A couple years ago, I wrote an essay called "A Porn Valley Story" that was, at the time, my attempt to write a definitive essay on my experiences in Porn Valley. At the time, I was also totally out of my fucking mind, so the piece was kind of, and by "kind of," I mean "totally," wacked out. Which was fine. At the time. More recently, after I was spurned by the publishing world when I (idiotically) thought I could sell a proposal for a nonfiction book on porn (loud guffaws), I started chomping at my own personal bit, wondering if I was, in fact, to some degree sane, or at least saner, these days, seeing as, you know, I no longer wanted to die every minute of every day, and so, what the hey, maybe it was time to write a sane definitive essay on my experiences in Porn Valley. Seeing as I don't have much to say about anything else in the universe, except porn. So, a couple weeks ago, I started banging at it, and then I got sort of freaked out and sidetracked and hemmed and hawed, and now I've gotten back upon the pony, and I guess, well, you could say I'm riding, writing it. Most of the time, as a freelance writer, you pitch, and a publication bites, and then you vomit up one of those little packets that owls puke that contain the bones of mice they've eaten, and that's the story. This piece I'm writing on spec, for who knows who, for the first time in, oh, a decade, I guess. Spec is generally considered kind of lame, but whatever. I'm trying to write it the way I want to write it. For it to be big, in scope. For it to contain everything. For it to be a kind of X-rated, emotional gesamtkunstwerk. Originally, I thought it was called one thing, but maybe, I'm thinking, it's really called "Can't Hold Back the Demons." A long time ago, that's what was written on the back of a T-shirt worn by somebody in the story. Did you ever have something in your life that haunted you so much that you just could not let it go? Sometimes, I think I'm writing into a void. Sometimes, I let myself believe that you're listening. This is hardcore. You go, girl.
