1. My focus this week is on pitching a story. A very big, massive piece about a porn story. Journalism. Investigative reporting. Perhaps you have heard of it. This would enable me to write a definitive piece on the adult movie industry 10 years after I set foot in it for the first time. Having a career writing about porn is tantamount to having a career in sticking your head into a toilet and flushing vigorously, every day, day in and day out, forever. I used to enjoy the pitching process. The way a junkie likes junk. Today, not so much. I just want to write it.
2. This week, I sent somebody I know an email. I told this person a story about something that had happened to me. Here's what I wrote. "As you know, I was on the set of 'American Bukkake 13.' It was February 2001. Every bukkake movie features three scenes. I was present for the last scene, the one where the girl has a cone around her neck like a funnel. The other scenes they shot on different days. In any case, a few weeks ago, I decided I would go and watch the video. I never had. For whatever reason, that scene has come to represent my entire porn experience. I guess this is/was a way of confronting my demons, self-testing, putting my head back into the mouth of the lion to see what would happen, or something along those lines. So, I jump through a bunch of pain in the ass hoops to watch it online--VOD--and pay some ridiculous sum to do so. As soon as the movie starts, I see why the feds chose it. The girl in the first scene is clearly playing it up to appear to be about eight or so years old. She's got pigtails, and the scene has her in the middle of a big bed, holding a stuffed animal, or something like that. So, I watch that. Then I watch the next one, which is this crazed black chick taking it with her head hung over the end of a bench in a faux locker room. Then the final scene starts, and...the VOD craps out. For the next couple days, I become quite depressed as this seems to have stirred up old shit or whatever. At this point, I decide I'm never writing about porn again or some crap like that. By the following week, I've changed my tune. I decide I'm going to watch this movie because the whole thing is bothering me. I go to my friend's house as she's got a PC that's more compatible to the VOD system and watch it. At this point, I've kind of gotten over it. It's sort of weird, knowing I was there, right there...looking over Jim's shoulder. During the summer of 2005, when I was completely out of my mind, I decided I would never write about porn again (catching a theme here?), and then I checked my email, and some guy had emailed me at 1AM, saying he'd seen me in one of the bukkake movies, as I was stepping in and then stepping out of frame, and at that point (I wrote about this on my blog not long ago) I realized on some level I'm always going to be stepping in and out of this mess that is porno. Anyway, so, part of what I was doing was trying to figure out if this, "American Bukkake 13," is the video I'm in. I sit and watch the scene and think when I was in Porn Valley in a situation like that, I pretty much dissociated. So, I think part of what I was doing was seeing, you know, if I could see it for what it was. And, I could do that, at a distance, both literally and figuratively. So, the movie ends. And then there's this still at the end. Probably it's a photo that the on set photographer, a [redacted] named [redacted], shot. The photograph is of a woman's chest. You can't see her face. And she's wearing a T-shirt that reads, get this, 'GOT CUM?' across her tits. It's like she thinks this is all some kind of a fucking joke or something. I look at this photo, and I recognize instantly this is me. Was me. I was there for a Playboy TV shoot. I guess that was my idea of a costume. Now, I can barely stand to look at the mess of it."
3. Where I live, it's hot. So, so, so hot. So hot you cannot even believe how hot it is. The giant newspaper headline this morning read: "YEP, IT'S HOT. REALLY HOT." Really? Because I hadn't noticed. The AC in my bedroom does not work so good and is very loud. Last night, I dragged my mattress out into the living room and slept there. It was like camping out. Instead of stars, there was a ceiling fan. When I first came to this state, I didn't have anywhere to live. I lived at my friend's house. I slept in her son's bed. It was shaped like a racing car. When you turned off the lights, the ceiling was illuminated. It was covered with glow in the dark stickers in the shape of a million stars.
4. I sent Chris Bishop an email outlining the Untitled Internet Project.
5. At some point, I will make the next two double panels for "My, My American Bukkake...Never Ends." The first set of panels are black and white. I think in the second set of panels, I will introduce color. One color. Red. Yesterday, while cruising the Internet, I saw a black and white stenciled graffiti with a violent splash of red on it that spilled out onto the sidewalk underneath it like blood. Today, I can't find it.
6. I haven't worked on HAPPY (again) since I (re)started it. The main character is a man. The novel is noir. I'd say it's influenced by City of Glass, which I have read many, many times. My father was a writer. That was the story of his life. He wrote on a typewriter. When he made a mistake, he would rip the paper from the machine. Later, you would find him sitting in the study, surrounded by balled up papers. Like snow. Adrift in it. It's hard for me to write. Under this avalanche.
7. Recently, I've been doing a lot of research. OPTF. AOS. "Hold back the edges of your gowns, ladies, we are going through hell."--WCW
8. In 2005, I lost my mind. In 2006, I had brain damage. These days, I'm feeling better, thank you. As Hoogerbrugge says: "FUCK DEATH."
9. Are you reading me like I'm reading you? (I don't know what to do.)
10. From "The First Stranger" by Kristine Ong Muslim via Riley Dog.
"You are beautiful creatures," he went on,
"only limited. But I can help you with your vision,
make you see things beyond your visible range."
And he did. It only hurt when he grazed
the optic nerves. He said that pain was all right,
that it could not exist in the memory,
that it was just there for the moment.
He told me to open my eyes, and all I saw
was darkness. "You blinded me,"
I said. "No," he said, chuckled.
"Look closely. There are certain colors
interspersed with the black."
Filmy, mottled swatches shifted
across the blackness.
All the colors were unfamiliar,
unnatural yet they looked as if
they had always existed.
And, oh, how the darkness sang.
