c h a p t e r 1 6
The Electric Adventures of
A Novel of Erotic Satire
Chapter 16
c:/misc/first writing/Alvin
It was a February morning before dawn when I sat down in front of our boxy beige computer in our icy kitchen and clattered out the first lines of what would become The Electric Adventures of Alvin.
I didn’t know how to start, so wrote a description of what I envisioned Guinevere looked like as we chatted. The business about the computer mouse is something she told me she actually did sometimes.
This is what I wrote (before Carol, my agent, made me change all the vaginas to lesser words):
c:/alvinexcerpts/notes46
Gem opened her silky brown thighs and propped them widely across either arm of the desk chair, and slid her hand between them, taking the hot soft mound of herself into her own eager palm. Her vagina was a flower, a radiant living cluster of lush darkness outside and moist pink petals inside, and now she gently parted those petals to find the knot of life at the center of her.
With her free hand, she guided the computer mouse there, its smooth hard cold plastic invading the delicate warmth of her folds. She let out a small gasp as she felt it against her, pressing her like the button on a keyboard.
On her computer screen,
c:/adam/notes895689
Some of the letters I get in
I’m not sure I deserve that kind of camaraderie from the writers. I may belong to some kind of unofficial fraternity, but I’m not sure it’s that one. I don’t like to think too hard about which one it actually is. But since the writers have asked about the process, I’ll tell them:
c:/mydocuments/writing/thoughts
All my life, I’ve awakened before dawn. All my life since about age thirteen, I’ve awakened with an urgent erection that required attention. This wasn’t a problem until I began living with Beth. Beth isn’t a ``morning person,’’ sexually or in any other way, so it wasn’t feasible to fold her into my morning routine. But my morning routine would generally awaken her, well before she was ready to wake up. So I had to change the routine. Soon after we started living together, I began hauling my morning erection into the bathroom and dealing with it there, standing up. This wasn’t ideal – picture a gourmet chef having to get by on fast food – but I viewed it as one of those little adjustments that we all have to make for marriage.
This change in routine tended to make the whole process end more quickly. Pre-Beth, I might have spent an hour or more before dawn just lying in bed, taking my time, mentally reviewing the previous day’s parade of women I’d encountered out in the world, which is fine if one is ensconced comfortably in a warm, dark bed. But who wants to spend a pre-dawn hour standing on cold linoleum in a painfully lit bathroom, looking at the wall? (To look in the vanity mirror – to accidentally glimpse the mirror, even – would bring the whole enterprise to a screeching halt.) So my morning routine soon took on a ``just-get-it-over-with’’ imperative that ended with me out of bed and wide awake well before the sun was up, with nothing to do. Enter
c:/misc/adamnotes/chat35683
Mikey000: so gem, that first sentence, with the computer mouse. Um.. ?
Gem4U: u have a question mikey?
MinniMous: sheesh
MinniMous: yes mikey gem has done that, get yer tounge back in your mouth
MinniMous: (I’m sure she’l be glad to send you a pic of it too)
Amy69: u are going to use my posing-nude story, alv??
Amy69: O god what if brian reads it??
Mikey000: wait. So, Gem, there IS a picture?
DeXtr: whats w/ all the biblical quotes alv?
Gem4U: yeah, thou shalt this and that. not exactly hot.
Gem4U: Kinda gay, in fact
c:/programs/writing thoughts/misc
I didn’t set out to write a novel. Certainly not an autobiographical novel, and definitely not a best selling autobiographical novel that would spawn long magazine write-ups, congressional hearings, and my current marital quandary. None of that was ever part of the plan. There wasn’t a plan, really. I just started writing, in the hour or two every morning that I had to myself after dealing with my morning erection in the bathroom and before Beth stepped from the bedroom, yawning and stretching (I love watching her stretch) and climbing slowly out of sleep.
I began with Gwen and her predatory sexuality in college and her late-night prowling in
c:/mydocs/adamwriting/notes/notes09423
And, without really pondering the wisdom of it, I wrote about Beth – about her sweet dark nipples, her lush blonde bush, her shining bright aura. I wrote about the first time we made love and the best times we’ve made love. I told the things we’ve said to each other over the years when we were alone, and the thing she does with her tongue around the tip of my penis, and the way her small hard clitoris feels when I pull it gently between my lips, and the way her vagina feels, inside. I told our secrets, to a readership base that has surpassed half a million souls.
