Un-Blackmailable Me: Or, Write through the Lies
It seems like the laying down of a gambit, almost provoking fate (“spitting at heaven” as one language’s idiom has it) but I feel close to un-blackmailable, if for no other reason than that I:
1) Lack shame and have written down the most private parts of my life and consciousness for print and, 2) Have no desire to run for public office, for anything from dogcatcher to President of the United States of America. Even in this age of deep-dive background checks and Orwellian scans of potential employees’ social media, it seems like sex offenders can get menial or entry level jobs, so the scribblings of a lunatic semi-employed writer aren’t likely to arouse the interest (much less the suspicion) of an employer should I decide to hang up my scribe’s scarf and beret, and operate a forklift (it would probably be a more productive use of my time).
Just to illustrate my point, though, let me give you a specific example: Awhile back I got the idea for a futuristic cyberpunk tale about a powerful tycoon who had a bizarre sexual fetish and thus found himself compromised. I cast about for some weird paraphilia to hang on my character, and since Russian prostitutes micturating on orange men was already taken, I went with ABDL (an acronym for Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers, also known as paraphilic infantilism). I’ll spare you the gory (re: shitty) details, but it’s a fetish in which adults pretend to be babies. I’ll also skip the Freud, and the jargon about concepts like “Erotic Target Location Error,” limerence, or lovemapping (sic). The point, sufficient both for this blog entry and for my novel (called Touch No One) is that people are into weird shit, and if they’re powerful they can be blackmailed for being into it.
I did some research on the subject with little hesitation. I have, after all, looked into things like how to make bombs or meth amphetamine, not because I have any intent of ever using this knowledge, but to give my protagonists and antagonists the verisimilitude to make them believable to the reader. A guy who writes under the name Uncle Fester, who has been doxed earlier, has made an avocation of writing books on how to do things like make vest-busting bullets and the secrets of Brazilian knife fighting (spoiler alert: there are no secrets to Brazilian knife fighting and even “Fester” admits this title was a quickie cash grab on his part).
Getting back to the adult babies and the subject of blackmail, though, a few days after I began research, a package arrived at my doorstep from some medical supplies store. This chain had previous sent me gear for my sleep apnea machine, but I’d discontinued use of the thing some time ago because it was too cumbersome for me to sleep soundly with it on my face (If anything, it just reminded me of the times I had to go through CS training at Fort Benning wearing one of those rubber gas masks with the mica viewing windows that quickly clouded over as the drill sergeant shouted and the cinderblock shack where we were to be gassed grew smoky while the pellet dissolved).
Figuring that someone at the medical supplies store had screwed up, but curious nonetheless, I opened the box…and discovered, nestled among the packing peanuts, a package of adult diapers. It’s possible that there was some kind of mix-up, that someone in shipping and receiving meant to send me some gear related to my (cancelled) sleep apnea mask, and an erroneous keystroke instead meant I had some free yet useless adult diapers headed my way. Then of course its possible that this was more than pure coincidence, that someone was playing a mind game with me, or at least trying to. What they don’t know or hadn’t banked on is that I didn’t give a shit, and continue not to do so.
Give me a hundred bucks, or hell, just dare me to do it, and I’ll go on a blind date wearing an adult diaper underneath my formal wear. I’ll look the most beautiful woman in the eye over a white tablecloth at dinner and tell her I can only achieve an orgasm by taking a big dump in my pants, and I’ll do it at a French restaurant, when there’s a lull in conversation and Vivaldi’s sonorous strings are light enough that everyone in that mood-lit room can hear me as if I was proposing marriage by candlelight.
The point I’m trying to make, I guess, is that if you’re afraid to stand naked and humiliated in some way, you’re afraid to write, or at least write honestly. There are already enough people writing dishonestly. I can’t knock that, since society itself is built on a lot of fragile conceits and there is much to be said for lying. I do it myself sometimes.
But it gets boring reading lies. And as time goes on it gets easier to see through them and more importantly, to write through them.
Some people might not believe my little anecdote related here, and that’s fine. I’ve heard that the line muttered into the intercom of Bill Pullman’s house in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (“Dick Laurant is dead”) is based on something that actually happened to David Lynch. I believe him, Lynch I mean.
