Blogging Redux

I started blogging regularly again recently because I saw this tweet from Elizabeth Spiers noting that Lockhart Steele was returning to blogging. Yesterday, Spiers wrote a little bit more about why she's chosen to do so, as well, and Fred Wilson talked about "the personal blog where I can talk about anything that I care about."

At least for me, it's in part a response to what blogging unbecame. In 2002, I created what became a very popular blog, The Reverse Cowgirl. It was one of the early blogs about sex (see: "A Brief History of Sex Blogging" and "A History of Sex Blogs"), but, as most blogs are, it was about far more than that.

In 1998, I moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, and by the time I started blogging, I'd spent four years as a freelance journalist. I was successful, and did TV work as well, but I was tired of being told, "No, you can't do that," by various editors, agents, and producers to whom I pitched story ideas, book ideas, and TV show ideas.

At the same time, I had a problem with my leg that made walking painful, and I was relegated, for a time, to my house. Unable to tromp about as I once had and exhausted by rejection, I forged out on my own and launched a blog that was housed on Salon's servers. I loved blogging. I loved the lack of censorship, that I was my own boss, that there was no wrong or right, just that "puny inexhaustible voice, still talking." It was indisputably mine.

Years later, I was hired by Time Warner, where I spent several years generating hundreds of blog posts. There, blogging became something else entirely. It was a numbers game, a way of generating "content" that brought in unique visitors and lined pockets. That had its benefits: There is no room for writer's block when you are blogging for dollars. But it made blogging commercial for me as blogging became more commercial for everyone else, and something about blogging died, in the world and in me. I did not blog from within; I blogged for someone else.

After that, I blogged for Forbes for three years, which was great, but it was, at its heart, not truly me.

Eventually, I found myself making $100 an hour writing Facebook updates spoken by a bottle of pink medicine manufactured by a multibillion-dollar company obsessed with engagement, branding, and PowerPoint presentations filled with colorful pie charts.

I had become a digital ghost of my former self.

I think if there is a renaissance of blogging it is in reaction to that, the invisibility imposed when you commodify yourself, an attempt to recreate something that was lost, something, one hopes, that's more about autonomy and freedom than engagement and revenue.

Or, at least, one hopes. We'll see. Won't we?

The Congress

"You have a dream? Be your dream, for God's sake." -- The Congress

What a strange movie "The Congress" is. Part live action and part animation, it's a dreamy, looping, psychedelic exploration of Hollywood's human meat machine, what happens when beautiful women get older, and the threat technology poses to our souls. Starring Robin Wright as Robin Wright, Jon Hamm as a besotted animator/fan, and Danny Huston as the shouty Harvey Weinstein-esque head of Miramount Studios, it serves as both a revelation regarding the cost of celebrity and a scorching exposure of the toll it takes on us as vampiric aspirers. In order to take care of her sick son, Wright sells her likeness to the studio and scores immortality as a techno-replicant of herself. The movie is at its best in cartoon-land, featuring funny cameos by Ron Jeremy, Tom Cruise, and Frida Kahlo. Unfortunately, it's no "Waltz with Bashir," a profound consideration of the toll that war takes on our collective humanity. "The Congress" is something of a beautiful, riveting mess, albeit one that tells a truth most movies -- and Hollywood -- struggle to hide.

I Get Email

 (Read) your artical about being
a pornstar . Thaught if i e-mailed
maybe i would be closer to
becoming one.
  If I got the wrong person (apologize)
   i was looken for the journalist
which wrote : the  articke .

Lightbulb

A visit to Thomas Edison's estate in Fort Myers, Florida, the lab in particular, is of interest to the average writer. The lab is chockablock with things: test tubes, a darkroom, straps and wheels, desks and work spaces, burners and corks. Looking at the orderly mess of it, the writer is jealous. Here, the inventor makes manifest what only exists in the writer's mind. This is a place that says, I am working. It indicates, Serious things are happening here. It reminds, This is mine and not yours. The writer's lab resides within, and so, invisible to others, its boundaries are crossed, its time squandered, its experiments foiled. Oh, but to have an Edison lab in the head.

