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.

I’ve been working hard for the past several weeks on my new ebook, Daddy/Boy, and I submitted it to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Friday. Yesterday I received word that Amazon will not be offering this title for sale. It is “blocked.” The reason? “It is in violation of our content guidelines.”

So, you might ask yourself, what are Amazon’s content guidelines and why didn’t my book conform to them? First, the guidelines state that Amazon doesn’t publish pornography. Which, unless I somehow dreamed the fact that I’ve sold hundreds of my previous ebook of erotic fiction, is bullshit.

There’s only one other section of the content guidelines that could possibly apply to Daddy/Boy, and here is where it gets frightening/hilarious. I quote:

Offensive Content
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.

That’s literally it. See for yourself. I find this utterly insulting. I’ve spent too much of my life being shamed by society for my sexual predilections to get shamed by a shady-ass corporation. Daddy/Boy contains a disclaimer at the outset that it is fiction, and that all the characters are eighteen years of age or older. But the age/underage thing is the only reason I can think that Amazon would reject the book. The point is that I don’t know for sure. Maybe they objected to the word “boy” in the title? Maybe they don’t accept incest erotica? I could make changes to conform to what I “would expect” an unoffensive book would/wouldn’t contain, but here’s the real kicker:

We may also terminate your participation in the KDP program if you don’t adhere to these content guidelines.

So if the book is rejected again they could terminate my participation and then I wouldn’t be able to sell anything on Amazon. For a writer who is scrambling to make a living with my art, this is a rude wake-up call. So far as I can tell, when it comes to making money with ebooks Amazon is just about the only game in town. (Full disclosure: I have yet to experiment with self-publishing through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple or any other online outlets, and I was intending to do so with this ebook, but I suspect the money isn’t as good as Amazon).

Amazon holds to key to my future at this point and so I’m beholden to their will, whatever it might be. I’m cool with that. I’ll toe the line, rejigger, figure something out. I sent Amazon an email: “Can you give me any specifics on why the title was rejected so I may not make the same mistake again?” Do you suppose I’ll get an adequate response? I’m dubious.

UPDATE: Seems incest is something Amazon objects to after all. Good to know. How hard is that to put in their fucking guidelines?

Features fourteen tales of intergenerational sex, including one brand-new previously-unpublished story, “Chuck and Skippy,” plus an entertaining preface and quasi-entertaining story annotations. Will be available on Smashwords and Amazon. Cover design by Johnny Murdoc.

I exercised my constitutional right to disable my Facebook profile yesterday. I’m on Twitter so if you want to follow me feel free to do so: @nattysoltesz. Though I almost never post on Twitter because I don’t understand its purpose, beyond attempts to get the attention of people more famous than me. Am I missing something?

I’m feeling focused lately, which is one of the reasons I’m trying to minimize my distractions. Man, I read this great book yesterday – and I mean I really did read the entire thing in one day. Dream School by Blake Nelson. I got it from the library and I was holding off on reading it, because I knew it was going to be good. Finally I picked it up yesterday morning and I read it all day. It was so wonderful. I’d do something, take a break, then come right back into that world because I never wanted to leave.

Anyway it was inspiring because it’s about this college girl discovering that she’s a writer. And the voice is just effortless, and Nelson doesn’t waste any time on events, he just plows right through this girl’s life and goes on to the next thing that happens, then the next thing, then the next thing… It’s rare for me to get inspired by a book I admire, usually I just feel crippled by greatness that I’ll never live up to – bad books are typically more motivating.

I’m inspired to finish this novel I’m working on which – fuck it – is a sequel to 428 College St, and it’s called 691 Suburban Dr. I’m also working on a new ebook called Daddy/Boy, which is going to be a collection of my intergenerational/incest stories, most of which have already been published but I’m going to include at least one new story, plus an introduction, plus a section of annotations and notes on the stories which is painfully self-indulgent but fuck it, it’s my ebook and I can do whatevah I want.

So those are my two main projects at the moment. Daddy/Boy should be out around the beginning of February. ‘Suburban Dr,’ who knows, but I know I’ve found myself drawing out the process of writing it because I’m so happy to be working consistently on something, but I think it’s to the detriment of the book. So I don’t want to say too much about this but I am determined to tell the story a little faster and not worry about length so much and just tell the damn story and get it out. So hopefully that’s good news.

What else? By the way I should be leaving for work right now but I’m putting it off, because it’s my Monday (I work Tues-Sat) and I’m not looking forward to it. Basically, I’m trying to become a full-time writer. I haven’t mentioned it extensively on this blog, but Str8 but Curious has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, and it’s made me believe that I could actually support myself solely through writing, and that is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. So I’m optimistic about the future, and also pretty damn scared because there is so much to consider.

I dreamt last night that President Obama and I were in my backyard and he smoked me up with this incredible weed, and I was so stoked because I’d get to tell my grandchildren that President Obama got me high. Plus he was so cool and chill and we were just hanging out. I was disappointed when I woke up. He’s totally getting my vote this year.

Two interviews that I did with local media were added to the web today:

1) A Q&A with my old friend Laurie for her blog Yinz R Readin.

2) A similar type interview that I did with my good buddy (and acclaimed author) Mack Friedman for Pittsburgh’s Out Newspaper (it’s toward the end of the issue).

Here’s some things that have happened since I last posted:

1) Backwoods was submitted to the Lambda Literary Awards in the ‘gay erotica’ category, which doesn’t really mean anything as there’s a bunch of books submitted. They’ll announce five or so finalists eventually, so we’ll see.

2) Dennis Cooper, one of my literary heroes, listed Backwoods as one of his favorite LGBTQ books of 2011.

3) Backwoods got its first Amazon review.

4) I’m working on another book, slow and steady, but it’s coming. Not to say too much about (I don’t want to jinx it) but it’s a novel (a real novel, not a novel-in-stories like Backwoods), it’s erotic and it features characters I’ve written about before.

**One that I forgot to add: I did a short piece on Point horror books for my good friend Laurie’s blog, Yinzr Readin.