This month Handjobs Magazine is running an excerpt from Backwoods and as a result I’m getting a lot of fresh hits to this website. Welcome, fellow pervs!

One thing I like to do on here from time to time is run a poll to decide what I should write next. I’ve done four of them in the past. This time, I’m taking the first runner up from each of those polls (mostly, I made one adjustment to keep the choices varied) and giving them a second chance.

So vote!

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Here ’tis: the original version of my most recent ebook, originally rejected by Amazon and now released in all its incest-laden glory. Includes fourteen of my best intergenerational fuck stories, plus a brand-new story (“Chuck and Skippy”), a preface and a section of annotations detailing story inspirations and other randomness.

**Buy it here via Queer Young Cowboys. The $3.99 download price includes .pdf, .epub and .mobi versions.

This is the best ebook I’ve put together so far, if I do say so myself. I’m grateful to my friend, fellow writer and publishing enthusiast Johnny Murdoc, who is releasing it under his Queer Young Cowboys micro-pub. I have to say, Mr. Murdoc has outdone himself with the cover and promotional aspects – he was the one who slapped the word ‘unexpurgated’ on there, which I love. It reminds me of one of my favorite writers, Anais Nin, whose unexpurgated diaries were released after her death. In fact, one of those volumes detailed her sexual relationship with her biological father – and that book is available on Amazon. Irony! Stupidity!

Repost from old blog, 8/7/2007
So I’m back from vacation on the west coast, the highlight of which was visiting, for one day, the set of Joe Gage’s latest porn film. It was a really positive experience. I stuck with the crew, which were filming five performers doing an anal scene and a watersports scene.

So there was the porn set, with hot sex for sure, but also camera angle changes and dead camera batteries and airplanes occasionally ruining the sound overhead. After filming was over I was asked – had the fantasy of porn been ruined for me? The illusion shattered? To which I honestly replied “no.” I mean, I’ve seen “Boogie Nights.” Watching any porn, I’m always aware of the glimpses of reality I can catch beyond the frame.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to believe anybody holds illusions about porn at this point. Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy it – quite the contrary. It’s just that the will of fantasy is powerful, and will easily squelch anything that gets in the way of its enjoyment. I mean, just cause Mel Gibson is a homophobic asshole doesn’t make his “Lethal Weapon”-era ass any less hot, right? Even though you have no chance of ever meeting the guy (and if you did manage to proposition him he’d probably beat you up), the exuberance of your fantasy life still, somehow, gets your face between his buttcheeks.

But anyway.

The set was homey and everyone was friendly and welcoming. On breaks we ate cherries and Nutella sandwiches and watched “South Park.” I didn’t get an erection, except for chubbing up a little when I sat down and read the script. Shows where my interests lie. I got a certain frisson from tiny details – the way a performer slapped the sides of someone’s shaved head, for instance. But, ultimately, the proceedings were stripped of any fantasy element for me to latch on to (they’d filmed the dialogue the day before).

So why didn’t I get a charge from simply seeing real, live people have sex with each other right in front of me? After all, the experience presented me with my first view, since entering a monogamous relationship, of a real live naked man standing in front of me with an erection (who wasn’t my boyfriend). But still – it was real yet unreal.

Beforehand, I assumed I’d be more interested in watching the actual performers than viewing them on the monitors, but as the scene progressed I found myself watching the monitors more, becoming more interested in the fantasy that they represented than the actuality of the work that was taking place. I was looking at it as a writer, as if the scene was a story, focusing in on elements that worked for me, positioning the performers as characters in my mind, props.

Joe was nice enough to even entertain one of my suggestions (you can read about it on Joe’s new, improved blog). Will it work to the scene’s advantage in the end? Who the fuck knows. Certainly not me. At any rate, I sort of like the idea of manipulating people to my own perverted ends – and I only make that sound diabolical in jest. Directing seems like another side to what I’m already doing (albeit a side that I have no experience with whatsoever). I think that’s the biggest revelation I took away from the experience.

This interview appears in the February 2012 issue of Pittsburgh’s Out which can be read at outonline.com.

By Natty Soltesz

Brace yourself, America: Pittsburgh-based drag performer Sharon Needles (born Aaron Coady) is bringing her outsized, outrageous and occasionally offensive brand of drag to your living room. One of thirteen competitors on season four of RuPaul’s Drag Race (premiering January 30th on cable network Logo), the self-anointed Queen of Shock has been blowing Pittsburgh audience’s minds for the past several years at venues like the Blue Moon and the Brillobox. How will she hold up under RuPaul’s scrutiny?

