Filthy (Thank You, The Sword!)

Filthy. That’s me.

I’ve known it for years, of course. But now it’s official, seeing that The Sword has named me its Filthy Blog of the Month. Yes, thank you. Thank you for your applause. You may touch me. No, not there. Lower. Lower. That’s the spot.

Filthy Blog of the Month. I know my mother, god rest her soul, would have been proud. I can feel her heavenly spirit looking down upon me and saying, "That's my filthy son!"

The article itself is pretty complimentary. Who’s going to argue with, “writes about sex just about better than anybody”? Not I. My favorite line, however, is, “The most appealing thing about this Mr. Steed dude is his grizzly, no-bullshit attitude.” You don’t know how many years I’ve been waiting to be called grizzly. I’m going to own it, bay-bee. Grr.

The article touches on a topic that’s been bugging me a little the last few days—namely, the issue of realness. Of veracity, if you will. Though The Sword (correctly and graciously) assumes that I’m not a fictional construct, some of my readers don’t really seem to get that there is an actual person who writes these entries and whose life corresponds with them. I’ll get private emails asking, “Hey, how much of that blog you write is true?” Or a question or three on formspring.me saying, “Sigh. I know I’m not going to get a straight answer, but how much of your journal is real?” Or I’ll have a commenter saying on the entry about my Tuesday romp that it lacks the “stench of credibility.”

For one thing, if someone’s already decided that I’m a liar and they’re not going to get a straight answer from me, there’s not really a lot I’m going to be able to say that’s not going to elicit the sigh and the shrugged shoulders. I would actually be interested, if that was the case, why they’d even ask me the question. And for the other: virtually everything I write on my blog is honest and accurate.

A-ha! He said ‘virtually!’ It’s true that I have slightly—slightly—fictionalized some elements in my writing. To wit: I mostly have changed people’s names, when I post about them. It may surprise you, but the Silver Fox’s first name is not Silver, and he’s not related to Redd Foxx. If someone has a distinguishing characteristic that would instantly identify them to all and sundry in my geographical area, like a prominent tattoo of all four members of ABBA between their shoulder blades, I might alter it to a tattoo of Adam Lambert. On the guy’s butt. If Scruffy really works in a library as a children’s librarian (he doesn’t), I might change his job to that of a clerk in a video store, so that people won’t be accosting all the unshaven young men in the local children’s stacks with, Hey! Are you Scruffy?!

I’m not under the illusion that I have hundreds of fans actively stalking me in my area, mind you. But you understand what I’m saying. I try to observe a little discretion.

When it comes to details of my own life, I either graciously don’t comment on them, or I alter a very minor detail here or there to preserve the shreds of anonymity to which I can still cling. I think anyone who knows me, or who has met me, would agree that there’s extremely little dissonance between the persona I present in my journal, and my real-life self.

Here’s what I don’t fictionalize, or fib about, or construct out of whole cloth: I don’t fabricate my encounters. I don’t create the people I have them with. The sex I write about isn’t fantasy. I actually have it, or if I’m writing about my past, have had it. As I’ve said a few times now, I have a whole career in which I make shit up. I spent hours a work day dreaming up conceits and bringing them to life. It’s not easy labor.

When I write in my journal, I don’t want to have to play make-believe. It’s a relief to be able to write about real stuff that’s happened to me. I draw the people I meet as deftly and fairly as I can. I resurrect the chains of events and the dialogue that took place from my memory . . . which is a pretty good memory for everything except birthdays and remembering to pay my bills . . . and I fashion a self-contained essay about it. Sometimes, as with 3 Loads, 35 Minutes, I’ll illustrate it with the photos I took as it happened. My photographs, from my camera. I think I do a great job of remaining true to what took place.

If one looks backs through the comments on entries, it’s possible to find a couple from people who actually know me in the flesh. I suppose the argument could be made that I might’ve created their profiles and blogs in order to sustain a grand illusion that I’m not a fake. But really? That sounds like an awful lot of work for a whole lot of nothing.

I’m getting this all out of my system because I want to be able to type it once. Then, in the future when someone questions my very existence, I can point them to a single URL. (Because really, I’m lazy that way.)

I write about sex because I think it’s something people do together that shows them at their best, their worst, and at various touching and humorous points in between. I write about the sex I have because I feel my perspective on human interaction is worth documenting. The encounters I write about are very real.

And so am I.