You Say I'm Crazy? I Got Your Crazy.

The new Britney Spears video is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever seen. I know, I know, "why did you watch it?!? why are you even talking about it?!?!" But I think that it is actually notably stupid, like, this is what the third wave would look like if we all got together and listened to Peaches all night and drank like twelve Sparks apiece and then instead of going out for ill-advised tattoos in the morning we all went shopping for wigs and lobotomies. Like, why do you keep straddling him if he's such a douche? Why does your kitchen wallpaper have "Womanizer" all over it? Why are the eggs square??? OH MY GOD BRITNEY! WATCH THE ROAD! 

I kind of love the dude's acting skills though. He is so clearly thinking, "this is a real step up from community theater! Next stop: Godspell!" 

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

TODAY IS THE DAY

Read the last panel of this comic.

Now, tell yourself I should not be saying those precise words every day of my life.

That's right! You can't! Because it is true - I should be.

Additional Fact: every time I think about posting a link to this blog on Facebook, I have this exact conversation in my own personal head.

There really is no point to my posting these things. You know, I JUST WANT TO SHARE.

Best! Heist! EVER! (Almost.)

Leaving aside, for the moment, the pun-heavy "that's what she said" style of this article, I am disappointed to note that the two "thugs" who robbed a Canadian sex toy store did not take any of the Hitachis.

How can you pull a vibrator heist and not steal any Hitachis?

Dudes*, your girlfriends are going to be so pissed.

* The thieves' gender is not specified in the article! I'm just assuming that they are guys. Why? Because they have bad taste in vibrators. Also, I'm a sexist.

Satanic Incest Dinosaurs, or: How I Spent My Childhood

You know, we can spend all day talking about "recaps" versus "reviews," and adults reading YA lit, and nostalgia, and triviablogging, and whether those are good things or just a sign of how our generation has infantilized itself. OR - and this is the preferred option, here - we can just celebrate the fact that I was not making any of this up! 

I loved Christopher Pike's books when I was a pre-teen. I passed them around to all the girls that I knew, and they loved them, too. My mother was horrified. I was such a strong reader! Why was I wasting my intelligence? Were these books possibly Satanic? (Mom loves church. So much, Mom loves church. I'm actually thinking of handing out a brief pamphlet to everyone in my life to explain how I came to be, and it will read "CHURCH MOM + BOOZE DAD = THIS." The rest of it will just be pictures of naughty Catholic schoolgirls.) I didn't care. They were about sex, and death, and nobody was going to tell me anything about these subjects, so I had to find what I could.  

Most of my Christopher Pike memories concern reading in the backseat of a hot car, which paused periodically so that my brother could throw up (the boy had a legendarily bad relationship with motor transport; on long drives, we actually resorted to doping him until he fell asleep, so that he wouldn't leave a trail of spew everywhere we went). Something about the heat and the motion and the smell of puke made all of these memories feel hazy and indistinct, like fever dreams, and I could not ever be sure that I was remembering the books correctly. So it is actually reassuring, in many ways, to click through to a recap of Scavenger Hunt and read this: 

Cessy and Davey are actually part of an ancient race of dinosaurs that developed intelligence and found a way to gain immortality after surviving the dinosaur holocaust.

Yes! They were! Dinosaurs who fed on human sacrifice! They also re-animated a dude's dead best friend and disguised him as his teacher for purposes which remain unclear! They were also twins, and they made out! WITH EACH OTHER!!!!! God, I'm so glad I didn't just come up with this. 

There's actually a lot of incest in the Pike books, which I had mercifully forgotten. Also, lots of New Age stuff about ancient astronauts and interdimensional wisdom-bringing gurus (who are inevitably Indian, despite being interdimensional) and walk-ins. I was clicking around last night, and apparently it's kind of a big deal that no-one has ever seen a photo of Christopher Pike or learned anything about him, but I honestly think that, if he exists, he's one of those dudes who wears a quartz crystal around his neck and believes himself to be an alien. Which, if so, his higher wisdom would seem to be kind of incompatible with all the DIRTY TEEN SEX in his novels! 

Did you know that there is a Pike book (Die Softly) in which two cheerleaders have repeated threesomes with a quarterback and then kill him by forcing him to take cocaine? They tie him to a tree and shove it up his nose, I think! They are both super popular at school because they sell cocaine laced cookies at the bake sales. I blame this book for my long-held belief that (a) it was possible to take cocaine in cookie form, and (b) this was the only safe way to do it, because if you put it up your nose, you would instantly die. 

