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Spotlight on … Harry Mathews Cigarettes (1987)

 

‘I created this abstract scheme of permutations of situations in which A meets B, B meets C, and so forth. There’s no point in looking for it now because no one will ever figure it out, including me. Anyway, I stared at this for a year, and in time people started appearing, then situations, then stories.’ — Harry Mathews

‘Novelist, poet and essayist Harry Mathews is one of literature’s great modern treasures. The deft experimentation which characterizes his work must at least in part be attributed to his association with the Oulipo, a group of French writers and mathematicians devoted to exploring the potential of literature by applying sets of rules, simple and complex, to texts, with the thought that a series of logical steps can lead to surprise. And surprise, as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan — among others — has pointed out, is perhaps the most convincing proof of our unconscious. (Incidentally, out this month from Atlas Press, is the excellent oulipean resource, The Oulipo Compendium, which Mathews co-edited.)

‘Last year Dalkey Archive Press, another modern treasure, started to reissue a selection of Mathews’ out-of-print works, including most recently Cigarettes, his 1987 masterpiece. An immensely readable, densely plotted, slyly subversive novel, Cigarettes is full of surprises. Its chapters center on pairs of relationships between the book’s characters who operate in New York City’s art and business world in the early 1960s. Chapters are titled after the relationship pairs: Alan and Elizabeth; Oliver and Elizabeth; Oliver and Pauline …

‘Mathews weaves remarkable hues of compassion and coercion into his cast of personalities: passively naive, hugely generous or pathologically fearful of being swindled, excluded or duped. Some are able to dwell satisfyingly in ambivalence; others are so frustrated by ambivalence they lunge toward an extreme of kindness or cruelty. The narrative’s subplots, which involve scams, seductions, friendships, forgeries and love affairs, are staged against a backdrop of bars, art galleries, country homes, S&M; clubs, artist studios and horse-racing tracks — and are tantalizingly drawn out without being resolved.

‘There is much to praise in this elegant book, which is wicked and warm at once: the casual introduction of complex ideas, the humor, the Herculean scaffolding of its structure, the skilled blend of language — gorgeous description, detailed narration and speech. Its direct dialogue ranges from natural (an artist to his assistant: “You are crapping all over the canvas. You know better.”) to bizarrely clichéd (a woman discussing horse track betting with the man she’s courting: “Wrong nick-name toots. The point is, so far my system’s no answer to a virgin’s prayer.”), to frighteningly incomprehensible (a young artist debilitated by an undiagnosed illness: “Then a nice older piece of lettuce for salad days full of suggestions & spinal trappings.”).

‘For Mathews, language mirrors human conduct and, specifically, communication — an activity often structured by misreadings of oneself and therefore others. Language and behavior are interconnected enterprises with vast possibilities; both can be executed creatively; both can be played out as unthinking responses to received information. It’s a process which sets in place a stubborn assortment of destructive behaviors — such as parents’ possessiveness toward a “favorite child,” younger siblings’ anger at the older ones who cared for them, and miserable self-absorption — which require concerted efforts, if not extreme measures, to break.

‘Among the ways Mathews’ characters break that conditioning include: sadomasochistic games (which come off somehow touching and hilarious); physical and mental illness (sickness being an especially violent form of destruction); and the more conventional teacher-student relationships, as between these two writers: “Morris was showing him what writing could do. He advanced the notion that creation begins by annihilating typical forms and procedures, especially the illusory ‘naturalness’ of sequence and coherence.”

‘But changing habits isn’t just about obliterating patterns; it’s also about allowing new knowledge in — and understanding that it dwells nearby — as the exquisite meditation on death at the novel’s end suggests: ” … the dead stay everlastingly present among us, taking the form of palpable vacancies that only disappear when, as we must, we take them into ourselves. We take the dead inside us; we fill their voids with our own substance; we become them.”

‘In Cigarettes, life is a kind of play whose capacity for rapture, longing and pain are limitless. Engaging with it can prove to be achingly joyful.’ — Lynn Crawford

 

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Gallery

 

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Further

‘TCH, TCH: NOTES ON CIGARETTES’ by Jeremy M. Davies
‘THE NARRATIVE ARTISTRY OF HARRY MATHEWS’ CIGARETTES’
‘THE MANY FALSE FLOORS OF HARRY MATHEWS’
‘Harry Mathews’s Al Gore Rhythms: A Re-viewing of Cigarettes’
‘Quotes About Harry Mathews’s Cigarettes (1987)’
‘Composing: Harry Mathews’ Words & Worlds’
‘Recognizing the Thing Itself in Harry Mathews’s “Cigarettes”‘
‘Should Writing Hurt?: Joseph McElroy interviews Harry Mathews’
Harry Mathews interviewed by Lynne Tillman @ BOMB
Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191 @ The Paris Review
’25 Points: 20 Lines a Day’
HARRY MATHEWS IN CONVERSATION WITH LAIRD HUNT @ The Believer
‘In Quest of the Oulipo’ by Harry Mathews
‘HYMNS TO MISUNDERSTANDING: HARRY MATHEWS’ FIRST THREE NOVELS’
‘EXTRAVAGANT TABLECLOTHS: HARRY MATHEWS, POET’
‘SOLVING (AND NOT SOLVING) THE CONVERSIONS’
‘More Harry Mathews (fewer numbers this time, I promise)’
‘How French Is It?’
‘The Curse of Coherence: Cold War CIA Funding for Oulipo’s Confidence-Man’

 

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Extras


Lecture Oulipo, Harry Mathews aux Récréations 2011 à Bourges


Harry Mathews reads “The New Tourism”


Marie Chaix and Harry Matthews | The New School for Public Engagement




Lecture / Reading Harry Mathews, 10.10.11, galerie éof, Paris


Harry Mathews Quotes


A Tribute To Harry Mathews | The New School

 

______
Interview
from EOAGH

 

Barbara Henning: I reread Cigarettes a few weeks ago and the characters are still in my mind.

Harry Mathews: How was it?

