Melissa and I have been reading Tyler Coates’ blog on Tumblr for years now, and like many people, have always felt like we’ve known him. Like I told him in the interview, whenever we made list of contributors for the book, we always hoped he would be one of them. The short bio in the sidebar on his blog reads, “I live in Chicago. I have a day job, I go to grad school, and I write stuff on the Internet.” We met on gchat today to talk about that last part!

meaghan: So a lot of people affectionately call you Tyler Coates: Man About The Internet. We know it’s sort of a joke but, you really do open up on the internet in a way that makes people feel like they know you.

tyler: I guess! it’s sort of weird to think that, sometimes. The “people who read my blog” are sort of invisible, anonymous people to me? Even though I know a lot of them, I guess. It’s just jarring sometimes to have someone reference something on my blog, and then I have to come to terms (again) with the fact that I DO put a lot about myself on the Internet. Last year at the Tumblr meet-up in Chicago, someone said that they were amazed at how much I reveal about myself on the Internet. And I thought that was so strange, because I didn’t think I revealed THAT much. I’m “introspective” by nature, which is the polite way of saying “self-obsessed.”

meaghan: Ha! Be careful, you are in mixed company!

tyler: hahaha. Well. I say all of that in jest, because I’m beating other people to the punch? Everyone is self-obsessed, but not everyone has a blog. Someone once defending it by saying that I was “thoughtful.” Which I appreciated a lot, and eventually used as one of the three adjectives to describe myself on OKCupid.

meaghan: Ha! So you mentioned recently on your blog how you were understandably hesistant to write so personally for this book.

tyler: Yes, I was a little scared, mostly because I don’t write about sex on my blog.

meaghan: But what put you over the edge and said yes this is something i should do?

tyler:I think my rationale was, “I can’t turn down an offer to be a part of a book, especially if I’m in such good company.” And I think I’m going to have to get used to being a bit uncomfortable with a wider audience reading my writing if I actually want to write for a living. And the story I wrote was also one I’d been wanting to write for a while.

meaghan:It’s funny to me because when we were asking people to contribute, or thinking about people to ask, you were always on our list, from the beginning. Reading your blog made us feel like we knew you and that you had something to say, so to speak. We wanted to see you go there. Even though you never wrote about sex really on your blog, you did touch on dating and relationships.

tyler: Right. Something that I find frustrating is that I feel like I’m seen as this gay guy who is soooooo emotional. Because men, in general, are supposed to be stoic, and, hey, I’ve always been “emotional.”

meaghan: So like when people are like, “Oh you’re so EMO on your blog, you share so much.” It’s just relative to expectations of what a guy should be sharing.

tyler: Yeah! Personally, I hate that word (emo) because it doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING. It’s like “hipster” It’s boring. Come up with a new insult if that’s what you’re getting at.

meaghan: You’re right, now the word “emotional” is an insult. As if having feelings is something to be ashamed of (OY)

tyler: Right! And that’s why I get so confused when people claim I share so much about myself, and they could NEVER do that.

meaghan: It’s an interesting thing, especially with this book— saying, “Yes, I have sex and sometimes have feelings about it,” seems to some people like we are admitting something, when I’m thinking, “Um, we are all Human, remember? This is no secret! I know all of you experience the same thing!”

tyler: I feel like I am distrustful of people who DON’T think about it that way!

meaghan: Who don’t think about sex that way? or Life.

tyler: Right. I overanalyze everything. Once someone told me that he had trouble having a conversation with me because I thought too much about stuff. Which is THE OPPOSITE OF AN INSULT. And, luckily for him, I didn’t talk to him after that.

meaghan: Ha! So a lot of your story is about your first boy experience— what made you want to tell that story, you said you had wanted to for awhile

tyler: Well, mostly because I think it’s funny. Because the other half of the story is about my first STD scare (“Baby’s First STD Scare”), which is always a crowd-pleasing story. I think I wanted to tell the story not because the experience affected me so emotionally (it didn’t, really), but because it is the sort of experience that a lot of people have. I described the story to a lot of friends, and I heard the same thing: “I was so scared after I lost my virginity,” or “I immediately assumed I was pregnant.”

meaghan: yes! there is something in that storytelling, whether it’s over brunch or in a book where when you say it out loud or write it and other people say “Yes! me too!” it’s just the best feeling in the world.

tyler: This isn’t in the story, but when I was freaking over it, my father told me, “When I had sex for the first time, I was TERRIFIED.” Which is a sweet fatherly thing to hear, but also made me want to die because it was coming from MY FATHER.

meaghan: Well now you can hand this story to your children. HAHAHAHA. (God help us) Are you going to let your mom read this?

tyler: Probably not. I may eventually break down and tell her about it, but I don’t think she needs to read it. For one thing, she will figure out who the guy is!

meaghan: Ha! What about the guy?

tyler: I don’t talk to him anymore. I don’t think I talked to him much after we fooled around the one time. We’re Facebook friends!

meaghan: HAH I was just going to ask! Maybe he will buy the book.

tyler: That was why I did not post a link on Facebook!

What’s really got me today about the book is that no one can write a true book about sex. No one can get the whole story.

I’m uncomfortable with the idea of sexual truth, of the importance of telling it. For too many people, to do so would be life-threatening. I used a pseudonym on my blog from 1998-2004 for that reason — because I wanted to tell the truth as best I could without linking my offline life to it. Over time, I took back my whole name. (That’s Grant.) I’m open about more than I could have imagined I could sustain. That’s maybe brave? But there’s no way I can hold anyone to that standard. Sometimes just showing up where and how you can is the bravest thing.

The stories we are getting — almost more than we can publish but keep going — are as much the stories of writers working out sex in a kind of public as they are moments of individual discovery, regret, disarrayed memory.

The win here — not that art is about victory — is more for storytelling than for sex.

Tell us we’re good at writing, not being “brave” about fucking.

(posted in haste from a sidewalk in San Francisco)

Hi, books.

You don’t exist yet, I know it. But.

