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In Defence of the Confession

How the literary establishment mistreats young, shameless writers like Marie Calloway
True Story

“I have the right to write about my life.” — Marie Calloway

Lately, a confusing debate has erupted over the validity of what is being called “confessional writing,” the kind that places its author and its author’s intimate experiences at the centre of the narrative. The modern confessional exists in transparent opposition to objective writing, where the writer is removed and reports narrative facts largely without opinion, and definitely without feeling. The proliferation of online sites that facilitate impromptu personal writing has cultivated a belief among the status quo that serious writers shouldn’t share an “excess” of personal details or opinions, lest they risk a public shaming. It’s certainly not uncommon in the Internet age to see a personal piece met with a clumsy, trolling comment chorus of “Keep that to yourself,” “TMI” or “Why should I care about your life?”

Additional indictments hurled at confessional writing are that it’s boring or embarrassing, although for whom is not entirely clear. Some critics have concluded that it is without exception bad writing, unworthy of publication, blanketing the form with disdain in hopes it will be forced back into the writer’s private documents folder. By even referring to it as a confession suggests that the author has done something wrong, that there is a central sin they should be repenting; at times, it seems the sin is merely in the act of telling: “How dare they?”

Exactly what differentiates the loathed confession from the lauded personal essay is difficult to name. But it’s impossible to ignore that a majority of these controversial and oft-dismissed confessions are being written by women — primarily young, under-published outsiders accused of lacking the self-awareness that presumably comes with age. The complaints suffered are often of the gendered variety, suggesting a naïveté on the part of the authors to be proud of documenting and distributing their experiences, much like web cam self-portraits posted on Facebook. The suggestion is that they are boring, reprehensible, or invalid in some way, and should never see the light of day. (more…)

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Posted in Chapter and Verse 17 Comments

The Unbalancing Act

How literary periodicals flail to correct gender inequity
Literary periodical coversCanadian Notes & Queries 80: The Gender Issue, Taddle Creek No. 26: Summer Issue, Granta 115: The F Word

If I were a man, and cared to know the world I lived in, I almost think it would make me a shade uneasy — the weight of that long silence of one half of the world.” — Elizabeth Robins, 1907

Recently Good Magazine published an article with a simple solution to inequity on conference panels. What if white men refused invitations to panels that don’t properly represent the diversity of their industries? The idea was so basic, yet I had never even considered it. Usually when I see five men on a magazine, marketing, tech or publishing panel, I criticize the organizers: “You couldn’t find a single woman?” I ask. It never occurred to me to question the participants.

Good broke it down:

“Why don’t the white men who are asked to engage in this nonsense simply stop doing it? The boycott is a protest with a long history of success. If white, male elites started saying, ‘I will not participate in your panel, event, or article if it is all about white men,’ chances are these panels and articles would quickly dry up — or become more diverse.”

But why not take this ingenious idea even further? Since literary publications so often struggle with gender disparity, in their contributor lists and mastheads, in the books they review and the viewpoints they include, why don’t men who consider themselves allies to equality simply refuse publication? Why doesn’t the “How do we fix this?” question include the responsibility of male writers, not just male editors, in its solution? Why shouldn’t writers cultivate a list of publications they will and won’t submit or pitch to on the basis of equity? (more…)

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Posted in Chapter and Verse 42 Comments

Taming Like a Shrew

How Rebecca Eckler’s misguided relationship advice hurts us all

How Rebecca Eckler’s misguided relationship advice hurts us all

How to Raise a BoyfriendDoubleday Canada

Oh, gender essentialism. Friend to marketing tactics and sitcom stereotypes everywhere.  For those of you unaware, gender essentialist approaches assume that men and women are fundamentally different, and that the difference is the same every time. Essentialism is always about binaries and never about overlap. Blue and pink. Mars and Venus. He brings home the bacon and she makes him a sandwich. Essentialism makes lady legs touchably smooth and real men pound brewskies during the Super Bowl. It haunts prime time, triggering laugh tracks with its doughy, clueless husbands and shrill judging wives. It’s the reason we see trend pieces about how women can be good managers and dads can stay at home with the kids. It’s the reason why the media feels justified in questioning a woman’s political leadership when she’s subject to PMS, and it’s the reason why men who are not primary breadwinners or sports fanatics are often made to feel inadequate. It’s also the foundation for Rebecca Eckler’s latest book, a guide for women to raise their men like toddlers.

