slutever...

Slutever Has moved!

2010-10-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

This blog has permanently moved to the new address Slutever.org

BYE!!!

This Week In Pics

2010-10-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

All Photos @ Slutever

The Opus Dei Look

2010-10-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

Opus Dei used to be super underground until The Da Vinci Code blew up their spot in 2003 and made them all mainstream. Kind of like Kim Kardashian after the sex tape. The book portrays Opus Dei as a bunch of hooded, albino murderers with a fetish for self-harm. It’s true that many members practice corporal mortification—self-inflicted pain as a pathway to deeper spirituality. However, what most people don’t realize is that OD are actually very phashion, and the garments they wear to torture themselves are super conceptual and trendy, like sexy garters that cut your legs when you walk, and funky vintage shirts that give you a rash. Beauty is pain bitches!

Opus Dei, in case you don’t read Dan Brown, is an organization of the Catholic church, widely thought of as the church’s most controversial force. There are roughly 90000 members worldwide, 30% of which are celibate and practice “mortification of the flesh.” This is done in penance for one’s sins, imitating Jesus who willingly suffered on the cross. The following are some fashion must-haves if you want to get the Opus Dei look!

I don’t know about you, but I could totally see one of these on the runways of Paris and Milan. Comme Des Garçons anyone? A hairshirt cilice is a super scratchy garment worn close to the body made of coarse cloth or animal hair, intended to constantly irritate and chafe the skin. Sounds like a recipe for some raw nipples—ouch alert! Note: To be worn with nothing underneath, to maximize pain-effectiveness and overall sex appeal.

A metal cilice is a sharp chain with inwardly pointed spikes worn around the thigh. They’re sort of like those choker tattoo necklaces that were big in the late 90s, except they hurt a lot more. The cilice is generally worn voluntarily for two hours a day, and is apparently not intended to break the skin or draw blood. It’s just meant to be really, really fucking painful and annoying. A big fan of the cilice was the ever fierce Mother Teresa.

This is a must-have accessory for those who really want to rock the full Opus Dei look. The “discipline” is a cattail whip of knotted cords, usually made of woven cotton string. It is used for the purpose of self-flagellation, being flung over the shoulders repeatedly during private prayer. Not hard enough to draw blood, though some tears are OK. Also, don’t be afraid to get creative with the “discipline”—dangle it from your belt loop, wrap it around your head like one of those faux-hippie forehead-band things—whatever!

This might look like any random rope you’d find lying on the floor of your sex dungeon, but do not be fooled. This cilice belt, made specially with coarse goatskin for added itchiness, will give you a rash worse than that time you shared a bed with your cousin with the ringworm arm.

Below are a couple samples from the user feedback on cilice.co.uk.

With the cilice belt pulled tightly between my legs in a double strand, it literally splits me open and in two. It literally rubs me raw and leaves me bleeding on occasion. Additionally, it sometimes catches and pinches when I move and that results in a sudden blinding white-hot pain, nowhere even near to arousing. Perhaps by chastising these private parts of our bodies, desire for pleasure turns to association with pain and the desire simply dies down. - Clare

I recently purchased the sackcloth hairshirt from cilice.co.uk. It is a more or less constant irritation to my skin and the points of itching change constantly. After wearing it for a couple of hours, I have not gotten used to it and it continues to irritate, itch, and sometimes chafe my skin especially over my shoulders but also all over my back and chest. It is a very good penance and reminds me of how Jesus suffered for me and that I have to always be aware of my sinful nature and fight temptation. - Scott

Slave Update

2010-09-28T02:13:00.001-07:00

Here’s the latest from my slave. (click to enlarge)

Aside from a slight repetitiveness and the continuous misspelling of the word “so,” I can not really complain about this email. It’s actually pretty spot on, if you ask me. Fuck... my increasing irreverence when it comes to receiving messages and photographs of this nature is actually beginning to frighten me. I think. Sort of. Maybe. Not really.

Below is some information about my slave, most of which I’ve concluded from his various drunken, convoluted, 2000+ word emails, which I only read half of and then get bored and go back to watching porn.

-He enjoys being told his dick is small.
-He has, on numerous occasions, hired a married couple to come to his house and fuck in front of him while simultaneously telling him his dick is small.
-He is 36.
-He enjoys eating girls out, especially after they’ve just been fucked by someone else (bonus points if he came inside her).
-He works in marketing.
-He’s never sucked a dick but he wants to forced to do so, preferably by a woman.
-He enjoys jerking off and ejaculating onto his own face, then eating his cum.
-He likes dolphins, has swam with them many wonderful times.
-He has not had penetrative sex in over 18 months (he goes down on girls but doesn’t fuck them... sounds awkward).
-He is a vegetarian.

Growing Up

2010-09-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

My slave--so sweet!

So I’m becoming an adult I guess. Since moving to America nearly four months ago I’ve gotten a bank account, a phone that turns on without the assistance of a safety pin and a hammer, and... get ready, an apartment! I’m officially un-homeless. Weird!

This whole process of growing up has been a weird mix of excitement and apprehension. For starters, I paid my first rent check OF MY LIFE the other day, which I guess is sort of impressive considering I’m almost twenty-five. It was strange; after living in the squatter mindset for so long, the idea of paying rent is so alien to me that I actually began laughing out loud when writing the check. My landlord found this amusing. Then immediately afterward I got a horrible stomach ache, realizing that though it’s nice to have a home or whatever, in reality Im pretty poor (who isn’t?) and I might struggle to pay New York’s extortionate rent prices. However, I must be in someone’s good books because this morning, in the height of my panic, I received an an email from my slave offering to pay my rent.

In my last post I expressed my slight anxiety toward being bought gifts by the slave without giving him anything in return. I’m over that now. It totally makes sense that a weird perv in Ireland that I’ve never met should be paying my rent. And buying me vibrators. And sending me love letters signed in his own blood. It’s just redemption for being such a good person or whatever. And to be honest, my slave seems like a pretty put-together, nice guy. I’m actually beginning to like him, in a ‘I don’t ever want you within 1000 miles of me’ sort of way.

So far having a real apartment has been pretty good. I realized the other day that the last time I had my own bedroom was in in June of 2009, so having my own space is cool I guess. Although I’ve literally yet to spend a single night in my room alone, as I’m constantly housing all my homeless friends and people I know from London and elsewhere who are passing through New York. Also the place is sort of a shithole, and I’m genuinely confused about why I’m paying money to live somewhere which is definitely a step down from all the cool, massive abandoned warehouses I inhabited over the past five years. Welcome to the real world, I guess!

Get To Work

2010-09-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Ellen Rogers

The girl lies on the bed, naked, drunk and pretty. “My name is Amy,” she’s saying, “but I recently changed it to Cher because it sounds more... more... interesting I guess? I just think it makes me seem more like... like...”

The boy and I sit upright at her feet, half dressed. We’re watching her like she’s a TV. She has long, flaxen brown hair and skin creamy like milk. “Look,” says the boy, silencing her with a commanding wave of the hand, “we prefer Amy, so that’s what we’re going to call you. Also,” he continues, slowly, “you don’t have to speak. It’s nonessential.”

The boy tells me to take off my clothes so I do. I don’t take my time or try to be sexy. In fact the whole act is very systematic, as if undressing is a task I must complete with great speed and efficiency. When I’m done I look at the boy expectantly, like, What next? I feel the sudden need to be directed, like if he doesn’t tell me when or how to move I’ll be paralyzed. He leans in close, bites my lip as if to draw blood and says, “Get to work.”

Sex is so difficult to recall. I’m never successful when trying to remember the intricate details of a sexual encounter. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe if we could remember all the tiny, twisted details, sex would somehow become a less transcendent experience. Some things look better when they’re slightly out of focus.

I blink and I have my fingers inside the girl and my mouth above my fingers. I’m moving my fingers in a “come here” motion and doing the same with my tongue. This goes on for a while but she doesn’t seem to respond. I sit up to make sure she’s not dead, which she isn’t. I want to scream, Make some noise you bitch, this isn’t a fucking monologue, but instead I say, “Tell me how to make you feel good.” And she takes my head and shoves it back down toward her body with force until I smash face first into her pelvis.

The boy stands up, blinks his round eyes. He’s scrawny and too tall for his body mass, like an overgrown dandelion. “We should take a shower,” he says in his too deep voice. Me and the girl both nod yes; we’ll do anything he says.

The boy drags us the the bathroom by our hair and tosses us into the tub, turns on the water. “I want to be entertained,” he says flatly, staring down at us. From here I can see far up his nose, possibly all the way to his brain. The Valium I forgot I swallowed earlier is starting to kick in and I feel woozy and strangely not in control of my limbs. I lift my arms up and down repeatedly just to prove to myself that I remember how. As the water fills up around us the girl presses her body up against mine, breathes in and out. “Doesn’t skin feel so nice on skin?” she smiles, and I grab her by the throat and hold her head under the water for what some might argue is too long.

Everything’s gone all blurry. I’m pretty sure I have the girl by her hair, shoving her face onto the boy’s dick so hard that she’s choking. Whoa... I think, sex is so, like, pornographic. And I tilt my head back so the water rains down on my face, and through deep, desperate breaths I say, “You can do anything you want to me. Whatever it is, I would be into it.” And the boy says, “I know.”

About Time

2010-09-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Julia Wagner!

I’ve decided it’s about time I went on birth control, as I recently discovered an abortion in America costs $600--not free like on England’s NHS—meaning I should probably stop considering it a casual form of contraception.

Because I don’t have insurance, I don’t have the money for a real doctor and have to go to Planned Parenthood instead. It doesn’t really make a difference to me; I’m not fussy. However I recently walked past the clinic nearest my house in Brooklyn, and it’s potentially the bleakest Planned Parenthood of all time--bulletproof glass covered in spiderweby gunshot wounds, crowds of pregnant women smoking at every entrance, a wilted flower memorial for the victim of a stabbing, etc.--so I opt to avoid this specific branch and instead visit the one close to my parent’s house upstate, which I assume will be pleasantly quaint, with flower pots on the windowsills and a staff possessing all or at least most of their teeth.

I don’t have a license so I suck it up and ask my mom to drive me to my appointment. She reluctantly agrees. Being a devout Catholic, my mother has been in denial of the fact that I have sex ever since I shattered my hymen nearly ten years ago. It’s always been very “don’t ask, don’t tell” between us. I guess I’ve opened the floodgates.

“So, you... you want to start taking the pill...” she fumbles. “Does that mean you’ve found “the one”?”

“The one what?”

“Karley, do you indulge in multiple partners?”

“What, like at once?”

“Just remember,” she says, her eyes fixed in a weighty stare, “the safest sex is no sex at all.”

The parking lot of the clinic is swarming with protesters. My mother turns bright red as we zigzag though hand-drawn signs saying things like ‘Unborn Does Not Mean Undead’ and ‘Honk For Life.’ In the waiting room I fill out a questionnaire about my sexual history, lying about my past number of sexual partners and the frequency with which I get tested. It’s stupid, I know, but I want to make a good impression. I scan the room and realize that though I’m by far the oldest patient here (everyone else looks about sixteen), I’m the only one with a parental chaperon. I become paranoid that the teenage sluts are judging me. I exchange multiple dirty looks.

In the exam room I undress and put on a pink paper gown. Minutes later the doctor arrives--a plump, fifty-ish woman with offensively large hair. She smiles wide and shoves what appears to be an eggbeater up my vagina, then wiggles it around a lot. It feels sort of good, which is slightly worrying. I’m actually relieved when the pleasure turns to pain.

“How many sexual partners do you currently have?” she asks, her fingers deep inside me.

“Just one I guess,” I say. “Well... actually, does group sex count?”

“Yes, group sex counts.”

“OK so more than one.”

“Are you currently the victim of sexual abuse?”

“None that I don’t ask for.”

“So you want to go on the pill. What methods of birth control do you practice now? Do you use condoms?”

“...yyyyyeeessssss?”

“Always during intercourse?”

“Well, no. Sometimes I use the pull-out method. Does that count?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Do you use condoms during oral sex?”

“No, never.”

“You do realize you can contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases through oral sex, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, but come on. It’s social suicide.”

The doctor shoots me a disapproving glare, then yanks out whatever was inside me in one quick, hostile motion. As I dress she hands me two months worth of anti-baby pills, as well as a bunch of blueberry flavored condoms which I promise with feigned sincerity to use during fellatio. On the car ride home I open one of the packets and curiously lick the fruit flavored latex, gagging almost instantly. “For blow jobs,” I say to my mother, holding the condom out in front of us for inspection.

“Is it just me,” she says, pensively, “or does that seem a bit small?”

Another Slave

2010-09-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, back when I was living in that shithole Squallyoaks in south London, my squatmates and I briefly owned a slave. We found him through his personal ad on Gumtree.com. “Chore Slave Seeks Dominant Abusive Master,” I believe it said.

To the rest of the world our slave was a 28-year-old lawyer from Nepal, but to us he was a servant. Twice a week he would come over and do our dirty work – wash our dishes, alphabetize our VHS tapes, scrub the semen from the walls with a toothbrush – and in return we’d abuse him. Hannah would whip him with one of her various leather and chain bondage toys. Kerri would scream unknown Scottish obscenities at him in her retarded accident, occasionally throwing the remains of her TV dinners at his back. I once made him lick a wad of my saliva off the floor. It was kind of fun but also slightly disturbing if we weren’t drunk or high. However, after two months the slave stopped showing up, realizing we found the situation more humorous than we did sexually arousing. Basically he wanted a dominatrix, not three K’ed-up scumbags more interested in watching America’s Next Top Model than shaming him.

After the house-cleaning slave ditched us, some of my friends went on to get slaves of their own. They’d been given a taste of power, and they wanted more. Hannah, for a while, had a slave that would pay her to scream at him in public. Kerri found a man in Hungary who funded her weekly shaman lessons (embarrassing), as long as she engaged in sexy emails with him on a semi-regular basis. I never bothered finding another slave, perhaps because I have this thing called “conscience” which makes me feel guilty when I take advantage of others. But who knows?

Recently however, through almost no effort of my own, I acquired my second slave. Slave and I met on a sex fetish forum. My forum username is Slutever, and two months ago he messaged me asking if I ever read the sex blog of the same name. When I informed him that I was actually the author, he began casually messaging me, offering to “buy me things.” At first I felt uncomfortable about it, but after his tenth email literally begging to buy me gifts, I gave in and sent him a list of books I wanted on Amazon. Not the sexiest of all gifts, I know (I think he had lingerie in mind), but he obliged.

The day I received my first package I felt an unsettling mixture of pleasure and guilt. Some weirdo perv in Ireland had bought me these books and I had given him nothing in return (aside from maybe a boner or two). I enjoyed the feeling far more than I wanted to.

That was a month ago. I now receive books in the mail almost every day. Slave buys me books and in return I send him photos of myself reading them (and occasionally licking them, if he asks nicely). It’s pretty simple. Recently things have started getting slightly weird though. Like the other day Slave sent me a video of himself naked on all fours, practically crying, begging to buy me more books. He’s also started sending pictures of himself with BOOK BITCH carved into varying parts of his body, as well as excessive emails telling me that I own him. I can’t decide how far I should push this.

The problem with having a slave, however, is that after a while of being handed freebies, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that you deserve this type of behavior–that one sided relationships are normal and OK. It’s easy to become a bitch, basically. But then again, is Slave even really my “slave?” I’m not forcing him to do these things; I’m just sort of sitting here apathetically as he willing self-mutilates. As long as I’m not promising him anything I won’t give, and he’s not secretly planning to kill me, then it’s fine, right? Is it wrong to take from someone who wants to be taken from? Hmm… finding the answers to these questions will require a fair amount of moral analysis and intellectual gymnastics, and right now I’d rather just be bought presents.

P.S. Slave, I know you’re reading this. Now get on your hands and knees and lick the fucking floor you bitch.

London artist and shaman Matthew Stone talks art, dying gods and the future of spirituality

2010-09-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

I interviewed my friend Matthew Stone for the current issue of Vogue Hommes Japan. Here's it is, along with a selection of his amazing images!

Matthew Stone’s whole being is geared toward a life lived as art. Orchestrating a miscreant scene of visionary youths where celestial bodies fit together and one becomes another, Stone’s rapturous and beautiful images help us to imagine a future where everything is possible. Cited as one of the most influential artists of his generation, whether he’s working in photography, sculpture, performance or film, Stone’s bold proposal for Optimism as cultural rebellion resonates like a pacifist war cry. The unspoken leader of London’s infamous !WOWOW! art collective, Stone’s work reaches beyond art, and his power of existence is recreating the role of the artist in the 21st century.

Known for his effortless style, Stone has composed exclusive soundtracks for each of close friend Gareth Pugh’s fashion shows, and was a resident DJ at the now legendary London clubnight, Boombox. For this issue of Vogue Hommes Japan Stone shot his first ever fashion story, working alongside his boyfriend, stylist Matthew Josephs.

This is the first time you’ve shot fashion. What was different about this
way of working?

I wanted to make images that functioned as fashion photography and not just a repackaged version of what I normally do. Normally I shoot people naked. As much as I love clothes, and have spent years dressing up like an idiot, I feel they are distracting in my work. But I saw this shoot as an opportunity to be more playful with my aesthetic, and to show some of my humor, which doesn’t always come across in my other work.

Your work has always aspired toward the spiritual. However this shoot seems to employ more overt references to pre-existing religious imagery, for example the crown of thorns and the portrait of you cradling a naked body, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pieta. Was this intentional?

I often try to avoid specific religious references in my work because I want to find a new spiritual language, rather than just comment on the nature or politics of the past. Fashion, however, is a specific cultural conversation that celebrates the recycling of imagery, without demanding that the intentions behind their use be justified. This is what makes it so powerful culturally. The fashion world also welcomes aesthetics and beauty, whereas both are often seen as problematic in contemporary art.

In your self-portrait you wear a crown of thorns. How do you identify with Jesus? Are you a leader?

I think casting myself as a proto-Jesus is essentially where the humor I mentioned comes in. Although if you were to consider that Jesus was basically an anti-capitalist, hippy shaman with a fundamental belief in the transformative powers of love and humanity, then yes there are striking similarities.

More seriously though, anybody that makes culture is in a position of influence, and becomes a leader of sorts to other people. This is why the model of shaman as artist is so appealing to me. An artist can do more than make expensive objects. Artists should live to inspire others to further their own unique creative potential within the world. That is the role of the shaman.

So what exactly is your role as an art-shaman?

The shaman is an ordinary individual who enters non-ordinary psychological states to gain knowledge and energy. This energy is then given a bodily form as art, and shared with a community to effect positive change. So essentially the shaman acts as a bridge between the divine and real worlds. This is still happening today. Art, movies, fashion and music everywhere are all metaphors for supreme energies that everyone can learn to access and be empowered by. Culture constantly speaks of the eternal, but it becomes powerful and resonates when spoken of in the language of our times. Warhol particularly recognized this. I think we can consider his factory a spiritual home to a group of modern shamans, and his portraits as depictions of the saints of his society.

So if Warhol’s sanctified Marilyn, and claimed celebrities as newfound Gods, do you think he saw them as fulfilling a genuinely spiritual role for their devotees?

I don’t know whether Warhol intellectualized what he did to that extent, or whether he just intuitively moved toward something that people loved because it would be successful. I see Andy Warhol as a deeply spiritual artist who worked in a very intuitive way. He had a religious upbringing, so the art he experienced from a young age would have been Byzantine Catholic icon paintings—portraits of saints, the Virgin Mary, devotional figures—and you see that reflected in his paintings. Warhol’s legacy was totally of his own time, but it also transcends it. That’s what all art should aspire toward.

It’s not common for artists today to speak so overtly about the spiritual, but you seem to embrace it.

People are disillusioned with religion and associate it with hypocrisy, war and small-mindedness. Historically we have killed off Gods as they have ceased to serve the social and political reality of our times. In the twentieth century, when God died, we were left with a spiritual vacuum, and nihilism emerged as a new belief system. It’s now up to us to determine new ways of understanding our place within the universe.

How do you choose who you photograph?

Mainly I shoot my friends. Ultimately I want to make images of people who truly inspire me. Somehow I feel that if I work with people who have beautiful minds and beautiful bodies, the images will become infused with the combined energy of their physicality and thinking. Beauty on every level.

So in a way the work becomes a collaboration between you and the people in the images.

Completely. This is what I find so interesting. You can’t use people in the same way you use normal materials. You have to work with people, the same as in everyday life. The artist Joseph Beuys proposed a type of collaboration that resulted in “the world as a living sculpture”.

You’ve referenced Beuys as an influence in the past. Some say his greatest artwork was his statement that “Everybody is an artist.” How do you define an artist?

Artists are not special or worth more than any other person. They are simply those that have come to be conscious of the fact that every action is creative and can be beautiful in some way. The mindful choices that they make not only define their own lives, but shine like happy, truth-loving stars, born to illuminate and inspire the lives of those that encounter them.

Slutty Reader Photographs

2010-09-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Send more to Karleysciortino@gmail.com !!

