We’re going three by three to the mountain top
To throw that son of a bitch right off the highest drop

On Friday night I flew back from Chicago. The trip was pretty fun. Chicago was a cool (if utterly corrupt) town. But after flying in, the wife and I hopped into the car and drove the 3 hours to her parents’ lake house. There we met her folks as well as my best friend from college, the guy who was the best man at my wedding. We hung out, drank some Jack, and bowfished the hell out of the lake one night. It was fun, but the real kicker of the weekend came when my buddy started talking about his ex girlfriend (whom I’d met before).

Evidently she was batshit crazy. And as we all know, crazy girls equal crazy sex. But there was one incident that really set her apart. My buddy had volunteered to be the DD for a bachelorette party his girl was a part of. Somehow events led them to a strip club, where the girls all chipped in to get him a lap dance. When they finally called it a night, he went home with his girlfriend and another of her friends—at which point said girlfriend initiated a threesome with all present parties.

That blew me away. I almost didn’t believe it, but I knew my friend is on the level because… well, I know him. He’s not the bragging type. But when he told me that he broke up with her shortly afterward because of that very incident, I was dumbfounded. But according to him, even all the crazy amazing sex wasn’t worth the agony of dealing with her on a daily basis. Which got me to thinking.

I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of people—that yeah, the sex is great, but when you’re dealing with a crazy person, it just isn’t worth it in the long run. Maybe I’m just biased (because let’s face it—I’ve had nothing but sane sex my whole life), but there’s got to be an equilibrium point when the sex gets crazy enough to balance out all the down points. But what about the rest of you out there? Have you dealt with similar situations? Was it worth it? I know mama said not to tell tales out of school, but mama ain’t here, so get to tellin’!

when that gal gets down you can’t help but stare

It’s been a long while since my last post, hasn’t it? Well, if anyone is out there who still gives a damn, here’s an update on the status of things since my last post.

On the home front, the wife and I are still trying to sell our house. With the market as it is right now, we just can’t seem to get anyone to bite the hook. There’s plenty of lookers out there, but there’s also a ton of inventory and in order to set yourself apart from the pack, you have to drastically cut the price—something we just can’t do. The numbers just don’t work out. So we’re going to keep the house on the market at the current price and wait ‘til the market comes back and we’re able to sell it and get enough money out of it. If that’s a year or two from now, so be it.

Work, on the other hand, is going pretty well. I’m not sure if I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, but in July I received a good raise, which was awesome news. And I’ve received word that next year we’ll be doing some international travel, which will include Mexico City and Perth, Australia. About a month ago I applied for a passport for the first time and got that back last week, so I’m all set to tackle my first trip out of the country and extremely  excited about it. This Wednesday I’ll be heading off to downtown Chicago for a couple days to attend a meeting with one of our outsourcers. It’ll mostly be a pissing match in which all participants will compete to see who has more three letter acronyms on their business cards, but it should be fun to visit the Windy City for a couple days. Also, in December I’ll be sitting for a professional exam that, should I pass, will probably net me either a good raise or a promotion, so I’m excited for that as well.

The unfortunate part of doing well at work, however, is that other things tend to slip—mainly my writing. The Money Shot is still in progress, and lately I’ve made some additional strides in my revisions and restructuring of the novel. So far I’ve got 13 chapters nailed down and I think the narrative is sharper and more succinct because of it. On the other hand, I’m not making the kind of progress I would like. It’s been slow going, but I do intend to persevere. I’m hoping that on the plane ride to O’Hare I’ll have a good opportunity to get some writing done.

Other than that, there’s not much to report. Been to a few concerts, kept the roads hot with lots of day trips and visits to family. The wife and dog are fine, no little bambinos yet. All is (mostly) well in my little corner of the world. 

But for all of you whom I haven’t talked to in a while, please drop me a line and let me know how you’ve been doing. I have read some of the more recent posts on my friends’ page, but I don’t fancy trying to catch up on all the reading I’ve missed over these last few months. So give me a quick shout and let me know how things are going in your lives, too. I’m eager to catch up with all of you.

I’m the poison in the well

I’m the fruit rotting on the vine

The fourth installment of “Phil Spade’s Classics of Smut Past” is a little skin novel called Zarina by Veruschka O.

This one was quite the find, if I do say so myself. Found it on my trip to San Diego in a place called Wahrenbrock’s Book Warehouse, an old three story building in the heart of downtown jammed to the gills with dusty old treasures. And boy, is this one a find.

The story involves the most famous of all British Secret Service agents, none other than James Bond. Of course, they author is very careful not to use the actual name, but the hints (calling him “James B—“ and throwing “M” in as a character) were kind of hard to miss. But with copyright laws as they are, it’s no wonder. Anyhow,  as fertile ground as James’ Bond’s exploits would be, 007 is mostly tangential to the story’s plot. ‘Cos other than the very first scene, the only folks getting it on in this one are the ladies.