Those are the passages in the book that I think about when I think about Beth opening paperback edition that I’m looking at right now. Those are the words that will confirm, beyond any doubt in her mind, who it is that wrote this.
c:/miscnotes/chatw4573
MinniMous: arent u worried she’ll read it?
Alvn: beth? not likely.
Alvn: Dnt know that she’s ever set foot in an adult bookstor
Alvn: this isnt the kind of thing youll find at the local library or Borders.
Amy69: what about you u
MinniMous: u mean my knight in shining armor?
MinniMous: **shrug**
MinniMous: would he give a flyin fkk?
c:/notes000000000003
Beth has this way of opening her legs wider at the end of our lovemaking sessions – of just spreading them with abandon, just as we’re galloping toward completion, and arching her back and pushing her hips up toward me and generally splaying herself out. For those few moments, she opens like a flower. It’s a stunning little move, completely outside the realm of her generally more modest approach to lovemaking. As you’ll recall, I spent most of Chapter Eight describing it.
c:/mynotes/bethhell
What the hell was I thinking?
c:/notes/chat094235
Gem4U: why didnt i get more ink alv?
MinniMous: ! ! !
MinniMous: is that a joke??
Amy69: gem, yor most of the book, sweety
MinniMous: i’ve known him since H-school …
MinniMous: and I didn’t’ get HALF the ink as you, g
Gem4U: & why do you write in there that we only fukked once??
Alvn: um . . . because we only fucked once. (?)
Gem4U: well, A) who’s fault was THAT?
Gem4U: and, 2, it’s fiction, you can make up whatver u want, dickhead,
Gem4U: so we should go all out
MinniMous: She’s mad that u didnt make her SLUTTY enuf
MinniMous: (Of course)
Amy69: hey if we’r making requests …
Amy69: I wouldnt mind my character having bigger boobs
Gem4U: u could make it hotter, i’m just saying,.
Gem4U: Maybe have me and Minny go at it or somthing
MinniMous: oh you wish
Alvn: gwen did my agent put you up to this?
c:/documents/religion notes/notes
If I’d left it at that – at the sex, and everything around the sex – I might have gotten away with this. The whole book might have sunk into the irrelevant anonymity that it so richly deserves; a stroke book, nothing more.
The religion was the problem. I think it made people on both sides take it more seriously than areolas and vaginas and leg-spreading alone would have done. It’s a common thread I see in the articles about the book, from those who loved it and those who loathed it: They always want to focus on what I meant by this chapter about the masturbating priest or that passage about the sadistic rabbi or the stuff about the Baptist preacher and the mating animals.
I can’t really answer those questions. I’m frankly not sure why I included that stuff. Certainly, it was useless to my online friends, who (unlike all these so-called literary experts) knew enough to embrace the book for its masturbatory value and not get all worked up about its alleged themes and metaphors and supposed commentary on societal attitudes about sex and religion. Mindy, whose childhood Catholicism is mostly dormant but sometimes still rises up to rack her like a recurring case of measles or something, confessed to me once that she found herself ``unsettled’’ during the portions having to do with religion. Guinevere’s complaints are less diplomatic, as usual. ``its like i’m in the middl of getting a good hard fuck, and all the suddn smeone starts DRONING ON about mideval philosphy or smthing,’’ she opined, not too long ago. ``zzzzzzz. kind of a buzz-kill, alv.’’
c:/misc/jjacksonthoughts3
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT:
Janet Wiss
FCC PROPOSES STATUTORY MAXIMUM FINE OF $550,000 AGAINST VIACOM-OWNED CBS AFFILIATES FOR APPARENT VIOLATION OF INDECENCY RULES DURING BROADCAST OF SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW
Washington, D.C.: The Federal Communications Commission today issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture of $550,000 against various subsidiaries of Viacom Inc. for apparently willfully broadcasting indecent material during the February 1, 2004 Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.
