Sex Sellout

A billionaire dinosaur forced a strapping young man with oiled pectorals to become gay, and as a side effect I have decided to become a best-selling author of adverb-laden erotica.

 I love it when the page beckons, but it doesn’t happen often enough to make me a millionaire. My hope is that this has more to do with commitment than talent, and that the more I sit myself down in front of the writing machine, the more material (and therefore money) I will produce. The trouble is, however, that I write about things that strike me, topics that mean something, and moments that should matter as much to the world as they do to me, but don’t.

I must be as out of touch as my children sometimes think I am. Not only do I like corduroys and listen to singer songwriters that can write and sing and play music without auto-tuning, I can't tell you whether a yellow circle emoticon with closed eyes and tears denotes laughing or crying. But worse than all of that, I am also clueless about what matters to the world, and what people living in it want to read. The human condition has in fact, nothing to do with family struggles, personal insecurities, falling in love, winning or losing at life, and toilet paper. No, it’s all about shallow, musky, animalistic rutting...and that’s what sells books.

Hunter Fox learned this while still at UCLA, and has self-published more than fifty novels based on the concept of dinosaurs, unicorns, and just about every character you might find in Tolkien, turning men gay. His titles read like something out of Mad Magazine in the eighties, if Mad Magazine in the eighties had been as dirty as every boy that read it had wanted it to be, and if every boy that read it had wanted to be turned gay by mythical creatures. There’s even a saber-toothed tiger (not mythical) thrown onto the title pile for good measure, while my favorite title includes an alien hound, whatever that might be.

I checked the Amazon rankings for Mr. Fox’s books, and while the Amazon ranking system is not a clear indicator of sales and income, there is no doubt that this guy is making money at this. Sure, the titles are funny and bizarre, and if you belonged to a fraternity (shudder) or were homophobic (shudder) you might give one to a buddy as a “joke” gift, but does anyone read these books all the way through, and without laughing?

No, I can’t go out tonight, guys, I just downloaded “Dark Pegasus Made Me Gay” to my Kindle, and I can’t wait to snuggle up in front of the fire with a cup of cocoa and get started on it!

And lest anyone that is straight think that their attraction to the opposite sex affords them a lofty look down their nose at the smut preferred by some LGBT readers, I’ll mention Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, anything written by Danielle Steel, and the complete Harlequin Romance collection. All of them relative smut when it comes down to it, all of them laden with adverbs and descriptors that can’t be read without imagining heavy breathing and the popping of bodice buttons, all of them selling millions of copies. And those are just a few of the mainstream mentionables; many authors have made small fortunes by churning out series of formulaic filth that no one has heard of, or at least will admit to hearing of.

A bad day of writing at home beats a good day inside the corporate grist mill, and while I would be happy just making a comfortable, anonymous living by writing, I can admit that a part of me would not reject a sellout opportunity to become an international sensation, churning entire forests into pulp and putting endangered owls into owl retirement homes. I sometimes wonder, however, can that happen writing short stories about moments that matter? Should I sex up the telling of my best friend and me boiling our own urine on his mother’s kitchen stove to make gunpowder, just to land on the bestseller list and extricate myself from corporate America for good? Maybe some sexually frustrated neighbor girls stopped by to borrow the very pot we pissed into, and maybe the oven glove that I used to pull the pot of the stove caught fire, and the girls ripped off their shirts in order to smother the flames and save my life, and in doing so they ignited the lusty pressure keg of passion trembling within a sinewy, pale-skinned, virginal teenage boy.

It could have happened that way. No wait, it did happen that way, I swear...

Elizabeth and I joke about me becoming an erotica writer all the time. We imagine book titles, all of them weighted with innuendo and vice, taboo titles that suggest sensual struggles between wealth and poverty, daring and innocence, pleasure and pain. These titles lead to a discussion of racy cover photos, glossy images of men with naked, oiled, capable chests taking tragic women with bulging breasts and desperate eyes into their arms for lessons in lust while holding uncomfortable, even physically impossible poses sure to bring about deep vein thrombosis.

And I know what I'm talking about; I used to spend hours hiding in my aunt's basement thumbing through her romance novel collection, drinking in lusty covers, wondering at racy titles, and reading about heated embraces and throbbing passions. All of it made me feel funny inside, but I didn't completely understand why.

Well I understand now, and I think it's time to cash in on that realization.

Of course, in order to write erotica, I will need to choose an appropriate pseudonym, something like Dick Foxhunter or Richard Stonewood. Being a righteous family man that has never once let a lustful thought linger, and has worked for years to earn an untarnished reputation for knightly valor and virtuous gallantry, I would not want to risk the public knowing that I earn my stacks writing such filthy books.

Especially those members of the public that are my friends and family, more specifically the ones who would secretly not only read my dirty books, but also dog-ear their favorite pages.

