Tonight, the man (the myth, the legend) who is responsible for our breathtaking video, Carlo deJesus, who is very talented and very nice and generally the best, posted the director’s cut.
There is a missing scene included and coloring and all sorts of good stuff. We were just trading emails about the whole process, looking back at how much our vision grew from our first sitdown, and remember how serious we learned to take ourselves, and how much luck played a role in the making of it,
It’s beautiful how it just came together. You guys put that simple post about asking for help, and i’ve never volunteered to help ‘strangers’ out for a random video job (i don’t even do paid jobs for people i don’t know), but for some reason i was eager to help out and just volunteer. I think it was partly because a few days before i responded to that post, i was talking to a friend of mine at a bar and we were talking about work and art and how things just happen when you put yourself out there. If we hadn’t had that conversation, then i doubt i would have just volunteered to help out randomly.
There isn’t much time left to our fundraising, although there is still lots of book left to make and always more coming and crying to do, right everybody? Ha!
My chest is tight; I’m thanking people and answering questions and it’s all becoming very real suddenly. I’ve said that a lot but I guess with any big project, the reality hits us in waves.
This week has been a big week for us in lots of ways, not the least of which is that we’ve gotten almost all of the stories now. Each one is a little revelation unto itself, and I am so BOWLED OVER and in awe of each of them. They are all almost too much. Once we put them together in a book— this thing will hit you like a punch in the gut. And a hug! A punch and a hug (not that I advocate that).
It’s an amazing thing, this Kickstarter deal. My friend Emily was just saying how, Wow, we completely sidestepped so many things in publishing, that we didn’t wait for anyone to give us permission, to knight us as Authors or Editors or Publishers or any of that. Which is true, there is no Man or Middle Man or any of that.
But our permission— which isn’t really permission at all, but support, and encouragement; our very ability to do this, all comes from you guys.
And that is really cool.
Um ALSO if you do not read my blog (which I can’t really imagine why not?!)(jk), Her Holiness Miranda July emailed me back (see below), and I literally screamed at work. SCREAMED.
I’m flying back to New York (this is mgg) and Meaghan and I just made this spreadsheet, like the ones we’ve got all the C&C contributions sorted in, that one day we realized we could use to chat in (I think we were giving each other a hard time about the fact that we were chatting in both gchat, which is bad enough, and a spreadsheet).
And for the next three hours or so, while I’m still airborne, we’re going to hang on this spreadsheet (insofar as one can) and write with you, our backers.
We made a prompt to make it easier:
“What thought — that you can put into words — crossed your mind the last time you came, or cried, or both? (Don’t tell us which it was.)”
You can answer completely anonymously. And if you choose a name we can call you (which can be the anonymous number Google assigns you) we can talk to you over on the chat window.
If you want to tell folks to join us, they can give us a buck and do so. (Hi, new backers.)
One rule: Like the book, and the spirit of the book, you can be as ridiculous or awkward as you want, as long as you are honest.
We know that we’d like to share this document outside this backers-only circle after we’re done with it tonight — possibly at our secret-ish post-project get together in New York this week. (Which a $1 pledge will also get you an invite to. Because we kind of want “people everywhere who have sex and have feelings” to take part in this.)
Here’s to the final 24 — !
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)
Meaghano, I may have only contributed what looks to be $1, but as my account was already negative $3.25 I will receive a whopping $35 overdraft fee. It was worth every cent!
Tonight we added a new Backer level to Kickstarter: for $10 more, you can send a book to someone who otherwise wouldn’t be able to order it.
Because last year around this time I don’t think I could have afforded to buy this book.
Because I think I had something like 15 overdraft fees in 2008.
Because we are doing this so the book can get to people like this ladybird who has my heart bursting, and because I don’t want any more overdrafts on my conscience and because the entire reason we are doing this project is to bring these stories to people who are excited to read them!
So if you have already given us more than necessary, to support the endeavor, or to make sure we met our goal— well, we did it! And now we are getting a little more romantic, a little more idealistic, because we can (literally) afford to.
One of our goals, if not our primary goal, is to reach and connect with people who are reaching back and looking to connect, just like us.
