Slug Sex

Yeah, I know, Slug Sex sounds really great.

But it is amazingly sensual. (And I've always hated slugs.) It's like a sweet, sweet, Cronenberg love scene. Hemaphroditic invertebrates defying gravity in a twisting band of hormonal tension, encased in blossoming bands of mating mucus, while their sexual organs swell to encompass their entire bodies, in an act of throbbing, mutual insemination, the ultimate gestalt of sexual being.

Stars divide. The air burns. Rockets fly. Little slugs are made.

Trust me. Just watch it.



If nothing else, the mellifluous vocal tones of David Attenborough should sooth your humors.

what the fuck, literally

I'm really tired, so I'm not going to write anywhere near as much as I could. But I want to say simply that this NYT Books article absolutely disgusted me.

It disgusts me that Chabon, Eggers, and Wallace are supposed to be the "great male writers" of our time.

It disgusts me that Mailer, Roth, and Updike are supposed to be the "great male writers" of any time.

It disgusts me that anyone, woman or man, would be comfortable with this analysis of our current state of sexuality in america.

It disgusts me that anyone, woman or man, might possibly read an article like this an not get as disgusted and upset as I am right now.

There is an un-severable, bloody-uterine-appendage connection between sex and writing. It is thick, rigid, wet, tight, and secreting out of any literature. Not just the overtly sexual writing, and not just the graphic writing. If you read the sex of any of these listed authors, you are reading the most stilted, white, middle class, faux-intellectual, marginal american sex ever. This represents the worst that the american sex drive has to offer. Virginized christian america is more interesting, because it at least has a hang up, and teenage pregnancies. For goodness sake, if I wanted to re-read the tender violations of mainstream sexuality, I could read Cosmopolitan.

The problem with all of these authors, is that they set up a false dichotomy between the "mainstream facade" of american sex, and the "violation of the facade". All of them, in their own degree, are inflating a blow-up doll, and then knocking it down. I would hazard a guess that this represents 1% of americans view on life. They have a certain view of sex, and then worry themselves sick about the few contradictions of that view they are able to discover.

The rest of america, is fucking. Or they're watching porn, or watching VH1, or watching each other fuck on cell phone video, or hating sex, or killing people who have sex, or raping people (like, actually raping people, not just insulting them) or putting pictures of their penis on Craigslist. All of this is going on, 24 hours a day, and we're supposed to act like anything Dave Eggers says about sex is relevant?

Of course nobody is going to capture the complete package. But claiming that a high-brow novelist is even close to the truth is like a New Yorker treating their own sex life as anthropological archetype. Which they do, by the way. As do people from all over the country, all the time, 24 hours a day.

Everybody in this country thinks they know how to cure everyone else's sex life, while they can't see the problems with their own, while they watch other people have sex on TV, while they have sex themselves. This incredible non-stop orgy of the mind and body and everyone else's mind and body IS american sex. One of Burroughs' speed dreams about aliens and assholes is a lot closer to the truth than a novelist's Anytown, USA. The thing the NYT, and all of their canon miss, is the SPEED of sex. It is happening, all over the country, all the time, accelerating. Britney Spears' naked crotch is BREAKING NEWS in this dimension! What dimension is the NYT living in?

Alright, part of my anger is that I just wrote a novella outlining this basic concept, and to see wet blankets like the above names cited as "america's male authors" cuts into me like a 9" plastic stripper heel.

But apart from that, it really kills me that americans can continue to be so blind about their own sex lives. You can read all the literature you want, whether it be misogynist novelists or french feminists. But if you still cannot see the sex going on out the window in the middle of the street in the daytime, if you still cannot plug literature into your body as well as your mind, if you still cannot talk and read about sex while having actual sex, then how can we say we've progressed past or through anything? The key to sex in literature is not that literature IS sex, it is that we read with our eyes, think with our minds, speak with our mouths, and write with our hands, and then turn right around and use these VERY SAME body parts to pleasure ourselves and others. A metaphor is a working link, not a costume. Literature does not "take the place of", but "connects between". As it is for words, it is for body parts.

okay, well thanks for listening. I'm off to bed.

"It Had Better Hurt... or What's the Point?": Author's Note

Most of my writing ideas are inspired by a sensation, or an experience, which often I write down quickly in the form of a vignette, and then go back later to think about themes to develop, or characters and plot. Some I never return to, and they form a lovely little quilt of bizarre thoughts and notions, which hopefully I save and accumulate until they, in their totality, prove worthy of some sort of use.

