Almost everything you could possibly want to know about me is available between the lines of every other page on this site, so any attempt at biographical explication seems redundant. I will note that the original Nicholas Urfé is to be found within the pages of The Magus, by John Fowles; that he is quite a callow youth, selected by the mysterious Conchis for a graduate-level seminar in mysteries, mythography, and magical thought; he resists his lessons at every turn, in every way he can, even as he ends up utterly transformed by them; and the card which directly precedes the Magus in any Tarot deck is, naturally enough, the Fool.
I have been scribbling sexual fantasies in one form or another with more or less success for—a while, now. They began in 1996 or thereabouts to crystallize around two rather disparate but nonetheless interrelated and interlocking stories, or approaches, or strands of thought, which became (one in a grubby Spring brand composition book, the kind with the speckled black-and-white covers; the other on the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop stolen from an office filled with obsolete computer equipment that sat there, unused, collecting dust) Indigo and The James Sisters. I began publishing them in 1997, first on Mr. Double’s inimitable website, and then through the offices of alt.sex.storied.moderated, and the alt.sex.stories Text Repository, where I started my website in June of 1999. Having learned a lot since then, I’ve essayed a number of drastic revisions, and finally got around to putting one up in September of 2001, which includes a number of new pieces that fall outside my self-conscious dialectic, as well as my blog, Inexplicably Fancy Trash, which may or may not be updated daily.
Writing pornography (“written, graphic, or other material intended solely to excite feelings of sexual lust, and usually considered obscene... Greek pornographos, writing about prostitutes”) or erotica (“literature or art concerning sex or intended to arouse sexual desire... New Latin, from Greek erotika, plural of erotikos, of or caused by love or desire”) (and I trust the hypocrisy of such a split is inherent in these definitions; one should, perhaps, ruminate on the fact that the Greek prostitute was frequently a woman of great learning, who presided over witty and literate A-list salons as often as more athletic, nocturnal pursuits; and that Eros has come down to us via the bourgeois Romans as Cupid, that appallingly cute little bare-assed angel on Hallmark cards. Of course, one should also reflect that the learnéd Greek prostitute was known as an hetæra; the pornai were the lowest and least expensive class of prostitute, frequently slaves owned by brothel-keepers; and Eros was seen as a powerful god in the Classical imagination: “Ruthless Eros, great bane, great curse to mankind, from you come deadly strifes and lamentations and groans, and countless pains as well have their stormy birth from you.” On the third hand, the pornai were quite ruthlessly described as “those who yield themselves to defilement for gain,” and Eros had this thing for his mother. So. Where were we? Ah, yes) is a tricky and ticklish process of calling up and bodying forth one’s deep desires, one’s primal needs (and it is necessarily an unconscious process; how deep do those foundations go, anyway?)—or trickier yet, learning enough of what others desire or need to summon those, to body them forth, to think and want and need enough like someone else to fake it well—and yet maintain enough—control is the wrong word; mastery worse; presence of mind is laughable; distance entirely too problematic— You’ve got to be able to work with this raw, debilitating stuff, shape it into something that is at least somewhat artful, capable of communicating something of some worth to someone-not-you (and any utterance is capable of communication of some sort; it’s just that some are better at it than others); you’ve got to do all this, you’ve got to be witty and athletic and nocturnal and knowledgeable and naive, you’ve got to give yourself up to defilement, a slave in service to a terrible, wrathful, stormy god, who hides behind cherubic cheeks on pasteboard cards handed out by schoolchildren and sneaks into Psyche’s bed in the dark; unseen, unknown. —Critics who assert that art which proposes to excite the viewer or reader sexually is antithetical to the complex function of art, of literature; or that physical arousal distracts from a rich and complex æsthetic response; have something of a point: it can be hard to think clearly when one’s primary goal is to get off; it can be downright annoying to attempt a criticial response to a piece that panders to one’s deepest desires. But that doesn’t make it impossible. Merely a tad more difficult, perhaps. (And, perhaps, more rewarding?
(Perhaps.
(Perhaps not.)
Since biography is not forthcoming, some notes as to the creation of this site: Built on a Macintosh iBook (tangerine) using Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Fireworks; typeset using the invaluable combination of Tom Bender’s excellent shareware text editor, Tex-Edit, and Dean Allen’s invaluable Scripted Writing for the Web Apple-Scripts. All imagery found throughout is either in the public doman (to the best I can determine) or has been collaged, manipulated, and processed enough to fall under a (broad) reading of the Fair Use provisions of American copyright law—which are under direct attack from publishers, producers, distributors and politicians throughout the world—just about everyone, that is, but the artists and the audience, who are the only two who really should matter, in the end. Textual poaching: it’s not just a right, it’s a responsibility.
But (more than) enough out of me. Read. Enjoy. Write. Stay in touch.
Best,
—n.
September, 2001•
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