When I brought home my review copy of Eckler’s How to Raise a Boyfriend, my partner (who has in no way been raised by me) asked genuinely, “Is that a satire?” No such luck. I really wanted to give Eckler a fair shake, the benefit of the doubt, to not judge her book by its cover, its marketing, and, well, everything that everyone has already said about it. Eckler — novelist, columnist, and contributor to publications such as Elle, Fashion, Maclean’s, and the National Post — is the target of so much scorn that it brings out a protective, maternal  (essentialist) impulse in me. She has already assured her detractors that the book  is actually funny and in no way sexist. But the problem with my urge to defend Eckler is that she shows so much patronizing disdain for not just the opposite sex but also her own, stereotyping everyone  into two distinct camps of the disappointing (boys) and the disappointed (girls.) The book manages to put the responsibility of good male behaviour on women, as if we’ve all been collectively  failing them by not being clear about the fact that they’re failures. It’s not just a book that perpetuates the idea that men are idiots, but that women have no other role than to constantly correct them.

In How to Raise a Boyfriend’s privileged universe there are oblivious men and hard-done-by women. There are women who get bikini waxes, who spend entire days preparing for their man’s approval, and who leave subtle hints about the bracelet they want for Valentine’s Day. All women in this universe have given birth or will one day give birth. There are certainly no homosexuals. All couples have or need housekeepers and nannies, and should have two bathrooms and two televisions. How do they find money for such relationship savers? “You always have money if you give something up.” I’m sure there are people who strongly disagree with that classist, insular solution. (more…)

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Posted in The Haulout 31 Comments

Still Standing 6’1”

A feminist take on rocker Liz Phair, half a lifetime after her landmark Exile in Guyville

A feminist take on Liz Phair, half a lifetime after her landmark Exile in Guyville

Darren Ankenman

When Liz Phair released Exile in Guyville in 1993, I was fourteen years old and only beginning to understand the less than optimal implications of growing up female in a man’s world. Phair has described herself as a “diamond of pressurized anger” in creating the collection of songs that became a soundtrack for disgruntled, dissatisfied girls, and that has ranked on Rolling Stone and Spin lists of greatest albums of all time. So many of us latched on to her sentiments of anger and dismay, buoyed by the accessibility of her lyrical rage, sexual agency, and unabashed “fuck the haters” attitude. Given our culture’s recent wave of nineties nostalgia, typified by this month’s Matador at 21: The Lost Weekend in Las Vegas (where Phair performed), this seems an appropriate time to revisit her status as a feminist icon.

Now I’m thirty-one, sitting with Phair  at a hotel bar on Robson Street in Vancouver, watching her drink an herbal tea. Five albums later, she’s candid about everything from music industry drama to (almost-too-personal) emotional trauma, much like Exile was over fifteen years ago. When I apologize for rambling from early morning flight exhaustion, she leans forward and touches my leg reassuringly, still fulfilling the unintentional promise she made to teenage girls so many years ago: that someone should and will listen to you.

Meanwhile, I’m trying not to be distracted by how stunning she is. I remind myself that detailed descriptions of her “shiny blonde hair” and “striking blue eyes” do not a feminist interview make. When I confess I’m a culture writer, not a music critic, Phair is eager to strike up a conversation about gender. “It’s so hard for me to just say small things for you,” she admits. “I’ve shut up about (feminism) for the last five years. I’ve been patted on the head. But when I start it’s hard to stop. It feels like I’m vomiting because I repress so much. And then I have to dial it down, dial it down.” (more…)

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Posted in Music 5 Comments

Return to No Fun City

In Vancouver, the host of past heartache, the author says goodbye to all that

In Vancouver, the host of past heartache, the author says goodbye to all that

Elizabeth Sarobhasa

I have been in Vancouver International Airport’s baggage claim area about a dozen times. Every time I stood waiting for my luggage to appear from a flight arriving from Toronto or Montreal, I had the same feeling — a toxic mixture of hopeless love and aching lust, peppered with a knowledge that I was both stupid and doomed.

