Woman Rewatches Man Bites Dog
I wrote something for HILOBROW: “Repo Your Enthusiasm (18): Man Bites Dog.” Give it a read and share it too.
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The Soundtrack to My Writing Life (Yeah)
Lately when I’ve been working on my porn novel I’ve been listening to “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003).
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The Porn Library
Since I am working on two books that concern themselves with pornography—a novel and a nonfiction book—I thought I would start compiling a list of books about porn. These are not recommendations, per se, but books that trade in the subject in some way, whether that’s a ghost written autobiography of a porn star or a novel or an art book. The only thing not included is anti-porn nonfiction books; those are dumb.
NB: These books are presented in no particular order, and this list will be expanded over time.
Blue Money by Carolyn See
Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism by Heather Berg
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-Rated Video by Robert Stoller
Girlvert: A Porno Memoir by Oriana Small
The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry by Legs McNeil
Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below by Jane Kamensky
My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir by Chris Offutt
Porn Studies by Linda Williams
Traci Lords: Underneath It All by Traci Lords
Porno by Irvine Welsh
XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz by Ron Jeremy
Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire by Laurence O’Toole
The Valley by Larry Sultan
Preachers vs. Porn: Exposing Christianity’s War on Sexxx by Mark Kernes
The Money Shot: A Play by Neil LaBute
XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography by Wendy McElroy
The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know by Shira Tarrant
Camgirl by Issa Mazzei
Playboy’s Greatest Covers by Damon Brown
The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure by Tristan Taormino
Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood by Maitland Ward
Porn Art by Dahmane
Dreamland by Jeff Burton
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson
Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine by Allan MacDonell
Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay Talese
X-Rated: Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s by Tony Nourmand
Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” by Linda Williams
From Princess to Porn Star: A Real-Life Cinderella Story by Tasha Reign
Have a suggestion for The Porn Library? Let me know.
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Life in L.A. (Monsters)
Monsters. Mannequins. Merry-go-rounds. Follow me on Instagram for more of my life in L.A. photographs.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #10: The Pornification of My Life
This is part 10 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
In this post, I’ll be talking about my current projects. Now that my memoir is in the world and the promoting of it has lessened, I’m focusing my attention on different things. That includes two books and various freelance writing assignments. What do these projects have to do with each other? Well, they’re all pornified.
The Novel
Since sometimes titles change between conception and delivery, I won’t be sharing the title of my novel-in-progess. In fact, I won’t be sharing too much about this project, to protect it. I will say that this novel is set in Porn Valley. Since I first set foot on a porn set in 1997, I have been trying to figure out how to write this book. When I was done writing and revising my memoir, I turned back to this project. Once again, I tried writing it in various ways, none of which worked. Then, sometime late last year, I figured how to do it. Thus far, about a quarter of the book is drafted. It’s such a delight to work on it. It’s fun, and crazy, and oftentimes when I read back over what I’ve written, I laugh out loud, which is always a good thing.
Having spent the last several years working on a nonfiction book, it’s great to be in the fictional realm. People are made up, facts don’t have to adhere to reality, and the world is different. I’ve been writing fiction since I can remember, and my graduate degree is 50% literature and 50% fiction. Over time, my fiction muscles had atrophied a bit, so it’s been nice to feel them getting stronger. Focusing on one central character has also been helpful. There is world building, the world around this character, but the book is most preoccupied with the main character’s interior, which is my sweet spot.
Another craft-oriented thing I’m doing with this project is working on it slowly. I guess you could say I’m part of the slow writing movement. There is nothing about hustle culture that is good for deep creativity; its disregard for time and process and synchronicity doesn’t allow for organic flow. And, it’s better for my body to not be stuck in front of the computer all the time. I recommend slowing down.
The Nonfiction Book
This book is also set in Porn Valley, but in the real one. Again, I don’t want to say too much about this project as a way of keeping it private for the moment, but it has a bigger arc, a lot more characters, and of course is nonfiction. Again, I’m playing to a strength here, which is thanks to the long time I’ve been writing about the porn business. This book will be longer than the novel, and it will likely take longer to write. In addition to being drawn from current journalistic encounters with the porn industry, it will also draw on what in a few years will be 30 years I’ve spent writing about this subject matter.
