February 13th, 2011 / 8:29 pm
Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes & Events & Random

On hand jobs, AWP, the internet, truck drivers, and embodied living

Maybe before sleep I was thinking, “I haven’t thought about that kid I used to stalk in a while.” And then I had a dream about him. He was being cruel to me and then I started to retreat and he sensed me leaving, maybe not physically going away but mentally withdrawing…he could feel it. He started acting kindly toward me, like his cruelty was just a cover for the deep sense of tenderness that was his true feeling. I started to run. I don’t know why. I slid beneath tables that were randomly placed in an art museum like a nightmarish obstacle course. I got up and kept running. He was chasing me. He just wanted to be kind. And yes, I wanted that closeness but could not bear it. I don’t know why. I woke up and went to the bathroom and thought about how most of my life I’ve lived for other people. As in, obsession. As in, all thoughts orbiting around the chosen one(s)…a flash-flood of understanding in the holy shitter then ZAP!—it’s gone. While watching a film I zone out for a split second and am hit by the sensation of intimacy, the kind that exists between two people but it’s not attached to any real people; it’s just a bodily memory of what it feels like. You’re usually so used to your body; you walk around and sometimes hardly even notice it’s there, feeling it even less while you browse the internet. But when you’re getting to know someone it suddenly becomes this very new thing. And all at once you’re so in your skin, totally delirious beneath the possibility of touch. When I first met my current partner I was instantly obsessed and I hated myself for it. I thought, you cannot be trusted in the company of people. You have all these insane feelings and nobody else is with you in them. That makes you feel like a real maniac. There’s no reason for any of it. Maybe I’m a maniac but mostly I’m a grandma. In high school one of my friend groups de-friended me because they thought I was “too intense.” I am drawn to people who seem singular in an unconscious way…weirdoes, recluses, awkward nerds. Never showy or confident people or people that carry themselves well.

Why the fuck am I writing this. After AWP both Ariana Reines and Kate Zambreno blogged about how they do it for the young girls, how the young girls respond and feel comforted. They put themselves out there unapologetically and I like that, but I also think about how I could never be that, how I was never a libertine in that way but perhaps very much so in others, how I never sought The Fuck (unless it was with myself), regardless of whether it was a casual pleasure fuck or a complicated hate fuck. I spent my adolescence obsessively trying to avoid all contact with boys/men and fantasizing about stabbing the ones that sexually harassed me. In middle school I was horrified to find that someone wrote down in a slam book that I had been fucked in the ass by some kid named Jordan, which was a fucking lie. I was a loner nerd but then all the cool girls befriended me because I had a hot gangsta older brother. They would sleep over my house as a way to hook up with other boys in the neighborhood. Late at night the girls would call the boys and negotiate sex plans. Once Katie arranged for me to give a hand job to some kid even though I didn’t want to. Behind some park late at night I definitely did not want to touch it. Later his friend tried to get a hand job from me, noting my “soft, tiny hands.” I kept saying noooo and, “I can’t give you a hand job because my best friend likes you and I would never do that to her.” A year and a half ago, when I was hitchhiking/bicycling alone around the east coast one summer, I got a ride from a trucker who told me he was driving straight to Philly. But it turned out he wasn’t even going to Philly, and he also wasn’t planning on heading straight there. He stopped somewhere to sleep and I was stuck in the truck with him. He begged me for hand jobs like that jerk from middle school. I said noooo and he kept begging and then he started offering me money while saying, “Come on! Loosen the fuck up. Don’t you want to make money for your trip? It’s not like I’m asking you to fuck me or anything.” To shut him up I said, “I have a boyfriend” because I didn’t know how he would react if I said, “I’m a lesbian.”

(I’m going to let you in on a little secret: little girls often make out and touch each other. My first lesbian experience was when I was 5 or so, and we said we were just “practicing” for Mr. Right.)