BH: It was great. I especially liked the characters Phoebe and Lewis. They are the characters that are the most alive, the most suffering …

HM: Yes, and Lewis turns out to be the narrator in the end and that changes everything. It makes him a much more sympathetic and humane character than he seemed before.

BH: I was wondering how you invented this narrative. Somewhere you talk about how the structure enabled you to work with some autobiographical material.

HM: Not so much autobiography, but my early milieu. New York, and the Hamptons, disguised in the book as Saratoga Springs. When I was writing Cigarettes I found myself confronted with this abstract list of events that had no meaning at all. But it finally gave me access to the circumstances of my early life. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I had set up a series of five-item lines of events, moronically simple events like A meets B, B dislikes A, A falls in love with B, B flees. . . and you have no idea who A or B is and they are not the same always. Anyway, I’ve spent years concealing this.

BH: Tell us.

HM: Well, let’s say there are five lines and then you transpose the things. You take the first item from the first line and put it into to the second line, and the third item into the third line, and so forth. You get a completely different story. I had this whole thing laid out in front of me, but there was no indication of who anyone was or where it was happening….

BH: How did you come up with that?

HM: I just kept looking and little by little and situations and characters started emerging. It was extraordinary. I had had no idea what I was going to do.

BH: It reads like a Victorian novel.

HM: Well, that was deliberate.

BH: When I finished it, I thought that it almost invites a structural analysis, and maybe that’s what you started with. Or maybe the critics would come out with something totally different.

HM: (laughter) They would come out with the detective aspect of it. What seems to have happened didn’t happen, it turns out he and she were not behaving the way you thought they were. That’s what people think is Oulipian about it, but it has nothing to do with it. It was just something that grew out of the structure. It was arbitrary in the sense that I lined up the different events, but they were after all very basic. They didn’t signify anything substantial.

BH: It wasn’t really a mathematical structure—

HM: It was because the situations were permutated, as in a sestina; their order changes in a precise way. The sestina, by the way, is a wonderful form. The Oulipo has done lots of work with not only the sestina but with what we call n-inas or queninas: that is, the principle of the sestina extended to poems whose stanzas have any number of lines (not merely six). This was the work of Roubaud, something not conceivable thirty years earlier.

BH: My students are writing sestinas this week, using sentences instead of lines. I’ve been doing this every semester in the flash fiction classes I teach.

HM: Do you know my prose sestinas?

BH: Yes, you gave them to me long ago. They are in the course packet with your assignment. I’ve been using them for years. What was the relationship between the New York School and Oulipo? You were involved with both groups.

HM: There is no connection, except for me. Incidentally, the original members of the New York School denied its aesthetic existence. I got involved because I had met John Ashbery, we became friends and soon started the magazine Locus Solus; Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler were the other two editors, also charter members of the New York School. Look at those three poets: they don’t have much in common.

BH: Yes, they are very different from each other.

HM: They had something basic in common, like “clean” writing. I don’t know how to define it. There was some unspoken rule perhaps that warned against self-indulgence.

BH: But with O’Hara and Jimmy Schuyler, there’s this intimate voice… I think that’s what a lot of the poets in the second generation New York School picked up on.

HM: You’re so right. I particularly like what Ron Padgett has done with that. Have you seen his last book, How Long? In fact his last two books are packed with rare jewels.

BH: It’s sitting on my to-read shelf. What you were doing with Oulipo was quite different from what they were doing. I’m thinking there is this experimental edge to the New York School, an interest in collage and . . .

HM: I don’t think there really was, certainly in the case of John Ashbery and we’ve discussed it often enough. You know he isn’t really interested, I mean occasionally he’ll use a formal procedure but it’s exceptional.

BH: What about his pantoums?

HM: True enough. The Oulipo was also interested in the pantoum. Jacques Jouet was the one who led the way; he eventually wrote an article on the pantoum, including its oriental traditions, that is as useful as such things can get.

BH: And you wrote a sequence of haiku in your latest book, The New Tourism.

HM: Oulipians have been writing haiku for years. The haiku has become like the sonnet, something you can do in your sleep. I mean it is not a really demanding form. Some people find it difficult, but all you need is five plus two fingers. However, I discovered a mistake among my own haiku, one of them is missing two syllables in the second line. Let’s call it a clinaman.

BH: I wrote a sequence of sonnets for a Leave Book pamphlet long ago and I was looking at them recently and noticed one was only 13 lines.

HM: It is still a sonnet. By the way, Ron Padgett wrote a great self-definitional haiku: “First five syllables,/ Second seven syllables,/ Third five syllables.”

BH: Richard Wright wrote a book of haikus at the end of his life, a terrific book.

HM: I wrote them because they are so short. At the end of the day I’m usually sozzled and sleepy; it was interesting to see what emerged from the day. Was it you that said they were little glimpses into my life?

BH: Yes, I did say that in a letter to you.

HM: I don’t know why I stopped, but I’m glad I did since there are so many of them already. It’s thanks to the guys who run this little press that I put them in; I’d found many of them defective as poems, but that doesn’t matter: it’s having the long sequence that matters.

BH: I like to collect haiku images either in my notebook or with my camera. It keeps me sane, in a yogic way of speaking.

HM: It was at the moment of the day when I couldn’t . . . well they probably did, kind of relief and abandonment of ego, which is half way there.

BH: Did you know Laura Riding when you were with Robert Graves in Majorca?

HM: No I never met her. She was long gone by then. They broke up in 36. And I met Robert in the fall of 54. No, I wrote this long piece on her, it’s in my collected essays, The Case of the Persevering Maltese.

BH: I remember reading that essay some time ago.

HM: At the time, they had just republished a wonderful book of hers, called Progress of Stories. I wrote this enthusiastic review, it must have been the most enthusiastic review she ever received.

BH: She was still alive then, wasn’t she?

HM: Yes, oh alas, and I really figured the whole thing out and not in an ah ha way I’ve caught you, but in a respectful way, but unfortunately this was the pretext for her grousing. I said, you know, her name has changed so much, the only thing that is consistent is Laura, so I’m going to refer to her as Laura.

BH: You must have known how she would respond to any critical writing about her. Did she write you letters?

