heaps of rotten seaweed sopping up the wet sand, black flies so thick as to form a second skin. multi-colored pebbles, bleached oyster shells, driftwood smashed into fragments i pick up and put into my pocket. each beach m. and i visit is unlike any beach i have seen because i have seen so few. we stop at every vista. i snap pictures of sea maggots wiggling in and out tiny rips in the body of a brown leaf; a dead fish; discarded men’s sandal with rusted buckles. up up up the one, speed peaking at forty. with each curve, we tower higher and higher above the pacific as it pushes up against colossal rocks, with or without trees, a carpet of lime green moss.

we left los angeles glazed with sun. a trickle of traffic, five lanes moving in unison until we drive down the grade: lane after lane of empty tarmac. santa barbara, the “tree city.” we park beside an oak—lay in the grass, suck on sunflower seeds, and eat tacos wrapped in purple wax paper. already the sky blackening, the “breeze” shifting to wind lifting my skirt above my knees. the sun holds out till san luis obispo. at the welcome center, a middle-aged man wearing a dodgers cap sells me a stale cup of coffee and proselytizes about obama’s unwillingness to show his birth certificate.

rain. water smeared across the windshield like vaseline. sixty miles outside big sur, a small digital sign: road closed ahead, businesses open. we drive on. as we soon learn, there are two roads leading in or out big sur: the pacific coast highway, which is closed, and a single lane mountain path, marked by an orange, handwritten sign do not drive after dark if unfamiliar. we rent the only room we can afford, a modified coat closet. no clock, radio, phone, or even nightstand. but a full size mattress, quilted comforter with aztec print. the placard above the light switch: NO LOUD TALKING. directly opposite the bed is a massive mirror. we unload our single black suitcase, all tattered with cat scratches, and fuck just once before heading to the lodge bar where we are the sole non-locals. on st. patricks day. the girl sitting next to us orders an irish car bomb, tells her friend in the imitation ugg boots: i fucked him last night, gestures towards the bartender sporting head to toe camo. don’t look! ten minutes earlier, i heard the same bartender say to a “regular” with premature balding: i slept with natalie. another round of irish car bombs for all. a four piece band with a blown out bass amp plays come back paddy reilly while a woman with a baby on her hip dances a jig, or what appears to be a jig, spinning round and round until she collapses into a deep-seated couch phew!

far too buzzed from the drive and the gin to ever sleep again, i kiss m. goodnight and stay in the bar, dancing and cheating at chinese checkers with natalie and her friend in the imitation uggs. 3 am: hotbox a jeep wrangler. eyes all threaded with blood. the girls refer to the men they’ve slept with, not by name, but profession. trail guides, boaters, bartenders, line cooks, wood cutters, or the day-shift assistant manager at the monterey pet smart. in the morning, m & i wake to a sky still snuffed of light. rain. inpentratable fog. car claws on. arrive to L’s apartment in oakland a day and seven hours late. we hug, say hi and what’s up, pack two bowls, squatting to blow the smoke out L’s bedroom window. say bye. am off to sacramento, alone.

an unexpected toll road. i hand fistfuls of pennies and dimes to the man behind the glass partition who blinks really? when i knock on J’s door, she's wearing pajama pants, hugging her boyfriend in the foyer. we eat burritos and drink modelo in orange wooden booths. walk in the rain to a brightly lit bar with tile floors and a bearded doorman who nods us inside. gin tonics, gossip about internet friends. i watch J watching herself in the mirrors that line the entire room. we talk about catherine millett. and the clitoris. flaubert’s letter to maupassant “i touch myself when i think of you,” signed “sister clitoris.” regarding a recent liaison of mine, J says well he was probably that obsessed because he couldn’t have you. biting into a lime: no matter who-you have to play it cool, pretend you don’t dig.

we pay cash for a taxi, strip off our coats, and listen to the everly brothers while cuddling mugs of vodka mixed with frozen pineapple concentrate in the living room. two tabby cats slink past, snuggle down on the edge of the couch. no toilet paper in the house so i wipe with a whole foods receipt. J fills the room with her milky yawns, shuttles off to bed. i am hardly ever wild awake in unfamiliar apartments these days, but tonight, yes.