I know what you look like. You’re the same color as me (because, here’s a secret, part of me is on the cover) and you have a plain brown wrapper but not the kind that hides anything. You feel good to hold. You’re the right weight and you fit in my purse.

You are my every reading-too-much ray gun and wanting to do that myself fantasy. You are all those Cocteau Twins records laid out on the floor. You are me doing graphic design in a word processor not meant for it that no one even makes anymore. You don’t require rubber cement but you remind me of how it smells. When I run my hands over you, nothing comes off on my fingers.

You are girls who sent me zines. You are late nights reading the internet. You are the crackle of gchat but none of the messy formatting. You are sure of yourself. You are discovered in thrift stores. You are all these teenage embarrassments and all the ones I won’t write ever.

You are forever, a little bit.

Love you, you 323 of 323.

ps: We want to have a party for all of you backers. (Did you get this far?) The night of March 3, in New York. More on that once we decide exactly where it is we plan to crash. There won’t be books yet, but all of you who can make it and us.

It’s a wild Saturday morning over here at Coming & Crying HQ, which today happened to be a coffee shop in Ft. Greene where Melissa and I spent the morning scheming excitedly and finding out we hit the $10k mark (!!!), but more on that later.

I fell in love with Tao Lin’s very particular brand of hilarity at a reading at WORD, the “bookstore of my dreams,” where he read an imagined Gchat conversation between Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment (!!!)(an excerpt, I think, of his forthcoming novel, Richard Yates).

From there I found his Nerve story, “Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days,” and my affection for his very weird, painstakingly self-aware, scare quote-ridden journey towards truth (or the oftentimes more interesting just falling short of it) was very much cemented.

Having him here was a dream of ours from the beginning, and a few weeks ago, after both of us had just finished Shoplifting From American Apparel, Melissa and I found ourselves (serendipitously?) at an event for The Rumpus, where Tao was reading.

In grand literary tradition, we cornered him after a few drinks and, well, as they say, the rest is history:

meaghan: SUP tao lin!
tao: happy valentine’s day
meaghan: Eeep!
tao:  what other contributors have you gotten?
meaghan: Um, we have Lorrie Moore…
tao: liar…
meaghan: JUST KIDDING, wouldn’t that be awesome? i would “die”
tao: yeah
meaghan: (was that a good use of scare quotes?)
tao: you should ask her. it was, good job
meaghan: Because i wouldn’t actually die.
tao: yes, good job. what’s going to be on the cover
meaghan: I thought you were?
tao: sweet…i have some sexy photos…on my photobooth
meaghan: HAH, send ‘em over.
tao: it should be a girl though, to increase sales maybe
meaghan: Ha. That’s “sexist”— oh wait are you supposed to only use one ’ vs “
tao: if you’re typing in all lowercase you’re supposed to use one ‘
meaghan: Ohhh, hahahahhahaa.
tao: yeah
meaghan: So my interviewy question is— why did you ‘agree’ to ‘contribute’ to this ‘book’?
tao: stephen elliott said yes, i saw something like $6k was raised, i feel impressed that one of the editors works for tumblr, and i thought it wouldn’t be ‘excruciating’ to write since i could just write something that happened, in first-person. and i remembered something you wrote about me, when you came to my reading at WORD. You said i was weird, i think.
meaghano: Oh yes, I said that you were super weird but hilarious.
tao: i had linked your post on my blog, like 2 years ago
meaghan: i know! i was sort of starstruck.
tao: i was glad you thought the things i read were funny
meaghan: Do you mean them to be? i always wonder that.
tao: i do
meaghan: You read so deadpan and sometimes i almost feel bad for laughing. i dont think i laugh at any readings as much as i do yours.
tao: i mean for it to be funny. sweet…
meaghan: oh PHEW. Do you laugh IRL ever? Are you laughing now?
tao: Yes, rarely, sort of. No, i’m sort of grinning a little
meaghan: That’s kind of sad?
tao: i laugh ‘on the inside,’ maybe.  i grin a lot
meaghan: Ah. Are you someone who says “that’s funny,” but doesn’t laugh (like Lorrie Moore says in gate at the stairs)?
tao: yes, sometimes. claire danes says that in…forgot the movie. the one with macualey culkin’s brother
meaghan: my so-called life? i wish
tao: When is the book coming out, do you think?
meaghan: Well, fundraising closes March 1, so probably mid-to-late April?
tao: nice. what’s the longest submission being published?
meaghan: I have no idea! We don’t have all of them yet!
tao: how long is stephen elliott’s?
meaghan: Hah wouldnt you like to know!
tao: hehe…
meaghan: (I think like 3 pages? maybe 4?) (Does that make you want to make yours longer?)
tao: i don’t know….mine is maybe 10 pages actually, currently. i want to ‘dominate’ the book, jk (sort of)
meaghan: HA. That isn’t a jk
tao: hehe… i feel like tumblr and twitter are owned by the same ‘parent company’….i know they aren’t
meaghan: Ha. So back to you! Your story is sort of like- “Things I Didn’t Come Out and Say in Shoplifting From American Apparel”
tao: Yeah
meaghan: which i thought was really interesting/cool
tao: interesting
meaghan: It was very meta at times, which i always appreciate.
binky.tabby: hm, didn’t think of that, but yeah. maybe i can be the new [someone] after this. john barth?
meaghan: Which one is he again? The balloon story guy?
tao: (jk) i think that’s donald barthelme
meaghan: Oh yeah!  I was close!
tao: this one doesnt have a main thing associated with him i think
meaghan: I’m glad you knew what i meant, though. I’m feeling pretty good about this interview.
tao: me too
meaghan: Even though i was totally confusing Barth and Barthelme
tao: that’s ok, same last name ‘pretty much’
meaghan: I kinda redeemed myself with the balloon thing.
tao: yeah, that was good. i only vaguely know what you’re talking about re: balloon thing
meaghan: You should name your kid Barth Elme. Then i will truly applaud you.
tao: Sort of like ‘esme’ re Salinger. that sounds good. elme, sounds really funny
meaghan: Do you like Salinger? Seems like you might ‘hate’ him.
tao: i haven’t read him in ~5 years, seems like i would like him ‘okay’
meaghan: Wait how old are you?
tao: 26
meaghan: ‘damn’. Do you feel weird writing about ‘sex’ or is it fine? Is it easier when someone asks you to?
tao: i like doing it
meaghan: Doing It or writing about sex?
tao: hehe…both i guess. damn
meaghan: Hahahaha. Got ya! So basically your story is telling us the stuff you kind of SKIPPED if you will in S.F.A.A.— why did you skip it?
tao: yes. for that particular scene, it seemed most emotional/satisfying to end before any sexual things had happened w/ that character
meaghan: Yeah, without it the scene definitely comes off more paralyzed.
tao: also, for the book in entirety it seemed more satisfying to skip all sex things, it ‘reinforced’ the ‘calm’ mood i wanted the book to have, to some degree.
meaghan: It’s this sort of refusal for a real narrative? I sound like an asshole. Nihilistic is too extreme, but, it’s more, Here are these every day things: yelling about red shirts, sitting on benches, not talking…
tao: i think the book doesn’t have a ‘contrived’ narrative, but that seems like something outside of not having sex in the book. wait, it does have a ‘contrived’ narrative, very much so, but it’s ‘contrived’ to be ‘not contrived’ (from the perspective of ppl who expect a book to have a kind of narrative
meaghan: Right, hah— a purposeful refusal of a traditional narrative-y narrative.
tao: i feel like i said all i have to say about sex, at this point, in terms of concrete description, in my nerve.com sex story,  so that’s another reason there isn’t sex in sfaa
meaghan: Ah, your story,  “Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For Awhile.” I liked the thing about a burrito in space, by the way. That was very sweet. Not sweet in the ‘sweet’ sense—  “HEARTWARMING.” And you sure do make us work for heartwarming.
tao: oh, good re ‘heartwarming’. it seems like some corporation should donate something like $25k [to the book project].
meaghan: Yeah maybe they will! Haha. Speaking of, what do you think about self-publishing? The Future?
tao: i dont know— to sell mad units you ‘need’ distribution to bookstores, and you get that through a publisher, who has deals with distributors. You could make a lot more money selling yourself, bypassing stores, though, so i think it would work just as well, doing it yourself, financially.
meaghan: It’s just a lot more work. But it is a fun experiment / experience. Experimence!
tao: yes. damn
meaghan: I know. I am on fire. Okay, so any last words / ideas / feelings / facial expressions?
tao: thanks for having me in the book.
meaghan: Thanks for being in the book! We are super excited you are going to be!
tao: i’m excited also, thanks
meaghan: and honored, etc, that you believe in it / us! ‘maybe’?
tao: yes of course i do