Friends I'll Never Meet: Slutever (the band)

2010-09-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

I hereby introduce you to Slutever , a new fuzzy, lo-fi garage band with edgy lyrics who don’t give a fuck about stuff. Like we need another one of those. Slutever is Rachel and Nicole from Philadelphia. At first I despised Slutever because they totally jacked my name. (Just to clarify, my blog existed long before the band and is far more culturally relevant.) However, I recently gave in and listened to their music, and, though I hate to admit it, it’s not as horrendous as I originally predicted. Their self-released debut EP, Sorry I’m Not Sorry, is now available for free download HERE. It’s pretty cool, you should download it. Or not. Slutever.

Are you guys lesbians? You look like lesbians.
Nicole: No, I’m into boys, but I won’t hesitate to tell a girl she’s cute if she is.

Rachel: I’m boy crazy and fall in love with any gangly, smelly, grungy boy that passes me on the street. I’m also super into the dude from Breaking Bad with cerebral palsy, and love dudes who stutter, so I feel like my type is pretty similar to yours, Karley. I only like extremely awkward and emotionally unstable boys.

I swear a year ago fucking guys with cerebral palsy was super edgy. Now every lesbian in an indie band wants a boyfriend who’s part retarded. What do you know!? Anyway, have you fucked each other yet?
Nicole: We totally made out in a hot tub once. It was my 19th birthday and we were playing spin the bottle with a bunch of friends. For some reason, everyone flipped the fuck out and got all excited when my bottle landed on Rachel. My friend was pouring out water all over our heads the whole time we were kissing. It ended the game. It was weird.

That’s vaguely hot. So, do you guys get lots of compliments on the band name that you stole from me?
Nicole: Yes, totally.

Rachel: Our name is probably the only reason people like us.

You said it, not me. What does Slutever mean to you?
Nicole: Slutever can be apathetic, or aggressive just as easily. As a band name it pretty much reiterates whatever our songs are trying to say. Probably because “slutever” is how I feel about almost everything. It’s dirty and it’s whatever and it’s my life.

Where did you first hear the word? I stole it from my friend Josh who used to say it in high school instead of ‘whatever’ because it sounded more lolz.
Nicole: I saw the word on a friend’s Facebook as a picture caption and instantly realized that it was the perfect band name for us. It just is!

Rachel: Honestly, if our band name wasn’t Slutever it would probably just be What The Fuck.

How long do you plan on being a band for? Because I keep getting Google alerts that I think are for my blog but are actually just about you, which is super annoying!
Nicole: Oh god, fuck those Google alerts. I seriously don’t care if ALICIA IS THE BIGGEST SLUT EVER. You’re gonna have to cope with band-related hits for a while, though. Slutever forever!

Gay. So, you’re playing at Vassar College soon. That’s like 2 minutes from where I grew up, and it’s where my mom works! Maybe I’ll come and we can hang out and do some 3-way scissoring and then cuddle and then start a 3-way relationship. Would you be into that?

Nicole: Yeah sure, why not? Slutever!

You guys are such sluts! I love you!

Eating Bunny

2010-09-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

Bunny’s in New York. He’s here sorting out his visa for when he goes back to university in London next week. He’s getting his masters--something to do with Asia, I forget. Lately I’ve been having the urge to eat him. Every time we’re together I just want to put all of him in my mouth, to devour him fully. I guess it’s a mixture of wanting to keep him here and wanting to, you know, “be one with him,” or something embarrassing or poetic like that.

“I want to eat you sort of,” I say.

“How do you mean?”

“I just want you inside me. But like, in a more abstract way than sex can afford.” I grab at the skin on my chest and claw fiercely at my stomach. In my head this seemed like a good way to illustrate “inside me,” although now that I’m doing it it feels a bit odd. “Have you ever felt like that?”

“Kind of,” he says, spacey. “Well, not exactly. But I’ve definitely wanted to cut someone open and live inside their body.”

“Me too. I think everyone has.”

“Probably.”

Bunny’s sitting shirtless on the floor, dipping his spidery hands into a pot of baby pink hair dye and mindlessly slopping it onto his head in giant fistfuls. Some of the dye drips down his face and neck and lands in globs on the floor. I tell him the color is going to be uneven but he doesn’t respond, doesn’t seem to care. His eyes look like mud puddles on his face--murky, opaque. It makes it difficult to know what he’s thinking.

“Maybe I should drink some of your pee,” I suggest. “That would be kind of like eating you, but wouldn’t involve any pain.”

“Maybe. Although lately my diet consists of little more than vodka and french fries, so I’m not sure how good it would taste.”

“Never mind. I don’t even know why I said that.”

We pass the thirty minutes it takes for the pink to settle into Bunny’s bleached hair by clicking through each and every Facebook photo of this kid from London we sort of know called Felix. This must be the hundredth time we’ve done this. Bunny and I have only met Felix twice--both times in nightclubs--but for some reason we’ve developed this weird, irrational infatuation with him. Almost all we know about Felix we’ve learned through his Facebook photos. For example: 1) He spends a considerable amount of time alone in his bedroom, taking pictures of himself on his Macbook. 2) He paints his finger nails frequently, sometimes black, sometimes a different color on each nail. 3) He likes plants a lot; they feature heavily in his self-portraiture.

Because we only know what’s on the surface, it’s easy to invent the rest of Felix in our heads. He’s an exterior without an interior, which makes him more exciting. It's sort of like we own him. For a while Bunny and I talked about the idea of being in a three-way relationship with Felix. It wasn’t necessarily a sex thing, we just thought the three of us would fit together well. I emailed Felix about it once. He seemed sort of into it, though nothing ever happened.

“I wonder if we actually got to know Felix that we’d like him less,” I say.

“Probably. That’s always the way it is.”

“I don’t even want to know him. I’m content just being vaguely obsessed with a made-up version of him from afar for no reason.”

“Me too.”

Bunny rinses the dye from his hair in a giant red bucket and I sit three feet away, squirming, trying to imagine what it would feel like to bite through uncooked human flesh.

This Week In Pictures

2010-08-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

Friends I'll Never Meet: Manuel Solano

2010-08-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

All artwork @ Manuel Solano

Manuel Solano is a 23 year old artist from Mexico City. He makes creepy fan art and videos of himself putting stuff up his ass, which are gross but also cool. The first artwork I saw by Manuel was a fan drawing of the band Salem, where the two guy members are having butt sex [above]. I was both disturbed and aroused. Later I discovered that a piece of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan art Manuel made ended up in the band’s album artwork for Show Your Bones. I’m now an avid follower of his blog, even though looking at it always makes me really sweaty and uncomfortable.

I love your Salem drawing, it freaks me out! What’s the story behind it?
I had read an interview in Butt magazine in which John said he wanted Jack to fuck him, but Jack didn’t. Or something like that. And that their songs are more “rape songs” than love songs. I was obsessed with their song Skullcrush, and one day while listening to it the image of Jack raping John’s corpse and crushing his face against the snow just came into my mind. I think Jack looks so cute while doing it : )

Agreed. What did the band think?
When I added John on Facebook (after months of searching for him!) he had the drawing amongst his pictures with a caption like, “lol sum1 mek dis inna blog.” So I told him I’d made it and he said, “Oh, I like it. It’s cool.” Later he asked me to make one of Jack masturbating and one of himself masturbating.

I know I say this all the time, but I’m really into the idea of being a fan. What do you enjoy about making fan art?

I like that I can create something naive and (as it’s often though of) uncool, and at the same time reach out to the people I admire. Making this “contact” with my idols gives me a huge rush of excitement. Some people consider it not cool to be a big fan, but I don’t care.

What do you think about when you jerk off?
I find it hard to jerk off to anyone I haven’t actually met. I usually start off watching amateur porn and then finish jerking off to a blurred mix of fantasies of me with several guys I know personally and that I wish to or have already fucked. I don’t jerk off to my boyfriend, I guess because I can have the real thing with him.

Weirdly, the way I can tell if I really like someone is if I continue to masturbate to them even after we’ve fucked. How did you lose your virginity?
I used to suck my friends’ dicks when I was a little boy. Does that count? Later, when I was like 13, I started having webcam sex with men in chatrooms, or jerking off for them via webcam. When I turned 18 and finally realized that having sex with someone “out of love” was not going to happen soon, I decided to meet up with this guy I knew from a chatroom and suck his cock. I didn’t like the smell of it. I wasn’t fucked in the ass until much later, by another guy I met online who I had a HUGE crush on. He didn’t use lube, nor did he spit on my ass. Painful! So, I guess losing my virginity was more of a process than a single event.

Seriously, like 90% of the gay guys I know lost their virginity to someone they met online. You guys are like SO 2010! Who are your creepy internet obsessions?
I sort of stalk Terence Koh. I’ve also been stalking my roommate online, to look at his pics. I don’t stalk him physically though, like, in the house. But I do like to catch his smell in the hallway when he opens the door to his room. I have a very strong sense of smell, and the male scent really turns me on!

That’s fucked up! You’re a psycho but I love you!

Objects of Desire

2010-08-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Pic @ The Saudis

“I’ve been having this reoccurring nightmare,” says Hamilton, pacing back and forth across his kitchen in an awkward lurch. He has dark, sunken eyes and a long beaky nose, the combination of which makes him look like a deformed bird. “It’s horrible,” he says. “I wake up in a cold sweat almost every night.”

“What’s the dream about?”

“Well, it starts with me in bed at night, and I can sense there’s an intruder in my apartment. So I grab a knife and search the house, but there’s no one there. And then I discover that someone has folded the pages of all my books.”

“Yeah,” I nod, urging him to continue. “And then what?”

“What do you mean?” he asks, seemingly puzzled. “And then nothing. That’s it.”

“That’s it? That’s the nightmare? What’s scary about that? Who cares if the pages of your books are folded?"

“Oh my god!” he gasps, horrified. “Don’t tell me you’re a page folder. Are you? Are you seriously a page folder? Do you have such a minute respect for books that you would sooner destroy them than exert the minimal effort it requires to use a bookmark?”

“Uh…” I blink an uncomfortable amount of times. “No?”

He takes off his sweaty T-shirt and drops it mindlessly at his side. There’s no flesh to him. He’s so skinny and pale that in certain lights you can almost see his insides through his skin—veins, small movements of muscle, the outlines of his bones. I stare at his pigeon chest and all I can think is I want to combine my body with your body. But not even in a sex way. The urge is more rudimentary than that, like I just want to slam myself into him as hard as possible or something.

“I don’t understand when people are neglectful of their things,” he says, stirring spoonfuls of wheatgrass into a pitcher of green health goo. "I also don’t understand why people wear underwear. Men in particular. Why would I want to wear another smaller pair of pants underneath my pants? It’s nonessential.”

He wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and I get a sudden and intense tingling sensation between my legs. This is what I like to call “The Feeling.” When I was younger and less sexually aware, I thought The Feeling just meant I had to pee really bad. As I got older, however, I learned The Feeling is actually my body’s response to a very specific type of visual stimulation. It’s my body saying I want you. I don’t know what getting a boner feels like, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s a very similar sensation to that of The Feeling.

It is considered an almost forgone conclusion that men are more “visual” than women when it comes to sex. Men, we’re told, view women as objects of desire, while us girls need to be cuddled and petted and told “I love you” in order to want someone’s dick inside us. This is retarded. Sure, the mainstream media objectifies women far more than it does men (and I’m not trying to sound like a militant feminist when I say that, it’s just a fact), however, I find it very difficult to believe that, on a personal level, men look at women differently than women look at men. Does it honestly seem weird that a girl would see a hot boy and think, I want to fuck the shit out of you? Because I definitely have that thought at least four times a day. Like, hello! We can be lecherous too! And we can have feelings! The two are not mutually exclusive.

“So,” I say, taking a sip of the newly prepared green goo, then covertly gagging into a napkin, “when was the last time you jerked off?”

“Uh… today,” he recounts with mild apprehension. “In the library. I was so horny, I couldn’t wait until I got home.”

“Interesting…”

Reader Art

2010-08-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Send more to Karleysciortino@gmail.com

FREAKS Need Love Too!

2010-08-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Finding someone who wants to fuck you back can be really hard! But have no fear, I'm going to help you find your soul mate / someone to pee on. This is the first installment of FREAKS Need Love Too. From now on, every week I will introduce you to a hot, single freak who, just like you, is looking for love.

This week, meet Dev Hynes. I've talked about Dev on my blog before--the guy with Synesthesia who's into squirters. Dev is a musician who operates under the monikers Lightspeed Champion and (more recently) Blood Orange. Prior to this he was in a screamo, proto-new rave band called Test Icicles, whose music I definitely had gurn sex to on more than one occasion back in 2005.

If you think you're Dev's soul mate, send him an email to sluteversetups@gmail.com. Come on, DO IT!

Blueprints

2010-08-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

The first time I visit the home of my internet crush Hamilton Morris, I know instantly that I like him because the place is a disaster. If someone died in this apartment, it could take months to find the body. Erratic towers of books mask every visible surface—kitchen table, windowsills, floor, sink. There’s a half eaten sandwich withering away next to the air conditioner, now half its original size. Except for a couple rickety wooden chairs, the only piece of furniture in the place is an offensively modern, neon orange sofa turned over onto its side, located directly in the center of the living room. “My dad directed an e-Harmony commercial a couple months ago,” says Hamilton, pointing at the orange heap. “That was a prop. I never got around to deciding where to put it.”

His bedroom is a roughly 3 meter by 3 meter square with a bare mattress lining the left wall. A couple yellowed pillows and a rainbow quilted blanket lay sloppily at its side. Above the bed hangs a hand drawn poster of the chemical structure of something-or-other. Old protein drinks and more books—The Psychopharmacology of Hallucinogens, Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, etc.—are the room’s sole embellishments. I scan the room multiple times over, then breathe in really deep, filling my nose with any available smells. I smile and say “I like this” out loud.

“I know, right?” he beams, gesticulating with his bony, awkward hands. “I don’t get why people need large bedrooms. I’d much rather live in a small cube than a large cube, don’t you agree?”

“Definitely,” I nod, forgetting to consider whether this is actually what I believe. “But like, where do you keep your clothes?”

“Right there,” he says flatly, pointing to a small cotton heap of about three T-shirts.

“Oh yeah,” I shrug. “Duh.”

You can tell a lot about a person from their surroundings. I like to think of one’s bedroom as a blueprint of his or her character. Personally, extreme cleanliness freaks me out. I mean let’s face it, people with immaculate houses have something wrong with them. Plus they’re bad in bed. Everybody knows that; it’s just a fact. I would never fuck a guy who vacuums or who folds his underwear. I much prefer a guy with a sink covered in hair and black mold, who wears the same clothes for weeks at a time. It lets me know we’re on the same page, that we want the same things out of life.

If I have sex with a guy and he comes on me, I don’t like to shower immediately afterward. I prefer to walk around for the rest of the day with his DNA festering on my skin. I want to be able to smell him on my fingers for hours. Naturally, I want a guy who feels the same—who revels in wearing my old cum and dried blood. Judging by the state of his bedroom, Hamilton would definitely wear my cum.

“Do you have any tattoos?” I ask, scanning his twiglike body for any visible markings.

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“For a while I considered getting the chemical structure of methylphenidate tattooed on my arm, but then decided against it.”

“That’s nerdy,” I say, followed by “You have very beautiful long hair.” And he laughs like I’ve just said something really silly, but I sort of meant it to be silly so whatever.

In Hindsight

2010-08-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Slutever

As told by someone else:

This is a story I would not tell you when I was your girlfriend because I knew it would mean the end of us. We’d been together for a long time, then you started liking that other person, the one whose name I can’t say out loud. At first I thought I could change myself—to learn to possess whatever special thing it was this other person possessed—but after a while of you not noticing I just gave up.

When we met you said you didn’t know anything about sex. I said that was OK with me. I said it was a good thing I was such a slut in high school, because now I had a vast knowledge of the human anatomy and how to make orgasms happen in both boys and girls, and that I would share it with you. This made you cringe a little, but you seemed optimistic. I taught you how to make a girl cum by writing the alphabet on her clit with your tongue (something I picked up from Cruel Intentions), and how to masturbate using a shower head. You taught me that I enjoyed erotic asphyxiation, and to shut up because I didn’t actually know as much about sex as I thought I did.

After you met that other person, you would go away for weeks at a time. It was because of your job, I know, but I still felt lonely. I started sleeping with a guy who liked to watch me eat during sex. He was about forty. Coincidentally, our affair began around the same time I developed an insatiable oral fixation. I would eat constantly, would chew gum, smoke cigarettes (I normally don’t, as you know), and bite my nails even more than usual. I would eat and smoke all day and at night I would go to XXX’s house to fuck, and while we fucked I would eat—cakes, ice-cream, candy bars, stuff like that. I once consumed an entire chocolate cake in a night. I gained ten pounds and felt like a fat pig. You didn’t care. Whenever I would complain about my body you would say, I like the way you look. Actually, I think you look better than before, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Around this time a close friend said to me, You know you have a problem with food when you can’t stop shoving your face long enough to get fucked. That made me laugh but then later I cried about it.

Someone somewhere once told me: if you don’t have sex at least three times a week you can consider your relationship over. But I remember points when we didn’t have sex for months at a time, but it felt OK. We did other things that felt just as, if not more, intimate. Like in the mornings when I’d get up to take a shower, and you’d lie in bed and make yourself cum. Then when I came back I’d clean you up with the damp kitchen towel I’d brought with me just for that very reason. That was nice. Kitchen towels always remind me of you.

Once, right before we broke up, you said, Sometimes I feel as though my thoughts, feelings, opinions and words are not my own, but rather a combination of those of the people around me. You said, Isn’t that depressing? I say No, that’s everybody. I remember thinking you sounded really pretentious.

About a month after we broke up I sent you a letter that said (in red, capital letters for dramatic effect): YOU ARE THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME. In hindsight I guess that wasn’t exactly the truth.

This Week In Pictures

2010-08-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

Fuck You, Fashion

2010-08-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

Ever since teen angst was commercialized in the 50s, conscious kids have invented ways to use their appearance as ideological ammunition. This article isn’t about Bebo mall-goths (I call them moths) or college drop-ins in Che Guevara shirts. We're talking about clothing choices that invented the future rather than just bastardizing the past (or at least bastardized it so good that it became indistinguishable from the future--headfuck). And if you think fashion is empty and can’t change the world, well, where have you been? Punk caused a generation gap, T-shirts have played part in non-violent resistance for years, fuck, the birth of the mini skirt practically derailed society. Because what’s important to remember is, in the end it’s not about fashion. It’s about using fashion as a way to say something bigger, about living.

1968: No bra

With the second wave of women’s lib in the late 60s and early 70s, a lot of angry women refused to wear bras, preferring to let their boobs sag freely down their chests, rather than be imprisoned by that horrible, cage-like apparel. Ick! Although nowadays stripping off your underwear to appear less of a sex object may seem a bit silly, at the time it like was like way progressive. Lazy journalists invented the first few instances of bra-burning, but feminists around the world thought this was a great idea, and did start burning their bras.

Fuck you, men.

1971-1974: Dudes who look like ladies

During the Glam Rock era, men dressed in women’s clothes and makeup because they thought it would get them chicks. Mick Jagger, the New York Dolls, David Bowie, and Brian Eno were wearing high heels, makeup and women’s blouses onstage (hot). In turn this inspired young British guys to wander the streets in sparkly, knee-high platforms and metallic fabric, wearing their sexual confusion with pride. While the actual gays were dressing like biker gang members.

Fuck you, not getting laid.

1976: Being punk

Sure, someone, somewhere did something punk before Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. But Punk: the Style was invented by McLaren after reading loads of Situationist books and deciding to rename his shop SEX. He then sold torn-to-shit clothing and bondage gear with the specific intent of changing the world, and marketed the whole package with his shop’s house band, the Sex Pistols. People always talk about Sid and Nancy as being the darling couple of punk, but anyone in their right mind would so obviously choose Viv and Malcolm over Sid and Nancy in a potential threesome situation.

Fuck you, rules.

1979 and currently: Radical Islam

This was the year of the Iranian Revolution, during which Shah’s corrupt, hyperwestern puppet regime was overthrown and replaced with a much-better-for-everyone Islamic republic. Even today Iranian men can’t wear ties, because they’re seen as a western import. Modern-day Muslim girls know that wearing their Islamic headscarves, and veils in particular, really pissed people off, and pop stars and fashion designers love them because they’re mildly controversial.

Fuck you, sexual freedom.

1979: Skinhead revival

Though skinhead originated among working-class kids trying to look black in 60s England, by the late 70s it had made a racist/anti-racist comeback, mainly as a reaction to what was perceived as the deadness of punk. One look at Nick Knight’s book Skinhead and you will almost certainly be convinced that skinhead is the sexiest of all the youth cult fashions. It also doubles as magnificent masturbation material.

Fuck you. Full stop.