This time, there is no central character, and while I’m a kind of tour guide — historically, I’ve compared my role as a journalist writing about Porn Valley to Virgil and the reader to Dante in Inferno — I’m definitely not the narrative focus. I’ve always made sure to remind myself that when I’m on a porn set, I am absolutely, undoubtedly, most assuredly the least interesting thing in the room. Porn Valley. The Other Hollywood. The X-Rated Movie Business. I like to think of it as my personal Yoknapatawpha County.
It’s a bit daunting this one, isn’t it? But I guess that’s part of the draw. Also, while other people have written books about the porn industry, I don’t think anyone’s done one quite like this one. If you’re interested in those other books, you might want to check out The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne with Peter Pavia.
The Other Stuff
One could argue this is not a blog post at all but something of a strategic plan for the days, weeks, months, and, yes, even the years ahead. If one were to argue that, one would likely not be wrong. I’ll be doing other things as well, including posting on Forbes.com, doing freelance journalism, and writing more fiction. A lot of that will trade in the subject of sex, and some of it will include porn.
I’ve spent a long time waffling around this subject matter. Let’s face it; it’s a little weird for a woman to write about sex and porn, to do it for so long, to be so seemingly obsessed with it. It’s a little embarrassing, a little dirty, a little wrong. Or is it? Well, on the one hand, sometimes I encounter people who think just that. But on the other hand, then I’ll remind myself that three of the most visited websites in the world are porn sites, and those numbers testify to the fact that there is a significant interest in it.
One time an idiot editor (a woman, obviously) suggested that while many people (let’s face it: men, mostly) like to watch porn, that doesn’t mean they want to read about it. I think she was wrong. I think people who watch porn want to know why they watch it, and they want to know why they want to watch what they want to watch, and they want to understand what the scenarios on the screen say about themselves.
In any case, I’ll be sharing more about this process as I move forward. Questions? Thoughts? Suggestions? Hit me up here. It’d be interesting to include the consumers’ perspective in the nonfiction book. Do you watch porn? Why do you watch it? What do you get out of it? Most importantly: How does it make you feel?
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The Flesh Eaters
This short story was originally published in Construction Literary Magazine in June 2018.
Dolores didn’t expect to spend the last year sewing pubic hair into a disembodied silicone vagina, but that’s the way it happened. One day, you’re working at the 7-11 on the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia, and the next day, you’re submitting your job application at a place your mother will refer to from this day forward as “the dildo factory.” In fact, it’s not a dildo factory. They make many things here. In the three and a half years that she’s worked at this place, she’s spent six months stringing anal beads, fourteen months assembling penis pumps, and two months boxing vibrators. A year ago, she found her niche: masturbators. The name sounded like something for which you should spend your Sunday mornings confessing, but in fact it was just her and four other girls in the far corner of the warehouse bent over a never-ending supply of thermoplastic rubber that had been molded to resemble the vaginas and assholes and entire rear ends of famous porn stars. At this point in her career, Dolores didn’t really think about what she was doing anymore: her head bent inches from the factory sculpted labia of a woman she’d never met as she poked the thick needle into the rubber surface and threaded another plastic pubic hair through the fake flesh. Sometimes she wondered what the real women were like. Somewhere in the Valley, they were famous actresses. On the internet, their images were beamed to places Dolores had never been in order to make men that Dolores would never meet happy, if only for a few fleeting moments. The demand was so great that Dolores and the other girls could hardly keep up with the pace. And right now, it wasn’t even the busy season. Come fall, the boss would hire another half dozen girls to work a second shift. The trucks would pull up to the back of the loading bay with increasing frequency, carting the boxed vaginas off to parts unknown. It made Dolores sad to see them leave, like watching your children head off for their first day of school. How would you defend them from the world? A week ago, Dolores was the last one leaving, and without thinking, she walked over to the table, picked up one of the boxes with a vagina in it, and dropped it into her bag. It was heavy—remarkably so—and she wondered briefly if the camera mounted in the corner where the wall met the ceiling had seen what she had done, even though she had turned her back to its prying eye. At home, she removed the vagina from her bag, set it on her dining room table, and considered it. On the cover of the box, the woman whose vagina it was had been dressed up like a waitress and was holding up her fake vagina like she was serving it for dinner. Dolores supposed that’s what men wanted: some piece of you offered up like a slice of pie for their consumption. To be honest, the thought didn’t make her mad. It made her lonely. As the sun set outside, and the room glowed with the golden hour, she had to believe that there was someone out there who would want the person Dolores really was, served on a platter, whole and ready to be eaten. Perhaps there was one man for whom she—meat and bone, organs and innards, blood and matter—would be enough to sate.
