Also, here is the Smashwords edition. Smashwords lets you download the book in a bunch of different formats, such as HTML or PDF, for people who don’t have a Kindle or an ebook reader.
Apparently Amazon gets the copies of Rebel Satori’s physical books before anywhere else gets them, so while I still haven’t seen the book yet, I’m thinking it’s gonna be any day now.
0 Comments“It’s at the printer. Slight hang up with a formatting glitch but copies will start shipping in a few days.”
I’m glad to know, at least, what’s going on. Yesterday totally blew – my big “book release” day and I had no fucking clue where my book was.
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Hello! Here’s a couple photos that my friend Anthony DeAngelis took of me, to be used in promoting my book.
And I should mention that I’ve recently come out of the closet about some semi-nude photos of me by cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.
This happened many years ago in Pittsburgh, and the photos initially popped up in an issue of this snooty gay French magazine. I used to be a little embarrassed by them, but I’m not now. And now LaBruce put one of them on the cover of his new monograph. Click here to see it, I’m in there somewhere…
Geez! Kinda cool and kinda weird.
4 CommentsIf you wanted to ‘like’ Backwoods on Facebook, for some reason, you could do that:
Repost from old blog, 2/16/2007
Is there anything sadder than a pedophile?
Born with his predilection, the pedophile is forced to make a choice: submit to his desires, either through pornography or child rape, and live life as a criminal, most likely ruining young lives in the process. Or, remain a slave to his sexual proclivities for the entirety of his life, always knowing that he is a freak and a degenerate, never able to truly accept himself or love himself in a society where he is unilaterally demonized.
In a country as oversexually stimulated as America, to maintain a neutered state of mind must be a challenge. We are bombarded with the sexualized images of young children – youth is put at a premium. It’s all “look – but don’t look too closely – and certainly don’t touch.”
As a gay man, I sympathize with the plight of the pedophile, even as I see their actions as repellent. I know what it’s like to be born differently, to not have any control over your desires even when you most want to. There was no way I could have lived a straight life. And there is no way a pedophile can live a life any other way.
This makes me question nature. Isn’t nature supposed to make sense? If a person is born with certain desires, shouldn’t they be able to act on them?
No. Nature doesn’t make sense – nature is as chaotic and uncompromising as it is beautiful and nurturing. So living beings will always have to die to keep other beings alive. So violence is essential for creation. So we’ve been given brains large enough to devise things (nukes) capable of destroying all of this.
It’s life. I guess no one ever said it was easy, but I’m going to say that sometimes: Life Sucks.
6 CommentsI tell ya what – you wait around for months (years?) for something to happen, then in one day everything happens.
You can pre-order Backwoods over at the Rebel Satori site.
3 CommentsFirst 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 was invited to a straight wedding recently. The bride was an old high school friend, but other than her and my date (one of my best friends from high school) I didn’t expect to know anybody there. It was to be held near my rural home town, and while I had no reason to suspect that those present would be anything other than friendly and gracious, in the weeks leading up to it, I found those old gay fears surfacing just this same.
Maybe this is something queers of my generation never get over. What was I afraid of? That I’d get called out for looking/acting/dancing like a fag. That some burly group of backwoods groomsmen would take me behind the reception hall and beat me up. It was irrational and I didn’t let it get to me, but still it was.
My date was a bridesmaid so I sat alone during the ceremony. A group of guys sat in the pew behind me. One of them opened his mouth and talked and though visions of gay bells danced in my head, I still assumed he was straight.
My assumption that I wouldn’t know anybody proved true, but by the time my salad was served at the reception I was too buzzed to give a shit about that or anything else. At my table was the wedding photographer. A few weeks ago she refused to photograph several high school seniors who’d posted bullying comments on another girl’s Facebook page. She wrote a blog post about it that went viral, then made national news. She’s going to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper in a few weeks. Others at the table reflected on the fact that something we’d had to simply suck up and deal with when we were in school – bullying – is now a cause, an issue.
I danced like a goon and then danced goonier. I sat out the slow songs. The last song hit and that’s when I spotted the guy I’d heard behind me at the ceremony, slow dancing with a young man who was clearly his partner. They weren’t hiding behind anybody else – they were right up there, on a stage, for the whole wedding party to see. I swooned.
The DJ shut down so me and the rest of the professional partiers headed to the hotel bar, where a cover band played popular radio hits. The place was packed – eighty percent with the bro-iest bros imaginable and the rest with girls enjoying/enduring their drunken attention. Some girl pulled at my tie on the dance floor then tried to rip off my shirt. “This is my good shirt,” I said, wrenching away. She managed to pop off one button – I was more annoyed than flattered (but flattered just the same).
The band started in on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” A group of bachelor party brahs stood right up front, pumping their fists to lyrics that shout out to sexual minorities – that shout out to me. Were they paying attention to what they were dancing to? Were they sneering inwardly? Did it matter as we danced together and it washed over us all in a wave of pop bliss? It’s only music – I know this – but just then it felt downright revolutionary.
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