Self Exposure

D’urban Moffer is much more than a writer, though he is that as well. His book, American Kashayas is available from Expat Press. I’ve not read it personally, but he describes it as thick, 500 pages.

A few days before my conversation with the filmmaker Malcolm Macmaster, I had a crisis of confidence concerning my little corner of the indie lit scene. I watched two episodes of the superb Misery Loves Company reading series, one devoted to Pig Roast Publishing, the other to Back Patio Press. I went in thinking, these are my people, but slowly I felt something in me grow morose and then rage filled. Every talented reader /writer was a straight white dude. My podcast cohosts were straight white dudes too. To utter this feels like I’m breaking a code. Transgressive writing is too busy exploring the depths of inner psyche and Taco-Bell wrappers to concern itself with representation. If you’re good enough , it doesn’t matter what you identify as. If you’re good enough, you’ll rise to prominence. On my hand, I can count the writers who have defied the white male stereotype of the scene. One of them is dead. Am I worthy of being published? Am I good enough? If the arbiters of taste are chronically online men who mainly know other chronically online men, would I even make sense to them? I hate that I’m asking these questions of myself but I also find I’m at a dramatic stage in defining my identity. I don’t feel like “woman” describes me anymore. I have no idea what that means for my future. It’s not exciting to feel this way, it’s a knot in my throat that won’t go away. For almost two hours, talking with Malcolm, I felt lighter. I felt wise and confident. It was a beautiful conversation. At the same time, I think of all of you, the dudes of indie lit, and I think you’re gonna turn this episode off. Without Josh and Derek to prop me up, there’s no draw. I hope I’m wrong. I hope, as ever, for belonging and respect and the chance to share my voice.

Jesse Hilsson noticed my presence when I joined the scene. He was the first person to DM with me and, because of his encyclopedic memory, he was able to fill me in. 

Imagine me as Donny, the character Steve Buscemi plays in The Big Lebowski. There was a permanent duh on my face, which the internet concealed, but Jesse could sense it and he reached out.  

I became aware of Caleb through his misanthropic substack, Middle American Literature. Every week a new essay about the same themes: the banality of work, the low level torture of wasting away your hours in a service job. It’s a subtle and gritty portrait that hits the same marks and this repetition, this drudgery, makes the portrait richer.   

Caleb and I became friends and started working together. Caleb and I worked on the piece I read at the Chicago Expat reading together. Caleb also endured a hellish bus ride from Indiana to meet me in Chicago for the reading.   

I’m pretty sure none of this comes across in our conversation. I apologize. I wanted sparkling intimacy, groundbreaking insights, but our combined depressive energy, along with our need to rehash the drama spawned by the last episode,  created a conversation with clipped wings.  

Still, at a muted volume, this episode served up its own grace. Caleb read a  story from his new collection, Novelty, and he did a good job. It’s the first time anyone has read their work on the podcast.   

The Simpsons are big for me right now. This is a Simpsons episode where Lenny & Carl hang out with Selma.  

Relevant links:

Jesse’s Substack -  https://cholorohemoglobin.substack.com  

Caleb’s substack - https://middleamericanliterature.substack.com  

Jesse’s books - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22163637.Jesse_Hilson.

Caleb’s books - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21528153.Caleb_Caudell

Alex Kazemi seeks representation from a bigger press. He is interested in more than indie clout and has never been anyone other than who he is: An ambitious Cancer.

The first thing I notice about Alex Kazemi is that he started our interview in a Scream mask but quickly took it off when our producer, Carla, mentioned video was not being recorded. When Josh showed up on the call, Alex said, Yo Josh, I started with a Scream mask, and Josh said something like, Tight, and I felt like the mom in a Sunny-D commercial.

Josh sent me a link to a lengthy Vanity Fair interview with Alex. I liked the picture they chose of him. They emphasized something priggish about his face. I think Alex Kazemi owns this quality in himself and accepts the ugliness implied by it.

I recall very little from the interview, though I did read the whole thing. Alex comes off as eloquent and thoughtful. Sprinklings of wisdom and gravitas. Eddies in a stream of toxic masculinity. Oh how we’ve failed our boys! They go around calling everything gay and when they say it, they mean it in the bad way, not in the Flintstones “we’ll have a gay old time” way.

It was momentous to read an interview in Vanity Fair with someone I would be interviewing later that day. I got a contact high off of it. I don’t know how many people Vanity Fair still reaches. It’s a great title for a magazine. There used to be a stack of Vanity Fairs next to the toilet in my parent’s tuxedo-tiled master bath. I’d take a luxurious shit in that bathroom whenever I got the chance. Magazine shits are a thing of the past and that's sad.

During our conversation, many names are mentioned. Lots of authors, book titles and Industry terms. It’s confusing to think about the book publishing industry. This interview is about content marketing, a phrase that reminds me of my old corporate consulting job, where I felt miserably useless on client calls.

But Alex tried something novel. He hired this avatar, The Twink, to step in for him, due to Alex’s no social-media stance. The Twink was there to do two things mainly: attract buzz and attention (especially from young gay men), and hound any writer or literary influencer that could promote the book.

