9.08.2005

the web is made from milk


FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 02 2005 5:24 PM
i have tan lines for the first time in 4 years. i think i reallllly miss my friend chloe, to the max. i spent a week with the family it was pleasent as we were at the ocean. on the 10 hour ride home i saw a convoy of "military police" with things like "lootbusters", "free trip to louisianna", "deserst storm - new storm" and all that lovely american killing machine horror written on the sides of them. and these people were proud. for a moment i thought "oh look finally they are going to get some food and water and help to those poor people . . ." then i realized that those trucks didnt have food in them , only guns.

-Quinne, one of the Suicide Girls. She's 21. Her MOST HUMBLING MOMENT: this is an everyday event people. Her CURRENT CRUSH: not doing the laundry, and given her FAVORITE BOOKS: harry fucking potter, into the great wide open, lolita, politics of extacy, geek love, the davini code, the perks of being a wallflower, she's not likely to come by this site any time soon (sigh). Check out her page, though - her journal is undoubtedly a rare find in the world of erotica... a living, breathing, fragile thingie. Not only the above, but august 24th, rocks. I am goign to wade into the comments and see whats up there. Obviously if I had boobs, this site would get way more traffic.

There are certain blogs and journals and letters and zines which - despite it all - read so "artless" (yet obviously Quinne knows a thing or twelve about the arts of seduction) that the writer in me immediatedly seizes wistfully upon them. Not even as material, just out of that lost innocence (again, lets look at Quinne's eyes up there) that writers, with experience, lose. I dont know how many times I have commented to friends who think they cant write and largely dont, "I love this, you should write a book", which of course, if they did, would murder exactly what I love in their writing, that unpractised occasionality.

But back to Quinne. What's she doing on the cover of the new issue of FENCE, announcing the likes of Carla Harryman to the world?

Rebecca Wolff, Fence's editor:

"Tits and giggles, really, when it comes right down to it, and perhaps more tits than giggles. Metaphorically speaking, it's tits that make us want to buy something, whether it be a journal or a car or a handbag or a sweater for a baby. If tits can be made to stand in for the quotient of glamour, or the promise of effulgence, or the metronomic catapult of image saturation: one eye on the tit back at the tit back at your eye. Tits equals extra. Tits equals vibration. Tits equals fiction! Tits equals valley and leverage, glen and demonstration. Tits equals hot food for the rest of your life. Quinne's tits, god love her, are exceptionally big and pretty, like her eyes; perhaps someday she will feed a baby with their milk, if she has not already.
What is a tit, really? As a woman entering her eighth heavenly month of breastfeeding, happy as all get-out to be plumping up my Margot, an eighteen-pounder built of nothing, so far, but the milk from my own considerably smaller, considerably older tits, I am currently feeling even more especially fond of tits than usual. Margot has an entirely unconflicted relationship to my tits: When she's hungry she wants them; she cries out; they are delivered to her. So why not, I thought, give the people what they can also be understood to want. It is a more than slightly ironic comment on my own initial promise to make Fence "visually appealing and desirable as a consumer product" (see my 2000 interview on bookmouth.com).
For all of these reasons I am happy to sport these nice, round, probably warm tits on the cover of this special double-fat summer-fiction issue of Fence. Thanks, Quinne!"

A year ago, I heard about the Suicide Girls, and checked out the site. I initially thought it was simply a new demographic being tapped. I promptly forgot about it. This afternoon, more than a lil bored, I visited dqpb and linked over to FENCE which is linked to (for the obvios reasons) Suicide Girls. Its a fascinating site to explore.

The women themselves, how they are presented, how they present themselves, the actual infrastructure/navigation of the site, what it promises, its apparent delivery of some of those promises (for instance, both male and female paying members post blogs and use it apparently like friendster, but they pay for the privlege of doing so on the suicidegirls domain). What is so fascinating is it so clearly both is/isn't about sex. For once, there is a website where sexuality is folded back into the culture at large, rather than being completely segmented off and desiccated. Not to mention idolize. Is this a "minor erotica" a la Deleuze?

