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Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: The Rumpus Interview with Sam Benjamin

David Henry Sterry — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:10 +0000

The second of four interviews by David Henry Sterry with some of the contributing writers from his current anthology, Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other.

Click here to read “Admit You’ve Paid For It: The Savage Honesty of David Henry Sterry,” in which Rumpus sex columnist Antonia Crane flips the script and interviews Sterry.

***

I am so stealing Sam Benjamin’s pet name: ‘The Ivy League Pornographer.” Sam attended Brown University. Shortly upon graduating, he found a home in the LA porn industry. His memoir “American Gangbang: A Love Story” was released in 2011. “Sex, Drugs, Ratt and Roll,” co-authored with Stephen Pearcy of the glam metal band Ratt, comes out in May. When he gives readings, he usually has bizarre 70’s porn music playing in the background on an ancient ghetto blaster. He is also unapologetically adorable.

***

The Rumpus: How did you get started in the sex business?

Sam Benjamin: I’d love to say I got started shooting porn as a total lark but in fact, I was deadly serious about it. It was probably the most intentional thing I’d ever done. At 22 years old, I imagined I’d make revolutionary sex films: spectacular, feminist, clever, ornate, Brechtian fuck flicks. Porn with a heart, basically. I fell far short of my goal, of course, but for a time there I really believed.

Rumpus: Best experiences being a sex worker?

Benjamin: Getting to push the boundaries of my self-conception.

Rumpus: Some things you learned about the sex industry?

Benjamin: I learned how to mix up a convincing fake-cum mixture that looks good on camera. Equal parts 30 SPF suntan lotion and pina colada mix. Bam.

Rumpus: Did you tell your friends and family you were a sex worker?

Benjamin: I told my folks that I was shooting porn, yes. I used to tell girls in bars, too, not only because once entrenched in the sex industry, I fell victim to a sort of snow-blindness, wherein I believed that my dirty lifestyle had a kind of validity and richness that your average 9-to-5′er would find deliciously interesting, but because I was philosophically opposed to lying. I alienated the hell out of people for a couple of years there with my potent blend of narcissism, over-sharing, and reverse snobbery. It’s like I was a character on Girls. Ahead of my time, I suppose.

Rumpus: Other jobs?

Benjamin: Transition from porn to respectable work was the absolute worst. I was used to making a grand a week, working negligible hours. My first job back was working in the customer care department at Wells Fargo in Portland, Oregon, answering handwritten letters from irate customers. Not that many people write letters to banks anymore. Most call. Turned out most of my new “pen pals” were incarcerated. Earning slave wages myself, trapped in a life I didn’t understand, I felt a certain kinship.

Rumpus: Do you think sex work should be illegal?

Benjamin: My sex work was actually always legal. Confusingly legal, in fact. Many of the actresses I shot escorted on the side, and they had to approach that side of their professional life with some discretion. Porn, on the other hand, kosher in the eyes of the LAPD by dint of having a running camera on the premises, allowed for all the salacious chest-thumping and idiotic, out-loud braggadoccio the world could bear. It made zero sense.

Rumpus: Did you ever have a crush on a client?

Benjamin: I had a crush on several of the porn actresses I shot, but none more than Belladonna. It wasn’t even that she was remarkably pretty—which of course she was. Bella had a wonderful, kind personality and possessed the sort of charisma that actually allowed me to believe that the stuff I was engaged in making might be worthwhile; might be valuable.

Rumpus: Would you recommend the sex business as a way to make money?

Benjamin: The adult film industry was a great way to make money in my heyday, which was 2000-2005. You had to be a complete, desperate drooling fool to avoid making at least a middle-class income for yourself. But the bottom’s since dropped out, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend this path to any graduating college seniors, unless they could approach it from an extremely inventive and resourceful marketing angle.

Rumpus: Good things about working in the sex industry?

Benjamin: The best thing about working in the sex industry was that it made me—a child of Hebrew School carpools and shinguarded soccer teams—feel unique and somewhat daring, even if that sense of “authenticity” proved increasingly difficult to hold onto as the years progressed.

The worst part was that the sex I managed to cadge was usually disappointingly bad. It was the raison d’etre, ya know? That was probably the main reason I had gotten into directing porn, if you want to get right down to it, and, to my surprise, it was horrid, cold, weird, unsympathetic sludgy coupling. I’ve had far, far better sex since I left the sex industry. That was my big lesson.

Rumpus: Are you still in the business?

Benjamin: I left porn about eight years ago. I still live in LA, and I’m tied to the adult film industry by a few friends, but that’s about it. I simply don’t have the heart for it. Porn was always stronger than me, and it still is.

Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: The Rumpus Interview with Annie M. Sprinkle

David Henry Sterry — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:00:14 +0000

The first of four interviews by David Henry Sterry with some of the contributing writers from his current anthology, Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other. Click here to read “Admit You’ve Paid For It: The Savage Honesty of David Henry Sterry,” in which Rumpus sex columnist Antonia Crane flips the script and interviews Sterry.

***

Annie M. Sprinkle spent her “wonder years” age 18-40 in Manhattan, then returned to California where she has been based for the past twelve years. Sprinkle earned a BA at School of Visual Arts then became the first porn star to earn a Ph.D. (IASHS). She has been an activist in sex worker rights for forty years, founded Occupy Bernal, and is currently a passionate environmental activist pioneering the ecosex movement. A former prostitute and “porn legend,” she has proudly had sex with over 3500 people. She has also written and done photography for most every ‘80s-‘90s sex magazine as well as many non-sex publications like Newsweek and the New York Times, and has published five books with Tarcher/Penguin, Continuum, and Cleis Press. Annie Sprinkle’s guiltiest pleasure is reading the National Enquirer every week. For the past ten years she has collaborated with her life partner, artist Elizabeth Stephens. Visit Anniesprinkle.org, loveartlab.org, and her new site, sexecology.org.

