Do not go naked into that good light

I just saw a video by Bjork (scroll down on the linked page to find it). I think that if you're a person of a certain age, and you're wondering whether or not you're aging gracefully, a good thing to do is to compare yourself to Bjork. I'm not saying it will make you feel better, and I'm not saying it will make you feel worse; I just think it will help you decide one way or another.

I have never done this

In the video, Bjork appears to be naked (though she seems to have had her vagina filled with putty and sanded smooth), and she has these freaky computer-generated blood-red animated streamers coming out of her nipples. (She's also got that plasticized Eero Saarinen hairdo that not even Sean Young in Blade Runner could carry off, but she's been doing weird shit with her hair forever.)

I realized, watching this video, that I would not, in my own life, produce a video where I'm naked and I have computer-generated blood-red animated streamers coming out of my nipples. (And as for sanding off my genitals, forget it.) I wasn't that comfortable with my naked body even during what I might very charitably refer to as its peak, during my nine or so years as an undergraduate, and I'm even less interested in exposing it to the world's steely, detached gaze now. The closest I've ever come to nudity in the name of art was one time in film school when, in an excess of confessional zeal, I briefly considered filming a scene where I would be depicted masturbating. I didn't go through with it, though. Boy, am I glad I didn't do that.

I think that bears repeating: Boy, am I glad I didn't do that.

Anyway, the point is that Bjork is probably pretty close to my age, give or take a few years. She's by no means a withered crone, but I think she's passed that period in a female celebrity's life where it's a foregone conclusion that everybody wants to see you naked. Maybe she's a brave genius making a confident statement about her sexuality. Or maybe she's a delusional, washed-up hack looking for attention in all the wrong places. In either case, I know one thing for sure-- I'm not prepared to follow her example.

What I can't decide is whether this reticence is a manifestation of dignity or the mark of wussitude. After all, Bjork is famous and respected, and I am obscure and (we'll say for the sake of argument) reviled. Maybe I just don't have what it takes. If the muse required that I paint my boner green and march around Pioneer Square in freezing rain for an hour, would I do it? Probably not. I'd be way too embarrassed. Also, after a guy passes the age of 25 or so, it's pretty tough to make those boners last a whole hour, especially in the freezing rain. Besides, if the muse jumped off the Empire State Building, would I jump off after her?

Unfortunately, the answer to that last question should probably be "yes." It's not, though.

Happy Valentine's Day

...and if you don't like that one, I've got a spare

If anybody is paying attention, which I doubt, the reason I haven't been posting here lately is because I'm busy putting together that online literary magazine that I've been not-so-obliquely hinting at in this space for the last month or so. We go live in May. There's lots to do between now and then, so I feel completely justified in blowing off this universally-ignored blog.

By the way, if you ever do read this blog, you'll be pretty much required to read the magazine. It's going to be called Lime Tea, and it's going to be living at limetea.net. Watch this space for further developments.

A bushel and a peck

I just ate a pear, for the first time in I don't know how long. Have you had these things? They're unbelievable. Even granting the fact that I really do need to get out more, eating a pear is one of the most ridiculously sensual and erotic things you can do with a piece of produce.

Marty's new girlfriend

I am aware that many people have found in produce other erotic possibilities (I get email on the subject frequently), but these don't hold a candle to the pre-Raphaelite-orgy-in-miniature I just held not five minutes ago. Putting a zucchini in your ass may be naughty; eating a pear is positively obscene.

Consider first the flesh of the pear, firm but yielding. I know that "firm but yielding" is a cliché, but that's exactly what the pear's flesh is-- all I can suggest is that perhaps people who use "firm but yielding" to describe other things should hold off once in a while and find some other phrase to describe whatever it is they're talking about.

The skin is almost absurdly soft and flimsy, seemingly having no other purpose than to be breached. Once your lips and teeth have dispensed with this coy pretense of modesty, you find yourself sliding fluidly, through just enough resistance to make you vividly aware of each millimeter of progress, toward the pear's juicy center.

I swear I'm not making this up. Go buy one if you don't believe me.

And get this: no matter how hard you try to prevent it, juice will inevitably run down your chin. I'm not kidding. There's no way to make the process chaste and sanitary; no matter how pure your intentions, within minutes, you'll find yourself wallowing shamelessly in pear juice. Look at you. It's all over you.

You whore.

Finally, with a pear, you eat it all, or almost all. A pear doesn't resolve neatly into an iconic core, like an apple. The whole thing is yours for the taking, and you take it, every bit, slurping awkwardly and greedily with sticky hands until there's nothing left but a stem and the tiny seed-filled center. You can't help it; this is how everyone eats a pear. You do it this way whether you were intending to have an orgy or not, which is precisely my point.

The whole experience is so monstrously, rampantly sexual that I actually felt a twinge of guilt afterward, as though I'd just ravished a hired sex slave to exhaustion-- though it's unlikely that I could ravish a hired sex slave to exhaustion in real life, unless the hired sex slave had one hell of a case of chronic fatigue syndrome.