Junkie © M. Christian

My name is Chris, and I'm a writer.  I have it bad.

You'll hear a lot of different reasons why people write in this book-- from a sexual journey to empowerment or a way of making a living, to a way of saying what otherwise couldn't be said-- but I think I'm unique.  My name is Chris, and I'm a writing junkie.

'Bad' doesn't describe how bad I have it, either; and it certainly doesn't describe how badly it has me. 

It wasn't always this way.  I've always been imaginative, always living several lives at once, only one of them 'real'.  Stories and fantasy have always been a big part of my life.  I remember deciding in the 4th grade to be a science fiction writer.  I had never written a word, but I knew that's what I wanted to be.  What could be better? Sitting around and dreaming up robots, aliens, weird tales, twisted stories, all day long -- it was what I was doing anyway.

I started to think seriously about it in High School, and that's when I first tried to write.  God, those first stories were awful (and in my darker moments I see my new stuff just as poorly): a big dash of Ellison, a heafty sprinkle of Bester, some Lafferty, some Zelazny, and very little of me.  I remember my fantasties around writing quite distinctly.  I was holding a book with my pseudonym sprawled across the cover in gothic boldness; a stark, dramatic image such as a screaming face, or an eclipsed sun, or a crystal starship. 

So I began, and found out very quickly that it was much harder than I thought.  The ideas were there, but the language just wouldn't cooperate.  I had a poor grasp of grammar, an even worse comprehension of spelling, and I was dyslexic.  I also suffered from an unreasonable need to be clever and to avoid simple language.  Somewhere I read Bradbury's idea that if you wrote a short story a week one or two you'd have to be good, just by sheer probability.  So I did just that.  I wrote a story a week for years and years, religiously, pathologically; and every last one of them completely, absolutely sucked.

Now, of course, I know that all those wasted nights did me some good.  They taught me discipline, gave me a sense of pride in that while so many of my friends were wishing and waiting, I was at least trying to achieve my goals.  It also gave me a good part of my writer's 'voice', the tone you hear reading this.

But writing then wasn't really love or even lust.  It was work.  Hard, miserable work.  Yes, sometimes the magic was there and something sprang from my fingers that made tears run down my cheeks because 'I' had written it.  But most of the time it was as much fun as pushing a boulder up an endless steep hill. 

Sex changed all that, but not in the way you think.  Years and years and years later, and married, I was exposed to two special things: the wide, wonderful world of sexuality, and the fact that science fiction wasn't the only market for my writing.  I knew both of these things before, of course.  I've always been very sexual (even if it was just with myself) and I knew about other forms of writing, but I didn't really have access to either realm.

On a lark, my wife signed me up for a class taught by Lisa Palac, who was then editor of the FutureSex magazine.  I'd tried months before this to write sex stories for women (or, at least at the time, I'd hoped that they were women) I'd met on the infant internet.  I passed one of these to Lisa at the end of the class, and she bought it.  Then Susie Bright picked it up for her Best American Erotica series.

Just like that I was a real, dyed-in-the-wool writer.  A pornographer,yes, but still a writer.  Slowly, here and there, I started to sell more and more stories.  With my best friend Thomas Roche's help and support I recognized that all writing is writing, and that a well written smut story can be just as marvelous as anything in the New Yorker.  For the first time people not only wanted to read what I wrote, but were willing to pay me for it.  It was incredible, it was fantastic, it was a dream come true.

As I write this, eight or so years after that first sale, I have a resume that could choke a horse: 100 plus published short stories, a collection from Alyson (Dirty Words), editor of seven anthologies, five monthly columns, and some very nice accolades.  I've also written about three dozen well-received science fiction and fantasy stories.

But something has changed.  Unlike that first sale that made me a professional, this transformation is harder to pinpoint.  I can't look back and say, "there, that's when the bug bit, when the disease took hold." Perhaps it was when writing first stopped being work and started being fun, or maybe when putting the words down began to be more enjoyable than the possible sale.  All I know is, I'm not the person I was when I started out.  I can see this in the way I view what I do: the rock is gone, the hill has vanished.  It's not work anymore, it's pure lust, a wonderful drug, my new religion -- and I've got it bad.

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Allow me to really mix my metaphors for a while, because for me there isn't a distinction.  Writing is a sex drug, a literary viagra, a literary nirvana.  It's a genital thrill as well as a cerebral explosion, a religious high -- and I love it.  Sometimes.

When I teach writing I wax poetic about the magic of storytelling.  We are magicians, the people in this book and other folks who feel the need to write.  We create wonders out of nothing-- no clay, no brush, no camera; just words, our own consciousness-- and we create things that live longer than any pot, any picture, any movie.  By ourselves, we create miracles with only our minds and dreams.  This is not hyperbole; it's how I feel.

People ask me about my spirituality.  Is "M.  Christian" Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Jewish, or none of the above? Answer: I'm a writer, that's my faith, my God.  Same people ask about my sex life.  Is "M.  Christian" straight, gay, bi, a masochist, a sadist, or some mad combination of them all? I smile and say that I'm politically gay, socially bi, and physically straight, but my real lust is for writing.  I've sampled a lot of drugs in my time, the hardest being speed and coke, the lightest being chocolate, but there is no drug more powerful than writing.

I really think I see the world differently.  I walk down the street and everything I look at becomes words, a short string of description, the fragment of a story.  When I talk, I often see what I and other people are saying as lines of dialogue.  When I dream, I 'write' my dreams, changing the outcome to suit dramatic structure. 

When I look at people I can' help but wonder about them: what their lives are like, what they think, what their daydreams might be.  When I'm in an erotic mood (i.e., have a deadline), I wonder what they might look like naked, like to do in bed, their first time, their last time.  What do their orgasms sound like? What does their come taste like? I don't really get aroused by these thoughts, but I do get a kind of 'spiritual' hard-on by coming up with what I think is a fuckin' dynamite story, when I just can't wait to get back to my machine and start to write.