Like me, maybe you're skeptical. And maybe curious too. Not to mention it makes me nostalgic for my days of peroxide, fishnets, and jumping up and down to shitty-ass thunderous loud punk rock. Again, I'm looking at the 2nd word of the phrase "literary community" and thinking - really? But yes, really. Old friends of mine still active in the punk community have changed roles - like it or not, they are the professors and police and publicists and politicians of that scene now, they love it, but that it changes relentlessly, it recedes - like one of my favorite characters in Dazed and Confused says - "I keep getting older, but they always stay the same age." Once you get over the typical male "perpetual youth" fantasy, there's a melancholy, there, an estrangement - a progressive tweaking of perspective - impossible to hide from. Think of the long, diminishing hallways in Expressionist German cinema. And, among writers, who hasnt felt the gulf of the very lack of shared adolescence, the gulf of having grown up apart from this whole
art scene, and hence a somewhat awkward, no very awkward, often, weighting of the scene towards the adult, or the very childish, the acting out to prove we're not adult stuff that, come to think of it, started seeping in exactly when? College? HS? But we are, we are, what to do about it, adults. Lets all get mature together and raise some kids, start a company, build offices, carports, homes.

I really would get more comments if I had a rippling six pack and/or "nice, round, probably warm" tits. Quinne averages 30-40 per post. PLUS email. but she's still all alone (sigh).

How fucking familair.

16 Comments:

Blogger Kyle said...

is anyone a member of this site? i wonder if the member's photos are as interesting, as ellusive, as the one above. in this culture, the tendency towards the explicit must be hard to buck. remove the arms, and you have, what, nipples? who really needs to see nipples? hide them, tease us with their nearness, and then you have me. absurd little nipples of the world, sometimes its hotter when you stay hidden!

5:37 PM  
Blogger frank said...

you are somewhat insane. she however is mildly beguiling. i too was sort of amused when suicide girls came on-line; the proliferation of porn subgenres; but i too have had that dazed and confused quote in my head of late due to the annual fall return of coeds

5:37 PM  
Blogger Boulder Fringe said...

Suicide Girls is pretty damn interesting. I played around some tonight, at yr instigation. Comments (at least on Quinne's journal) are mostly, "yes I agree" or "no I don't", but the nos tend to be gentle. I link hopped for a while and it seems to be a collection of pretty nice people, talking about their lives a bit...interacting surfaces, maybe, with the addition of having access to erotic pictures of one another. All the comments I read tend to be encouraging, either "you look great" or "I hope you're feeling better/that problem you had worked out/etc." and it's clear that the commenters don't actually know the people who're writing the journals they're commenting on. It's -friendly-, it's -human-. I'm crazy impressed. It gives me hope for the world.

Why don't we all start posting our own pinup shots? We're cute. Naked Poets. Keats in the cleavage, Balzac in the...well, Balzac is really enough on his own.

9:49 PM  
Blogger artifact reading series said...

hmmm...connie has a subscription & I think she actually did some suicide girls shoots at one time. you could ask her about it.

for me, I've seen enough naked poets & that's haunting enough. no need for pictures.

11:37 PM  
Blogger Boulder Fringe said...

Cool. Would you kick me her email privately?

Hehehe. I go the other way, I'm haunted by the poets who've seen me naked.

7:58 AM  
Blogger Dylan Hock said...

Yes! Thank you sara! I dig seeing beautiful women as much as the next person, Kyle, but when's the next post? I keep checking and I keep seeing nice tits but really just wondering when I'm going to read the next curious bit by my friend kyle. Right on with sara's comments! I feel the same, fuck Fence, I'd hope they'd had more sensibility. Maybe they thought it would be fun to use tits like everyone else to sell their shit, but come on, it's fucking everywhere already. Like The Roots said, Pussy Galore--"sex control America." I, for on, do have to admit, love when poets get naked in public, because no matter what, it takes guts and loosens things up, even if they're doing it for exhibitionism, it still makes me laugh. So, I think it would be hilarious if folks posted their "ginsberg and corso" wacky pictures in silly poses. I'd laugh my ass off. Picture Jim in a chaise lounger with some chiffon draped over his midsection, looking like he's trying to write his next poem. I think I'd piss my pants! Love you guys.

