2019: A Year in Review
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Following on the heels of my decade in review post, I present my 2019 year in review:
The Future of Journalism Is Female. I learned a lot as a fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, but the most important part of that experience was the relationships I had with the graduate students at the School of Journalism. They are an amazing, diverse bunch, who are truly reinventing what journalism is. Their relationships to sources is different, they are no longer are interested in silo coverage or single-medium tracks, and they’re just really fucking bright. It was a delight, an inspiration, and an honor to get to know these people. The future of journalism is female.
I Love LA. I don’t understand people who don’t love Los Angeles. Since returning to the city, I’ve tried to pin down my abiding affection for it. Where else can you make a living pretending to be Superman while standing on a star-covered sidewalk? In this city, there’s no difference between reality and fantasy. It’s all the same. The surrealism is everywhere, and it’s intoxicating.
Write More Weird Shit. I wrote some strange stuff this year. An appreciation of a woman who kills. A stripped-down personal essay that mashed up nonfiction and fiction. And the most widely-read thing I wrote involved Kylie Jenner’s foray into Playboy, which isn’t exactly weird, but some things never change, and what never changes is the general audience’s interest in sex. I guess boobs are eternal. And good for digital engagement. Now and forever.
Never Quit. I didn’t publish a lot of fiction this year, but I was delighted to learn last week that a short story I wrote years ago will be published in February 2020. The story, which is fiction, is called “Spike,” and it’s about a male porn star who has a penis problem. Or an erection problem, really. I submitted this story to over 14 publications, and it was finally accepted as the decade came to a close. I find it bizarre that more people didn’t want to publish a story about a guy’s relationship to his dick, but I guess editors aren’t as into the penis-for-hire genre as I am. Go figure. Speaking of which, “The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star” remains my all-time, most-viewed post on my Forbes blog with over 2.1M views.
See It. I posted a lot of photos to my Instagram feed.
I Am the Hunter S. Thompson of Sex. Or at least that’s what I told the researcher who interviewed me for this new book. I am “Interviewee 4” if you want to find out what it’s like to spend over 20 years digging through the bowels of this country’s perversions.
Confess Your Sins. I did a uniquely revealing interview with my friend Valerie Baber for her podcast, “Sex & Society.” While I’ve spent years investigating other people’s sex lives, I rarely discuss my own. You can have a listen to what I’ve got to say about nudity, Playboy, and other illicit topics by clicking here. I was ambivalent about being more personally revealing, but Valerie did a great job of pushing me out of my comfort zone. I suppose that’s how we grow, right?
The Dating Zone. I dated a fair amount this year. I’ve got a pretty sharp, strategic mind, but I don’t know if it’s possible to create a perfect strategy for dating. Maybe love is like an eel, and you spend a lot of your life trying to grasp the thing while it wriggles in your hands. Or maybe that’s not such a great metaphor. I have no idea what the answer is here, but someone said that at least I keep swinging at the ball hurtling towards me. Or maybe that’s not such a great metaphor either. Maybe love is a mystery. We’ll leave it at that.
Agents of Change. Back in October, I visited the LA offices of CAA which is where some of the Hollywood universe’s most powerful agents do their business. The rather dramatic building was designed by I. M. Pei and is known as “The Death Star.” Most of the people in the lobby were men who were dressed in black. After I went upstairs to talk to a film and TV agent and then came back downstairs, I went outside. There was an art installation with walls that read DOUBT, JUDGMENT, and RESENTMENT. There was a place where you could write your obstacle in white ink on a black card, so I wrote the word FEAR on the piece of paper, and then … what did I do with it? Stuck it in a slit in the top of a box, maybe. That’s my goal for 2020. Write the fear away. Anxiety is a writer’s gasoline. Prose is a fucking bonfire.
Find the Beauty. Without a doubt, the most beautiful thing I saw this year was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was in New York City for the Russell Sage Foundation’s Social Science Summer Institute for Journalists, and one day I made a pilgrimage up to the Met. I wanted to see the “Camp” exhibit. There’s one massive room in the show that’s darkly-lit but lined with big colorfully-lit boxes featuring mannequins in some of the most glorious clothes ever made. I was delighted to see Viktor & Rolf’s I love you wedding dress from the fall 2005 collection, which you can see at the 34-minute mark here. It was such a beautiful creation that being in the same room with it, rather than being separated from it by some screen or some photo or some magazine, made me cry. According to George Saunders, “There’s something that happens in the moment of creation of a good sentence, or a good swath of sentences, that feels like the dropping away of self. Somebody else shows up and that person is better than the normal, everyday you. I’m guessing that the various approaches to writing are ultimately all about getting to that moment, that moment of spontaneity and self-negation.” Get lost when you can.
[Image from my Instagram feed]