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The Rumpus: Are there any correlations between your career in sex and your career as an artist?

Annie M. Sprinkle: Being a whore was great preparation for being an artist. Beth Stephens, my partner and collaborator, and I just did a live art piece in a Brooklyn gallery—Grace Exhibition Space. Our work is exploring the earth as lover, instead of earth as mother. So we built a bed frame and poured fifty-five big bags of fresh dirt into it. We took off our clothes and got into the bed of dirt. Then we invited our audience to take off their clothes and join us. On one hand, it’s very different than been a prostitute. But then again it’s not. We were paid to get in bed with total strangers, naked. In a sense we are turning art patrons into johns and jills. It’s fun to play in these realms. I think that in some ways, we are all whores, johns and jills.

Rumpus: Why do you think there’s such a stigma about buying and selling sex?

Sprinkle: It’s a pity that there’s such a negative connotation about paying for sex. There are very few out johns in the world. I really respect those few. Fred Cherry, who passed away, Hugh Loebner, and Charlie Sheen are the only out johns I can think of, after all these years. They are very brave. No one wants to admit they pay for sex. Yet millions of people do, one way or another. Being a john is actually far more stigmatized than being a sex worker.

Rumpus: Do you think being a sex worker would make it easier to pay for sex?

Sprinkle: I heard about a recent study where some researcher did a survey and discovered that people who have been prostitutes are ten times more willing to be johns than the average person. So, if you’ve been paid for sex you understand the value of that experience on some level.

Rumpus: Were your johns generally respectful of you?

Sprinkle: My johns adored and worshipped me, therefore they empowered me. When I was 18, 19, and 20, I had a poor self-image and needed attention. It’s hard for people who haven’t been prostitutes to imagine, but I think it’s often true. There can be a very symbiotic relationship happening.

Rumpus: Did you ever have orgasms with clients?

Sprinkle: Sure, I had orgasms with clients, even though it was kind of a taboo at that time to admit it. Women weren’t supposed to enjoy sex that much! Today whores are much more open about enjoying the sex. I usually kissed my clients if they wanted to kiss. I thought it was just way too weird to say “no kissing allowed,” That to me was uncomfortable. Blow jobs are okay, but kissing clients is still a taboo. I liked having orgasms with clients and that was kind of a taboo at that time, but I never paid attention to that. A lot of women I worked with didn’t respect their clients. I had some clients who didn’t respect me, but still you somehow made it work. One guy, he had a lot of money and he was pretty disrespectful, he kept trying to have anal sex with me and I didn’t want to have anal sex with him and he just seemed to really want to provoke me and make me angry and manipulative. And then I felt like ugh this guy really needs love. Gee, I’ll model love for him, I thought. I’ll kill him with kindness. I don’t know if my strategy had any effect or not. Perhaps it was simply my way of coping with a challenging situation, and I needed to pay my bills. Other women might have kicked him in the balls and thrown him out. But then whores have the ability to put up with behaviors other women would never manage to put up with. That’s why we deserve to be generously compensated. Some men can be very rude. On the other hand, some clients are absolute angels. One john always brought me a gift every time he came to see me. He brought me a pearl necklace, a ring, a bra or something. But eventually, as much as I really loved all the gifts, he fell in love with me, and he tried to weasel his way into my life. It was too much and I sort of had to ‘break up with him.” Yes, whores do sometimes break up with their johns. He was pretty devastated. He was in love and that was not okay. That was uncomfortable for me. I’m sure he soon found another whore to buy gifts for. A lot of women I worked with really didn’t respect their clients. I respected my clients, as I tend to see the intrinsic, unique worth of every person. I was raised Unitarian by humanist parents. I think the whore-client relationship is very influenced by our childhoods, our parents, what we bring to the table as it were. I had many clients who didn’t respect me, probably because of how they were raised. We’re all the walking wounded. But still, magically, somehow you made it all work. It was still a win-win situation even when it was all screwy and convoluted. We are all complex creatures.

Rumpus: Who was your favorite john?

Sprinkle: I didn’t call them “johns” but clients. So I had this client I’ll call Samuel. Not his real name. I saw him steadily for twenty years, usually twice a month. Over twenty years you really get to know someone. When I met him originally, he had three little kids, then they started growing up, getting married, then they’d have their drugs and alcohol problems, then they got divorced. . . Whenever we would get together I’d ask him, “How are things? How are the kids?” He was someone that I wouldn’t have been having sex with had he not been paying me. But I cared about him deeply and genuinely wanted to know about how his life was going. When his business took a turn for the worse, I lowered my price for him. Looking back I’d have to say it was definitely a type of long-term relationship. The only reason it ended was because I moved out of New York. He was a great guy. He owned camera stores. I met him when I was 18. We split up when I was 38. He saw me grow up too. He was a client, and also a friend. Such things are more common than people might think. This arrangement was not so different than many American relationships. That’s why the laws against prostitution have got to go. They are totally unfair and mean.

Rumpus: Have you ever paid for sex?

Sprinkle: There have been times where I have definitely felt like I was a john. As a pin-up photographer for ten years, when I was photographing men and women, to be honest, sometimes I felt like I was a john, especially when I was shooting guys because they—you know—they had to have big erections in the photos. So they would jerk off for me for hours sometimes, and then I’d pay them. I sometimes felt like a “dirty old man” and a “voyeur.” Because they were younger than I was, and I’d pay them, and they were working it. But that was okay. I didn’t mind being a john!

Rumpus: So, how has this experience changed your idea of the john/jill-providor relationship?