Maria Diaz is a writer, professional tv watcher and tv blogger — a lady of many sharp charms and talents, and someone I met because I asked twitter for her. Turns out she lived in the same city, also spent all day on her laptop (this was San Francisco in 2008), and we knew the same internet. Though Maria is not vegan, she has had sex with vegans. That is what her story and this interview is about (and stay ‘til the end for her love poem to you all).

1:04 PM
Maria: yes, let’s do this!
mgg: wheep!
so! maria!
1:05 PM we lost you to the cold midwest. but oberlin is one of my favorite places. i have the diary i hauled all over campus when i was a ‘prospie’ sitting right on my desk right now.
have you told people there about C&C?
Maria: not yet!
mgg: it feels ‘very oberlin’ as a project
Maria: omg it’s SO oberlin
1:06 PM in my creative writing class yesterday, we had to tell an anecdote and the one thing one guy decided to tell was about very violent sex
this was the first day of class, mind you
so i think this is the right crowd for it!
mgg: i definitely got laid in the arb so.
i concur!
1:07 PM Maria: ha! the arb!
mgg: and one of our very first backers is a guy who used to have a performance art project where he blasted industrial music in the kitchen at harkness while standing in a huge tofu mixer, pouring soy milk over his body, clad only in a black apron
without oberlin, we’d be nothing!
are there hella vegans?
Maria: yes!
1:08 PM mgg: is there a vegansexual movement?
Maria: but i don’t know if the vegansexuals have a group yet
maybe it’s the “animal rights” group
and vegansexuality is their true agenda
mgg: i wonder where their agenda falls on honey
1:09 PM or on lube
Maria: only okay in oral sex?
there are vegan lubes!
mgg: i mean, i know there is vegan lube.
Maria: jinxxx!
mgg: JINX
so you are fighting fire with fire in your story
1:10 PM the subject is a guy who wrote a vegansexual manifesto
which he showed you after sex?
has he seen your piece?
Maria: he showed me after the sex, the morning after
he was very proud of his writing
1:11 PM he showed me several clips, like he was pitching me, almost
mgg: HA
BLOGGER!
Maria: EXACTLY! always be closing!
mgg: /dies
Maria: he has seen my piece because this anonymous dude who reads my blog sent it to him
trying to start a fight
mgg: oh of COURSE
Maria: but he has never contacted me
1:12 PM i thought he would since his words are so precious to him
mgg: i’m not sure what’s more wounding — the description of his sexual skillessness, or the dis on his writing
1:13 PM actually
Maria: both are bad, but his lack of skills were what did it
mgg: it’s sort of yelpy
to advance the food theme for a sex
*sec
like, the san francisco cult of yelp, which i can’t read this story without imagining
like, the way they would be all up on a restaurant (like the one where the story starts) opening w/o a liquor license
1:14 PM and the drama of that
Maria: or a place that serves foie gras
mgg: exactly
so why not review his plating technique, as it were
Maria: well, that’s part of what made me so pissed. like how dare he say that shit to me when he wasn’t even any good!?
mgg: writers!
Maria: you must avoid them
1:15 PM mgg: because you never know
san francisco was so good for providing opportunities for memoir that way
1:16 PM Maria: oh man, yes.
there’s a type you can only find there
i think this guy has moved onto an animal sanctuary
mgg: and the local writing scene was a little more brazen about how essentially you were all just reporting back on fucking one another
Maria: where he can be pure and avoid animal product cemeteries like me
1:17 PM mgg: i am sure his helio gets perfect service there
Maria: or his motorola Razr
let’s be real!
mgg: was that a bonus for you, in doing the piece? that he might see it?
1:18 PM stephen elliott tried to say that he’d never fuck someone just to write about it
i’m not in that camp, not really
but then that you can make up for awful sex by bringing a story out from it —
1:19 PM Maria: yeah, kind of
just so he could learn something?
i just didn’t want to participate in any earnest email discussions about his moral beliefs
mgg: But what about you?
Did you get anything out of it — as a lady, as a writer?
1:20 PM Maria: yes! it’s a great story, and i’m kind of in your camp, that out of any awful situation, you can at least get a story out of it
and in thinking where i was mentally that night, it was proving to myself that i could want something and get it, even if the result wasn’t amazing
sometimes a lady needs to do that
1:21 PM mgg: which most people would say is so unladylike
1:22 PM but this where i look back to patti smith and joan didion and propose, once you write at all as a woman, whether it’s about sex or not, you are taking a willful step outside of polite society
1:23 PM which is better than being in a workshop when it’s nice out?
do you have writing project plans while out there?
1:24 PM Maria: yes, i’m taking this great class called “concepts of scene” which is all about story telling
so i’ll have a lot of writing to do, just for that
this place lends itself well to writing, because there is literally nothing else to do but that, drink cheap beer and eat tofu
1:26 PM mgg: or drive to Cleveland to buy porn
thank god some college towns have a sense of history about them!
maria, where can people find you on the internet right now?
(outside of gchat)
Maria: my tumblr! which is at onesharpbroad but gchat is where i take visitors
1:27 PM like a lady does
mgg: i will pass that along.
and thank you for the story — i’m editing it now (with a submission we got that i can’t believe we got, which has phrases like “went down” and “cum” in quotes, with all sincerity.)

