“Hey Seb. You wanna see something cool?”
I looked over at him. He was still lying stretched out on the camp bed, his long dick in his hand, but he was looking over at me.
I said, “Yeah. What?”
He said, “You ever see a guy suck himself off?”
Read Tom Stays Over by Sebastian Wallace
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The ACME Novelty Library Volume 20 by Chris Ware
Chris Ware’s already mind-blowing work continues to evolve by leaps and bounds. This book is part of his ongoing Rusty Brown narrative, and one gets the sense that Ware has largely abandoned his initial conception for the project and gone wherever his nutso-genius brain has led him. While the first couple Rusty Brown books were somewhat disappointing rehashes of Ware’s formal and thematic favorites (experimental design, loneliness), in subsequent volumes the narrative has become increasingly fragmented, focusing longer stretches on seemingly tangential characters. #20 takes this approach to its extreme, honing in on the high-school bully character from previous volumes and laying out his entire life, from birth to death – or, more precisely (this being Ware and all, precision is paramount), from nothing to nothing.
Visually it’s as gorgeous as anything he’s ever done, designed to within an inch of its life (and, as Matt Seneca points out, in some ways the book design is the narrative). It would be a shame for the casual reader to avoid this book just because it’s ostensibly part of an ongoing series (and for its generic/numeric title) – it works perfectly on its own. I couldn’t put it down, read it in one gulp, heart racing. It took my breath away.
A brand new driver’s license; a low-riding muscle car; an incandescent blaze of searing red light; “Stairway to Heaven” blaring from the AM/FM radio. These elements all dance and intermingle on the page, sweeping you inexorably forward with an emotional rather than narrative thrust. Ware treats comics like a hieroglyphic code, a language for unlocking some unspeakable truth.
— Joshua O’Neill, a much more capable reviewer than I.
X’ed Out by Charles Burns
I’m sorry to report that this book annoyed me before I even opened it. Charles Burns’ last major project, Black Hole, is probably my favorite comic of all time – rich, strange, beautiful, nostalgic. So I had high hopes for X’ed Out, but was bothered outright by the fact that it’s a hardcover book. Whatever happened to alternative comics – like, actual, stapled comics that cost five to seven dollars?
Then there’s the back cover blurb: “From the creator of Black Hole comes the first volume of an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction in brilliant color.” So that’s why I’m paying twenty bucks for it – because it isn’t a comic book, it’s an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction. Give me a break – the fucking project isn’t even finished.
Okay, okay, I know that’s just marketing. And it’s quite pretty, and Burns is apparently going for a Tintin homage (though those books are softcover, to the best of my knowledge). But, because I bought both books at the same time, I can’t help but compare it to Ware’s Acme Novelty #20, which somehow seems justified as a complete work, between two hard covers (not that his earlier volumes, also hardcover, were always of the same caliber) .
The book itself was interesting enough, and seems to be going in a good direction. I’ll save any final judgments for the completed work, when I’m sixty dollars lighter and one graphic-novel-that-coulda-fit-in-the-space-of-four-comic-books richer.
0 CommentsHe gave me a smirk. “Trust me, some of the best suckjobs I’ve ever had were from guys.”
“I’ve heard that guys are pretty good.”
“You’ve heard? Or experienced?” He blew out some smoke, staring at me.
“Honestly?”
“Trust me, this beer isn’t the only thing I won’t tell your dad about.”
Read Dad’s Trucker Friend by Matt Swimmers
0 CommentsRepost from old blog, 2/23/2008
Around fifteen I realized that I could use the internet to order porn films. This had the advantage of bypassing the usual age verification at a store as well as saving myself the embarrassment of trying to purchase it face-to-face with an actual person.
I ordered a tape to my house and spent many queasy afternoons waiting to see if I could pluck it from the mailbox before my parents did. The anxiety was heady, but the tape came unlabeled, unremarkable – nobody took the slightest notice. However, the fear had been too intense, and I knew I couldn’t go through it again. I was ready to order more porn, and I needed a different plan.
8 CommentsI was in elementary school – fourth grade? Fifth? Right on the cusp of those years when all insecurities manifest themselves, when we glom upon the perceived weaknesses of others to deflect attention from our own, when we’re at our worst. Or maybe I’m just trying to justify what I did.
