On getting strong

Karl Elvis1 Comment

So let’s talk about something other than writing for a moment, just because i’m almost repeating myself in the last few entries  (plus i’m really distracted by a poet i’ve been reading and need to not think about eroticism for a bit).

For the maybe one of you reading who hasn’t known me for years, I have an uneven history with physical fitness.

I grew up your quintessential fat kid. That’s not to say I wasn’t strong – I was, I was more or less born strong. But I wasn’t particularly athletic by inclination; I was a book nerd and always preferred reading to most anything else (well, until I was a teenager and discovered rock music, drugs and sex, at which time I was a book, music, drugs, and sex nerd, and I sorted that in the wrong order so assume it should be in reverse).

When I participated in sports that required brute strength I did well, but fast and agile, I wasn’t. I stayed fit, though, because any time I could get away from class and hike, that’s what I was doing (I went to school in what we used to call a ‘free school’ in the 70’s and would probably be called child-led-learning now, ie, everyone thought if you let kids choose, they’d keep wanting to learn. In reality of you let them choose, they’d rather play, so we did a lot of play.)

When I got out of school and started to work, though (and started to drink beer), the tendency to stay fit ended, and (apart from periods where cocaine tended to make me skinnier), I started to loose some of the strength and fitness.

It took me a long time to get fed up with that; I was strong enough, fit enough, to do what I needed. It wasn’t until my 30’s when I had my first child that I started to feel like I wasn’t gonna be able to keep up with a child (a child who turned out to be the energizer bunny).

So for the first time I got fed up enough to join a gym.

An aside here, the single biggest motivation in my life has always been being fed up. Most engineering projects, home improvement projects, self improvement projects, surgeries, etc, all start with goddamnit, i’ve had enough of this shit.

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Finding like minds in the blogosphere

Karl Elvis8 Comments

As I resume this whole thing after a long hiatus (Really. Fucking. Long), i’m trying to figure out ways to find those individuals (like Bacchus at ErosBlog) who never stopped, or people who are new (ish) and have something to say that I like.

In the old days, the best way to promote one’s blog was to coment on others, which we collectively would all do to builds a circle of cross-links.

Thats’ not working as well now, I rather think, because people tend not to comment that much; they are, however, clicking like buttons, and finding other WP blogs via things like wordpress itself (wordpress reader seems to facilitate this rather well).

So i’ve installed a like button, and ask you to please give that motherfucker a poke if you could be so kind. It’s at the end of each post (but you gotta click post title to get to the comments/link/share buttons).

Meanwhile, the reason i’m posting this is because I just found a blog I really dig: journeychase.com.

There’s no about, no info about the author at all, but what there is, is some erotic poetry i’m finding inspirational (I suck at poetry, but reading journeychase just made write out a thought in a vague verse like form, which is more than i’ve done in probably 15 years; i’m not posting it, because it’s almost certainly crap, but, the person I was thinking about when I wrote it may get a look at it later.

In any case, props to the writer for being inspiring.

Anyone who’s known me more than about 15 minutes knows i’m utterly filthy and love anything erotic; my writing is mostly of the bent. Finding other writers who share that is one of the things i’m after.

An excerpt from Spread me open

I know if you
ran your hands
up my stockings
the world
would stop turning
for just one moment

Click links above to get more. That’s just a taste.

Something needs to explode

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I’ve had a lot of conversations lately about some complex emotions.

A friend whose marriage may be on the rocks, who thinks her husband is cheating on her.

A friend who’s dealing with an immense array of traumas from childhood, from adulthood, from disabilities and ailments.

A friend who’s commemorating two lost parents in the last five years.

A friend who recently suffered a devastating loss of a pet, who is struggling to deal with a pain unlike any she’s felt.

A couple of men my age who are dealing with mental illnesses, in ways none of us have typically felt able to discuss.

A young adult who’s trying to turn their life around, who’s been (so far) unable to take advantage of all the tools therapeutic practice has to offer.

It’s not news, I think, that mental illness is yet another side effect of pandemic, of trumpian fascist politics, of a world in which hate and ignorance has some our from under it’s pointy hood.

We’re not well, broadly speaking.

Yesterday at a small gathering, two separate (beautiful) friends hugged me with a sweet, desperate affection. Neither they, or I, wanted to let go, holding a platonic hug far, far longer than would have been the norm not long ago.

Ok,  I admit it, it’s never completely platonic with me. I’m aware of every inch of flesh that’s touching, and am damn pleased with it. Wait, i’m distracting myself now.

Maybe it’s the age group; maybe it’s that we’ve all had to confront things we’ve never dealt with in our white, middle aged, middle class, able lifestyles.  I do not recall any time where so many of my close and intimate friends seemed so desperate.

I find myself in a cycle of needing both to comfort, and to be comforted, in ways i’ve never experienced. Not that this is worse; it’s not. But there’s a constant, traumatic sense of need that feels like it’ll never end, as we go into another winter of surge, waiting for something, good or bad, but something.

Wound’t it be easier if we could all drop acid and get in a naked, sweaty pile? God knows we’d all be better for it. Or taking turns with the whip, turns on the wall in cuffs.

I need to feel something stronger than boredom and dread, which describes most of my last three years. And I need to elicit responses.

I think that’s what made me go revisit my novella, because it reprensets both. It represents my own intensity of some 20 years ago. It represents a period in my life where everything I felt was dialed all the way up; when I felt everything, and engendered similarly strong responses in others.

I can’t be back there; it’s been an incredibly long 20 years. But I can visit that place, that time. Re-writing, and then sharing, are about that intensity of feeling in a way I can control. It’s about that sense of directed chaos. It’s the feeling of making someone else feel, in a profound and visceral way.