Miraculously, the boyfriend lie worked on the horny truck driver. My fake boyfriend saved me. It was while hitchhiking that I learned that the truckers call sex workers that hang around the truck stops “lot lizards.” The nice old man truck driver who gave me a ride before I got stuck with the horny guy got on the radio to try to find me a ride and everyone on the radio immediately started chiming in, “Why do her tits look like? Does she have a nice ass?” He said, “She ain’t no lot lizard. Just trying to find a ride to Philly.” The old man gave me a knife and bought me a subway sandwich before I got in the truck with the horny guy. After I got out of the horny guy’s truck, the next guy that gave me a ride was very Philly-Italiano in a tender kind of way. I put my bicycle in the back of his truck and started to climb into the front seat, but as soon as I got into his truck a woman in a nursing uniform drove in front of the truck, pointed her finger at me and screamed for me to get out of the truck. She told me to get inside her car and when I was in the passenger seat she said, “I saw you on the side of the road with your sign. You can’t get in that man’s car!” The guy got out of the truck and said, “What’s going on here? Has this young girl escaped from the mental hospital?” I wondered, do I really look like an escaped mental patient? The woman was a zealous Jehovah’s Witness who forced religious pamphlets onto me before I got out of her car. The crazy lady was comforted when the Italiano Philly guy told her, “Don’t worry ma’am. I’m a God-fearing man myself.” (Cue up the tough guy proudly holding up his crucifix.) This is not writing about literature but maybe it can pass as literature. Here’s one connection: all good writing happens in movement. So. We go. This will certainly have many typos. I was going to post this on my personal blog but realized that I can’t because my aunts stalk me on there. Amy McDaniel has been posting about food so I figure I must have a little room to wiggle in words. Amy doesn’t know who I am but I saw her read and talk at the college I recently graduated from and I thought she was amazing and felt angry when the boys were taking up too much space and she didn’t get to talk as much. I think this might have been when Alec brought Blake Butler and Justin Taylor. But now that I think of it, I think Blake came at a separate time. I think Blake might have actually been to the house I lived at in Sarasota during a multimedia performance/reading event I organized. But I think he might not have actually gone into the house…which is okay because I would have just felt embarrassed. This was before I even knew what HTMLGIANT was. Well, I had heard of it, but I didn’t start digging into the internet until I graduated and quit my two jobs. Isn’t it funny that “jobs” comes after “hand” in the phrase “hand jobs”? Imagine your hand wearing a nice suit and carrying a briefcase as it walks off to work while you look at it tenderly and think, “My hand is off to its job again.” If I had a nickel for every time a gross guy told me to touch his penis…. After a while you start to really hate being a woman, especially one with big tits. Once I was sleeping over a friend’s house and a Christian boy crawled into the bed I was sleeping in and said, “Touch my shaft. Come on. Touch my shaft.” I said, “What are you doing? I’m dating your best friend.” Then he started freaking out while saying, “How am I going to remain abstinent until marriage???”

There was once a time in my life when I’d sit down to write every day and every time I would go to the place I refer to as THE ZONE. My point is, writing used to be something that just happened, not something I would do. As in, it did to me. I’ve always been a rather passive person and this worked out for us.

I am in Glasgow, Scotland right now. I came here two days after AWP. It took me nearly two days straight of constant travel to get here because I was trying to do it cheap. I scammed my way to NYC via bus and got stuck in traffic for two hours and ran to the subway and train and airport with a Belgian girl who was also on the bus from Bmore to NYC and, incidentally, was trying to catch the same flight to London. I thought everything would be different as soon as I left—that I would GET IT BACK. Maybe things are different but I don’t even realize it? Today I went to a building called the Center for Contemporary Arts to try to read and write while sitting at one of the tables in the center of the arts complex. They promptly kicked me out because I didn’t buy any food and for the rest of the day I was fuming while thinking about how all space is capitalist space, how much I hate the culture of contemporary art, how it is impossible to even sit down or gather with friends or do anything at all unless you are engaging in some sort of economic exchange. Maybe the sidewalk is the last of the spatial commons but if you stopped walking or sat down while on a sidewalk, you’d be “obstructing traffic,” and that certainly is not allowed. My point is, every time I sit down to write, I go a little insane. I abort everything I start writing lately because I don’t give a shit about what I have to say, because I want to be less of a person (the least you can possibly be while still being technically alive); to resist the urge to say, to be seen, to individualize, to be distinct. If I start to disappear from the internet it’s because I feel like I cannot morally justify writing, being an Author-Artist, or dumping all of my energy into THE WORD. Because anything having to do with my “self” literally pains me. Did you go to AWP? Did you feel connected or alone in your head? How did it feel to be near the people you know digitally, to know them embodied for a few days? I actually found it hard to make eye contact with people because I felt embarrassed and gross inside my skin. I hope I didn’t come across as rude. I was very excited to see everyone but I was nervous and extremely sleep-deprived. I met many of the HTMLGIANTers, bought tampons with Ariana Reines, made a fool of myself in front of Bhanu Kapil and Eileen Myles (especially Bhanu, after giving her an ambien letter and bundle of drawings), hung at a bar with M. Kitchell and Kate Zambreno, wandered the DC streets for hours lost and alone while it rained, was berated by a possibly homeless eastern European man who made racist remarks about me, stayed up all night talking to an old classmate about Clarice Lispector, flipped out when I found out Clarice Lispector loved Spinoza (!!), hung with Alec and other Florida people…and so on. Tim Jones-Yelvington was definitely the best dressed. I think it was Mike Young who asked me at lunch if I live in a punk house and I said I live in a “Marxist Goth Cult,” which may or may not be a joke. I will leave it to the imagination. A few months ago I deleted my facebook and it definitely feels like I exist less to the world. I’ve been reading too much post-marxist theory and feeling paranoid about subjective/immaterial production under postmodern capitalism—Empire, you might call it—and have been thinking about how facebook/tumblr/twitter/WEB 2.0 operates according to a consumerist logic, the constant production-consumption feedback loop that exploits our human NEED for acknowledgment while turning our fears and longings and sadness into tiny poops to be consumed without actually granting us the satisfaction of interpersonal connection that we often desperately crave. That, to me, is the saddest thing…the way an email only feels good for a few minutes, the way we are immediately waiting for the next thing, searching for something deeper while our sense of self worth gets bound up with the amount of hits or “likes” we receive. I’m not indicting anyone. I crave such contact as much as anyone else but this just doesn’t feel right. I am very fucking afraid.