About a dozen times I stood there waiting for the same someone “special” to meet me in arrivals. Every time I knew I was being an idiot, and every time I convinced myself otherwise. Vancouver has the distinct pleasure of being the city that hosted my youth’s most essential, reckless decision. As life choices go, it’s not the worst one a girl in her early twenties can make — I misguidedly followed a boy across the country. (I’m quite sure now he didn’t really want to be followed, but was much too nice to say so.) He had been offered a job on the Left Coast, and after suffering through a long-distance relationship and multiple flights back and forth, I decided enough was enough. After four years in Montreal, clutching my mostly useless bachelor’s degree, I sold my belongings and boarded a plane to Vancouver because of love. I had no apartment, no job, and no plans — just a romantic notion of “going westward as into the future.” What was worse was that, even after all those visits,  I wasn’t even all that sure I liked Vancouver, and as the months passed I became quite sure I hated it. At the time, my wise and irritatingly rational scientist father told me that no matter what my experience on the West Coast became, I should stay a full 365 days to give it the proverbial chance. A year to a fresh graduate is an excruciatingly long time, but now that rain-soaked memory seems only like a blip on an otherwise expansive map.

I’d been blaming my failure in Vancouver on a lack of funds for as long as I can remember, but there had always been a small voice in my head that suggested I should look deeper. So after ten years away (and with a boatload of repressed regret), I have reluctantly come back, out of morbid curiosity, stubbornly trying to prove something, or kill something, or maybe just to satisfy my masochism. This time I’ve landed in YVR with a healthy credit limit and no need to shoplift. Again I am baggage claim, this time on business instead of (attempted) pleasure, yet still feeling that inexplicable stupid doom that comes from a relationship that will never work out. And let me just say, Vancouver on love and Vancouver on business are two very different places. (more…)

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Posted in Online Exclusive 49 Comments

Revenge of the Sexy Nerds

The cult of Lady Gaga and the mainstreaming of outcast culture
Lady Gaga photo by petercruisepetercruise (Available under Creative Commons license)

“Do you think I’m sexy?”

Lady Gaga, covered in fake blood, squeezed into a black bustier, poses this question in her best rock-arena growl. The Toronto audience, easily 15,000 strong, roars its positive response as she flips back her crayon-yellow hair and semi-pornographically writhes on the floor.

“I wasn’t very cool in high school, so sometimes I abuse this part. Do you think I’m sexy?”

This endearing admission, made to a crazed, capacity crowd at the Air Canada Centre, easily sums up why the cult of Gaga has risen to rapid glory. She is that awkward, misunderstood high-schooler all grown up,  raising a big ol’ fuck-you middle finger to everyone who said, “No, you can’t because you’re too ugly/fat/stupid/uncool.” Submerged in the spectacle and decadence of her Monster Ball, she’s still very much that moody teen reject because, despite her all triumphs, she needs us to tell her we adore her. And when we do, she’s so genuinely in awe of the crowd’s frantic adulation. It seems like she has no idea how and why this all happened, how she went from bedbug bites in her New York apartment to God-like status in such a short period of time.

I’ve been trying to figure out “what Gaga means” for months now, using my decade-old Women’s Studies degree to try to decipher how her torn fishnets and Kermit-coat fit into this big, sugary mess we call pop culture. Yes, I love Lady Gaga, and it’s hard to write about something you love so much when you don’t really understand why you love it. An obscure music-snob at heart, I’ve already given my pedestrian Gaga-passion more deliberation than I’d like to admit. Hell, after eighteen straight viewings of the homoerotic, militaristic, sex-fighting BDSM homage that is the “Alejandro” video, I’ve actually developed entire sociological theories of dominance and submission based on her shoe choices. (more…)

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Posted in The Haulout 14 Comments

Drinking With Men Who Are Not Russell Smith

One woman’s perspective of the price of loving the culture we call “books”

On sexual harassment and publishing: one woman’s perspective of the price of loving the culture we call “books”

Publicity Girl
Via Creative Commons

Last Wednesday, the Globe and Mail published a column by Russell Smith in which he offered his unique and slightly controversial take on what the paper calls “Penguin Canada’s sex scandal.” I say “slightly” because the reactions I witnessed were divided into enthusiastic nodding, Hey, that’s not the whole story…, and sarcastic remarks about the columnist congratulating himself for not being a creepy douchebag. Smith gave a synopsis of the industry those of us inside already know well — young, nubile ladyfolk get hit on by older, entitled, lecherous dudes, blah blah blah, mostly because we all drink a lot, go to bed real late, and write about sexy things. Oh, and we’re hot. Smith explains that yes, he’s oft been tempted by “shockingly beautiful” girl-flesh, but he abstains because he’s smarter than everyone else. His conclusion can be summarized as “Canadian publishing is full of hotties, but be like me and keep it in your pants!”

