PORNHOUNDS #1 is about my old porn office in Cali. Sometime after that,
I worked at a NYC-based porn publishing house, which is where this writing
was published. [ed. note--okay, while this writing here is not "new,"
it was at the time I built this site a year ago...] We put out three
glossy rags a month, found behind counters at liquor stores, in the backs
of bodegas, and (according to the letters we got) stuffed in mattresses
in various cell blocks across the country. One of my many important duties
was to write the "girl copy"--the writing that accompanied the
layouts. I wrote girl copy for two, sometimes three magazines a month. I've
posted some of that writing here, in order share with you my process as
a writer. (Think: Nathanael West, Celine, me.
As I scanned this & reread it for the first time in a
long time (always strange, as a writer, to look back on one's ouvre),
I was actually pretty impressed with the otherwise fairly disparate themes
I was able to intertwine, here: 1) the imagined sexuality of early Amercian
settlers-- 19th century female sexuality being an unsung bit of history, to
be sure, and 2) all the cross-cultural, sexual-pop-culture weight any mention
of Japan inevitably brings to the table. All told, an impressive bit of copy.
I was really working towards some meta-commentary, here. Like,
why cowgirl and Indian? In the context of porn, what does this culturally
loaded pairing say about our culture as a whole? Of course, by the end, I
acknowledge that this question cannot be satisfactorily answered, and perhaps
never will be.
Just wanna take a moment here to give a shout out to my Swedish sistas!!!
Actually not really but....hmmm. You know, reading this bit of copy over
makes me realize that I did, in fact, make the right decision in not pursuing
that MFA at Iowa. Not that I applied, actually. But, if I had, I would've
gotten in. Obviously.
No
comment.
Layout involves a very attractive woman spread-eagled in vinyl boots. Notice
I give her a "voice." Also notice the juxtaposition of the words "hot" and
"sloppy-gooey" towards the end; for this (the repeating short "o" sound,
the repeating "o" as visual metaphor), I took my cue from 70s-era New York
Language Poets. Kidding.
If
you're like me, you've seen the movie Face/Off close to a hundred times.
So you'll recall in the beginning that Nicolas Cage (as the evil Castor Troy)
says to the woman on his lap: "You know, I can eat a peach for hours."
(He also says, "If I were to let you suck my tongue,
would you be grateful?"...which is my favorite line of all time, far superior
in delivery and cadence as far as I'm concerened than "Stella!" than,
"You lookin' at me?" than, "Say hello to my little friend,"
etc. etc.)
At any rate, it was the Face/Off peach quote that ultimately inspired the above bit of copy. However, quite obviously, with such a reference as T.S. Eliot, I also pull from my college education here (lit major). People have asked, how do you do it Sharon? The seamless blend of high and low culture, pop and lit, cinema and poetry; and in less than 200 words. For me, it happens naturally.
