3:AM Press and James Maker have parted ways. From James’ blog:
Due to unforeseen events at 3:AM Press which are not connected directly to either my book or to me, we have decided to annul the contract in an expeditious and amicable fashion.
Therefore, I have decided to serialise some chapters of the book, at this dedicated blog, while I look for an alternative publisher. Enjoy.
It’s a crime of global proportions that a book as funny and sharply written as this should be currently without a publisher. But then we’re living in an age of global crimes a-go-go – and the printed word is looking a bit… fucked. Frankly.
All James’ posted chapters from Autofellatio are shockingly well-written and criminally funny, but because of its content the one titled ‘Morrissey: Gide the Ripper’, a taster of which appeared on marksimpson.com last year, is probably going to generate the most attention, offering as it does inside insight like this:
I feel that Morrissey has achieved the impossible. It is the straightforward that eludes him. He had to become famous because although he is a savant in the auditorium, he is a dead loss in a launderette.
And anecdotes like this:
It was at Morrissey’s Cadogan Square apartments in London’s Chelsea that I met Sandie Shaw when she was enjoying a return to the stage and to television performing Morrissey and Marr compositions. I have always thought of Sandie Shaw as the ‘Nico of Dagenham’ and, to this day, I still feel a pleasurable shiver at Long Walk Home, released in 1967. With the mild success of Hand In Glove and Please Help The Cause Against Loneliness she was naturally keen to consolidate her comeback. So keen, in fact, that she contrived to enter his apartment building, without a key, and proceeded to ring the doorbell. She is an Essex girl and there is nothing like the direct approach.
But with Morrissey, the direct approach or the approach without charm, rarely works. One must learn to play canasta. We were in the sitting room listening to the musical score of her doorbell chiming when we decided to move across the hallway to the adjacent kitchen for some much-needed refreshment. Adopting the ‘Leopard Crawl’, a military manouevre designed to advance oneself with the smallest silhouette possible, the body close to the ground, we chanced our luck and stealthily crept towards the kettle. Halfway across the hallway, the letterbox flapped open.
“I can see you. Open up.”
The printed word may be in a bad way, but I think it’s just a matter of time before Autofellatio finds its way onto vellum.
For the record, I didn’t meet James until after Saint Morrissey was published. So, as I maintained at the time, everything in that outrageously unprofessional biography — or, as I dubbed it, ‘psycho-bio’ — was sheer guess-work and none of it was based on anything so sensible as speaking to people who actually knew him. Nor of course, speaking to Morrissey himself, whom I’ve never met. But I have spent most of my life listening to him.
I still haven’t met my subject, thankfully. Although there was a dicey moment when I travelled to Manchester’s Move Festival in 2004 in James’ Winnebago (he and Noko 440 were supporting Morrissey). I heard M was popping in to say hello to James so I went for a walk and admired The Ordinary Boys’ tight jeans on the main stage for a while. Cowardly? Possibly. But definitely tactful. How embarrassing it would have been for the both of us to actually meet.
After all we’ve been through together.
I adore both James and Mark, and I will gladly take a bullet (or a nasty look from Morrissey) for either of them if He chooses to go “touched meant to to be mental”.
Oh I’m glad you liked that. I didn’t even realize there was any comment, which sort of raises these um hackles of embarrassment? In fact I’ve been thinking what – by my own definition – a vulgar fag I’ve been in some of these comments. But my ‘career’ such as it isn’t very much, has been, after all, 85% or more and foremost that of ‘sex-kitten’, and so . . . my responses to things in relation to my own history are bound to go there more often than not.
I’ve enjoyed James Makers’ pieces. It so happens also that I have a real thing for autofellatio. My favorite kind of porn is absolutely self-sucking videos. It’s got to be the most considerate of genres (‘querelle could never get used to people having sex wtihout him’) and say you were actually with someone who was self-sucking; the principal thing would be to watch, so self suck videos tend towards porn degree zero.
After leaving the nest, I’ve tended to eschew porn almost altogether. I’ve never been the sort to jerk off 10 times a day and these days, it’s getting to the point that I can fall right out of being sexual right in the middle of having sex. – suddenly I’m a child wondering what is this that we’re doing and thinking ok enough of this. The less I squander my precious essence, the less likely this is to happen should I get lucky.