I could talk about the inspiration for this story, "It Had Better Hurt... or What's the Point?" because I clearly remember it, but the idea was the ending, and I don't want to give it away.

Instead, I'll talk about developing some of the themes.

Pain has always been very interesting to me, especially pain in the context of pleasure--so accordingly, sex. There are also volumes and volumes about this topic, so I'll spare you the theory and the metaphysics.

I wanted to write about pain and sex, but not from the purely metaphysical side, like Freud, and not simply from the vague "thrill" of writing about something deemed by some people to be explicit, like Sade, or countless others. In fact, I wanted to keep arousal as far away from the writing as possible--clearly that in itself can be a very fun game, but I don't really have the need to share my sexuality with the world (most of the time).

I've tried to approach this subject and failed, several times. These attempts should probably be destroyed, to save someone the grief of ever accidentally stumbling upon them, but I can't do things like that, and I won't. But all the same, I didn't have anything written I felt good about.

Approaching this story with a character who is quite young and who's inexperience is manifested in excitement seemed to be the key for me. I love how teenagers will babble incessantly about sex--they say some really funny things if you listen to them. Once you grow older you either stop talking about sex, or always talk about it in the same ways. You learn a vocabulary, and you learn phrases, and you learn ways of enunciating and stepping around the actual description, "....you know what I mean?" If you ever are so lucky to happen to overhear a fifteen or sixteen year-old first using the word, "cunt" to actually, qualitatively describe the female genitals, try and remember it, because it is truly a beautiful thing. Not because of the sexual content, but precisely because of the lack of it. S/he is testing out the word, fitting it between the thought and the lips (the verbal lips, jerk) for the first time, to see it it works correctly. Like watching someone first pick up a tool and make something correctly. The experience is even better for the speaker, but of course you don't realize it at the time. It's somewhat like having sex for the first time, not actual coitus, which is polluted with a thousand social connotations of very little use, but more like the first experience of oral sex, or manual sex--like a small fragment broken off, the ache of a splinter in the skin, something that sticks with you for the rest of the day, or even the week. Do you remember the first time you ever talked dirty in bed? You might remember that. A whole different sort of rush than having sex, a certain, "those words are coming out of my mouth!" and getting used to how it sounds.

I couldn't use the word "cunt" in the story--that was too explicitly what I was going for, and besides, it would be me using the word, no matter how I tried to write it, and not the character. But the character could say a ton of other things, awkward, teenage, overly-excited things, rushing out of his lips before he thought about them, and each one warming his face with the glow of stolen liquor. That sort of sexuality has a power to it because it is limited by time--and no one can hold onto it forever. You can tell he's is rushing back to his room, because no matter how sure he convinces himself that he is, she might not be there when he gets back.

It's this sort of ebullient, quiet panic I was trying to develop--the sort of nervous tension that can drown inhibitions as well or better than the warm beer you are probably drinking out of the can. The body's own pushing upward, a welling intensity, causing the the teeth to bite on the lip or neck so the hips can feel the spasm, caught against bone and muscle, like two young bodies enveloped in the tight dance of two people who are so obvious going to get it on, sucking so much face that you wish they would just go do it already, because it is a painful memory to those who have moved on, already gone and bought the beer so many times that now we buy it at the grocery store, because our sexuality has moved on to a different stage, like a butterfly looking at a cocoon with slight disgust at it's crusty, unflying sheen.

Some people have moved on from this stage--but then again, there are some people who never get there. The ending of the story has a thousand different parables and messages within it. But after all, that is the point, now isn't it?


Stay tuned for the last post, an author's note on the novella which is newly available, just like the short stories, from www.brutepress.com.

How much for that fetish in the window?

UPDATE: I added a section. I thought about it more after I posted and decided some thoughts weren't quite complete.

Mental image of the week: classicist Charlie Campbell scrutinizing an ancient document on a late-night desk by candlelight; upon reaching a particular passage, he wags his bearded face and utters a disgusted commentary: "these ideological presumptions are repulsive!"