1986: Paninaro

The world’s only youth movement named after a sandwich bar was a weird fuck-you to Italy’s hippies and the older generation’s sense of cultural superiority. These guys wore preppy American and Italian sportswear, and played a massive part in making outdoor gear like Timberlands fashionable. In fact, in some ways, the early 90s hip-hop wardrobe is just baggy Paninaro with bigger logos. And the Pet Shop Boys wrote one of fashion’s greatest songs about them. The Paninari didn’t give a shit about politics, loved looking good, and everything American, like sportswear, trashy pop music, and hanging out in burger and sandwich bars.

Fuck you, Euro communists

1990: Being Amish

Apparently the early 90s saw a surge in the growth of the Amish population, which may have had something to do with them having an average of 6.8 children per family. The Amish refuse to engage or adapt to modern convenience, and in turn, live very simple (aka terrible) lives, and dress extremely plainly, so as not to draw attention to themselves. No wonder they have so many kids, there’s literally nothing to do but fuck.

Fuck you, modern life.

Roughly 1990 on: Letting your ass hang out

Sometime in the 90s, sagging jeans became a big look in hip-hop and with skaters. A lot of people blame guys adopting a look made popular in prisons because of the prohibiting of belts, but pants had also been getting a lot baggier around this time too. By 1996, designer Alexander McQueen came out with “bumsters.” I don’t know if flaunting your butt cleavage is necessarily what one would call “abrasive to the state”—although enough places have tried to outlaw this practice—but it definitely heavily angered my mother.

Fuck you, not looking like a gang banger, aka running the risk of looking gay.

Mid-90s: Self-harm scars

Ever since Richie Manic slashed “4 Real” into his arm in 1991, some sick people have thought that was a really cool move. For real, all the super-alt kids at my high school in 1998 definitely spent their time alone in their bedrooms, thinking deep thoughts and listening to Elliott Smith while covering their wrists in razor scars (although they normally weren’t that deep (pussies), and were generally half-concealed by a studded bracelet in an “I’m making a lame attempt to cover up my scars but not really because I actually want you to know my pain” sort of way).

Fuck you, pretending everything is OK.

2000: The keffiyeh

Remember those Palestinian scarves everyone was wearing around the turn of the millennium? Well, aside from being a “hot” fashion trend, those scarves—correctly known as keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headdress—were supposed to be being worn as a symbol of support for the Palestinian people’s second rebellion against Israeli occupation rather than a drool-bib for PBR and nasal drip, which is how roughly 99% of them ended up.

Fuck you, understanding the nuances of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

2000s: Ganguro girls

Ganguro is a trend that started among young girls in Japan in the early 90s, but hit its peak around 2000. Ganguro girls basically look like blackface, cartoon versions of California beach sluts, only with tranny nails and covered in neon stickers. They’re known for using black ink and permanent marker as makeup, and wearing baggy thigh-highs which they literally superglue to their skin to hold them up. This might seem a bit silly or “kiddie dress-up” from afar, but actually some girls who dedicate themselves to the trend are shunned from Japanese society, because of their desire to embody the complete opposite of traditional Japanese standards of beauty.

Fuck you, country that won’t let people with tattoos go swimming.

2000s: Color revolutions

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution

Color revolution was a method of non-violent resistance used in several societies in the CIS (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s, where people wore specific colours as a symbol of protest against corrupt or authoritarian governments. Color revolutions have been successful in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and (although more violent than the previous ones) in Kyrgyzstan (2005). Each time, disputed elections were followed by massive street protests, which then led to the resignation or overthrow of authoritarian leaders. Pretty cool. Also worth a mention is the failed one in Iran where the pro-democracy guys wore green and thousands of people were killed by their own government.

Fuck you, electoral fraud.

2008: Mexican emos

Mostly I’ve avoided the most obvious rehashing of punk and club kid fashions, because no one is actually threatened by that stuff. But remember when emo became really popular in Mexico a couple years back? Reminding us all that while Hot Topic means being truly alt. in the West is near impossible, in the third world it can still get you killed. The emo explosion caused an insanely violent backlash among Mexican teens of other persuasions (punks, Rastas, metal kids, etc.) claiming emos were lame, overly sentimental homos and, well, just emo basically. Anti-emo riots broke out across Mexico. Emos were repeatedly threatened and assaulted for their clothes and music taste. Bloggers raved about killing emos online. It was totally fucked. And the sad part is, emos are an inherently peaceful type, which meant in most cases they just took the abuse rather than fighting back, and their passivity just pissed the haters off even more. Poor little things! (I’m serious.)

Fuck you, macho Mexicans.

Dear Freaks

2010-07-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

I attract freaks. Well, that’s not really what I mean. What I mean is, I think people feel like can be the weirdest, most twisted versions of themselves around me. I can’t decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. I guess it shows I come across as being very non-judgmental, welcoming of abnormalities, etc. I’m into that. However, it also just means I receive an insane amount of emails and Facebook messaged from strangers, pouring their deranged little hearts out about every fucked-up fantasy or sexual encounter they’ve ever experienced, and all the dark ambitions they’re too ashamed to share with their families and friends. Admittedly I do find a large portion of these messages extremely touching and amusing. However I’m actually just not the person you should be getting-real with about your impotency issues, your scat porn addiction or your hidden desire to fuck your mom. Seriously, get a psychiatrist.

I also must give off the impression that I’m the type of girl who would enjoy being sent extremely crude, overtly sexual emails, because I get a shocking amount of those as well. It’s slightly disturbing. Because if I’m honest, as much as I bullshit to try and make myself sound super edgy and sexually progressive, really I just want to have slow, lovey make-out sex like everybody else. I want a boy who strokes my hair and reads me books and stuff, not one who sends me sinister emails that open with “I want to punch your whorish mouth.” WTF? Your mothers would be ashamed. I also do not want to be sent photos of erect cocks (I don’t know how that rumor got started) so if you were thinking of sending over a few snaps of your morning boner, please consider otherwise.

I’ve compiled a few of the weirdest, most lolz, most creepy messages I’ve been sent as of late. If you’re reading this and one of these messages is from you, I’m sorry, I still love you dearly, but you should know that you have serious, deep-seeded emotional problems for which you should probably seek professional help.

Click to enlarge

The Replacements

2010-07-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Brett Lloyd

Bunny’s been acting strange lately. I think he’s beginning to get annoyed by my constant Skype calls and emails, repeatedly asking HAVE YOU FOUND A NEW ME? Normally he just replies something cryptic, like ‘I have no emotions’ or ‘I just came,’ but this morning was different. This morning he said: I think it’s time I told you about Mona.

Bunny went through a brief phase a few months back where he talked obsessively about his fantasy of having a “cool old lady girlfriend.” I didn’t take him seriously. People say a lot of shit they don’t mean all the time. I dismissed this claim like I dismiss 90% of what is said around me. I guess he wasn’t joking.

How old is she?

Sixty-three.

That’s gross.

Really? I thought you of all people would be more open minded.

Do you fuck?

It’s not like that.

But I mean, it’s kind of a joke, right? You two aren’t serious.

I’m going to her country house.

Bunny met Mona at a charity shop in Kennington where she regularly volunteers. He bought one of her dead husband’s suits. She thought it looked just marvelous on him, and invited him back to her house to try on some more of Roger’s (AKA the dead guy’s) clothes, which she was slowly but surely getting rid of. Bunny now has an entirely new wardrobe.

You disgust me.

Is it weird that I’m sort of into the idea of being the new Roger? Like I wouldn’t mind if Mona called me that. Roger, I mean.

She’s gunna kill you and eat you.

When she looks at me sometimes she doesn’t break eye contact for, like, ten minutes. I swear. I like her because she’s so different to everyone else I know. Yesterday I walked passed the kebab shop near our squat and Simon was inside, writing out their menu in exchange for food. If I’m going to surround myself with people like Simon, I also need someone like Mona.

I hang up and stare at my computer screen, not blinking, until my eyes go blurry. Through white mist I imagine myself crumpling up the screen, as one would a discarded piece of paper. I watch the LCD splinter and break, jagged bits of shrapnel filling the air like an ash cloud. It looks like snow. I sit motionless for what seems like days but is actually a few minutes. Somewhere in the distance a car alarm sirens, breaking the silence and setting off a wave of kinetic energy that reminds me that I’m here and alive and a person.

I blink and suddenly I’m walking down the street to a nearby bar to meet some people I kind of know but not really. I guess this is normal when you’re new to a city. At the bar a woman with long, poker straight black hair and bushy eyebrows sits down to me. She says her name is Jutka and do I want to go back to her apartment because she has tons of Adderall and this weird Chinese liquor that gets you, like, soooo fucked up. I find this invitation a bit weird considering we’ve only known each other for 3.2 seconds. I have a feeling this might be a sex thing. Still, I’m in the market for new friends who have similar interests to me, which it seems like she does, so I nod my head yes yes yes.

I rest my head on Jutka’s kitchen table as she crushes up the sky blue pill with her library card. She sculpts the pretty power into two even lines. I always feel a little bit guilty taking Adderall recreationally—after all it is the sacred fruit of concentration—but I also just really like being high, so I smile and sniff.

Ten minutes later I’m lying on her bed. The world seems bighter than it did before. I can see and think clearly. Or at least I think I can. I realize that it’s my turn—time for me to uphold my end of this unspoken arrangement. Give and take, I think. I roll over to face Jutka, offer her a stupid smile and lean in. She's terrified. “Whoa. WHOA!” she shouts, her arm outstretched, covering my lips. “I am NOT into girls. Like AT ALL. Sorry if you got the wrong impression. I just… WHOA.”

Jutka is not only not a lesbian, but she is also, it seems, vaguely homophobic. It’s one thing to be rejected; it’s another to be rejected by someone you didn’t even want in the first place.

I walk outside and the streets are calm. Sometimes it feels so nice to be alone. And as I walk home, stamping my heavy, tired feet against the pavement, the dawn rains down on me like crisp blue flakes and for the millionth time I think, Weird… where am I?

BUNNY: London Part 3

2010-07-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Matthew Stone

Here's part 3 of Bunny's epic journey to London, told by him. Click to read parts ONE and TWO.

Sometime near when we first met, near when I started staying in your bed at night instead of on the couch, you said Your face keeps changing in my brain, it's like I don't remember what you look like. I feel like I stare at you so close when we're together so I can see everything you're doing. And then, it's like, when you're not there, you disappear, I've stared too hard or something. You're far away, gone blank, like, nothing. Instead there's just your hair, some hazy colours and a face that's not a face.

About a month after I come to town, you and I, we crash some fashion party on St Martin’s Lane where they give us two free gift bags filled with lip gloss and a copy of this month’s Glamour Magazine. Oh perfect, I think as I’m ripping off the cover page and using it to wipe away the ketchup stain my shirt has suffered from the chip shop down the street, I feel more glamourous already.

While we stand beside the bar, waiting to collect our corporate-sponsored complimentary mojitos, I scan the room and am surprised to spot Kerri with a kilt on and some sporadic strokes of rainbow warpaint arched across her cheeks. I say, "No offense, but why are you here?" and she slurs right back at me "Fuck you! I was invited by that pretty chick called Blah Blah Blah from that show on Channel Something" and just before I have the chance to pose a few more necessary questions Blah Blah Blah is clicking over in her too tall heels to beckon Kerri to the bathroom. Before they go the pretty chick smiles wide at me and says "By the way I love your shirt. Is that one from Wherever, the collection with the rips and stains? I want one so fucking badly but they’re all sold out, goddammit!" I shrug at her and say, "It’s ketchup."

"Kerri’s got that new pile of whatever-it-is up in her room and I think she’s started selling it," you explain to me after they’ve left a couple seconds later. "Oh yeah," I say, and wonder if I should buy some now or just wait till she’s so wasted that she's handing out her wraps for free to anyone who knows her.

Later, after bartering with Kerri and a few trips to the bathroom, I feel so drunk and dizzy, dying, lying on a leather couch forgotten somewhere on the far side of the room. You’re way over there, smashing face against an older guy who I think used to be a pop star. You glance up to catch a breath and wave, I laugh and look around and think, Wait, what am I doing. Men with cameras stalk across the room like wild tigers on the hunt. PR girls teeter back and forth between the exits, slinging Glamour gift bags onto every important looking thing’s emaciated wrist. I catch the most familiar ones gazing with ambivalent expressions, something between lust and loathing, at their own reflections in the mirror behind the bar. And me too. I’m here too, I’m doing it all too. Everyone is talking, watching, waiting for whatever. I feel so stupid being here, feel so stupid when I’m like this.

A group of guys with Brooklyn accents--who I later learn are members of an entourage belonging to a certain successful rapper--ascend from the back basement stairs, greeting glares and lip glossed scoffs as they push aside some skinny boys with vests on waiting at the bar to minimal resistance. Then I hear that well-known Scottish squawk from somewhere in the jumble screech "Oi Motherfucker! I was first, give me back my fucking drink!" and see Kerri’s tiny body launch onto the massive back of some stunned bro as he tries to shake her off. Another guy grabs her by the ankles but not before she lifts a bottle from the bar and sends it flying into someone else's face. Soon there’s so much shit being flung across the room, everyone is screaming, squatting terrified beneath the tables or sucking in to save their lives, pressed up like paper on the walls. A gaggle of girls in glitter mini dresses is shrieking helpless "Murder!" as they carry off a fallen friend whose face is bloodied, lodged with the shrapnel of a wine glass stem, one of several casualties I witness in the massacre.

As the understaffed security is struggling to calm shit down, I start to feel real sick and hurry out onto the street so I can puke inside a potted palm tree just beside the door girl. As I wipe my mouth, some actress presses past me, pushing through the paparazzi flashing crazy as she picks a chunk of glass from out her hair and a mint leaf from what must have been a bomb made of mojito off her face. "Fuck this", she seethes through twisted mouth, then turns to me and says, "Here Have It" as she shoves a trophy and an XL bottle of Moet Chandon into my arms. She runs into her waiting car, I look down to read the trophy’s plate on which is etched her name and underneath, the words “Woman of the Year". Oh, I think, and shrug my shoulders.

When I try to go back to the party, the door girl refuses flatly, saying “This is a private party for guests of the Glamour Magazine awards ceremony only.” I hold up my trophy, telling her “But I’m, like, the Woman of the...” and she steps into the club and shuts the glass door in my face.

You emerge some minutes later and I ask you "Where is Kerri?" "I just saw her doing drugs with all these black guys from New York in the boy's toilets," you say. "Why, did something happen? I was giving head to that weird man in the stall right next to her." You grin oblivious, like no big deal, and we walk towards the bus stop.

On the ride home we take turns chugging from the champagne bottle, trading stories from our night, and just as you're recounting getting fingered on the dance floor, out of no where I start crying. "Sorry," I say, "this is weird, the first time that I’ve cried in like four years" and I start crying even harder cause I know it’s really true. You hug me, saying "Just a comedown, that’s why I cry like every day." "No," I say, "it isn't that, I think it’s that... I don’t know what I’m doing." I go on, shaky between tears, "I like, just don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Why did I even come to London? I wake up every day with no idea where I am or why I'm here or what my point is, I just feel so fucking... stupid."

"Hey," you say, stroking my arm, "I mean, we're all a bit retarded right now but it's what makes us sort of... better. Some people are just people and some people are just better. You're one of the better ones. I think that there's a reason you came here to Squallyoaks, to London. Maybe you haven't figured it out yet but I know that there's a reason. But, whatever the fuck happens, I think we'll be kind of ok. Better than ok. Ok?"

I nod my head and rest it on your shoulder, we stay quiet. After a while, we both fall asleep and accidentally ride the bus ten stops too far past our street. But as I sleep I dream about you swimming in the sea somewhere, deep underwater like a mermaid. Your face is white and blurry, hidden by your hair, and even though I try so hard, I can't remember what you look like.

This Week In Pictures

2010-07-19T12:48:00.001-07:00

Little brother.

The image below was mysteriously found on my camera. Scary.

Listing: Lightspeed Champion

2010-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dev: by Slutever

Dev Hynes, my friend and the musical mastermind behind Lightspeed Champion, asked me to write a guest blog for his website. Here's what I wrote.

HI, I’m Karley, AKA Slutever. I’ve known Dev for a few years now, and for some reason the two of us can’t seem to get together without falling into the same, pseudo-philosophical conversation about the science of “being cool.” This entails going around in circles, trying desperately to put our fingers on the elusive formula—the paradoxal blueprint—necessary to create a person that is ultimately cool. (And yes, it is as embarrassing as it sounds.) For example: “Is it cool to send someone you like a text that says I NEED YOU TO FUCK ME, or is it cooler to not text at all and just pretend like you don’t care?” “No, I think that’s cool.” or “Does this shirt/pants combo make me look cool?” “No, it makes you look like you’re trying to be cool, which is actually uncool.” And so on…

However, the catch is, engaging in this type of conversation at all is quite obviously the farthest thing from cool anyone could ever do, because those who are inherently cool don’t have to dissect cool, they just are cool naturally. You follow? Whatevs.

Anyway, at the root of these discussions, really, is love (or lust, whichever you prefer), because deep down, the reason we all want to be cool so badly is so that someone else will think we’re cool, too, and then we’ll fall in love and live happily ever after in our own little cool bubble. (Gross?) However, due to a recent series of girl/life bummers, as of late Dev has become super jaded about love / life / the quest for cool / everything. It’s a total drag. The other day he actually said the sentence, “What’s the point in trying to meet a girl? The best scenario is that we fall in love, get married, have kids… and then she dies.” WHAT?! That’s like total psycho talk!

Trying to help, I informed Dev about a new love-finding technique I recently heard of called Listing. Listing is when you physically write out a list of the qualities you want and don’t want in a partner, thus helping you to focus your mind and hone in on your “target market.” Sounds good, right? (If you're seeing red flags, ignore them.) Unfortunately, when I told Dev about Listing he was so down in the dumps that he merely rolled his eyes, frowned and mumbled, “I just don’t have it in me anymore.”

Being the good friend that I am, however, I went ahead and made a list for Dev, containing all the qualities I think he would like / dislike in a partner, based on the hours I’ve spent listening to him rant about all the girls he loves / hates / wants to fuck / wants to hate fuck / wants to die, and so on. Here goes:

Desirable:

Girls with vaginas
Girls that are unavailable (emotionally and physically)
Over 30s
Under 30s
Girls who suck dick like it’s their ambition in life (all guys like this, trust me)
Anyone not grossed-out by Chili Heat Wave Dorito breath
Semi nerds (i.e. geeky music knowledge, comic book fetishes, awkward bangs, etc)
Girls that are optimistic (to counteract his negativity)
Squirters
Pot heads
Girls with some money (not loads, but enough to buy him lunch)

Undesirable:

Girls who play games (some are OK, but don’t be OTT. You're not Sarah Michelle Gellar.)
Girls who do not enjoy spending hours every day sitting around in bar/restaurant hybrids Brooklyn, staring at walls
Dumb girls (read a book you morons!)
Girls who are sexually timid
Drama queens
Girls who aren’t into getting married having a kids and moving to the West Village (eventually)

Ok now go and make a list for yourselves you spinsters!

Sweeping Generalizations

2010-07-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Julia Corsaro

I’ve been living in New York for just over a month now, it’s great! I miss London kind of but not really. Change is good; I’ve officially decided. In fact we all need to make more of an effort to frighten ourselves out of our everyday, everyday. Take note! That was a very un-me thing to say, I know, but I’ve just had some stimulants and am feeling uncharacteristically chipper at the moment. As I'm still relatively new to NYC, I figured now is a good time to make a list of some of the observations / sweeping generalizations I’ve made about this city and the people in it since moving here. Here goes!

1. The hot girl / hot guy radio = insanely depressing

What the fuck?! This city is crawling with beautiful, half naked, horny women and there are NO hot guys! I’ve seen like 3 potential fucks in the past month, and I’m being generous at that. Despair! (Hot guys take note.)

2. People LOVE cocaine

SO hard! They want it like RIGHT NOW all the time forever. It’s so gross! (No, but for real, is that why are the girls here are so thin, because if so I want some.)

3. New Yorkers love aphorisms

Everyone speaks Bumper Sticker here. People literally walk around saying things like “You just gotta be you,” and “Follow your dreams” without any shame or reservation. It’s like being back at Christian camp! Last night at a bar, after telling a guy 3 times that I most definitely did not want to dance with him, he actually said, “Girl, you have to learn to just let go and be free, ya feel me?” Eww! No, I do not feel you, or your cargo pants, so feck off!

4. People get wasted but not that wasted

In London it’s totally normal to walk into a bar and see someone face down on the floor, motionless, covered in their own vomit. You just assume they either did too much K or are taking a quick disco nap and will be up to finish their pint in no time. New Yorkers, however, seem to possess a vague level of constraint when it comes drinking/drugs that others simply do not. I think it has something to do with people here needing to feel in control / wanting to retain memories / not hating themselves, but I can't be sure!

5. The food is worryingly sweet

For realzzz! Bread tastes like biscuits, apples taste like apple cider, peanut butter tastes like Reeces Pieces and semen tastes like milkshakes!

6. People are generally more positive, look healthier and smile more in New York than anywhere else I’ve been in the world

It's creepy but it's true. I guess it being summer helps, but I also just think the quality of life is better here than in most places, i.e. in the UK where people talk about the sun like it’s an urban legend and think Guinness is a vegetable!