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39 Comments

  1. phmadore

      Jesus be careful.

      This post was way better than HTMLGIANT. Gonzo essay type thing. Good shit. Rock on.

      Don’t get robbed. Jesus.

  2. kimberly southwick

      Thanks for this. Someone said once, if you’re not afraid, there’s something wrong with you. Then, someone else told me that was stupid. Who knows. Don’t disappear. And if you do, at least not on yourself.

  3. jackie wang

      i accidentally made a typo where i wrote amy mcdaniel “wasn’t” amazing when i really meant WAS… as in, very good. i corrected it. my fingers often convey the opposite meaning of my mind. the body is rebelling…perhaps.

  4. jackie wang

      haha i sometimes wonder what people would take from me if they tried to rob me. i never carry cash, but perhaps they would take me to an ATM and force me to withdraw the contents of my meager bank account? i carried a knife and pepper spray with me but yes, i admit, very stupid i was and still am… i was bonkers and high on this feeling of totally invincibility

  5. jackie wang

      my fear is funny. lots of things that scare other people don’t scare me at allll, yet things that are normal and everyday for most people are totally horrifying to me. at AWP m kitchell and i were at a reading and he was reluctant to walk to the literature party alone, which was a mile away. so i walked him there and asked the door person, can i get into this party for free if i write for 2 of the blogs that are sponsoring this event? they said no, so i walked back to the other bar alone. i felt like a chivalrous boyfriend when i escorted m to the party, hahaha.

  6. Bhanu

      Dear Jackie Wang, I made a sub-shrine out of what you gave me — Shadow Ladies — in the alcove at home. You not make fool. Glasgow. If you can: go to the Firth of Clyde. Now I am replying to your e-mail in a blog comment box. Charles Rennie Mackinstosh’s Hill House. And of course: the Loch Ness MONSTER. I always try to visit. Your writing in the things you gave me is brilliant. We love Loneberry. All the best to you – BK

  7. phmadore

      I mean like, now, in Glasgow!

  8. deadgod

      a trucker who told me her was driving

      18-wheel
      typ o feel

  9. Mark

      Hey Jackie,

      I live in Glasgow, if you’re still here you should check out the Free Hetherington (http://freehetherington.wordpress.com/) – it’s a former postgrad student club currently occupied by anti-cuts (student) protesters, loads of stuff going on, as well as free meals and coffee! A potentially lone non-capitalist public space in the city…

      Mark

  10. M. Kitchell

      you totally were my chivalrous boyfriend for the evening jackie ;)

  11. jackie wang

      i will definitely check it out! will you be hanging out there? if so i will say hello…looking for friends in glasgow.

  12. jackie wang

      can’t say i didn’t warn you….