But seriously- his recent blog post on prostitution and art (sexy, sexy!) covers some interesting ground. The question: is it wrong to use a sexual relationship to further one's artistic endeavors? I was first struck by his argument in that he begins by making the equivalence of ideological and sexual purity, at least when it comes negation: to sell sex is like selling out a cause. (The true equivalence of the Left!) It seems at first that he is drawing a connection between economics of body (sex is a fair, willing exchange) and purity of purpose (art should not cater to exchanges, but represent a fair pursuit of truth). Not that this is an undesired view point; it is a nice counter from the typical liberal view that sex as an exchange is a violation of truth prima facie. In other words, in his first view prostitution or sex is not immoral, it simply should be separated from ideological/aesthetic process.

But then he continues, to say that this is not always true, which is quite valid, I think. Purity of truth is clearly as much of a fallacy as purity of body and morality. You conclude that "transcendent aesthetic meritocracy does not, and will never exist," and I agree.

I might push it further though, and say that Trotsky's point about aesthetic value "not being reducible to class-struggle," (in Mssr. Campell's words; I do not know of Trotsky's own words) is somewhat misleading--it seems to take an easy out along the lines of Marxian super-structure. That is, to parenthesize aesthetics as some kind of sideline structure; so don't worry about that little exo-structure, focus on the structure (class relations).

On the contrary, I think a certain material analysis of art might show something interesting. To cut to the chase: it's all sexual, isn't it? The aesthetic desire to view a particular piece is not much different from sexual desire. From where do our fetishes derive? A complicated question, but not very different than the question of the source of our aesthetics (and how sexy the response is depends on who you're asking).

These pathways of desire, then, that distribute art and make it desirable for owning or viewing (a sexy metaphor, that), are not much different than the strange pathways of human relations. If the way that artists and patrons sleep around (paid or not) don't resemble the vicissitudes of popular taste, I don't know what would. Is art any more than a representation of desire? Is the art world anything other than a club for sluts? Or any other so-called "humanity"? Writers, scholars, and even ideologists co-mingle their fluids almost as much as their work (and the evil twin of sex, prudery, often rears its head in these venues as well). Did you hear that Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power are hooking up?

So if you can live with my little pet theory--humanities = the pursuits of humans = the sordid lives of sex addicts--then there is only one point left to ponder. The other unfortunate truth of being human: the daily necessities of food, clothing, shelter, wine, and admission to the hippest parties. In other words, good old Darwinian success, of which artists are known for being holes to.

But, let us not forget... well, um, Claude Levi-Strauss. Structures of kinship, etc. I won't delve into it here. Did you know that in five weeks Levi-Strauss will be one-hundred years old? Amazing!

The point: that humans form bonds, often sexual bonds, to help support each others search for human necessity. Not very complicated. Artists do the same thing. In fact, if you want to talk about sacrificing oneself for art, the best place to look is at some of the spouses of our more eccentric artists. Is this wrong? Probably, in some ways. But so is marriage itself, especially when it is utilized as indentured servitude. But sometimes it is not. I don't want to say I'm a model to be followed, but take my marriage for example. My wife's job earns a lot more money than mine, and she gets good health care. (It is my opinion that any one who is anti-labor union has never known how wonderful it is to actually be in a union.) So, because she cares about my well being, we had our relationship blessed by the State so that I could also have adequate and affordable health care. In addition, we have also discussed our artistic pursuits. At some point, each of us is willing to support the other with our day jobs so that the other can pursue art (my writing, and her painting). This is really no bigger than the daily agreements that make up our kinship system: I cook, she does laundry, rent is split down the middle, etc.

So what is the sexual world of art if not a much more complicated, largely unspoken, anarchic kinship system? Rarely, rarely is it the fetishized, one blow-job = one painting hung on a gallery wall. As Charlie noted in some of his examples, it is much more complicated. Artists have relationships with patrons, and then they move on to other artists and different patrons. The choice of whom-with-whom is often bizarre, often judged to be unwarranted, and feelings are hurt. But who can say it is prostitution? I send an author $15 if I wish to own a copy of his/her book and I feel the work is deserving. I might take an interesting artist out to dinner in exchange for the pleasure of his/her company and conversation. If my interest in someone's work has sexual components, why wouldn't I sleep that person? I can say honestly, if I thought a person was not creative, my attraction to them would diminish. I think my wife's art is wonderful, and it is part of the whole of my attraction to her. It doesn't mean we exchange sex for art, company for short stories, and home-cooked meals for clean laundry, but then again, we do sort of exchange these things. Or if you ask Levi-Strauss, we definitely do.

