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Friday, December 08, 2006
THE HANGING GARDEN
The Cure
Pornography
Elektra : 1982
[Buy it]
CENTERFOLD
J. Geils Band
Freeze Frame
EMI : 1981
[Buy it]
HOMEMADE
Sebadoh
Bubble and Scrape
Sub Pop : 1993
[Buy it]
WANDERING STAR
Portishead
Dummy
Polygram : 1994
[Buy it]
Last night I was fucking this guy, hard and fast with my ankles wrapped around his neck...Wait! Sorry. That wasn't me. Where are we? I'm all confused now. Hi. Brian says MW is going the way of smut, and well, clearly I'm not blameless. Then again, who is?
I did used to write porn, back in the glamorous first years of living in mid-nineties New York on nine thousand dollars a year. I was paid fifty cents a word to write for gay men's magazines. I wrote fake letters and the occasional "feature." "You're making them take way too long to come," my butch lesbian editor would complain. "These are men. They don't need the whole build-up. Just have them, meet, fuck, come, and then close with something funny." I rolled my eyes at the time, but now, as an editor, I see the true brilliance of that formula. If only she could sit in on some MFA workshops at Iowa, I'd be spared piles of overwritten overly-precious overly-boring stories about people committing adultery but never actually fucking. Or being funny.
Portishead was a joke among my friends; it was the go-to seduce-a-slightly-punky-girl record back then. "Then he put Dummy on," would go the story, and we'd smirk and giggle knowingly. I was so tired of thinking of different ways to refer to a penis for my porn stories that I had very little interest in real ones. But who knows? Maybe the Portishead maneuver even worked on me. Once or twice.Labels: joanna, smut
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Friday, December 01, 2006
CRAZY ON YOU
Heart
Dreamboat Annie
Capitol : 1976
[Buy it]
BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE
New Order
Brotherhood
Factory : 1986
[Buy it]
COMMUNIST DAUGHTER
Neutral Milk Hotel
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Merge : 1998
[Buy it]
These neighbors of mine have been having really loud sex; I can hear it through the airshaft every night. Well, at least I can hear her, and I'm assuming it's a couple. It's unseasonably warm here so everyone's windows are wide open, making her operatic wailings all the more audible. All you can hear is her progressively more and more insistent moaning and an occasional "yeah"; it typically lasts for about twenty minutes. Every night. She has to know we can hear her, that must be part of it, but the silence of her partner (especially after the dozen or so times I've heard it) is confounding.
One night last week I felt the need to call out to her, though I didn't know what to say. Hi? So, like a good New Yorker looking to make contact, I posted on Missed Connections, saying (roughly) where I live and I hear them every night and just wanted to say hi. Within five minutes, ten guys had sent me photos of their penises. Now I want to know, how many girls respond to such emails? About as many as the amount of people who respond to viagra/cialis emails? More? Less? Anyway, I also got notes from three couples claiming to be "them"; two pairs asked me to join them. Over the next couple of days I started quizzing: "What time were you fucking last night?"; "What sound did she make at the end yesterday?" Correct answers: 1 am; barking. None of them got them right. The best email I got was from a guy who works at the deli counter at the grocery store across the street who liked my post and said, "I work on this block and I'm sure I see all of you every day." Now I get free sandwiches, free coffee. Every day.
Tonight, though, instead of climaxing, the girl laughed. It was as loud and hard as the other endings, but laughter still. I still didn't hear a guy, though one could guess the laughter could have silenced him. Here's hoping I'm right about her having a partner, or else she's a crazy masturbating girl laughing alone into an airshaft. Though god knows there are worse things.
After I wrote this, Alex reminded me of his post from January, similarly inspired by loud fucker-neighbors, though his take on it is, well, different from mine. But it also reminded me that I hadn't said anything about the songs. Here you go:
"Crazy on You": This whole post was basically an excuse to put this song up.
"Bizarre Love Triangle": The neighbors, me.
"Communist Daughter":
And wanting something warm and moving
Bends towards herself the soothing
Proves that she must still exist
She moves herself about her fist Labels: joanna, smut
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Monday, November 06, 2006
BLOOD
Babes in Toyland
Fontanelle
Reprise : 1992
[Buy it]
THE SAME BOY YOU'VE ALWAYS KNOWN
The White Stripes
White Blood Cells
V2 : 2001
[Buy it]
JUNKIE NURSE
Royal Trux
Royal Trux
Drag City : 1992
[Buy it]
I went to my gym this evening to cancel my membership. It was time for "Let's be honest, Joanna, you haven't been in months and you aren't going back anytime soon." The woman at the desk literally tried to pull the "You have to give a month's notice and you owe for November," but I gave her my best "Are you joking?" one-eyebrow-raised glare and she dropped it.
