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“The single brilliantly funny voice of something genuinely new.”

– Walter Benn Michaels, author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism and The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History

“In fiction of this sort, there is huge pressure on the line-by-line life of the prose. Happily, it is in the energy and inventiveness of its language that this novel is most alive. Because that is what the work is finally about, that wonderful redundancy we call ‘art,’ showing us once again...the way from death to life.”
—Curtis White, American Book Review

From take-off to landing, The Pornographers moves at the speed of sound through post 9/11 angst, yoga, bureaucratic helplessness, marriage, collective public insecurity and family. A group of minor bureaucrats operating under the unfunded directive of “Homeland Security” try to start a commercial pornography site in order to generate revenue for their city. Their research into the the porn industry does in fact suggest it as a viable solution to their economic woes. Meanwhile their wives threaten to follow a guru to India in search of their own inner security. Written as a single, grammatically correct sentence, The Pornographers humorously lays bare the real and serious concerns about America in the 21st Century.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Grimes is the author of Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella (FC2, 2005). His stories have appeared in Western Humanities Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Reed, Cream City Review, First Intensity, KNOCK, and elsewhere. He teaches literature and fiction writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

© 2013 copyright Christopher Grimes

First digital edition. All rights reserved.
First trade paperback edition published Janaury 3, 2012.

ISBN: 978-1-937543-35-8

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information please visit http://jadedibisproductions.com

Published by Jaded Ibis Press, sustainable literature by digital means™
An imprint of Jaded Ibis Productions, LLC, Seattle, WA USA

Cover and interior art by Scott Zieher. Cover design by Melissa Walker.

This book is also available in digital and fine art limited editions. Visit our website for more information.

Excerpts from this manuscript have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal and KNOCK.