The show contained a musical performance that concluded with Justin Timberlake pulling off part of Janet Jackson's clothing, exposing her breast.
The Commission found that this partial nudity was, in the context of the broadcast, in apparent violation of the broadcast indecency standard. It proposed the statutory maximum amount against each of the Viacom-owned CBS licensees of the 20 television stations that aired the show . . .
c:/notes/adam2345634
When did I finish it? That isn’t the simple question it should be. I thought I’d finished it when I emailed it to Carol, my rapid-fire-talking agent, who I found by flipping through the yellow pages at our kitchen table one morning. Carol emailed me back a note telling me how much she loved the manuscript, then commenced to prove it by demanding that I change pretty much every word of it. We were still excising ``vaginas’’ and ``clitori’’ and ``breasts’’ adding in ``tits’’ and ``pussies’’ and ``cooches’’ practically right up until the minute the presses started rolling.
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/misc
As the publication date approached, Carol kept calling me on the mail-room phone attempting to entice me with accounts of how publishers typically throw parties for their authors to mark the publication, and host book-signing events, and set up media interviews and all the rest, and how I was going to miss out on all that (and, it was understood, make Carol miss out on it, too) because of my insistence on anonymity. ``These are great parties, Adam, you get treated like royalty, your wife could get all dressed up,’’ Carol said, during one of the calls. ``Oh, Adam, she’d love, love, love it!’’
``Carol,’’ I said, patiently, whispering so that the males of the mail-room wouldn’t hear me, ``we’ve been through this before. My wife doesn’t know about the book. I don’t want her to know about the book. She won’t `love-love-love’ it. She’ll hate-hate-hate it. Please, I’m begging you, just publish the stupid thing and let’s leave it at that.’’
c:/notes/congressnotes/congress986
SWORN TESTIMONY
SENATE AD-HOC SUB-COMMITTEE ON ELECTRONIC PORNOGRAPHY,
CHAIRMAN SEN. EDWIN REESE, PRESIDING
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Mister Alvin, I’ll just tell you this bluntly – I’ve not read most of your book, and what little of it I have read, I didn’t like. I think it’s crude and lascivious and, frankly, disturbing. I am sorry to put it that way. But –
MR. ALVIN: No apology is necessary, Senator. I wish your friends in the media were as discriminating in their literary tastes as you are.
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: – but the broader question is, why has your book appealed to as many people as it has? What is about this topic, Internet sex, or cyber-sex, or whatever you want to call it, that has caused it to sell . . . do we have those latest sales figures? Here, yes, thank you – to sell more than four-hundred-thousand copies, to date?
MR. ALVIN: I‘ve wondered that myself, Senator. I really don’t know what’s going on with that. It’s strange.
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: I mean, obviously, people have the right –
MR. ALVIN: It’s just plain weird.
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: – people have the right to read whatever they want. These proceedings aren’t about censoring anyone’s reading material. Our point here is to ask some hard questions about what this new form of pornography is doing to society. As the author of its `bible,‘ you may in the unique position to help us define this, Mister Alvin.
MR. ALVIN: You mean, define why people are reading it?
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Yes.
MR. ALVIN: Honestly, Senator, I don’t even know why I wrote it.
c:/alvnotes/carolnotes023
I could hear Carol’s familiar, dismissive chuckling at the other end of the line when I told her that Beth doesn’t know about the book. I don’t think Carol has ever fully accepted that fact. For whatever reason, she acts as if it’s patently unbelievable or something.
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/notes454
On the day it was officially published, a Monday, Beth went to school with Jack, her tall study partner, and I went to work at the mail room. That night, Beth and I went out and saw a movie. I don’t remember the title or plot; I was thinking entirely about my soiled little work of art going all by itself out into the world (or at least into that dark little adult-bookstore corner of the world that I assumed would be its purview). We got Chinese carry-out from a storefront restaurant down the street from the theater and brought it home and ate it in the living room with the news on the television screen, me sitting on the couch, Beth on the antique rocker with the yet-unrestored worn upholstery. I recall that she asked me at some point how my day had been, and I remember being just a little sad that I couldn’t give her the true answer, the answer that every writer wants to give: ``I got a book published today. A whole book. A real publisher. People are going to read it. I’m a writer today.’’
