PART TWO: I CONFESS (My Brush With The World of True Confession Mags... in the 70's)
VILLAGE VOICE Sept 1, 1975
PUBLIC NOTICE: The Scream of the Techno-feeb
Before we get to the second installment of Confession World, a mortification-fest of falling up in Magland, just a quick note from your author…… As I try to navigate the ins and outs of Substack, mastering the Swiss watch-like detail-work involved in actually steering a “post” from concept to completion - no mean feat for a born techno-feeb - those who visit the site may notice some problems. Repeated sentences, strange ellipses, grotesque typos and, worse, random between-paragraph stills of Donald Trump doing the YMCA White Man dance with Jeffrey Epstein and what looks – in the clearly doctored photo – to be a one-eyed, naked sixteen year old “double-cupping” both of them. These I have tried to excise. But what can you do with rogue technology?
Imagine! Long ago, scandal erupted over secret photos of Ed Meese, Reagan’s portly, porn-hating attorney general, on his knees, in stirrups and Big Girl thong, giving pony rides to coeds in Cowboy Hats at a Young Republican key party.
This was pre-internet. Things were simpler. Whoever had the AG pony play pics did not blast them out on instragram and Twitter… Sorry, I can’t say “X” without thinking of the band. I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts. If Elon was serious he’d go full Exene and change his name to Exton, or Ex Post Facto.)
But never mind. The real scandal in today’s RNC is beyond sex. Trump did for porn what Rush Limbaugh, for a fleeting moment, did for opiates - make them completely uncool by him getting addicted to them. No, the real that-which-shall-not-be-mentioned has nothing to do with Federalist Society bunga-bunga parties. Not even Clarence Thomas’s mythical black-face stylings at a ‘92 Bohemian Grove hoedown - attendees say they’ll never hear “Hava Nagila” the same way again - can compete with today’s deeply evil fascista secrets. And no, I’m not talking about the whole Amber Rose MAGA Satanist thing. Or not just. It’s not like Republican Devil Worship is hot news. Anton Lavey and Dick Nixon made ‘smores and watched Bewitched together. Separate issue!
Listen: When Matt Gaetz showed up looking Acromegaly-adjacent at the RNC, eyebrows were raised. (Not Matt’s, of course. Those babies won’t be moving until Trump takes office again in ‘32, when Trump’s a spry 87). Matt’s Botox bonanza, like Kitty Guilfoyle’s Whatever Happened To Baby Jane transformation before him, may look alarming to us. But that’s part of The Plan. Like Trump’s toupe when it flips up and reveals his hairless pate, the grotesquerie IS the Point. Anyone who’s seen the legendary Twilight Zone Episode, “Eye of the Beholder,” where a young woman, (Donna Douglas, fun fact, later of Ellie Mae fame) wakes up in a hospital bed, head wrapped in bandages, only to have the gauze ripped off to groans of horror by all present. Because - everybody duck! - she is NOT a mutant. But they are. It’s the mutants who have the power!
And there it is. The real mark of control, and status, in today’s Extremo Right autocracy, is a mug like Rondo Hatten’s. (Look it up.) Because, if you think about it, you don’t see folks with faces like Matt or Kitty bagging groceries or driving buses. You have to have money and power to look so completely depraved…When Jerry Lewis hit the prednisone and showed up at a telethon with his head the size of a truck tire, people thought he’d lost his mind. Now Trump would probably make him Surgeon General. Why not? Gaetz, at the convention, looked like his face had eaten his face and then eaten Wayne Newton’s face. And why not? If you’re not altered, top to bottom - and I mean bottom - you’re not in with the Nazilicious elite. Rumors that Trump has demanded all MAGAs, male and female, undergo Amber Rose-style ass enhancement, are, as of now, only rumors. Then again…. Since his Botox debut, nobody’s seen Matt with his pants off. Not on cable news. Though Matt has let slip he received a coveted Trump 24 Man Mumu, hand-delivered by Ronny “Addie Boy” Jackson.
Jokes about Trump’s ample keister were around before the whole Is-it-or-Isn’t-It a diaper controversy. But now, to be in with the elites, it is not enough to alter your face, you’ve got to expand your nether real estate as well. To show allegiance to Maximum Don, you’ll soon need to own a Republican caboose as sizable as the leader’s - with extra lip-room for all your followers’ kisses. All true. Expect to see JD Vance rocking a red tie, fresh eyelift, and double-wide Dockers on the campaign trail.
But fuck me. Listen! None of this – photos, typos, cupping, pony play – was meant to be here. Seriously! It avails me nothing to explain, but some of you have subscribed, and you deserve an explanation. As best the Substack security pros can figure, my Double S (as the kids say) has been hacked, and somebody’s trying to make me look bad by sticking in random visuals. It happens. You just have to roll with it. As James Joyce liked to say before barfing up his Jameson, “You can’t spell shame without ‘me.’”
“But where were we?
Oh right.
I CONFESS: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Asshole (Take Two)
So, okay: it’s 1975, I’m 22, and over the moon about bullshitting my way into The Village Voice, where I’ve somehow persuaded an editor to assign me a piece on Confession Magazines.
The Voice! Just stepping into the building, I think, like a total lit-rube, I am walking where Mailer walked. I could not be more excited! Until, that is, the reality of actually having to go and interview strangers sets in, and the excitement morphs to rank anxiety.