HM: She wrote a letter to The New York Review of Books, an absolutely loathsome letter which I answered with three lines. I wasn’t going to argue with her. She was too insane. But I love her all the same. I love The Telling, too. Did you ever read that? It is a terrific book. I pay tribute to that in this review, too.

BH: Yes, years back Lewis Warsh gave me a copy of The Telling. That’s the first time I read Riding. I also wrote a piece on her (after she died) that I presented at a panel for The Poetry Project. It’s on-line. I’ll send you a link. I spent quite a bit of time in the library reading all her letters to the editors and made a poem-essay in response.

HM: I have a student who has become a very good art critic and historian, Rafael Rubenstein. When I was his tutor at Bennington, he wanted to write on Laura Riding. In the end he sent her his thesis; I said, if I were you I wouldn’t. She just stomped on it.

BH: She created her own empty spot in literary history. Even now she doesn’t show up in lots of anthologies where she should. I may be almost out of questions today, but let me ask one last thing about Cigarettes. When you were writing it, when you got involved in these two scenes, the one with Phoebe’s terrible mental suffering and then the sadomasochistic sex scene with Lewis, how emotionally involved were you?

HM: In the case of Phoebe I was very emotionally involved because among other things, even though she is unlike Niki de Saint Phalle, Niki suffered from hyper- thyroidism and the description of Phoebe’s disease was really a replica of Niki’s. It was a ghastly, terrible experience to witness, and I was happy to be able to write about it in fiction, about someone who wasn’t Niki, rather than writing about her. In the case of Lewis, Lewis appears on the first page of the book. He’s the one who is saying I want to write a book about these people. They are showing him a letter from Owen and he can’t believe that anyone wrote this and he’s there speaking as “I” and . . .

BH: And then the reader completely forgets about it until in the end you realize you have been listening all along to Lewis. There’s one tiny reference at the very end that made me realize that. What was it?

HM: It was some reference to Morris. So my heart went out to him. He seems to be a creep but actually he is the person remembering everything so he can tell the story. I felt sympathy for Lewis. I suppose I was thinking about myself in my less sociable days.

BH: That’s all the questions I have, Harry, except—how did you hurt your finger?

HM: There was another French writer, Hélène Cixous, a feminist whom years ago I was ridiculously pursuing –– she was obviously gay. One evening friends of mine started making fun of her and I got very mad and swept my hand across a table full of glassware and cut my finger open very nastily. I went to an emergency ward up the street. They put me in front of this woman doctor. She was relatively young, but she had a solid older nurse standing behind her. She looked at my finger and said, But you are bleeding terribly! Oh, no, I said, this is perfectly normal. I spent my whole time reassuring this woman who was scared shitless of sewing me up. She took a hooked needle –– she was chain smoking through this –– and got it into one flap of my gaping wound, then she got it through the other, then she pulled the thread right through both flaps of skin and out the other side. It was extremely painful. I learned how many nerves there are in the extremities. Of course she had to do it all over again. Are you suffering pain? she asked and I said, Oh, no, nothing at all.

BH: So now your finger is bent like this because you were defending Hélène Cixous.

HM: Yes

BH: I have one more question. Why did you call the book, Cigarettes?

HM: That’s a very good question. Everyone asks it.

BH: You didn’t lay out cigarettes as you were laying out the permutations, did you?

HM: There’s no explanation. The explanation is that it’s a good question. After looking at that title every page after page after page, people wonder, why is it called, Cigarettes.

BH: I never thought about it until we were sitting here talking about Obama smoking. So you chose it because there would be no possibility of connecting it with the novel in a meaningful way.

HM: Only in a clichéd way, life or love is like a cigarette, you finish one, you start another, all that kind of junk. And I don’t see that. I think the title is getting better and better because no one smokes anymore, well, only two-fifths of the population.

BH: The sidewalks are now full of people who smoke.

HM: It reminds me of Tlooth. Here you are in the middle of the Venetian episode and the guy goes out to the prophetic marsh and sinks his or her leg and pulls it out and the marsh says, Tlooth. What happens at that point is interesting because the reader looks at the top of the page and realizes this has been there all the time and for a moment the book becomes an object, calling the reader back to reality.

BH: It’s already four o’clock and I have to head downtown. Thanks Harry for sharing your afternoon with me. And thanks for lunch, too.

 

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Book

Harry Mathews Cigarettes
Dalkey Archive

Cigarettes, more than any of Mathews’s other works, is about characters and their relations, how the networks of people knit together over a life. Compared to his previous novels, it feels like a more traditional, almost Elizabethan mode of style. But again, just under the surface, it is clear the author is up to something different: the characters are presented almost like icons in a chess set, played out in Mathews’s imagination in a series of formal integrations. Each of the novel’s 15 chapters—titled, simply, Allan and Elizabeth, Oliver and Elizabeth, Oliver and Pauline, etc.—explores the connection between two recurring characters over a stretch of 40 years. Slowly the manias, evils, desperations, illnesses, and all other sort of hidden human issues manifest themselves and combine over the framework of something larger about death and money and fraud and art. While Mathews is masterful at mimicking the serial manner of 19th century novels, he constantly injects his little puzzles, small sticky scenes, and knobs of language that throw the balance off of itself over and again. Opening sentence: “What’s he mean, ‘I suppose you want an explanation?’”’ — Blake Butler

 

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Quotes

She was disgusted with herself…and the disgust permanently cured her of suicide. Her piddling life did not deserve dramatic remedies.

*

While at the New School Irene met Mark Kramer, ten years her senior, a prosperous public accountant with a weakness for high culture. He persuaded her to leave the Bronx. From their brief marriage she learned that the sexual sincerity of the male may have capture and imprisonment as its covert goal.

*

So Pauline’s resentment lived on, a ponderous beast dormant in its gloomy trough. Twenty-five years after her marriage, her friend Owen Lewison told her one evening that Allan and Maud, for reasons unknown to him, had sequestered a valuable painting by Walter Trale, improbably claiming that it had been stolen. He asked Pauline to find out if the painting had been hidden in Allan’s apartment. ‘High Heels’ accepted, with a vengeance, with no illusion about her task: she would seduce Maud’s husband and implicate her sister in a dubious scheme.