What I said instead was: ``Fine. You?’’ And, yes, I was a little sad, but not a lot. We made love that night. I did it in silent celebration of a little milestone reached – a published author, and never mind the details – and she did it because I asked.
c:/media/misc/firstmention/nytimes243
New this week: The Electric Adventures of Alvin, by Anonymous [fiction/erotica]. An obsessive-compulsive atheist clerical worker finds love, lust and electricity in the burgeoning world of Internet sex. (BlueFlu Publishing, hardcover, 227 pgs, $21.99)
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes87
Gwen had another notion of celebration.
A few months after the book came out, I was home alone one night (Beth was at her night class) when the wall phone in the kitchen rang, which never happens.
``Hello?’’ I answered, a little warily.
``Wanna fuck?’’ came the answer, in a woman’s voice that I instantly recognized as Guinevere’s, though I’d not heard it in something like five years.
``Jesus,’’ I said, after a moment. ``How are you?’’
``Hot and bothered, that’s how I am,’’ she said, with her patented impatience. Turns out she’d randomly come across a copy of the book in Los Angeles while shopping for something else, and had stood there and flipped through it, then bought it and took it home, and soon, in that mysterious Gwen cause-and-effect way, decided that she simply had to call me for the first time in five years, to arrange to bed me for the first time in more than decade. It was an odd reaction, given that she’d already read most of the book, along with the rest of our little group, in emailed installments before it was published, and she’d not particularly liked it. Not ``hot’’ enough, she’d told me, repeatedly. But now, here she was, on fire from having turned the pages and read the words there – many of them her own words – and so hot and bothered that she was at that moment looking at a list of flights to
c:/alvnotes/booknotes0
What is it about the printed word on the page, do you suppose?
c:/notes/congressnotes/congress987
SWORN TESTIMONY
SENATE AD-HOC SUB-COMMITTEE ON ELECTRONIC PORNOGRAPHY,
CHAIRMAN SEN. EDWIN REESE, PRESIDING
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Do you at least have some theory, then, as to why so many people now are drawn to this ``bottom-up’’ form of interactive online pornography, as opposed to the traditional, commercial, ``top-down’’ form of earlier times? – to employ the terminology provided to us by Doctor Stuart.
MR. ALVIN: That’s an interesting job he’s got, analyzing different types of pornography.
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Yes, I suppose it is. So what are your thoughts? Why are people dropping their Playboy subscriptions in favor of going on the Internet and describing their masturbatory techniques to strangers?
MR. ALVIN: I’m flattered that you think I’m an expert on that, Senator – really, I am – but I honestly have no idea what to tell you about it.
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: No theories at all?
MR. ALVIN: Maybe they’re thinking that Playboy isn’t living up to its mantra anymore of showing them ``the girl next door’’ –
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Hmm. Okay. So –
MR. ALVIN: – I mean, unless you happen to live next door to a
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Okay. Order, please. Let’s have some order in the chamber, please –
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes89
``I could be there tonight,’’ Gwen said, and I recognized that musky urgency in her voice that she used to get when she wanted sex and wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded from it.
``Fine,’’ I said. ``We’ll just ask Beth to scoot over in the bed for you.’’
``I’m serious. I’ll get a hotel, near your place. You can say you had to run out for an emergency meeting or something.’’
``Gwen, I work in a basement mail room – what kind of `emergency meeting’ do you think I might realistically get called to in the middle of the night?’’
She emitted a little sound of exasperation, another familiar tune from Gwen’s hit-parade of horniness. ``Fine, then call in sick to work tomorrow and stay home and as soon as she leaves for school, I’ll come over.’’
Suddenly I found myself picturing the Gwen of a previous life, college Gwen, bent over in front of me in her form-hugging green sweats, fleshy round ass jutting insistently toward me, asking – demanding – that I yank down her sweats and grab her hips and ram my body into hers before Beth returned from the bathroom. Now, as then, I was both aroused and alarmed.