Missed Moment

“Two bobs left, two bobs right, then one left, one right, one left, and then it starts all over again, but from right to left,” Jared explained.

I watched, dizzied as my little brother bobbed his head from side to side in perfect rhythm.

“And you're always telling me that it's my turn to move, when I wonder what could make the needle jump the groove,” Amiee sang to the beat.

Jared’s head danced while I waited for the right moment to join in, like a little girl watching for her cue to leap between whirling double-dutch jump ropes.

My head bobbed left twice, right twice, and then back to the right for a single bob, just as Jared had instructed. I was feeling pretty good about my chances, and went left.

For two bobs…

Jared laughed as I tried to correct and catch up to his easy going movements. It was too late; my head frenzied back and forth in a seizure-like loop as Aimee sang on.

“Acting steady always ready to defend your fears, what's the matter with the truth, did I offend your ears?”

“Kid, it’s not that hard,” Jared said.

“Maybe for you it isn’t, but my head has a mind of its own,” I replied in jesting defense

.

“Just follow me,” my brother said, ignoring my protest. His head began to bob.

Aimee ignored us both. “Now I could talk to you till I'm blue in the face, But we still would arrive at the very same place, with you running around and me out of the race…”

I followed Jared’s example, and he nodded with encouragement as my head bobbed for one complete, correct, and rhythmic cycle.

“You got it!”

I grinned, and the multitasking center in my brain flickered under the sudden load. My head threatened calamity with a feint to the left, but just then a synapse fired, sending my head to the right, back in sync with Jared’s.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around Seattle to carpet-cleaning appointments, rewinding the tape and playing the song over and over again, our heads bobbing in unison to the rhythm of Aimee’s counsel.

“You're like a sleepwalking man, it's a danger to wake you, even when it is apparent where your actions will take you,” Aimee sang.

"That's just what you are..."

--

Happy Birthday, Jared. I hope you know that I am no longer a sleepwalking man; that's just not who I am...anymore.

Aimee Mann's "That's Just What You Are"

Reading About Me

The large auditorium was filled with tables, every table was filled with books, and every book was filled with words. My two sons and I wandered about, picking and browsing our way through it all. We had been at the Park City Library book sale for about twenty minutes when it happened.

“Dad, come here,” Caleb said, his hand reaching out and pulling lightly on my arm.

I turned, and found myself facing a familiar and very formidable enemy: Self-Doubt.

Caleb’s presence crackled beside me as I reached out and picked a copy of my own book, “West of Independence” from the table of books in front of us.  It felt heavy in my hand, so much so that the bones in my forearm threatened to snap under its weight. My heart dropped into my gut, and the air around me grew thick with the syrup of dread. I suddenly found it difficult to breath.

“Bad enough to see it here, but please don’t let it be the library’s copy,” I prayed without words as I peeled back the cover.

It wasn't, but that did little to keep my spirit from slipping further down the treacherous slope of failure towards the dark and depressive despair waiting below.

Standing beside me was one of my biggest fans, one of the four living people that I hate to disappoint. In the long moment that followed, I wondered what it meant for Caleb to watch me pluck my work from a library book sale table; did he feel sorry for me? Would this be the moment that changed forever the way he felt about his father? Was I as much a failure in his eyes as I was in mine?

I swallowed hard and said aloud with feigned confidence, “Someone must have read it, and then donated it to the library for the book sale. That’s nice.”

I stuck the book between two large hardcovers that I had already picked from another table. I didn't want anyone to see my picture on the back cover and feel sorry for me.

“Are you going to buy it?” Caleb asked.

“Sure, why not? I’ll buy it and sell it to someone else, or your mom can send it to someone for a review,” I answered, turning away so that my son would not see the forced optimism in my eyes.

I wandered in and out of the tables, trying to ignore the heavy burden I carried with me. Within the short course of a few minutes, I had rifled through piles of my favorite authors, looking for anything they had written that I hadn't read.

And then it hit me…I was rifling through books written by my favorite authors, in the same book sale where my son had found a copy of mine! I felt my self-worth claw its way back to the top of that slippery slope and up over the edge. Exhausted, he lay on his back and sucked in the sweet air of victory.

Between the three of us, we picked out two bags of books. Together we made our way to the checkout table, where a woman offered to help us tally what we owed. I emptied the first bag and handed over the stack of books.

“Do you have to pay for it if you wrote it?” I asked, a joke in my tone.

“Oh? Did you write one of these?”

“Yes, I wrote that one,” I said, pointing at “West ofIndependence.”

“Oh my, I've been reading about you, and I have been wanting to read this!” The woman exclaimed, dropping my fellow authors onto the table so that she could cradle my work in her hands.

“Well, that’s kind of you to say, let me buy it and I will give it to you,” I offered.

“Oh, no, I want to buy it. Would you sign it for me?”

So I did. With my sons watching.

Suck it, Self-Doubt.