Sprinkle: I’m interested in the idea of expanding the idea of what a john is, or a jill. I also did a masturbation ritual which is called “The Legend of the Ancient Secret Prostitute” in a theater piece called: “Post Porn Modernist.” I was just fresh out of prostitution, so it was just an extension of that. Now that work is studied in many universities. In my theater pieces, I would do “Tits on the Head”—Polaroid photos for $10 on the stage. There would be a line of folks paying me $10 for their turn. It was public prostitution. I turned my whole audience into johns. But because it was in a theater context, an art context, it was socially acceptable.

***

First photograph © by Annie Sprinkle.

Second photograph © by Julian Cash.

***

This interview appears in prose form in Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other (Soft Skull Press).

When Faggots Shoot

Cyd Nova — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:01:05 +0000

It takes two years before Bob shows his gun collection to me. The guns are in the corner closet of a room I’ve slept in over thirty times. He opens the slatted door with a key, and one by one, he pulls out latched wooden boxes, heavy velvet bags, and cardboard boxes of bullets, delicately placing them in front of me on a foldout table: a militia spread.

There is a gun manufactured during World War II with Nazi insignia carved into the hammer. A gun with a ceramic grip, cream-painted with delicate roses. A majestic double barrel, a combination of polished steel and lustrous wood. And ten others, all of them shiny, cold, and heavy in the palm of my hand. Each one of them I have to pick up and acknowledge. Turn them over in the evening light. Listen while he tells me each individual history—their makes, values, and how they came into his life.

When we initially met, years earlier, Bob told me about his collection of firearms. We were in bed together, our bodies stretched out post-sex. He told me how he bought his first one in response to the threat of ’80s AIDS paranoia. He and his boyfriend started amassing weaponry together when a proposition calling for an AIDS quarantine was put on the ballot. His boyfriend was HIV-positive. They lived together in this house for a decade. Bob didn’t seroconvert until the early 2000s, though, long after that boyfriend died of an opportunistic infection.

In ’86, even though Bob was mostly closeted, he planned a revenge-killing spree. He wanted to walk up to Jesse Helms in a dark alley and leave his body full of smoking holes. He dreamed of drugging Lyndon LaRouche and leaving him facedown in a blood-splattered hotel room. Of waiting on a rooftop for days to pick out Ronald Reagan’s tiny head from a mass of bodyguards, pull the trigger, and watch the body gently fall to the ground.

Bob came of age with the backdrop of Stonewall and Harvey Milk. He deserves these revenges. His stories fill up the room between us, settling the distance between our bodies. I never ask him what happened or why, instead of going vigilante, he stayed in his job as a scrap-metal executive, flying from country to country to negotiate against unions. It is best practice to not ask clients embarrassing questions. That is part of the role of a sex worker: to let clients remember only the good stories about themselves.

That day was the first time we met, but I decided immediately to do what it took to make Bob my regular, even though doing so would break down the boundary between sex-work life and real life. Bob would be my primary romantic relationship for a couple years, the real reason I couldn’t really commit to dating anyone else.

Bob fucks me like I’m the drink of water he’s needed for a long, long time. In bed, when I lower myself onto his cock, he growls into my ear, “Your body is made just perfect for my dick.” I kneel next to him in the kitchen and drink his piss while he deep fries me breaded eggplant. It isn’t all about the sex though. He is caring and kind of lonely. I am caring and kind of lonely as well.

In the span of our relationship, guns become a focal point of tension. Every visit, we discuss plans to go to the shooting range together. Once a month, he goes with a group called the Pink Pistols. Part of me wants to go with him, but we both shy from commitments that would solidify our relationship in that way. Our ability to be as free as we are with each other runs parallel with the transient nature of our relationship.

After two years, we’ve stopped having sex every time we hang out. A year into our bimonthly overnights, he started to get erectile dysfunction and now has to inject Viagra into the slit of his cock to get it hard. I feel disappointed when we don’t fuck, even though this should be the ideal hooker situation: getting paid to lie around naked, eating and watching TV, while Bob gives me history lessons.

Tonight, though, I am being pushy about him fucking me. Cupping my hand around his cock softly bobbing in saggy underwear. He keeps trying to talk to me about the tactics of Occupy, but instead of letting him play earnest daddy I take off my clothes and climb onto his lap. I suggest we pack a bowl; maybe if we get high, tonight will be like it was before.

The reality is that he’s not into fucking me any longer. He’s started dating a forty year-old goth to whom he doesn’t have to hand a wad of twenties in the morning. The date’s name is Billy. Bob tells me about what it’s like when they hang out: he picks Billy and his laundry up and orders him dinner. Then they get undressed, and Bob puts his fist in Billy’s ass. Billy never asks him about emotions and never wants to hear stories.

Back on the couch, his hand lies idle on my thigh. We start talking about the guns. And then we’re walking upstairs, and I find myself limply obeying instructions to press my finger against a trigger.

Even though the gun is unloaded, I feel nervous. In bed, listening to his stories of desire and revenge was romantic, but here, the connection of death-lust to the solidness of dull grey steel scares me. He wants me to practice holding and aiming. He stares at me, my hips out, and I’m trying to keep my shoulders straight and hands steady. He tells me to practice pulling the trigger. Russian roulette: What if there was one forgotten bullet in the barrel? How many of these plaster walls would it pass through?

I can’t do this with him looking at me. I feel my body absorbing the physical memories imprinted by his hands when he grasped these guns with anger. The desire for his own or others’ deaths. These guns have been held by other men in his life. What right do I have to be here?

