<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/b>Marco Vassi<\/b><\/p>\n
On January 14 it will be four years since Marco Vassi died, and I\u2019m going to take a moment to think a little out loud about Marco and his life, about what this man who I knew as much from his writing as from the times we met face to face, means to me.<\/p>\n
Marco Vassi (Marco Ferdinand William Vasquez-d\u2019Acugno Vassi, to be exact) will probably be remembered by most people for his writing.\u00a0 He wrote 13 novels, hundreds of articles and short stories, poems, plays, and assorted riff raff.\u00a0 His books were published for the most part by trash porn houses \u2014 presses like Banner Books, Manor Books, Carlyle Communications, Pleasure Books.\u00a0 Olympia Press, who first published Henry Miller in this country, got Marco into writing and published some of his work, but he never really made it in mainstream publishing, at least with his sex writing.\u00a0 His publishers would pay him a few thousand dollars to produce formulaic porn tracts, and from Marco\u2019s point of view, that\u2019s what he did.\u00a0 But there is something unique about his writing, about the way he spoke of sex and all the complications and contusions that come from entering the realm of the sexual as fully as possible.\u00a0 As fantastic and exaggerated as his stories and novels often are, there is something undeniably genuine, intriguing \u2014 even profound \u2014 that distinguishes Marco\u2019s writing from the other pulp novels of that time (the 70s and early 80s).<\/p>\n
What is most important to me about Marco is that he was one of those rare people who choose to make sex the organizing principle for their lives, no matter what the consequences might be.\u00a0 By his own accounting, Marco delved into the sexual world as deeply and broadly as anyone ever has.\u00a0 Sex with women.\u00a0 Sex with men.\u00a0 Sex with various numbers of partners, and in various combinations.\u00a0 Fierce sex.\u00a0 Tender sex.\u00a0 Intimate sex.\u00a0 Casual sex.\u00a0 Anonymous sex.\u00a0 Fetish play.\u00a0 Power play.\u00a0 Gender play.\u00a0 S&M.\u00a0 Loving sex.\u00a0 Cruel sex.<\/p>\n
Sex for Marco wasn\u2019t just about getting laid (except sometimes), not just a question of neurons and orgasms.\u00a0 For Marco sex was a lens on life itself, a magnifying glass through which the dynamics and foibles of being human become intensified, and so his pursuit of sexual knowledge and experience took on the color of a philosophical quest.\u00a0 He saw himself at once as the Avatar of Eros and an eager student of zen enlightenment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSex is a key to doorways of knowing,\u201d Marco wrote.\u00a0 \u201cFor me it has been a yoga through which new qualities of self evolved.\u00a0 Like the alchemist who works with a potion for decades and in the process brings about a transmutation of his essence, I spent all my conscious life since the age of eight mixing elements in the crucible of sex, sifting enormous amounts of material to produce a few grams of pure substance.\u00a0 I had fucked or been fucked by over five hundred different women, and twice that many men, in circumstances ranging from brief gaspings in alleys and whorehouses to lengthy relationships.\u00a0 I had gone through all the possible scenarios.\u00a0 And with the suddenness of total change, I became a different kind of person.\u00a0 At the far end of bisexuality I realized that all that had gone before was but the task of perfecting the instrument, the mindbody that is myself.\u00a0 My adventures had served a single purpose: to exhaust all the subjective aspects of the sexual act.\u00a0 The many modes, which had been challenges, areas of exploration, were now my tools \u2014 homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, abstruse psychosexual states and practices, the so-called perversions, the many masks of libidinal displacement\u2026 these were now at my command, to be used the way a director uses a cast of characters to realize a vision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, Marco\u2019s vision, the sense of life that emerged from his far-reaching sexual explorations, was anything but simple.\u00a0 Marco was a lover of irony and contradiction.\u00a0 In his life as in his writing, he created situations that gained power from their inherent contradictions, and he would emphasize the topsy-turvy nature of reality every chance he got.\u00a0 He knew, for example, that every lover, every circumstance, every moment, is uniquely magical.