Someone more rational than I (and incidentally a fan of Smith’s writing) pointed out that my cynical reaction to the piece probably stemmed from the fact that I had lived the very things it describes. While Smith’s argument is a simplistic overview of a complex and dangerously flawed industry, a band-aid proposal that doesn’t examine the expectation that women are required to be up-for-anything, flirtatious bombshells with graduate degrees (uglies need not apply), I actually appreciate his sentiment. This idea that we can actually try not to be jerks. And it’s inspired me to write my own personal overview of Men Who Are Not Russell Smith.

I don’t consider myself a “total unbelievable hottie” by his description, but after a decade in an industry where I’ve played the roles of novelist, publicist, editor, and marketer, I feel like I’ve been trained to successfully navigate and tolerate the tricky drunken terrain of strategic innuendo and ass grabbage. Admittedly, I am also a relentless flirt. I’m not sure if I was like that to begin with or if publishing has made me that way — I’m guessing the latter. (A therapist once asked me, with genuine concern, why I was “out until four a.m. with strange men,” and the only response I had to offer was, “’Cause that’s my job.”) Sadly, the late-night cocktail of flirtation and suggestion seems to be the lubricant that gets book deals done. (more…)

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Posted in Chapter and Verse 20 Comments

michaelturner810

Recently, I went to Random House’s Toronto offices to interview Michael Turner about his latest fiction, a study of war and migration called 8×10. The book is made up of a series of short sections, guided by a grid pattern that prefaces each. The title, in the author’s own words, “is derived from a commercial portrait format (the 8×10 glossy) and is related to the structural layout of the book: the lives of eight people — and the lives they come in contact with — told over ten events, each.”

There is a detail about this discussion that should be revealed up front ⎯ I have had a fangirl crush on Turner (Company Town, Hard Core Logo) since he released The Pornographer’s Poem close to a decade ago. This was a fact that I desperately (and poorly) tried to conceal when I was invited to do the interview. In addition to this obvious source of anxiety, Turner did not remove his (rather handsome) overcoat the entire time we spent together on a (rather handsome) leather couch. People leaving their coats on indoors is one of those things that makes me neurotically uncomfortable. My resulting inner monologue was, well,  neurotically uncomfortable. Thankfully, Turner seemed unaware.

At the end of an epic one-hour-and-forty-five minute discussion that covered everything from pro-sex feminism to the tyranny of yoga mat–pushing–big box bookstores, he was generous enough to say that I seemed like a confident, competent, and strong woman. And that I should get more physical exercise to deal with my stress. Honestly? I don’t think the interview did much to curb my crush.

Some people have referred to 8×10 as a puzzle. Do you feel when you’re writing that you’re putting together a puzzle? Are you a collector of sorts?

Composition and form — the form carries a kind of content. The book is a three-dimensional object, it’s suggestive of a certain kind of activity; you prepare yourself when you look at it. You look at a poem and you prepare yourself to fill in things.

I’m interested in how everyone’s touting the book as “experimental.”

Every book is experimental.

Well, it’s interesting to me because I actually found the book really accessible.

Well, thank you. Part of [the reason for] me not using names, places, races, and dates was to create that accessibility.

It’s almost as if the reader is in every piece of the story, because they’re not so distracted by detail. The readability is unbelievable. Were you deliberately against using specific names to create that feeling?

Names stop thought. Once you have a name for something, you can only think in a certain direction. There’s something to be said for holding back on the name. In The Pornographer’s Poem, the narrator was nameless, and to give him a name — what if I had called him Vito?

Names mean different things to different people; they change the whole tone of things. Vito, obviously —

When I say stops thought, I mean it stops abstract thinking, and it’s all about figuration. I want things open. The book is about things that are absent. If you were to go through it and find the squares [on the grid] that are blacked out, you’d find a prize. And no one’s done it.

It’s like an Easter egg.

No one’s done it! And for it to be done would be interesting, because the figure that emerges is the absent signifier. It is the thing that turns the book in a certain sense.

That’s a gem of knowledge to have.