I start panting, asking for the barrel against my temple while I suck his cock. I want to feel the muzzle pressed against my ass. Please threaten and fuck me with these weapons. I whine for him to pin me down with them. He says no. These guns are too precious to be clogged up with my spit and cum. It would create something too messy between us. He walks me into the bedroom and jams his meaty fingers into my hole. I pretend to cum but instead I feel empty and untouchable. This is the last time we ever fuck.

***

In New Mexico, where I grew up, everyone owned a gun. It was a ritual to give boys BB guns on their twelfth birthdays. After their parties, I’d sit watching them shoot at balloons tied to hay bales.

Driving down the windy highway, I’d see trucks full of hunters, racks of shotguns covering their back windows. My dad had a gun in the front barn. He said he kept it only for emergencies, but once I saw him shooting at the coyotes that slunk around our apple trees every morning, eating rotting fruit.

Along with gun culture comes a routine engagement with killing, with guts and blood and bullets piercing flesh.

The first boy I played footsie with was named Alistair. He was a tall redhead with a plain face. He was one of the few other gringos in our class. In the grade below us was his snotty-nosed sister Abigail, who had to go to the nurse’s office every day to take her ADD medication. Altogether, there were five siblings in the school. They lived outside Taos in one of the houses made from car tires and dried mud, with no electricity.

The third Friday of the month, our classes were driven together from school to the public pool in Española. Alistair was the only other kid who could swim, who needed to swim to avoid getting dunked underwater or standing lonely amongst the clumps of sullen teens smoking in the shallow end, the girls with their immaculate chola bangs and the boys with slick shells of hair under hairnets. It was at the 9” mark he started touching me, rubbing his feet against my ankles underwater, brushing his fingers against my waist lightly.

It was six months later when he shot himself in the face. His parents said it was a gun-cleaning accident. The wound was not fatal. Gossip at school was that, with his finger already pressing down on the trigger, Alistair decided he didn’t want to die. He succeeded in not shooting out his brains, but blasted a hole in his face where his nose once lay. We were given a half-day off to think about it. (When there were drunk-driving accidents and real suicides, we got the whole day off.)

I think about New Mexico constantly. It’s where I always end up in dreams, retracing childhood footsteps. Deep in the stillness of the mountains was the steady promise of adventure. The summers I spent walking barefoot down trails into dense ponderosa forest, taking paths over sharp rocks to a waterfall, a sparkling, clear stream that spilled through boulders the size of my body. I would lie naked on the rock, sunshine shadowed by the ghostly aspens bordering the creek, long skinny trees with arms branching into bright yellow leaves. The winters were full of soft falling snow. I’d walk through the dead pasture, the cold numbing my toes till I couldn’t feel my feet. I’d climb over fences, and the dogs and I would slide across a frozen river, picking up driftwood to break a hole through the glassy surface to the water still flowing underneath.

Life and death in New Mexico is more visceral than survival in San Francisco. Death was not news. It was walking to the school bus every day, past the body of a cow that first bloated up with gas and then deflated into a pile of strewn skin and clean-stripped bones. Bound to these memories of sweet, simple earth are recollections of the fragility of bodies and the constant threat of extinction.

***

Bob wants to take me to the gun range, and I can’t think of a reason to say no.

Everyone tells me that I need to know how to shoot a gun. For when the apocalypse comes. For when the bombs hit and the smoke starts rising and the earth is quaking. When the war starts or when the war ends. All queers need to be prepared so one of us can hotwire a car and we’ll hightail it to a ghost town to live in a commune, away from the storm. We’ll need guns for that. Or if all the rich people shut us in the city so they can be the ones to move out to clean air and open spaces—we’ll need guns for that too.

Bob drives into the parking lot. It’s strip-mall dirty. There’s a river next to it, but it’s less of a river of water and more like a river of mud, churning its sludge slowly.

Inside, everyone looks hard: tight-lipped faces, weathered cheeks. At the counter is a bored-looking woman. Her ponytail is as perfect as a gymnast’s, pulled back so tight it makes her eyebrows arch, every curl slick with hairspray. She hands us liability forms. I’m only allowed in as Bob’s guest. It is against their rules to let any random person off of the streets rent a gun, so as to avoid the suicidal.

Behind the counter are thick, plastic shotguns that look like toys for GI figurines. There are shelves lined with items for cleaning and customizing your gun, there are pepper spray canisters, including pink ones for girls. On the walls are rows of targets to choose from: zombies, black diagrams of bodies, and a picture of a mustached man grasping a skinny blond girl, pressing a gun against her temple. I’m grateful the figure in the cartoon isn’t a black man. In Miami, after the murder of Trayvon Martin, a gun shop started selling targets of a figure in a hooded sweatshirt, Skittles and iced tea in hand. They sold out in two days.

Above it all, a line drawing of Angelina Jolie looks upon us like the Virgin Mary. Her benevolent gaze falls on the altars’ offerings of hunting knives, NRA bumper stickers, and shirts that proudly proclaim, “Extreme Right Wing.”

Before walking into the shooting range, I must put on earmuffs and eye protection. Then I walk through one metal door, which must be completely shut before I can open the second. It feels like entering into a spaceship.

Inside, the range looks like a concrete bowling alley. But instead of bowling balls, every lane is filled with a steady stream of fire and explosion. Every time a shot is fired, I jump reflexively. I’m trying to keep my eyes on everyone, to be ready to duck at any second. I cannot let go of the idea that this is dangerous. I am the only faggot in this room, the only one wearing a purple shirt and nail polish. All the men around me are the type I’ve encountered on Friday nights waiting for the bus, the drunk and surly ones who follow me around street corners demanding a cigarette or an answer as to why I’m dressed so funny. Men I play chicken with, staying cool and impenetrable on the outside while keeping my eyes on their fists. Here, they all have guns in their hands, and even though nobody so much as glances my way, there’s a loop in my brain warning me I could die in seconds.

