I lived in Tokyo from 1985 to 1991. The reason I left Japan was that I was burned out on the culture. Carmen felt the same way. We were tired of the strangeness, the drinking, the deeply unhealthy attitude toward sex, and the inability of the Japanese to form close relationships with foreigners. We were…
Situation normal for Korea
December 7, 2023
Ever been to Korea? Here’s pretty much what the entire culture is like. “Why are you doing that? Stop it! Be normal, can’t you?” I guess is what the family is saying. It’s all contrived, I’m sure, so I don’t care. What interests me is the fact that the daughter’s had cosmetic surgery to make…
Noreen in the Rat Palace
December 5, 2023
I’ve received several queries about Noreen in the Rat Palace. One came from Scott Thunes. So I’ll tell the story. First, an explanation: Ghosts and Ballyhoo is an art project. It isn’t a memoir per se. Everything in it is true, but I wrote it in order to elicit a certain reaction among readers. I…
Fear and discipline
December 4, 2023
One of my favorite films is Soldier, starring Kurt Russell. He plays Sergeant Todd, selected soon after birth to become a soldier. Set sometime in the future, the story is about how people can be trained to repress all emotions. Of course the training methods are absolutely brutal. The end result is soldiers who fight…
My blue eyes are brown
December 3, 2023
The Hampshire College Sex Blog got a question from Anonymous. How do you recommend women keep their genitals fresh and clean without any unnatural products? Here’s the beginning of the answer: Great question! First, we’d like to quickly address the language of saying “women” instead of “female-bodied people:” not everyone who identifies as a woman…
Paying the piper
December 2, 2023
Someone sent me a link to an interview with the bassist Lemmy Kilmister of the band Motörhead. He’s in terrible shape from all the drugs, drinking, and smoking. If you don’t know anything about Motörhead, they’re a metal band as famous for their excesses as their deafening music. Also, Lemmy plays his electric bass like…
Norway’s great, except for the Norwegians
December 1, 2023
A Norwegian soccer player’s wife has upset some people by sharing a selfie of her unravaged postpartum body. Caroline Berg Eriksen is also a “health reporter,” whatever that is. In response a Norwegian blogger named Suzanne Aabel wrote a fairly incoherent piece both criticizing and praising Berg Eriksen and her critics and supporters. The fact…
A very bad man, part one
December 1, 2023
We live in a golden age of flim-flammery. A lot of you reading this are depressed and aghast at what you see; my parents were too. They couldn’t believe how the world had changed since they were born. So to give you a sense of proportion, I’ll tell the story of the most merciless, predatory,…
A very bad man, part two
December 1, 2023
There was no sense of order at all, piles of debris having simply been dumped wherever a clear space had existed. It was a scene of such devastation that I immediately lost all desire to browse and decided to leave. I greeted Larry and engaged him in our ritualized banter, but his heart wasn’t in…
A very bad man, part three
December 1, 2023
He simply would not listen, would not change the way he did things, and would not stop bringing in more and more junk that nobody on the planet wanted. We had no idea how this three-quarters-dead old man would leave another four hundred pounds of crap for us to sort, but he pulled off this…