Anyway, I am thrilled to note that Like Pike will soon be covering Whisper of Death, which was the first Pike book I read, and is still in many ways my favorite. In Whisper of Death, a girl fools around with her boyfriend and quickly finds herself in need of a safe and legal abortion, but when she and her dude return from the clinic, they find that their pleasant bedroom community has been transformed into an eerie ghost town, from which there is no escape, and in which they (and the handful of randomly selected teenagers which comprise the town's entire population) have all been sentenced to die grisly coincidental deaths which mirror some unpopular chick's book of extremely violent fairy tales. This is because the unpopular chick died last year, because no-one liked her, and also she was reincarnated in the form of Abortion Chick's untimely fetus. I mean, damn, I sympathize, but don't you think people would have liked her better had she not been plotting to cut them in half via witchcraft? Anyway, the only way for the girl to save her friends is to travel back in time and die mid-abort. Because I guess having the witchcraft child wasn't an option. 

It occurs to me now that Whisper of Death was the first thing that got me and my friends talking about abortion. Yes, it was gory (the goriest Pike book I can remember, aside from Monster, in which space bacteria infested people's brains and made them into cannibals) but the thing that stuck with us was the pregnancy. It also occurs to me that we learned about abortion from a book which told us actually having one would sentence you to a deadly netherworld, but, you know. Sex ed is rarely perfect. 

Good Things To Think About When You're Bummed: All-Sarah Edition

1. Camille Paglia is still hilariously crazy.

On Sarah Palin's speech patterns:

As a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.

Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge.

2. BUST is still hilariously clueless.

On Sarah Palin:

Just imagine for a moment that Palin was on our side. Imagine that she was pro-choice, pro-environment, and all the rest of it. Now how excited would you be that we had a woman running for the highest political office who could raise 5 kids and govern a state at the same time? Who was some sort of Annie Oakley, moose-wrestling frontierswoman? And who could give a speech like nobody’s business? I, for one, would be thrilled... She’s a mother, she’s pretty she wears skirts! All of that put me on her side.

3. Sarah Haskins is still (intentionally) hilarious.

Let's ride the euphemism train to shit town!

They're Selling Postcards Of The Hanging: Max Hardcore & The Business Of Abuse

Yesterday, I tried to write a post about this incident, in which a girl (on my street) was raped in a subway station while the man working the token booth watched. I tried to talk about this incident in the context of my own rape, and the prevalence of rape, and the context of our culture, in which rape is persistently either trivialized and eroticized or swept under the rug. I tried to argue that watching a woman get raped in front of you and trivializing or ignoring the widespread presence of rape in our society are not ultimately that different, in that both reactions essentially give rapists a free pass.

Unfortunately, as often happens, I got mad, and the writing got messy. I also got pretty messy, by the end, and I learned that the "save" button is dangerously close to the "publish" button, and that the "dear God, get this off Google Reader" button does not exist. I'd really rather not tell you guys about my experience of sexual assault, right now or ever, because I am not a precious little flower, and my personal experience is not the point. The point is that it happens to many women, and it is considered acceptable to dismiss or make fun of that fact.

So, let's not talk about me. Let's talk about Max Hardcore. He's a porn director, producer, and "actor" (that last word is HIGHLY iffy, in his case) who was recently sentenced to 46 months in prison for "obscenity." Unfortunately, this means that some folks - including folks at Gawker and Salon - are referring to him as a "first-amendment martyr."

Now, I've done some time in proximity to the porn industry. I know about Max Hardcore. I know the men who like Max Hardcore. I've heard those men talk about why they like him. And before we start talking about the terrible things that have been done to Max Hardcore - before we start talking about his fucking martyrdom - I think it behooves us to talk about what Max Hardcore has done.

Susannah Breslin, in her excellent post on the subject, points to a Hardcore fan's list (not linking here, because I can't visit it right now) of "extreme scenes" he's done. I encourage you to read it. See how far you can make it down the list. Here, I'll give you some highlights, which I copied last night:

* Pamela Dee; In 1992, Little sent performer Pamela Dee to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank "after she suffered vaginal hemmhoraging during a taping," writes Nick Ravo in the 2/98 ICON magazine. Dee, a writer in Reno, Nevada told Ravo that Paul came up behind her and, without warning, rammed his fist into her vagina. "I never heard of anything like that being done to anyone before. I felt ripped open... He could kill someone - he should be behind bars... he really screwed me up."