We’ll have to watch and see, but underneath Sharon’s pull-no-punches stage persona is an intelligence and a dedication to drag that should serve her well. Pittsburgh’s Out spoke to Sharon about reality-TV fame, the state of Pittsburgh drag, and the necessity of Elmer’s Glue Sticks.

Pittsburgh’s Out: You’ve been doing drag for a long time. Did you ever see yourself getting this much notoriety?

Sharon Needles: You know, yes. When I was young I was vain enough and blind enough and living on my own planet to know that I was going to be famous. But the older I got the more that I was seeing reality and knowing that it probably wasn’t going to happen. But now there’s so many reality shows, anyone can be famous. Andy Warhol once said that one day everyone will get their fifteen minutes of fame, but, you know, you get fifteen episodes.

What’s been the best part of the experience so far?

Literally all the friends that I made. You take that many drag queens and pack em up into a room and put them in sixteen-hour daily shoots, and instead of hating each other we really all loved each other. Some more than most.

Do you worry about how they’ll edit you, or how the exposure will affect you?

My exposure has always caused indifference with people. I say I’m the Queen of Shock and I say it for a reason. I’ve always felt like I was pushing buttons so I’m sure it will be no different than what I get now. In terms of how I’m being edited, I’m such a fan of the show, so I’m looking forward to seeing the story that’s created. And it’s shocking cause I thought reality TV was much more forced and scripted, and it really wasn’t ever scripted or forced.

If Sharon could endorse any product, what would it be?

Elmer’s Glue Stick. You can ask a drag queen what’s the most important thing in your makeup kit and you’ll never hear foundation, mascara or lipstick; you will hear ‘glue stick.’ It’s our number-one secret.

You have this great sense of taste and an ability to fuse your influences – like Peg Bundy & Marilyn Mason – into your drag persona. Do you use any Pittsburgh people as role models?

Any queen in this town, I love. I look at Georgia Bea Cummings, she makes me want to wear a gown. I look at Veruca la Piranha, I want to paint up like a clown. I look at Alaska Thunderfuck, I want to sing live. I look at Courtney Brown, I want to impress all the judges in a pageant. I want to be Kierra Darshell, I want to be a great MC. I want to be Marsha Mellow, I don’t want to give a fuck about anything, especially the way I look. I want to be Lola LeCroix, I want to look like a fishy, bitchy cunt. I want to be Lady Rose and be a statuesque pageant queen. I want to be Mahogany and be a fearless performer on stage. I want to be Cherri Baum and be fish down. I wanna be Amy Vodkahaus and be a total campy mess and relish in it. I love every Pittsburgh queen.

Is there anything you wouldn’t do in front of an audience?

I would never take myself too seriously on stage. I don’t know how.

You grew up in Newton, Iowa – how’d you end up in Pittsburgh?

I lived in a lot of cities in my late teens and early twenties. [At one point] I was looking at nine months in jail and my friend said “I’m moving to Pittsburgh tomorrow,” so I was thinking “Hmm: Pittsburgh, jail – they sound quite similar! Maybe I’ll come and stay for a couple of weeks” – cause I never stayed in a city for long. And I just loved it.

What keeps you here?

It’s like America’s dirtiest secret. I really like the street fashion and I love the dive bar scene. I like it cause it’s rough around the edges. I still get called a faggot everyday, you know? Not that I think that’s a good thing, but I like that it’s blue collar. It’s a town where people aren’t afraid to call someone a faggot, and I like that. [Laughs.] I don’t know why. I never get called a faggot in New York or LA! Sometimes I think I’m not dressed appropriately.

You consider yourself a transgressive artist. When people are put off by your performances does part of you want them to understand, or do you just think “fuck you”?

It would be stupid to think that by doing transgressional art for a living [I’m not] gonna piss them off. But then the innocent side of me that does what I do…I’m always really upset when someone’s upset about it. And I say “fuck you.” But I don’t mean it. I always feel bad when I make someone else feel bad. And then the mean side of me wants to say “I feel bad that they’re too fuckin stupid not to realize that a man in a dress is being an example of all of our anxieties and all our fears.” I always say, I’ll take the darkest issue and put it right in the spotlight. For free. Every other Saturday at the Blue Moon.