Tess Lynch lives out in LA, grew up in New York, can currently be found on your television starring in a Crest™ Commericial (!!!), and is one of my favorite writers on the world wide web. She’s hilarious, smart, genuine, and oftentimes delightfully, well, weird. Ya know, in a good way. A good, smart way. The best way! One of my favorite examples of the Tess Lynch Good-Weird are her much-beloved Fake Dinner Party Conversations, wherein she pretend-invites real characters into her actual home to have imaginary conversations and then writes about them.

Naturally, we thought this was the best way to introduce her:

Tess, Meaghan, William Shakespeare and Judy Blume are sitting around a conference table.

Meaghan: So, Tess, how do you feel about the ambiguity of writing for the internet? You know, considering yourself a writer, but fighting the distinction of “writer versus blogger,” creating an audience yourself as opposed to —

William Shakespeare: Bring forth my vittles, for this is a celebration that calls each son of man to dine and imbibe the finest distillation of the grapes of our labor!

Judy Blume: Yeah, where’s the dinner? Isn’t this a dinner party?

Tess: No no, it’s an interview. You guys are going to ask me questions.

William Shakespeare: But what countrywoman, who sayest thou thou art?

Tess: I’m Tess Lynch. I’m contributing to Coming & Crying.

Judy Blume: David Lynch? I’ve heard of him.

Meaghan: This is kind of what I was getting at with my question. About writing versus blogging.

Tess: It’s hard to accept the possibility of the decline of paperbacks, libraries, and dust jackets. It’s really hard. But at the same time, I think I’m in a better position because of blogging than I would be if it were just me with a scroll and a quill.

[William Shakespeare nods in appreciation.]

Tess: [cont’d] Being able to visualize your audience — and, often, you’re part of their audience, because you follow them on Tumblr or read them in The Awl or This Recording — makes you willing to open up to them in a way you can’t with print. There is, you know, a sense of community. It makes me optimistic about the validity of new media. That’s why your book is so exciting!

Judy Blume: Thank you.

Tess: I was talking to Meaghan.

Judy Blume: What book is this?

Meaghan: A non-fiction sex anthology. Actually, Judy, Tess and I both thought of you as a kind of milestone sex writer. You taught us a lot.

Judy Blume: Why, Meaghan — I’m touched.

Meaghan: Yeah, it was basically you and, you know, the instructions in our mom’s tampon boxes.

William Shakespeare: And also Othello.

Tess: That didn’t make the list.

William Shakespeare: This interview creeps at a petty pace.

Meaghan: Next one was…[shuffles notecards]…Judy, close your ears for a second.

Judy Blume: Why?

Meaghan: I feel like you’re going to be offended. Don’t be offended!

[Judy Blume earmuffs]

Meaghan: [cont’d] You used to mock the sex scenes in Forever, right?

Tess: Totally. The ski trip! But I feel like Forever was also the most honest account of sex, in a way. Judy, you can listen now. Like what’s that book’s equivalent now? I don’t think there is one. Twilight is the opposite. In sixth grade my friends and I would read parts of Forever aloud to make each other uncomfortable. But how explicit it was is so relatable.

William Shakespeare: Just like in Othello!

Tess: I think this book is brave. It’s easy to get around writing about sex, and maybe that’s what makes it awkward to read, sometimes. But it’s also the parts you skip to, dog-ear. They make you feel something. And it’s great to get the opportunity to get this volume as a real-life book, because sex is more sexy when it’s not on a computer screen.

Judy Blume: That was my thinking with Summer Sisters.