I don’t like the idea of leaving anybody out of that.
And I know Overdraft-Me would have really enjoyed these stories I spent the day reading yesterday, that gutted me and made me laugh and filled me with awe. Which, BY THE WAY are really, really wonderful, each of them! We have about 25 submissions now— almost all of them! can you believe it? we have a lot of interviews to do!- and I can say with conviction (and humility!) that we have quite a book on our hands. Some are funny and about being young, some are about learning things about ourselves, coming into them, only when we’re older; all of them are about things we may never really wrap our heads around, they are all an interrogation of sorts, and they are real and honest and individual, because that’s what sex is.
So if you’d like to share that with someone who might not otherwise be able to curl up in bed and have a few hundred revelations and heartwarms, you can give $10 more and get a book for yourself and someone else, too (or, if you already backed with extra $$, just switch to this level. you can do it! i promise. kickstarter is pretty magical that way).
Once we get some people in this backer level, we’ll put out a call for the Overdrafters to email us, and we’ll send ‘em some books, too.
BECAUSE THIS IS SO AWESOME AND IT’S HAPPENING. AND WE ONLY HAVE TIL THE 1ST!
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.
Emily Gould used to say that, but with yoga, (YOGA!) in her (on her? I never know with the Internet) blog— she and her friends would ask each other, “is the yoga was working today?” and they would say yes or no, depending how easily pissed off or enlightened they were feeling.
That’s what I say in my head lately when near-strangers start to open up to us about sex in ways they probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t just said the words “coming” and “crying” so close to each other in a sentence: “Ooh! The sex book is working!”
We went over to Kickstarter HQ last week to be interviewed for their podcast and found ourselves drinking beer and talking about how one of them [REDACTED] used to talk about porn with his dad and then there I was admitting to someone at this venerable dream-making web enterprise how i used to sneak with an old friend to watch her older brothers porn when I was a kid and then soon we were all laughing and being forthcoming in a way you usually only are with good friends. Storytelling about sex is so relieving in a way (although I am Catholic and could have 1000 conversations like this and never feel completely RELIEVED as it were), to be able to blush a little bit but remind each other that all these secret shames are nearly universal.
The next night I had dinner with A Friend From the Internet who I had never met but who was in town and particularly wonderful and we found ourselves talking for hours about relationships and sex and all that, in this old friends way, that I’m pretty sure never would have happened if it weren’t for this. To knock down that wall, well, that’s all i ever want to do.
And so now all of our contributor calls have been put out, and our deadline for stories is next Friday and so everybody is writing their way through the cold nights and joking with us about, “Is masturbation okay? I haven’t had sex in 7 months!” or, “How long can this be? I’m not even to the part about blow jobs yet!” and it is a lovely image, really, to think that everybody is hunched over their laptops in solidarity, mining old wounds and fun memories, thinking about how they felt and how they feel now about it all.
We have lots of great contributors lined up, some new rewards to kick it back into high gear (I feel so lame when I am like, Let’s kickstart this! Oh wait, that’s the name of the site! I am so lame!).
So hi secret blogfriends! We want to meet all of you and hear your stories.
My coworker today was saying how he feels bad for me, having to hear everyone’s boring sex stories and I stopped and thought, what? THIS IS MY ULTIMATE FANTASY YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.
Please everyone, tell me too much.
We definitely took a risk with the title. First it was sort of the Working Title, the joke thing we stuck in until we thought of the real one, because we knew we’d never dare call it that. But then after talking about it with enough people and laughing about it for so long, I think we grew attached and we figured shooting from the hip was sort of the name of the game here.
So yes, it is done with a wink and I think it is clear that one of the many hopes for this book, in terms of the message it communicates, is that all experiences are valid. There will be funny stories, filthy stories (if we didn’t appreciate the kind of experience you are alluding to I really don’t think we would be doing this book in the first place), awkward, sad; I hope there will be love stories. Angry stories. All of that stuff— the point being, we could sit here and talk about “ideas about women and men and sex,” or we could just honestly talk about our own experiences.