\u00a0 And he knew equally well at the same time that, in another sense, all partners are interchangeable and ultimately meaningless.\u00a0 \u201cIn the end,\u201d Marco liked to say, \u201cwe are all just fucking ourselves anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy have any partners at all?\u201d Marco asks in one short story about a woman who locks herself in a darkened room for weeks, to explore the inner recesses of her sexual nature.\u00a0 \u201cOrgasm is the quintessentially private experience,\u201d she decides.\u00a0 \u201cThe notion that we must share it with others is the final corruption of what\u2019s left of civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost every bit of Marco\u2019s writing has a twist, a jab, a way of saying that things are not what they seem, not what we like to pretend they are.\u00a0 He is, in this sense, a true Sadeian.\u00a0 He writes the perfect New York subway fantasy (carried, it seems, by every man who rode the subways as a teenager, pressed belly to belly up against untold numbers of perfumed strangers in the sardine can of rush hour) in which a man and a woman gradually become aware of each other, approach, touch, become increasingly sexual \u2014 only to have the woman turn out to be an undercover cop who busts the man for molestation.<\/p>\n
In another story, a man who is attracted to other men, yet not wanting to be homosexual, undergoes a sex change operation only to discover that after his transformation he is now only attracted to women.\u00a0 In yet another, a woman goes through the ultimate psychosexual therapeutic catharsis, transcends her debilitating paranoias, only to be run down by a bus as she crosses the street, totally free from fear.\u00a0 In\u00a0\u00a0The Other Hand Clapping<\/em>, perhaps his finest (though least sexual) novel, there are so many twists and turns on the nature of reality, jealousy, theatre, and life, that by the end the reader is in a state of pure ecstatic vertigo.<\/p>\n As a person, Marco was no less contradictory than his writing.\u00a0 He was at times able to give another person complete and absolutely focused love and attention, and at other times so self-absorbed and inaccessible as to be totally infuriating.\u00a0 He could at one moment be open to all the complexities of multi-partner relationships, free of possessiveness, ego, and the like, and then descend in a matter of hours into simple-minded jealous tantrums hardly worthy of a tv soap opera.\u00a0 He was able to look the most complex, difficult truths \u2014 about sex, about relationship, about life \u2014 directly in the eye, yet he was often unable to sustain even the most elementary forms of honesty and compassion with partners and friends.<\/p>\n He was thus, to me, the finest sort of hero:\u00a0 the wise man who is also a goat, the monkey who is also a monk.\u00a0 During the final months of his life, after he was diagnosed HIV-positive, Marco went into a deep depression that put him beyond the reach of even his closest friends.\u00a0 He wandered from east coast to west, tried to commit suicide twice, was continuously morose (despite his relatively good physical health), and totally self-absorbed.\u00a0 He did not, in other words, take to dying gracefully.\u00a0 He did not die like a hero with a capital H.\u00a0 He was, you could say, a bad sport about it.\u00a0 A (suddenly) very ordinary human being.\u00a0 Just another guy afraid, confused, and, largely by his own construction, surprisingly alone.<\/p>\n I saw Marco for the last time in August of 1988, at Annie Sprinkle\u2019s apartment, where he was spending much of his time.\u00a0 I went to show him my new book,Erotic by Nature<\/em>, which included a story of his, and to give him his contributor\u2019s copy.\u00a0 He looked through the book carefully \u2014 the photographs and the stories \u2014 taking time with each page.\u00a0 He saw it for what it was.\u00a0 He liked it.\u00a0 He appreciated its quietness, its depth, its complexity.\u00a0 Then he went off to his PWA support group.\u00a0 That winter, he spent a day walking around New York in the snow with practically no clothes on, caught pneumonia, and secluded himself in his room.\u00a0 When friends finally located him weeks later (letting the phone ring for a half hour until he finally answered), he was all but gone.\u00a0 A flurry of phone calls got him to a hospital and the indignity of being connected to a bevy of minimally life-sustaining machines.\u00a0 On January 14, 1989, he died.