Smiling woman

Smiling Woman, Chicago, Illinois

I get email

You beast.  You lovely monster.  The three-headed gatekeeper of dreamlands.  I'm tempted to run from your nasty spell and cry myself silly until I don't believe in you anymore.  But you have seduced me with your conviction.  There is no arguing with your fervor.

My wife just came in and saw that paragraph and I'm sure freaked out a tiny bit as she calmly asked, "Who are you writing?"

I quickly explained how I read your article about why not to be a writer and how powerful and terrifying it was and that I needed to write you for my own sake and that it was not a love letter.  

She said as she smiled sweetly, "I know."

What does she know?  That I shouldn't be a writer?  That she thinks it's cute that I'm playing my writing games on the computer late at night?  That it actually is a love letter but not to susannahbreslin@gmail.com but to myself?

Well thank you Susannah Breslin for sliding a broken plate full of rusty knife points and dirty glass shards onto my seat cushion just as I was sitting down.

You are absolutely right.  I shouldn't be a writer.    

And yet, who should?

[redacted]

Dear Johns

While Letters from Johns is no longer active, I've recently launched Interviews with Johns.

So far, I've heard from a site reliability engineer:

There was a lot of overlap with business travel. Earlier when I was at a startup, I was’t dating at all and was working 80-100 hours weeks, it just seemed easier. 

And a teacher:

I answered an ad on an escort site. This was before Craigslist or Backpage. She was an olde lady in a trailer park who walked me through the process. It was fun, but not hot. I forgot to pay her I was so on edge. I drove back to give her the money and she was really nice about that too.

If you're interested in being interviewed by email -- it's anonymous -- you can email me at susannahbreslin at gmail.

[READ]

Diary of a freelancer

I'll be doing a new series on my Forbes blog this month: "30 Days of Freelancing."

I decided to do the series for a couple of reasons.

1) I didn't feel like I was getting enough done, and I wanted to get a bit more meta about the process.

2) I was focusing on getting less done, and I wanted a forum where I could explore that.

Those two things seem contradictory, but this is the nature of human existence.

Have you heard of the slow food movement? It’s part of the slow movement. Apparently, there’s something called the slow work movement. Pete Bacevice is its philosopher.

I decide I’m a recovering workaholic. The slow work movement will be my Alcoholics Anonymous. I will take 30 days to become a slower worker.

[READ]

Why men pay for it

Yesterday, I posted that I was reading Chester Brown's Paying for It. Basically, it's an autobiographical graphic novel about how Brown paid prostitutes for sex.

I think I got it yesterday in the mail and finished it last night. Generally speaking, I didn't really like it.

Mostly, it's depressing. Which isn't to say it's not accurate. I got the sense it was very accurate. Brown kept a diary of when he did who, and that's the structure that guides the narrative.

But Brown is a nerd/robot, and because of that, you don't get -- well, I was going to say, much in the way of feeling, but really you don't get any feeling at all.

Brown feels kind of dead.

Dead to me. To him, I think he feels like himself. He's very mechanical. Logical. Thorough.

But it's sort of like watching someone fuck a hole in the wall.

You get glimpses of the women, who are mostly disguised -- by speech bubbles over their faces or the absence of specific details -- but not a lot.

Mostly, I felt like the book read like a polemic that was pretending to be a diary. Brown is a fan of the legalization of prostitution. Which is fine. I don't have a problem with that.

There's a lot about his troubles with love, but in the end, it's like his real issue is a lack of ... passion.

Which left me feeling like I ate a sandwich with nothing in it. 

Aesthetically, I loved it. It's all tiny boxes, and little opaque people, and the sex scenes are like a sperm trying to penetrate an egg. I liked the way it looked the best.