* Ryan: She is pissed on and anally raped in her scene. Matt wrote in his review for the film. "severely mouth rapes her. Man what a segment that was. She begs for him to slow up or stop and is definitely crying in agony! That only infuriates him more along with her wiping away/spitting saliva in disgust and he pounds harder into her mouth leaning backwards on his chair." I've watched this scene and the girl is in no way faking it, she is crying and begging Max to stop. "Can't you take your prick out." She cries to Max, he keeps saying, "A little bit longer," while continuing to pump away.

* Melody Love pisses onto ground for Max. "after the normal start suddenly the music wells up and overlays the human voices and at this point Max tries to anal her. She's pushing him away and obviously saying no with her face contorted in apparent agony (facially she's not too attractive anyway but this makes her look really ugly). He holds her down and continues anyway, at one stage choking her. She seems to appeal to the cameraguy but of course he just continues videotaping. Then Max goes back to vaginal sex and the music dies down and is replaced by normal human noises." - Patrick Riley.

* Olivia; Actress Olivia claimed that she was coerced into sex during this shoot. All copies of this film were pulled. "After a while he tries to get her to do an ass to mouth and she won't do it. She says "no no no no no". Max sort of pushes her mouth towards his cock, but she resists. She then looks up at him and at the camera man, then gives in and does the ass to mouth. It's pretty compelling to watch. I wouldn't say they forced her to do it, but I think they made it clear that she should. I would think she would have known beforehand that ass to mouth was part of the deal but who knows. There's more to the story here. Later in the scene, Max has her upside down and he's forcing his cock down her throat. After a few minutes of this, she tries to get up and says "that's it, I've had enough." But Max just keeps going. I have to admit, that was a bit distrubing. Actually, quite distrubing. Max ignored her when she said she wanted the scene to stop. That's just wrong. The only other notable part of the scene is when she says something like "god, I'm such a whore" and looks off the set at the camera people as if she's shocked at what she's doing." - bofnyc. Max also pissed on Olivia's face during the scene. Some of which goes up her nose.

Let us be clear here: Max Hardcore is a rapist. He rapes sex workers, who are notably less protected from rape than other women, but that does not in any way lessen the seriousness of his crime. In fact, since those women have less access to legal recourse - remember, we are operating within a justice system where proving a woman is a "slut" can get you off the hook, and monetary exchange or contractual agreement stands in for consent, regardless of whether the sex worker consented to the specific acts which took place in the transaction - it makes his crime greater. He is a rapist, and he is in jail, and it is acceptable to be happy about that.

It is also acceptable to advocate banning Max Hardcore's work on the basis that he is selling authentic footage of rape and abuse, and must commit acts of rape and abuse in order to produce the footage. This is the same argument that we've used to ban child porn and snuff films, and it is not incompatible with a pro-sex or pro-porn viewpoint. To argue that Max is a victim of prejudice against sex work is to ignore the fact that, in his films, he aims to degrade the actresses (not their "characters," but the actresses themselves) specifically because they are sex workers - "whores," in his preferred language, who are "stupid" for agreeing to do the scenes and are therefore "get[ting] what they deserve." Max Hardcore is not a victim of anti-sex-worker prejudice; he actively perpetuates it. Women have the right to have sex when they choose, and in the ways that they choose, and that freedom does not end once a woman enters the sex industry. People have been working for decades to make porn safe and fun and sexy for women - those who consume it and those who make it - and getting people like Max Hardcore out of the business is essential to the success of that project.

It is not acceptable to make like Glenn Greenwald and get all OMG WTF WHAT ABOUT TEH ABU GHRAIBS. As if people who object to Max Hardcore don't care about Abu Ghraib. We do. We care precisely because we believe that torture and forced sexual humiliation are unacceptable. We do not believe that it is any MORE acceptable to torture an American female sex worker than it is to torture a Middle Eastern man.

It is not acceptable to refer to Max Hardcore's films as merely "distasteful," without addressing the fact that Max Hardcore's work rests on the infliction of severe and unfaked pain, and sometimes on rape. It is unconscionable to say, as Greenwald does, that "there was no suggestion that any serious violence was ever inflicted or that the adult actors in the film were anything other than completely consensual." Olivia's rape is on record. The tapes were pulled, which is as close to a public admission of guilt as one can get. Pamela Dee's vaginal hemorrhage is, likewise, a matter of public knowledge. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence from within the industry to support the fact that, with Hardcore, the pain is real and there is no safeword. Any journalist who makes Greenwald's argument, or one like it, is either bending the facts to make a point, or else publishing his work without checking to make sure that his article is factually correct. In either case, such a journalist is unprofessional, if not downright dishonest.