for Maria Luisa Basualdo
without whom this book would not have been written

WINTER 2001

The United States of America

The next to last item before the Budget Committee, a proposal for a direct-to-Internet video production — tentatively titled Flight 69 and told, we’re briefed, exclusively through the eyes of the main character (evidently some dude named Abdul) — finds us airborne in an aisle seat, the black and white countdown leader of an in-flight movie flickering at the front of the cabin, next to which, the movie screen, stands a severe looking flight attendant, described as one of those stone-faced Frigidaires all buttoned up with her hair pulled back, her mouth a glossy, thin-lipped scar, none of which strike us as too promising, what with the antiseptic and generally problematical setting of an airplane, to say nothing of all the scowling, until it’s revealed that the in-flight movie is actually an adult feature, a solemn orgy filmed and presented in vintage Super 8, a welcome development despite its contributing to an already overly-complicated scenario, including, it’s pointed out, such additional logic discrepancies as to how the feature was pre-loaded into the inter-cabin entertainment system in the first place (one wonders aloud if we have the makings of a comedy here), but even these more or less logistical concerns now evaporate, at least temporarily, with the revelation of the extraordinarily sexy specimen we’re introduced to, sitting right next to us in the window seat, a stone-cold knockout squeezing out dollops of hand cream on her hands, rubbing the hand cream in, dollopful by dollopful, periodically glancing at us, languidly pushing an auburn curtain of hair aside with the top of her oily wrist so that we can see the blunt, rounded tops of her teeth and a suggestion of the tongue there in the pink center of a seductive, full lipped smile, prompting us to speak, to ask (importantly, it’s emphasized) to where is [sic] you going, delivered almost in a whisper, the effect defined as some kind of foreign accent, one she’s perhaps having difficulty placing, too, because she’s still just sitting here mutely, still just smiling, continuing to rub that hand cream on her hands, probably wondering, as we do, if the accent is along the lines of an Arnold Schwarzenegger, say, who sounds a lot to us like a younger Henry Kissinger, when she finally offers up her singular reply, drawing out the word vacation, snapping the lid of her hand cream shut after saying it, our gaze moving jerkily from the hand cream bottle to her breasts — described here as not too big and not too little, definitely natural, just right — although it’s imperative to the plot, we’re told, that we peel our eyes off of them, what’s described as that stupendous rack of hers, and instead look back down to the tray table that’s been obscuring a view to our lap, lifted now to reveal that in our one hand is a gun, and in the other, an enormous erection, an erection so impressive in its enormity that Hot Babe drops her hand cream, a look of horror on her face (we don’t know if it’s the gun or the erection pointed in her direction that frightens her at this point), a look on her face that clearly comprehends the instant truth of the matter that we ourselves give voice to — that this shit going [sic] down, bitch, and so are you — and after giving it, the harrowing pronouncement, we reach out and grab her by the arm, forcing her to stand up for the purpose of dragging her to the front of the aircraft, right up to where the severe looking, buttoned-up Frigidaire stands, presumably still at the spot where earlier she had demonstrated the adjustment mechanism of our seat belts, and where she continues to stand, a force to be reckoned with, because we’re taking control of this plane, goddamnit, taking over Flight 69, and in clear demonstration of the fact, we briskly shove Frigidaire out of the aisle, pluck the inter-cabin telecom unit off the wall and announce that you American bitches, exporting your lust and various so-called degradations and seductive ways — something along these lines, it’s explained, as this is simply a rough sketch and some dialogue will need to be re-, well, thunk — well, now you will see what it means to get fucked, we command, motioning to suddenly not-so-severe-looking, but still humorless Fridge (her flight attendant cap having fallen off from the shove, she now stands to reveal a glowing mane of blonde hair) with the barrel of our gun, and we order her, the once frigid figure now thawing before our eyes (things are getting a bit complicated, it’s admitted), to come here, an order that she at once obeys (we maintain both gun and erection, after all), nervously stepping towards us, taking tentative, sideways looks at the passengers, her charges, as if to spy the answer to the question of why, exactly, she’s here in the first place, what her purpose is, what she should do next, a studied and severe authority (albeit increasingly sexy), fortuitously conversant in and therefore presumably able to translate the incomprehensible language we’re barking at our captive audience (in other words, we appear to have exhausted our English vocabulary by this time in the presentation), which she does, translate, for the rest of the passengers, all of whom we are surprised to now discover are women, who must, the flight attendant says on our behalf, take off their pants and skirts, and now their shirts, followed by the bra and those panties, so that when everyone is sitting in their seats naked, we pick Hot Babe up — the other, initial passenger, not the hot, at this point, Flight Attendant — and turn her over in mid-air, her legs pointing straight up like fireplace tongs, which we proceed to spread, the legs/tongs, and run our tongue along the folds of her vagina, momentarily stopping to tell Flight Attendant to tell her, Hot Babe whose vagina we’re licking, to reciprocate (for such is the Flight Attendant’s dilemma, the contract that she has with Hot Babe, and indeed all the other passengers, that she must faithfully deliver our demands in order to save them all, an unenviable position, to be sure, and one that we doubtless relate to), executed, the fellatio, at first hesitantly and in great fear, and voila, a standing 69 — hence the title — although thusly engaged we still frequently eye the other passengers suspiciously, we’re told, but they, too, are getting aroused (in any event our point of view reveals that there’s lots of lip licking among them), so we wave the gun, telling now naked Flight Attendants to communicate our directive that you American sluts, you get fucking or else, and that’s all it takes, apparently, because there’s a sudden swarm of groping, a fuckfest, someone offers, at 30,000 feet, citing the description as possible promotional copy, which, particularly as we’re beginning to run short on time — to say nothing of the fact that the decision of whether or not we really want pursue actual production, as opposed to just the distribution of content is still a source of serious debate — provides an opportune segue to the other, related item on the agenda, Trends Analysis, though before leaving the first item for the moment, it should be made clear that despite the obvious cost prohibitions of the scenario just reviewed (re: setting, specifically the building or procuring of a commercial aircraft hull), it represents the kind of out-of-the box thinking that might well get us through our critical, at this point critically chronic budget shortfall, and although we’re given to understand that this was a summary of part one of the entire production, and part one only, we agree it’s sufficiently illustrative of the general thrust of the concept, and that, despite the obvious financial restrictions such a production would be made to labor under, it deserves further consideration (though perhaps in a modified form), but be that as it may, for the moment at least, we’d do well to put it aside in order to get to the second item on the agenda, the Comptroller’s analysis of trends, rooted, he prefaces, squarely in the Pew Charitable Trust’s latest poll indicating that a full 82.5% of American males aged 18 to 40 accessed Internet pornography at least once last month, that 33.6% of American females in the same age group are reported to have accessed Internet pornography during the same period, both trajectories therefore leading us to the inescapable conclusion that there’s lots and lots and lots of accessing of pornography via Internet going on even as he, the Comptroller, speaks, that the accessing of Internet pornography has become a mainstream, so-called populist activity, statistically speaking (although, he says, given the relatively narrow scope of the Pew study, certain extrapolations needed to be made to account for broader demographics, and that we therefore might need to adjust our business plan accordingly in order to accommodate such information, as encouraging as it is), a statistical spike in consumer demand perhaps on the one hand attributable to — and here the Comptroller is just thinking out loud — the sudden, widespread availability of low cost, high quality digital cameras allowing a producer to focus on creating output that appeals to the more idiosyncratic and fetishistic tastes of the consumer, tastes historically too narrow in their interests for a producer with mass-market ambitions, and, on the other, all of the demands, simply speaking, made on our time, the fact that we have no more time left, the Comptroller continues, not a spare minute, plain and simple, nothing more than a couple of minutes maybe to do anything, so that the average, basic consumer isn’t going to waste his time with all the rigmarole that gets in the way of the excitement, no, because he needs the thing right here, right now, and besides pornography is pretty much your Reader’s Digest condensed version anyway — what with its short build up, etcetera, as per discussion in the earlier example — all boiling down to expectation, because that guy who’s thinking about the quote, unquote cum shot (a theme that he’ll take up more diligently later in his analysis, he says) is thinking about the so-called cum shot long before he sits down in front of the computer, meaning this guy’s on the bus thinking about that cum shot, reading the lists of names of the dearly departed in the newspaper obits while vaguely thinking about that cum shot waiting at home for him, so that when he doesmoney shotlet it all ridethinyoungwhitelongblondelesbianbigmonsterhugeover 12 inchesfatthickmassivetighttinylittlesmallrealBob Lerner’s Field Guide toAnimal Tracking in the American Midwestobsceneaverage377%alreadyinLate-Late ShowniceYou’re WelcomeThe Price Is RightneedMayor stands firmShoppera period of thoughtless reposerelaxchoosechooseanymakeeveractuallyiswarPeaceusthemashrama mediating responseNo Peace, No Pussy,hereperturbedIntroductoryGuide to the SutrascoachedzingnotIntroductory GuideunionyokesutrathreadsuturesThe Yoga Sutras of 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