*

Pauline never interested Oliver except as a prize. He soon neglected her. He discouraged her from working, from having children—when he learned the truth about her inheritance, he declared that in such difficult times children cost more than they could comfortably afford.

*

Oliver’s self-esteem did not lessen when he learned, much later, the facts of Pauline’s inheritance. He never overtly reproached her, and in truth the revelation left him almost grateful. After all, it confirmed that he had the right to manage things, the right to show condescension and pity, the right to control.

*

Morris had imagined a prodigious book: for that place and time, The Book. It was to include fiction as well as criticism, theory as well as poetry, using the most appropriate medium to explore each facet of its subject: the finiteness of intellect and language confronting the infinity of the intuited universe. During the spring weekend they spent with Phoebe in the Hudson River valley, Morris invited Lewis to collaborate on the project. They would begin work on May 24, Morris’s thirtieth birthday. The task would take at least three years.

*

In a clump of copper beeches by the stables, on a tablecloth spread on the ground, Phoebe set out lunch: two club sandwiches, four pears, a slab of rat cheese, a frosty thermos of martinis. They ate and drank. . . . Owen felt pleasantly restless: “Let’s go take a look.”

“This is no time for camp followers,” Phoebe told him. “We’d be in the way.”

“Well, I feel like joining the party.”

“They thought of that. You get to bet.”

*

At another time [the voice in Phoebe’s head] repeated an inexplicable succession of letters inside her docile ears: b.s.t.q.l.d.s.t., b.s.t.q.l.d.s.t. . . . Phoebe could not decipher the series. After making it yield “Beasts stalk the question lest demons sever trust,” and “But soon the quest lured drab saint thither,” she rejected the possibility that the letters were initials. She found it even harder to make words out of them, especially without a u for the q.

*

During her trip, Phoebe learned something about the series of letters. B.s.t.q.l.d.s.t. signified an old train careening down an old track. At slower speeds, the train said,

Cigarettes, tch tch.

Cigarettes, tch tch.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I’m not sure that fun in the usual sense is what masters are looking for. Jagger seems to have fully recovered from his heart thing since the Rolling Stones are now on a giant North American tour. Reducing or over-inflating is what the media is all about. Everyone, Mr. E has updated his FaBlog with a ditty called ‘Prejudice and Pride’, and it’s right smack dab here. ** Bill, Thanks, bud. The earlier Meijer is quite good but different, yeah. Maybe not as strong as ‘Rag’. She’s writing a book about bull fighting now. That’s why she was in Paris, a stopover on her way to Spain. The heat lessened yesterday, and the skies are normal summer fodder finally again today, and we’ll see how long that lasts, But, yeah, it was fucked. ** Sypha, Hi, man. So sorry to hear about your body and emotional woes. I hope things pick up. Yes, I’ve come across several escorts who’ve swiped that boy’s photos. Unless he lives simultaneously in multiple cities in Eastern Europe, I don’t think they’re him. ** JM, Hey, Josiah! I did see/get the photos you sent me on FB, and, yeah, holy god, it looks to have been just a mindblower! And very involving/taxing to do. Big kudos, sir. And thanks a lot! And enjoy your in-between time! ** Keatonum, It’s funny you say that about the Beatles because I just yesterday restored a very old post about the ‘Paul Is Dead’ phenom because a blog reader requested it. Um, hm, I think you’re right about the Queers/Beach Boys. How strange. Loving your self-blurb. Sounds fresh. Two ‘boy’ songs. Nice. And why am I not surprised? ** Dominik, Hey D! I’m glad you liked Ryan’s work. Like I said, I had a feeling it might be up your alley and useful to you in your thinking and practice maybe? Cool. No, we’re not supposed to get the timing report until maybe a week or a week and a half from now, so I have a lucky break. Yes, I do feel like it’s taken ages to get to this point with the new film, ha ha, but I’m very happy that we’re close to starting the process. Zac is going over the translation to finesse the language right now. Hopefully we’ll get it to our producer in the next couple of weeks. Any progress on the Chicks performance? I don’t know ‘Euphoria’. I’ll look for online evidence. So great to see you! Lots of love snowballing back towards you! ** Nik, Hi, Nik! Thanks, man. I’m very happy you liked those books. I’m good, especially now that the heatwave died. Did you get it there? The TV series projects is in a short break. There are some kind of big, troubling issues that need to be sorted out right now. Long story. We’ll see. We’re readying the final translation polish of the script of the new film to deliver to our producer ASAP, and then, assuming he’s cool with it, the many months of seeking funding will begin. The gallery hasn’t sold a gif novel yet, but they say there are interested prospective buyers, so we’ll see about that. Super fascinating about the Sarajevo stay. You sound very perked, which is cool. I’m so glad that turned out to be so useful and inspiring. A possible band? Obviously, I like that idea. Yeah, spread any news if and when you have some. ‘For A New Novel’ was hugely important to me. Hard to overstate what a big effect it had. I read it in the mid-80s when I was living in Amsterdam and doing my final preparations for the George Miles Cycle, and it was kind a very giant key that allowed me to figure out what I wanted to do and start. I haven’t reread it in a long time. I think it’s on my shelf, so I’ll put it off. I don’t remember if I agreed in totality with everything he was proposing. Probably not. The Nouveau Roman had its own aims, and it was reacting to the literary/social climate of its time, so I don’t know that the aspect you found troubling was important to what I got from the book. I didn’t feel a need to fully agree with him, but I guess his principles about fiction were very mutateable to me and to what I wanted to do, if that makes sense. I saw enough of what I needed to see, in other words. Take care, pal! ** Steve Erickson, Hi. With the slaves, I always think it’s pretty safe to assume that most of what is written/proposed is a brain/libido-to-brain/libido thing. David Brooks … maybe not. Huh. I’ll go check up on his stuff. I don’t think I know his work, but his name is one of those names that might not have stuck on its own. Oh, I’m hardly the best judge, but I don’t have any serious expectations about what Gay Pride is or should do or be. Maybe the softening effect of the word ‘Pride’ is part of the problem. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’m surprised too! Ha ha, Victoria Beckham … he did look a little like her, ha ha. ** Misanthrope, If/when I go to London, it will be for an event, and I will let you know. That is funny about niece thing. God know they’ll be an interesting couple of kids considering their source. We’ve cooled here. Low 80s. Feels like the 60s to me. (I like the 60s). Praying the cool down is a keeper. Well, for a week or two at least. ** KK, Yes, and SCAB’s editor was just several comments about yours. Dominick. Yeah, super happy about that connect. I would imagine Nervous Breakdown can sort out the doubling pretty easy. That guy Brad Listi is cool. I was on his show. It was fun. I say take the chance if it comes up. Great about the possible Tanner retrospective. I’m assembling a Tanner post. Probably PGL was never submitted to Austin Film Society. Our American distributor was not very on the ball. That would have been great. I don’t know of any screenings of PGL coming up in the States. Sure would love to do them. You might be stuck with streaming or DVD via the biggest screen and best speakers you can get. Have a terrific day, man. ** Okay. Today I draw attention to the great Harry Mathews’ one crossover ‘hit’ novel, the marvellous ‘Cigarettes’. If you haven’t read it, check out the post and see if you’d like to. See you tomorrow.