Mugshotz

Mugshotz is a publication that I have found at various convenience stores, such as 7-11, in Southwest Florida. It costs $1 and is usually for sale near the cash register so you can grab it and go. The current issue is #97. It features the most recent mugshots from Lee and Collier counties. Usually, the photos above the fold include at least one attractive female. Here, Frances McGinley, who was arrested for "DRUGS," is the eye-catcher. Wade Discuillo's battered face may be equated with his "RESIST OFFICER." Brian Garrison Jr. looks resigned to his "PROB VIOLATION." The publication has ads from bail bonds companies (gobailmeout.com), humor ("Bubba says:  If robbers ever broke into my house and searched for money I would just laugh and search with them"), and advice ("With the craze about social networking increasing day by day, cool sayings are attaining more importance."). There's also a photo page of boats with funny names like "Full Of Seamen," "Boobie Bouncer," and "Ship For Brains." Sometimes I google the names of those in the mugshots. Oftentimes, you can find their full lives on their Facebook pages. Prostitutes swearing to stay sober. Addicts arguing with their mothers. Parents posting photos of themselves with children of which they no longer have custody. Sometimes, if you wait a few weeks or a few months, their face appears in another edition of Mugshotz. 

How Much I Got Paid: #8

Title: Contributor

Publication: Forbes.com

Date: 2011 - 2014

Word count: N/A

Payment: See below

Notes: I blogged for Forbes.com for three years. Looking back, I would describe the experience as "awesome." Sure, assholes like this dumb fuck can say contributors like me besmirched the Forbes brand, but, for me, it was a great gig. My first post was about what it was like to get shitcanned, my most popular post (1.5M+ views) revealed how hard it is to be a male porn star, I shot a gun for fun, I wrote about being diagnosed with breast cancer five days after it happened, and I ate a hamburger topped with an unconsecrated communion wafer. My editors were the great: they got out of my way and let me do what I do. One of the best things about blogging for Forbes is that when you ask people if they're interested in being interviewed, they almost always say yes. For a journalist, it was like scoring one of Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets. I was paid a flat fee every month, which required a minimum of five posts a month. On top of that, I was paid a certain amount for how much traffic I generated; I was paid a certain amount for one-time visitors and a higher amount for repeat visitors. The last couple months, I made around $5,000 a month because I wrote this.

Conclusion: Sometimes I miss it.

[How Much I Got Paid]

Cream

via This Isn't Happiness

The Costume of Success

"My serenity became more important than my accomplishments, my happiness superior to the costume of success I'd been weaving for myself since high school." -- Victoria Pynchon