lay on the couch, write in my journal or listen to J's roommates through the bedroom door. their laughter interrupted only by bits of conversation about a girl whose name i miss, but who, last weekend, acted ridiculous, i mean really ridiculous. at some point, one of the boys staggers out, asks you smoking pot? can i rip that? i hand him the bubbler no worries, man. he does not ask my name or my reason for being there. sun’s first flush. i wake six hours later with my head going bomp bomp bomp. J brews a pot of coffee, toasts an english muffin. cigarettes? she buys toilet paper and cigarettes from the corner store. in the kitchen i read all the cute notes she’s tacked to the fridge if any of you need more time for electricity or rent, you can pay me in installments.

after a colorless sunset, in a part of san francisco i am told is “industrial,” m. and the others plug in keyboards, amps, a whole grocery bags’ worth of black cords while, in the basement of the venue, i talk to my sister on the phone about potty training and exposed brick. bookless and bored--walk four blocks past one hour room rentals to good times liquor store with requisite black bars on the windows, boiled eggs for thirty-five cents, a five-tier plate of sticky buns, and everything i need for diy white russians. no, i can’t concentrate on the band or L’s film tonight all these unfamiliar bodies swimming in and out shafts of light from the floor to ceiling windows. i study the girl in the too tight jeggings, her carrie bradshaw hair piled high atop her head. whenever she sits, she unbuttons her pants, turning her head side to side to see if anyone noticed. a group of out-of-place punks pick at their nail beds, finger a belt loop, occasionally kiss, or bob their heads to the beat. the twenty-something boy in turquoise corduroys, passionately texting, his face rimmed in blue. slip outside to smoke, wind slapping my face bright red, mascara clotted. it is impossible to light the cigarette so i just stand there five, seven minutes, staring into the sleet.

spring break

“In 1981 Yale French Studies finally published a feminist issue, number 62, Feminist Readings: French Text/American Contexts. The volume is an interesting collection of work which successfully combines engaged feminist analysis with sophisticated literary and psychoanalytic theory. But the beginning, the first sentence, disturbs me. YFS 62 (as I will henceforth refer to it) opens thus: “This is a very unusual issue of Yale French Studies, in that its guest editor is a seven-headed monster from Dartmouth."
     A striking, somewhat troubling image. Of course the notion of a monster from Dartmouth is quite funny. As swiftly as it appears, the monster is domesticated...The seven-headed monster literally refers to the seven Dartmouth faculty women who edit YFS 62. The monster is a figure for the seven individuals working together as one body. The next two pages give a glowingly positive description of this collaboration, of collectivity as method. Since the image appears in the introduction, signed by the editors, it constitutes a self-portrait—an ironic one. The editors are saying: Look, we are horrifying, we are monstrous, we are inhumanly ugly. This turns out to be an ironic way of saying: Look, we are “very unusual,” we are beautiful, we are extraordinary.
     ...there are many possible ways of being monstrous, but the same type of abnormality that figures in the editor’s introduction also figures [throughout]—the monstrosity of a being whose boundaries are inadequately differentiated, thus calling into question the fundamental opposition of self and other. Such a being is terrifying because of the stake any self as self has in its own autonomy in its individuation, in its integrity.”

--Jane Gallop, The Monster in the Mirror: The Feminist Critic’s Psychoanalysis

m. & i went to disneyland for ten hours two weeks ago. roller coaster hair, twilight zone tower of terror, greasy popcorn, and throngs of little girls dressed in megawatt princess gear. i read somewhere that disneyland was specifically constructed so that the visitor feels like a participant rather than a dominated viewer. for instance, the buildings on main street are three-quarter scale. i also read that when leni riefenstahl visited america, walt was one of the only people within the film community who would receive her.

“We tend to think of American democracy as being somehow eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults...The Founders thought, in contrast, that it was tyranny that was eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults, whereas democracy was difficult, personally exacting, and vanishingly fragile. The Founders did not see Americans as being special in any way.”

--Naomi Wolf, The End of America: A Citizen's Call to Action

sprawl reading series

sprawl reading series, hosted by tracey rosenthal. readings and performances by diana arterian, jamora crawford, henry hoke, michael molitch-hou, and marlene nichols.