The rest of it is all abstraction and intellectualizing of something that is so individual and so complex (even when it isn’t), and it’s tempting to talk about stuff that way— really tempting (as in, I do it all the time)— but this book, if not my blog, is being done with the hope to counter all of that bullshit. Because there is something about telling your story, the whole story, that can never be invalidated. Whether you come or don’t (or laugh, or, yes cry) I think storytelling, and in this case storytelling about sex, ekes us all closer to understanding and mutual respect and compassion and a little bit further away from “typical male experiences” and “typical female.”
But yes, to answer your question, There Will Be Pounding.
”are my favorite part of all this.
Maybe because I do the same thing, maybe because, when it’s not a boy caught in a recursive loop and asking me out for coffee without really saying anything constructive, they are so often spilling over with affection or mania or just, humanity.
I joked about sex on my (main) blog before all this, sort of alluded to it, sometimes with a wink, sometimes in all caps, sometimes through the lens of a song or nostalgia or the distancing of existential drama. But I have never, at least I don’t think, really dealt with it head on. I was always a little hesitant, worried about creepy old men or held up by the thought of misleading young women.
With this project I really had to look into myself and consider whether sex was worth interrogating honestly, not just in that literary safe place, but next to my face, in my voice, all over my name in The Google :)
There is no going back now, and although terrible things could still happen (although I’m not sure what, really), I am so struck by how positive the response has been, how much people seem to need this as much as Melissa and I do. I’m amazed by the people who have said they are willing to write about it, amazed by the type of people who bring it up to me, and most profoundly, amazed by all these damn young ones who seem to be exploding with pathos and generosity and internet connections (get it?!):
Most start off like this,
ANYHOW, i had a thought last night that i thought was more than appropriate for your book….(which WHY i was thinking about your book during sex is besides me) but, i had a thought and often wondered if this was something that ALL girls go through, or is it just me. but then i realized the title of your book and thought (how it fits), maybe it’s not just me, or maybe i’m reading into it too much (or maybe i’m just rambling, now)….
Some like this,
The concept for the book is interesting, but the bigger concept of a piece of media that you just put out there (share) and say “Hey, who’s interested?” and we say “Sure, I like that this much,” and that’s the WHOLE exchange, is fucking rad. So I’d probably have pledged even if you’d promised a book about goats (maybe next time?). Getting a book about sex is just icing on the cake.
And then some mean everything, everything, everything:
Dear Meaghan,
This is why I contributed to your book project:
“Sometimes I wonder, what would someone who had someone that loved them do? Do people in love wash their sheets a lot? Is that a way I can be better? Should I fold my laundry at the laundromat and then I will be better? If I was a Real Person would I have some backup toothbrushes in a drawer somewhere? Do Good People never have crappy underwear they only wear when they haven’t done laundry, and oh, jesus, how do you hide all these things from people if you want them to love you?”
This paragraph destroyed me. What you describe has been for years my deepest, darkest shame. This is a loop that plays in my head on a regular basis, wearing me out. I even used the term Real Person! As if I’m somehow half-formed because I can’t keep my house from getting messy, or shave my legs all the time, or not run out of toilet paper, or keep up with my checkbook, or the literally thousands of other ways in which I feel like I’m failing as a human being. And yes, I do my best to hide these failings, these obvious missing pieces, because why would anyone love someone who comes up so short of Good?
I am surprised (more often recently b/c of tumblr) by coming across my own thoughts in the writing of people trying to be honest, but reading this went beyond surprise into shock. It was such a jolt that I had to turn away from the computer and sob into my hands for a little while. When it was over, when I got my breath back, I realized knowing that I don’t have a monopoly on this little pocket of crazy is a giant [there should be another word here that is bigger than giant — like gargantuan! — but they all sound ridiculous and flowery] relief.
You probably get dozens of emails every day from women (and men! but I’d bet mostly women) saying thank you for writing and being honest and admitting that you’re afraid and being afraid but doing it anyway, so I will just add mine: Thank you.
One more thing: I make $300 a week. So why am I giving you 10% of that? One, I don’t get to help make someone’s dream a reality every day. And two, not feeling alone is worth every cent I’ll ever have.