7. It’s too hot

It's so nightmarishly hot in NYC that in order to feel mildly comfortable you have to either be 1. in the shower 2. standing with your face pressed directly up against the air conditioner, or 3. running through one of those cinematic red fire hydrant fountain things, which I have actually taken to doing quite frequently (in slow motion, obviously).

8. People dress boring

As a general rule people in London dress retarded (this is good). Here not so much. That doesn’t mean people care less about they look (oh they do), I just think they’re less inclined to be outrageous or take noticeable risks. It comes across far less try-hard, but also in turn slightly less interesting. Although sometimes admittedly in London people take it way too far, i.e. people who go out with plant pots taped to their head / dress like futuristic, introspective vampires.

9. People love beards

Seriously!

10. It’s not “cool” to be a disaster.

In London being a poor junkie squatter is seen as really cool, believe me! Even all the rich west London kids rip their designer clothes and sleep on jank mattresses in abandoned warehouses to fit in. Here it’s all about having a job, not being a pathetic junked-out monster, having an apartment (furnished), and taking showers. Who knew?!

Love Lists

2010-07-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Julia Corsaro

A couple weeks ago I received an email from my friend Huw in London, telling me about a new technique he’s been using in his quest for eternal love. It’s called Listing. He said that physically writing out a list of the qualities you want and don’t want in a partner helps to focus your mind, thus allowing you to hone in on your “target market.” He said that in life we have to dream big, but we also have to be realistic. I said that sounds like the sort of insane, desperate fat girl bullshit one reads in the pages of Cosmopolitan, and where do I sign up?

The thing is, I love lists. They’re pretty much my favorite. I make a To-Do list every morning when I wake up. Admittedly, sometimes it’s not much longer than To Do: Nothing, but still, I get an extreme amount of pleasure in crossing it off. In light of this I asked Huw to send me an example of the list he made, to give me a clear picture of the task at hand (and possibly to steal some of his ideas). His list, however, was total shit. For one the ‘desirable’ column was almost identical to the ‘undesirable’ column, both of which included ‘lesbians’ and ‘pretend lesbians.’ Also number one in the desirable column was ‘easy girls,’ which was an immediate red flag.

Despite his incompetence, I went ahead and made a list of my own. I believe it to be quite good. See below:

Desirable:

1. Boys who look like girls / girls who look like boys
2. Anyone possessing a general air of sickliness / malnourishment / weakness
3. Boys that are too young for me
4. Bisexuals (I’m going to pretend they exist for the sake of this list)
5. Salad lovers
6. Sex addicts
7. Self-destructive tendencies
8. People of immeasurable brilliance
9. People that smell a little bit but not too much
10. People I haven’t slept with

Undesirable

1. People I’ve already slept with
2. People not on Facebook (thus I can not stalk)
3. Muscles (ick)
4. AIDS
5. People with “real” jobs
6. Racists
7. I can’t think of anything else

After completing my list I immediately felt like I understood myself better. There it was: everything I ever wanted spelled out right in front of me. Nothing necessarily monumental happened. A naked Louis Garrel did not fall through my ceiling onto my lap. But I felt like someone who knew what she wanted. I felt powerful.

A few days later, after hours of sitting at my desk, working (and by “working” I mean masturbating all day which I’ve somehow convinced myself is a valid occupation), I decided I needed a break. I put on my $10 thrift store wedding dress and walked to the apartment building of Hamilton Morris—a Vice drug columnist who I internet stalked while in London and wrote creepy blog posts about but who I’d never actually met—with a sign that said HI, I’VE BEEN JERKING OFF THINKING ABOUT YOU SINCE 2008. On the walk there I briefly contemplated whether this was perhaps too much, but quickly decided that no, it’s in fact just a really normal, not-at-all-disturbing way of introducing yourself to someone. In fact, you should all try it. (Not being ugly helps.) I then sat on his doorstep waiting for him for the next five hours. When he finally arrived I was so delirious from having been out in the sun for so long without food or water, wearing a deathly hot polyester wedding dress, that I wasn’t sure if it was really him or just an extremely lifelike mirage.

He appeared confused, then bent down and started speaking at me, slowly. I’m not sure what he said; I wasn’t really listening. I was too overwhelmed with the sudden desire to put my head under his T-shirt.

“I think we may have met in a past life,” he said after a long pause. “You think it’s possible?”

I said no but I really meant yes.

Top 10 Hottest Girl-on-Girl Film Moments

2010-07-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Girl-on-girl moments in mainstream cinema tend to be pretty lame. This is because, for the most part, they exist solely to titillate male viewers, thus end up being really cheesy and bimbo-eqsue rather than erotic or realistic. This applies to pretty much every lesbian lip-lock in the history of teen movies. However, when properly executed, girl-on-girl is the holy grail of boner (duh). I’ve compiled a list of my personal top 10 leztastic film moments. Here they are, in no particular order. 3… 2… 1… lick your fingers.

Mulholland Drive (2001): Naomi Watts and Laura Harring get it on

I’ve seen David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive four times and I still have no idea what’s going on. Something about an aspiring actress, an amnesiac and a weird, tiny monster that lives behind a garbage bin? I think? I actually Googled it recently to see if anyone smarter than me had finally figured it out, but most plot summaries just classify the film’s meaning as “open to interpretation.” Whatever. More importantly, the film has a couple of disturbingly arousing sex scenes between a fresh-faced Naomi Watts and the glamorous Laura Harring. Bonus: They both have very expertly shaped breasts.

The Craft (1996): The whole movie

For those of you living in pop-cultureless cave world, The Craft is a movie about four girls at an LA high school who discover they have magical powers and then cast a bunch of spells on their classmates and each other. There’s not even really any explicitly lesbian content in the film—just a few quick pecks here and there—but lesbihonest, it’s one of the most grrrl-power, estrogentastic, lezbi-friendly films ever created. It made me wish I was gay. Well, not really, but it definitely made me care more about wearing all black and carrying around weirdly shaped sticks than about boys for at least three months.

Fucking Åmål (1998): Hot young lesbians being hot young lesbians

This is a Swedish film about two, desperate(ish) young girls growing up in a nowheresville town called Åmål in Sweden. The unpopular, suicidal one has a crush on the hot, popular one. The two attempt to run away together after they unexpectedly bond over their hatred of small town life. After that they suck each other’s faces for a while, then some bad stuff happens, then some touching stuff happens, then it ends. It’s sort of cliché but in a really sweet, innocent, ‘I relate to this’ sort of way. I recommend you see it.

Cruel Intentions (1999): Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar swap spit

This choice may be a bit obvs and teenage, but it’s definitely one of the defining on-screen lesbian moments of our generation (well, maybe my generation is more accurate—you’re probably 14), so I had to include it. Plus we’ve all dreamed of being as alt-hot as Selma Blair at some point in our lives. Buffy’s not so bad either. After seeing this film I definitely stole the line, “Only this time, I’m going to stick my tongue in your mouth….” and used it when teaching 14 year old boys to make-out behind the tennis courts after school.

Gia (1998): Angelina Jolie lesbian shower

Before Angelia Jolie had 4000 ethnic children and started dating the guy from Oceans 11, she used to be really cool and “out there”, and do things like die her hair black and make-out with her brother. Hot. During this time she starred in Gia, a film about Gia Carangi, a bisexual drug addict supermodel who dies of AIDS. Whoa. There’s one scene in the film that’s particularly sweet, in which she and Elizabeth Mitchell take a shower together. (And yes, I know what you’re thinking, that is Juliet from Lost!)

Frida (2002): Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd making-out

One can only hope to posess a fraction of the power and sex appeal that Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd do at 40. (Realistically we’ll probably all be aging, blob-like mothers of 7.) In Frida—a film about the life of artist Frida Kahlo—the two share a passionate dance and lip lock. It’s not a particularly lovey-dovey kiss, but it’s hot in a sexually free, women’s lib, female empowerment sort of way.

Therese and Isabelle (1968): Old school sex

During junior high I spent most weekends at my friend Brittany’s house, because Brittany had arty, film-buff parents with a giant catalogue of sexy art films and old school erotic movies that we thought were just so risqué at the time. This is when I first saw Therese and Isabelle—a love story between two young girls at a French boarding school. Although when it came out in the 60’s it was classified as an erotic film, nowadays it seems pretty tame. However all the sex scenes are very slow and sensual, which is a nice change. I recommend watching this with the lights dimmed, in a lacy nightgown, perhaps with a glass of red wine… you get the idea.

Jennifer’s Body (2009): Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried make-out

This movie, admittedly, is not that amazing. (I still love you Diablo Cody—sex bloggers unite!) However, the make-out sesh between is Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried is very sexy, and actually goes on for quite a good length of time. I also realize that Megan Fox is a very obvious choice of babe—the sort of girl you’re told is hot so often by the media that you cant tell if she’s actually hot anymore, or whether you’re just buying into some preconceived, Cosmopolitan idea of beauty. (Jessica Alba is another example of this. Is it just me or is she SO whatever?!) However, to clear it up for you, Megan Fox is actually just one of the most physically attractive people on the planet, so it’s OK to sit back and bask in her overwhelming hottness. The dumb one from Mean Girls isn’t bad either.

The Hunger (1983): Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve having crazed vampire sex

Let’s face it, Susan Sarandon is just cool. I wish she was my mom and my BFF and my lover all at once. The Hunger—though it stands alone as a pretty good vampire seduction thriller—is probably best known for its epic, filthy vampire sex scene between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. Also David Bowie is in the film being typically mayj.

Poison Ivy (1992): Drew Barymore and Sarah Gilbert tonguing

Has anyone ever nailed it harder than Drew Barymore in Poison Ivy? She’s probably the hottest, coolest bad girl of all time. I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed to admit I’ve modeled my entire existence on the character of Ivy (minus the murderer part). The scene where Ivy and Sylvia kiss is extremely arousing, mainly because in that precise moment Drew Barymore is the personification of sex. I can’t tell whether I want to fuck her or be her.

The end.

Teen Dream

2010-07-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Matthew Stone

For the third time this week I’m alone in a sweaty Brooklyn apartment, snorting Adderoll, talking to my computer. I can’t hear you, I say, pressing my lips right up against the screen. Did you say I miss you or I want juice? Through some magical connection of invisible wires, Bunny’s far away voice sputters back at me: So, like, have you made any new friends since moving to New York?

Not really, I say.

How come?

Don’t know, just sort of been sticking with the old ones I guess.

That’s good. I don’t want you making any new friends.

I don’t want you making any new friends either.

If you do meet someone new, the voice continues, Can you take a photo of them and send it to me for pre approval? Like before you decide whether to make them your actual friend or not? I’ll allow you a maximum of five new friends, but you can only see them once a week in a casual social setting, like at a gig or in a park or to eat crappy Mexican food.

Actually, I did make one new friend—a gay Puerto Rican kid called José.

Really? What do you guys do?

Nothing much. Watch movies. Listen to Beyoncé.

That’s it?

The other day we made strawberry and banana smoothies.

Oh. That sounds fun.

Are you being sarcastic?

No, it does.

In my absence Bunny has started working as a male nanny. I find this very amusing, as the last time I saw him in close proximity to a child—the time he tagged along while I babysat my boss’ 4-year-old daughter Emily—he ended up giving the kid a detailed lesson in narcotics and gay sex, resulting in me nearly getting fired. How he managed to get this job is beyond me. I hate that he’s so far away.

When you were young, I say to my computer screen, Did you ever picture yourself living the life you are now?

Are you joking to trying to be existential?

It’s just weird how nothing in life turns out how you planned. I guess that sounds cliché…

I hate when you get like this.

Do you think we’ll spend the rest of our lives inventing complicated ways to depress ourselves?

I’m hanging up now.

I close my eyes and imagine that I’m eleven or fourteen or sixteen—at all these ages I dreamed of growing up and moving to New York City. Dreamed of all the people I would meet and the boys I would fall in love with. I try and recreate this feeling of excitement, but dreams are so different once they’re outside your brain and in three dimensions. In my teenage fantasy I already have two Oscars—the first was for Best Actress. I played a reckless teen mom who reforms after overcoming some really big life event, like the death of my hot boyfriend or a drug overdose or something—I never decided for sure. Because I was plucked from obscurity at a grocery store, I never had to do the whole poor, struggling actress thing. I was born to be a star. A natural. Wow, I really didn’t expect this! Oh god, where do I begin? This is how my acceptance speech started. This is how it was always meant to start.

I received my second Oscar for Best Screenplay. This was just something I whipped up after my award-winning role, to show people that not only am I an effortlessly gifted actress but an intellectual as well. The film was quirky but with an underlying, deeper meaning. Like Juno only more profound. I have many talents. Really, everyone says so.

Are you still there, I say into the screen, but get no response

If we showed our now selves to our teenage selves, would our teenage selves be disappointed?

Joe and Duke

2010-06-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hi, meet Joe and Duke, 8 year old identical twins and two of the sweetest, most adorable kids on earth! When they’re not busy learning how to read or tie their shoes or whatever it is 8 year olds do, Joe and Duke spend their time chillin’ at the George and Dragon pub in east London, necking shots of apple juice and just generally being cool. They’re also budding fashion icons. To date they’ve been in a Stella McCartney GapKids campaign, were photographed by Nick Knight as part of his 100 Portraits series for the 30th anniversary of i-D, and were recently shot by Mert and Marcus for Love. Whoa, imagine where they’ll be when they reach the double digits. Probably editing Vice Style.

Joe and Duke’s parents are the amazing Pippa Brooks and Nathaniel Lee Jones, who together run M.Goldstein, a small shop/showroom in east London which sells punk art, antiques, human skulls and lots of other weird and amazing stuff. In the 90s Pippa co-ran the legendary, cult Soho boutique, Shop. She’s also a former Playboy bunny. Their family makes mine and your families look lame in comparison.

All the bitchy fake bullshit that exists within the fashion world can be a real drag sometimes. In need of some purity, I decided to ask Joe and Duke for their opinions on fashion, personal style and the reasons behind why people wear what they do. We also played dress-up in the park. They styled themselves, obvs.

So, do you guys pick out your own clothes?

Both: Yeah.

How would you describe your personal style?

Duke: Funky.

Joe: Girly.

Is it good or bad to look different?

Duke: It’s good, because if everyone wears the same thing then it’s boring and it just looks like everyone came out of the same house.

Should people be able to wear whatever they want? Is it right or wrong that people get made fun of because of their clothes?

Joe: It’s wrong, because everyone is allowed to have their own style. And because it’s mean. And because other people don’t decide how you look.

So true. Does anyone at your school ever get made fun of because of what they wear?

Joe: I do sometimes.

What do you say back?

Joe: Normally I say I don’t care, because it took me a long time to pick out this outfit!

What can you tell about a person by the clothes they wear?

Joe: Sometimes you can tell if they’re boring. Or funny.

Duke: You can tell if they are geeks.

What do geeks wear?

Joe: They have black eyes all over. And no teeth. Definitely no teeth.

Can you tell whether or not you would want to be friends with someone based on what they’re wearing?

Duke: Maybe.

Joe: Sometimes. It’s good when people wear clothes that make them feel good.

Do you guys share clothes?

Joe: No! Are you crazy?

Why not? You’re the same size.

Joe: Actually, he’s bigger. He’s one minute bigger.

Who is the best dressed person in the world?

Joe: Me!

Duke: No, not you Joe! Sometimes I like Lady Gaga’s clothes.

Do you like what your mom wears?

Joe: Sometimes. I like it when she wears dresses. Sometimes we give her fashion advice, but she never listens.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Duke: I might want to be a geologist, and if I don’t get that than a biologist, and if I don’t get that than a weapon maker, and if I don’t get that than a waiter, and if I don’t get that than I’ll just be rich.

Joe: I might want to be a DJ. Or a fashion designer.

If you were a fashion designer, what would you make?

Joe: Jeans probably.

Good choice.

All photos by myself (Slutever, duh) and Mavi Staiano

Seeing Sounds

2010-06-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

Pic @ Slutever

“Your voice is purple,” says Dev, perched on his blood red, velvet armchair. “Whoa… really, really pretty.”

“What?”

“Your voice—it’s purple,” he repeats, pointing eagerly toward a cloud of nothing floating directly in front of my lips. “Well, not purple purple. More a dark auburn, like, a couple shades darker than your hair.”

“Are you for real?” I ask. Dev has talked to me briefly in the past about his ability to see sounds, but I always just thought he was bullshitting or trying to be poetic. Today, however, his expression seems sincere enough so I opt not to be skeptical and say, “How is that even possible?”

I met Dev in London back in 2005. He’s British but moved to NYC three years ago, claiming he needed to “escape the evil,” whatever that means. I like Dev because he over-thinks things to the point of paralysis and just generally freaks out about everyday life events, which makes me feel sane in comparison. He has all these weird germ phobias. He rarely eats, mainly because no food is clean enough to put in his mouth. When he does eat it’s generally a family sized bag of Chili Heat Wave Doritos, which he consumes methodically, carefully tipping chip after chip directly from the bag onto his tongue, so as not to contaminate the food with his hands. It’s very amusing. He also wears the same clothes for months at a time, which is strange considering the whole germ thing.

“It’s called Synesthesia,” Dev answers, his face masked almost completely by a pair of oversized grandpa glasses. “I’m not an expert on it, to be honest. I just know my brain is wired in a way that means I can see sounds—different colors for different notes and tones. Weird rainbows of noise floating around me constantly. I’ve had it my whole life.” He goes on to explain that Synesthesia is a neurologically-based condition in which one sense is simultaneously perceived by one or more additional senses. Some synesthetes, for example, always see a certain color in response to specific letters or numbers—the word “happy” is always a mint green, the number “4″ a light pink, and so on. He says the word Synesthesia comes from the Greek words, syn (together) and aisthesis (perception), literally meaning “joined perception.”

“Fuck,” I blurt, because I’m like in shock or whatever and it’s the first word that comes to my mouth. “So basically your whole life is like being on acid.”

“Uh, kinda.”

“That’s fucked-up.”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “Try having a conversation in a club with all that shit going on around you. It’s pretty much impossible. People always think I’m rude, distracted, unresponsive… but really I’m just trying my best to block out the endless circus going on around me.”

“But I mean, is it cool? Do you like it?”

“It’s not that I like it or don’t like it, it’s just normal for me. But one thing that’s cool is that I never have to learn a piece of music. I can play a song immediately after hearing it once, because I can read the notes by the colors it produces.”

“But… I…” I stumble. “How could we have never talked about this more in depth? This is literally the weirdest thing anyone has ever told me. Wow, you’re like an actual freak, did you know that?”

“I’ve been told.”

“Man, I wish I had something cool wrong with me. Everyone always has all these bizarre and amazing conditions, and I have nothing. I would even settle for a second rate fuck-up, like dyslexia or ADHD or something. Sometimes it’s hard being so perfect.”

“Totally…” He smiles and then I smile, I think—the shock I’m experiencing means my face is just sort of doing whatever it wants. We smile until it becomes awkward and then we stop smiling, after which we sit in silence, listening to Pat Benatar or someone who sounds like that: me, reading an ancient copy of Glamour Magazine (‘75 Ways To Please Your Man In The Bedroom’—gripping), and Dev, watching rainbows of music bounce off the white walls like fireflies caught in a glass jar. I guess.

Squatting 101

2010-06-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Above image Ellis Scott. All other pics @ Slutever + Friends

I receive a lot of emails from people wanting information about squatting: advice on how to squat, what rights squatters have, if squatting requires living in constant fear and pissing into buckets, if I’m looking for a roommate (my favorite). I also get inquiries from people living in countries where squatting is illegal, asking how the fuck I manage to occupy a building that I neither own nor rent without being arrested. In light of this growing intrigue, I decided it was high time to give you all a little overview of what exactly squatting is, and clear up some of the common misconceptions about squat life in the UK and elsewhere. Ahem…

Plainly, squatting is the act of occupying an uninhabited space or building without permission or ownership. Duh. However, the term ‘squatter’ doesn’t solely apply to colorful art students snorting K in disused Toilet Factories in south London. It’s slightly broader than that. In his book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, author Robert Neuwirth states that today there are one billion squatters globally, meaning roughly one in every six people on the planet. (Check his blog, SquatterCity. It’s cool.) Naturally, the majority of this figure is made up in developing countries, in slums and shanty towns, but the world of squatting is incredibly broad—from the 1,000 people currently squatting the Grande Hotel Beira in Mozambique, to the 900-strong, Danish squat community Christiania, to the 6 million people living on squatted land in Mumbai, and the list goes on. Not to mention all the new-wave squatters who recently jumped on board post Global Economic Whatever. Basically, there are a lot of us.

People squat for many different reasons: necessity, political reasons, because they like the lifestyle, because it makes them seem super cool and edgy (joke?). Personally, I see myself as all of the above. I’ve never felt particularly ideologically driven in my decision to squat. I’ve always just done it because I needed a place to live, and because in my mind paying rent is akin to throwing giant wads of cash out of a moving car. Also, living in London—a city riddled with empty buildings—it seemed silly not to take advantage of my surroundings.