As the story goes, there’s a beautiful Russian scientists named Zarina that’s been working on a faster than light (FTL) engine for the Russian space program. And since the British can’t just stand by while that happens, they send the illustrious James Bond “To Russia With Love.” The aim is to seduce her into defecting, but it turns out that Zarina is a bone fide lesbian and wants nothing to do with him, so the secret service sends in their top female agent, Georgina Flame. And, well, I’m sure you see where this is heading.

I’ve transcribed the story into a .rtf file (about 45,000 words, all told) and posted it online for your reading pleasure. I haven’t given it a detailed read-through, so there are probably some typos in there. If you happen to find any, let me know. 

Carve me a smile

As we speak, I am battling a phenomenon of horrible proportions. It is the bane of writers everywhere, that nameless sound in the night that makes us all shake in fear.  It is the that one thing which all novelists dread more than anything else in their craft. The otherworldly horror of which I speak? The Shinies.

Not to be confused with The Shining, of course. The Shinies are something completely different and even more terrifying. It is the one single thing that can easily derail even the most well planned of novels.  They’re that idea you get just before you go to bed, that suddenly realized premise that is so full of absolute fucking awesomeness that you can’t not write about it. You feel this surge of sudden inspiration, this drive to get it all down on paper before the creativity dribbles out your nostrils like so much snot and is lost forever.

So yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with right now. I feel like I’ve still got plenty of inspiration to finish out The Money Shot. I mean really, the story is all there, I just have to write it and edit the crap out if it. It shouldn’t be that hard. But I’ve run up on an idea for a new story that I just can’t seem to put on the back burner. To make matters worse, there’s another conundrum on top of it.

I don’t think I’ve told anyone on LJ this before, but my introduction to writing was in the realm of fanfiction. If you don’t know what that is, count yourself lucky. Fanfiction is the dregs of the literary realm. It’s full of teenage matchmaking fantasies, “what-if” alternate universes, and a plethora of spoofs, vignettes, and other badly written stories. But that’s where I first cut my baby teeth, so it is what is it is. One of the fandoms I dabbled in was that of Silent Hill—you know, the survival horror game franchise by Konami? It was recently parleyed into a movie of the same name, which really didn’t do the series justice, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, my story idea involves a Silent Hill-esque town in which the main character confronts secrets of his family’s past as well as his own internal demons. The whole thing would be sort of like a big long “dream vision,” in which the reader is just a little unsure of what is real and what is happening in the narrator’s mind. The idea’s been kicking around my skull for a few years now, but recently I’ve started to solidify certain ideas, details about what I want to do. The added problem comes from the fact that I am unsure if I can make my idea my own. It’s inspired by Silent Hill, so if I create my own spooky town with its own strange secrets, is it going to seem too much like a cheap knock off of the original? Would I be just as well served to write the thing as a piece of Silent Hill fanfiction instead of going through the motions to dress it up as something similar but different? 

I don’t know. I mean, I know that original fiction is the way to go. Fanfiction is a dead end. But I want to write it so bad that I almost can’t help myself from jumping in the midst of it. I need help, some sort of grounding. Some advice would be good. Do any of you out there have anything that might help me?

Words

They twist and turn in me

They rip and burn in me

I Have a Sad Clown Fetish

At least, that was what I told my wife the other day when we were having sex. She was in the middle of that phase in her cycle when she typically turns moody and hormonal—yet somehow I’d convinced her to do the wild thing that afternoon. It had been all but two minutes since I’d slid into her, when she suddenly started to sob. 

If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing your partner burst into tears in the middle of the sex, you’re missing out. There’s nothing like trying to soothe her fragile self-esteem while simultaneously maintaining your stride. But somehow I did it, and she eventually came out of the PMS-fomented funk. But then there was another problem.

“Is my mascara running?” she asked.

“Nah, it’s not bad.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she mewled piteously.

“It’s cool,” I replied, “I have a sad clown fetish.”

She suddenly busted out laughing. The PMS blues dissolved in a wave of cackling laughter, and as soon as she could stop laughing, we were humping like rabbits again. So all’s well that ends well, right? Exactly. Except for one thing.

How do I tell her I wasn’t joking?

I’m going to keep digging deeper into you

Until I find what makes you scream

God, who doesn’t love a good nooner? There’s nothing like leaving the office, doing the deed, and then going back. It’s empowering—like you’ve got a dirty secret no one else knows about. Part of the fun is that no one else knows, but at the same time want to rub all their faces in it. You want to shout it to the world that while everyone else was off sitting at the drive thru, you were buried deep in a sweaty, moaning, writhing embrace.  

That was me and the wife this afternoon. And we both agreed. It needs to be a regular occurrence. When I get back to the office tomorrow, I’m putting a weekly reminder on my calendar. It’ll give a whole new meaning to the term “hump day.”

A little bit of sunshine

A little bit of booze

A little bit of me

And a little bit of you

Just like Alice, I’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole. But unlike the little blonde heroine, I’m not going to Wonderland. I’m going to a far more treacherous, far more horrendous realm. I call it Revisionland

My experience has shown that the process of editing can be an endless rabbit hole of revision upon revision. The perfectionist in me over thinks every little word placement, every nuance of plot until a simple redraft turns into a maze of changes worthy of M.C. Escher. I have to be really careful not to edit or analyze too much. It’s admittedly hard for me, being an English major and all, but with The Money Shot so far I’ve been able to stave off the urge to print out a copy of the manuscript and red-line it all to hell and back. That is, until recently. Now I’m up to my armpits in revisions.