On my way out I noticed they were having a blood drive (my (now-ex-) gym is a YMCA). Why not? I had some time to kill, and this would be my final gesture to the institution to which I had donated so much sweat. I haven't given blood in a while (since high school maybe) and was surprised at how elaborate it was. Blood pressure, pulse, hemoglobin level, have you ever been to Africa, have you left the country for more than six months at a time, did you eat today, have you ever had sex for money, have you ever paid for sex, have you ever had sex with a man who might have had sex with a man, do you have a cold. But I passed and they agreed to stick me. The male nurse glared at my tiny veins. "Make a fist!" He said. "Tighter!"
"I know," I said, "I'd make a terrible junkie." He didn't smile, and eventually stuck me somewhere I'm imagining he thought might be a vein.
"Blood is coming out, right?"
"Yes," he said, and minutes later told me what a good bleeder I was. I beamed with pride.
Meanwhile, an attractive middle-aged woman (whose name I'd later learn to be Linda) arrived, asking if her sister could sit by her for "company." I averted my eyes to her own sticking (her veins were so much easier than mine!), and joked to the nurse that I hoped I'd get a nice "I gave blood sticker" to show off to my date in a little while.
"You have a date?" The nice woman asked. "I was wondering why you're so dressed up!" This is an oddly intimate comment to hear from a stranger. I was wearing a cotton short-sleeved dress, not particularly fancy, so I'm not sure how she was measuring the formality of my attire. "Where are you going?"
"This restaurant on Prince Street, Savoy?" I said it as a question, a little snobbishly assuming that people in the Y on Fourteenth Street giving blood might not know of a fancy Soho eatery. But I was totally wrong about Linda.
"Oh, that's right around the corner from where I live. I love that place. Upstairs or downstairs?"
"Up." He had actually made a point of telling me the reservation was for "upstairs."
Linda approved. New Yorkers really are hilarious. Then the sister asked, "Is this a first date?"
"No, it's a do-over." Linda, sister, and nurse all looked confused, so I said, "A re-do." More blank stares. The blood loss was making me coy. "We dated a long time ago and know we're trying again."
"What happened last time?" asked Linda.
"I-got-married-to-someone-else-and-now-I'm-divorced." In truth, I just filed the first of eighty-seven divorce papers earlier this week, but details in these situations are totally out of place.
This got the nurse's attention. "You're divorced? Any kids?"
"No," I said, "no kids."
He nodded in approval. Then muttered, "Lucky guy." Let's assume he meant the date rather than the ex-husband.
Then one of the other nurses, who'd been on her cell phone the whole time, shouted something about the cars back to Brooklyn/Queens being disorganized and it seemed as though my nurse was going to get screwed out of a ride. I suddenly felt so sad for him, with his bad mood, lonely eyes, and now this, the likelihood of a three-transfer subway trip. He started getting very angry, and I looked over at the huge needle sticking out of my arm. Linda had a similar concern, saying "Don't get too excited, sir!" Sir. Linda is classy.
He calmed down enough to gently take the needle out of my arm, told me I was finished and that I should go sit down and drink some juice. "What about my proof?" I asked/whined.
He frowned seriously, went into a large plastic file box, and pulled out a roll of stickers. "Is this what you're wearing later, on your date?" he asked. I nodded. He then peeled off a sticker that said "I just gave the gift of life," and planted it square on my left breast. "In case you change, here are a few more," he said, handing me three more stickers. Then, out of nowhere, he pulled out a small plastic pin the shape of a drop of blood, eyeing my other breast. I knew exactly what was coming. He slowly leaned in toward the fabric of my dress. There were at least ten long seconds during which I could have stopped him, said, "I'll put it on myself," but didn't. He reached in, literally put half his hand inside my bra, and pinned the blood drop not only to my dress, but through the fabric of my bra and my slip. Three layers. I just watched, amazed, then nodded at him as he shyly handed me six more blood-drop pins, for another day, or, perhaps, for poseur friends anxious to impress.Labels: indie, joanna, rock, smut
posted by Joanna
LINK |
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