Meet procrasturbator, blackholedown, DOOMED, Patient-4-Doctor, and DC’s other select international male slaves for the month of June 2019

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pieceofmind, 22
Wanting r a p e d
Wanting k I d n a p e d

Treat me like a mutt dog make me eat drink out of a food and water bowl
Collar me to a corner that I can be used as a public urinal and put a sign up that says free for use make me piss and shit outside like a dog
Video me being gangbanged and email it to my relatives

I live to be owned used we’re ever whenever
My limits are extreme pain and permanent damage but I can always work past em
I am very perverted pathetic piece of shit

Comments

Electro_Cute – June 20, 2019
Can you trolls, like, go talk about this somewhere else. Some of us are trying to jack off here.

Anonymous – June 20, 2019
ahhhh … the golden hour

Anonymous – June 20, 2019
Actually there’s an initial hour +/- depending on the conditions where the differences between dead and unconscious are almost indistinguishable. The dead can even “snore”.

Anonymous – June 20, 2019
how a guy looks asleep or passed out is nothing like how he’d look dead, i thought so too but it’s like the difference between a real baby and a doll.

pieceofmind (Owner) – June 17, 2019
Thats funny cuz a guy choked me unconscious once and after he brought me around he said I looked so hot unconscious he was sorry he did.

Electro_Cute – June 17, 2019
I’m sure you look great when you’re screaming or dead :O.

pieceofmind (Owner) – June 16, 2019
Cause I’m ugly

Electro_Cute – June 16, 2019
Maybe you were just in a bad mood that day why don’t you take new pics?

pieceofmind (Owner) – June 16, 2019
Possibly both but it’s about all I got lol

Electro_Cute – June 16, 2019
You look angry or constipated.


 

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brianna, 22
I’m Bryan but I want to become a Brianna and used as a cumdump and go with the flow

Comments

brianna (Owner) – June 18, 2019
glad to be slave

MasterSilverWolf – June 16, 2019
19h36 26/05/19 Brianna needed to be fixed. I cut her nuts off. I will modify her in any other way I desire.

MasterSilverWolf – June 10, 2019
Brianna 04h18 23/05/19

Anonymous – May 17, 2019
“Only dead fish go with the flow”




 

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procrasturbator, 22
I prefer to fix a problem if it’s in my capacity regardless of benefits. Some things are not in control of a single person unless you are omnipresent. You know nothing else in this world can make you feel better than being helpful. It gives you a sense of purpose. A single doctor cannot save thousand patients at once actively but if thousand patients listen to an advice doctor gave in some internet forum and applies in their life, chances are they can prevent an upcoming disease. But there is always both side of the coin. Sometimes I can be harsh and be irritating. I cannot stay for long. If I do, people tend to get used to me and try to take advantage. I do however believe if someone is so determined to use you, you are probably useful. Life is too short and in the end I will be eaten by maggots when I am a dead cold corpse laying around so hey in the end, good or bad, headaches or migraines I just… LIVE.

Comments

procrasturbator (Owner) – June 22, 2019
You already know, chicken!

KingWithBeard – June 22, 2019
I think you do so come on share with everyone. I’m curious is why.

procrasturbator (Owner) – June 22, 2019
I’m saying I have done so before, why?

KingWithBeard – June 22, 2019
Are you saying it’s not a secrete now?

procrasturbator (Owner) – June 22, 2019
I don’t want to secretly now but I have done so in the past though, why?

KingWithBeard – June 22, 2019
Do you secretely want to get snuffed but haven’t done anything about it?

 

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LivingStatueObject, 19
Looking to be encased permanently inside wax as a wax figure or plaster and sculpted and kept as a living ornament, statue for a collection or sold to private buyer. Unable to move inside my prison for admirers or special collectors forever more.

Willing to travel.
5”11
Feet size 10
Cock size 7”
26 waist



 

_______________

slampunk, 19
Dirty pimply slam addicted junkie teen unwashed no limits looking for the same.

SPOILERS AHEAD. I’m no longer a prostitute. END OF THE SPOILERS.

Let’s speak now??? As I’ll surely not be here a very long time…

Comments

Anonymous – June 7, 2019
Other than “because all life is sacred”, I say no.

MrTeapott – June 5, 2019
Rehab?

Anonymous – June 3, 2019
If you remember him from his porns using and abusing him in this terrible state is very emotionally powerful


 

________________

blackholedown, 18
Me: I’m the boy you see skateboarding. Walking home from school down the street. The boy who notices you looking and wishes he was tied up at your feet. I’m the boy who has struggled his whole life accepting his submissive nature.

You: You live for the moment that You finally have me. Naked. Collared. Hands cuffed behind my back. Dirty sock in my mouth with about 5 wraps of tape around my head. Blindfolded. And as you gently graze your leather gloved hand along my body you remind me. “this is exactly where you belong.”