Sharon takes no shit, and that must feel liberating. Do you need to be in drag to make her real?

Do I need drag to bring out Sharon Needles? Yes. And maybe alcohol.

My friend Aaron, aka Sharon Needles, is the star (yes, the star) of the current season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I can’t tell you how much fun is is to watch a friend on TV, but there’s more to it than that. So many reality shows make stars out of boring, privileged people. Shows like Project Runway (from which Drag Race takes its structure) are enjoyable to me because they’re about the process of creating something, and the camaraderie/antagonism that results when a group of people are forced to create together.

There’s a humanistic quality to that, and Drag Race takes it a step further. It can’t be a casual decision that RuPaul ends each show with the question “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” (Can I get an amen in here? Amen!) These men who dress like women have likely spent most of their lives being maligned and ostracized, and – even if it is just reality TV – it’s profound to see them elevated to the status of stars.

What’s most exciting to me is seeing a friend of mine presented as a TV character, yet retaining much of his/her individuality in the process. Here are a bunch of crazy, fabulous drag queens, in all their realness, on display for a million Americans. I may not do drag, but these are my people, and it makes me proud.

The censored version of Daddy/Boy is now available for the Amazon Kindle. Buy it if you want, but I’m hoping to have the original version, containing (gasp!) incest stories, available on Smashwords soon. Below is the preface to the original version, now heavily ironic considering Amazon rejected it ostensibly because it included incest erotica. I wonder if some Amazon schlub had to read this, and what they thought? Probably it was just shoved into some program that parsed the words then sent out my form rejection email.

Desires are Human, Perversions Divine

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I don’t want to fuck my family. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my uncles (or aunts, for that matter).

Chances are you don’t want to fuck your family either. And while less than half of the stories in this collection feature relationships that are explicitly incestuous (the rest are of the intergenerational/power imbalance variety), the fact that you’re reading the preface to an erotica collection called Daddy/Boy suggests you must not be disgusted by the whole incest thing, at the least.

We’re a different breed, you see. Incest is boner (and lady-boner) kryptonite to a lot of people. Even most mainstream porn, both written and filmed, will court the intergenerational fantasy but steers clear when it comes to all-out incest. Is it worth it to ask why?

I think so. My first sustained attractions to real people started when I was eleven, to my ten-year-old best friend and his middle-aged father. Let’s call them Derrick and Paul, respectively. Derrick and I had many moments of near-experimentation, though my attraction to him was never reciprocated, as far as I know.

Paul was an interesting case. He had a body like the proverbial shit-house made of bricks. I’d be playing with Derrick and he’d come home from work, strip down to his tightie whities and wear that for the rest of the night, his hairy butch muscled body on display. He knew he was hot.

So did Derrick. It seemed natural to my young and hormone-drunk mind to fantasize about them together, though my sexual imagination at that time was limited. I’d picture them piling into their bathtub and sliding their naked bodies together.

It never occurred to me that I was eroticizing a taboo. I didn’t feel any shame around it – well, no more than I felt about having gay sex fantasies in general (which was a lot of shame, in fact). Sometimes I’d put Derrick’s older brother in that tub too, and why not? They were all pretty hot. They seemed hotter all mushed together.

They say a lot of your sexual interests are imprinted from what you encounter at a young age, and I think that’s true in the case of my relationship with these two guys: my love for big asses, muscles and cocky attitudes, for starters.

Incest, too. But there’s always a push to try to explain the taboo fetishes over the more culturally acceptable ones. You can pathologize a fetish all you want and it really won’t get you anywhere. Maybe I didn’t have a strong enough father figure in my life? Neither do a lot of people, and maybe we all want a big strong daddy to slap us around but I doubt it. Either way it ain’t no thang.

Still, there’s something interesting about the disconnect between our familial and sexual relationships. We’re as close to our families as we are to our sexual partners, yet we don’t have sex with our families. On both sides of the equation there’s potential for those feelings to get mixed up and confused.

Even as I got older and was able to process that the fantasies I was having were incest fantasies, it was always clear to me that it wasn’t my own family that I was fantasizing about, it was some mythically hot fantasy family.

Maybe that’s what’s so difficult for people to understand. The gag-reflex reaction that most people have when confronted with incest is one of those instinctual things, with good genetic reason. The fact that people like you and I are turned on by it proves that we’re able to overcome that animal portion of our brains.

Clearly, we’re more highly evolved.