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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
My stint as a copy editor at a skin mag taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the sexual proclivities of the American public.
Jan 20, 2005 | Let us call him "Mr. Green": a varnished old rogue in a stained ascot. At a New York writers party featuring various penniless scribes crushed into a room the size of a janitor's closet, Mr. Green watched as I spoke touchingly of my wife's second pregnancy and the financial burdens presented thereby. Then he asked if I wanted freelance work.
"Copy-editing jerk-off letters for a skin mag," Green said. "Your eyes will glaze over but the money's grand."
It started off pleasantly enough with a phone call the next day.
"Good morning, Daniel. My name is Chastity. I work for Mr. Green at Joystick" (the name of the magazine has been changed).
"Ah yes, how do you do, Chastity."
"Would you prefer 'Butt Busters' or 'Cluster Fuck'?"
We were off to the races.
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Within two days I found myself developing category preferences: No masturbation scenes -- the writer's lot was lonely enough without having to deal with someone else's isolation. Also, no orgies -- they were the equivalent of sweatshop labor. I had to draw diagrams to keep the positions straight (Peg's on the left, Roger's on his knees, but where'd Yvonne go? Quick, call 911! How'd we lose Yvonne?). Fetish Frenzy was good: expanded my thinking. Handicap Parking was lovely: nice to see that amputees got love, too. I was given the magazine's style sheet to refer to and a copy of Canada's guidelines to memorize. Since American issues were exported to Canada, the entire industry had to oblige Canada her narrow views. No pain of any sort, no handcuffs, not even a harmless little enema here and there. Anal play in particular was verboten. Didn't matter how much you may have thought Dudley Do-Right was in need of a grape juice enema, he wasn't going to get one in the pages of Joystick.
Within a week I had my routine down. First thing after a dinner of pot roast and kasha, I'd retire to my sun porch to download files and get my dose of American vernacular. He was packing some heat in his meat ... She had nipples you could dial a phone with ... She came so hard I felt the waves ... Some of the unself-conscious vitality I was being paid to correct was actually more colorful in the original: I burst my pants instead of burst out of my pants. She was sucking on his dick, instead of just plain sucking.
I also enjoyed the addition of too many commas, a stylistic idiosyncrasy that gave the text a breathless quality. I kept her underwear, and, allowed her to get dressed ... When I finally saw my wife, with her legs spread wide around Mike, I thought my heart would pound, out of my chest. And the absence thereof. She began licking between her breasts removing my spunk. I appreciated the stiltedness that resulted from the letter writers' reluctance to contract: Sophie licks her to orgasm every time she has finished shaving her. Frequently this gave the raciest sentences an incongruously Puritan flavor, especially during moments of passion. "I am feeling myself relax," she purred softly. "Now I am ready to have some fun with you." Other times it made the dialogue sound like Bert and Ernie. "Let me see," said Jane as she leaned over to see the love juices winding down her cousin's thigh. "Ernie, look at the mess you have made!"