It’s called 8×10. You expect eighty stories, but really there’s only sixty-four. It’s like people want their money back. It sounds disingenuous to say that what the book lacks is that which is not there, but I do think there is something to that. It’s like the white space around a poem, or the Ian Wallace tableau where he had a photo imprinted on a canvas with two monochromatic paint panels…If you’ve read The Pornographer’s Poem you remember the Bullshit Detector: it’s about where you’re coming from, where you’re going, what did you do to get there, and what will you do to get from there. It’s always about the back story.

The stereotypical Canadian narrative is always laid out for us, telling us the feelings we should have. At the end of every piece in 8×10, we’re left with our own feelings as a reader — it’s like you don’t give us enough to give us more. It’s a very generous thing for a writer to do, to trust readers enough to take something unique from the work. That sounds lofty, but it’s an honest reaction to this notion that you’re not going to give it all to us so we can figure it out for ourselves.

Yeah, you can either go with it, or you can be happy with an instance of pattern and recurrence. The portraiture is based on a pattern of behaviours as opposed to a visage, the face.

Do you feel that some readers will look at 8×10 as an experiment or something mathematical, whereas others will perceive it as telling all of our stories? A lot of reviews of the book have been very technical in terms of breaking down its structure, but I tend to be more of a romantic. Did you deliberately write it that way, to allow such varied approaches?

Well, everything I do is deliberate. But there are things that happen serendipitously. Or apart from my knowledge. Or at the expense of my knowledge. Like I said earlier, I’m interested in form, and like Beckett says, “form carries content.”…The toy, the prize in the book, is in the middle of the book, and it’s the middle of the title. The book is an attempt to reorient people but it’s really hard to do, because the narratives are in us. We’re born and we’re raised with them. The master narratives have atomized now. But grand theory and politics and party politics, it’s all breaking up, right? More than ever, I think people need to cling to those old ideas for comfort, so they’re always going to bring those narratives to something new until they can accept a work on its terms. They can go, “I’m having a feeling here. I’m having the feeling that maybe I’m supposed to have.” It’s a sensation, as opposed to something being over and done with. The modern novel is all about ending with suspension. It’s not about ending with —

Closure.

Closure. You know, therapy is destroying literature. It insists on closure. “I need closure! That man has to have his head cut off in order for me to feel better about my son or daughter being killed. Or that man has to have lethal injection in order for me to feel better. And I have to be there to see it.” We live in a violent, militaristic, vengeful world culture. It’s not just war, it’s pestilence. So if it’s not Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s SARS or H1N1. We’re kept in a state of fear. I’m trying to reflect the times somewhat. To comment on the times. Hence the beheadings.

I’ve always been intrigued by how you write about sexuality. There’s a simultaneous repulsion-attraction thing going on. It’s very arousing, but it’s not the stereotypical “this is a sexy scene.” There’s this filth aspect to the way you write about sex that doesn’t necessarily make it ugly, but it’s definitely not what we think of when we think of sexy.

Theories of desire are all based on attraction-repulsion: we are attracted to that which we are repulsed by. That dialectic. I do believe that pornography operates as a burlesque in the mainstream. There is no mainstream anymore. [Porn] is at times repulsive and repetitive, but it does mirror other things. It mirrors production. It mirrors social relations.

I actually think it’s a style of writing that appeals to women. From a feminist perspective, it’s so much more honest. It’s a more realistic portrayal of the way sex actually happens, instead of a floral or degrading way of presenting it. Your approach sits nicely in the middle: it’s honest, at times gross, but it’s beautiful. I don’t see a lot of literature that’s written that way. Is there anything you’ve read that you can appreciate on that level?

Well. About a year and a half ago I was invited to the Witte de With [Center for Contemporary Art] in Rotterdam to take part in a show called Bodypoliticx, which was about representations of sexuality. They asked me to have a live public discussion with Xaviera Hollander.

Wow.

And I was like, “Yes.” So I went and read The Happy Hooker, which I’d never read, but I’d read Xaviera!, the sequel, because my mom had it. I can’t open an old paperback now without being reminded of that book. The smell that comes off the old paperback — I mean, I feel it, down here. [Xaviera!] was a book that I would go to late at night. I liked the way that she wrote about sex the way she wrote about shopping, about running a business, about a travel schedule. It was all even. It’s that Dutch matter-of-factness. So I read The Happy Hooker, and after finishing it I thought, this would never be published now. She has sex with a boy. She has sex with a dog. She does S&M…It is a repulsive, repugnant book, but at the same time it is not. She is so honest. She is a very intelligent woman and she lets you know that. You could tell she loves sex, but she loves life, she loves everything she does.