Some nauseating facts for you: In April 2010 an investigation by the Guardian Newspaper found that almost half a million homes are lying empty in the UK—enough to put a roof over the heads of a quarter of the families on council house waiting lists—and that’s not even counting commercial properties. It’s completely ridiculous to think that in this current state people are still homeless.

Jim [no last name offered], a resident of London and a long-time organizer with London’s Advisory Service for Squatters states, “What’s important to understand about squatting here, which is very different from squatting everywhere else in Western Europe, is that mostly it’s about housing—people being angry that they’ve got nowhere to live with buildings standing empty. It is far less overtly political, as in say Germany or Greece.”

If you want to squat, it’s important to remember that each country has its own laws about squatting. Although squatting is legal in England and Wales, due to the Trespass Scotland Act 1865 squatting illegal in Scotland, and is virtually nonexistent. Throughout continental Europe laws and leniency vary from country to country. In Australia it’s possible for squatters to be charged with criminal trespass under the Enclosed Lands Protection Act, but generally squatters are just evicted when discovered. In the United States squatting laws differ depending on state, but for the most part it is rarely tolerated to any degree, particularly in cities. Bummer.

The reason you can get away with squatting in England and Wales is because it’s a civil matter, not criminal matter. Basically this means that squatting is a direct conflict between the squatter and the property owner, and has nothing to do with the police (although moronic cops sometimes need to be reminded of this). The law states that it’s legal to occupy a building as long as you have exclusive access to that property, AKA the keys. These are generally attained by changing the locks when you break—woops I mean move—in. However, if there is evidence of forced entry, then that is regarded as criminal damage you will be arrested. So basically you’re allowed to occupy a building that you don’t own, but you’re not allowed to break into a building that you don’t own, you follow?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Then how the fuck do I get in? Well, that’s up for you to figure out. I mean, I would never say that you should use a crowbar to jimmy the lock off the door, or check for open windows, or break a window and then repair it immediately after entry, or dress in overalls or a workman’s uniform (or even a suit) during a break-in to appear less conspicuous, because that would all be illegal. And obviously I would never want to encourage anyone to do anything illegal. Cough. Normally, what my friends and I do is hold magic naked rituals outside of a potential property, asking the squat Gods to unlock the doors for us. That normally works. Totally up to you though.

Once you are inside a building, after securing all possible entry points, the next step is sorting out the water and electricity. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and they will already be on. Water, a lot of times, is left on even when a building is not in use. If the water is off at the taps, find the main and turn it back on. If water has been turned off completely then you have to approach the water authority. If the electricity is off, as long as the wiring is OK, you have a legal right to have the electricity connected, but may have to pay a security deposit to the electric company. Or, I mean, you could just squat with someone who is handy at, like, fixing stuff and sorting things out, because I’m certainly not and I’ve managed OK so far.

As for how long you can remain in a squat once you live there, it all depends on how long it takes for the property owner to find out you’re squatting, and how adamant he/she is on kicking you out. In order to be evicted from a squat in the UK the property owner must take you to a civil court. Once court proceedings are under way you normally have about a month before bailiffs will show up and chuck you out. (Not a fun day.) Personally, I lived in one squat for almost three years. I lived in another for less than a week. It’s the luck of the draw, really.

In my six years as a squatter, I’ve learned that one of the most common misconception people have about squats is that they’re free-for-alls where anyone can move in, conditions are unsafe and essentials like water and means to cook are lacking. The amount of times I’ve been asked, “So, do you guys, like, have a toilet?” is just uncountable. Yes, I’m sure these shitholes do exist, but this is not the norm for your average Western squatter. Most squats I’ve been to in the UK and elsewhere have been very clean, communal and friendly. Some you would never guess were squats unless told otherwise. And yes, I know I’ve complained about the debauchery and disgusting nature of Squallyoaks many times over in the past, but that’s just because my squatmates and I are gross. It would be the same even if we paid rent. And to be honest I’m quite comfortable in my own filth so whatever.

Funnily enough, I recently moved back to NYC, which means my squatting days are temporarily on hold. Truth be told I’m really going to miss it–the ridiculous and profoundly beautiful lifestyle that seems to be wholly unique to a squatty existence. It really is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Unfortunately, the only squatters I’ve encountered thus far in NYC are either mental anarchists or homeless crack heads. But who knows… maybe I’ll join them. Or maybe I’ll just squat someone’s couch. (More likely.)

I Heart Asger Carlsen

2010-06-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

Asger Carlsen is a Danish photographer based in New York. I met him at an art opening of his in Copenhagen a few months age, and instantly found his images really funny, demented and arousing in a way that made me feel guilty for being turned on. His new book, Wrong, is out now on Morel Books, the art-book and zine publisher who previously published Ryan McGinley and VICE’s Jonnie Craig.

Your work is LOLZ. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?
Asger Carlsen: It’s fair. It’s been really fun for me to work on.

So what’s Wrong?
There is nothing wrong with “wrong.” In fact one of my favorite songs is What’s Wrong by Matt Elliot.

I hate to be a party pooper, but it’s clear that the images have been doctored. Are you trying to trick people? Is it important that when people look at the images they feel like these situations could be real?
I think is good for people to see things they don’t believe or that gross them out. Seeing something you don’t understand opens your mind up to new ways of understanding. Basically, I’m more interested in telling a good story than the truth. It’s like a lie you can get away with.

I found some of the images sexy, especially the ones with the wooden legs. Do you relate to them in that way at all?
I think all of them are sexy in their own way. But I’m happy to hear that you think that, thanks.

You shoot all the images yourself. When you’re shooting them, how much of the original image is designed ahead of time?
I try not to plan anything in my life. Things work better that way. Some of the images have no reference to anything created by God, so it was very much a case of really letting go of everything I have ever seen before in life. Although I do find inspiration in medical books and police evidence records.

What sort of reactions do people normally have when looking at your work?
I recently received a comment from a woman online saying, “It’s wrong and it’s sick.” Maybe she’s right, but I just have a strong need to entertain myself, and I really enjoy doing stuff like this. I like to confuse people.

Leaving London

2010-06-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Johnny’s Bird

It’s my last day in London so Mavi offers to buy me lunch. Sitting anxiously on a sunny patio outside Café Alto, I reluctantly shove forkfuls of salad between my quivering lips, the leaves salted by my tears. To our right a homeless woman begs aggressively for change. “Spare a few coins?” she spits, stumbling toward us.

“I’m sorry Darling, I really would, but I’m only carrying cards,” says Mavi, not lifting here eyes from her Blackberry. Furious, the woman plunges her dirt-caked fingers deep into the bowl in front of me, tosses a handful of wet leaves into my face and storms off. Vinaigrette dressing merges with the teardrop rivers streaming down my cheeks, trickles down my neck and seeps into the crease between my tits. Mavi screams obscenities in Italian.

We leave before finishing our food, partly because I’m now sobbing and partly because the eBay auction for the one-off Justin Bieber T-shirt that Mavi is currently bidding on ends in twenty minutes, and it’s really important that she doesn’t lose. The waitress offers us a pitied smile and says our meals are on the house.

On the plane to New York I swallow a Valium and dream that I’m deep under the ocean, swimming like a fish, fast and eager, until suddenly I fall off what seems to be the edge of the earth. I wake up violently. I spend the remainder of the flight turning the dream over and over on the tip of my brain, trying to find some profound meaning in each and every one of its tiny details, but fail completely. I’m sad I think, I can’t tell anymore.

My mother picks me up from JFK and tells me that my skirt is too short and that I probably need a haircut and that she loves me. On the car ride home I pop a Morphine pill that this boy called Huw gave me last night as a leaving present, knowing full well that taking it means I will vomit violently for the first five hours of tomorrow.

By the time we arrive home my body feels like jelly so I lie face down on the kitchen floor and go limp; for some reason at this moment this behavior feels both appropriate and necessary. “Is this a new hobby of yours?” asks my mother sarcastically as she steps over my lifeless body. My brother Rob walks up behind me. My eyes are closed but I know it’s him because I can hear the scuff of his Converse against the wooden floor. He never was good at picking up his feet.

Rob curls up his frail, still boyish body next to mine, breathes deeps and runs the tips of his fingers slowly down my spine. “Feels good, right?” he says. “I’ve stopped biting my nails, finally. It was really hard. But now I’ll be extra good at tickle-rubbing.”

“Cool,” I say, slowly lifting my eyelids. He’s grown a mustache. I guess that means he’s a man.

There’s a long silence, and then: “Is this… are you… bleh. Wait, fuck…” he stutters, then smacks himself in the forehead, as if to kick start his brain.

“How stoned are you?” I say, my face reflected in his dilated pupils. He closes his eyes carefully, trying to gauge his wastedness. “Not very,” he concludes, then adds, “I’m really happy that you’re home, you know. “Nothing good has happened to me in a long time. Why is it that good things happen to bad people?”

“Are you referencing something in particular?” I ask.

“Not really. It’s just that… Sometimes, I think I wish I believed in God.”

“Really?”

“No, actually,” he says, pawing at his face sleepily. “I don’t even know why I said that.” And as I lie here, half conscious, he keeps talking, speaking in his weird, oblique way that’s at once worrying and comforting. And as he spits words at me, one by one hitting my face I think, What you say means everything and nothing, don’t stop.

Cumface

2010-06-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

In fashion, sex sells. Duh, we know. From the just-been-fucked aesthetic of American Apparel ads, to that infamous Dolce & Gabanna campaign which was basically just glamourized images of gang rape, to Tom Ford’s iconic photo of a naked and seemingly ecstatic Sophie Dahl for YSL (and basically everything Tom Ford has ever done, for that matter), fashion photography is all about the suggestion of sex. Sure, hot, whatever. My question is: Why not just cut to the chase?

Recently, a photographer friend of mine told me, “Fashion photography is all about capturing that magic moment. It’s about the money shot.” Now, maybe it’s because I’m not a (real) fashion photographer, and my brain doesn’t work in metaphors, but when I hear the term "money shot" I immediately think of ejaculation, AKA orgasm. Newly inspired by his words, I decided to stop beating around the bush and take some photos of boys cuming. Because, really, this is what everyone is getting at, right? Fuck suggestion. The real thing is hotter.

If I’m honest, initially I was quite nervous about embarking on this task. For one, it’s a bit strange/scary to approach someone and ask, “Hey, can I take pictures of you jerking off until you cum?” Also, before this I had never watched someone masturbate in a non-intimate situation, which seemed like it could be vaguely awkward. However, the whole thing turned out to be really fun. The copious amounts of porn and alcohol definitely helped, but in general spirits were pretty high. It was actually weirdly unweird, if you know what I mean. Or maybe I’m just bad at gauging when a situation is uncomfortable. I’ve been told that in the past.

Anyway, after taking these photos, the conclusion I came to is this: People are beautiful when they cum. That might sound obvious, but the severity of this statement needs to be reinforced. Even the ugliest person is desirable in their moment of complete release. That moment when the body i enraptured, and it feels so good that it hurts but you want more and for a second you die a little. And whatever’s left of you when it’s over is better for it.

I’ll leave you now with my favorite orgasm quote, said so well by Derek Jarman: “An orgasm joins you to the past. Its timelessness becomes the brotherhood; the brethren are lovers; they extend the “family”. I share that sexuality. It was then, is now, and will be in the future.”

Suck On This: Fashion Through A Steamy Lens

2010-06-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Since the dawn of the motion picture camera at the turn of the 20th century, people have been making pornos. The industry finally went legit in 1969, when Denmark became the first country to legalize hardcore pornography. Thanks guys! Since then about a gazillion fuck films have been made. As well as being an easy (and a little bit sad?) way of getting oneself off, porn is also a steamy glimpse into the fashion of its time. Here’s a look at what people were wearing while they were doing it, from the early 1970’s right up until now. Suck on this.

1970's

The 70’s was the decade of major production porn films—films whose reputations still hold strong today, like Deep Throat (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), and Debbie Does Dallas (1978). This is the scene from Debbie Does Dallas where Bambi Woods fucks herself with a bunch of earthy colored candles, surrounded by some ethnic rugs. This behavior was commonplace in the 70’s, as people didn’t know what to do with their hippie leftovers, so they just stuck them up their vaginas.

The late 70’s were all about Studio 54, bell-bottoms, polyester, Farrah Fawcett hair and embarrassing dance moves. Groovy! During this time it was the norm to fuck wearing crotchless, boobless, disco cat suits made of white satin. Bareback porn was also very “in” in the 70’s, as it was before AIDS was invented by the government to irradiate the homosexual population or Africans, so no one had to worry about condoms. Those were the days, eh?

Obviously in the 70’s it was cool to have a giant, untamed jungle bush that reached all the way back to your asshole. Sort of gross, but to be honest it’s better than those scary slut strips that porn stars have today.

1980's

With the arrival of the home video cassette recorder in the late 70s and early 80s, the porn industry skyrocketed. Instead of hundreds of porn flicks being made each year, there were thousands. By 1982 most pornos were being shot on videotape, which meant the end of the age of big budget productions. This change moved porn out of theaters and into the home, meaning viewers could now jerk-off freely in the privacy of their living rooms, rather than having to awkwardly stroke their throbbing erections under a trench coat in a packed cinema. Yay! This explosion also spawned porn mega stars like Ron Jeremy and Traci Lords. This is the man Ron Jeremy rocking the classic 80’s porn star look—hairy chest, leather biker jacket, moustache and slight double chin. Hot?

The 80’s were all about power, cocaine and being super glam like Princess Di, the cast of Dynasty or Oprah. Even porno chicks masturbated in their power suits, wearing fancy pearl bracelets and with immaculately painted red nails.

50’s retro was big the 80’s, largely to do with insane success of Grease. Being a raunchy whore (a la Madonna) was also pretty popular. So obviously this meant that letting a stranger suck your asshole while draped across a Cadillac was the hippest of the hip. Big hair, big hair, big hair!

1990's

In 1991 a little thing called the Internet was invented, thus changing porn forever. The www sparked a rise in amateur porn, as well as spawning the webcam. Ugh webcam, so addictive, am I right? Cam girls of the mid 90’s normally looked like a possibly underage version of Britney Spears, except from Eastern Europe. The fall of communism also freed millions of poor white people to join the porn industry. All their clothes looked like they were bought from stores with names like Risky and Rave Gurl 66.

In the 90’s it was very en vogue to have sex under water wearing lots of brown makeup and gaudy gold jewelry. Not breathing was also very “in.”

The 90’s were all about filling a teen movie stereotype, both in real life and in porn. I was the hot popular chick with cool clothes that everyone wanted to fuck, a la Cher Horowitz. Which one were you? During this time cheerleading costumes and pigtails were big. So was dressing the same as your best friend. No, but like seriously, you can’t deny you didn’t do that at least once.

21st century

If you were lucky enough to have sex on camera at the turn of the century, it’s a fair bet that you had a fake tan, were dressed in tacky “nightclub” clothes, and were rocking some serious Sarah Michelle Geller hair. This was sort of a dip in the overall porn aesthetic, if you ask me. Everything looked like it was filmed in a Holiday Inn.

Colorful skull sheets, star tattoos and crying during sex became fashionable in the porn the 00’s, thanks to bands like My Chemical Romance and whatevs all those other shit emo bands are called. I’m actually really pleased with the recent rise in emo porn, to be honest. It just feels so real. Even if all the clothes are from Topman.

P.S. Note the New Moon poster.

This is a screen grab from Bruce LaBruce’s 2008 porno, Otto, or, Up with Dead People. All of the costumes were designed by Rick Owens. Yeah, I realize that this is technically art porn, but it’s a good example of actual fashion making its way into pornography. Plus. FUCK ME, gay zombie porn? Does anything hotter even exist on this earth? I just came.

Friends I'll Never Meet: Part 3, Jey

2010-06-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, I briefly mentioned my infatuation with Jey Crisfar, the hot gay zombie boy from Bruce LaBruce’s art porno Otto; or, Up With Dead People. I saw Otto for the first time a couple years ago, and since then I must have cum a hundred times to the image of his bloody corpse. A couple weeks ago I sent Jey a message asking if he would participate in my series of conversations, all loosely based around the theme ‘internet obsession.’ He replied saying that he too, like most of our lost generation, is obsessed with the internet. He also said he didn’t understand why I would want to interview him, claiming that his life isn’t any more interesting than your average 22 year old, and that at the moment, he’s just a nobody like everyone else. I replied: perfect.

Jey is from Belgium, and currently lives in Brussels

Me: I write a lot about sex, sometimes from personal experience. Initially my parents hated me for it, we constantly fought. It’s chilled out a bit now, mainly because they choose not to read most of what I write. Have your parents ever reacted badly to any of the choices you’ve made, i.e. having gay sex on film when you were just 18?
Jey: My parents reacting badly to choices I’ve made is kind of the point of them being my parents. Parents aren’t there to understand what you’re doing, and it’s pointless to lose time trying to make them understand. That’s what I’m learning at the moment. My father was never happy that I’m a homo, or an “artist.” When I decided at the age of 18 to go to Berlin to shoot Otto, he just freaked out. But it didn’t prevent me from doing it.

What are your creepy internet obsessions?
I’m obsessed with the fantasy of meeting guys over the internet. I spend a lot of time online checking out guys, but I never meet any of them because it’s hard to find somebody between 1m79 and 1m83, that’s both muscular and slim, clever and interesting, wears nice clothes, is really sexy and with a face that says eat me.

Uh yeah, that would be nice. Slight wishful thinking though, right? Anything/one else?
I’ll admit something: for some time I was probably was Googling Brett Lloyd several times a day, everyday. Also because I liked his photography

I’ve gotten to that point. It’s weird to think that people have most likely done that to you, too, ya know? What are your ideas on fame? Is it something you think about? Want? Don’t want?
Fame is something everybody thinks about—it’s 2010. That’s what we’re all looking for at some point, on different levels. I got cast in Otto through Myspace, I would be lying if I said it never passed my mind. But fame wasn’t exactly it—I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to let others know that I was there. Growing up, people at school didn’t have special interest in me, and at home I didn’t get much attention. This isn’t an issue anymore—now everything I care about is to have enough money to live properly and to be doing what I feel like doing, whatever that is.

What’s your default thing to jerk-off to?
To be bareback fucked by a troop of hung guys in a garage. I don’t do sex parties, I find it gross. This is something I like to keep as a fantasy.

Weird, that’s mine too! How did you lose your virginity?
I lost my virginity with some random Turkish guy in his 20s. I was almost seventeen, and the idea of fucking with a guy was there for so long, I just had to do it. I met him over the internet. At that time I was living in La Louvière, where nothing happens and homos are still scared to be living their sexuality openly. I had no interest in him, but it felt like he was the only person that really wanted me.

Have you ever been in love?
Love. Hmm… I don’t know? At some point in my life it felt like I was, truly, but once the love affair passed away, nothing stayed. It was like if nothing actually happened. It’s like that every time.

Are you religious?
I’m not religious. I’m very much against this machinery.

What is your most memorable drug experience?
It was when I was in Berlin shooting Otto. The weather was great, I decided with a girl friend I made there to party, and we took great X for 3 days. I had sex with her after two days, and it felt like the greatest experience.

Sleeping with girls… noted. So, in your email you said you’re moving to Mexico City soon. What for?
At the moment nothing has been planned. Everything I know is that I’ll be visiting my Mexican friend that is a film director, and that we have the intention of working once I get there. He’s written some scripts, but I haven’t read any of them. That’s kind of how I like to live—not knowing how or why, but doing it anyway.

BUNNY: London Part 2

2010-06-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Matthew Stone

Part 2 of Bunny's journey to London, as told by him. Read part 1 here.

Kerri asks me if I want a Sweet Tart, handing me a wad of dirty tissue wrapped around a crumbling bit of ancient looking candy. Um, I say, Cool Thanks and, not wanting to refuse any kind of fucked up squatter hospitality, I shove it in my mouth and suck, don’t think I’ve eaten in a year. At first it’s hard to understand what the fuck Kerri is saying cause her Scottish squawk sounds permanently slurred from years of chugging so much whisky. But after these seven or eight or fifty days spent succumbed to her supply of ketamine and pisstaste cider stolen from the shop, I’ve learned the lingo, letting her voice scatter in my skull as I sit still, trying to decode my hands that look so like, whatever, weird right now, slipped someplace in between the crack that separates her scabby mattress from the wall.

When I first get to London I take a train from the airport to Green Park. It’s a destination that I choose simply because I’ve got no other place to go so going on the name alone, it seems like temporary paradise. The most pleasant way I can avoid all the panging panic building up inside me as I’m forced to face the lack of direction I’ve arrived with. Tired from the late night flight, I spend the morning sleeping in the grass. I use my tiny weekend bag as a pillow, not worried for its safety as I sneak a nap in public space cause, save for the passport and small wad of bills I have stashed inside my underwear, I’ve got nothing that I’m scared to lose.