Yes, obscenity laws are bad. They use definitions which are broad and subjective, they criminalize sex no matter what level of consent is involved, they are selectively enforced, and they can very easily be used to punish folks who are already marginalized, such as sex workers and queers. Andrea Fucking DWORKIN didn't support obscenity laws. So we can talk about obscenity laws, and we can talk about freedom of speech, but one thing we cannot do, if we want to be honest and accurate, is to argue that Max Hardcore is anything other than a dangerous criminal. Max Hardcore went to jail for obscenity; Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion. Neither one was convicted for his most severe crime, but both were bad men who got caught.

Let's Make Love & Listen To Death From Above: Or, How I Stopped Worrying & Learned To Love Michael Cera

Hey, you know what the world needs? A movie about a sensitive dude who hooks up with a sassy chick while listening to some of today's hottest indie bands! Well, fortunately for the sensitive and/or sassy among us, such a film has been released, and it promises to redefine love for our generation. I speak, of course, of Garden State.

Just kidding! I meant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Oh, no, wait, that's not it. Juno?

Closer... but no, still not right. No, I am speaking of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - a movie that I have not seen, but that is so familiar to me already that I feel confident I can transcribe the entirety of its dialogue in five minutes:

NICK: Sensitive sensitive sensitive.
NORAH: Sassy sassy sassy.
NICK: Say, do you enjoy the music of [band]?
NORAH: I surely do - as does our intended audience! We have quite the connection.
NICK: Let's fuck and listen to [band] together.
AUDIENCE: Awwwww. Yay!
***END CREDITS***

Much as I complain about such movies, I am beginning to suspect that I will, at some point, want to see Nick and Norah, for reasons which I shall describe thusly: Michael Fucking Cera.

Michael Cera! He is so charming! At times, it seems that the entire genre of quirky indie young adult rom-com – in which the boys are all shy blushing ingénues pursued by quirky girl-powered ladies who say things like “I refuse to be the goodie bag at your pity party” – has been invented merely so that Michael Cera might exist. He blushes; he stammers; he casts his eyes down in meek bewilderment. He's less like a human male than he is like a gentle forest creature, stranded in our urban landscape and longing for the shelter of the woods. To see Michael Cera is to want to tell Michael Cera to put on a warmer sweater, lest Michael Cera catch his death of cold. You cannot resist him. In fact, you should not try.

Yes, Cera's screen persona - which seems fairly inalterable, a routine he carts along from one role to the next - does smack of calculation. Yes, there's something cheap about how neatly he's been positioned: he's a teddy bear for girls and a nonthreatening viewer surrogate for boys, an actor who manages to be vaguely "cool" without being inaccessible to the kids who shop at Hot Topic. Yes, he knows precisely what he's doing, and his stuttering, mumbling humility is most likely an act. You know what Michael Cera says to that?

Awwwww, look at him in his little jacket!

That's right: Michael Cera says nothing. Any questions about Michael Cera's integrity, any doubts as to his range, any suggestions that he might in fact be some sort of ageless android manchild designed to incapacitate the American public with sheer nonthreatening cuteness, thereby rendering them helpless in the face of the forthcoming alien invasion - any objections to Cera whatsoever - will be met with a blinding onslaught of sheer adorableness.

Awwwww, with the hoodie and the guitar and OH MY GOD I BET HE'S WRITING A SONG ABOUT LOVE AND DREAMS.

Give into it, people. Michael Cera has reached the age of his majority, and there is nothing you or I or anyone can do to stop him. If you date boys, get ready to compare them to Michael Cera; if you are a boy, get ready to come up short. There is no need for this to be painful. After all, no matter how inadequate you or your loved ones are, you will always have before you an exemplar of perfect indie-branded romance, in the form of the Almighty Cera and his Infinite Playlist.

Together, now: Awwwwwwwww.

New Feature: Slightly Insane Media Studies

I am not smoking! Well: I'm not smoking much. This is very exciting, for several reasons, the chief of which is that I've spent the entire day straddling some sort of barbed-wire fence between panic and irritation. (That is what we call a metaphor, and it is one of many things that you cannot do well when you are trying to overcome your weird emotional/physical dependency on something that makes you smelly and unattractive and also might kill you.) Yes, lots of things are hard when you do not smoke: talking, working, and not whining constantly about how much you want a cigarette would be my top three. But also writing, it turns out, is pretty hard! Which is why it is so, so gratifying when someone else manages to sum up - in only one sentence! - that one thing you just keep bitching about re: popular culture but can't quite communicate in a clear or succinct fashion (do you ever communicate in a clear or succinct fashion, Sara? probably not!) and that you just keep trying to communicate, awkwardly, thereby wasting endless time and space and making everyone think you are kind of a sour nag. Are you ready for the sentence? Here it is!