Famous Not Famous

The famous actress was sitting in front of her computer, reading a celebrity gossip website, because there was a photo on the webpage at which she was staring, and the man in the photo was her boyfriend, a famous actor, and the woman in the photo was not the famous actress. The woman in the photo was young, and French, and wearing leather pants. The famous actress was sitting in front of her computer and not wearing leather pants. She was practically 40, and from Dayton, Ohio, and wearing the same yoga pants that she had worn yesterday. Her eyes wandered away from the photo of the famous actor that she thought was her boyfriend and over to the living room rug, where her son was playing with his Legos. Technically, he was not her son. He was adopted. She had adopted him a year ago after a bad breakup with a different famous actor – although, that famous actor was famous only in Portugal, which was convenient, because that meant the famous actress was more famous than him in every country but one (Portugal). After that boyfriend had left her, she had decided she needed a child, right away, some thing that would fill the hole that his leaving had exposed inside her. But when she had told her agent about her plan to get pregnant from a sperm bank, he had made a face that looked like he was sucking on a rotten lemon, which meant that if the famous actress got fat, and was getting older, and had to spend her time being pregnant and taking care of a baby, she would never work in this town again. So, she had gone home, searched “adoption” online, and discovered that for normal people, of which she was not one, it took two years or more to adopt a baby, and if you wanted a baby faster than that, there would have to be something wrong with the baby, like a harelip, or dwarfism, or half-blindness. She knew she couldn’t have an imperfect baby; that wouldn’t make any sense. A few hours after that, she had found an attorney in Indiana who said he could get her a baby in six months or less, guaranteed, or her money back. It would cost her $100,000. She had flown in a private jet to meet the baby hunter. In a wood-paneled office, he had chomped his shark teeth, and he had pointed at his collection of framed photos featuring newborns clutched by wild-eyed parents, and he had convinced her. Five months, three weeks, and four days passed, and the baby hunter had a check for $100,000, and she was standing in a parking lot behind a hospital with a bread loaf-sized human in the crook of her arm. She had flown home, and the baby had slept the entire way. The following morning, she had heard the baby gurgling in his bassinet, and she had plucked him from his holding pen, and she had held him up in the morning light streaming through the gauzy curtains the interior decorator had selected for moments like this. She had inspected the baby carefully. According to the baby hunter, the baby’s mother was white, and the baby’s father was black. The baby was the color of a candy caramel square. It squirmed and wriggled in her grasp, uncomfortable and kicking at nothing. Legally, it belonged to her. The odds of it abandoning her at this stage were slim; it was too weak and vulnerable to fend for itself. Besides, it didn’t even have any money. Now, in the living room, her son was attempting to conjoin a big yellow Lego and a big red Lego. For the baby, this was akin to performing neurosurgery while wearing mittens. It grunted unpleasantly and farted. It could play like this for hours, muttering nonsensically, defecating itself, fiddling with whatever she handed it. Two weeks ago, the famous actor had held the baby, and he had told her that he would like to adopt it so they could co-parent it. Today, he was running around Paris with a French girl. The caption under the photo reported the famous actor and the French actress had shared a cozy lunch at a Parisian bistro. In all likelihood, he would have ordered the steak tartar. Who knows what the French actress would have eaten. Nothing, probably. Just smoked a Gauloise and brooded sexily at the famous actor, her lips a wet pout. In the next photo, the French girl was tugging at her hair, which had been pulled into a messy half-bun, and her pert nipples were poking through the thin fabric of her white T-shirt like they couldn’t wait to be photographed by the paparazzi and broadcast around the world. She scrolled further down the page. Here, the famous actor and the French actress were saying goodbye. It was hard to tell if the famous actor was kissing the French actress on the mouth or on the cheek. The famous actress turned her head from side to side, trying to get a better look, but it was hard to tell what was happening from 5,642 miles away. Suddenly, the famous actress felt sick. Her son had conjoined the big yellow Lego and the big red Lego and was attempting to add a big blue Lego. She went into the kitchen and opened a cupboard. She took out a sack of sea salt chips, a box of Stoned Wheat Thins, and a can of organic garbanzo beans. Without stopping, she ate all the chips, and all the crackers, and the can of beans. She closed the cupboard. The food rose up in her throat, wanting to get out. She swallowed hard, forcing it back down. She had eaten, and she would pay the price. She would be fat forever, no one would hire her, and the only photos they would publish of her would be coupled with headlines braying about how unbelievably obese she had become. In the other room, her son shouted something that sounded like a question, but she had no idea what the question was or how she could answer it. She sat back at the desk. She didn’t want her son to know anything had gone wrong with her plan to build a better life for them with the famous actor. She leaned close to the computer screen, and her nose bumped against the glass. She hoped she would find her reflection in the eyes