I discovered Lou the way we discovered most of our contributors: online. His Tumblr took me to his Flickr, and soon I showed him my secret blog, and we started talking excitedly about collaborating on a project like this one. As I mention below in our IM interview, his photos are honest and compassionate and beautiful— you want to be seen the way Lou sees people. There is an intimacy at work that I hope you’ll find threaded into our book.


meaghan: Hi Lou!
louobedlam: Hi meaghan!
meaghan: It’s funny we are talking on IM for your interview because I remember us IMing for hours before I met you. I had found your work on the Internet, and you mine
louobedlam: we used to IM so hard
meaghan: We did. You were very meta about it— about Getting To Know Someone Online
louobedlam: Getting to Know Someone in person is complex enough. Add in the filters of internet communication? oy veysmer.
meaghan: But then we met! IRL!
louobedlam: i picked you up from the airport. You were adorable.
meaghan: You did! I let a stranger from the Internet pick me up at the airport. (Sorry Mom!) And then you took my picture in the parking lot and I freaked out but it was a nice picture.
louobedlam: I’ve got it on my wall!
meaghan: I’ve got it on my Facebook Wall. It’s actually my Profile Picture. I think that speaks multitudes of your skillz
louobedlam: Aw. That’s awesome
meaghan: Oh yes, tell the fine ppl about your Creepy Polaroid Wall
louobedlam: thanks for putting it in that frame
meaghan: Ha, I’m just here to make you look good
louobedlam: I’ve been taking Polaroids since 1996, been putting them up on my wall about that long. Different apartments, always a wall of Polaroids.
meaghan: Wow! In 1996 I was 12. I was taking— notes in Pre-Algebra.
louobedlam: Thanks. Right now? 1154 or so.
meaghan: Damn! So you share a lot of your work online
louobedlam: online…man, that has really made me the man i am today
meaghan: Would it be fair to say that. the Internet is how most people find your work?
louobedlam: EVERYONE
meaghan: Those of us not so lucky to find ourselvesin your bedroom
louobedlam: Oh, you. Online I find models, the occasional paying gig. Most of the folks I photograph, I found on Flickr or Tumblr. Lots of good folks, lots of good friends.
meaghan: So the internet means a lot to both of us. It’s a nice springboard for meeting people and doing stuff offline, which is where the real magic is
louobedlam: as weird as it is for interpersonal communication, you sure do get to meet MORE people through it
meaghan: Because you can’t take pictures of your computer. Or you could but they would only be so interesting
louobedlam: i like the ladies.
meaghan: I’m glad we cleared that up.
louobedlam: IN CASE ANYONE WAS CONFUSED
meaghan: Dames.
louobedlam: Ladies or dames. Never girls. Never did understand how folks let “girl” just slide into the lexicon, especially folks so intent on properly framing themsevles.
meaghan: You are a stickler for language.
louobedlam: i think it’s important. Words have weight, man.
meaghan: Yes! I think that’s why we want to do this book
louobedlam: People listen to you. You are…A ROLE MODEL
meaghan: EEEP! I remember talking to you about this book a long time ago, when we first started talking. I think finding your work and so many others on flickr and tumblr, showed us all that people were doing real honest, brave work that, well, is really worth something. And! You had made a book before! (ed: Portraits of Pretty People)
louobedlam: i did! There’s definitely something more potent about a physical object.
meaghan: Yes! As photographers well know.
louobedlam: That’s the thing. I don’t know if photographers really value the physical object like they used to
meaghan: But there is nothing like a polaroid (or a wall of 1200 of them!) or hanging up a print on your wall
louobedlam: Nothing like holding the object, the art, in your hands. Being able to affect that—
meaghan: Although, as I’m sure you have experienced, that stuff can be expensive and a lot of work to print, to mail, etc…But it is worth it, right!
louobedlam: Yep, lots of hassle— and well worth it.
meaghan: I think the inherent thing we are all trying to say is, “It is worth it! Remember? This is awesome!”
louobedlam: Making something, the act of creation? there’s nothing like it. And with a physical artifact? You hold it in your hands, you get a sense of the work put in
meaghan: There is a legitimacy maybe?
louobedlam: Yeah, that’s a good word for it. If it’s physical, it exists.
meaghan: The fact that you honored it enough to bring it into the world quite literally
louobedlam: it’s real in a way 1s and 0s aren’t. Exactly.
meaghan: Although we do love 1s & 0s. It’s a complicated relationship for the internet-savvy artist… the web lets us meet all these people, share our work instantly, get support—
louobedlam: Lets us meet and interact and discover and experience, but it’s just a little bit removed from Reality.
meaghan: Indeed. Easy to sit on IM all day and forget to Make Things
louobedlam: Totally. They supplement each other, but neither should be ignored.
meaghan: We are very lucky though to have friends like us who remind each other of that, though.
louobedlam: I don’t think so. It’s not luck. We put it out there.
meaghan: Ah!
louobedlam: We actively seek the kinds of people who’d remind us of these kinds of things. We create, and that helps bring like-minded creators to us.
meaghan: I am reading this Twyla Tharp book, The Creative Habit,  and she says luck plays a role in art but you have to be prepared and be skilled and work hard to recognize when those kind of opportunities arise, and be brave enough to seize upon them.
louobedlam: Totally. You have to be ready for the opportunities.
meaghan: Hooray! Okay last thing. Let’s talk about your photography. I’ve heard you talk about it but maybe you’d be better to elaborate but, your aim is to capture a part of them- to communicate through your work, an intimate part of them or an integral part of their Self that maybe not everyone would see right away?
louobedlam: I try to take honest pictures. I take all kinds of photos now, but the ones I love, the kind I keep coming back to, are the ones where I’m attempting to get something honest, something real, from the model.
meaghan: they seem to be honest, but with a compassion. You look at them and you want to be seen that way.
louobedlam: Yeah, it’s nothing w/o the sharing. For me, sharing it is just as important— the response, how well i was able to communicate what i saw
meaghan: Right. And what about n00dz? I know you have a sort of complicated view of that. You don’t want to take pictures that people just look at because there are boobs there…
louobedlam: Yeah, that one…taking nudes, you know it will attract attention, and a very specific type of attention. Sometimes, nudity is more honest. I think with the women i shoot, it is. But sometimes it’s an excellent way to obscure— there is nudity that can be used as a decoy.
meaghan: Somewhat counter-intuitively?
louobedlam: You’re so busy staring, you don’t notice what’s going on.
meaghan: What do you want people to notice, feel when they see your pictures (nude or no)
louobedlam: i’d like them to come away having been affected- that they see something in the photo that gives them the feeling they get/grok/understand that person,
if only in the moment they were photographed
meaghan: Yes. I think that’s a lot of the reason for this book, too!
louobedlam: My take on the book— it’s trying to put a real, honest, authentic face on something that’s not often gone down those roads. It’s not often you Connect w/erotica. Because it’s poorly written, or fake, or just ridiculous. That’s not the fault of sex, it’s the fault of the writing, of the corrupt intent to titillate instead of affect.
meaghan: Yeah. It’s just different. It’s a hard thing to write about— in that you have to really be vulnerable to do it well.
louobedlam: Isn’t that true for art in general? for really good art?
meaghan: I think so! Like David Foster Wallace said,  to talk out of that part of yourself that can love rather than the part that wants to be loved.
louobedlam: Yeah, that’s a really good quote.
meaghan: *bow*
louobedlam: ahahahha
meaghan: hahahah