<\/p>\n And so, four years down the road, I (for one) offer my thanks to Marco for all of who he was \u2014 the wisdom and the folly, the light and the immense darkness, the times of transcendence and the times of sheer imbecility \u2014 and for what he was able to write down, to give to the rest of us to do with what we will.<\/p>\n [Twelve of Marco\u2019s erotic novels, long out of print, will be re-issued during 1993 by The Permanent Press.\u00a0 More about this in a future column.]<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n My Aunt Nettie<\/b><\/p>\n Not all sex explorers are public figures, and not all sexual free spirits are products of the \u201csexual revolution\u201d of the 60s.\u00a0 Being sexually outrageous has a long and distinguished history and tradition, even if it\u2019s one that has been expunged as thoroughly as possible by all the good folks who control our knowledge of and access to such information.\u00a0 I want to tell the story of my Aunt Nettie.<\/p>\n Well, actually it\u2019s my mother\u2019s Aunt Nettie, which puts her two generations back, born 1890 or so in Russia, come to this country as part of the great influx after the turn of the century.\u00a0 Once in New York, Aunt Nettie married Uncle Hymie and the two of them moved to Connecticut, where Hymie ran a \u201cjunk store.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not exactly sure what a junk store is \u2014 something like a second-hand store, but furniture and odd items, not clothes.<\/p>\n Anyway, Hymie\u2019s junk store did quite well and eventually Hymie sent money for his younger brother Alex to come to this country.\u00a0 Alex, who was maybe 15 or 16 when he hit Ellis Island, moved in with Hymie and Nettie and went to work in Hymie\u2019s store.\u00a0 Hymie was about 28 then, Nettie maybe a year or two younger.<\/p>\n To make a long story short, for the next 20 or 25 years, Nettie was, well\u2026 you know\u2026 getting it on with both Hymie and Alex.\u00a0 For most of that time, apparently, no one but the three of them knew anything about it.\u00a0 They would show up at family functions, just like all the other members of the family.\u00a0 Hymie was well off compared to everyone else in the family.\u00a0 He was the only one who had a car.\u00a0 Some people thought Hymie was a bit of a show-off about his money, but others saw them all as just anxious to share their luck with the rest of the family.<\/p>\n Everyone liked Nettie.\u00a0 She was lively, generous, vivacious.\u00a0 She liked to wear lots of make-up, put bright red circles of rouge on her cheeks.\u00a0 For at least 15 years, no one had a clue that Nettie and Hymie and Alex were anything but a regular couple with a live-in brother.<\/p>\n Then one day Nettie got mad at her sister Sarah and told Sarah the whole story, just to blow her fuse.\u00a0 It was quite a scandal.\u00a0 Sarah and her younger sister, my grandmother, never spoke to Nettie again.\u00a0 When Nettie\u2019s 5-year old second child developed melanoma and died, everyone said it was God\u2019s punishment for Nettie\u2019s wickedness.\u00a0 Of course, every fault of Nettie\u2019s was magnified and given great significance.\u00a0 Like Nettie was never much of a housekeeper, so people would say, \u201cWell, what do you expect:\u00a0 A dirty house, a dirty life.\u201d\u00a0 And then there were all the wonderings about what had really happened:\u00a0 Did Nettie seduce Alex when he was a tender teenager?\u00a0 Maybe Hymie was not so good in bed.\u00a0 Did Hymie even know what was going on with Nettie and Alex?\u00a0 Maybe he just pretended not to notice.\u00a0 And who was the father of the children?\u00a0 Did even Nettie know?<\/p>\n Meanwhile Nettie and Hymie and Alex went on with their business as before and, as far as I can make out, were quite happy together.\u00a0 When Alex was 40 or 50 he moved away to live by himself.\u00a0 He never married.\u00a0 A little later, Hymie died.\u00a0 Nettie moved to California, where she lived a long, long time.\u00a0 In fact, as far as anyone knows, she\u2019s still alive, though I guess she would be pushing 100 by now.<\/p>\n I only met Nettie a few times as a kid,\u00a0 What I remember is that she was attractive, lively, and full of good cheer.\u00a0 I wish I had known her and her story when I was older, so that I could have asked her what it was like \u2014 how she did what she did, how she felt about being exiled from the family, how she dealt with the two brothers, with jealousy, what it was like to be sexual with a teenager at 28, how things really worked among the three of them.