Karley’s pink slip is on the floor, I put it on. She’s standing spaced out in her bra, gasping as she touches her huge tits against a mirror and shivering like it’s ice. You Look Good Like That she says to me, moving closer. Her lips are the same colour as her hair, red like fire, wild, electric. Everything is rippling. What’s Happening I say to her and Karley moans, then laughs, spitting streams of horny giggles punctuated by Kerri in the hallway who I can now hear screaming as she’s manic banging on a drum. What Are You Guys On? I ask Karley. She keeps laughing, then stops sudden, looks at me so serious as she says softly: Sweet Tarts. Thump thump thump, the drum beats on, ripples down my spine.

At an internet cafe near Oxford Circus I check my e-mail to find a response from a message I sent yesterday last minute to my friend Lauren who I know from school. She moved to London a while back to be closer to her girlfriend, this insane Scottish chick called Kerri who once stayed with me in Brooklyn where we bonded in my bathroom as we barfed up the remnants of a regretful three day binge of pills and poppers soaked in orange syrup from all those endless cans of Sparks. Yeah you can totally come stay with us. We live in a squat Southeast. Kind of a shithole but easy to get to... Call us when you’re here. How long you around for? I write back to her A couple days and scrawl her number across my arm.

In the kitchen there’s this fat kid sitting on the counter playing with a kitten. Simon’s microwaving frozen chicken wings, Dale’s dying his milk blue. I pass Gary passed out in the bathtub, Kirsty’s nearby, speaking slowly to the sink like it’s some foreign tourist asking for directions. Hannah pokes her head out of her room and asks me how I’m doing and if I have two condoms. I look behind her and see some guys slumped over shirtless and blindfolded on her bed. I shrug sorry, smiling, as I climb onto the roof where I find Matthew wearing a white robe and chanting in the centre of a circle made of candles. Karley’s writhing naked next to him and Matthew stops chanting for a second to take a picture with his plastic camera. Weird, I think, I’ve never felt so fucking right. That thump thump thump thing rattles at me one more time, don't ever let it stop.

The 12 bus takes you straight to Hell. At least that’s what it looks like as I snake down Walworth Road, watching a parade of sideshow rejects plucked from Freaks fumbling limbless as they stumble from the thousand pound shops that seem to stretch forever down the block. As I wait for the stop called Westmoreland Road, where I’lll get off and walk South searching for the brick house at the bottom of street like Lauren told me on the phone, I press my face against the window of the bus and wonder if it’s gonna rain. Outside, everywhere, a dull grey lull that in this moment calms me as the flat black clouds that bruise the sky roll past my eyes, back rolling, reeling, lost somewhere, I don’t know where, a hollow deep inside.

x Bunny

Working

2010-05-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

Simon’s in the kitchen making me poached eggs. I guess he gives a shit about me. It feels nice. After spending thirty-some hours at a sinister acid rave, transforming into a cube and then back again, one appreciates a little love and affection.

“Tea of coffee?” he says, and I say “I love you Simon, I really do. It’s so sweet that you’re making me breakfast. This is amazing, I love you. Did I already say that?” Simon’s wonky Gummo face twists into something that signifies confusion. “It’s just some eggs,” he grumbles. “Chill.”

“Yeah I know but it’s just so nice,” I beam, my body collapsed upon the tattered living room sofa. “I’m really going to miss you when I’m away. I don’t know how I’ll live without—“ but he’s already gone. It’s just two weeks now until I move to New York. I’ve become far too sentimental.

A minute later Simon returns carrying a piece of plywood filled with plates of eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, congealed blood patties and lots of other salty weird shit that British people call breakfast. He sets the makeshift tray down in front of Bunny and me and smiles wide. “Since when are you so generous?” asks Bunny, skeptical.

“How did you afford all this?” I add. “Just yesterday I watched you eat a piece of cold macaroni out of the trash.” Simon says nothing. He face sort of sinks.

“Just tell us and get it over with,” I say. A sudden and severe wave of déjà vu spills over my body.

“I sucked a banker off in the toilets of The George and Dragon last night,” he says, tiny droplets of yolk dripping from his crooked mouth onto his chin. “For £45. With a condom, obviously. I’m not, you know… gross.”

“£45?” says Bunny. “That’s a random number.”

“Well, he said 50 to start with, but then he only had 45 on him. But we were already in the stall by that point so I just thought, fuck it.”

“I guess,” says Bunny. “Was it, like… whatever?”

“Seriously, I don’t even know,” he moans, shaking his head. “I had done a fuck load of K, and was having trouble seeing. It wasn’t so bad though. I guess I was sort of blacked out or something.” This story doesn’t surprise me. Simon has a history of making money in the oddest of ways. When I met him he was one of those people you see in central London, holding giant signs that say things like ‘Comedy Show This Way’ and ‘Bikini Wax £5.’ Last year he worked part-time over-dubbing cartoon Japanese porn. He even worked for a while as a K dealer’s personal assistant. He is now an expert at folding drug wraps.

“So, are you thinking of making this a regular thing?” I ask warily.

“Not sure,” he says, “maybe just until my band gets signed. I know it’s a bit of a shit way to make money, but fuck me, I’ve just been so broke lately. There’s only so many times you can eat canned soup for dinner before life starts to feel seriously bleak.” A housefly buzzes around Simon’s head a few times, then lands briefly on the tip of his nose before being swatted away. “This fucking fly won’t let up!” he shouts, waving his arms wildly. “How do I get it to leave me alone?”

“Put this over your head,” I say, tossing him a nearby plastic bag, “then tie a knot.”

“I wish.”

Paranoid

2010-05-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

I wake up to someone choking me. Where am I? I think. My eyes burst open, scan the room for clues. I see a broken television, a small pile of books, a photo of young Harmony Korine with a gun to his head. It looks at once familiar and foreign. Is this my room? I think, before realizing that yes, it most certainly is. Why didn’t I recognize it? From behind me a pair of cold hands are gripping my throat. I turn around suddenly. I see the face of a boy I sort of recognize, but not really. Bloodshot eyes, olive skin, crooked teeth.

“What are you doing?” I shout, yanking his hands from my neck.

“I thought you said you liked being choked?” answers the mysterious boy, seemingly confused. We hold an awkward yet deep stare for a fleeting moment, then break.

“Uh, yeah, I do…” I stutter, “but like, during sex. Not just randomly while I’m sleeping.”

“Oh…” his cheeks fill with blood.

“Remind me who you are,” I say.

I’m your housemate Dante’s friend. Here visiting from Italy. You said I could crash in your bed, don’t you remember?” I’m drawing a blank.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say. “Sorry, I’m just… hungover.” He answers with a slow smile, then struggles to a stance and eagerly marches away, toward the kitchen. “I’ll make the tea,” he shouts over his shoulder as he disappears into the dimly lit warehouse. From afar I can hear a kettle begin to boil. That was strange, I think. Is he a psycho or just foreign?

I flop backwards onto my bed. That was the third time this week I awoke feeling wholly confused. Am I just drunk? I wonder, or could this be a symptom of something more profound? I feel paranoid. Lately I can barely sleep. I dream in bursts, wake up inexplicably throughout the night in a cold sweat. I can’t remember where I am. I experience erratic fantasies of nonexistence. What does it mean?

My friend Little Matthew is a hypochondriac. With him there’s always a new mole that could be cancer, an itch that could be scabies, a vague feeling in the air that is positively, without a doubt, most definitely impending doom. Whenever he enters one of his panicked states I just roll my eyes, tell him he’s making too much of things and move on. Until recently I never sympathized with the fact that the horror he was feeling was real. Fear may be irrational, but it’s also really fucking scary.

In a couple weeks I’m moving back to New York. Indefinitely. I’m trying not to think about it. I can’t really go into it at the moment, but let’s just say it’s not exactly my decision. I’m sort of looking forward to the change, I guess. What I’m most worried about is: what am I going to do without London’s endless supply scrawny, sexually confused, beautifully lost boys? In New York everyone’s so career minded ; it can be a crushing bore. Plus like 95% of the dudes have beards. Nightmare.

If New York doesn’t work out, as a back up plan I’m moving to Celebration, Florida. It’s a city the Walt Disney Company created out of the pure desire for absolute evil and control. There’s a road that leads directly from the center of town to Magic Kingdom. I’ve been obsessed with it for the last twenty minutes. Taking virtual tours on YouTube.

But rewind back to me, in bed, waiting patiently for a nameless Italian boy who may or may not have tried to kill me five minutes ago. After a moment he returns, holding two cups of tea. He’s sort of goofy, not atrocious looking. He perches himself at the end of the bed. “You know what I love most about London?” he says.

“What?”

“British girls,” he smiles. “They’re so crazy. Like you.”

“But I’m not Brit—“

“Like last night,” he erupts, “you told me to wake you up choking you, then this morning you say otherwise. You’re playing with me, yes?”

I would make the effort to argue otherwise, but…

BUNNY: London Part 1

2010-05-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

Slutever is a blog where I endlessly rant about the lives of myself and those close to me. For a change, I thought it would be nice to get someone else’s opinion on this collective existence. If you read this blog, by now you’re familiar with Bunny. Bunny is my best friend and a fiction writer (a really good one, I rip him off constantly). Today I’ve asked him to tell us, in his own words, just how and why he came to London one year ago. Here is part 1. To be continued...

When I wake up I’m splayed across the kitchen floor still wearing someone else’s shoes and jacket, some sort of souvenirs from the night before, I’m not sure, I can’t remember. There’s like dried blood all over my hands and knees and everything smells like piss, I don’t know if it’s from me or the cat curled up on top of my chest. The last thing I can see inside my head is going to a random dude’s house somewhere in Brooklyn, a bunch of ugly people sitting pretty, smoking crack and snorting speed. I lick the walls, they look like ketchup. And then I’m running. I remember running through a park really fast. And then that’s it. Dark, dead, kitchen floor, uh huh, who cares, whatever.

It’s been three years in New York and I’m having little breakdowns every day now. I get caught with a Capri Sun stuffed down my jeans as I try to leave the grocery store, I lock myself inside a Starbucks bathroom for three hours cause I can’t stand the smell of coffee. I sit for days inside my room pretending that I’m paralyzed and the only time my body moves is when Lily lays on top of me, saying Please Get Up Because I Love You and I have to use my arms to push her off. All the stupid things I do to feed my need for meaningless self-sabotage, I guess I like the way it feels to be pathetic.

I stagger to the sink and wash the blood from off my hands and feed the cat, then stand there, silent, watching him stab savage at each tasteless looking dried brown crunchy thing with his tiny teeth until he stops mid-chew and looks up, staring back at me, our eyes are locked and waiting. What Now? we both seem to wonder, then his head ducks back down into the bowl.

“Bunny--I mean Jordan or... whatever--I don’t know where he is but I think he might be dead.” That’s what my old roommate Patty told my mom when I ran away to California for those few forgotten weeks last year when no one knew how they could find me. “I’m fine,” I told my frantic mother, reluctant from an Oakland payphone. “I’m just like uh I guess, whatever, bored,” I say, sounding retarded as I once again repeat my most essential teenspeak mantra. Later, when I’m finally forced to wander back to Bushwick, I decide to spend the next year slowly throwing out my shit, encouraged as I wake up every morning still thinking that Today’s The Day I Disappear. “I’m afraid one day I’ll come home and you’ll just be gone,” Lily used to say to me. She burned it in my selfish brain like a horoscope that doesn’t change, a self-fulfilling prophecy you got no other choice but to believe.

Little Rabbit
How are you? Everything is fantastic here. The weather is so hot, I just sit on the beach all day in my bikini, I fucking love it. If it weren’t for you and Pan and New York and real life, I’d never leave. Rima is here--she’s engaged now. The wedding is in September, everyone is so excited. By the time you get this I’ll probably be on my way home. I can’t wait. India is amazing but I miss you so much. It’s been the best six weeks but I need to come home now. Wait for me. And remember to feed Pan.
x x Lily

That night I pack a bag with two shirts and some extra shoes and stand on the corner where the bus that takes me to the airport stops. I see some kid I know across the street, he shouts at me Where Are You Going? and I say Last Minute Trip To London But I’ll Be Back Soon, he says So Long and I do too. I hold my breath and close my eyes and count as high as I can go and for one weird second lost inside my own dumb desperate urgency, it seems as if I really know exactly what I’m doing.

x Bunny

Friends I'll Never Meet: Part 2, Theresa

2010-05-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

Meet Theresa, a 16 year old high school student from New Zealand. We met on Facebook six months ago after she kindly offered me a place to crash at her parent’s house in NZ, despite the fact that I had no intention of going there. Thoughtful! Theresa is a dancer, can speak Japanese and loves Ritalin. Her tagline of Facebook is “I would vomit up my life if I could,” which is really funny and totally relatable. She also has a really cool boyfriend named George. What I love most about Theresa, however, is how much of a genuine, unapologetic fan girl she is, because I’m totally the same. Everyone can relate to harboring stupid internet infatuations with people. It’s cooler to just embrace them than to pretend you’re above it. This is an interview I did with her over Facebook chat.

We’re both such internet groupies. My current obsession is Jey Crisfar, the gay zombie boy from Otto; or Up with Dead People. What about you?

So true, I have a very addictive personality. I really love Conor Oberst, Rodaidh McDonald from Cocadisco, the Youtube beauty guru Juicystar07, and Alexi Wasser is pretty rad too. I’ve also been an obsessive fan of Hamilton Morris for nearly two years now, which is funny coz I know you like him too. I’m so jealous of his fuckin’ insane job, traveling around the world trying obscure drugs and writing about it—yes pls!

A lot of the time you contact these people through Facebook and Myspace, right? Who is the most famous person you’ve talked to?

It’s hard to decide who’s the most famous, but I got really excited emailing people from Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley band in attempts to get Conor to Skype my boyfriend on his birthday, so probably them.

OMG so funny, did it work?

Yeah we talked, but the Skype thing didn’t end up working out as they were too busy in the studio, which was a total bummer!

Do people ever not respond?

Sometimes. Most of the people I add on Facebook I never actually talk to—I just kinda stalk them from afar. I like knowing what they’re up to. I’m really creepy like that. Oh, and Dev Hynes never accepted me

Weird, I know Dev. He’s generally quite a strange and paranoid person, which is probably why he didn’t accept. Actually he just deleted his Facebook entirely because he was having a life crisis / mental breakdown of some sort, so don’t take it personally! What’s New Zealand like?

There are hobbits and sheep everywhere—it’s exactly like all the stereotypes. We also have a large percentage of meth addicts and baby-shakers.

Gross. What’s your default thing to masturbate to?

Definitely That’s So Raven. The whole show though, not the girl.

Umm… I think they’re all like 14, but I guess that’s OK as you’re underage too. So, who’s the hottest boy on earth? I change my mind like every day but Louis Garrel, Mackenzie Crook (with his bowl cut) and Louis Theroux are all definitely up there.

Hahaha, Mackenzie Crook? You’re crazy. George Armstrong is my fave! Also, I feel really retarded to admit it, but I’ve had a huge thing for Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance since I was 10. I used to be a ragin’ emo obvz. Yannis Philipakis is rad too, and so is Jethro Cave.

I agree with everyone except Gerard Way. Guys wearing make-up is hot, but he just takes it too far. Is two boys making-out hot to you?

Hmm… no not really, sorry.

What?! Are you mentally disabled or just blind? J/K! Who is your lesbian crush?

Your friend Mavi, defz. I completely love her. She’s so endearing and kind, and we (digitally) get along so well!

I agree! Although you know she’s not a lesbian in real life, she just has short hair. Actually we sort of made-out once, but she was unconscious so I don’t know if it counts.

Bummer.

Your Facebook pictures make me want to be sixteen. I hate you.

I would vomit up my life if I could.

Tolerance

2010-05-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

All pics @ Slutever

“…and so he was like What’s lolz? and in my head I was like OMG how could someone not know what lolz means? but obvs I couldn’t say that to him so instead I was like Uh DUH! Lolz is obvs just multiple lol!” Mavi takes a deep breath, taps the ash from her cigarette onto the newly polished oak flooring and looks expectantly at her dinner guests, all of whom appear vacant. “Are you guys even listening to me?”

“Not really,” says Bunny, letting out a long sigh. “Can we change the music?” Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere blares from crappy laptop speakers.

“I don’t care what music we listen to,” shouts Mavi, clawing the glass table in front of her. “I don’t even like music! You know that about me. Plus, I’m giving up trying to entertain you all because you obviously don’t give a shit what I have to say.” Defeated, she picks up a packet of artificial sweetener from the table in front of her, rips off a corner and begins to suck loudly at the packet’s powdery contents. Bunny studies her for a moment, then says evenly, “That stuff causes cancer in laboratory animals, in case you didn’t know.”

“That’s fine,” she replies with a flick of the hand, “lucky for me I don’t know any laboratory animals.” She continues to tongue the packet until there’s nothing left, then lets the soggy remnants drop from her mouth. “So… like…” She’s searching for something to say. She’s never content with silence. “The Dalai Lama is mayj, right?”

Bunny shoves his bony face full of artichoke. “Do you guys remember that time Monica Lewinski designed handbags?”

“What kind of music do lesbians listen to?” continues Mavi, oblivious. “I might become a lesbian. It would make sense—I have short hair now.”

This goes on for roughly another half hour. You know when you spend so much time with one group of people that eventually there’s nothing left to say, and you all just give up and let words spill unedited from your mouths in a constant flow of verbal nothing? We’re there.

I leave Mavi’s and walk the five minute walk back to my (semi) new squat. I open the heavy metal door to find a girl, roughly ten years old, in a pink party dress and bedazzled tiara, cartwheeling across the warehouse’s expansive cement floor. This is Alexi, my Hungarian squatmate’s younger sister. She’s been crashing with us for the past couple weeks. I’ve only ever seen her wear this outfit. It’s sort of weird actually—squatting with a ten year old, I mean—but I just try not to think about it. This is how I deal with most things.

“What up Alexi?” I ask, but she just swings her wand in front of my face and skips off into the distance. I haven’t worked out if she speaks English yet.

Behind her are my four new housemates, hypnotized by a crappy TV, flipping aimlessly between Wife Swap UK and a documentary about how British people eat shit food. They’re all at university, and do little else besides go to school and come home and study. I don’t know how they do it; they’re all painfully devoted. I really like them. Living here is a lot different to life in the previous installments of Squallyoaks. In the last squat it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to come home to find Kerri in a wedding dress on DMT, making experimental music with a gang of teenage cross-dressers. Or, alternatively, to walk in on an orgy. That happened a few times. Those days are no more. Now I come home every night to people eating a home cooked dinner (normally some weird, eastern European soup made from cabbage and bits of hot dog), listening to classical music and talking peacefully. Or, in the case of tonight, a child fairy skipping happily throughout the house, blessing people with her magic wand. It’s different, but I’m getting used to this unfamiliar calm. When you move house every few months you need to be able to embrace change. I’m learning.

Top 10 Hottest Guy-On-Guy Film Moments

2010-05-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, while flying from Toronto to London, I watched A Single Man—that homo Tom Ford film starring Colin Firth and the hot kid from Skins. I wasn’t expecting the movie to be so sexy, but fuck… the scene where they both get naked and frolic about in the sea gave me such a massive boner, I had to cover up with the in-flight magazine. So embarrassing. This unexpectedly sexy bit of gay cinema got me thinking about other memorable boy-on-boy film moments. I’ve made a list of my personal top ten. This is the real deal. None of that quasi-gay, Brokeback Mountain Hollywood bullshit. Here they are in no particular order. I recommend you jerk-off while reading this.

1. Les Chansons D'amour (2007): Louis Garell’s Gay Sex Scene
This is a French film where Louis Garell falls in love with a chick and then she dies, after which he becomes gay and the movie starts getting good. The gay sex scene is by far the best bit. Les Chansons D'amour is actually a musical, so they randomly bust out into song during sex, which admittedly is a bit weird. But seriously, Louis Garell is so stupidly hot the cheesy singing can easily be overlooked.

2. Twilight (2008): Robert Pattinson Smashing Into Another Dude During A Vampire Baseball Game
Twilight is basically the gayest film ever made. I particularly like this moment—it just feels so real.

3. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001): Threesome Scene
Being involved in a threesome situation with Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna is my ultimate fantasy. The best part about the gay moment in this film is that you don't expect it. You're just casually watching, lost in their hotness, and then WHAM! They're making out.

4. Milk (2008): The Scene Where They Eat Cake In Bed
I’m sorry, but I think Sean Penn is super hot. Do other people? I can’t work it out. I think I’m just into people who look like birds. The scene in Milk where he and James Franco eat cake and kiss in bed is so sweet. Ugh... sometimes I seriously wish I was a gay man. Have I made that obvious enough yet??

5. Stupid Junkie Faggot (2006): Bunny Sucking Some Guy’s Dick
Back when my housemate Bunny was an edgy film student he starred in the student film Stupid Junkie Faggot. You can pretty much grasp the film’s concept by the name. The best bit is when Bunny repeatedly screams, “I need some fucking heroin!” followed by him briefly attempting to suck his boyfriends flaccid dick. However, the guy is so junked-out that he fails to get hard, at which point Bunny gives up and stabs him repeatedly in the chest with a scissor. Hot!