1) Lack shame and have written down the most private parts of my life and consciousness for print and, 2) Have no desire to run for public office, for anything from dogcatcher to President of the United States of America. Even in this age of deep-dive background checks and Orwellian scans of potential employees’ social media, it seems like sex offenders can get menial or entry level jobs, so the scribblings of a lunatic semi-employed writer aren’t likely to arouse the interest (much less the suspicion) of an employer should I decide to hang up my scribe’s scarf and beret, and operate a forklift (it would probably be a more productive use of my time).
Just to illustrate my point, though, let me give you a specific example: Awhile back I got the idea for a futuristic cyberpunk tale about a powerful tycoon who had a bizarre sexual fetish and thus found himself compromised. I cast about for some weird paraphilia to hang on my character, and since Russian prostitutes micturating on orange men was already taken, I went with ABDL (an acronym for Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers, also known as paraphilic infantilism). I’ll spare you the gory (re: shitty) details, but it’s a fetish in which adults pretend to be babies. I’ll also skip the Freud, and the jargon about concepts like “Erotic Target Location Error,” limerence, or lovemapping (sic). The point, sufficient both for this blog entry and for my novel (called Touch No One) is that people are into weird shit, and if they’re powerful they can be blackmailed for being into it.
I did some research on the subject with little hesitation. I have, after all, looked into things like how to make bombs or meth amphetamine, not because I have any intent of ever using this knowledge, but to give my protagonists and antagonists the verisimilitude to make them believable to the reader. A guy who writes under the name Uncle Fester, who has been doxed earlier, has made an avocation of writing books on how to do things like make vest-busting bullets and the secrets of Brazilian knife fighting (spoiler alert: there are no secrets to Brazilian knife fighting and even “Fester” admits this title was a quickie cash grab on his part).
Getting back to the adult babies and the subject of blackmail, though, a few days after I began research, a package arrived at my doorstep from some medical supplies store. This chain had previous sent me gear for my sleep apnea machine, but I’d discontinued use of the thing some time ago because it was too cumbersome for me to sleep soundly with it on my face (If anything, it just reminded me of the times I had to go through CS training at Fort Benning wearing one of those rubber gas masks with the mica viewing windows that quickly clouded over as the drill sergeant shouted and the cinderblock shack where we were to be gassed grew smoky while the pellet dissolved).
Figuring that someone at the medical supplies store had screwed up, but curious nonetheless, I opened the box…and discovered, nestled among the packing peanuts, a package of adult diapers. It’s possible that there was some kind of mix-up, that someone in shipping and receiving meant to send me some gear related to my (cancelled) sleep apnea mask, and an erroneous keystroke instead meant I had some free yet useless adult diapers headed my way. Then of course its possible that this was more than pure coincidence, that someone was playing a mind game with me, or at least trying to. What they don’t know or hadn’t banked on is that I didn’t give a shit, and continue not to do so.
Give me a hundred bucks, or hell, just dare me to do it, and I’ll go on a blind date wearing an adult diaper underneath my formal wear. I’ll look the most beautiful woman in the eye over a white tablecloth at dinner and tell her I can only achieve an orgasm by taking a big dump in my pants, and I’ll do it at a French restaurant, when there’s a lull in conversation and Vivaldi’s sonorous strings are light enough that everyone in that mood-lit room can hear me as if I was proposing marriage by candlelight.
The point I’m trying to make, I guess, is that if you’re afraid to stand naked and humiliated in some way, you’re afraid to write, or at least write honestly. There are already enough people writing dishonestly. I can’t knock that, since society itself is built on a lot of fragile conceits and there is much to be said for lying. I do it myself sometimes.
But it gets boring reading lies. And as time goes on it gets easier to see through them and more importantly, to write through them.
Some people might not believe my little anecdote related here, and that’s fine. I’ve heard that the line muttered into the intercom of Bill Pullman’s house in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (“Dick Laurant is dead”) is based on something that actually happened to David Lynch. I believe him, Lynch I mean.
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