what is this strange privilege? four days free from work, school, car pooling. i get drunk off gin gimlets, smoke too many cigarettes shivering on the sidewalk watching the same two teenage girls wait for the bus, eat flamin hot cheetos, clean out their hairbrushes, clots of blonde hair floating in the gutter water. read all morning about anais nin and gershon legman’s three week fuck during which he also edited and sold her erotica to “the collector” in oklahoma. in private legman describes anais as very oral, but “one of those women...who sometimes have a marvelous experience when you’re making love to them...but the experience is not with you.” read also about the 1975 deep throat obscenity trials, the prosecutor insouciant, turning to face the jury: "a woman seeing this film may think it is perfectly healthy, perfectly normal, if you have a clitoral orgasm. that that is all a woman needs. she is wrong. she is wrong. and this film will strengthen her in her ignorance.” apparently bill mahr discovered the clitoris while watching deep throat. for doris lessing, it was balzac: "i learned of the clitoris from Balzac - not of its existence or its uses, but that it was part of the lexicon of love, with a status." in the evenings, i am mostly addicted to watching old political documentaries, or stoned on a rooftop lit by a single wind-chapped tiki torch with C who is in town (from atlanta) for two nights only. C. who is at all times concerned with not being concerned about anything. we talk little, sometimes kiss, eat delivery pizza. although i have not seen her in five years, if ever the conversation should venture beyond so nice to see you or that’s intense, she ends it abruptly. her willful, almost forced chill. no matter that i have so many things to ask her! back to back blunts. when, in a way, just sitting next to her is enough.

baby, i don't care

rita hayworth & robert mitchum, 1957

Feminaissance Blog Project

I asked five writers to respond to Les Figues title Feminaissance without placing any limitations on the content, length, or form. Throughout the week, read responses from Allison Carter, Evelyn Hampton, Claire Donato, Amy King, and Tisa Bryant. My introduction has some fun clit facts.

excerpts from Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth

August 28, 1996

Moving my bowels at home I feel a great recognition arising: good old me. Today I had to shit at Wendy’s. As I let it go, I felt zero recognition—the good old me was nowhere to be found. To my surprise, I felt somewhat relieved, even joyful, to sense anew the careful absence of where I’ve come from. To be alive is to shit into a strange place.


September 12, 1996

I seek respite from tolerance, in every sense. Stop giving me what I want! Say to me, “This has gone far enough!” Put me under arrest, take me to the other side of the register! Take me back into the manager’s tiny office and explain to me the gross error of my design! Mange me! To manage—what is that? To not let be.


September 18, 1996

I don’t think Wendy’s coffee has such a good taste. This is not to say I don’t like it. I like it very much. Its poor taste keeps my intentions clear; I drink coffee for the enthusiasm-prod, not for the taste. The taste, then, when it is too pleasant, can distract one from what matters most — the deep writhing jolt. Of course, some taste is necessary so that the jolt seems, at bottom, inadvertent.


September 20, 1996

Today I had a Biggie. Usually I just have a small, and refill. Why pay more? But today I needed a Biggie inside me. Some days, I guess, are like that. Only a Biggie will do. You wake up and you know: today I will get a Biggie and I will put it inside me and I will feel better. One time I saw a guy with three Biggies at once. One wonders not about him but about what it is that holds us back.

September 23, 1996

Gangbang weather for the first time in weeks. Makes me want to behave. Just go out and behave in the stinky sunlight. In my biography, they’ll say that I never behaved at all, and that the sunlight was no stinkier than usual. But that is the business of biography; biography is the dream of misbehavior that is able not only to endure the stinky sunlight, but to forget it. Its incalculable insistence.


September 24, 1996

I love to watch a dick slamming in and out of a cunt or an asshole. The only way t.v. could enhance Wendy’s is if it was confined to showing nonstop hardcore pornography without sound. No ridiculous assertion of plot or personality. Just the real pleasure of lacking language. Just a reassuring view of the signifier itself as it finds its way to its ancient hiding place in broad daylight.


September 25, 1996

A woman with twins today, aged five or six. Almost perfect replicas. They sit eating, starring off now and then into the mid-air realm. The not-eating realm. They stare out knowing that their mother is there. They stare out from the good of eating. I want to ask them: is that good already not good enough? And do you understand already that there is something more original than a mother?

notes: the hite report

rejecting the very idea of penetration as the sole definition of “real sex,” shere hite’s The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976) sought to understand how individuals regard sexual experience and the meaning it holds for them, using the clitoris as her critical lens. “its not specifically just orgasms we are talking about here,” she wrote, “we are talking about a complete redefinition, or un-definition, of what sex is.”

collected from long essay-style questionnaires, the hite report uses the personal stories of women themselves as the main text. its very success lies in this glut of personal accounts.to know that women are sexually frustrated is one thing, but to read page after page of “long foreplay makes me uncomfortable because i worry that i ’m putting my man through too much work, when i know that he could come so much sooner if he let himself" is quite another. in response to the question, how have most men had sex with you?:

“Most of them start kissing, petting, really getting off on the breasts—then the fingers in the vagina a bit, love talk, when we’re ready, cunnilingus and fellatio simultaneously, then I get on top, then he does. This is fairly standard with a lot of guys.”