6. Mysterious Skin (2004): Car Kiss
Mysterious Skin is about a little boy who gets abused by his baseball coach, resulting in him developing loads of "issues." Eventually said little boy grows up to be the kid out of Third Rock From The Sun (except super hot). Then he starts getting with his equally attractive, male childhood friend. You follow? The scene where the two boys kiss in the car always makes me wet. Eww, look at Michelle Trachtenberg's head.

7. My Own Private Idaho (1991): The Whole Movie
You don’t really get hotter than a gay, narcoleptic, junkie prostitute. It’s like the holy grail of hot. My Own Private Idaho is a road movie by Gus Van Sant about two male hustlers, Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves). The whole film is masturbation material.

8. Titanic (1997): Leonardo DiCaprio Fucking A Tranny
This is way hot, but fuck those tranny’s hands are huge. Leonardo DiCaprio is so obvs gay.

9. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985): Johnny Licks Omar’s Neck
My Beautiful Laundrette is cool because it’s a film about a gay relationship that doesn’t make homosexuality the point of the film’s conflict. This was pretty significant when it came out in the mid 80’s. Set within the Asian community in London during the Thatcher years, the love between Johnny and Omar is offered as the one thing that's simple and good amid issues of race and class. The hottest bit is when a sweaty Johnny lick’s his lover’s neck. I want you 80's Daniel Day Lewis.

10. Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006): My Heart Melts...
Wild Tigers I Have Known tells the story of a thirteen-year boy named Logan, who enters into a gay relationship with an older boy, Rodeo. It’s more amazing and beautiful than it is sexy, but it's still very worth seeing. Watch this trailer and tell me this isn’t already your favorite movie, even though you’ve probably never seen it.

My Friend Mavi Probably Stalks You

2010-05-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

Like most of us, my friend Mavi Staiano spends countless hours on Facebook. Stalking the profiles of crushes, leaving lolz comments on friends’ walls, jerking-off to the defaults of hot strangers—this is all normal. We can all relate. Mavi, however, has taken digital stalking a step further. Over the past three months, she collected more than 5,000 images and screen grabs from the Facebook profiles of people all over the world, most of whom she doesn’t know. She spent literally hundreds of hours trolling profiles—friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and beyond—collecting the images of their lives. She then took these idealized images of youth and printed them on t-shirts, made them into popstar-esque posters, and framed them as if they were her own. The result of her obsession is something both beautiful and creepy, depending on how you look at it.

So Mavi, what exactly is this? Is it art? Is it for fun? Are you just a perv?
Mavi: It’s difficult for me to define. I think of it as curating images. At the start, I was just being a creep and stalking strangers, but not saving any photographs. Then one day I realized how many amazing images I had seen. It made me want to collect them, so I started screen grabbing. At first I didn’t know what I was going to do with the images. That took me a while to figure out.

When you look at all the images together, they have a very youthful, American aesthetic. Would you agree?

Yeah, definitely. The people in the photos are all very clean, fresh, pure and young. When I was little, I thought being American was so cool. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Macaulay Culkin—these were the coolest things on Earth to me, probably because they seemed so distant from my actual life. I’m still infatuated by very clichéd American things like road trips, skaters, cowboys, bikers and prisoners.

It’s strange how with Facebook you can essentially curate your life by editing your photos, albums and information so that you appear in a certain way. Is your work a heightened version of that? Does it portray a perfect youth?
It feels like that, doesn’t it? When I look at these images, I think, “Oh my god! I want these photos to be the photos of my youth! I want to be 16 with long beautiful hair and freckles, on a beach with my cool skater boyfriend. Like, obviously!” They are very idealistic and carefree.

I know that you’re a big fan of Richard Prince and his use of reappropriated photography. Do you feel that because you’ve found these images and screen grabbed them, that they’ve become yours?
Yeah, I do. Grouped together the way that they are, these images are my work. Screen grabbing is obviously the photography of our time!

Did you ever feel like you’re invading people’s privacy when looking at the profiles of people you don’t know?
Not really. If you don’t want people who aren’t your friends to look at your profile, you can change your settings to prevent that. I never add the people I stalk.

Why did you choose to display the images on t-shirts and posters?
It’s just the ultimate fan thing, isn’t it? We wear the t-shirts of bands we love, fans of Leonardo DiCaprio wear Titanic t-shirts—this is the same thing. I’m genuinely a fan of all the people in my work. I think being a fan is such a nice thing, and that whenever we think something nice about someone we should say it. It’s a good attitude to have.

Along with the photos, you also screen grabbed bits of digital conversations. What’s the idea behind this?
I’m a bit of a communication freak. Even though I see my friends all the time, we still constantly call each other and email, BBM, g-chat, Facebook, Twitter and so on. So many amazing things get said, but in general these digital conversations are so fast and flippant that we lose and forget about them. I started screen-grabbing bits of conversations that I felt were funny or amazing or relevant in some way, just to keep a record of them.

I was having a conversation with my journalist friend Hanna Hanra recently about how all progression in language is essentially a bastardization of what came before. Our conversations tend to be full of online slang, abbreviations and invented words. In your opinion, are words like lolz, OMG, and Marlon Rando just language moving forward?
Definitely. I think it's so important to create new words. Everything progresses, so why should language be any different? Words like lolz and mayj might sound silly now, but fad words that stand the test of time eventually become part of our everyday language.

Obvs.

Rinsed

2010-04-29T07:21:00.001-07:00

Over the past few weeks we’ve been seeing less and less of Johannes. He says he’s been crashing with some Polish squatters in North London, but has informed us of little else. He sort of drifts in and out of Mavi’s apartment, normally showing up around dinner time (convenient), eating our food and then disappearing again for days at a time. I have no idea how he makes money, or even is he does at all. Recently, investigation into whether Johannes is actually Austrian / an objectophile entered a bit of a lull. We just weren’t getting anywhere, and eventually we stopped caring. The kid is like a brick wall. Also, the person who was most interested in uncovering the truth about our mysterious house guest was Bunny, and he’s been trapped in Berlin for two weeks due to the lolcano. My partner is crime is MIA. Fuck you, Mother Nature.

The last time we saw Johannes was on Wednesday. He barged into Mavi’s living room around midnight, moving rapidly in his character, teenage lope, carrying a garbage bag full of clothes. Tattered tartan trousers, a Destroy T-shirt, corpselike face slashed with lines of red paint—he looked straight out of Jubilee. Every time I see him I can’t help but fall in love with him; he’s absurdly beautiful. Dead-eyed, Johannes explained that he had fallen out with the people he was squatting with, and that he needed a place to stay temporarily. The ever-accommodating Mavi obviously offered him her sofa. When I asked him what he and his squatmates had gotten into an argument about, Johannes toed the floor and mumbled, “They are not nice people.”

The following morning I got a call from a hysterical Mavi. She said that Johannes was gone, and that a bunch of her designer clothes had gone missing from the apartment, along with some DVDs and a digital camera of mine (an old, shitty one, but still). She said he left without saying goodbye. Fucking prick. Considering that Johannes has no phone, Facebook or email that we know of, we have no way of getting in touch with him. At this point we’re all pretty certain he won’t be coming back.

Later that afternoon I called the HMV in Surrey where Johannes previously worked, asking for him. (If you remember, we know he worked there because we found his pay slip). The girl on the other end of the phone informed me that a boy named Johannes had work there recently, but about a month ago he just stopped showing up. When I asked if the Johannes she was referring to was Austrian, she answered, “No, but I remember him motioning that he lived there for a while.” When I asked if he had neon blue hair she said yes.

In my fantasy, Johannes is consumed by wanderlust. He’s constantly moving, making new friends, taking what he can from them before moving on to somewhere new and doing it all over again. He rinses people. With each new home he takes on a different persona. People like him because he’s this cool, elusive character. You can’t really figure him out, but he gets by on his strangely beautiful appearance and his backward charm. Obviously I can’t be 100% sure that any of this is true, but it seems pretty likely, don’t you think? Who knows, perhaps I’m being a tad bit romantic. I feel used.

Friends I'll Never Meet: Part 1, Luke

2010-04-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

Obvs I have loads of internet friends as well as real life friends. (Shout out Theresa Pankhurst, Remi Morin (where’s my friendship bracelet you bitch?), Corinna Spencer and the Twitter massive.) Even though I'll probably never meet most of these digital besties, we still love each other in an abstract, 2010 sort of way. Recently I made internet BFFs with Luke – a 21 year old art student from Sydney – after he sent me this message via Facebook which gave me an instant boner.

OMG. Luke is basically my dream man: hot, skinny, weird, a little bit messed up and ultimately unattainable. Below is an interview I did with him. Now you can become obsessed with him too.

Hey loser. Tell me about the accident and how it happened.
I was hanging out with some friends in a seedy park sculling goon sacks before going out one night. The park was right next to this upmarket looking construction site, and after a quick joint I followed my two friends inside and climbed up to the third level of the building. It was pitch black aside from the balcony, which was lit up by the moon. I started walking towards the light, and suddenly I was falling. I wasn’t completely aware of what was happening, it all happened so quickly. Next thing I knew I hit the concrete floor with a bang. It wasn’t until I heard my friends voices above me – who were on the second level – that I realised I had fallen three levels onto the ground floor.

How bad were you hurt?
I fractured my foot and spine, and shattering my heel bone into more than 27 pieces (the doctors stopped counting when they reached 27). I now walk with a limp and I’ll never be able to run again. Although apparently it was good that I was blazed and boozed when it happened, because if I had have been more aware and stiffened by body, the effect would have been more detrimental. Moral of the story – drugz are good.

That sucks! Is sex different now?
Not really. I guess it means that I’ll never be able to experiment with running sex or trampoline sex. Not quite sure what they involve, but I would have been keen to try them anywayz.

I've heard that gay people can't catch balls. Does this have anything to do with you falling off the roof?
Hahhaha. What!? Karley, are you high right now?

Hmm… kind of. So, do you ever kiss girls?
I haven’t since some slut party I went to when I was 12. We had just discovered making out, and we played ‘competitions’ including longest kiss and most inventive kiss. It was pretty seedy now that I think about it.

Hot. So do you want to make-out sometime?
Hellz yeah!

Ok cool, I’ll think about it. What's your default thing to jerk-off to? Mine's Jamie Bell in a dress.
Closeted gay boys who act straight. That and Gaspard Ulliel.

Oh my god, I just Googled him. He’s so hot!
I know!

Who's hotter, Taylor Hanson circa Middle of Nowhere or Leonardo DiCaprio circa What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Is this a joke question? Who could ever top Leo? Besides, I loved Zac not Taylor.

Eww Zack is fugs, Taylor is the most beautiful creature on the planet.
Whatevs.

Who is your favorite ever America’s Next Top Model contestant? Mine is Shandi (season 2) because she was super hot but also edgy. (She has a neck tattoo now by the way—I saw her walking down the street in NYC once. Lolz).
Definitely Amber – more entertaining than Tyra herself. You haven’t lived untill you’ve seen this Youtube video:

OMG she's so Marlon Rando, I remember her. Lastly, do you like Justin Bieber?
Bail. In ten years he’s going to be some drug riddled coke head, and not in a good way. Actually, he probably already is. No wait, I changed my mind – that’s hot.

So hot!

The Underwear Theory

2010-04-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

Underwear says a lot about a person. In his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, Warhol said, "I would rather watch somebody buy their underwear than read a book they wrote." Underwear, he suggests, is a reflection of character. Personally, I don't wear underwear because mine are always dirty, and when I do they're the crappy £1 kind they sell at Primark. But there you go — I guess that says something about me.

Based on this theory, to get the down-low on a guy, all you have to do is check out his undies. Boxers or briefs, designer or generic, clean or cummy, newly bought or tattered, bought by himself or by his mom — these things all signify something. Recently, I dated a guy who folded his underwear. On paper he was everything I ever wanted: beautiful, unstable, brilliant, self-destructive. In reality, he did things like point out if my eyeliner was asymmetrical and vacuum my bed. Not surprisingly, the underwear-folder turned out to be a control freak. I should have seen it coming.

I’ve always had a thing for guys who wear boxers. I like to be surprised, you know? To me, boxers symbolize a quiet confidence. If a guy's underwear is too tiny I just feel like I'm being sent mixed messages. Boxer briefs can seem a bit arrogant. American Apparel Y-fronts are a little trendy. Jock straps are too gay. Unwashed suggest a gross-tasting dick. And so on.

So, in an effort to learn more about the beautiful and intricate science that is the male undergarment, I recently took some photographs of boys in their most intimate attire. Anything in the name of journalism. With this information in mind, please take from these images what you will.

Bunny, 21, writer, and Armin, 22, philosophy student
Bunny and Armin are best friends. Bunny is my housemate and I know for a fact when I asked him to pose for these pictures that he had no underwear on. Armin had a pair of generic black boxers on. They were being really finicky about what underwear they wanted to wear in the photos. In the end, they went through my pyjama drawer and chose these matching American Apparel Women's Jersey Booty Shorts. They were really excited about their underwear matching.

Andy, 22, art student

What kind of underwear do you normally wear?
Andy: Normally boxer shorts, although I never really think about it that much.

Where do you buy your underwear?
Primark, markets, anywhere that’s cheap.

Do you consider what girls might like when choosing underpants?
I have, yeah. I have nicer pairs for when I go on dates.

How often do you change?
Four or five times a week.

Robbie, 22, photographer
My friend Robbie showed up for the shoot in these women's lacy control pants. I thought this was a bit odd. When I asked him about his choice, he said: “Some days you want to feel the breeze, other days you just want everything to stay in the right place.” I guess that makes sense.

Dev, 24, musician

What kind of underwear do you normally wear?
Dev: Boxer briefs, because they’re the most comfortable. I can’t wear loose underwear. I hate it. It makes me feel so weird. What’s the point in wearing underwear if it’s loose? You might as well just not wear it.

Do you ever think about what girls might like?
No, never, actually. Because I only wear pretty generic boxer briefs, I pretty much think I can wear any pair and it would be OK. Plus, I feel like most girls don’t even look anyway.

Edgar, 20, music journalist
The purple thigh highs were my idea, but he didn’t argue.

George, 20, PR

Where did you get the underwear you’re wearing now?
George: My mum bought them for me from Marks & Spencer about a year ago.

What sort of underwear do you prefer?
I have some fruity colour bits and pieces that I like. It's good to add a bit of colour to the downstairs region, you know?

How often do you change your underpants?
Every day, if I can.

Bunny, again
“I can’t remember ever buying a pair of underwear. I don’t even know where the few pairs of underwear that I own came from. I think I probably just stole them from friends.”

Twiggy, 20, DJ

What are you wearing?
Twiggy: Emporio Armani boxers. They were a Christmas present from my girlfriend.

Does you girlfriend always buy your underwear?
Sometimes. I have a really colourful underwear drawer and most of my pants are really wacky. She bought me these because she wanted me to own some nice, normal boxers.

That’s cute.
I guess. I sort of just wear whatever. Actually, that’s not true: I prefer boxers. Briefs are too tight.

Stella, 23, fashion student
This is a girl, obviously. I met her at a bar and thought she was really hot. I told her about my photos of guys in their underpants, and she said that she liked to wear boys' boxers because she thought they were both comfortable and sexy. I agreed.

Sex.

Let Me Squat Your House

2010-04-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Judging by the success of my recent attempts to Google-manifest my destiny (namely Secret Garden Wheelchair Kid, Dennis Cooper and Hamilton Morris), I’ve decided to try my luck and pray to the internet once again. Here goes…

I'm looking a free apartment in New York this summer. Basically I want to house sit. This might sound like a ridiculous request, however, I promise I'm not as mental / disgusting as my blog posts may imply at times (although I never lie). Surprisingly, I’m actually a meticulously clean and respectable human being—it’s the people around me who are gross. Below are some examples of the kind of place I’m looking for.

Thanks! Can't wait to hear from you! Email: karleysciortino@gmail.com

Immaculate Contraption

2010-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

We’ve been living in our new squat—a two story, disused warehouse in east London—for two weeks now. Since the move four new squatmates have joined the Squallyoaks crew—one Hungarian girl and three Italian guys. My favorite thus far is Dante, an Italian skateboarder with a fetish for crafting homemade sex machines out of found objects. Think Dr. Frankenstein, only way more pervy. He’s so lolz.

Dante is a twenty three and from Sicily. Tall, curly brown hair, lovably geeky—he reminds me of an Italian Seth Cohen. His most noteworthy trait is his obsession with sex. It's all he talks about. Not in a creepy way; it comes across more as an honest expression of his general intrigue on the subject.

When I first met Dante, within five minutes he was briefing me on his growing interest in DIY sex toys. He said he spends hours thinking up weird ideas for pleasure devices, and then makes them out of silverware, dildos, wood, tools—anything he finds lying around. It’s pretty cool, actually. When I asked to see some of his creations, he eagerly ran off to his bedroom and returned with a large wooden box. From inside he produced what appeared to be a medieval torture device. “This is my latest creation,” he smiled, placing the weighty, metal object into my hands. “I call it Sex Saw. It used to be an electric hand saw, but I’ve removed the saw part and replaced it with this." He pointed to the large pink dildo fixed to the end of the saw’s body. “This thing makes girls fucking scream. It’s so insane.”

When I asked how it worked, he turned the machine on, causing the dildo to violently thrust forward and back again in a rapid, repeated motion. The thing literally looked like it could kill someone. Either that or generate the most intense orgasm of one’s life—I couldn't decide. “Pretty cool, huh?” he said with a dopey, self-affirming smile. I nodded graciously, and he began rummaging through the box for more goodies. He pulled out an electric shaver with a kush ball glued to where the razor should be. Next came a medical glove with feathers taped to the tips of each finger. Next a small turnip.

“What’s the turnip for?” I asked.

“Slip this baby into a condom,” he grinned, “and you’ve got yourself a homemade butt plug.” Obviously. “So,” he continued, reaching into the magical chest once again, “have you ever been into piss?”

“Umm, you know… whatever,” I stuttered not wanting to sound like a prude. I mean, I’m not avidly searching out piss sex, but I’m generally pretty keen to adapt to the sexual desires of whoever I’m with at that moment. Don’t knock it ’till you try it, I guess.

“Have you ever done it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I say. This is true. It was kind of lame. It would have been cool if it was more spontaneous, but we stupidly planned it beforehand, which caused for too much preparation. Chugging two pints of water, laying out towels, providing cautionary wet wipes—it totally killed the mood. Then, when it came time to pee, I got stage fright and couldn’t go, so I just sort of awkwardly hovered over his chest in a squatting position for ages before any actual pee came out. Not sexy?

“Well if you’re into piss, this stuff can be handy” he said, holding up a roll of plastic wrap. “The other day a girl wrapped me in this stuff and then pissed all over me. Makes the act a lot more sanitary, ya know?”

“I’ll keep that in mind."

After sharing most of his weird box of perversion, Dante packed up his things and returned to his bedroom. I suddenly felt incredibly turned on, overwhelmed by the desire to know what Sex Saw felt like. I contemplated waiting until Dante left the house, then stealing Sex Saw and trying the thing out on myself. However, I reconsidered at the fear that I might fuck up and damage myself beyond repair…

Body Language

2010-04-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Last week my friend Matthew Stone had the opening of his solo show Body Language at Copenhagen's V1 Gallery. I’ve been taking part in Matthew’s weirdo, naked, ritualistic photoshoots for nearly five years now, so it made sense to tag along. Most of the time Matthew exhibits really big, studio-shot color images. This time he included some of his black and white photography as well. Here's an interview I did with him while we were in Denmark.

Hey Matthew. I’ve noticed that increasingly your photographs are of just bodies, and less faces. Why is that?
The images are becoming more abstract. When you see a face, straight away you know what you’re looking at.

Why do you want the images to be abstract?
People are abstract, thinking is abstract, relationships are abstract, but bodies aren’t. They separate us from one another. I want to push the body towards those abstract spaces and bridge the gaps between us. It might sound literal to say this, but I think that actually placing bodies against each other makes them closer in multiple ways.

What’s the relationship between the color and the black and white images in the show?
I started shooting 35mm black and white to challenge my own established working method. All of the photographs I made prior were quite controlled and shot in the studio, so I inverted that way of working with a fully automatic camera.

How much of your work do you feel is staged?
Not as much as it looks like. I do rely in part on the people I photograph to define the image. I like to think that I stage situations that allow for intense activity to unfold naturally. I push people into strange and intimate situations, but what happens between them is real.

My favorite photos in the show are the ones taken in the empty department store in Peckham. We all performed a ritual which we made up as we went along and to me it felt more like we were documenting an experience than staging photographs.
Yeah, and it went further than we thought it would. It was playful but it also ended up being quite serious and sincere. Don’t you think all the shoots are like that in a way?

Yeah, more recently it’s definitely felt like that. I mean, you don’t dictate what happens, but those situations wouldn’t occur without you. Can you describe what you want to happen and then what actually does?
I try to help people enter a psychological space that is separate from ordinary reality. I think that creative minds in particular are wired with the possibility for a type of thinking that is fluid and ultimately beyond individuality. Different artists and mystics have used various methods to get into these states. Most people who are born with these abilities nowadays just take drugs to get out of themselves and to ignore the responsibility that comes with it. But that’s not the only way or even the best. I feel comfortable directing elements of the images as long as it helps to metaphorically explain what is really happening inside of people while we make them.

