I’m fond of the way this one turned out – it’s the sort of story I’d typically refrain from posting on my site, the better to submit it somewhere and possibly get some money for it or save it for that mythical single-author anthology of my stories that’s going to be published in my dreams someday. This story was, in fact, accepted to Men, but was never published due to said magazine’s subsequent demise. I then submitted it to Best Gay Romance 2010 but it was rejected, so to this website (and Nifty) it goes.
1. Dum Dum Girls – I Will Be: I listened to this album more than any other this year.
2. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
3. Frankie Rose and the Outs – s/t: Songs that aren’t really songs but moody, catchy, frequently beautiful experiments. Self-aware, too: “Think about the empty space…”
4. MGMT – Congratulations: Hated their last album.
5. Wavves – King of the Beach: Didn’t bother with their last album.
6. Let’s Wrestle – In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s
Also liked:
Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
OK Go – Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
The Chemical Brothers – Further
Songs: “When I’m With You” by Best Coast; “Tightrope” by Janelle Monae; “The Drug” by Royksopp; “My House” by Ganglians; “I’m Aware” by Clinic.
MOVIES
I didn’t see any movies this year. Well, not really. But I hardly saw any. I liked The Social Network (which I wrote about here), The Kids Are All Right (which depicted Mark Ruffalo’s meaty, thrusting ass), and Everyone Else (which was a twisty and unusual depiction of a failing relationship).
Still want to see: Burlesque, Enter the Void, Life During Wartime, Winter’s Bone, Black Swan, Dogtooth, Toy Story 3, Blue Valentine, Another Year.
I never said anything about it again, to him or anyone else, for fear I’d get in trouble because of what I’d done. Now, as an adult, I’m really glad I didn’t because if I had said something about it to the wrong person, my dad might have gone to jail for what he did!
Thank God that didn’t happen, that I kept my mouth shut! I got to grow up with a father who loved me instead of having the stigma of being the son of a “child molester,” just because he jerked off in the shower one time in his life with his kid!
Read My Last Shower With Dad by Luz Rojo (originally hosted by Nifty but link points to Rojo’s website)
Repost from old blog, 1/18/2008. Thought of it because of this business.
So I’m doing my regular Google ego-surfing and the first link that comes up is a new review posted to Amazon’s listing for Best Gay Romance 2008. With glee I scroll down to see what the reviewer had to say about my story, and I see this:
In “A Not-So-Straight Duet,” Natty Soltesz contributes two different stories of young men who deviate from their preconceived ideas about themselves. In the first story, two college students partner together for a business arrangement and discover they share a common desire. In the second story, the light of the day brings an intense revelation between two young men. Five Stars.
Five Stars! Wow! I’m proud and I start scanning the other blurbs (she wrote something about each story in the collection) to see how I measure up to the rest. The next story I check got five stars. And the next one?…five stars.
Every fucking story got five stars.
It’s the thought that counts.
Update for 2010: the reviewer ditched the stars at some point since I initially wrote this.
I loved this Keith Schofield-directed video for the Charlotte Gainsbourg/Beck collaboration “Heaven Can Wait” as soon as I saw it. But today I became annoyed after reading this interview with Shoefield on Pitchfork, where he states that the inspiration for it came from the images he discovered and appropriated from sites like ffffound.com and various Tumblr blogs.
The problem is that – surprise – somebody actually created the images that he appropriated, in particular these two images from an artist previously unknown to me, William Hundley:
Thing is, these two images clearly stood out to me from the rest in the video, which says something about the potency of one’s imagination or lack thereof. But there’s another level here. I myself have a Tumblr blog, and I follow quite a few of them. It really is its own sort of world, a saturation of images without context or cohesion. It’s interesting that Shofield decided to run with that concept, but the problems that resulted are one and the same with the problems I have with most Tumblr blogs that seem to have no interest in the source of an image. So yeah, it’s an image of a skateboard on cheeseburgers – but somebody took the time to create this thing, to buy the cheeseburgers, to stack them, to plop a skateboard on top of them. There’s real intent behind it, and to assume it just exists and belongs to the world is sort of arrogant and dismissive.
I don’t know. I do the same thing, really, when I steal images I “find” on Google Image Search to illustrate blog posts. Really, it’s the way things are headed. Authorship, as far as images are concerned, is this passe thing. It’s weird, is all I’m saying, and it makes me uncomfortable.
I still think it’s a great video, and Schofield’s other work is worth checking out, too. Here’s two more:
As I toweled off I couldn’t help but remark how in shape my body was. I hadn’t really taken a look all season, but my workout schedule and playing had combined to tone and build both my upper and lower body, and I had shed some of the extra pounds that had accumulated around my waist off season. Fuck, I looked hot, and I was proud. Big, meaty pecs, biceps that balled into cords of powerful muscle, my abs not perfectly ripped but definitely rockhard. And a nice, high and round butt and a set of thick, muscular quads.
It was Halloween of 2001 and I needed a costume. I’d been growing out my hair for over a year and it was as big as it ever had been (and ever would be). It was a total white-boy afro.
So I got an idea. I brushed my hair out really big and sprayed it red. I found this amazing yellow jumpsuit at the thrift store and some red and white striped tights. Some pancake makeup and – poof! – I was Ronald McDonald.
The night before Halloween my friend had a party. I passed out lollipops and everyone was impressed with my level of creepiness.
I got incredibly drunk. I ended up wandering around campus with a non-costumed friend, getting attention from everyone we passed. We stumbled into a random house party. Nobody was wearing a costume except me. They were having a fight club. The living room was full of people crammed against the walls and along the staircase, all egging on two tough-looking girls who were boxing in the middle of the room.
There was a lull in the action and people started asking who was going to go next. Somebody said, “Ronald McDonald!” and then others took up the chant. Fifty people were demanding my presence in the ring – there was no getting out of it. Fortunately I was trashed enough to put on my game face instead of running for my life. I slipped on the boxing gloves and got in the middle with a tall, vaguely scary-looking dude.
I know that I threw at least two punches, and if memory serves, one of them actually landed. As it was, though, I was mainly on the receiving end, and after a particularly potent hit right in the middle of my face, I went down. Everyone cheered.
I stumbled home. There was blood on my white clown gloves. My friend said I’d done better he’d thought I would. “I thought it was going to end really badly,” he said. “That guy wanted to fuck you up.”
Once my hangover wore off I too could appreciate the fact that I’d gotten out of there alive. And I figured I’d given the party a little extra jolt of fun and excitement. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Ronald McDonald get his ass knocked to the floor?
