"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
Sorry I’m late. The car service just arrived to take Watts to the airport. She’s spending a week in N’Orleans visiting her sister, so she got top priority the last couple days. Try as I might, even with her around for most of the time, this was kind of a depressing Christmas. My usual introspection level goes into overdrive at this time of year. Considering the year I’ve been having, getting through the holiday wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had. And it didn’t help stumbling across a certain television show at three in the morning two days before the twenty-fifth.
Run, Run Rudolph Monday I did my shopping. I like to wait until the last minute to hit the stores, so I can experience that frenzy of purchasers charged with down-to-the-wire anxiety. Pretty much I was only buying for Watts this year. My other friends all got ornaments in little felt stockings when they came to my Christmas party. Her first two presents were easy enough to get, two volumes of Transmetropolitan (what is it about that book that chicks really seem to dig?). For her third gift I wanted to get her a lava lamp, because she’s always drooling over mine. But Target was out, so she got Myst III for Playstation 2 instead. The last item I hoped to get her was something she was dying for. So, naturally, it had to be one of the hottest items of the season. No, not Chicken Dance Elmo.
Watts was hungry for the new Extended Version of The Fellowship of the Ring. I ended up walking over fifty city blocks, scouring two buroughs, and waiting in line for a half hour to find a copy of this thing. I finally managed to snag the last one in stock at a Best Buy on Northern Boulevard in Queens. All this over a bunch of elves and wizards and shit? I guess word of mouth about the ass transfers for the Back to the Future trilogy cut down on the variety of DVD choices this winter.
So anyway, I get home and wrap her presents. Gift giving makes me so giddy that I couldn’t sleep at all. I was running on six hours rest as it was, after being up late proofreading a Star Wars novel. But somehow I managed to stay up until nine the next morning due to sheer excitement. A good chunk of that time was spent watching television. Unfortunately, sometimes I’m highly susceptible to the message of the babysitter. Especially when I’m overtired and in a heightened emotional state.
Last One In Is A Rotten Egg The show was called Naked New York, which immediately caught my eye when I saw it on the cable guide. It turned out not to be porn. It was a show about two degrees above Public Access, discussing all things sex. When I flipped to it some hot chick was demonstrating these molded foam pads that help with all kind of fun positions. Yeah, she was fully clothed, dammit.
Being sorta young, male, and a former nerd, sex is one of my few sustained obsessions. And when I say obsession I don’t mean it’s something I think about a lot, like many people. I mean obsession in every good and bad definition of the word. Next week I’m writing about all the parties I attended this Christmas and I’ll tell you about the night I maintained a four-hour conversation about rimjobs.
Alright, so with this in mind it shouldn’t surprise you that the novel I wrote has a lot of sex in it. But don’t worry, it’s literate sex, not just simple pornography. So I’m watching this show and they have a roundtable discussion about the death of the handjob. Two of the participants are a writer from the Village Voice, Tristan Taormino (the hot chick with the foam) and Kevin Keck from Nerve.com. They’re going on about how the blowjob has replaced the handjob in American society and I’m thinking, hey, I should be on this show. I’ve got a thing or three to add to the subject.
After the show is over I get on the Internet and track these two down. My idea was to find a way to e-mail them and do some networking that may ultimately help me get some paid writing work. Kevin Keck wrote a piece about being a teacher and having sex with his students. There wasn’t any link to an e-mail, but I found out Nerve.com has an open submissions policy. Tristan Taormino has a whole site of her own at www.puckerup.com, complete with the usual advice for people interested in becoming a professional writer. I take the defeatist attitude and decide not to bother writing to her, because any question I would use to veil my ulterior motive she could answer by replying with a link, so what’s the point?