You speak in riddles.
I can’t help it. Every time I make a statement the other side of the argument presents itself as being equally valid. I’m not trying to be obscure–I just think that we are complex beings and our day-to-day interactions often ignore this, which leads to unnecessary suffering.

Stop it!

Christiania

2010-04-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

Christiania is Copenhagen’s infamous, self-governed squat community. It was described to me as a magical town where cannabis is sold freely in the streets and hot, girly-looking boys frolic about giving people blowbacks. So like obvs when I was in Denmark last week I HAD to go. Also, being a squatter, I feel a strange affinity with other squatters the world over. I wanted to be close to my people.

Freetown Christiania is a self-proclaimed independent state of about 850 people, spanning 85 acres. It was founded in 1971 by a group of hippies, anarchists, and idealists after they squatted an abandoned military barracks in Copenhagen. One of the perks of the town’s special set of laws is their ability to legally trade cannabis. The authorities tolerated this for over 30 years, but since 2004 there have been constant efforts to try and normalise the legal status of the community.

The main cannabis trade in Christiania takes place on the centrally located Pusher Street (yes, really). I had to steal this picture off the internet because whenever I got my camera out around any drug paraphernalia everyone within ten metres shot me evil “NO PHOTO” glances, and snarled at me with their unbrushed teeth.

Though there’s a lot of pot, in 1979 the town administrated a “no hard drugs” policy which remains in effect today.

Many of the houses in Christiania were built by the inhabitants themselves. Some fail to meet health and safety standards, lacking things like water and electricity, but whatever. This is yet another reason why the government wants to put an end to this hippie/loser paradise.

I couldn’t help but think this weird spaceship house was an idea someone had when they were way too stoned, and yet which they somehow managed to follow though.

I’d like to live here.

To leave Christiania you have to pass under this sign that reads, “You are now entering the EU.” I thought that was really cute.

Later that evening we went to a place called Spunk Bar. Apparently “spunk” in Danish means sweets, but I couldn’t help finding the name really funny. Apparently, I have a very stunted sense of humor.

Inside, we made friends with some locals. They weren’t exactly the hot Danish girly-boys I was looking for, but I liked their style. This is basically how all the cool kids dress in Copenhagen.

I don’t know if there’s more heroin in Copenhagen than in other major cities, but it’s definitely more out in the open. Walking through the city’s more sketchy areas I saw at least three different people smoking up in the middle of the street, in full view of everyone. I took this photo of a drain outside Spunk Bar. Yum.

This was only a few footsteps away. All the hard drugs and violence made me wish I was back inside the peaceful, loving walls of Christiania.

Nancy Drew

2010-04-10T06:01:00.000-07:00

Following last weekend’s drama—AKA the devious discovery of Johannes’ porn, British passport and HMV payslip—we’ve all become hyper aware of the actions of our mysterious houseguest. We watch his every move, analyze his ever word. We’re essentially waiting for him to slip up so we can catch him out in some massive (yet still unknown) lie. It’s proving pretty difficult considering the kid barely ever speaks, but there have been some advances. Let me explain.

Tuesday morning I get a call from Mavi. She says she overheard Johannes talking on the phone in the bathroom, and that his English seemed “a lot more better than other times.” Being a spazzy, ESL Italian, Mavi isn’t exactly the best judge of English fluidity. Still, I’m intrigued. When I ask her if Johannes was speaking in an English or Austrian accent, she replies, “As if I know. All English sounds the same to me.”

For the next few days Johannes is all I can think about. He rules my thoughts, polices my dreams. This stupid kid is becoming my whole life. One day I literally stare at him for over an hour while he’s asleep on Mavi’s couch, trying to read his brainwaves or something. It’s sick. I want to confront him, to make him confess, but I’m too scared to go through with it. And what do I even want him to confess to, exactly? That he can speak English better than he portrays? That he’s not sexually attracted to statues? The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it all seems. I begin to think that maybe it’s me who’s the crazy one.

Eventually, despite everyone’s advice otherwise, I decide I need to confront Johannes, if only for my own sanity. I sit at home Friday night, creepily anticipating his return. He finally arrives around 3am, fucked, wearing pretty much the same outfit he showed up in two weeks ago—awkwardly high-waisted jeans, scuffed Docs, a grubby T-shirt with some vaguely obscure band name carved across the chest (today it’s Slime). He stomps clumsily across the room and flops down on the couch next to me. He’s nodding out.

“I found this,” I say, producing the HMV payslip I thieved from his luggage.

He strains to lift his heavy head, then stares at the piece of paper. I can’t decipher whether his blurred gaze is one of rage or confusion. “Wait…” he slurs, snatching the paper from my hand, “why you touch my stuff?”

“I found it on the floor,” I lie. “I think it fell out of your bag.”

“And…” he barks. “What problem?”

“Nothing, I—I just thought you said you came here from Austria,” I say, trying not to sound aggressive. “I was just surprised to find this.”

“Yeah,” he stumbles. “Well, I… my mother British. I here sometimes. I work sometimes. So what?” I think for a second. I guess that makes sense.

“So you’ve lived in the UK for a while then?” I ask. He doesn’t respond, instead hacking up a large wad of green mucus and spitting it into a nearby tissue. “It’s just,” I start, “it’s weird that your your English isn’t any better.” His eyes squint a bit. He looks insulted. What am I doing? I think to myself. This whole thing has gone way too Nancy Drew. I suddenly feel like a complete idiot.

“It because I fucking stoooopiiiid,” he spits back in a warped, mocking voice, pushing his face to just centimeters from mine. “Anyways, why you care?” Tiny droplets of his saliva sprinkle my nose and cheeks. From this close up his face looks different, just a little too perfectly constructed. His pale eyes, his crooked nose, his chaotic teeth and lips… it all makes way too much sense. I feel like maybe we’re having an intimate moment, so I struggle to try and make some vague sexy eyes, but he just gives me a disgusted glance and pulls away. “You don’t touch my shit,” he shouts, and then stomps out of the room. WHY CAN’T I EVER JUST BE COOL?!

Johannes hasn’t been around as much the past few days. According to a sloppy and vaguely incoherent note he left on Mavi’s refrigerator, he’s been crashing with some Polish squatters in North London. Who knows. Basically, what I have decided is that I’m over caring about whether he was/is lying about what/who/where, etc. To be honest, it’s almost makes him more interesting if he is. Besides, I think I blew this whole thing a little out of proportion. We’ve all lied, we’ve all kept secrets. Big deal. My main concern now it that Johannes doesn’t find all this stuff I’ve written about him on the internet. (Embarrassing?) I want him to be someone I can publicly dissect and exploit without him ever knowing. I wonder what the likelihood of that is?

The Return Of Squallyoaks

2010-04-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Finally, after four months of living in a cold, dark sex dungeon, we have successfully found a new and amazing squat with which to bring back the true spirit of Squallyoaks! Hurray! I’m insanely happy, as the last house was really beginning to depress me. It was way too small. Also it was a basement flat, which meant there was barely any natural light, making the whole place feeling like a weird, overcrowded cave. Not to mention the ultra thin walls. I fell asleep to the muffled sounds of people fucking almost every night (it also might be worth mentioning that everyone shared beds and I never saw a sheet get changed once). The last time I was there, while getting dressed for work, I put my foot into my boot to find that someone had thrown a used condom in there. Now you know why we called it the Sex Dungeon. For the record I only had sex in there once, and I barely remember it which means it doesn't count.
But moving on to bigger and better things, the new house is incredible. I’m not sure what it used to function as exactly—it looks like it could have been a gallery of some sort. It's two floors in total, plus a roof garden. We don’t have that much stuff in there yet, but we’ve had the ingenious idea of using tents as bedrooms, as the place is essentially two giant, open spaces, rather than separate rooms. It’s like camping without the hassle of being outside.

Sadly, quite a few of Squallyoaks’ previous occupants have now moved on from their squatting days, choosing instead to to live in real-people houses and do real-people things like bathe and own forks. Slutevs! At the moment the Squally team has dwindles to just four—me, Bunny, Simon and Darren (plus the addiction of three Italian guys and one Hungarian girl who don’t really speak English and I plan on just pretending don’t exist). Still, I'm excited for my new life.
Tent party!

Liar

2010-04-01T13:01:00.001-07:00

Photo: Karley Sciortino

It’s been a week now since Johannes, Mavi’s Austrian punk house guest, stumbled angrily into our lives. I’ve spent the past seven days trying to figure this elusive, blue-haired, beaten-faced kid out. He just doesn’t make sense to me. There’s something off about him. Something freakish. Not in the way that my other friends are freaks. This is a different, more desperate, more lurking form of freakdom. Let me explain.

Upon Johannes’ arrival, I’m instantly curious to find out more about him. He’s so evasive, so secretive. This only fuels my intrigue. He tells us he’s come to London from Vienna to look at art schools—Central St. Martins and Goldsmiths in particular—but little else. He rarely acknowledges any of us, other than to ask where he can score drugs or to comment on how “magnificent” or “sexy” Mavi’s apartment is. Honestly, the apartment is the only thing he ever talks about with any passion or interest. I kind of hate him, but I also kind of want to fuck him. I want to hate fuck him, basically.

On Thursday night Johannes, Bunny and I stay in drinking wine. Our mild drunkenness softens the mood, and I finally work up the courage to ask Johannes some of the personal questions I’ve been pondering for the past days.

“So Johannes,” I start, “are you gay or straight?”

“Why you want to know?” he asks, wearily.

“Just making conversation,” I say. “You know, trying to get to know you better. This is what people do.”

“People too soft,” he spits back in his broken English. “I have never fancy humans. I like hard, rock, building, architecture. No people.”

I stare at him, confused. “That’s not true,” I say in disbelief. “You must have been sexually attracted to someone, somewhere, at least once.”

“Never,” he says. “I once was into a statue of person. Although I liked more the statue base than actual human figure.”

“Bullshit,” I press.

He looks at me with a knowing glance. “I once had sex with bridge.”

Later that evening, out of curiosity, I Google “sexual attraction to objects.” I discover a condition known as objectophelia. Also called objectum sexuality, objectophelia is a pronounced emotional desire towards particular inanimate objects. I stay up all night reading stories about people all over the world falling in love with their laptops, fucking their cars, having intimate moments with their side tables. I watch a documentary about a woman who is married the Eiffel Tower. I learn that most objectophiles believe that all things are living and have a soul, and that some find emotional relationships with humans incomprehensible. Is he telling the truth? I wonder. Does Johannes really want to fuck Mavi’s apartment? I find this idea both far fetched and oddly attractive. I sort of hope it’s true.

Photo: Karley Sciortino

The following day Bunny and I decide to search Johannes’ stuff for clues. I feel slightly bad about it at first, but Bunny assurs me we only have to feel guilty if we get caught. This puts me at ease. While Johannes is out we search his laptop, spotlighting words like ‘porn’, ‘sex’ and ‘naked’. Low and behold we find his porn stash—videos of girls fucking girls, pictures of hot blondes covered in cum, naked chicks on motorcycles. No buildings, statues or sexy night tables in sight.

“Looks like he was lying,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment.

“I could have told you that,” says Bunny.

But we don’t stop there. We need to know more about this strange, misleading person. We open his recent documents. We find an admissions essay, written in perfect English.

“Someone else could have written that,” I say. “You write Mavi’s school papers all the time.”

We open more documents, searching for truth. They’re all the same—essays, poems, short stories, what appears to be a love letter to an ex-girlfriend, a to-do list—all written in perfect English. It doesn’t make sense. We search his luggage. There’s no stopping us now. We unfold his clothes, flip through the pages of his magazines, smell his cologne. We find a British passport. We find a payslip from HMV addressed to somewhere in Surrey.

“He probably just has a British parent,” I say, not sure if I even believed my own words.

Bunny shakes his head, bemused. “This shit is too fucking weird.”

Eventually we give up, making sure to return all of Johannes’ possessions to their original positions. When he arrives home that evening we say nothing. What is there to say?

We know Johannes is hiding something. Is he not who he says he is? Is he lying? We could confront him about it, but in a way it’s almost more interesting to play along.

Attack Music

2010-03-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

My good friend Matthew Stone recently directed this music video for one of my favorite bands, These New Puritans. It's amazing. You should watch it.

The Secret

2010-03-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

My mother is an avid believer in The Secret—some ridiculous, pseudo spiritual self-help book that Oprah made famous back in 2006, via her weird book cult aimed at simultaneously empowering and undermining desperate housewives. The Secret is the ramblings of some Australian bitch named Rhonda Byrne, claiming that focused positive thinking can result in increased wealth, health, happiness, etc. To be rich, you have to think like a rich person. To be happy, you have to think like a happy person. Thin, a thin person, and so on. Thanks Rhonda. Someone should really get on it and tell all those starving people in Africa people to start thinking like someone who just ate a cheeseburger.

About a month ago, my mother suggested I use The Secret to “improve my love life.” (What are you getting at, Mom?) She said since she began thinking like a skinny person she'd lost five pounds. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I agreed to give it a try anyway—both to humor her and as an attempt to cure my ever-increasing boredom. I decided to use The Secret as a method of scoring the boyfriend of my dreams and object of my ultimate desire, Hamilton Morris. Hamilton is a writer from New York. I became obsessed with him through reading his column in Vice, ‘Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia,’ where he writes about weird, rare drugs and just generally being fucked-up. Hot. He also happens to be the most retardedly beautiful person on the face of the earth—that wonky nose, those lanky, awkward limbs, that uncomfortably deep voice which makes him sound like an audio cassette that melted in the sun. Kind of like a special needs person, but in a hot way. I want him so bad it hurts.

So, taking leave of my mother's wise words, following our conversation I began thinking like the girlfriend of Hamilton Morris. I scribbled Karley Morris on all my notebooks. When I made dinner, I set Hamilton a place at the table. I talked to a picture of his face that I ripped out of Vice about my feelings and problems. I left him little notes on our pillow in the mornings saying things like, “Gone to work, didn’t want to wake you. See you this evening sweetie! Love you!!!” I even made-out with my hand in the shower on a couple occasions, imaging it was Hamilton’s perfect lips I was tonguing. It was exhausting.

Yesterday marked week three of my experiment, still with no signs of interest from my stateside lover. Not even so much as a Facebook friend request. This is bullshit, I thought. The Secret isn’t real; it’s false hope disguised as spirituality. I had bought into a deluded movement—a spiritual cash machine. I had become one of those people who pray for the winning lottery ticket, chant for parking spaces, meditate on fame. I decided to ditch The Secret and do things my own way. I had a plan.

If you remember, my last scary stalker internet obsession was with the wheelchair kid out of The Secret Garden. I struggled with my love for him for nearly fifteen years, longing for his messed-up legs to be wrapped around me in a passionate embrace. I yearned for him from afar. Then, as soon as I professed my love for him in a blog post, he sent me an email. (Yeah, it might have been angry and dismissive, but whatevs). Then, last week I wrote a blog post in which I quoted my idol, author Dennis Cooper. Not a week later and I was elated to discover that he referenced my entry on his blog, The Weaklings.
I started thinking about the strange links between these two events. Suddenly it hit me: The internet is basically like this weird, magical thing that connects the entire world or whatever (duh?). No one is unattainable. Writing about someone online is essentially as effective as whispering it in their ear. Let’s face it, everyone Googles themselves. Hamilton Morris, no matter how painfully cool he may be, is no exception. I wonder if he has Google alerts. I wonder if he’s reading this RIGHT NOW. Are you out there, Ham? Can you hear me? Do you love me like I love you?

So what I’m saying is, maybe the internet is the real secret (even though everyone already knows about it). Maybe instead of thinking positively, we need to think out loud, online, unedited, non-stop, all the time. Am I right? Is this blog the answer? I’ll let you know in a week.

Google Alert: Josh Rawson: You're my Rushmore. Bradford Cox: I may or may not have jerked-off thinking about you yesterday. Stacie Howard: I actually did make out with your boyfriend in the girls locker room after soccer practice that time in tenth grade... bitch. Jamie Bell: Wanna go for coffee sometime?

Egotistical Punk

2010-03-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

I wake up to Mavi shaking me violently.

“Look, I need a favor,” she says, frenzied. “I have a friend coming to stay with me from Austria today—some kid I met while street casting punks for that shoot in Pop last year—but I’m working all day. Can you look after him while I’m gone?” Mavi works in fashion. She’s almost always head to toe in Rock Owens. Her true love, however, is her myriad of weirdo sidekicks. She’s constantly collecting new fuck-ups and freaks to incorporate into her exotic circle of friends. I guess in a way they’re like her ultimate accessory. After all, that’s how I got here. “Karley!” she screams again. “Are you listening to me?”

“Wait, what? Who?” I’m half asleep. I’m having trouble understanding words.

“His name is Johannes,” she says. “He’ll be here in half an hour. Just make sure he’s entertained, yeah?”

“Uh… I mean yeah I guess that’s…” but she’s already gone.

“You’ll like him…” I faintly hear her shout as she slams the front door. “He looks like he’s dying.”

An hour later the doorbell rings. I answer it to find a tall, slender boy. Roughly twenty years old. His head is shaved apart from a triangle of neon blue fringe, which hangs lankly into his eyes (I think it’s called a Chelsea?). He’s wearing a homemade crop top with Blixa Bargeld’s face on it, awkwardly high-waisted jeans and floral DMs. He’s picking something out of his front teeth with his thumbnail. “Uh, hi. I’m—“ I start to say, but he doesn’t even look at me, instead shoving his duffle bag into my chest and pushing past, toward the living room. “…Karley,” I finish.

“Johannes,” he snarls in his thick Austrian accent. “I need fucking cigarettes. Are you housekeeper? You have food to eat? Hungry.” I look down at my skintight black lace dress—the same outfit I’ve been wearing for two weeks.

“Um, do I look like a fucking housekeeper?” I say. He laughs. Too bad he’s such a dick… I think. His face brightens as he studies the rest of Mavi’s apartment—a converted ballroom with rich wooden floors and majestic, floor to ceiling windows. “This house,” he says carefully, “is very beautiful.” He runs his hands slowly across the mahogany walls. “So beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful… I just want to fuck it.”

“You want to fuck the apartment?” I ask, slightly taken aback.

“Yeah,” he says flatly. And just like that, I’m interested.

Twenty minutes later we meet Bunny for lunch at a nearby café. I stare blankly at the menu. Everything is made with lentils, legumes and dirt. “Wait, are we at a vegan restaurant?” I ask.

“Yeah,” says Bunny.

“Why?”

“Because I’m vegan now.”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday.”

“But WHY?” I ask again. “I saw you eat an entire brick of cheddar cheese in bed like two days ago.”

“Well,” he begins, “given the poor standards of contemporary factory farming, animals are forced to undergo horrifically unethical treatment, not to mention the hugely negative effects commercial agriculture has on the environment.” He wipes some snot from his nose onto his sleeve. “Also, I read that Natalie Portman is vegan and she’s like hot or whatever.”

“Ugh…” I execute a really loud and over dramatic moan to illustrate my annoyance. I don’t hate vegans; I just don’t want them around me. They smell funny and they have really bad taste in music. I consider complaining but before I get the chance a red-headed waitress in an ill fitting brown dress walks up to our table.

“Can I get you guys something to drink?” she asks, sprightly.

“Coke,” commands Johannes.

The waitress wrinkles her nose in disgust. “We don’t serve Coca Cola,” she snaps, her mood shifting suddenly. “This is a vegan restaurant.”

“Uh… what the fuck?” he hits back.

“Do you know what Coca Cola does to your body?” she asks. We stare at her. We don’t know.

“The massive amount of sugar in Coke is seriously damaging to your organs, and can lead to Diabetes,” she says smugly. “Not to mention it contains ethylene glycol, which is used in anti-freeze. It’s essentially a slow poison.”

Johannes rolls his eyes. “Lady, I do so much fucking heroin, one Coke not make a difference.”

She stares down at him in disbelief. I laugh nervously, trying to gauge if he’s joking or not. I don’t think he is. I look to Bunny for help. He’s blowing his nose into the paper tablecloth, not listening. He looks confused—a deep-rooted, earnest confusion that appears to be more a fundamental element of his character than something passing.

“We’ll just have three waters, thanks,” I say. The waitress leaves quickly, followed by a long silence that seems awkward only for me. I look at Johannes. I study his face—the way his crowded teeth sit behind his thin lips, the way his dark eyelashes crash into the white of his eyelids, his pierced nose, his erratic freckles. He seems deep in thought, gazing toward some nonexistent point in front of him. He’s so retardedly beautiful it makes me sick. “What are you thinking about?” I ask.

“9/11,” he says flatly.

We order some food that tastes like worms and eat it peacefully. As we sit in silence I wonder how long Johannes is going to be in London for. I wonder what he looks like naked. I wonder if he has any tattoos, or if he has one of those ribcages which protrudes slightly, making visible each and every one of his perfect bones. I wonder if he thinks I’m pretty. I wonder what sort of face he makes when he comes. I wonder what’s going to happen next.