I have never met Katie West, but I feel intimately connected to her through her writing and photography. Time and again her work reminds me why we need to do this project. It reminds me that there are people out there doing this, people out there being brave, reporting back as they fumble through life, just like the rest of us. I interviewed her on Gchat because this is the Internet and this is what we do.

meaghan: So you are so far our only photographer AND writer contributor. I think I found you through your photography, but then soon found your writing, and loved that, too.
katiewest: i am multitalented. this is true.
meaghan: Very.
katiewest: ha!
meaghan: I think what’s pretty interesting, or amazing really, is that it’s sort of the same, whether writing or photography, it’s the same You, I tend to be affected similarly. I feel like I am encountering the same Self; a similar vulnerability.
katiewest: Yeah, I think because I use both as a sort of self expression. Though I’ve always liked writing more, but photography is easier.

meaghan: Do you feel that way, that it’s your same Self coming though? I guess it makes sense when you are being very honest in your work, when it’s more than a persona.

katiewest: I think I find writing to be more personal, for some reason. Even though I can tell and show just as much in writing as I can in a photo, it just seems more valuable to me.
meaghan: What scares you more? does anything scare you? When you hit publish do you close your eyes sometimes?
katiewest: Oh my god yes.
meaghan: hahaha ME TOO
katiewest: I keep things in my Draft folder for WEEKS sometimes before i hit publish
meaghan: What do you say to yourself before you hit post or publish or whatever it is? What keeps you going, what’s the pep talk?
katiewest: Well, usually I’ve been looking at it for weeks, changing things, rearranging things. And when I finally realize that the last couple times I’ve looked at it, I haven’t changed anything, I convince myself that it’s okay to hit publish. That maybe someone else might like it. Maybe. But I like it, and I wrote it to be shared so I should just hit publish…..*silence* Okay. Fine. *hits publish*
meaghan: i think people might be surprised to think that we DO sometimes have drafts online
katiewest: yeah, the internet is supposed to be all instant posting, no thinking, no drafts
meaghan: Yea! and as much as the internet allows for that, people certainly respond when we put a little more time, a little more of ourselves, into things. I know I am very thankful when you post a longer story. Ya know? I get excited to see that in my dashboard.
katiewest: The internet responds very intensely to people who put themselves out there onto the internet. You could be generating amazing content on the internet, but when it’s devoid of any information about the creator and of some sort of SELF then people don’t like it as much. It seems….
meaghan: They really do. Yes, I mean what’s the point of this whole democratizing of who gets to share their voice if you don’t take risks with it? and as distant and posturing and ‘clever’ a lot of internet writing can be, I think we have found that people are hungry for those risks. So, do you ever regret stuff— want to take stuff down? I know I have a few times.
katiewest: um, sometimes i’ll think about it if something is really personal and i think the person i wrote it about will realize it’s about them.
meaghan: Hahaha yeaaah.
katiewest: ha, and then i’ll usually email them and say, “hey i know that thing i just wrote seems like it’s about you. but it’s not, okay?”
meaghan: I’m sure they usually know. Haha sometimes I title things, “This is Not About You.” I kind of want to title everything i write that.
katiewest: ha, i know! Because it also happens that i’ll write something, or title a photo something and i get 5 emails asking me if that was about them, and it wasn’t about ANYONE.
meaghan: Ha. Do you ever feel like, “Okay. Here goes. I am choosing my art over this relationship.” Sometimes when i write about someone part of me feels like i am putting the nail in the coffin. Like ol’ Joan Didion said, ‘Writers are always selling somebody out.’ How do you work through that in your head?
katiewest: Ah, yes, i often feel like i’m selling the people i write about out. i’ll try to hide them, mix them up with other people, so no one can find themselves in my work, but everyone can find themselves in my work.
meaghan: But also, everyone can recognize themselves in your work, in that universal way that we are always aiming for. I reconcile that way a lot— that that somehow is worth more. But is it? I am unsure.
katiewest: But i mean, that’s what i want to write about. I want to write about things that affected me. about instances that wore me out, and broke me and that made me feel really fucking horny.
meaghan: I am very glad you want to write about that, and do. Because i think those are the things, the times when people feel most isolated—- The Things We Don’t Usually Talk About. I try to hope, or at least pretend, that they agree, that they think it’s Worth It. And when I know they won’t approve, I remind myself that my writing will always be there for me and that I can’t get that guarantee from them.
katiewest: That’s a good point. i guess it depends on who the person is and how they are. some people i know like it a lot. other people, pretend not to, but do. other people really don’t, but can still appreciate it. And look at how well people respond to Things We Don’t Usually Talk About!
meaghan: Some people like it too much, too. Ha. I had someone recently tell me he wanted to sleep with me so i would write beautifully about it. i told him that was immoral.
katiewest: ha! are you sure?
meaghan: Yes! hahahahahahaa.
katiewest: though sometimes i want to have horrible relationships just so i can write beautifully about them, so…
meaghan: Eep. I think it’s that sometimes i willingly go into things comforting myself with the idea that, even if this is hard, i want to Know.  I want to explore this, because i want to know about people and the world.
katiewest: yeah, i know what you mean. i know when i’m making mistakes, but sometimes do it anyway, just because i want to be there, want to be that girl, want to know if i can. then what do i make of myself?
meaghan: Writing’s our consolation? I guess that’s reductive.
katiewest: hmm…writing’s our no, no i don’t think it’s consolation i think writing’s our i don’t know. i want to say gift, but that sounds not right. It’s how we offer ourselves up to others. It’s how we get through ourselves and connect. We’re a bit fucked up maybe? Communicating with sex and broken hearted mumblings. Because i want to connect. I don’t want to feel alone. i want people to email me after i post something and say yes, that. i know exactly what that feels like. and i sigh and say, look at us! not alone here!
meaghan: I think that’s why writing about sex is so tied up in that, why I feel compelled to report back from the front lines so to speak. because it’s like- guys, world, look, we’re trying, and failing, and also connecting in amazing, transcendent ways, and sometimes not, and sometimes laughing and sometimes not. but we all are! I try to remind myself every time when I am trying to be brave, to remember the deeper you go, the more recognition, the chance at someone saying, Ah! Yes!
katiewest: do people email you and say, “Your work is so…so…human.”
meaghan: Sure.
katiewest: i always liked that. that somehow being human was really hard, and brave, and courageous and took balls.
meaghan: Hah it’s a sad state of affairs when “HUMAN” is this great elusive thing
katiewest: right? but so now being human is being honest and vulnerable and open? letting people reach you?
meaghan: That’s why it’s funny when people make this big thing about talking about sex, about it being so taboo, and i just want to say, THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE. THIS IS THE DRIVING FORCE OF LIFE. The question isn’t how can we talk about it so openly, it’s how can other people not?!
katiewest: it’s the original SIN, Meaghan. we’re going to HELL. and we’re LADIES.
meaghan: Sometimes when i cringe or second guess myself i just remember, I AM A PERSON. I WILL AFFRONT YOU WITH MY PERSONHOOD. My ‘humanity’ haha
katiewest: we can’t get excited about a cock and describe how it feels when it fills us.
meaghan: Eep! But yeah, people have been getting filled with cocks for millennia.
katiewest: but! you know what we do is different than just describing that, exactly, you know?
meaghan: there should be a DIALOGUE
katiewest: MORE THAN COCK
meaghan: right. it’s the cock, but it’s how you got there and what went through your mind and how you felt after
katiewest: right, like what you wrote the other day about what you were thinking about while he was on top of you, and you were looking at him, squinting wondering if you still knew him, or if you ever did. I loved that.
meaghan: *hopes he isn’t reading this* ahahaaa
katiewest: oh yeah..uhhhhh…
me: So! We have been talking about this whole Coming&Crying thing probably since our first few conversations. We both know this whole, idea of sharing yourself like that, not skipping the good parts, or the scary parts, is important, and I know you are always working to that, towards that, and in that spirit, but why do you think it should be a book?
katiewest: I think for many reasons, not all of them exactly justifiable. But it legitimizes it. Having it in print, even if we do it ourselves, proves we were right somehow. In my brain it does anyway. And I think people like print, the people who need this book like print. They like libraries and look at pictures of bookshelves on their tumblrs and long to have more themselves.
meaghan: Yeah, something about it says, hey! this is real!
katiewest: And I think it has to do with what it’s all about; it’s a way to connect. It’s a very intimate way to connect. Reading a good book on the subway feels very intimate to me. You do it alone, you do it in your own head, but you’re still connecting with something complicated and involved and possibly, possibly life-changing.

