Queer

Cannot wait to see Queer, based on the 1985 William S. Burroughs novel, and directed by Luca Guadagnino.

About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email

Hey Doll

This fictional short story was written by me, published by Nerve in 2002, and republished in You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You? in 2003.

She wondered if it was a good idea to date someone of whom there was a doll version. What if one of her girlfriends mailed the doll of him to her as a gag gift for her birthday? Maybe at some later point she would get mad and rip his head off and yank his clothes away and humiliate him in some obscene act of desperation. Then what?

She watched him on television. She watched him so much the show's theme song turned her on. When he came onscreen, she would smile at him and think, Oh, he is really funny, or, Wow, that is such a burden. She thought if she had the doll of him, he could sit on the couch right next to her, and by the end of the show his little plastic hand would be climbing up her shirt, headed straight for her boobs.

She told her girlfriend, who went to a bar he frequented, to invite her along one night. As it turned out, he must have liked her because he walked right up to her, and he said, Hey, do you want to go out with me sometime? She couldn't see his small eyes back behind his thick glasses, but she told him, Sure. Other men had told her, You are terribly intriguing, or, You are terrifically fascinating, but then couldn't think of anything else to say. This time, she thought, it would be different. With this one, the script had already been written.

For their first date, she went over to his house. He went off to the kitchen to get them a couple of beers, and she went to wait in the living room. There, she found four female sex dolls, sitting around on his furniture. She wasn't sure what to do, so she sat down next to one of them. She pulled at its rubber tongue, and it popped out in her hand. Luckily, she got the tongue back in before he came back in the room. Then, they drank the beer, and watched TV, and made out while the dolls sat around on the furniture, watching them.

Their relationship, such as it was, went on like that for a while. That was pretty much all they ever did. Once, they went bowling. After about a month like this, he broke down and told her what he really enjoyed was being beaten during sex. In his home-office, he showed her several oversized books filled with page after page of drawings of tall, angry women standing on top of men, beating them.

All of a sudden, before she knew it, he was naked down on the floor, and the bottom of her boot was across the back of his neck, and his tongue was on the top of her other boot, licking it, and she was shouting at him, You're licking my boot because that's the only thing that you're good enough to do! With one hand, she twisted his balls, hard. With the other hand, she smacked violently at his penis.

As she did it, it didn't turn her on, exactly. But the thought of someday standing next to his large swimming pool, holding the hand of his fat and round baby as it doddered around like a small and tiny version of him in its own pair of miniature glasses, while she staggered around half-drunk in high heels and a string-bikini with her lipstick smeared all over her frozen-on smile face, did turn her on. To her, that was a fantastic idea and everything she had ever wanted and a dream come true, all rolled into one.

Their relationship, such as it was, would involve him talking into his cellphone while they drove around, and him chatting with his agent as they dined out, and him laughing loudly with his friends across the back of the limousine they were riding in as, the whole entire time, she sat there right beside him, at his side. Living her life as if there was a camera broadcasting everything she did out to the world's peoples sitting bored in their homes metaphorically masturbating to her life would, surely, make her happy. Everything that had already taken place in her life before him would become like the blinding snow of a silent TV screen. It would be amazing what she could do when she lived on the other side of the fourth wall with him.

After things had been going along in this manner for about a month, they took a trip together to Las Vegas. At the airport, she watched as the crowds of people stood around staring at them like the people in Close Encounters of the Third Kind watching the aliens shuffle down off the spaceship. When they walked through the casino surrounded by the fleet of bodyguards, she knew that the people playing the slot-machines were jerking off their levers just for them.

But, late that night, in the privacy of their hotel room, when she looked up into the round mirror over the king-size bed in the Greco-Roman penthouse suite, the only thing she knew for sure was that he had just said to her, I do not like having intercourse, per se, all that very much, and within 4.6 seconds, she had thought, I can live with that, because that, she knew, was what the script had called for. There was, after all, no going back to auditions once you had won the part. It was hard, though, to know what to do when you found yourself hanging off the edge of the very page that you thought you had written.