Thank God we have another film about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of a fucked-up straight white guy.
- Dana Stevens, first sentence in her review of Choke.

Ha ha ha, AWESOME. But can she keep it up? Let's check in with the second sentence:

For a moment there, I had almost forgotten to keep such dudes at the forefront of my concerns.
- Dana Stevens, second sentence in her review of Choke.

Oh, snap!

It's not that I don't care about FUSWGs. I do! They are a part of our human community. Some of them are quite talented. It's just that these stories dominate the landscape, in a way that often makes me feel that other perspectives aren't valued, and at a certain point my relationship to the culture at large starts to feel like hanging out with a dude who has to tell me everything about everything and quite blithely and confidently cuts me off when I start to speak. At some point, my willingness to listen wears thin, and I excuse myself so that I can step outside and smoke.

I should note that this sentence, for me, really hangs on the phrase "unintentional cruelties." Always, in these stories, the FUSWG in question hurts someone - typically a girl - either through sheer doltishness and immaturity, or because he actually does believe that he matters more than she does, that he can and should be cruel or disrespectful or dishonest, because it's fun, and because he can get away with it. The "sensitive," navel-gazing aspect of the story, and the eventual redemption, are supposed to legitimize this: I know I'm an asshole, but I just can't help myself. This is a common line, and it wearies me. If you don't want to be an asshole, there are plenty of ways to avoid it - like, say, listening to the women in your life when they tell you how they want to be treated, or challenging your own belief that respecting women's boundaries is "emasculating." Also, you might not want to surround yourself with narratives that legitimize asshole behavior - although, as previously noted, they will be difficult to avoid.  

--- WORKBOOK: FUN WITH THIS SENTENCE ---

This sentence is fun because you can use it in different contexts! Let's start by applying it to, say, Indecision:

Thank God we have another [novel] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of a fucked-up straight white guy.

Let's apply it to All the Sad Young Literary Men:

Thank God we have another [novel] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of [three] fucked-up straight white guy[s].

Let's apply it to Knocked Up and High Fidelity and Fight Club and Garden State and Elizabethtown and The Last Kiss and About a Boy:

Thank God we have [all of these stories] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of [a bunch of] fucked-up straight white guy[s].

BONUS QUESTIONS: Can you think of any narratives to which this sentence might apply? Be creative! Is it okay that many Charlie Kaufman movies fit this pattern if you also think Charlie Kaufman movies are just really good? Consider fucked-up straight white chick media: is it equally insufferable, not least because of the amount of privilege inherent in being a straight white chick, but also because self-pity and self-absorption are just really unlovely traits? How about this blog? Is it annoying you yet? Do you think that it will start to? Also, can I have a cigarette now? Please. I want one. Please. 

Technology!

I'm currently familiarizing myself with the Blogger platform, and have come to realize that it provides no way to keep track of my blog's unique hits.

It does, however, have a "gadget" that can supply my blog with a new baby animal picture every day.

A new baby animal picture every day!

I think my choice is clear.

Drunk Transcription Services Presents: Virgins, Whores, and Retail

I gave a reading at the Knitting Factory last night. This is the first piece I read: written on the day of the reading, no doubt too rough to work outside of the reading, yet transcribed (post-several-drinks) so that you can feel you were there. To those of you who did not attend, or were asked not to: don't worry. You were there in spirit, and in the piece itself.

---

Ladies and gentlemen of the crowd: I am writing to you from the second floor of the Union Square Barnes & Noble, whence I have retreated to enjoy a series of panic attacks concerning a reading I am to give later on in the day. It is the reading at which I am to deliver this piece, in fact, and by the time I tell you this, it will already have begun. I have considered inviting several people to this reading, and have decided against it, reasoning that my spectacular failure is nothing that they need to be involved with; the end result is that I have extended a round of frantic dis-invitations, pleas not to watch me choke, and I know none of you. This is great, because now we can talk.

Because, as previously indicated, I am writing this on the second floor of the Union Square Barnes & Noble. And it has porn.