I think the problem, as with most problems regarding value, occurs under commodification. Prostitution is the epitome of the commodification of sex. The sex is reduced to a menu of acts, and the price is firmly set in exchangeable counters. Now, this is not the problem itself; the problem is that when these securitized acts are commodified, it is much easier for oppression to occur. Perhaps the giver of the act has to agree to a price that s/he did not set; perhaps the act includes violence or power relations that would not ordinarily be securitized with the act under desired circumstances; or perhaps there is a capitalist involved who takes profit merely for packaging and marketing these securities. My metaphor here is not in topical jest; I think this is the problem. The problem with commodities from Marx's perspective: surplus value. What are you paying that you are not compensated for? In general prostitution, sometimes it is as simply as your parent's morality. Sometimes it is as dire as your bodily integrity and personal safety.

Art very rarely has these dire consequences; I have never heard of an artist being beaten for his/her art and left to die, infected on purpose with an incurable, deadly disease. I think it is disrespectful to sex workers to make the comparison.

But, to return to the subject at hand, I think that the point of contention for sex and art is not that certain exchanges occur; the point is that commodity of desire into packaged securities can give and take surplus value where it is not due. It can be capitalized. Warhol, for instance, was able to create the impression of value in his mass-produced art, where I think it was not warranted. There was a certain sexiness built in to his work via his persona, which was not only not due, in my opinion, but perhaps was accumulated at the expense of those working in the Factory (the metaphor here, is simply not a metaphor). Did the unseen, anonymous "production assistants" receive any compensation for the notoriety Warhol achieved with Blow Job?

Of course, commodification exists in varying degrees in a market that, as a point of pride, claims to despise commodification. And, as I stress over and over, I do not believe that commodification is simply alienating abstraction (nor do I believe that Marx intended commodity to be thought of in this way, despite what others may think about him). But, it is true that when something as esoteric as human desire, and its partner, value, are compartmentalized into objective units, they make themselves available to capitalization, just as an open-minded, nubile artist's assistant is party to suggestion. I joke, but that is the power of the commodity of words: to imply, to suggest, to connote, and to willingly arouse.

I think one of the biggest complaints about the combination of the art-world and sex lives comes from the point of view of fairness. If one is sleeping with a gallery owner, one has an avenue to submit art to be considered that one not sleeping with the owner does not. This is a valid complain, but at the same time, it also comes from an egalitarian, democratic perspective. The supposed conclusion to be drawn from the complain is that everyone should be considered equally. Hence, blind submissions processes. There is an episode occurring in the writing world now about this very concept; it seems that certain renowned poetry and fiction prizes are actually insider popularity contests.

But then again, so what? Art is, nearly by definition, subjective. At least any superlative qualifier is subjective. And doesn't the gallery owner have to right to choose which art is hung in his/her gallery? Why not? Of course, if one gallery develops a reputation for only hanging the art of the particular tartlet that the owner is currently housing, then that is only fair.

I think that art "communities" or circles are definite popularity clubs anyhow. It's all pop these days. I might mention my wife's art on my blog, but if I wish to be known for having a fair opinion, then I would include one of those cute little "full disclosure" notes stating, 'yes, this artist and I have had our relationship blessed by the State.' Or if I wish to showcase my friends, then I could do so, but if somebody didn't like "The Interdome Set", then I could be sure that s/he would start a blog to talk shit about me. In fact, this behavior is encouraged: it's called "networking". And a network is only a social market, that (most of the time) doesn't have anything to do with sex (as much as anything can have nothing to do with sex).

And this--the commodification, and the social relations--is what we call the market, or the "Structures of Kinship", or the relations and means of production, or the scene, or anything else. Fairness, purity, and higher notions of truth upon which the work or product or relations are based, are largely bullshit, or only utilized to fool someone into doing something.

And this exegesis on markets? What is it designed to do? What is my secret objective in entering the marketplace? Well, to entertain perhaps (fat chance!), or to spell it out so that maybe one's negotiations within such a market aren't confused and befuddled in the currents and eddies. Because of course, theory is itself an art. It can be produced, commodified, and utilized to align one's reasoning in various ways and purposes. Is it true? Not necessarily, not unless it works. Right now this theory has taken up some space on this blog, and maybe occupied some of your day, if you've read all the way to the bottom. Maybe it will illuminate the human markets a bit; mostly, I hope that it just doesn't do any harm. But perhaps this is disingenuous; I do hope that it would make those who complain in the harshest of tones about how they are not "getting any" in the art/literary/culture world to maybe think twice before opening their mouths. If there is one thing I can't stand, it is people complaining about their lack of sex life: obliquely via their other inadequacies, or directly.