The next morning, when she had finished hitting him for the umpteenth time, he looked up at her, and he said, Isn't this great? Behind him, The Mask of Zorro was playing on the TV, and Antonio Banderas was running back and forth in his black mask, waving his whip around wildly, raising his arched eyebrow up and down at her, as if in an erotic challenge. It was getting harder for her to upright her brain from the place it fell over when his bad edits in the reel of their life together knocked her over like a car that had gone off the road.

Back in the city, she found herself at the very last moment softening her blows to his erect penis. She discovered increasingly she could barely muster up enough energy to tighten his ball-gag as tight as he liked. She could hardly bring herself to raise the crop high enough above him to bring out the best welts on his pale bottom waiting below.

By the time her birthday came, he had stopped calling. Instead, a UPS man showed up at her front door with a brown box containing the doll version of him as a gag gift from her girlfriend. That night, she could hear the live-in studio audience in her head murmuring its displeasure, shuffling out the stage door, as she climbed in bed alone yet again.

When the phone had quit ringing entirely, she called her girlfriend, who had taken her to the bar that first night, and asked her to come over. Together, they made a collage out of pictures of him that they had cut from The National Enquirer. When it was done, he looked like a big, fat, crying baby. The next morning, when she looked at it again, she burst into tears, and then cancelled her cable TV service. The doll version of him, for its part, was already sitting headless in the back of one of her bathroom cupboards, the dust bunnies gathered all around it.

In the revised version of the story of her life, that she finally ended up writing, she never completely forgot that boyfriend or what he had meant to her or how hard she had been able to slap him across the face just to make him smile. But, eventually, she fell in love with another man, who was balding and who had never been on TV. With him, she learned how to pantomime true love to the degree that, sometimes, she thought she could hear a laugh-track playing in the background like applause while they had sex. And in the end, it turned out, that turned her on.

About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email

The Soundtrack to My Writing Life (Yeah)

Lately when I’ve been working on my porn novel I’ve been listening to “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003).

Buy My Book I About | Blog I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Hire Me I Email

Strangers

I watched “All of Us Strangers.” It’s a beautiful movie about ghosts, love, and loss. I highly recommend it.

Buy My Book I About | Blog I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Hire Me I Email

The Solodemic

Last week, I came across a “Modern Love” call on The New York Times website. They were looking for personal stories from people who are self-isolating solo. I wrote my version relatively quickly and submitted it online. I don’t know yet whether it will be published, but I’ll post an update here. If The New York Times doesn’t publish it, I’ll either submit it elsewhere or publish it on my blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

After I got divorced in October 2017, I waited a few months, and then I started dating. Since, I've gone out on exactly 22 first dates. I know this because I kept a list. Or, more specifically, I maintained a list of what the men I went out on dates with did for a living.

Want to hire me? Learn more here or email me here. Subscribe to my newsletter. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Read The Hustler Diaries here.

A Pandemic Love Story

From my Pandemic Fictions series with animated versions on Twitter / Instagram.

Want to support what I do? Buy a copy of my digital short story: THE TUMOR.

Call Me

Finally got around to seeing “Call Me By Your Name.” Don’t know why it took me so long, since “I Am Love” is one of my favorite movies. Having seen “A Bigger Splash,” I’ve now completed seeing Luca Guadagnino’s “Desire” trilogy. The movie is gorgeous and superbly acted. Timothee Chalamet is a wonder, and Armie Hammer, well, he just looks great. It’s a beautiful interrogation of desire, love, and heartbreak.

Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.

LA, Changed

WeHo

9 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "WeHo"

It's been some time since I've lived in Los Angeles, and I'm happy to have moved back last month.

Here are a few ways it's changed.

It's more politically correct

It used to be that California was a bifurcated state. The North was where the hippies lived in politically correctness. The South was where the heathens lived in political incorrectness. Now LA is more politically correct. The recycling. The bag policing. The Priuses. Still, there's a layer of muck below the surface. Thick black tar, underneath it all. It's PC as performance.