Dylan

PS: Maybe I should send, just a nipple for Kyle?

9:48 AM  
Blogger Kyle said...

yes, explanations overdue.

2:17 PM  
Blogger Kyle said...

larsen, i gotta say, it does look like fence is pretty desperate here. as any good pobre knows, when you pay so much, and try so hard, to get that circulation, the compromoises are gonna start adding up. oh sweet irony of a high class purveyor of challenging lit. but this lil dumbass doesnt even read ya.

seriously, this si the maybe second time i've even been to their website.

and i am a dumbass when it comes to this stuff - i dont mean that ironically. i know jack about contemporayr poetry once we leave the little world of my friends. which is i dont teach - or, anymore - preach about it. tempting though, non, ma frere?

ha ha, i kid you. eet ees a joke, nothing more. bon nuit.

k

5:53 PM  
Blogger Kyle said...

the more complex part is i am not sure i care jack about 99% of contemporary lit. THAT is one thing i haven't even blogged on, secret too shameful, too vexxing, to air.

5:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sex does sell. But sex is not what is always being sold. I'm guessing there's an article about the Suicide Girls inside the magazine right? If this is the case, I don't really know what a person would expect to see on the cover of a magazine that is doing a piece on The Suicide Girls. Them sitting around a table eating cupcakes (though also very sexy I suppose)? This is what they are known for. And sure, what Sara is saying (and very nicely put by the by) re: the selling of a product via its connection to "tits" is seemingly true. But other things are occuring as well. Many things are happening simultaneously. Context is much more relevant here than I think is being stated. Is Kyle challenging this circumstance by keeping his post running with a picture of the article? Surely it is paying off, since it keeps me coming back to see the cover again.

Ultimately, it sounds to me like women who are attempting to be in control of their sexual promotion/futures are being told once again to put the clothes back on. Certainly they had a say in their usage on the cover no? If this is the case, it looks like people are just finding another way to get them covered up, just attack the magazine not the girls.

Unless of course the magazine has only used the image unquestioned by the Suicide Girls and inside this issue there is no referenc eto them. Then it's a bit strange to say the least.

B

8:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not without mentioning the elephant in the room being that The Suicide Girls sell images of their bodies. Radically re-contextualized for sure, but I think Fence including a covered photo of one of the girls palees in comparison, no?

8:02 AM  
Blogger Kyle said...

bob, strangely enough, there is no work on the suicide girls inside. just the photo. hence the (intended?) controversary. and of course, what exactly constitutes the line btwn sex and sexism, and says who?

12:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's no piece about the Suicide Girls? That is strange. And you can use HTML anywhere on these things it seems?

I think the "who" decides falls simultaneously on the partcipant(s) in the act and the participants in the sustaining of the context within which this act takes place: I.E. does the participant have a choice? In plain terms: the naked girl and the context in which the naked girl is in fact naked. It's a tightrope, but one worth traversing I think. But again (I'm sure I've said or wanted to say this before) I think just talking to real people eleviates some of the confusion. Talking with a strippper, or a prostitute, or any other person in socially established "compromised positions" elucidates what we're talking about. Just ask.

i think in many cases the context is mostly to blame> I wouldnt do this if I had money etc... Which is interesting because something like the Suicide GIrls is manipulating or taking back the power of a trade where women's access to power is highly questionable. Who's in charge? The pimp, pimped, or consumer? Or are each pimping one another in a very real way?

5:52 PM  
Blogger Kyle said...

thats the way. listening to the subaltern. and watchign the exchanges, the pimped out pimp being pimped here and pimping there. thats a recognizable reality. also recognizable is that we are at 17 comments and its because sex sells even here, so i am not going to criticize fence too hard, i think its out in the open they did it for the money and attention.

but me, i did it cuz of the boobs. and the arms. and the eyes above them. and the piercings dont hurt.

11:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Word.

Arm Leg Leg Arm Head. You what that spells....

6:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

not sure why you have nothing better to do then talk about me. get a life... seriously

4:43 PM  

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