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.

First off, usual disclaimers apply: deactivation is temporary, I’ll probably be back on Facebook before you know it, etc etc.

The short answer to the above question is: people on the Internet annoy me. The answer that requires explanation is: because I believe the Occupy protests are the most important thing in the world now.

I can’t help it. I’m smitten with this movement, I was made for this movement. My fears, when I have them, tend toward the major – by which I mean the catastrophic, the End Times, the point of no return. Atomic weapons. Irreversible ecological degradation. The forces that conspire not only against me, not only against humanity, but against life itself.

You could also say that the things I fear most are the things I feel helpless to change. So when something like this comes along – when a mass of people find one another and simply acknowledge that SHIT’S FUCKED UP, it uplifts me. It gives me some fucking HOPE. Go ahead and ask me “What is it these people want?” I’ll be glad to offer several hundred suggestions.

And now, as the movement gains momentum and coverage, I increasingly get subjected to dissenting opinions on my Facebook news feed. Let me be clear: dissent is healthy, skepticism is good. And: the Internet, particularly Facebook status updates, is not the ideal venue for a productive conversation.

On Monday afternoon I stood in downtown Pittsburgh with the Occupiers, holding my sign (“Accountability, please”) and facing the passing-by hoards on their lunch break. This was not an easy thing for me. I’m not comfortable putting myself center stage. I feared being challenged.

And people did challenge me. They offered dissenting opinions. But they were framed in the form of a conversation, with people who genuinely wanted to engage. Sure, one guy scoffed at my sign, people screamed “Get a job!” from their cars – the real-life equivalents of a pithy Facebook observation. But in the face of real people acting like interested humans, they faded into the background.

On Facebook it’s a little harder to ignore, particularly because these are my “friends.” I’m not being melodramatic when I say that I feel like our collective asses depend on this movement. When Internet-people deride the movement as pointless or idiotic a part of me (rightfully) says not to take it personally, while another part of me thinks they may as well be calling me a faggot.

To them I say: it’s unfortunate you lack for imagination. And if you really, truly believe that everything in this country, this world, is dandy, is kosher: get your head back in the sand, your ass back on the couch, your eyes off my fucking webpage.

I’ll see you on the other side of history.

Comments disabled: Fuck the Internet and fuck this guy.

I’m going to be interviewed LIVE for a local web show, Positive OUTlook, this Thursday, September 1, at 1pm. Just go to http://outonline.com to watch the live feed. Afterward it will be archived on their YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/OutTVPittsburgh.

The show is health oriented, so talk is going to be along those lines (fantasy as part of a healthy sex life, etc). There’s a number where you can call in and also a chat room, which could be fun.

Repost from old blog, 2/16/2009So has everyone seen the BBC documentary about women who have loving, sexual relationships with objects like banisters and the Berlin Wall? If not, you must:

Married to the Eiffel Tower

It’s my bad blogger habit to just assume that everyone is exposed to the same shit as me. Everytime I talk to one of my friends about this they have no idea what I’m talking about, so I end up showing it to them and watching it all over again.

Of course I laughed at it at first (and still do), but the more I watch these special ladies the more I find them so strangely endearing. For starters, what could be more harmless than fucking an object? These ladies aren’t hurting anyone. My favorite part is when they’re at the amusement park, and while the one lady is rubbing Mr. 1001 Nacht’s oil on her face, the other one wanders off and has a chance encounter with a very attractive fence. She doesn’t waste any time, either – just straddles that sucker and goes to town! I love it.

What’s so fascinating about their desire, I think, is that it comes from a place we can all relate to. My friend Sera and I got to discussing what object of our own we would be screwing if we “went that way.” Mine would probably be my new laptop. I just got it this Fall, and I’m always wiping it down with this special microfiber cloth to keep it fingerprint-free and clean.

I have this crazy impulse to try my hand at an objectosexual porno story. I think I could do it. Stay tuned. Or don’t.

Repost from old blog, 2/11/2007

Note: Due to the continuous glut of amateur internet porn this is post is woefully out-of-date.

Amateur “straight guy” porn – the web is overrun with it. You either love it, hate it, or jerk off and never think twice about it.

I find it alternately arousing, annoying, fascinating and frustrating. The guys that produce the stuff almost interest me more than the models themselves. There’s Sean Cody, sucking cock in his prim buttoned-up plaid shirt and pressed khakis; there’s Doug & Jay, looking stoned out of their gourds and having sloppy sex with trashy models who look just as if not more stoned; and then there’s the world of Straight College Men.com, possibly the most obnoxious site out there, with its insufferable, panty-voiced director fawning and wetting himself over his models, none of whom ever miss an opportunity to express their heterosexuality, even when they’re fucking each other in the ass.

But these sites interest me much more than studio-produced porn, nowadays, because there seems to be more room for fantasizing in them. The models carry a lot of embellished backstory, much more than the typical “character” played by a porn star allows. We get a chance to imagine what the amateur porn model’s life might be off camera. We can envision them being pulled off the street, away from girlfriends and jobs.

I realized recently that I get a lot of my best ideas for porn stories from these sites. There’s a lot going on in them, and I’m less interested in what’s “true” than in what is presented to me and what I can’t see.

So here are five of my favorite amateur porn scenes.

Amateur Straight Guys – “Nate and Vance”
Two visibly drunk guys have sex. Not much to that, but there’s something refreshing about how much delight they take in it. It’s all about Vance’s dialogue in this one: to him, apparently, fucking each other in the ass is just what “bros” do, nothin queer about that.

…more

(more…)

My cat’s been missing for the past four days.  I let him out Wednesday morning and he just never came home.  It’s been hard cause he’s sort of my family’s mascot – he’s big and cuddly and will let you do whatever you want to him.

Anyway I’ve been posting about this on Facebook but I recently deactivated my profile.  It’s just temporary but I wanted to say something about it here just so any friends might know I didn’t “un-friend” them.  I just need a break, and the pleasurable feeling of exerting control.

***UPDATE:  Reggie returned home tonight!  (Sunday evening).  He’s hungry but no worse for the wear.  God only knows where he was for the past four and a half days.

I started a new blog.  Check it out and please please please contribute.

I started a Tumblr blog. I’m pretty sure Tumblr is a tool of Satan, so it stands to reason that it’s pretty fun.

As I fell into the rhythm of the words, as I savored the way Dickens was planting his signposts for the development of the plot, as I watched him create unforgettable characters in a page or two, I felt a kind of peace. This wasn’t hectic. I wasn’t skittering around here and there. I wasn’t scanning headlines and skimming pages and tweeting links. I was reading.

What I am going to do, is take some time every day to read.

Ebert: The quest for frisson

So it’s the fifth anniversary of Dennis Cooper’s blog, and if you’ve never checked in with the community there, you’re doing yourself a disservice. DC’s got me my first contact with an editor, and my first contact with Rebel Satori Press, who are going to publish Backwoods. I owe them a great deal, but besides that it’s just a fascinating place where I’ve been exposed to a number of strange and wonderful things.

I gave the blog a birthday gift which was posted yesterday (under my alias “bacteriaburger”), you can check it out here.