Three feet to my right, several teenagers are poring over a photo book, the principal subject of which is naked ladies. It's the Suicide Girls book, actually; you can find it in the Women's Studies section. These teenagers are mostly boys, clad in aspiring-teen-rocker gear, which I am comforted to note has not changed much since the late '90s: longish hair, wallet chains, baggy pants and band tees over bodies they haven't learned to deal with yet. They're not cool yet, these boys, but you get the sense that in a few years they might be. Their pictures from this time will be hidden, or burned.

(Is that a Puddle of Mudd t-shirt? Do they still make Puddle of Mudd t-shirts? Am I looking at evidence of time travel?)

There are girls as well, two of them. Their clothes are tighter, and more stylish. Girls learn how to present before boys, always; the concept of the body as spectacle comes to us earlier in the game. Still, they look awkward and half-formed. When they go to college, they'll discover American Apparel and try to forget that their eyeliner ever looked this way.

The boys are staring at the book with raw fascination, offering little critiques and murmurs of approval as they flip the pages. The girls are looking alternately at the book and at the boys. The boys are having the time of their lives, it's clear; the girls might be too, though it's hard to tell, because they rarely speak.

"That one's beautiful," says the blondest and heaviest of the boys, pointing at a photo. "I don't even want to see the titties or nothing."

So sensitive, this boy! One of the girls - a slight pixie girl, dark hair drawn back in a bun and four studs glinting in her ear - lifts her eyes to his face and nods, making a small wordless sound of agreement that echoes in her throat. Mmmmhm.

I wonder how much she's heard. I wonder if she hears him saying that there is a difference between thinking a girl is beautiful and wanting to see her titties, between pretty and sexy, between the girl you admire and the girl you fuck. I think about this, and I wonder about the rest of her life.

My friends and I wrestle with these concepts constantly. We talk about them, write about them, negotiate our positions on the spectrum with every man we meet. I know girls who won't sleep with their boyfriends because they don't trust those men not to disappear, and girls whose boyfriends lost their sex drives once the word "love" was exchanged. I know girls who accompany their dates to strip clubs and feel guilty or crazy when jealousy enters the picture, and I know girls who strip, saying that they've never felt more desired in their lives, but that their clients swear at them, call them names, put their hands where their hands aren't supposed to be, and that they wake up on some mornings feeling angry at the entire world without quite knowing why. All of us want to be liked and respected and cared for, and all of us want to be well and frequently fucked, and all of us, for some reason, take it as a foregone conclusion that we can't have both. Our conversations - those marathon IM therapy sessions or late-night rants in bars - all end in the same way. What do you expect? This is the way things are.

I used to think that all of this had changed, or was changing. I took it for granted that I would have more choices than my mother, and that my daughters would have more choices than me. Hooking up was supposed to change everything, right? People just sleep with each other, sometimes for months at a time, with no commitment, because sex is no big deal. Yet, when I look at these teens, and the world they live in, that seems wrong: virgin and whore are spinning farther and farther away from each other, in a decaying orbit. We synthesize stars so cartoonishly virginal that the sight of one draped in sheets, with an inch or so of back exposed, can incite mass panic; Jordin Sparks can take the stage at the VMAs, her voice gripped with hysteria, and announce that she has to wear a purity ring because she doesn't want to be a slut, as if she - and we - had only two options. Other girls talk about reclaiming their sexuality by appearing in Girls Gone Wild videos, and for every Miley Cyrus, there is a pop star sanding her personality down until she presents nothing but sex, and only the kind of sex that her marketing team thinks most men will find appealing. I kissed a girl, and I liked it; I hope my boyfriend don't mind it. There's always a boy watching; his reaction, his respect or pleasure, is always what matters most.

So I wonder where this pixie girl will end up, in the bedroom or in the kitchen or somewhere in between, what compromises she'll make to get what she wants. I wonder which parts of herself she'll give up, and when, and why.

----

Here, for those keeping track, are the reactions that I received:

• Dude #1: "I was one of those boys."
  
• Extremely Admirable & Accomplished Feminist Writer: "That was great. No, I mean, I'm not just being supportive: I really liked it."
• Dude #2, With Whom I Have A Past: HIGHLY UNCOMFORTABLE FACE, accompanied by "congratulations, good job."
• Dude #2's Girlfriend: "You just took everything in my head and said it."
• Dude #3: "The thing is, the thing is, when a man loves you, you will know it. You can't change a man, girls try to, you can't change a man. When a man loves you, you will know it."
  
• Dude #4: "I liked your reading. It taught me how to pick up chicks."

Favorite part of the reading:

• The fact that everyone in the audience put down their drinks and stopped chatting when I said the word "porn."