflection paper you assigned re: the queer interpretation of Virgina Woolf’s texts (due today) and is instead a letter to you about me.

I am wearing short-shorts with a squirrel motif emblazoned on the front, and a tank top that says TOTALLY Not a Girl on one side and has a male symbol on the other, all of which is written in red marker. The white of the shirt (which, I couldn’t say before, is what I wore when I performed with my boyband) is stained pink from the time I washed it and forgot that pen is only mostly permanent when met with water. I am listening to Justin Timberlake singing about girls, and he’s calling them “bitches.” If you were here, you would make a face I have seen you make where your jaw tightens and your eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. You are sort of scary.

What I wanted to tell you is that I am not a lesbian.

I have been making wildly inappropriate jokes about characters being gay due to their choice of sensible footware during class in order to see what I can get away with now that I have a shaved head. I am a very good actress, but beyond that, my whole post-pubescent life I have been mistaken for a dyke. This is a funny sort of identity crisis, as the experience of being called a dyke when one grows up in San Francisco is, I would imagine, somewhat different than if someone is growing up and called a dyke in Southern Australia (where you say you’re from). In a family that has never once worried me about my sexuality, in a town known for its leniency towards homosexuality, I got the constant reminder that being gay is okay (it’s great! it’s fun!), and that I have nothing to worry about.

Only I am not a lesbian and never have been. I’ve tried it, a little, who hasn’t, dabbled here and there. I have treaded the rainbow path, but as frustrated and hurt and betrayed as I’ve been by boys, I have never once considered giving them up for good.

Girls have fallen for me. I can’t forget (with a weird sort of fondness) the number of girls who told me they were in love with me in high school. In my sophomore year of college, there was one chick who had it bad. Oblivious to it all, I was flattered when told, but I never felt a particular sense of having missed out on anything (vaginas are great, I’m sure, but they’re not for me).

I do, of course, acknowledge that you probably don’t care about my sexuality. It is entirely possible that never once did you think I am gay. You probably find my sense of humor engaging, and so you don’t get offended when I make lesbian jokes. But somehow I know that if you were to find out that I am a poser, a fake, a straight in dyke’s clothing, you wouldn’t be happy. Or perhaps I underestimate you.

Either way, I needed to come out about this, and hope that this letter breaks the news to you as gently as possible. My mom calls me a cultural anthropologist—I went to Catholic school as a Jew, and have on more than one occasion  taken classes that de-marginalize race, gender, and sexuality; these intersections fascinate me, and it pisses me off that an interest in these issues is often considered gay, like you can only care about various “–isms” if they directly affect your life. But whatever. I digress.

I guess it’s sort of a weird statement to make—to come out to someone as being not-gay. Truth is I hate it when people define themselves by who they have sex with. What does it matter, really? Isn’t saying that one is a lesbian or a straight woman or a dyke only re-instituting a different sort of norm? Lesbians wear sensible shoes and like to hike and have dogs and process everything. Straight women wear high heels and like to be told they’re beautiful and if they don’t marry then they’ll have cats and always need to talk.

Queer, okay, so that means that I’m different. I am a connectosexual, after all, and know that I do have a curious ability to fall in love with people regardless of body parts. Bisexual, you could call it. But honestly, Julie Abraham, I’m more concerned with what else there is. Namely: why aren’t I having sex, any sex, gay, straight, dyke, queer, hot, tame, dirty, safe, overwhelming sex right now?

I am much more concerned with this.

For a long time I took offense when people assumed I was gay. It made me feel unfeminine, ugly, overweight; embarrassing to admit this, as it is counter to every fact I know about what being a lesbian actually means.

But I didn’t understand that for most women, being loud and confident and unafraid to speak up is a rare quality. Too often people confuse being awesome with being gay, i.e. the saying, “That’s gay.”

I have realized, too, that a part of me wants to be a lesbian because there always seems to be that moment, the sudden ah-ha, standing in a bookstore, waking up in the morning, walking across a bridge, kissing a girl, brushing my hair, when everything suddenly makes sense. Oh! I like girls! So that’s why I’m different! I like thinking that in a single instant the truth gives context to a feeling of difference that has lurked throughout an entire lifetime. I am attracted to that moment. But mine has not yet come.

I’ve gotten a lot off of my chest. I hope you aren’t too shocked, and if you are still reading, I want you to know that Virginia Woolf has changed my life, and The Death of the Heart took me three weeks to read because it was really boring, but also entrancing in a strange, masochistic way. And maybe you should check out J. T. sometime. He sure beats The Indigo Girls. Figure of speech, of course.

Most respectfully yours,

Alanna Coby

P.S. You do have the most sensible shoes I have ever seen.

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Original art by Ilyse Magy.

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