I have always been anti porn in general though cause I am quite certain that in my youth I was ruined for people I might have had sexual feelings for cause I was too hung up on the guys I was used to jerking off to in playgirl, etc. To make matters worse, an ungainly young man, I didn’t stand a chance with anyone who looked anything like that (partially no doubt cause I was so painfully aware of the gap between us). I’m sure that the abundance of slick porn today has contributed a lot to the relative sexual barrenness of post modern life compared to years ago.
I’m really sorry the two most amazing self suck videos on xtube have been deleted. They so eclipse anyting that remains that I can’t be bothered to recommend anybody who’s still there.
If you ever get a chance to pick up one of the self-suck videos of Scott OHara, you really must. He’s the best. His writings are most definitely worth a look, too. He’s from a bygone era – there is that sense of a utopia just waiting for the lucky gays if they would only let it be. He was evidently graced with it being no problem for him to have ongoing sexual things with all and sundry. In fact he loved to go to the baths and lie on his stomach and just wait for whoever would come to use his hole. If you can be satisfied with that life would look pretty rosebuddy. From time to time there’s some utopian/selfserving sentimental garbage in his musings, I think – for instance in his theorizing why it is he’s attracted to Latin men, pure wishful thinking. But he also makes lots of very smart calls. Sadly the picture on the cover of the book that I bought doesn’t do him justice. He also wrote about sex life with AIDS in the 80s in a way that I imagine is…pretty unique.
I had no idea that there really was anything such as a bicep fetish until I ran an ad flexing my arm with me looking at it, appraising it, clearly pleased. (I remembered papa’s pep talk to Lou Ferrigno in “Pumping Iron” – an interesting scene!) Anyway, the hardcore ones came out of the woodwork – like one guy I know who is so into biceps it doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or woman – and I quickly discovered that biceps strike a chord with lots of guys in a way that never would have occurred to me cause I was never really concerned about them myself. I always had kind of nice arms even before I started working out. The things I’ve been fetishistic about invariably have something to do with the departments in which I find myself lacking. In fact I would go so far as to say that the first part of my life was effectively ruined when, 20 lbs overweight, on a walk with my sister, shirtless, she was good enough to tell me, “look you have boobs!” after which I didn’t take my shirt off in public for about 20 something odd years. I mean it was just like God telling Adam and Eve that they were naked, and I became fixated on a nice rack.
What a fantastic story. Much more interesting than admiring The Ordinary Boys’ thighs. But then big arms are always a good conversation starter.
I’ve wondered whether you’ve ever met Morrissey. I did once. I was driving up La Cienega and saw this very tall guy looking a bit lost and thought, “He looks like Morrissey…OHMYGOD IT IS MORRISSEY!” I frantically parked the car around the corner and trotted up to him and asked, “Morrissey, can I get a hug like they do onstage?” He smiled, shrugged and opened his arms. I asked him whether he wasn’t lost and he explained that he couldn’t find the hair salon where he had an appt. He honestly didn’t seem that determined to find the place, but being such a dolt as I am in any such an unforseen circumstance, my only thought was to offer to call for him, which I did, getting the address, and then it was easy to find. I asked him if he’d ever received a book I left for him with some guards at the Hollywood Bowl who said they’d gotten permission to bring it to him. It was the “Kraken edition” of Melville’s “Pierre – or the Ambiguities” with these really sexy illustrations by Maurice Sendak. He said no, and I suggested maybe I could send him another copy. He asked me how I got my arms so big. Again in my typical completely disingenuous fashion I told him that being HIV positive I was given steroids and growth hormone and I worked out a lot. “There are advantages to everything!” he replied. I walked him inside and said goodbye and turned to leave when he stopped me, “Wait, don’t you want my address?” To my surprise – I was expecting a ‘c/o some office suite’ address – he gave me a residential address above sunset plaza. I drove by looking for the place, of course, but found no such number. Puzzled, I sent the package with delivery confirmation. The package arrived but I never heard anything from him.
A year or so later I hooked up online with a guy who lived in the same area (another british artiste, as it happened) whose house also apparently wasn’t there. It turns out that some of these streets dead end into properties that are completely hidden. At the push of a button, the shrubs part like the red sea.
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