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More Days of Smut
Back in April, I decided I was going to write 30 flash fictions that had something to do with sex for a new project I named 30 Days of Smut. Pretty quickly, I realized I wasn’t going to complete those pieces in that time frame, so I renamed it Days of Smut and kept at it. Now I have 20 flash fictions with 10 more to go, and I’ve found this exercise to be beneficial. It’s great for silencing your critical mind and letting yourself be creative, you start doing weird things when you work within a rigid framework, and the things you can make up in your mind are pretty endless when you just keep producing. I’ll update again here when I’ve completed all 30.
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Ma Vie en Rose
A pink curtain in an East Hollywood art gallery. Follow me on Instagram for more of my L.A. photography.
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My Gumroad Shop
Just a reminder that you can buy various things in my Gumroad shop: signed books, consulting, a short story.
The Last Thing
This week’s must-read essay is “The Last Thing My Mother Wanted” by the (pseudonymous) Evelyn Jouvenet.
Books I Read in 2024: My Friend Dahmer
I really enjoyed Derf Backderf’s graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer. It’s about the author’s high school relationship with the guy who would become America’s most notorious serial killer. Creepy, suspenseful, voyeuristic, savage, and peculiar, it raises interesting questions about how things might have turned out differently if you’d lived your life another way and didn’t end up murdering and eating other people.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Pink Fishnets
I took this photograph of a porn star on the set of an adult movie in Woodland Hills, CA, in the spring of 2009.
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Strangers
I watched “All of Us Strangers.” It’s a beautiful movie about ghosts, love, and loss. I highly recommend it.
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Books I Read in 2024: I Hate Men
I bought this book because I was in Berkeley, my hometown, and I thought it would be funny to buy a book called I Hate Men in Berkeley. The book, authored by Pauline Harmange, is thin, both physically and in its content. I don’t know why the book got sort of attempted banned, since it’s mostly the not actually very radical or provocative musings of a woman not living the life she claims to exalt. Do not recommend.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Luna Luna
High & Low
As a longtime fan of fashion designer John Galliano, I really enjoyed this new documentary: “High & Low.” It’s a complicated portrait of a complicated genius. If you’re not familiar with his work, I’d suggest starting here.
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The Resident
Image credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
I’m delighted to share that I’ll be a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska, later this year. While updating my About page at the beginning of the year, I realized how impactful various writing residencies I’ve done over the years have been. So I decided I would apply to, say, a dozen residencies over the course of this year and see what happened. I got a few rejections, so it was extra wonderful to get this opportunity. In an upcoming installment of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” my ongoing series of blog posts on writing, editing, and publishing, I’ll share some tips on getting a residency. One thing that’s especially exciting is that this residency is for the novel that I’m working on. More soon …
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Days of Smut
Awhile back, I started this mini-project called 30 Days of Smut. The idea was that I would write a short piece of smut-themed flash fiction every day for 30 days and post it on my website. That specific goal didn’t work out because I got busy, so I crossed out the 30 and the project is now Days of Smut. I’ll probably keep going until I have 30 stories and then stop. Basically, the purpose of the project is just to exercise my creative muscle. So far, I’ve introduced a dominatrix, a porn addict, an auto-cannibalist, a woodsman, and a mannequin.
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The Convention
I took this photograph near the red carpet at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada, in, I believe, 2013.
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Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade
Last year I realized I’d read, like, no books, so I thought maybe this year I would read a few. To start, I read the incredible Victory Parade by Leela Corman. You should buy it and read it. Here’s my Amazon review:
This book is an absolute masterpiece. It's an electric, searing, beyond Spiegelman's Maus anatomical and artistic investigation of the twin traumas of war and violence, the nightmares that haunt survivors' waking and sleeping lives, and the banality of evil's horrifying consequences to the human soul. I read about this book in the Washington Post and read it in one day (i had to take a few breaks because it's so powerful). I can't recommend Victory Parade enough. It should win all the prizes and praises. Congrats to Leela.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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