of the famous actor. Instead, his pupils were filled with the beautiful French girl’s heart-shaped face. Not long ago, the very same website had published a photo of the famous actress and the famous actor walking the red carpet at a charity event for a disease she couldn’t pronounce and hoped she would never get. She had worn a skintight black dress, and her hair was slicked into a chic bob. The famous actor had worn ripped jeans and smelled like burnt toast and spoiled sandwich meat. Anyone could see she was more attractive and therefore better than him. Couldn’t they? Of course, she was getting older. Still, he was older than her. It wasn’t easy, for a woman, getting older in this town. She paid her facialist $1,500 for each bottle of fetal spinal fluid that she smeared on her face with religious fervor every night before going to bed in order to improve her complexion. She had been peeled by lasers. She had been injected with fillers. She had been implanted with silicone. She had a job to do, and that’s what it took to do it. Regular people thought you did it for the producers, the directors, the test screenings, the Q score, the paparazzi, the vanity. It wasn’t that at all. It was for the fans, not for their love of her but for their terrible intolerance of her getting older, for they could see no difference between themselves and her, and, for them, she had to be a god. It was the only way they could stand themselves; her immortality was their dream, the thing in which they believed. Once upon a time, she was a golden girl. She had set a record for what an actress was paid per movie. She had won awards. She had turned down parts and refused to audition; she was that good. Yet, over the years, under the burning klieg lights, something within her had begun to melt. By the time she had spotted the famous actor in a restaurant, he was 53. From across the room, she had scanned his face, admiring its deep furrows, and she had felt herself flush with envy. Why was he allowed to wear his true self, and she was supposed to battle nature to the death? That night, she had screwed the famous actor into his mattress, and she had wondered if she could suck the life source right out of him. Remembering how his hands felt on her made her want to rip her face off her skull, tear loose her limbs, feed herself to the dog. She hunched over in the chair, collapsing. She covered her face with her hands. She had discovered too late fame was a gilded sarcophagus. The stack of scripts was diminishing. She was forced to audition again, so they could see if she was still hot or not. The other day, she had walked into a cafe, and the only person who had recognized her was the barista who had waited on her the day before. She wasn’t a supernova, like she had thought. She was a shitty white dwarf. Soon, she would be an indistinguishable speck in the night sky’s constellations. She opened her eyes and looked at the floor through her fingers. She had not heard her son approach. His feet were on the floor next to her. His toes looked like Vienna sausages. She was overwhelmed by an urge to stick his foot in her mouth, to gobble him up, to consume him whole. It would be a reverse delivery; the boy who had come out of a woman she had never met would enter her dormant womb and bring her back to life. She swiveled the chair to face him. His diaper was askew and drooping. He had lost his shirt somewhere. His eyes were so dark she could not distinguish the irises from the pupils. Boy, you a old soul, ain’t you? the old black woman at the supermarket had cooed and grabbed at his chubby leg like she had owned him. Her son had gazed at the old black woman with rapt fascination, recognizing something in her. The famous actress pulled her son onto her lap and plucked the pacifier from his mouth with a soggy pop that loosed a line of drool that slipped across the perfect slip of his lower lip and dribbled onto her thigh. He reeked of stale urine, baby oil, things feral and unknowable. She drew the boy close, his legs sliding around her hips, the great dome of his inscrutable head knocking gently against her collarbone, his protruding stomach pressing into her overstuffed abdomen. She was famished, she realized. Whatever it was for which she longed, the famous boyfriend didn’t have it, the young French actress didn’t have it, the next starring role didn’t have it. She could feel the polar icecap of herself melting from her proximity to the child’s global warming effect. She leaned into the nape of his neck and inhaled the irresistible pull of desire that was somebody’s son needing its mother, any mother, the mother that was her.

Boat

Smutraker

According to @CJR's @ryanchittum, my porn industry coverage for @Forbes is "bad for a high-end brand like Forbes" http://t.co/ldxH7m0qnS

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) July 28, 2014

The War

"On these occasions, he experienced an ache of longing for its shattering finalities, its deafening cacophonies, the way it changed you into something that you had no idea you could become, that you had no other way to become, something that you could never let go, and it wasn’t you that was holding onto the war, it was the war that was holding onto you, and that it would never let you go." -- work-in-progress

Good Man

"Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." –Voltaire on his deathbed ... http://t.co/2wV7djuDmn pic.twitter.com/bFDn8r9BCO

— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) July 21, 2014

Shopping

Employee: "What's your name?"
Me: "S-u-s-a-n-n-a-h. B-r-e-s-l-i-n."
Employee: "Oh, that's a pretty name. It's sounds like it would be a famous writer's name."
Me: "Oh, ha-ha. Well, actually, I am a writer."
Employee to coworker: "I said her name sounds like a famous writer, and she really is a writer!"
Coworker to me: "Maybe one day you will be a famous writer!"