Even here, with the formality and cartoon targets and lists of rules about proper use, I don’t forget that guns are instruments of death. In the shopfront are hunting magazines covered with pictures of elk vibrantly alive, looking at the reader with poise and innocence against a background of vivid green. None show the felled creature, a limp corpse with blank eyes, the thunderous dance of electrical synapses in its brain dulling into a final, dead silence.

Although I get swept up in the romance of preparing for revolution, the kind of violence that guns bring feels too final, too cold. I’m scared to learn how they work, because I’m scared to tap into the mindset of how they are used.

And now it is my turn to shoot. Stay calm and pleasant. Pick up the firearm, press thumb against thumb, pulling the trigger, and stay steady for the combustion. The bullets, depending on their size, will squeeze out quiet and civil, or screaming, cursing the world for their expulsion into open air.

The anticipation is more than the action, after many rounds of tension popping my arms out of aim, I learn how to pop off shot after shot. Bob takes a picture of me: it looks like a still from a video game. The roof is crumbling, sheetrock hanging loose from the low plywood ceiling. The figure in the image is trapped on both sides by aluminum walls; above him, a light in a cage almost touches the top of his head. His shoulders are arched back, neck tanned, arms stretched out in front holding the magnum steady. A ball of flames explodes from the muzzle; its destination is the cowboy zombie target, which has its own gun drawn and which is illustrated to have a chunk of flesh already missing from its torso. Spent shells litter the ground.

I lay the gun down and walk outside to smoke a cigarette, staring into the seething brown of the river.

***

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

About That Whole “Men Are Sex Fiends” Thing…

Lauren ONeal — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:41:35 +0000

Well, this is interesting: “…for most of Western history, from ancient Greece to beginning of the nineteenth century, women were assumed to be the sex-crazed porn fiends of their day.”

Alyssa Goldstein chronicles the process by which that stereotype flipped all the way around—and why both its iterations have been bad for women. One of many fascinating passages:

In the 1600s, for instance, Francisco Plazzonus deduced that childbirth would hardly be worthwhile for women if the pleasure they derived from sex was not far greater than that of men’s. Montaigne…considered women to be “incomparably more apt and more ardent in love than men are…”

Trigger Warning

Sarah McCarry — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:01:59 +0000

When I interview writers for my blog I often read reviews of their books: a little bit research, a little bit procrastination. Even the work I like to do I like to put off. I am, in fact, putting off work right now. But it’s nice to see, often, the kinds of questions other people are thinking about. Erica Lorraine Scheidt’s book Uses for Boys is painful to read in places. Its teenage narrator, Anna, has sex in order to find out who she is and what her value is in relation to other people. The adults in her world do not take care of her or look out for her. She is sexually assaulted on a school bus; she is raped at a party; she has sex that is loving and not loving with people she does and does not care about. She is, you know, human. When I looked up the book before I interviewed Erica, I was not surprised to see that a large number of reviews took issue not with the writing or the plot or the structure, but with the main character’s sexuality; but even I was startled by the vitriol of many of them, the insistence that a story about a girl who fucks cannot be a story with any value at all. That a girl who fucks cannot have any value at all. I read them all, one after the other, and I could feel them in my stomach, gathering weight.

“Anna is probably not a likable character. This is because of her choices and because they don’t make a lot of sense.” “Bad things happen to Anna and Anna does bad things in turn. Do you think Anna feels bad for any of it? No, she doesn’t.” “Anna sort of made these decisions herself spur of the moment not taking into consideration, the repercussions after, so you can see why I had no sympathy for her.”

Today is grey and cold and, unseasonably, snowing, and I am sadder than I ought to be about various things of no consequence. I have had some version of this piece sitting on my desktop for months. I hover the mouse over the “publish” button and then I move it away again. I wanted to tell you about something else instead, like how last night I told my friend over the phone you can never admit in public that you find Infinite Jest boring, because people just think you are too stupid to get it, and then this afternoon on the train I saw a man who looked exactly like David Foster Wallace, and it seemed like a sign, but of what I don’t know. I don’t want to write about rape anymore. But here we are.

“My biggest misunderstanding was in that the blame seemed to be placed more on the boys and less on Anna making poor decisions and her mother’s inability to lovingly care for her daughter.” “I kept expecting her to eventually make better choices or at least learn from her mistakes. But hello, who gets raped and doesn’t even realize I mean not fully.”

I was unaware of what had happened in Steubenville until relatively recently, when, in a tire store in Park City of all places, the story came on the news while I was waiting with a friend for his car tires to be changed. Without warning, the YouTube video was on the television screen. I went into the bathroom and threw up. When I came out of the bathroom the story was still on and so I went into the bathroom again and locked myself in the stall and cried—this is what I do, I guess, go into bathroom stalls and cry—and the image of that girl’s body, swinging between two boys, their faces blurred, is one that I can still see, even now, three months later. The knowledge of not just what was done, but of how many people watched. Somewhere else, that is happening again now. My friend got his car and we drove away. “Are you all right?” he said. “Sure,” I said. “Fine.” Park City is lovely in the winter.

“I also wasn’t a fan of how Anna’s promiscuity started. Anna had a choice from the moment she was on the bus to make very different decisions than she did.”

Slutty, unlikable, passive, drunk, poor decisions, doesn’t make a lot of sense, dirty, has too much sex, has sex, is probably thinking about sex, poor, brown, wrong body, wrong gender, at the wrong party, didn’t say the right kind of no, couldn’t say no, didn’t know how to try. What are we talking about, here? A book? A girl? A human body? One another? Me? It gets harder and harder to tell.