``Gwen,’’ I said. ``We really, really can’t – ’’
``Adam, c’mon. Our book is on the shelves! People are reading it – reading about us! God, just the thought of all those eyes on us – ’’ she stopped to breathe. Then: ``Adam, we have got to christen this thing!’’
I said nothing for a moment. I was puzzling over the phrase, ``our book.’’
c:/adamwriting/misc/collegegem
``. . . We’ve got a minute, you know you want to, seriously, I’m wet, you can just pull them down and ram it in, right now, right this second, come on, Adam, just grab my hips and give me a few good thrusts and just come as quick as you can, what, are you gay? I’m offering it! C’mon, fuck me! You know you want it! . . .’’
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes90
On the phone with Gwen, I pondered a long list of potential excuses as to why we couldn’t arrange this little liaison to christen the book, reasons having to do with logistics and security and even morality, all of them weak.
The real reason was more nuanced and ethereal, so much so that I could barely define it for myself, and doubted I could convey it to Gwen.
Finally, though, when she wouldn’t be dissuaded by logistics or security or morality, I gave it a shot:
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes002
``Gwen,’’ I said, ``I think maybe there’s a reason that we’ve had physical sex just one time in all these years. And I think maybe it has to do with that hidden world in my book – in our book. I think it has to do with that new form of electricity that we’ve helped invent. It doesn’t just flow through hard wires, the way it does for most people. Here, in this place, it’s free of the wires. What’s between us, it doesn’t travel in a linear circuit, it leaps and arcs and sizzles. That’s the kind of electricity I’ve always felt with you, and that I want to keep feeling from you. And it’s more electric than anything you could achieve by just plugging a cord into a socket. So let’s not.’’
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes91
She was silent for so long that I decided she must have understood. For once in the long, tumultuous, hormone-soaked stretch of miles and years between us, I thought, we’ve finally reached some kind of détente that isn’t all about what’s between her legs, and mine.
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes92
I was wrong.
``You’ve gone fag on us, haven’t you?’’ she finally said.
``What? No. Gwen . . . ’’
``It was all those years as a waiter, wasn’t it? They turned you, didn’t they?’’
``Wait a minute, listen – ’’
``It’s true!’’ she exclaiming, as if all made sense now. I could hear an edge of derisive laughter in her voice. ``You’ve totally hiked up
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes93
After that one unconsummated phone call from Guinevere, I’d assumed that more calls would follow, that I’d have to start dodging them now, the way I’d had to dodge her physical advances in those months after that morning in her bedroom. Gwen has a floodgate approach to life: They’re closed or opened, and when they’re opened, it floods everything in its path, for a long time.
But in fact, the wall phone in the kitchen didn’t ring again. We still encountered each other online, of course, but there, too, she was suddenly more subdued than I’d ever known her to be. It’s been three weeks since I’ve heard anything at all from her.
In hindsight, I think maybe we did, in fact, reach some kind of détente on the phone that day, some kind of closure to an encounter all those years ago that altered the very nature of my Inner Life, and that perhaps affected her more than I’d imagined. Maybe we finally reached a mutual climax of sorts in this years’ long sexual bout of ours, as she stood there on the phone with me, her free hand holding my book. Our book.
c:/alvnotes/booknotes/gemnotes94
Honestly? I crave the flooding now. The woman you know as Gem is ravenous and selfish and reckless and cruel, a force of nature that’s as destructive as it is beautiful, and I know that I’m safer keeping her at a distance. Still, have you ever watched footage of a raging flood? Jesus, how can you take your eyes off that?
c:/misc/minnnotes2346
``do u miss her?’’ Mindy asked me, earlier tonight.
c:/notes/chat094235
MinniMous: it‘s ok if you do
MinniMous: i’ll still love u
MinniMous: ; )
Alvn: * miss * is the wrong word
Alvn: gwen’s a habit. Like smoking
MinniMous: smoking is deadly
Alvn: gwen is deadly
MinniMous: marital bliss is deadlier.