I’ve had a taste of it again; three or four friends who’ve read my work, in the last month, who’d gotten hard, or wet, who have reacted mentally, emotionally, physically, to my words, my voice.

It’s powerful, but it’s goddamn ephemeral. You can’t have a first time more than once, and so I find myself needing more first time feeling.

I want to extend that intensity to loved ones, friends, to the women I hugged yesterday.

I can make you feel, I want to say, I can touch you everywhere, without touching you, and you, then, can repay in kind just by letting me know how it felt.

Something needs to explode; I wish it could be all of us.

What she looks like

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When I wrote Wanton, the character was vividly imagined, created by my subconscious, in a dream.

I describe her in the text:

 

Blood-red hair cut just past her jaw line, brushing her long, slender neck. Big eyes some strange color I could never put a name to. Full lips in a perpetual sneer. Her teeth were a little bit crooked (most of these things I noticed only later). Early 20s, probably ten years my junior, but with something in the eyes that seemed much older. 

Later I add that she’s tall (half a head shorter than our narrator, who described himself as a big man so he’s something north of six foot.  Hey arms are sleeved with tattoos, as well tattooed flowering vines covering hips and sides. 

Several years after I wrote it, I bought a book called Naughty and Nice: The Good Girl Art of Bruce Timm (an incredible book by the way, by one of my favorite comic artists of all time; out of print now, but I’ve heard a re-release is coming — EDIT: here is the re-print

 

In any case, when I first opened said book, there was Wanton looking at me, straight out of my mind’s eye. 

the tattoos are not there, of course, and hair color; but imagine before she was heavily covered. Wanton’s blond, naturally, hair a honey color. But we know she dyes it, red in the story. So imagine this is a black hair phase, pre-tattoos. The pubic hair would be blond, of course, but again, easily imagined. 

I’ve actually tried to get my Timm to draw my version of this girl (it’s been impossible to reach him thus far). At some point I hope to find someone who can transform this for me, digitally, or even re-draw it in something like Timm’s style. 

Alas I no longer have the book, for some reason, so can’t get a higher resolution image. Until the book is reprinted, this will have to do. As best I can present it, this is her. 

 

 

 

Bruce Timm Naught and Nice page 87

Trying to Start

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I’m trying to start writing something. 

I’ve edited a lot over the last month, even re-wrote bits of things. 

It’s been cathartic to feel it coming back, to hear narration in my head again, to refresh memory of how to create. 

I’ve even got a friend asking me to write her something. 

How did I used to start a piece of fiction? I frankly can’t recall. I can’t recall how to get from blank page to — that thing that happens after a blank page. That thing where words go, with purpose and meaning and intent. 

I was good at this, a while ago, until I stopped being able to do it at all. 

I’m doing this instead of that, an avoidant technique. 

Stop stalling I say to myself. Type. 

In a minute. 

Meanwhile, I was successful in getting a number of friends interested in my novella,  Wanton. One or two via Facebook, but maybe 20 via a post on Instagram. 

The two on Facebook actually read, loved, responded. But the mass of people from Instagram, not one went beyond thanks after asking for the link. 

It’s the age old creator’s problem, isn’t it. Create something for yourself, first, because audiences don’t really want to venture forth to new things, even if they ask. 

Ah well. Three or four new readers is something, particularly after a decade of not having anything posted. It’s a start. 

But as a reminder to myself, go listen more to friends music. Go read their books. TELL THEM you’re reading, listening. Creators need it. 

 

Howling to the Void

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It’s funny, when I started this blog, which was mumble years ago, it was utterly free. Nobody read it, nobody knew it existed apart from my friend Jen who originally hosted it.

There is a pure and complete freedom to write without any audience. I could say anything, do anything, didn’t matter.

Social media changed that – orkut, in this case. People followed a link and I gradually picked up readers, first random strangers, then later real life friends and family.

Suddenly the externalization of inner voice might be read by the people I was talking about, and I started writing to an audience, or worse, not writing because of an audience. It changed

 

Now, it’s come full circle. Nobody is reading; in all likelihood, they never will. So I could do what I originally started this for, howling into the void, free, honest, unfiltered,

I dunno if I’m ready for that. Or if the internet is ready. Maybe I’ll find out, though.

What’s it all about

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For the first time in at least a decade, i’ve updated the About page for this site (also linked on side bar and in menus, here here here, oh, everywhere, as the Genie said.

You should read it, it’s unimaginably brilliant. Really.

Also, on the off chance that anyone is reading out there, I really appreciate comments. You don’t have to use a real email and i’m definitely not saving anyone’s emails; that shit’s just there to ward off spam comments (which, despite nobody reading, I still get a cubic fuckton of daily).

Everything that’s old is slightly less old

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I pulled out all the old stories that were once up in a writing blog off of an old archive disk, and am gradually going through them.

It’s a mixed bag. There’s nothing anywhere as good (he says, full of humility) Wanton, of which i’me very proud, particularly after a revision.

But there’s some treasure.

Long Dark Car (a story based on a long ago sex dream about – well, some minor TV star) is actually pretty good, and required no editing to speak of (aside from cleaning up typos).

The Man with the Bag is better than I remembered it being; it’s actually a lot of fun. It was written for a long-ago contest for long-gone erotica site Satin Slippers; we were asked to write ‘Bad Santa’ erotic stories. Mine won. Note that it’s password protected right now, because it needs a disclaimer (the site it was written for hosted a lot of non-consent type stories, so it was written with that in mind – yes, he’s a very bad santa). It needed a little revision, but not much. If you want to read it, you’ve been warned – the password is mister Claus’ first name, all lower case.

Aside from that, I have a half dozen short pieces (some erotic, some not) which I have to go through to see if they should be fixed and posted, or if they should just stay in the archive permanently. We’ll see.