“Here’s the part that really made me wanna smack the girl. Anna goes out to a party, gets drunk, and this post-high school guy spends the night pinching and twisting at her nipples. She doesn’t want him to, but hey, it seems to be a normal occurrence for her, so the most she does is flick him off for doing it. So it’s no wonder the guy finds her drunk @ss later to rape her. He pins her down and covers her mouth, and when he’s done, casually asks her not to say anything to anyone. ‘Okay,’ is her reaction.”

There is more than one way to survive.

“I didn’t like her at ALL. I kinda want to punch her in the face. I don’t really want to go slut-shaming and all that. But seriously.”

If language wounds so well there is hope in the thought that it can also bring us together, mark us out as warriors, as kin. That we can build bridges out of our scars.

“I’m sorry, but this girl truly is a slut with major mental issues, with no one to blame but herself.”

I want to write the thing that will make it all make sense because I don’t want to write about this anymore. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Do you understand? Walking through the park a few nights ago, not that late. I have an old, bad back injury; every now and then, the muscles seize up, and I walk with a noticeable limp. Past a group of men. The algebra you do: how many of them there are factored by do they mean me harm times how fast can I run. “Why’s she walking like that?” one of them said to the others. “Sweetheart, you hurt? You want me to help you?” My heart stopped. I’m sure he meant well. In the wild, a wounded animal is often left to die. Last night watching an old episode of Buffy. Some cheesy biker demons rampage across the town. They corner all of Buffy’s most annoying friends. “Some of us have anatomical peculiarities,” sneers a demon to Buffy’s witchy bestie. “They tend to tear up little girls.” Well, I tell you what. Picturing that really fucked me up for a while.

“I honestly and truly believe that Anna had something wrong with her.”

I chose not to link directly to any of the reviews; I have no interest in summoning the short-lived Internet vengeance machine. They’re real. You can find them for yourself, if citations are important to you. I will tell you that every single one of them quoted here, except for one, was written by a woman.

“Had the author just given me that last scene where she proved that Anna was going to become something better than she was, I could’ve give this novel at least three stars. Now… I hate even giving it one. It disturbs me that much that this girl slutted around, got high, got drunk, and didn’t change anything about herself moving forward.”

I didn’t change anything about myself, moving forward. “Okay” was my reaction, too. This body, this heart, the same old fucking stories. I still drink too much sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I went to a lot of the wrong parties. I tattoo my own history on my skin but I’m starting to forget it anyway. Am I becoming something better than what I was? Should I be?

I don’t know. You tell me.

Writs of Passion

Lisa Dusenbery — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:00:47 +0000

In case you missed it last week, check out Steve Almond’s “Why I Write Smut: A Manifesto.”

It’s an excerpt from Writs of Passion, a set of six tiny books made up of Almond’s stories and essays that are too dirty for prime-time.

The book covers fit together like a puzzle to reveal a steamy scene by Brian Stauffer. Below you’ll find a sneak peek of the cover image and details on ordering:

Limited edition of Writs of Passion is available until Valentine’s Day. To order, send $25 per set via Paypal (sbalmond AT earthlink.net) or send an email to stevealmondjoy AT gmail.com.

“Attention Is the First and Final Act of Love”

Lauren ONeal — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:30:51 +0000

Steve Almond’s Writs of Passion is “the best Valentine’s gift money can buy,” at least according to About.com (and us!).

About.com guide Corey Silverberg interviewed Almond about pleasure, emotional danger, and how to write sex scenes.

A preview:

…even if we do enjoy sex, we find all kinds of ways to punish ourselves for that pleasure. I wish it wasn’t so complicated (believe me — I wish!). But it is. I’m trying to capture that.

Why I Write Smut: A Manifesto

Steve Almond — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:11:50 +0000

1. Because I’ve devoted perhaps eighty percent of my adult waking hours to thinking about sex, and it seems dishonest to pretend otherwise in my work.

2. Because human beings are never more alive to their own hope and shame and fear than when they are naked and aroused, and because the same must therefore be true of our characters, who are nothing more than poorly disguised versions of ourselves.

3. Because I’m really tired of seeing sex used to sell SUVs and underarm deodorant and crappy light beer, rather than being portrayed as a natural and sometimes even holy human endeavor.

4. Because I have accumulated over the years such a tremendous surplus of sexual humiliation that it seems stingy of me not to re-gift some it to my readers.

5. Because I happen to agree with Freud’s naughtiest disciple, Wilhelm Reich, who argued that a true political revolution would only be possible once sexual repression was overthrown, which pretty much rules out the Tea Party as a true political revolution because, boy, is that a movement that needs to get laid.

6. Because I am now married with two small children and thus writing about sex often constitutes the closest I get to having sex.

7. Because President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did have sexual relations, and while I could care less about the big phony scandal that story became, I am interested in the sweet and deranged version of love that passed between them. Aren’t you?

8. Because I’m really tired of having to listen to well-meaning religious folk misquoting God about how the rest of us should use our genitals.

9. Because both my parents are psychoanalysts – and despite what you are all now thinking, which is basically, Wow, you must be a really crazy person, which is a very interesting thought for you to have, by the way, and something we might want to talk about a bit later in the session – the one lesson my parents managed to impart, as I lay those many afternoons on the analytic couch that was, in fact, the only piece of furniture in our living room, is that our libidinal drives are not some bright new user option, but an essential part of our beings, an inborn riot of wants and counter wants that we can never control entirely. And because, as a writer, I’m interested in the loss of control, in the danger of forbidden thought and feeling, it strikes me as utterly foolish – just from a practical perspective – not to write about sex. Why skip over the part almost guaranteed to teach you something new about yourself?