  13. Justin Taylor

      Jackie- Blake did come down separately. It was Amy and I who visited New College together. I think the discussion you’re thinking of was her, me, Alec, and Alexis Orgera; we spoke about influence and about favorite books at the Four Winds. You’re right that Amy is amazing–a great writer; easily among the most incisive and wise literary minds I’ve known in my life (and believe me, I’ve met a few Heavies); and a dear friend for some years (we drove down to Sarasota from her home in Atlanta). But as you must know from reading her work (even if only the recent recipes) one of her most powerful tools is a stunning economy of expression. Nobody does concision, or cuts a Gordian knot, quite like Amy McDaniel. With all due respect I don’t think that because she spoke less, it necessarily follows that she was spoken over.

  14. M. Kitchell

      jackie
      hanging out with you & carrie was a total high point of my awp experience, i wish we lived closer so we could hang out all the time–seriously. i kind of think you’re totally amazing, and yeah, really fantastic. i felt like a brat after you walked with me to lit party & then couldn’t/didn’t get in & you walked all the way back to the table-x reading alone, but you had already displayed such a total capacity for autonomy that i let myself ease up on being, i don’t know, kind of embarrassed about it, or whatever.

      i have been thinking a lot about intensity lately and how, really, i think i am really only interested in intense people & experience. i am only interested in being an intense person. that might sound stupid, just sort of condensed into a single sentence like that, but i think it’s mostly the truth, and i think i need to maybe think more about it articulate what i mean, especially vis a vis what you’ve written here.

      I don’t know what I’m saying but basically you’re awesome & i hope you have fun in scotland and i hope we can hang out again sometime

  15. Kate

      Jackie – Oh God I love this. So raw and gorgeous and visceral and kind of jetlagged. I do want to say I think I might have misarticulated about the libertine and myself – I don’t think of myself as a libertine. If so I would be the most boring libertine ever. I love that handjob scene, with the truck driver, the fear and the bravery and the ickiness and intimacy of it…

  16. deadgod

      not an air-or

      typos work

  17. Scott mcclanahan

      Nice, Jackie.

  18. jackie wang

      ooohhh…hmmm it would be even more complicated to rob me in glasgow since i have a foreign bank hahaha. but glasgow is a lot safer than baltimore, which is where i live in the states….

  19. jackie wang

      my motto used to be: “celebrating the unapologetic typo since 2003”

  20. Tom Beckett

      You are a wonderful writer.

  21. Tom Beckett

      You are a wonderful writer.

  22. jackie wang

      hi scott. i think i heard about you when i was doing a month-long residency at the Cyberpunk Apocalypse house… i heard you write good stories. are you in pittsburgh?

  23. jackie wang

      hi scott. i think i heard about you when i was doing a month-long residency at the Cyberpunk Apocalypse house… i heard you write good stories. are you in pittsburgh?

  24. jackie wang

      i saw a picture of the shadow ladies boxset on yr blog and was like, woowowo look at that! ahh you are the second person i’ve talked to recently who mentioned the loch ness monster. it makes me want to become a cryptozoologist and seek out the animals that do not “officially” exist. take caare.

  25. Sean

      What is an Ambien letter? I have to go Google now. It sounds cool.

  26. Sean

      Ok, I googled. Didn’t find much. So now I assume you wrote a letter while on Ambien?

      Close?

      Who knows, or cares. I just remember when Tiger W was having porn star Ambien sex and I thought, “People have crazy sex on Ambien?” Am I missing something?

  27. jackie wang

      i remember there were points during the panel when it seemed like a private conversation was taking place between a small group of guys… possibly with the guy who liked brecht a lot? i do think that people can control conversations in ways that push other people out, or make participation harder. not that it is malicious or even intentional. some people also don’t feel comfortable talking in public, often people that are socialized as female. but my most basic point is, conversations require a high level of sensitivity in order to remain open to people of different interests, backgrounds, etc.

  28. jackie wang

      i thought our meta conversation after the panel was hilarious… when you were talking about how ridiculous it was that you were called in to play the young, hip, postfeminist when you feel kind of post-libertine. yeah i totally understand that you feel distanced from the girl-libertine from where you’re at now… in the post i was thinking about my thoughts during the talk… how i think it’s wonderful that people are saying it all but also how i feel like i was born a weird alien grandma haha.