By then it was about five in the morning and I’m getting kind of dreary. My mind starts going to bad places and I let it. I’m looking at all this stuff on the Internet, seeing entire sites dedicated to talking about sex and that’s when I start to feel like I’m the last one getting on the bandwagon. Does the world need another novel about the love and sex struggles of twenty-somethings living in New York City? Sure, I’ve got a great new angle that hasn’t been explored yet, and word was passed to me that the editor at Doubleday who made me write it called it ‘brilliant’, but it’s not in print now, is it? Besides, it seems like talking about sex is only commercially viable when women do it. Nobody wants to hear a man discussing the subject, because deep down (sometimes not so deep down) women think men are obsessed pigs anyway. And guys don’t want to hear other guys talking about this stuff because they like the slight taboo of a woman talking frankly about why the blowjob has usurped the handjob. Maybe I’m just wasting my time.
Lather, Rinse, Epiphany Despondent and feeling like I have no place in the world because my interests are ground well trodden, I hop in the shower. It just so happens that that is where I do my best thinking and come up with my best ideas (well, except for the shoulder aquarium, that was the result of a particularly deranged lunch in my college days). I could try to be poetic and say that washing away the grime of the previous day made me realize that I am not a person with just one layer. But I generally don’t think like that. All that happened was that I realized I was selling myself short and being too myopic. Sex isn’t the only thing I think, talk, and write about. It just happened to be what was on my mind because of that show.
While in the shower I thought about the book I’m writing now. There’s barely any sex in it at all. Mostly it’s about a dysfunctional family. And the book I want to write after that is about being in your mid-twenties and wondering when your life is going to have some direction. And after that I want to write a book about two friends who decide to become roommates and how it affects their relationship. The more I thought about it, the more I remembered that the things I write about are the things I can relate to. Yes, I have a beyond healthy interest in sex. But I have a lot more to contribute than just that. And even this book I just finished, even though it has a lot to do with sex, it has a lot more to do with friendship.
Following the stream of consciousness, I started thinking about jobs, since I’m going to have to get one soon. I’m dreading getting back behind a desk and being someone’s office gimp again. But right now, other than writing, that’s all I’m really qualified to do. Even if the writing took off at some point, there’s no guarantee that I would have a long career. Some people write one book and it’s the only one they ever get into print. So I imagined this point down the road, if I’ve had a book published but it looks like that’s the end of the writing thing. What would I want to do with the rest of my life? What am I really good at?
And I thought about the main theme of every book idea I have; people. I don’t write about events or actions. I don’t write about wars or exploration or murder. I write about people interacting with people. And every idea is a catharsis on one or another level. Hell, I spend every week here trying to sort out my problems. When I’m out spending time with my friends we rarely talk politics or world issues. We talk about our problems. And I’m damn good at helping people solve their problems.
So, there I am, standing in the shower, trying to figure out what the rest of my life is going to be about, when a possible answer becomes obvious. What kind of job involves interacting with people, talking and listening, sitting on my ass a lot (because any job I have has to include that) and solving people’s problems?
Now, as I’ve said before, therapy isn’t really my bag. I like to hope I have the strength in me to work out my own shit. And maybe I do. And if I do, then maybe I could help those people who don’t have that same strength to solve their problems, or at least deal with them better.
The New Year starts with a new long-term plan. First I need to get a job I can stay at for a year or two while I work out the financial hoo-hah, which is going to be hard in this economy. Then I need to sell my book to pay off the debt I’ve accumulated, which may be even harder than getting a job. After that I may just start looking into going back to school for a Masters Degree. I’m not planning on giving up on writing. If anything, my new idea for a job path is one that would be flexible to being a novelist as well. Not to mention the fact that spending my days talking to a bunch of wackjobs will no doubt provide great material for future novels.
From The Monkey House a/k/a Simon And how does that make you feel?
The Random: Okay, the Shoulder Aquarium. I was at lunch one day in college, talking about how I’d like to be shot at some point, just to know what it feels like. A friend of mine volunteers to do it to me when I turn twenty-five. We decide the shoulder would be a good place. Then I go off on this tangent about how we could put a small pipe through the bullet hole and then slowly stretch the hole like those people in Africa do with their lips and earlobes. Once it’s big enough we can put a permanent piece of PVC pipe in my shoulder, cover both sides with clear Plexi-glass, fill it with water and toss some fish in there. Voila, the Shoulder Aquarium. (If you’re reading Leo, don’t worry about missing my birthday)