10. Because I’m tired of living in a culture that allows children to fire make-believe glocks but freaks out at the first sign of a naked boob.

11. I just really love being able to write off lube as a business expense.

12. Because our best writing resides in the senses, and sex invokes all five of our senses—at least if you’re doing it right.

13. Because, though I watch pornography, and am terrifically involved with it for about two and a half minutes, I am most often made sad by pornography. Not simply because it involves the self-exploitation of people who probably have suffered a good deal of misfortune, and not simply because porn stars can perform in manners that often seem like physiological, geometrical, and even gravitational impossibilities (and thus make me feel like the abject sexual nebbish I surely am) but because porn stars are actors being paid, most often, to simulate pleasure. They drain sex of its single most intimate aspect: the vulnerabilities that bring us to the act in the first place, the drama of our imperfect bodies as we seek to make a communion of our desires.

14. Because I believe literature’s central purpose is not to pretend we don’t have bodies and their consequent needs, but to make us feel less alone with these needs.

15. Because the Puritans themselves were—don’t kid yourselves—total horndogs who wanted nothing more than to tear off those black robes and suffer a spiritual crisis. And because when I write about sex I am writing, ultimately, about a dream that begins with the Puritans: that we the people of this violent and troubled kingdom will at last forgive ourselves the lust and loneliness the reddens our blood, and will seek a final remedy in the warm temple of one another’s bodies. Who’s with me?

***

This Manifesto is part of a set of six tiny books called Writs of Passion. They are adult material, stories and essays that have appeared in Tin House, The Normal School, Playboy, Best American Erotica, etc., but are too dirty for prime-time. The covers fit together like a puzzle to form a gorgeous image, created by my DIY partner in crime Brian Stauffer. Limited edition, available until Valentine’s Day.

To order, send $25 per set via Paypal (sbalmond AT earthlink.net) or send an email to stevealmondjoy AT gmail.com.

***

“Why I Write Smut: A Manifesto” originally appeared in The Normal School, Spring 2012.

Art by Brian Stauffer.

More or Less

Chris Wiewora — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 08:01:07 +0000

In her dorm, Kisha undid my jeans. Her finger held the tab of my zipper. I heard the teeth release. My pants caught around my ankles as Kisha’s hand slipped under the elastic of my briefs. I snatched her wrist, holding her from going further. It was the first time we had done anything together.

“I’m not huge,” I said. Kisha’s face was at my crotch, ready.

“I don’t care about that,” she said.

I let go of Kisha’s wrist. She took me in her mouth.

It was good. Not great. Kisha said she hadn’t done this too many times before. What she lacked in talent, she made up for with enthusiasm. I thought I might get friction burns.

“Slow down,” I said. “I’m going to cum.” I reached out for her wrist again.

Kisha kept her mouth on me.

“It’s a lot,” I warned.

Kisha looked at me the same way as when I said I wasn’t huge. She continued. The space between my stomach and waist—in the core of my body—tightened, preparing to gush everything out of me.

I filled up her mouth. I felt Kisha’s face twitch, her eyebrows rising. Her lips kept sealed over my cock, her cheeks puffed out.

She swallowed.

In my sixth-grade sex ed class, Ms. Gonzalez didn’t put a condom over a banana. Instead, she lifted an unlit match to the whole class and told us that millions of sperm could fit on the red end. She lit the match. Sulfur permeated the room.

When I got home from school, I snooped around my parents’ bedroom and found a box shoved in the back of the bottom drawer of the table next to my dad’s side of their bed. I opened it. Trojan condoms. I put one in my pocket, closed the lid, and shut the drawer.

In my bathroom, I opened the wrapper. Slick goop leaked onto my fingers. A smell, like doctor’s gloves.

I couldn’t get an erection for the condom. I was thinking about my parents having sex. I had never stumbled in on them. Not that I wanted to, but I had heard stories from friends about walking in and staring at what they didn’t know.

I unrolled the condom. It was like a wet, limp balloon. I hated the flapping sound it made. I rolled it up in toilet paper and put it in my bathroom’s trash bag. But my brother Joe could find it. So, I tied the trash bag and took it to the trash bin in the kitchen. I stuffed it at the bottom. Then I thought, what if Mom or Dad saw the bag in a bag and opened it and found one of their condoms? I double-knotted the trash bag, took it to the garage, and put it all in the trashcan.

***

Kisha gave me a condom. I remembered the egg-fart smell of the lit match in sex ed. I figured it was either condom or no sex. I opened the condom. I didn’t wilt. I still remembered the directions from that first condom wrapper. I pinched the tip and rolled it onto myself, snug.

Kisha lowered herself onto me.

“How is it?” I asked, beneath Kisha.

“Good,” she said, with half-closed eyes. She started to rock back and forth on me.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

Kisha pushed off me as I reached out for her hips to hold on. She rolled over onto her side.

“I try to find a way for us to do it safely, and then you say that,” Kisha said. Her voice muffled into her pillow.

I looked at her ass. I wanted to take Kisha from behind. Imagine who she could be. Not have to look at her telling me no.

“Come on,” I said. “I was kidding—”

“You’re joking about something serious?” Kisha said. “I’ll have to get on the pill, and get fat.” She cried against the wall away from me.

I rolled my eyes, only because she couldn’t see me do it.

“No, no,” I said. “Look, we can try again. It’s okay, this is only the first time with a condom. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

After a few minutes of convincing, we were fucking. I didn’t think of it as sex, as love. Whatever. It was action. We were getting off.

Above her, level with my eyes, was an Obama HOPE poster. The black President was painted in red and blue. He tilted his chin off to the corner, but his eyes squinted at me fucking my black girlfriend. I thought of his campaign slogan: Yes, we can! However, with each thrust, my mantra was not-pregnant, not-pregnant, not-pregnant.