Drawback: You will need to be able to handle or ignore the splash of my disappearance trending heavily on the news for some weeks because my mother is very famous.

 

________________

i_did_something_bad, 21
Since our very birth we are violently indoctrinated in the damaging ideology that we all are –or SHOULD be- *equals*, and should relate to each other as such on a sexual, emotional and spiritual level. This authoritarian pedagogy negates the obvious fact that we all have different capacities, needs and desires, and forces us to spend most of our lives trying hard to adapt ourselves to those imposed egalitarian lifestyles, fighting permanently against our innermost feelings, thoughts and desires. And we do it because the social cost of defying the dictatorship of equality is too high: from losing friends and family to being bullied or ostracized, or even incarcerated.

I am a slave in the Roman sense of the word-with postmodern skills-; that is, an extremely docile sub-human creature whose only existential engine is to make His life better. I am a butler, a cook, a pet, a urinal, sometimes a piece of furniture, sometimes a lab rat or a burden beast; all in one. In an ideal world, my Owner would chose my clothes and my haircuts, He would determine my eating habits and training routines, He would manage my sexual, social and financial life. He would organize and rule my entire existence.

On a sexual level, I am psychologically castrated, I am 100% passive, an extremely docile living fleshlight for His enjoyment. My only sexual motivation is to satisfy Him in whatever way He wants. My cock and balls are His as He pleases, but I believe they exist only to be tortured, and to remind me of my place in the world through denial, pain and frustration.

Once a Contract has been signed, I -previously a fake “he” for social survival- becomes the “it” it has ALWAYS been secretly since it was born. By this act, it loses the provisory decision making and denial capabilities it developed throughout its life to preserve itself for its Owner.

Comments

TheContess – June 26, 2019
I have taken permanent ownership of it formerly him. It is undergoing extensive hypnosis, psychotropic medication and programming. In my opinion the start to any good slave’s journey is the destruction of its brain’s archive and capabilities, whereupon the body and mind mold themselves around the necessity of becoming a new it. A slave should learn to crave the state of being a figurative inspiration for sperm and dread the releases of its own orgasms. This slave’s high intelligence and verbal acuity have proved a great challenge, but through strict mental draining and sculpting the “he” is nearly gone now and the process has been immensely enlightening.


 

________________

Keith, 18
Been able to comfortably take a fist since I was 16 and getting bigger ones each time.

Had a very harsh breathplay harsh experience recently and I felt in love. Like I was expecting that since my childhood.

Pay for travel I’m yours.


 

_________________

disporecois, 20
Want to experience all their is to experience and have new existences. Don’t know what to expect.

Comments

MasterSamrat – June 11, 2019
Difficult to say with one photo. Let’s talk privately. Best guess … anywhere from 10k to 40k? If it can get to no limits, up to 50?

userunknown – June 11, 2019
Vietnamese, cute. How much?

MasterSamrat – June 11, 2019
Looks Asian, Spanish, Arab? If Asian with a cute face, very interested. If other, possibly.

userunknown – June 11, 2019
I wld love to disquisition my slave, 22, w/ a few usual limits. I attach sample pic. Are you interest to resale it?

MasterSamrat – June 8, 2019
Hi dears this is Master Samrat here.
I have acquired the rights to this slave as one of my turnaround flips. He is in the midst of 3 weeks training for no limits usage at my compound in Duisburg.
Visits, inspections and purchase offers begin on June 1.
If the slave is not acquired privately he will be auctioned on June 11 at the usual venue (ask if you don’t know) in Hamburg.
If anybdy has questions or a slave they wish to deacquisition than contact me.

TheWalkingDad – June 2, 2019
You’re not my type.

Master-NoLimit – May 29, 2019
Hello, thank you for reading carefully the following. I am Master Nolimit. I warn all fantasizers, especially you with your halloween makeup, thank you to take into account that if you tell me “I love it all”, I will make you see that the meaning of the words have a huge importance. That said, I am very respectful of the laws in force in France, so you will either save your death wish if you have one for another Master or you will need to do some traveling.



 

_____________

e$$ere, 18
Nice blond -> Daddys . I am spoiled all in a nice car or in a luxury home !!

Comments

e$$ere (Owner) – June 15, 2019
Now everything I have in my hand are cash !! It excites me !!!

Nipple99 – June 15, 2019
He has a daddy now. He’s mine. Completely. Avert eyes. Hands off.

 

_____________

dumbmedown, 19
Just want a bf as dark and creepy as I am sweet and innocent who is a teen like me who wants to break me mentally until I’m just dumb and dependent. If you’re into it and wanna make it happen that’s cool but I’m gonna warn you tho I’m not the most stable person.

Comments

metalX – June 9, 2019
I’m not teen, i’m 46 n i want to fuckin dumb u down bad and i CAN. I can do it fast, i can do it hard. Teens always want me, want me n they ‘ll keep wantin me, cuz i have my own style, my own personality n i really care about any word they say. Many people said 2 me that i can’t be as perfect as i seem. But i am, cuz i WANT 2 be perfect. The others care more about what they ‘ll get, than what they ‘ll give. So i’m not pedo. The teens r the ones who r tryin 2 make me their bf. I don’t try anythin cuz they’re not hot like u. N they r always happy. Cuz they know that there is someone who understands em n helps em. N it’s 2 difficult 2 find such a person. So i know who’s the pedo. U r the pedo, who is at the same age as ur bf n destroyed n will keep destroyin their lives with ur disgustin character.

mel_hrd – May 31, 2019
dumbing him down like taking someone already brain dead off life support

keenan435 – May 18, 2019
Already dumb gay mess who only likes Star Wars and vodka



 

_____________

pozboy06, 19
Let’s go to Slave ,, I am Slut, Cum is all around, Welcome to my world, Please torture my ass please please.

Just don’t waste my time .., you better be dirty enough so I don’g get bored

Eating disorder ,.,, dancer .,,, poz detect!!! ,… model

Comments

Waldeinsamkeit – June 20, 2019
You’re such a fuckin’ cutie, and I’m so vanilla, ugh it isn’t fair.

pozboy06 (owner) – June 9, 2019
Yes I do

teamdrizzy – June 9, 2019
He doesn’t mean torture in the way you think.