It's more crowded

In LA proper, the streets are glutted with traffic. Nobody can agree upon the driving rules. The drivers are more aggressive. It takes forever to get anywhere. After dark, the freeways are red and white glowing streams of people trying to get somewhere, anywhere but where they are.

It's more expensive

In Los Feliz, the one bedroom apartment that I used to rent for $725 a month is now $1,850 a month. $2,000 a month gets you a dump near a busy street and maybe no refrigerator. Hollywood, the Valley, and the areas east are a bit more affordable. This is New York City, without the brownstones.

The food is better

Poke bowls. Handmade mozzarella. Fried Thai ice cream. Pop up restaurants. Food trucks. Fine dining with a side order of attitude. It's all there. And it's fucking delicious. Every bite of it.

There's a lot of art

The sculptures made of dead bodies. Whatever the hipsters are doing these days in Echo Park. Those loaded Broads. It ain't the Met, but I'll take it. Because the palm trees are Rodins, and the faces of the ladies on Rodeo Drive are Cindy Shermans, and the Hollywood sign is a Barbara Kruger.

See Moonlight

Didn't see this until Friday. Wow. Just breathtaking. Gorgeous, and heartbreaking, and true. It's three stories in one. It's everybody's story in one movie. It's a poke in the eye of white people everywhere. It's complicated, and simple, and beautifully written. I cried multiple times. I got my heart broken. It is one of the best movies ever made. Hurry up. It's hard to explain. Just see it. It'll open your heart, and your mind, and your spirit. 

True Romance

This is how me and my husband @DaneGrant met 😊 pic.twitter.com/WHWamMfJjw

— Dayna Grant (@Daynastunts) March 20, 2016

What She Said

Time.

"Time."

Buy THE TUMOR: "This is one of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."

Just Say It

Image via NYT

The NYT has an odd/interesting/fascinating video story of a couple. The couple don't tell each other they love each other. The video looks at how/why/what. It's strange/lovely/weird.

"'I need to tell my boyfriend that I love him,' Ms. Leppo wrote in. 'Year after year I kept thinking "Oh, maybe this year," but it never happened, and now it has gone on far too long.'"

[NYT]

Dear Valentine, Horoscope Edition

Image credit: Free Will Astrology

"I hope you have someone in your life to whom you can send the following love note, and if you don't, I trust you will locate that someone no later than August 1: 'I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.' (This passage is borrowed from author Jonathan Safran Foer's book Everything Is Illuminated.)"

[FWA]

30 Days of Fiction, Day #30: I Made Her a Love Machine

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

After she left me, I went in the garage and gathered together a series of spare parts: a broken muffler, the faded keys of a vintage typewriter, a rag dipped in motor oil. For years, I worked on the machine, adding and subtracting items, dumpster diving to make ends meet. I had no time for a job. A decade passed. One day, I finished. That afternoon, I presented it to her: a device that embedded my words on her body like some kind of spoken tattoo. She tinkered with it for hours, adjusting the lettering, bleeding out around the sentences.

Time: 13 minutes

Word count: 100 words

30 Days of Fiction, Day #23: I Can See Forever From Here

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

She wanted a house, so he found four leftover toilet paper tubes and an old shoebox. He taped the tubes to the top of the box. He went on a walk, collecting small sticks and large leaves. Back at home, he weaved them into walls. For the roof, he removed the shirt from his back, cut out a piece of it, and sewed the canopy over the tubes and the walls. He skinned a baby rabbit and used it as a throw for the matchbox bed. When she got home, he invited her inside their tiny life together. 

Time: 5 minutes

Word count: 98 words

THE FIXED HEART

This week's Modern Love column in the New York Times is wonderful: "Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting." It's about how a doctor overcomes a broken heart in an unlikely place: the hospital in which he works. The accompanying video is spectacular.

When I started my work as a doctor, it took every bit of concentration to put aside my private sadness and focus on my patients. I was lost, and it’s a wonder I didn’t hurt anyone. In moments of downtime, and especially in the depths of night when the unit was quiet, memories of my ex and my longing for her would overtake me. Like a persistent virus, loneliness lived inside me.

[NYT]