A part of me wanted to stay inside her. But I didn’t, because I knew what that could mean. I pulled out.

Kisha’s face was buried into her pillow like an ostrich. My cum hit next to her cheek. She turned around as I aimed, trying to squirt the rest onto her back. She smiled like after she had sucked me off.

“Have you ever thought of being a pornstar?” Kisha asked, trying to touch me still hard. She leaned on her side, her arms pushing her small breasts together. Kisha grated her nipples against my bicep.

“I know I could,” I said. I could still feel the gaze of the Obama HOPE poster on the back of my head.

***

I remembered, when I was single and used to watch porn alone, a clip played with this guy, who I later knew was Peter North, double-penetrating a woman I had searched for on a “vintage” site: Sarah Young—a foxy Italian with curly bangs, a polka-dotted blouse halfway ripped off, and quite a hairy snatch. Peter double-teamed Sarah with a black guy, who I didn’t know was Sean Michaels. At first, since I didn’t know Peter, I considered that Sean—because he’s a black guy—was the pornstar, while Peter was just some white boy filler. And so I watched, not knowing either guy, Sean fucking Sarah’s ass and Peter plowing Sarah’s pussy.

I was looking forward to what I knew would be the last thing in any clip: the old phrase “money shot,” which was now just called a “facial”—the withdrawal of Sean and Peter’s cocks from Sarah’s ass and pussy to cum on her face. And so, Sean pulled out and held his cock in front of Sarah’s face. I expected him to turkey-baste her. He started slow, cumming in some inch-length dribbles. At the same time, Peter continued to fuck Sarah in a wheelbarrow position, really slamming into her. Peter edged, his eyes squinted as tight as his taut triceps. Then Peter withdrew and took up more than half of my computer screen as he started to unload on Sarah’s face. He almost came on Sean, too, because it was like a shotgun spray.

Peter came nine times, and then he pumped into the double-digits. By that time, Sean was out of the frame. Sarah smiled with her face plastered. Her sopping, curly bangs began to straighten with the drying slickness. Like egg-whites, jizz dripped from Sarah’s chin.

The clip faded out. Then a pop-up appeared: a call for new recruits. I figured all I had to do was stop jerking off for a few days to “save up.” Then get out my cameraphone and record myself. I thought I probably shouldn’t take a pic, because I believed the industry folks would think I’d faked my load and enhanced it with flicks from a spoonful of yogurt, which I knew was used in some productions.

I imagined after I had finished recording myself coming, I would want to select a song. Something like “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim to play in the background. It would show I had chops besides acting. That I could edit, too, maybe even direct!

I saw on the recruitment site that I needed to include a summary of my info:

-Ounces: Well, I figured I could count tablespoons, maybe even a quarter of a cup.

-Distance: I remembered one time when I stood with my back to the wall in the shower and came horizontally, hitting the opposite wall a few feet away.

-Average ejaculations: As I jerked off watching Peter facialize Sarah, I had matched him splurt for splurt. I’d need to go back and tally how many that was.

From there, if I got accepted, North Pole Productions would fly me to California. I’d get buff, tanned up, and waxed down. My start would be a five-minute feature without my face in the frame. Just my cock and a girl and what I could deliver. I would prove myself.

I could make it a career: working out in the mornings, fucking chicks in the afternoons, blowing loads in their faces, and getting thumbs-up from businessmen in airports on evening flights from my mansion in LA to my condo in Miami.

But I didn’t apply. I didn’t want to feel empty and then wait to refill and then feel empty again and again and again. I didn’t want to be a spectacle. And I thought it would be worse than being alone.

In the afterglow, Kisha snuggled next to me. We spooned naked. She shuddered as she started to fall asleep. Then she faded into a deeper sleep. But I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to stay.

I woke up Kisha and said I was going to go back home. As I put on my clothes, I suggested she take a Plan B pill, just in case. Kisha didn’t say anything. I had my shoes tied, and I was ready to leave. I said that I didn’t want kids. I wondered if Kisha thought, Not now? or Not ever? or Not with me? I let myself out.

***
Listen to Chris read his essay.

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

Nick Cave Monday #14: “Wild World”

Tony DuShane — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:00:07 +0000

There’s a soundtrack for when I’m about to fall in love with a girl. That precious gap of time between getting to know each other physically and mentally before diving in the pool of vulnerability and embracing love and commitment.

Laying in bed, talking, cuddling, kissing, ravishing.

There are crates of records around my apartment and the album “The Bad Seed”, by The Birthday Party tends to get a spin on the turntable next to my bed when I have entered that beautiful space between …..is this something?…. to …..yes, we are something…..

The second track “Wild World” is where the needle gets dropped on the record.

Here is Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds performing the song:

“Our bodies melt together, we are one.”

Sexy as hell, right?

That was 2003, let’s back up 20 years to 1983. Here is The Birthday Party performing the song:

The Birthday Party, Tracey Pew on bass, Mick Harvey on drums and Rowland S. Howard with the haunting guitar.

One night Rowland joined The Bad Seeds in 1992 for a petit reunion of sorts of The Birthday Party. “Wild World” is the first song. Listen to the crowd go nuts when Nick introduces Rowland:

Here’s a pretty cool video with interviews of Rowland, Mick, Nick and Barry Adamson from a documentary on Rowland S. Howard:

In another interview, Nick discusses how they thought London was going to be an amazing music scene, and when they got there it was more like being gang banged by a bunch of marshmallows.

“Hold me up baby for I may fall, hold my dish-rag body tall.”

How can you not fuck and fall in love to that?

Thanks for reading and come back next week for Nick Cave Monday.

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