In the interest of making sure the overall plot “still works,” I’ve taken it upon myself to start from the beginning and edit up to the point I’m at right now, roughly 2/3 of the way through. And while I meant for it to be a quick breeze through, it’s turned into anything but. I edited the first four chapters, which wasn’t terribly bad, though I did end up rewriting several parts pretty much from scratch. The problems only started when I began to look at my high level plot outline and suddenly I realized: it totally sucked.

I go through phases like this in every work that I write. Every few months or so I have a panic attack about my plot. Suddenly something doesn’t fit and I have to beat my head against the wall until I dislodge some great idea, and everything clicks back into place again. In the course of writing The Money Shot, I’ve done this four or five times already. After a little skull sweat, I can usually work out my problems, make a few minor tweaks, and move on with the story. But this time was different. This time it was bad. You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach? It feels like a big, invisible hand squeezing the life out of your guts. Its that sense of dread right after the hammer drops—your girlfriend has been cheating on you, your boss is about to fire you, your grandma just died. Yeah, that kind of feeling. That was me Tuesday for the whole goddamn day. 

I literally couldn’t work. I got nothing done. I just read my outline over and over, scribbled in my note pad, and generally belabored the fact that my plot had more holes than a piece of Swiss Cheese. The more I thought about it, the more wound up I got. I spent the whole day like that, not working, just desperately racking my brain for a solution to my conundrum. It wasn’t until I got home and smoked a couple of cigarillos that I relaxed enough to get my head around the problem. I decided to try an old trick I’d learned in college and started at the end. I worked my way backward, scene by scene, until I’d outlined the entirety of the story. And believe it or not, it worked. Some scenes I’d already written got cut. Some got moved up earlier in the story. But now I think I’m got a solid outline that is going to stand up to all these revisions. It’s also more compact. Before this I was kind of worried about keeping the wordage below 100,000, but now I do believe it’s going to work out.

Of course, I’ve said the same thing before. Only time will tell if I’m right this time around.

I’m not looking to stand up real high

I’d be happy to crawl

California’s calling again.  She’s the mistress I just can’t seem to keep away from, the drug I can’t get out of my system.  I thought my most recent visit would be the last for a while.  But no.  She’s got her hooks in me now, so here I go again, back to her sun-bleached bosom once more. 

This time it’s San Diego.  My flight leaves Friday morning, and I’ll be staying until the following Friday.  It’s the time of the year in which my department usually goes off to a big group grope they call “training.”  It’s is great and all, considering it’s actually some good training and the whole thing (including travel and lodging) costs a pretty penny. But seven days with face-to-face contact with no one but your coworkers is a sure recipe for a mental breakdown.  This year, however, is different.  Because of the current economy and the financial constraints that go along with it, they’ve decided just to send a handful of us to separate venues.  So in other words, I’ll be free to do exactly what I want when I want to do it. 

To tell the truth, I was originally kind of bummed to hear San Diego was my destination.  I’d been hoping for New Orleans—even had my eyes on a concert at the House of Blues one day that week.    I can’t see how it could be any better than Bourbon Street, maybe San Diego will be a close second.

The hotel is in downtown San Diego.  It’s on the waterfront, pretty close to the Naval Air Station.  I’ve already identified a used book store I want to go to, and I think I saw that the book store has a large section of erotica.  Maybe there I’ll be able to pick up some more titles for Phil Spade’s Classics of Smut Past. I’ve also recently found that I enjoy Ian Flemming’s original James Bond books, so I wouldn’t mind finding some more of those, either.  There are also sure to be a ton of bars and restaurants, as well as tourist attractions galore.  I’m sure I’ll be able to find somewhere to spend my evenings, but I think overall I’m just going to play it by ear.

I don’t know exactly what the week will have in store, but I look forward to finding out.

Set a fire in me

Allow me to present the next installment of Phil Spade’s “Classics of Smut Past.” This one is The Nurse’s Curse by Stanley Gross, and it’s available for your perusal here.

The story is about a prudish school nurse who finds that she’s drawn to a younger sort of lover. I’ll let you fill in the blanks as needed, for we all know where this is going.

The story is all right as far as cheap 70s porn books go. The author is, as I call it, “adjective happy.”  He seems to have bought into the school of thought that “more is better,” for every sentence in the book is jammed full of enough adjectives to choke a thesaurus. It must have been because the nouns were lonely. They needed a lot of company—words like “lewd,” "wanton," and "lascivious" are repeated ad nauseum, a constant companion to any bumping of uglies that might transpire.

But I suppose that’s the main reason why these books are so endearing. They’re bad—deliciously bad.  They’re composed by hackishly hack writers, forming a not so pretty reminder of our pornographic past. And I love them for it. Perhaps you will too. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

You’ve got a whole that you need to feed