This marketing strategy verges on performance art. For the most part, it seems to have gone very well for Alex Kazemi and his team at Permuted Press. The pearl clutchers clutched their pearls while the trigger warning enthusiasts seized upon The Twink in a show of mock outrage about his exploited persona.

Alex Kazemi wrote this book when he was 18 and put it on tumblr. He spoke about this period of his life at length during our interview. He was slated to release the book through MTV’s publishing arm but he didn’t do it. He didn’t think he was ready. He didn’t think the book was ready. Antithetically, he said, he was worried about being pigeon-holed as a child prodigy writer.

So he waited 10 years. He snorted his advance. He got deep into research on Y2K and the culture of masculinity. He wrote and rewrote until it was ready. Alex Kazemi is extremely proud of this book and wants it to have the biggest audience possible. He believes this unrestrained ambition makes him a target. 

The night before we were supposed to record, Alex Kazemi backed out of the interview. He told Josh that people were being nice to his face and then saying a bunch of shit behind his back. People in our scene think he didn’t pay his dues. 

Josh and Alex discuss the scene at great length. They discuss past scandals, like the Fuccboi scandal, and how you win or lose literary beef battles, and how unfair it is either way.

While all this is going on, I look at the screen and feel overwhelmed by their energy. It’s Friday night for me, Friday afternoon for Josh and Friday morning for Alex. 

Time and space have never been easy to navigate. 

Carla and I are sphinx crones who chime in now and then about other reasons to be a writer, other desires besides fame.

New Millennium Boyz is out September 12.

I have never wanted to read a book as much as I wanted to read Adam Johnson’s book, Cialis Verdi Gin and Jag. In fact, I wanted to read it so much, that when I saw Gwen Hilton tweeting about her copy, I asked to buy her book and that I’d pay for her copy of CVGJ too. She agreed and a couple weeks later I had them both in my Berlin apartment. Both books changed my life in profound ways. 
Encountering Adam’s books, whether poetry or sustained narrative, is like encountering an advanced alien life form. Who is this guy? And how did he develop this gift? When you ask those questions, you’re in genius territory. Genius doesn’t feel familiar. It’s not a worn-in shoe story. It’s braver and newer and somehow inconceivable. It’s almost a trick. 
How did he do it? Why isn’t he super famous? Adam Johnson’s latest book is Covered in Sharpie and Suing for Peace. It was released by Pig Roast Publishing in mid July. It is funny, mean, and emotional. It is so weird and delightful and it probably took him a couple of weeks to write it.

I am sitting on the train car at the Ronkonkoma station of the Long Island Rail Road waiting for the doors to close.I am headed to dinner with my publisher & friend and another literary type he wants me to meet.We are meeting for dinner at a hot spot in Chelsea. Or the Lower East Side.Or perhaps, but probably not, Tribeca.The restaurant is called Phoebe’s and there’s a table waiting for the nervous southern author and his friend, the enigmatic author and publisher, and the surprise literary guest.The author and his publisher began the year with an unbecoming public spat.The author felt entitled.The publisher felt ambushed, and perhaps even taken for granted, unappreciated for the work he had put into the author’s book.The author wanted more promotion for his book.The author felt his book was very good, and he wanted to be interviewed about it and he wanted to be talked about at parties he would never attend, and he wanted the publisher to spend more time and effort publicizing the book.The publisher had put out at least a dozen other books that year.They were excited to see each other and hug and stay up for the next two days talking about literature and music and film and sex and war and New York.Meanwhile, my friend Sabrina Small – the Los Angeles born, Berlin residing author, shop owner, and 1/4th of Self Exposure is in upstate New York wondering what she’s done to alienate herself.She was in Chicago last week, at the publisher’s huge reading.She’d flown from Berlin for the reading.She was excited to meet everyone.I am speaking on the phone to D’urban, my friend and spiritual advisor.I tell him the train doors won’t close.I am sweating.If I let these train doors close and follow the momentum to Phoebe’s in New York then I will shortly be at the literary dinner.The night could become almost anything. 

How will I explain this abandonment to Sabrina in the coming weeks?I have already made an ethically questionable decision to tell my publisher, a month or so ago, that she planned to read a piece in Chicago about her complex interpersonal relationship with the host of the event – a fellow author.I worry about this for Sabrina.I worry about this for the publisher.I worry, mostly, about this for the host (who seems to me, incidentally, a decent person navigating a difficult scene).I read the piece.It is not mean.It is fair and it is interesting.But it is interpersonal gossip and won’t be good for Sabrina, or the publisher, or the host.The piece is nixed.A new piece (a good one – Sabrina is a tremendous writer) is picked out.I have meddled in an event I am very much not part of.The headliner of the event is Sam Pink, a newly minted press mate that I was critical of in an article about the Fuccboi.I felt his conspiracy theories about Fuccboi being an international spy that caused the deaths of the publisher of Tyrant and his own fiancée, along with unnecessary lame jabs at women in publishing were worthy of ridicule.This complicated some things for me and made Chicago impossible.The door has not closed yet.I am still sweating.I am supposed to meet up with the playwright Matthew Gasda, an author I am incredibly fond of.This is going to be two days of literary bliss – the kind of life that happens in my fiction and never my real life.And if I let the train door close then what will I tell Sabrina?