“I hate the usual pattern—kiss—feel—eat—fuck, simply because it’s usual. I like people to talk to me and moan a lot. I like when people are expressive and creative with me.”

“Foreplay with constant pressure to have intercourse.”

all but 5% of heterosexual couples, hite discovered, followed the “reproductive” model: foreplay (touching, kissing, oral), followed by penetration, and intercourse (thrusting) followed by orgasm (especially male orgasm), usually defined as the “end” of sex. “this is a sexist definition of sex, oriented around male orgasm, and the needs of reproduction,” hite wrote. “this definition is cultural, not biological.”

hite also found that 70% of women did not orgasm from intercourse alone. although she stressed that orgasm was not the sole, or even necessarily, the main pleasure of sex, she asked her readers “why do women so habitually satisfy men’s needs during sex and ignore their own?”

for the majority of women clitoral stimulation is used for arousal purposes but not orgasm. a point hite returns to again and again: through the reproductive model of sex, male orgasm is given a standardized time and place that is prearranged and preagreed during which both people know what to expect and how to make it possible. this places women in the position of having to ask for “extra” stimulation, something “special."

while the 1960’s may well have been, as sex researcher bill masters quipped, “the decade of orgasmic preoccupation,” hite showed that this did not, and still does not, necessarily carry over into women’s actual sexual experiences. that is—an awareness of the mechanics, ease, and potency of female orgasm did not appear to have much effect on the way 70% of women fucked.

“if women couldn’t ask for clitoral stimulation to orgasm, or do it themselves, they were unlikely to get it from the man they were with," wrote hite. “is the answer to the oppression and neglect of female sexuality and especially orgasm that men should lean to give (better) clitoral stimulation? yes and no. of course men should learn these things, but even more important, we [women] should find the freedom to take control over whether or not we get this stimulation.”

“This is not the tired moralist claim that only a native can know the scene. The point I am trying to make is that in order to learn enough about Third World women and to develop a different readership, the immense heterogeneity of the field must be appreciated and the First World feminist must learn to stop feeling privileged as a woman.”

--Gayatri Spivak, French Feminism in an International Frame

bogart: notes

A PERCEIVED SENSE OF CONTROL IS DANGEROUS:

in the maltese falcon (1941), humphrey bogart plays sam spade, a private detective whose sense of knowingness is forever suspect. what unfolds is a brilliant, complex tale: three men and one woman on a ruthless search for a jeweled falcon, all seemingly unaware of the other’s connections to spade, all equally dangerous.

the film opens when a new client, ms. brigid o’shaughnessy (mary astor), tells her story to spade. Iit does not involve the falcon, but rather, her sister’s dangerous fiancé, thursby, who must be tracked. for spade’s services, she offers a large sum of cash. bogart nods, rolls a cigarette. ms. o’shaughnessy figures him her idiot—he believed! not until their next meeting does it become clear that not only did he not believe her, he understood the exact extent of her fibbing: “you paid us more than if you had been telling the truth and more than enough to make it alright.” when Spade mentions that his partner, archer, was killed while tailing thursby, she says something to the effect “how sad.” without pause bogart replies, “stop it. he knew what he was getting into. those are the chances we take.” spade already knows that a perceived sense of control is perhaps most dangerous of all.

although the film was made twice prior, neither version achieved critical or box office success. the 1941 john huston production excelled for two main reasons: the script’s adherence to dashiell hammett’s original text and humphrey bogart. bogart was not warner’s first pick; studio politics had already selected george raft. when raft refused, huston hired bogart. after viewing early footage, warner head hal wallis urged huston to re-shoot. the problem: bogart was playing spade with a “leisurely, suave form of delivery.” wallis’ advice: let bogart be bogart.

a similar situation had occurred during the casting of Bogart’s breakout role in The Petrified Forest (1936) as unhinged outlaw Duke Manatee. Primarily a character actor, Bogart often played the violent sidekick of stars like Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and James Cagney. “The audience was trained to dislike him,” writes David Thompson, “...a guy you could not trust to trust.” Leslie Howard, the star of The Petrified Forrest, wanted Bogart specifically for the role of the volatile Manatee: “No Bogart, No deal?”