Do you think there’s a sanitizing of our culture now that makes that attitude just not possible? You said a book like that would never be published today.

Well, it would be illegal to publish it. And immoral as well.

You’ve worked in a variety of different media over your life. Is there any experience you enjoyed more than others? Do you think of yourself as a writer? Do you think of yourself as a musician?

As a musician, I was writing songs. It’s always been about writing. It always begins with writing. Breaking it down by genre — “Michael Turner is a novelist”? I hate that. Just writer is fine by me.

Is there something that you haven’t done that you’d really like to do?

[Silence.]

Not like horseback riding, or something.

I’ve ridden on horses. [Pause.] No.

No? You’ve done it all?

No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying I’ve done it all. I think my nature is a little more existential. I just go through life and get surprised.

You’re not very ambitious?

No. If I want to do something I’ll make a point of doing it, but that’s the point. If you ask me, “Do you want to go for lunch?” I’ll tell you, “Sure, let’s go here.” I’m not the kind of person who says, “I don’t know, where do you want to go?” I’ll have an idea. Okay. Okay. The first thing that comes to mind is just travel. Certain places I haven’t been to. I have to go to Shanghai because my father was born there; I’d like to go to South Africa one day. I’ve been everywhere else. But what would I like to do as a writer?

As a writer, yes.

I would probably like to have the kind of time I think I need in order to write poetry.

I read that you’re less interested in the prose novel now.

I’ve never been interested in the novel. I’ve always been at odds with the novel. I can and I can’t understand why it persists. Whatever. I try not to refer to my work by genre. I think Pornographer’s Poem is [considered] a novel only because there was confusion because it was called a poem. 8×10 has been reviewed as a novel, but nowhere on there does it say novel. I made sure of that. We’re calling it fiction. “But they’ll think it’s short stories.” No they won’t! It’s a fiction. I’m a writer, not an author.

What is validating for you?

My favourite thing is when my work is taught.  If my work is added to a course and it’s discussed and I’m asked to come in, I’ll be there in a second. All I ever want to be is engaged in a conversation, and if my books are part of a conversation, that’s great. So when I’m writing, I’m writing my conversations with the literature. All of it. Whatever’s been written…I read what you read. I know what you read. I can tell what you read. And I can tell you about it on its terms. My arrogance is such that I can tell you why I think you like it. Bear in mind that what I do is based in some ways on what you read. And how your narratives are formed. Or reinforced.

All right.

One more thing!

Absolutely!

Just to go back to the Xaviera Hollander, Happy Hooker, Pornographer’s Poem: I will say that the narrator of The Pornographer’s Poem was a repressed kid, and I think that’s reflected through certain aspects of the writing. But Xavier Hollander was a literary woman in a time — in the early sixties, when she started to write the book — she was always a liberated woman. Her achievement to me is as significant as what Angela Davis did, or what Gloria Steinem did, or what Betty Friedan did, or Germaine Greer. She’s a pro-sex feminist, despite herself. Actually, what she is is a libertarian, and certainly a libertine, but really she’s a very conservative woman. Much like the most repulsive pornography she does create an effect, through her being in the world.

(Portrait by Judy Radul)

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Posted in Chapter and Verse 3 Comments

When I was sixteen years old I fell in love with a boy with a pompadour who made up for his complete lack of charm with the finest taste in music of anyone I had ever met. He made me epic, narrative mix tapes, bought me daffodils, and serenaded me with tracks from The Queen is Dead. We’d lie on our backs on the floor of his band poster-plastered bedroom, staring longingly at the ceiling and each other. We’d listen to rare, dismal quality Morrissey b-sides and live recordings. We’d discuss at length how the world didn’t understand us, our love, or his hair. We even considered celibacy (albeit briefly, thanks to the tyranny of teenage urges.) I stopped eating meat and started writing poetry. In that miserable teenage haven the stage was set for the beginning of my “Morrissey phase,” something that many of us experience and most of us get over when the world gets a little shinier and less overdramatic. But unlike the vegetarianism, poetry, and the pompadoured boy, Mozzer was something I simply never got over. (more…)

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