(Sidenote: Not a lot of folks still mention Norman Mailer… It’s understandable, what with the whole tried-to-murder-his-wife-with-a-pen-knife-at-a-drunken-party thing. On the other hand – talk about progress! - we’re about to put an adjudicated rapist in the White House. Of course, unlike the weed and booze-addled Mailer, Donald Trump, as defenders will tell you, is stone sober. Unless you count the Addies. But that’s medicine! From Doctor Ronny! And you can always tell he’s done too much by the flecks of foam and bagel paste flying from his mouth during rallies. What can you do? Unlike Mailer, Trump never knifed his ex-wife, just sexually assaulted her (according to Ivana herself) and buried the poor woman on the 11th hole – I might have that wrong - at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course. As one does.
And who are we to judge? Maybe the whole bury-your-wife-at-your-golf-course thing is not just a tax dodge. Maybe it was Ivana’s idea. Perhaps Don Junior’s mom became spiritual in her later years. And, as penance for marrying Trump, wanted to be walked on by fat white guys in high-waisted slacks after death… (I knew a woman who wanted her ashes ground up and secretly mixed in with her husband’s KY. But that’s a different saga for a different time… )
By way of backstory, to return to my own fuckups, Confession Magazines - the subject of this ancient article, and source all this drama - were glossy newsstand publications devoted to stories of secret sin, tales of lust and torment; the passion, struggles and fantasies of men and women in a world so bleak that reading about debauchery was as close as many in the audience would get to enjoying any. (“I MARRIED AN EX-NUN AND DIVORCED HER FOR ADULTERY!” “I LET A MAN KEEP ME… Must I Marry Him?” Etc… )
What’s more damning, these narratives, to my callow, 23 year old self, were straight-up hilarious, and - in my massively delusional mind - harkened back to the legend of Nathanael West steaming open guests’ mail at the Kenmore Hotel in NYC, where he was night manager, reading these private missives out loud and laughing hysterically with Dashiell Hammett, James T. Farrell, and the rest of the demented literary lushes he let live there on the cheap. West, not surprisingly, was writing his first masterpiece, Miss Lonelyhearts, at the time. (“Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, I was born without a nose… “) What better turf, for a young writer, than making carnival with other peoples’ pain?
Speaking of: the most powerful quote in the whole Voice article– “The difference between me and my readers is that my I.Q. is over 40” - was not one the interviewee actually uttered while I was speaking with her. Which is not to imply that she didn’t say it. Or I made it up. God no! More like, she did say it. Just not, you know, to me…
What I mean, your honor, is that I heard her say it in an elevator, when I was on my way to the interview. And, owning no moral compass whatsoever - not to mention never having gone to J school – I stuck the eavesdropped quotation right there in the article.
Which, needless to say, was quite a surprise for the woman who didn’t say it to me … The confession mag editrix who, let’s not forget, was nice enough to make time in her busy day to talk to me in the first place.
Grim but true… When the article dropped, I had about half a day to enjoy my triumph before things veered into Uh-Oh-Land. First my Voice editor – let’s call him Elliot - received a call from the swells at Macfadden Publishing. Something about my “egregious behavior.” Then I was summoned back down to the Voice offices at Sheridan Square, where the editor bade me (bade me? When did Charles Dickens get here?) to stand and listen to another call from the angry confession human. Whose screams, by now, were so loud that Elliot, God bless him, simply held the phone away from his head and massaged his graying temples. (Which, thanks to my behavior, were getting grayer by the second.)
After this bit of theater, said editor chewed me out a little more before declaring - be still my heart – that if I ever wanted to write for the Voice, or anywhere else again, I had to go back and apologize to the lady whose words I, had, as he said (rather quaintly) purloined.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he yelled after me, as I was skulking out of his office. At which point, like the sullen teen I’d been only a few years earlier, I sort of lowered my eyes and mumbled, “I wasn’t.”
All of this, I hasten to add for you youngsters, was pre-internet, pre-smart phone, pre-everything that banishes the horror of in-person communication. Meaning, of course, that my 23-year-old ass could not read about my offense, from afar, in a vicious email, while curled up in fetal position on the floor. (I am in fact, going fetal now, just thinking about it.) No, I had to stand there while every other human in Voice Editorial, be they copy editor, assistant fern waterer, or Xerox copy machine repairman, gathered round to stare and point.
Fast forward to Confessions Central, on 33rd and Park (I think), where I passed through another gauntlet of professional magazine folk, before it was time for a one-on-one with Susan Breslaun, the woman I’d wronged, about my heinous behavior. My strategy, cooked up on the spot, was to simply nod humbly at every charge she levelled, just throw myself on the mercy of the court.
Unethical? Check!
Unprofessional? Yep.
Sleazy? Absolutely!
My inquisitor, a handsome woman in her forties, worked a serious permanent wave, lustrous auburn, and every time she asked a question she kind of touched her hair lightly, as if checking that I hadnt made her go bald.
In the end, I simply agree to every charge. Which, I believe, threw my interlocutor. (And proved an estimable strategy years later, in the full bloom of junkie-hood, when caught red-handed, say, by the camera over the cash machine in my ex-wife’s bank. “You’re right, honey. I did take your ATM card. I’m a monster….“)
Lesson learned!
There is an awkward pause - more like a chasm - after which the Queen of Confessions asks, with more curiosity than rancor, “You know we could sue, right?”
I nod meekly. And then, to my surprise - and eternal gratitude - she laughs in my face. “They tell me this was a your first article. You’re lucky. Nobody who reads these mags is ever going to read the Voice, but you’re still a fucking idiot… And trust me, honey, in this life, you only get to be an idiot once…”
Words to live by.
Typical brilliant work- this just in from the morbid understatement department- you got STORIES. You have inspired me to post a short piece from my new book somewhere on here!