in 1941 bogart hardly resembled hammet’s description of spade: blonde hair, over six feet tall, widow’s peak, shifty as the devil incarnate. Instead, he was in his early forties, balding, face puffy with drink. unlike the uber-manly james bond of the future with his impeccable, phlegmatic cool, when bogart gets hurt, he really gets hurt. and, more importantly, he is aware that there is not always a way not to get hurt. in the maltese falcon, bogart, or the he pioneered, realizes that to be smart requires a degree of fallibility: you never know what the other person in the room is thinking, will do; to be triumphant often requires degradation.

my favorite moment: when spade says to joel cairo—a gun-toting, immaculately coifed, gunsel for the villainous Fat Man—“i’ll slap you and you’ll like it.” bogart smacks cairo (peter lorre) almost playfully then takes his gun, shuts him up. gun fights aside, the pair agrees that spade will find the falcon, no questions asked, for a steep fee. however, this will not be their last confrontation. in fact, it is through bogart’s dealings with the fat man, and his hired help, that the viewer understands the extent to which bogart outsmarts nearly everyone he encounters.

directly after his visit with cairo, bogart meets the fat man’s second, still green, lackey wilmer (elisha cook jr.) on his way to ms. o’shaughnessy’s apartment. assigned by the fat man to follow spade, it takes spade only a minute or two to lose him. after hoping inside a taxi, bogart instructs the driver to stop at a random apartment. once inside the building, bogart presses every number on the call box then waltzes out the back door only to watch from the street a befuddled wilmer toiling over the call box. spade equally outwits the master himself, the fat man (sydney greenstreet). during the pair’s first meeting, the fat man pours spade a drink, asks, “are you a closed-mouthed man?” “no, I like to talk,” says spade. the fat man raises his glass: “i distrust a closed mouth man...here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.” despite his colloquialisms, the Fat Man rarely speaks clearly or directly, and the pleasantries dissolve when a raging bogart stands to his feet, smashes his glass, and delivers the Fat Man an ultimatum: if you are interested in my services, get me the money and details by 5:00 pm the following evening. here, as elsewhere, bogart’s upperhand relies on a plausible bluff: if the fat man believes spade knows the falcon’s whereabouts, he will not kill him or intimidate him too brutally. his sense of control, his “smartness” is only an appearance, an educated guess, a gamble. as soon as he shuts the door to the fat man’s apartment, he grins as he walks insouciant down the hall. the viewer is led to believe that his rage was merely an act, that spade played the fat man, and played him hard, which was his plan all along. But this is wrong. waiting for the elevator, bogart looks down at his hand, which is shaking violently, and when he smiles at his own hand, it is not a gesture of smug self-approval, but rather, a kind of stupefied disbelief that he actually pulled it off, nerves and all.

the maltese falcon is one of hollywood’s greatest films, not only because of the fantastic dialogue, lifted more or less directly from hammett’s original text, or its pared down, harshly lit, direct cinematography, but for the questions it raises: are knowledge and power the same thing? and if not, what is the nature of their relationship?

towards the end of the film, the fat man invites spade to his office and mixes him a drink. spade is aware that the drink is probably spiked. unwilling to blow his cover, the entire case, to avoid a single moment of degradation, bogart swallows the drink, falls to the floor. wilmer, still roiling from spade’s merciless taunts and evasions, kicks him not once but twice in the face. bogart knew this would happen. but to be sprawled on the floor, kicked in the face, to be drugged does not make him weak or stupid or any less triumphant: it happens to him—is out of his control, a natural occurrence if one is to venture into the wild. while it is logical to assume that the fat man will not kill or otherwise physically maim him while drugged, it is only an assumption, an educated guess, gamble taken under the false assurance of “facts” and “logic.”

if the fat man had murdered him, it would not have made spade any less suave or shrewd. knowledge is invaluable insofar as it can help lessen, if not always prevent, the brunt of the wild instant. spade’s greatest strength is his awareness, and acceptance of, personal fallibility. you can never know what someone will do to you. you never possess full control. bogart takes the kick in the face, but he does not forget it.

the misfortunes of virtue

here's a video of economist milton friedman, excerpted from a 1979 interview with phil donahue. if you were to condense the most basic political message of the sade's justine you’d get friedman: “and what does reward virtue?"

THESIS 2010 @ calarts