Oh, the sexual pleasure…

We love Matthew Lawrence, for lodging that phrase in our guts (and it also inspired a rather dirty betting pool re: who would document that they said it aloud in bed), for being hilarious and generous with us, and also for having a blog called Naked Pictures of Your Dad. If David Sedaris were most honest about the lousy head he’s got in his day, it would sound not even as right as this.

Here’s how I (mgg) ambushed him over email after we finally met on the Lower East Side about a week before we shot the C&C video:

mgg: I hope I didn’t terrify you when I went up to after hearing you read at Sex Worker Literati. Your piece completely killed and all of a sudden I felt possessive of you, because I had just put together which three blogs I loved were all yours. So where did the story come from?

Matthew: The story I read at Sex Worker Literati was totally 100% true. I actually didn’t even change the name of the characters until the afternoon of the reading, when it occurred to me that changing names is a key part of the creative non-fiction process, as well as legally advisable. And the guy I get the blowjob from in the story, with the mysterious cuts and the weird network of cameras and videotapes, was just such a weird, unreal person—one who ended up having a major impact on my life, in a way. So I thought I’d start with him. Plus, as far as the reading goes, he’s easy to encapsulate in a short amount of time, and it’s helpful that he had such a disturbing catchphrase.

I wrote that story for the event, partly to fit in with the theme of the evening; Jeffrey Escoffier was there talking about the history of gay porn, and Tre Xavier, a porn star, was there reading as well. But I have many, many, many awkward sex stories.

mgg: And are there writers like that you are a little over-excited about? What do you read on the internet re: storytelling?

Matthew I’m trying really hard to be super-excited about pre-internet authors again. Which sounds dumb, maybe, except that in reality it’s way easier to just zone out in front of the Google Reader for an evening, bouncing back and forth between 214 different voices who are mostly talking about things I’ll never see in person. My favorite writers online tend to be critics, or at least entertainment-focused, and they tend to have really strong opinions. Elisabeth Vincentelli (who writes theatre for the New York Post) has one of my very favorite blogs, The Determined Dilettante; in a four-sentence post about a play she hates she’ll also let you know what television actors she finds handsome, what her favorite French candy is, and what out-of-print novel she was reading the other night in the corner at the black metal show. She’s also really into ABBA, which is nice.

My two other favorite bloggers, probably, are Joe Jervis and Natalia Antonova. Joe’s been doing Joe.My.God for a million internet years now. He’s a consistently reliable source for gay news, and far less trashy than something like Towleroad, but he also has a really solid, sane voice that somehow sounds calm and collected even when he’s clearly really angry about something. Natalia’s been around for maybe half a million internet years (although she’s younger than I am, which, uggh) and her writing will have an angry feminist tone one minute, and the next she’ll be talking about her love for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s a good balance, and her views on sex work and Eastern European politics are always provocative (in a good way).