MinniMous: i swear, I think you could lay me spread-eagle
MinniMous: over our diningroom table at dinner time
MinniMous: and fuck the bejesus out of me right in front of him
MinniMous: and he’d ask u to pass the bread when yor finished
c:/programs/documents/writingnotes045048
The essay in Slate, positing that my book was an attempt to establish a sex-centered religion, was, let’s face it, kind of silly. But I keep coming back to this notion it brought up, that our species’ endless search for what we might call ``truth’’ in our existence requires a structure that the old religions don’t provide anymore – but one that we might find instead in the people around us, the intimate connections we form with them, and the things we take from them via those connections, drawing from them like an appliance draws on an electrical current.
Me, I’ve been aware for some time that I tend to gravitate toward people who appear to have ample supplies of whatever form of electricity it is that I’m missing. Mindy’s velvet-steel feminine knowledge, Gwen’s fearless sensual aggression, even Clarence’s determination to soften the edges of his hard cold workspace by lugging around that stupid plastic plant – they all possess qualities that I recognize as valuable, even urgent, in defining reality, but qualities which I lack myself.
c:/notes/chat094235
Alvn: *chuckle*
Alvn: `` fuck the bejesus out of me ’’
Alvn: u little potty mouth!
Alvn: what, are you Gemming out on me now?
MinniMous: : )~
MinniMous: just making sure yor getting your fix while she‘s away, adamski
MinniMous: i know u, dear. remember?
c:/programs/documents/writingnotes045049
Beth’s normalcy – that’s the only word for it – has drawn me like a magnet since college, and I’ve always understood, at some level, that it’s because I’m the most abnormal person I know.
c:/notes/congressnotes/congress987
SWORN TESTIMONY
SENATE AD-HOC SUB-COMMITTEE ON ELECTRONIC PORNOGRAPHY,
CHAIRMAN SEN. EDWIN REESE, PRESIDING
MR. ALVIN: I really have no idea at all why they’re doing those things online, or reading about them in my book, Senator. Unless – (INAUDIBLE)
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: I’m sorry, sir, I can’t understand you. Could you move the mask?
MR. ALVIN: Is that better?
CHAIRMAN SEN. REESE: Yes. Proceed.
MR. ALVIN: – Unless they’re just wanting to know and be known.
c:/mydocs/natureoftruth
Are these connections, then, my attempts to gather the tools I need to define life? Reality? ``Truth’’? To figure out how it all means anything? Do I need these additional resources, from others, because I so long ago rejected the religion that might have provided all of it for me? Can a spiritual life be replaced by an Inner Life? Can sex be a substitute for God?
I don’t normally think in such epic terms about my book, or the people and events that spawned it. But I’ve been aware for a long time that what I see in women – in womanhood – is more than just one of the two genders, more than just a group of people who look different than I do, more than just breasts and vaginas and pleasure and intrigue, more, even, than the comfort of a woman’s words, so unlike those of men that it often seems to me they’re using an entirely different language. I’ve long been aware that there’s more to that towering thing, Femaleness, than can be explained by the sum of its parts.
It’s when I think about that that I begin to understand how it is that minds throughout history have obsessed about the nature of truth, and invented gods to explain the unexplainable. Maybe they were looking too far away; maybe the answer was a lot closer than they realized, unrecognized for its closeness, like a pattern in a painting that appears random and senseless until it’s viewed from far enough back to take it all in and recognize the true shapes there. Maybe they should have been looking for goddesses instead of gods – and looking for them in their own beds, instead of scanning the skies.
Too simple? Probably. And who the hell am I to try and answer age-old unanswerable questions, anyway? What is it about writing a best selling pornographic novel that would possibly qualify me for that task?
Still (since Slate brought it up), I’ll take a shot at it: If I had to define ``truth,’’ I would say that it’s
c:/notes/adam406
Sorry about that.
Beth is home.
She walked in a minute ago and kissed me on the cheek and sat in the old rocker with the worn upholstery on it. She leaned over to the little stack of books she bought yesterday at the mall. She’s sifting through them right now, trying to decide which one to start reading.
c:/notes/adam407
Jesus.
c:/notes/adam408
She’s got
c:/notes/adam409
She’s opening it now. She’s reading the first page. Right now. Right this second.
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Contact: alvinpart2@yahoo.com