The Feist family lived across the alley from us. They were pariahs, the perfect “others.” The dad was qualifiably insane. He had two sons, one a year older than me. Both were low, trash in my eyes. Bad kids. Poor kids. But they never did anything to me.
I can’t remember why we decided to do it. It was me and my friend Timmy. We were walking home from school, and the younger Feist boy was walking ahead of us, and one of us (I think it was Timmy) suggested we get him. We walked up to him. I had an umbrella. We hit him with it. I remember him trying to get away, and I was whacking him with this folded-up umbrella.
I’m glad I remember this. It’s good to know I can be as awful as the rest of humanity.
1 Comment“So, you’ve never done this before,” he says.
“No,” I say.
“It’s all right. You can do whatever you want.”
Read Dicksucker by Johnny Murdoc (also hosted on Nifty, link is to Johnny’s website)
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– It subverted genre cliches deftly. Every drug movie needs a moment when the addict hits bottom and finally examines himself, I thought it was pretty clever that “The Fighter” had its drug addict character quite literally watch himself in an HBO documentary (the filming of which frames the first third of the movie).
– Marky Mark is in great shape and showing as much skin as in his you-know-you-masturbated-to-him Calvin Klein days. One could create a convincing argument that he looks even better with a little meat and age to him.
– Christian Bale created a wholly convincing, endearing, sad crack addict character.
– It made me want to see more boxing movies. People in the audience actually cheered during the final fight, and clapped at the end.
– It’s doing well, so it’s a sort of financial redemption for David O. Russell after “I Heart Huckabees,” meaning maybe he’ll get to make another movie soon, which would be great news. “Three Kings” might be one of the best war movies ever made, if you could call it a war movie.
– Great soundtrack. They used a Breeders song, ’nuff said.
– It’s spirited. Even when it threatens to depict the local color a little cartoonishly, it’s a welcome spin in a genre that could easily devolve into dour gravitas.
– There were at least two “Marky Mark’s butt in sweatpants” shots that could be construed as gratuitous.
For all these reasons and more, “The Fighter” is deserving of your time.
3 CommentsI never started writing erotica for the money. Pursuing any type of writing for the money would be, amongst many other attributes, hilarious. I started writing erotica because it was what I was meant to do, and I started publishing it on Nifty (and eventually on this website) because I felt it was good, and that people might like it. Then and now, that has been my chief motivation for writing erotica: because I like it and hope others will like it too.
However, the market for erotica was once robust compared to the market for other fiction, and I came right on the tail end of a golden age. When I was selling stories to Men and Freshmen I was making an astounding – but, at the time, pretty standard – $300 a story. What’s more is that magazines were contacting me – me! – to write other things for them, and offering me money to do so.
I almost cried writing that last paragraph. Those checks were a godsend. Now – NEWS FLASH! – the writing/publishing industry is in the toilet. About the only game left in town are the anthologies (like Best Gay Erotica) and let’s just say that while I appreciate the money they offer per story, it don’t even add up to a week’s worth of groceries.
I work a full-time job. It’s a good job and I’m incredibly grateful for it. The schedule is flexible, which gives me free time to work on my writing and my website. The trade off for this flexibility is the fact that I don’t get paid a whole lot.
It’s never been easy for me to ask for money. But it’s becoming clearer to me that if an artist (or even a porno writer) feels that their work is worth something, they need to ascribe a monetary value to it and encourage their audience to do the same. That doesn’t mean I expect every reader of this site to donate something – I read and watch and listen to plenty of free things. Nor do I knock writers who want to give their work away – I think finding and developing an audience is paramount. But money is pretty necessary, too.
Consider this: my web hosting costs come out to about six bucks a month. The yearly fee for my domain is around twenty bucks. That’s small potatoes, but if you donated six bucks you’d be keeping my site alive for a month. For twenty you’d be sustaining it for a year. Either way you’d be supporting my writing (habit/disorder) in a tangible way. That’s pretty cool, right?
Think about it and get back to me!
Scott said he wanted to ask me something, something weird, and not to be
freaked out by it. Would I put face down by his balls, just to help him
out? His girlfriends always did that, and he loved to experience that while
he jacked off, it felt so nice to feel hot breath on his nuts.
Read Tent in the Backyard by Expat Stud
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