\u00a0 I mean, they lived this way for some 25 years and made it work.\u00a0 They must have learned all sorts of things that went to waste for lack of a friendly ear.<\/p>\n See, as far as I\u2019m concerned, Nettie is as much of a sexual hero as Marco, and there are probably thousands of Netties and Normans tucked away everywhere \u2014 people who define their sexual lives as they please and are willing to deal with the consequences.\u00a0 Sexual existence above and beyond the confines of \u201cthe way it spozed to be\u201d has been going on since the beginning of time, and I for one take heart and support from knowing that those of us pushing the boundaries here in the Brave New World of 1993 are heirs to a long and great tradition of sexual assertion and self-determination.<\/p>\n Wouldn\u2019t it be great to sit down with the sexual outcasts of earlier times, however old they might now be, and hear their stories?\u00a0 Compare notes, ask questions, puzzle through some of the dilemmas that stay the same, despite our different placements in history.\u00a0 There was a little of this at the Henry Miller Centennial last year, when old lovers of Miller\u2019s and other Miller-related life spirits talked about what it was like with Henry back in those days.\u00a0 It was wonderful to watch these women and men \u2014 many now in their 60s, 70s and 80s \u2014 get that familiar sparkle in their eyes, talking about this and that sexual adventure or outlandish experience.\u00a0 When I\u2019m 70, I hope I get to sit down with my grandchildren (when they\u2019re old enough to understand, of course, what do you think I am, a pervert?) and pass on some of the current sense of possibility and wonder.\u00a0 \u201cHave I ever told you what it was like in San Francisco back then, in the 80s and the 90s, [“Oh, Grandpa, not again!”],when sexual exploration was going every which way, when all the different subcultures were emerging and flowering, when there were sexual happenings and groups, and our own magazines and books, and workshops, and theatre and art everywhere?\u00a0 Let me tell you, it was a marvelous time, even when Meese was Attorney General, even when Bush was President, even before we had a cure for AIDS\u2026.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Where\u2019s Waldo?<\/b><\/p>\n Meanwhile, back in America, Eileen Godfrey, \u201cmother of two,\u201d is fuming because out of the thousands of cartoon figures that appear in the children\u2019s book\u00a0Where\u2019s Waldo on the Beach?<\/em>\u00a0<\/b>there happens to be exactly one woman with (gasp) a bare breast.\u00a0 The\u00a0Where\u2019s Waldo?<\/em>\u00a0books are puzzles for children.\u00a0 The kids have to search for the figure of Waldo among hundreds of others that crowd each drawing.\u00a0 This particular two-page spread includes one female sunbather who has undone the top of her bikini, been splashed with water, and is lifting herself up, showing her breast.\u00a0 She is, you understand, about three-quarters of an inch long, head to toe.\u00a0 Waldo, by the way, is not even in the vicinity.<\/p>\n \u201cI just never expected this in a children\u2019s puzzle,\u201d says the horrified Ms. Godfrey.\u00a0 \u201cHow can they say \u2018for ages 5 to 12\u2019 and put a naked woman on it?\u201d\u00a0 After borrowing the book from a 7-year-old friend and squinting at the picture for a very long time, I finally was able to locate the offending breast.\u00a0 I must say that I am, most of all, impressed by the meticulousness of Goodwoman Godfrey\u2019s investigative eye (let\u2019s get her a job at the Government Accounting Office), and amused by what I take to be a winking sense of humor in Waldo\u2019s creator, Martin Handford.\u00a0 But, hell, this is no laughing matter:\u00a0 let\u2019s throw the lout in jail for peddling porn to kids.\u00a0 I mean, if we open the door to naked micron-sized breasts in children\u2019s books, there\u2019s no telling where we\u2019ll end up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n January 8, 1993<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1993 David Steinberg<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Marco Vassi<\/p>\n On January 14 it will be four years since Marco Vassi died, and I\u2019m going to take a moment to think a little out loud about Marco and his life, about what this man who I knew as much from his writing as from the times we met face to face, 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