BiBoy502 – June 9, 2019
Dont torture his ass … my God are you crazy?!!!!!!

pozboy06 (owner) – June 6, 2019
Thomas , I am not Flori .., but my ass can be avialible for you 11:00 to 14:00 Sunday June 2

rockstar – June 6, 2019
Oh wow … I used to fuck him back when he charged for it.

Flori, respond if you read this. I’ve got so many toxic loads saved up for you, your ass is going to back up like a sewer.

Thomas (the one with the black Porsche 😘)


 

_____________

HappyBlondBoy, 18
Was straight a month ago but I partied really hard about a month ago woke up to some older guy I didn’t know fucking me. Lol told him he just turned me gay and don’t stop. I ended up finding a couple chat rooms and have met a few weirdos’ I have been fucked by 4 of my friends now. I haven’t worn a condom once and don’t plan to. I like tying a fishnet around an onion and beating myself senselessly with it, as another boy watches. I always eat the onion afterwords. The only thing that scares me is being tied up and helpless (but maybe that’s because I’m only 13 haha.) For all I know, they’re going to murder me or some shit.

 

_______________

trueskinnylegend, 21
Make me a pooper scooper for your yard
Thanks for reading and get in touch

 

_______________

Eatmeplease, 25
Pig for the dinner table. Cook me and eat me. 73kg. 7” cock medium balls. Size 10 feet. Eat them, Remove them for display, Stuff them as taxidermy. Sell them to a far away land.

Comments

Anonymous – June 14, 2019
togerther………………………………………………………………

 

_______________

rasta_baby420, 19
stoner fucks only stoners (ages 45 – 70) connect!! i love you xoxo

Comments

losingame – June 3, 2019
one had the impression that were one not required to be stoned oneself one could go fairly nutso with this baked, complacent beauty.

 

_______________

FullOfJuices, 20
Some things about me I play most games on xbox live I watch any movies except comedy
I listen to good music no jazz or heavy metal or stuff like that
I am very highly sexed
I like to make desserts
I live with family cause I take care of my grandma with my mom and I have a Part time job at night while mom is home my main goal is get my life together get a car and help get the house fixed up and looking good
I like to sing but can”t unless I have the music in my ears so I can”t hear myself
What makes me unique I care about every person until u respect me too much then ur done with talking to me
It bears repeating that I am very highly sexed
I never imagined that I would post in this “KIND OF STUFF” but sometimes UNFORTUNATE things happen.
I love u more than anything in the world
We will be fine

Comments

FullOfJuices (Owner) – June 10, 2019
U are given to hyperbole, sir

DeathBreeder – June 10, 2019
he wants a lot of “getting to know him” and friendship grooming but once overpowered very horny, so horny you get everything you want, the whole night he does everything and by everything i really mean everything.

FullOfJuices (Owner) – June 7, 2019
I get that a lot

Matino0 – June 7, 2019
Hey I’m only commenting because I really want to put my hand in you.

treeman5 – June 4, 2019
I am looking for a hot sex, and I am horny been horny all my life I don’t like women

FullOfJuices (Owner) – May 27, 2019
Nah

RapeFaggots – May 27, 2019
In a relationship but hes not into my kink, so after a year I get to play outside and, lucky you, I really really fucking like you.

Things I will do to you: Fuck your mouth and ass, I do not “start slow” or “ease it in” I fuck how I want from the first thrust. I’ll throat fuck you as you wretch and spit up bile all over my cock. I will slap you very hard, punch you, give you two black eyes and choke you until you turn dark red. Spit on you, step on you, kick you, stomp your head until it cracks. I cum where I want when I want. I’ll cum in your blacked fag eyes so they burn. Over and over. Always consensual, always a safe word although your mouth will be gagged shut or so wrecked to shit and broken that I’ll probably never hear it.


 

________________

Treatmelikeshit, 18
Only time we don’t speak is during “Sex and the City”
I gets Carrie fever, but soon as the show is over
I’m right back to being your soldier
The few guys I’ve been with say I’m good
My penis has been described as “impressively small”
I am below the knee amputee, one leg
No one is cut like me, the fabric is different

Comments

Treatmelikeshit (Owner) – June 23, 2019
Fuck you. Shut yo… I do not give a fuck.

alexnew – June 22, 2019
I like the color of the new hair color


 

________________

DEXTER, 22
Nothing excites me like being whipped and flogged until I’m shredded and bloodied; looking for a serious player who knows how to get the job done. Due to my insatiability I will only accept a weekend experience at the very minimum; no sleeping but a few shorts naps are acceptable



 

______________

D00MED, 23
₦Ø₮ ₥Ʉ₵Ⱨ ₮Ø ₭₦Ø₩

Comments

Anonymous – June 19, 2019
@drugsfordinner no allen was murdered by his “drug dealer” in november. bashed his head in with a sledgehammer. they had to use dental records to identify him. if you knew him you can guess the real story i’m sure.

Extrovert05 – June 16, 2019
if you look at the stats he hasn’t logged in here in 8 months.

drugsfordinner – June 16, 2019
Christ Allen you’re still alive??!!!



 

______________

Leviathan, 20
Please follow the socially accepted rules of engagement (face, dick, no harassment, money offer, more than three words)

Me: perfectionist, Jew

Shalom

Comments

ihavehugecock – June 13, 2019
Kind of lethargic. Maybe ill or something. That ass tho. A+

GODSTEFF – June 5, 2019
I’m a fuckin SSuperSSexy, dropdead gorgeouSS, horny, 18 yo SSatanic NAZI bull SStud addicted to hard raw fuckin SSex with jews: the more fuckin depraved and fuckin twiSSted it gets, the fuckin better! No fuckin bloody morals here! Morals are for that fuckin shit xrist of nazareth and its fuckin filthy whore mother torah!