I wish I liked more sex writing online, but I’m really fussy and 90% of the stuff I find, the gay stuff anyway, is sort of this laundry list of these awful bareback hookups. It drives me nuts. Google recommended a blog to me the other day, it was called Breeding Your Filthy Spermhole or something horrible like that, and it was this guy bitching because the bottom he was barebacking (which is a whole other thing) had a shitty asshole, and he posted these gross cameraphone shots of the shit on his dick and the other guy’s pimply ass. I’m all for telling ugly sex stories on the internet (obviously) but this was so appallingly devoid of creativity. And I’m not seeing a ton of gay, creative sex writing except in really tiny patches, like the recent Manhunt/Grindr postings on Tyler Coates’ Tumblr.

But I’d rather talk about books and not be negative. My favorite book author, without question, is Muriel Spark. She’s best known for The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, which gets a bad rap mainly because the title sounds so old lady-ish, but her best books are these really short, sharp novels where she picks fights with her own characters. Her first book, The Comforters, is about a woman who can’t concentrate because she’s distracted by the clacking typewriter sounds of someone writing her story. The Ballad of Peckham Rye and Driver’s Seat are even better; brief and severe and hilarious and violent.

I’m also really into the Martin Beck series of detective novels published by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo in the sixties and seventies. Sjowall and Wahloo were husband and wife, Swedish socialists, and each book in their series is a bleak, well-plotted exercise in the futility of police work and drudgery of dealing with superiors. A murderer caught at the end of one book might show up three books later, already released from prison and living a quiet life in the country. The murderers are almost never bad guys, and, of course, the higher-ups in the police department are all bumbling jackasses.

mgg: You have an acute sense of the architectural horrors around you in your story: the split level house with carpeted go-nowhere stairs, and weird old bureaus. I don’t know any other opportunity like sex work, to get to go into those places and see what sex happens there. It’s so American. What is it like when you go into one of those situations? Are you taking mental notes when the sex goes bad, or does the story all come together after?

Matthew: Well, the house in that story was exceptionally weird, but I’ve never really thought about my writing that way. When I was a kid, my parents and I used to sometimes go to open houses on the weekends. My parents weren’t house shopping, although I was always instructed never to tell the realtors that, but it was just a good, free thing to do on Sunday afternoons. I think I was in college before I realized that everybody didn’t spend that much time snooping around other people’s homes. So, I don’t know, maybe my upbringing has something to do with it. But yeah, I guess I notice the interior architectural stuff, and now that you asked that I’m realizing that a couple of my other sex stories focus mainly on the interiors.

I’m the same way with TVs, though. If a TV is on in the room I’m completely incapable of focusing on anything else, even if the sound is off or it’s something totally boring. I once met a client who blasted—seriously blasted—the TV volume so the neighbors wouldn’t hear us. (He lived in a single-family house, mind you.) And it was this 60 Minutes report about kids dying and some prescription drug recall, and I totally almost exploded trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. And then Andy Rooney came on to do his thing, and that was worse. In a way I wished that Murder, She Wrote was still around to come on next, because that would have made it completely perfect.

mgg: The first blog of yours I came across was Mixtapes for Hookers. Can you tell us which alt.weekly’s have made you embarrassing offers for it?

Matthew: Mixtapes For Hookers will be celebrating 1,000 posts at some point in the next two weeks. I’m proud of myself for keeping it up this long (although I’ve only made about a third as many mixtapes as I should have at this point.) And, of course, everything I wrote at the beginning is completely embarrassing now. The post about wanting to fuck Terry Richardson and the post about how Lady GaGa would never amount to anything because her label was clearly marketing her the wrong way, particularly. But, you know, that’s fine, and I think that my writing’s tightened up, at least a little, since then.

Besides that, annoyingly, I’m just trying to look for a job while simultaneously trying to deal with my mortal fear of looking for jobs.

We came to writing at an earlier age, from an urge to release a scream that had stuck in our throats. Then we worked on our screams until we thought they were something someone might want to hear.

We are so excited to make our first contributor announcement: founder of The Rumpus, author of The Adderall Diaries, (Time Out New York’s Best Book of the Year for 2009!), and the man who tells me I am not allowed to read his first book because I am too young and innocent: Stephen Elliott.

I first met Stephen a few months ago when he was visiting New York on his epic “DIY book tour”, but I’d been aware of his work for a long time. He e-mailed me before he came into town asking if he could interview me for The Rumpus— he was conducting interviews of “normal” people he met in each of the 33 cities he was visiting. According to the intro of that interview, Stephen chose me because, “a few months ago for some reason I started following Meaghan O’Connell’s twitter posts.” Well, fair enough.

What he didn’t know is that I, too, was involved with 826 and had heard about his writerly poker tournaments out West, that I worked at Tumblr (still working on getting him signed up!) that I knew his old friend from San Francisco, Melissa Gira Grant, with whom I was in the early stages of developing a book project on the more complicated side of sex— a side of writing that he had always lingered in, was never afraid to work from, and had dealt with in a way that has inspired us both for a very long time.

Maybe this project would exist without Stephen, but I know that he has been generous with his encouragement, and with his own writing, in a way that has allowed me to dare to think of myself as A Real Writer through talking to me like one.

He also told me that I had to jump on any opportunity presented to me to work with Melissa Gira Grant. Many days I found myself doubting this project that thought came back to me.

We made this video the other night at the 1st Anniversary of The Rumpus— it is hard to believe it’s so young!— Melissa and I were drunk and happy and feeling so inspired listening to the readers and talking to them after and rallying everyone in support of this project. We asked him about love and writing and the more complicated parts of sex (and how it all intersects). If anyone has something of value to add to this conversation— if anyone has been having this conversation with the world, it is him. You can see the longer version here, on Vimeo.