Ah ...  for me there is nothing better than when a story is going well, everything just ...  clicks; when, from conception to completion, it's what I wanted to say, and I said it well.  God, sex, drugs all fall aside when compared to the powerful magic of writing.  God is in heaven and doesn't really care about us; sex is a messy joy that last for a minute, if you're lucky; and drugs make you feel like a wad of used gum the day after.  But a story, and the joy of the words-- that can last for days, for weeks, sometimes even for years.  I have characters that have stayed with me longer than lovers, stories that are more real in my mind than the time I lost my virginity, or when my father died.

I have it bad, and it's glorious.  Sometimes.

When it's good, I bathe in arrogance.  I can do something you can't.  I have stories that will outlive me and I don't have to share the acclaim with anyone.  I, and I alone, sat down and pounded it out of nothing but my own thoughts and soul.  No actors, no instruments, no team, just me.  Sex doesn't compare, drugs are weak, and even God is small and distant compared to the joy that suffuses me when I write it down Just Right. 

The fact that I write about girls with ravenous cunts, butt-fucking bikers, leather-clad dykes, or bottoms with steak tartar asses doesn't change a thing.  I'm a writer, and that's all that matters.  But since this is a book on sex writing, I'd like to focus on that.

I have a great little story.  I usually write everything under the same pseudonym (out of a combination of a need for privacy and a mischevious joy in being able to recreate myself on the page), but sometimes I have to pull another one out of my hat.  For example, if an editor has me in a book more than twice, or the editor has a thing about a boy being in an all-girls' book ...  whatever the reason, sometimes I pull out 'Alice.' Alice (to protect certain publications, I won't give her last name here) has sold about a dozen or so stories, sometimes with quite a bit of recognition. 

So there I was at this party.  Writing comes up.  Someone says he has a story in the current isue of this certain magazine.  I run the title and month through my mind and realize that I, too, have a story in the same issue, and mention it.  Curious, this guys asks me for the title.  I tell him, then explain that I had to use my other name for that story.   His jaw drops, falling right there on the floor - skidding across the linoleum until it rests against the fridge in the nearby kitchen.  "I masturbated to that story," he squeaks, shocked and confused that the lesbian sex story he read, and that got him off, was written by a 40-year-old man.

I smiled.  Damn, sometimes this job is sooo good.

In the back of my mind I have a file of stories like that, and memories of conversations, letters, emails, book titles, and good reviews.  I pull them out all the time and roll around in them.  Yes, writing can be a burning hot drug, and a damned powerful faith, but when it's good it's the best sex you've ever had.  Stories like that make my dick throb, steel-strong, bobbing with strength.  Rock.  Hard. 

When I finish a story it's like a great fuck.  When I sell a story it's like an ogasm that rattles your back teeth.  When I get in a book with "Best" in the title it's like a come that is God giving you the thumbs up.  When I sell a book, it's like the petite morte that shows you the glories of heaven: I am the sexiest man alive, my penis is great and powerful, my semen boils with genius, and my orgasms destroy buildings in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Sometimes. 

If you are not a writer you can't understand.  How could you? If you can't understand the glorious power of when it's good, then how can

you ever understand how terrible it is when it goes bad?

When you write, it's just you.  There's no one else to share the credit.  When you fail, there's no one else to share the failure.  It's just you, in the dark, by yourself.

There's something else you should know about me, to put this next part in perspective.   Yes, failure is hard, but for me the good is rare and the bad is common: I'm a chronic depressive.  My therapist, my ex-wife, and my lover all say the same thing: "You've picked a hard life for yourself," meaning that writing is not exactly the best choice for someone with self-esteem issues.  I always explain that I didn't choose to be an obsessive writer; it's bigger than my religion, my hunger for caffine, and my lust all put together.  I didn't choose it, writing chose me.

When it's bad it's very bad.  Jesus-On-His-Chromium-Throne it can be bad.   Writing something that I know is just shit is like not having a date for the ball; getting a rejection letter is like getting stood up; getting turned down for a "Best of" book is like someone pointing at my dick and laughing; and getting a book rejected is like someone saying "you want to do what?" with disgust in their voice.  More often than I mentally pull out those glowing reviews and wonderful sales, I moan and roll around in agony over the sales that didn't happen, the nasty rejection slips, the editors and friends who don't return my emails.  I've never attempted suicide, but I've wished many times for death or at least discontinuance.

So where does that leave me? Right now my depression and anxiety feel like they're pushing me towards a point where nothing about my writing will make me happy -- that all my negative feelings will wash away the successes, the inherent joy I used to feel about telling stories.

That is the fear, part of the depression.  There's also something else that I try to remind myself when the pit yawns beneath my feet: there is a solution.  A religious man would pray, an addict would either get clean or go on a bender, a sex fiend would get laid.  But I'm not really any of those, and so my solution is different.

I'm a writer.  I'll write. 

I know that might sound simplistic, but lately I've been allowing myself to write simply for the joy of it: to play with words and stories, exorcise demons and celebrate the ecstasy of creation.  I've been trying to let go of the competitive, business side of writing, and remember why I do it. 

When I teach, I say something like this, but I've been really trying to put it into practice: "Celebrate the story, and not the sale." It's hard to remember that when some editor points at your wang (like I said, that's how it feels) and laughs his or her head clean off, but try I do.  I've been trying to relish in creativity, to stay in that wonderful ecstasy of writing, to keep playing with language and words. 

Happy ending? Not yet.  But then this story is a work in progress.  It's hard to say for certain, but I think I'll be smiling at the end. 

After all, I'm writing, and there's really nothing that's better than that.

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