“I am sorry I ratted you out about what you were reading and then abandoned you in New York.” All my literary dreams laid out before me as I watch the door and wait for it to close.

When the door finally closes, I am inside the station, still sweating, apologizing to Manny for not making it to New York, and waiting for my sister-in-law to come pick me up and take me back to the pool in her backyard and my nieces and nephews and my son and my daughter and my godson, my wife, my brother-in-law; my real life. From Chicago to New York, Sabrina returns to America an Expatriate, a writer, a wide-open woman of endless wonder. This is her story.

On February 4th, the popular and well-paid art critic, Jerry Salz asked his followers, 

“Artists; Just a question: What does art have to do with nature?” 

Salz was regularly tweeting out insipid shit like this and it boiled Sabrina’s blood.

She was saving his worst tweets and hoarding them, thinking she’d do some sort of ironic project with them. 

Here are a few gems she saved: 

Artists: Try to spend a lot of time in the presence of your art. Listen carefully to what it has to say. Follow it wherever it leads you. It has needs.

Artists: Art is your fate, your destiny. 

Artists: You have to plow and tend the field of your work in order to reap the crop of your art. 

Artists: Every artist feels clueless, uneducated, unoriginal, and not connected or well-off enough. Tough titties. Get to work anyway. 

Artists: Art gives up its secrets slowly. 

Artists: There’s a lot of boldness to living as an artist. Congratulations. 

Artists: You do know, don’t you, that it’s not too late to live your dreams? All you have to do is get to work. 

Artists: You are just trying to reach your own shore; not anyone else’s. 

Artists: The light that you put in your work is the light that will pour out of your work. 

Artists: Art is visual sunshine. 

Artists: Dare to be powerful in your work. It’s incredible what can happen.

Sabrina goaded Salz with a snarky reply to his tweet: 

Replying to @jerrysaltz 

“I can’t believe no one is telling you how douchey these tweets are. You are the most annoying guy at the water cooler and I’m not just saying this to make myself feel better. Consider it a PSA.” 

Salz wrote back, which was thrilling for Sabrina. It was as if a mythical portal of twitter, one that puts you in direct contact with celebrities, had briefly opened for her: 

Replying to @foodandfootage 

“I love how the cool kids think they are arbiters of what others should do! Rather than use your energies to tell me how to use my energies, maybe unfollow or block me? Lol! Thank you.” 

Sabrina could not let this rest, so she tweeted back: 

Replying to @jerrysaltz 

“Kids don't know what a water cooler is and anyone cool isn't doing this on a Saturday afternoon. I don't have the moral fortitude to unfollow you. It's a car accident I enjoy watching. I recommend less therapy, Jerry. Less self esteem.”

Perhaps this qualifies as arrogance on Sabrina’s part. Hard to judge.

Derek reads at @LoFiLit's An Evening of Poetry and Fiction on Wed June 14, and sends dispatches as Wartime Author.

Josh's Hobart Pulp piece is I Used to Watch Touched By An Angel with my Grandmother on CBS.

I was not expecting TB Sheets to be such a sultry blues masterpiece. “Your little star struck innuendos, inadequacies and foreign bodies!” Blessed be Van Morrison. Hot Damn. 

Also, it reminded me that we both have this film obsession with Tombstone. We should explore that. I feel like it’s a very specific touchstone for people our age. It separates us from the millennials. We were the last generation of the masterful Western. Do you link the song TB sheets with Val (Kilmer) / Van (Morrison). I bet you do. If anyone’s gonna have sexy TB sheets it’s Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday. Val Kilmer is a big first crush for me. Real Genius was my sexual rocketship. He seemed like Ferris Bueller with a bigger dick and more swagger. 

The other day when I was having that talk with my kids about hormones, we were playing “jukebox” with my phone and a portable speaker. The rules were you have to stick with your song once it starts playing and you only get one song per turn. I mostly dislike their music. It’s a lot of twinkle farts. When it was my turn, I chose Television’s Marquee Moon just to have something longer to groove to. I’ll take the long song every time. 

This was Sunday and we stopped at a Vietnamese joint in Reinickendorf on the way to Jump House for Henry’s 7th birthday. I felt we deserved a little luxury because of all the fighting so I packed my vape and spent too much money on lunch. We ordered summer rolls with chicken and tofu and some kid friendly sushi. I ordered one of those Vietnamese iced coffees with sweetened condensed milk. They brought it to me in a beautiful crystal cocktail tumbler. I thought about letting the kids order lychee juice or some shit but that adds like 8 euros to the bill and I'm trying to cut them back on sugary drinks. We were sitting outside on the first day of full heat. I asked the owners about their charming little garden plot. It had such plump roses. I love when restaurants do their own landscaping. The kids kept begging to try my coffee so I gave them ice cubes like a mamma bird, spitting it into their mouths. This was fun. This got us through the next 10 minutes till the food came.