 

______________

Twinsbrothers, 19
In Berlin for 1 month. Show us that the crazy stuff that we have heard is true.
👬

 

______________

Patient-4-Doctor, 20
Name says it all

Comments

DoctorGoodglove – June 20, 2019
Doctor will see you now

Surgeon – June 18, 2019
I will be capped, masked, gloved and gowned and entering the operating theatre with my latex clad hands raised in front of me, anticipating the stainless steel to be passed to my skilled fingers when I command it.

DrCherno83 – June 16, 2019
You need chemo stat

Medicalextreme – June 14, 2019
* Exams/dental/surgical/catheters/stethoscope/ECG/blood pressure monitoring
* Anesthesia/KO (meds,gas,chocking,rebreather,forced nitrous )
* Forced sedation and nipples and boner pierced
* Extreme clinic scene IV/IO line, NG/ breathing tubes

DoctorProstate – June 5, 2019
I’ll tie you down to the hospital bed where will take my sweet time in anally extracting ALL of your milk – If I don’t feel I’ve extracted every drop of semen then the electro plugs will be used and I’ll pound the last drops of cum out of you through hard anal electro.

doctorbear – June 5, 2019
Can not wait to get my professionally trained gloved hands on the outside & on the inside of you.

DoctorJordy – June 3, 2019
When I play doctor, I play to win.

 

______________

SnuffLad, 21
Served men since a young age and I’m now looking for my” final” sadistic Alpha.

The more twisted and sadistic the snuff the better.

Prefer to travel for it, the further the better, think it’s best for everyone that I am unknown and undetectable when it happens just to be realistic.

100000000000000000% anorexic (I don’t eat).

Serious beyond belief and looking for a murderer.

Turned on by all aspects of kink sex, violence, suffering, horror and I’m completely open to extended, insane use of my body before the snuff – nothing bothers me.

I consider myself more as a useless object with accidentally attractive aspects to be used, destroyed, murdered and discarded, rather than anything else

Further pictures available on request, as are references from others who can vouch.

Comments

Anonymous – June 7, 2019
I can vouch that this lad has been obsessed with getting snuffed since he was quite young and I am among the many who have had sane snuff play sessions with him. What he doesn’t mention is -and I think anyone considering this commitment should know- the compulsion to die for real is because his wife just had triplets and then died during child birth.


 

______________

SlaveForLifetime00, 21
I am a completely broken straight slave fresh from 8 months in prison where I was trained to suffer. I was trained in prison by the white gang members who bought me. But I’m currently homeless and willing to let you do anything to me in exchange for a place to stay. I’m looking for a very cruel and violent sadist who wants a slave to be kept completely naked and barefoot in a dark freezing cold basement in heavy chains and isolation. I am also available for no limits overnight sessions from men who are from the local area. Like I am currently available for the whole day today.

Comments

TheBoundCollective – May 22, 2019
We are TheBoundCollective – an international art collaboration of rugged guys who love to publicly display their passion for boys, bondage and objectification.

We’re not talking about a quick fuck in the park. We’re talking about the dehumanization of the human being! We’ll transform you into nothing but a faceless object. That’s why we love tape. It covers up your individuality until nothing remains. With each layer, you feel your humanity disappear: stiffened joints, useless hands, blind eyes… You’ll be objectified into perfect insignificance.

It’s about art. We focus on situations of everyday life that we attack with the complete dismantling of human self-determination.

TheBoundCollective made their debut at Folsom Europe 2016 with the installation “Tape Mummies @ Victoria Luise” inside a Berlin subway station.




 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, very interesting, yes, thank you. ** Keatonkini, That happened to me two days ago. I was in my local Monop, which is kind of the classier French equivalent of a 7-11, as I think you know, and I saw this guy, and I was like, That guy looks insanely like what Mike Love from the Beach Boys must look like now that he’s 70 years old or something. Uncanny. Then I walk out the door and up the street, and, sure enough, on the marquee of the legendary Olympia venue, which is two blocks from where I live, who’s playing that night? Yep, The Beach Boys. Or rather Mike Love and a bunch of musician toadies milking the brand name. ‘Works but it’s boring’ … hm, that’s not such a lure. I think I’ll save it for a plane. Whitehead directed the vid for my all-time favorite Stones song, ‘We Love You’. That’s their ‘Citizen Kane’ if you ask me, and it’s also the all-time greatest use of mellotron, if you ask me. I’m with the Stones up through ‘Exile’ and then barely for a couple of subsequent albums and then not at all, which I guess most people who are discerning are. I think ‘Some Girls’ is insanely overrated. Anyway, … Today is supposed to be most horrifying and peak heatwave day, and since I was already sweating in my apartment at 7:15 am, I think that’s right. Supposed to fade down a bit tomorrow. God, Jesus. Hm, if I were to record a ‘rock’ record … Well, you know I was in a rock band in high school. Lead singer/rhythm guitar. George Miles was the keyboardist in the band. And that band sounded like a cross between Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, early Alice Cooper, and the first couple of Love albums. And even though we were terrible, I still think what we were trying to do in our pathetic way was pretty fucking hot, so maybe I’d go back to that sound and try to do it right? Characterise your record in progress please. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, no air-conditioning in my apartment. I honestly don’t think a single person I know in Paris has air-conditioning. I’d take the high 80s right now in a heartbeat. I think an embed of ‘Charlie Is My Darling’ was available in full in the post if you want to see it? ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, okay, thanks about the crash pad offer. I think I’m going to go to London, but I think in September most likely. What’s up with LPS? You’ve been quiet about him, so I assume things are on an even keel? Own stuff sounds good. To me too. I’d probably be digging away at my own stuff if it wasn’t too boiling here to think. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Cool, I hope that works out with the Finlay project if it continues to interest you. Oh, wow, his dad is Ian Hamilton Finlay? That’s wild. I like his work, and his poetry is excellent too. I haven’t heard people talk about his work that much recently. I should do a post. Like Lene Lovitch! Fantastic, yeah, when a long term gap in contact with a friend disappears in a second, that is the total best. Wonderful! ** Okay. End of the month always means a bevy of slaves, and there you go. See you on Monday when I hope I will writing to you from a comfortable and liveable place.

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