I can promise one thing: this blog post is in no way designed to convince anybody to sleep with me. Purity of intent by way of boring diatribe! Success!

Genes, Siblings, Secret Lovin'

This morning my alarm woke me with news- big news! Well, it always does this; around the time I get up WNYC is playing BBC World Service. The news always sounds much bigger when delivered with a British accent.

But the story this morning was about an incestuous couple in Germany. The brother/sister kind of incest. They were seperated at birth, were reunited, and now have children. Sorry that I can't find the report online to link to it, and the details are a bit hazy as I was waking up at the time.

But I wanted to post more generally on the topic of incest, genetics, and morality. It seems that they are all strangely linked in the minds of some genetic-moralists, whose opinion forms the majority opinion of our society.

Firstly, say what you want about child/parent incest. It seems obvious to me that quality sexual relationship could not really form with the child/parent relationship in the way, and if it did, then there would obviously be too much of a power relationship overshadowing the sex. Maybe if in our society parent/child relationships were different, then there could be a possibility of a sexual relationship, but as it is, it strikes me as a bad thing for the same reason that there are statutory rape laws. Not because a child can't make decisions you understand, but because between an adult and a child there are ulterior power relationships that would necessarily interfere. Similarly, why sex between a prisoner and a guard is rape by statute: even if they somehow did find "true love" in each other, the power relationship would interfere to an extent that the sexual relationship would become a problem to the well-being of both, in that they are who they are.

But as far as sibling incest goes, the fact that it is prohibited by statute seems to me to be totally bizarre. The traditional moral argument aside, (while bother to argue against a textual moral argument? "but it says this...") the issue is preventing the creation of genetic "monsters". Abominations. Now, let's bracket for the moment the fact that this culture over-privileges genetics as moral determination (the similarity between Darwinism and Creationism is a topic for another post). The genetic fact is that the reason that interbreeding between siblings is "bad" is because there is an increased chance of occurences of double recessive traits. Now, agreeing that our hypothetical incestuous couple wants to and does spawn children, the justification for the law is to "ensure a better a chance of Darwinian fitness".

WTF? Are sibling incest laws one fancy Darwinian dance-step away from eugenics? Since when was it the place of the state to be the life guard of the gene pool? Why don't we then make laws prohibiting people with poor genotypes or genetic disorders from breeding? Or restrict breeders from breeding with people who may be at risk for harboring similar recessive traits? There are tons of people walking around with disabilities, disorders, and just plain dislikable distinctions, but we don't make laws against them, because it is fascist, and because that is part of the beauty of the human species and the risk of life and breeding. I really can't believe that genetic-moralists can speak out of both sides of their mouth like that, glorifying "natural selection" and then trying to make "natural attractions" illegal. Who is playing "prime mover" now?

It seems simple to me; if we are going to let people make their own breeding choices, given that they decide to do so at all (a strange decision in itself) then we have to let them make their own choices, for good or for bad. If they decide to consult with a doctor, then the doctor should tell them whatever s/he wants to tell them about their possible offspring. But the state should stay out of it.

As far as the sex, proscribing the sex just because it might make a child with epilepsy is ridiculous. Any limits on breeding should be made universally, otherwise it strays into the above territory. And without the genetic-moral argument, there is no argument whatsoever, because sexual preference has been protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Due process clause, jerk. And as for marriage between siblings (or other taboo couples for that matter), I think there is a slightly different but related argument, that yet draws the opposite conclusion. I'm going to write about that soon though, so I'll hold off for now (lucky you!).

The absolute weirdest part is, the genetic-moralists have gone so far as to produce a diagnosis of sibling incest. They call it "genetic sexual attraction". I think using Foucault could develop a more nuanced argument here, but I'll just cut it short by saying that the genetic-moralists really think they have it all down, don't they? When they can classify something, they own it, theory-wise. The medical discourse maintains control, because it can diagnose a sexual relationship according to theory, and thusly, can maintain juridico-discursive control over its domain. You see, incestuous siblings don't "really" have a relationship, the only "suffer" a pathology of GSA. How convenient. Remember, homosexuality was in the DSM until 1973.