  29. jackie wang

      yess! thanks for being my AWP buddy, mike. i actually didn’t mind walking at all. it’s good exercise, haha. you shouldn’t feel like a brat in the slightest. i thought it was quite cute. also, i felt bad that you didn’t get to see the readers at the lit party because we were lingering around the bar at table x reading. since i have an in-and-out relationship with the internet, you should feel free to email me anytime and let me know what you’re doing or what you’re writing about or make me reading lists of french women authors.

      i am with you on intensity. also, i find that i speak in cliches as well when i talk about things. like when we were eating with ariana and she joked about how what i said about politics would sound really unsexy if it were posted on the internet. you just gotta be the truth that you are.

      maybe one day we will live in the same town and can watch movies together :)

  30. Amy McDaniel

      this might be a good time for me to jump in. jackie, thank you for attending both events and for your generous appraisal of me in this post.

      i doubt justin would disagree with what you describe as your most basic point about sensitivity in conversation. without presuming to speak for me, what he is saying is that there might be another explanation in this case for my relative quietness. he knows me well. i’m not the least bit uncomfortable talking in public, socialized as female though i was, and i am not apt to let myself get pushed around by brecht-liking guys. i remember the panel as a congenial if sometimes wandering conversation among friends, to which i contributed what i wanted to contribute and no more or less.

  31. jackie wang

      ahh hahaha yeah i wrote the letter after taking ambien. this weird thing often happens when you take ambien where you feel looser and more willing to make contact with people… like ambien emailing or dialing, ha. i got this idea after i took ambien that i would write letters to the people i was going to see at AWP, but i only completed the letter to bhanu. i’ve had ambien sex before and it can get weeeird. also, hallucinations can occur. when i was on the plane to london i miscalculated the duration of the plane ride because i didn’t consider the time change. so i took my ambien, but then they served dinner and i was totally out of my mind. i don’t remember eating the dinner but i realized later that my mouth was burned…i think i didn’t realize it was extremely hot and kept eating it because of the ambien, haha. tell me about tiger w’s sex. i haven’t heard about it.

  32. jackie wang

      thanks, tom. i like your last name. are you related to samuel beckett??

  33. Sean

      Oh yeh, apparently he and his 4 (uh, cough, 14) mistresses had these long, Ambien sex sessions.

      I’d use the word Tantric but I think it was more my-opiate-receptors-r-indeed-engaged, as opposed to spiritual. Gary Snyder was not present, in any way, I think I can safely say.

      I would go Google some links now but I’m lazy. Ok, just one:
      http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewmcfbrown/100018993/tiger-woods-took-ambien-to-spice-up-sex-but-did-he-raid-the-fridge-afterwards/

      My point is Tiger would have these Ambien sex sessions, which of course added even more layers of “oh my” to the conventional reader.
      Sports god had a mistress, fine. Wait, 14 mistresses. Wait, Ambien. Etc. Etc. Now it’s get a weird spaceship feel, with all the hate/envy of those who would love to enter outer space.

  34. jackie wang

      i hope that when i suggested that some people aren’t comfortable talking in public, it didn’t seem like i was implying that i was specifically talking about you (though i was speculating more generally about public spaces)… i did get the sense that you were confident. certainly my experience of the whole thing was framed by my desire to hear more about your thoughts about literature, being less interested in some of the directions the conversations took, or being acquainted with the school and the types of people that often dominate conversations of the intellectual sort.

  35. Mark

      I’ll definitely be there for a bit today (tues) – I run a lit theory reading group at the uni and we may have our session in the hetherington today if there’s enough room. We’re all meeting at 5 outside it in any case. We’re reading from this book – http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uOAPdbhSpksC&source=gbs_navlinks_s – but I don’t know which chapter yet – I’ll get back to you! We normally go for a drink afterwards anyhow…

  36. jackie wang

      i might actually be going to see the filmmaker harun farocki talk today at the CCA. but lit theory reading group sounds great…i would definitely go if it weren’t for this other event. that book you’re reading relates to some things i’ve written on queer negativity.

      i can be email at loneberry (at) gmail.com. if you email me, i might be able to catch you somewhere after the farocki event…like if you go out for drinks or something.

  37. Mark

      cool, i’ll do that. enjoy the talk!

  38. jackie wang

      (also, it wasn’t me that implied that you were pushed around or talked over. that was justin’s assumption of what i meant in the post, which was really just saying that there were certain people used up all the time.)

  39. Kristen Iskandrian

      jackie, late to this party, but this was so great, as is your blog.