GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #808: BENSENVILLE '94, MY PART

 Before we begin today you might want to check this out. Rob's been a friend of mine since high school. Right now he's recovering from having a bionic penile implant installed. The old one had a pump that shit the bed. Before he can test it out and stretch the flesh, as it were, I figured I'd put this out there and talk about those days.

The reason I met Rob, who was one year ahead of me at York Community High School in Elmhurst, was because we shared the same English teacher, a man named Mark Sibley. I hope he's still alive. He was a cool cat. Former NBA player. He got kicked out because he worshiped at the altar of cocaine. He was one of the weirdest teachers I ever had. He learned early on that I wanted to be an author, and I was writing my ass off. Turned out, he knew another writer in another class. He had us switch stories to give each other feedback.

My memory is starting to fail me. I think what happened was, Rob got my story and red penned it, and I got it back. Mr. Sibley never gave me Rob's story. Regardless, we saw each other around school and at McDonald's. The first time he came over was because Rob made friends with my cousin, Erik, first. He was Erik's guest, and I'm pretty sure Matt was there. I know Holsted wasn't there. Holsted never came over to my place.

But before long Rob and I hit it off. Fast forward more than 30 years later, and we're still friends. We've had our ups and downs, as all friendships do, but that was the foundation all those years ago. I know we were friends by 1993, but  we might have met sometime in 1992, which was the start of my freshman year.

"The Dark" truly is atrocious. Even back then we knew it was bad. But that easy chair joke is still going strong. It's all right. Remember a while back when I said I sucked when I started out? He was witness to that, and I know he's reading this right now. One thought is going through his head: "Write It Down."

Anthony Havershame. The less said about him, the better. Because this character was actually based on a real person, and I don't know if that person ever found out it was me. He might even be lurking on some of your friends lists. I'm not going to go into the genesis of that series, but I will say that I use a variation of that name as a pseudonym today. If I'm writing gay erotica, then I'm writing it under the name Anthony Haversham. You can find his work in Indulge For Men.

Did you see my interview with John Wayne Comunale? He did it for his Patreon subscribers. We were talking about my past as a porn writer. I told him the name of the magazine, but he kept saying Honcho instead. I understood the joke at the time, but since then I've actually seen Honcho in the wild, and it makes me laugh harder now.

Anyway, I did stop writing about young Anthony's adventures, but Rob talked me into starting a new series with him as coauthor featuring a similar character but far more deranged. He was cunningly named Richard Thruster. He went on to become a star at our school. A big fish in a small pond. Not bad. But we crossed a lot of lines in that series and even wrote one of our teachers into it. One of Rob's friends decided to leave a copy anonymously on that teacher's desk. They never caught me. Rob might have been a suspect because, well, as a life-long criminal, he's usually suspect #1. But I was the good, quiet kid who never rocked the boat. I was like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expected me.

Look at me now. Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

One more thing before I go. He called me "astute," but also added that I pretend that I'm not. Dammit, man. You can't just tell the world that! I make it a habit of ensuring people underestimate me. How can I do that if they know my game?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #759: PEN NAMES

 I don't think I've ever done a thing about the various other names I've written under, so I thought perhaps I'd go down the list here. Compared to other authors I don't have all that many pen names. I probably should have written everything under a pen name, considering how my writing cost me a good job once upon a time, but what the hell. Here's the list.

In high school I tried writing stories under the pen name [redacted]. Ho-ho, why is this redacted? Because I actually use the name in my upcoming sex book. I just finished the first draft last week, and I thought it would be funny to throw it in there. I can only think of two people reading this who might recall that pen name, so I want to see if anyone else can catch it. It's kind of easy, though. Good luck finding it!

I also wrote gay porn under the pen name Anthony Haversham. It's a variation on the name of a character I used to write in high school. It's too long a story to go into here, but I used to write these horrible tales about an insipid masturbator's adventures in masturbation. He eventually morphed into another character named Richard Thruster (heh) cowritten with one of my friends who is probably reading this now and is one of the two who will remember that other pen name. I wrote "Bobby Yandell, Private Investigator" under this name, as well as its sequel, "My Dick is Quick." I also wrote "Cocksmoke," my porn parody of Gunsmoke, under this name.

I wrote another story under that name, but the editor decided to change it for publication. I'm OK with that because this one was a hetero porn story. I don't even remember the actual title because it was published as a letter to Penthouse. I was writing fiction for Penthouse, but Penthouse Variations picked it up instead, and they wanted it to be in a letter format. Haversham turned into Walter K. of Dallas, TX. Unlike many letters to Penthouse, this was actually based on a true story of what happened to me. Remember when I said I used to be a distance man? A girlfriend once made me cum in my own eye, and that's what this story was about. Imagine my disappointment when I read the published version to see they'd wrung all the humor out of it and tried to class it up. Ah well.

I wrote one story under the name Jack F. Graves. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's a stupid pen name. I'm the edgiest edgelord who ever edged. I thought it was cool and even kind of funny. I published "Pimp of the Living Dead" under that one. I'm almost certain I included it in Tales of Questionable Taste, but I'm too lazy to look it up. It was originally in the first issue of Tabard Inn, which I'd put together with the help of friends. I didn't want it to seem too much like a friends-only fiction magazine, so I made up Jack Graves on the spot.

Lastly I wrote the book [REDACTED AS A MOTHERFUCKER] under the pen name [also redacted] because if I released it under my name, I'm pretty sure someone would have killed me by now. I didn't even use Amazon for it. I had to use another company, one that doesn't strike me as all that important, because I knew I'd probably never be able to publish another book through them again. Surprisingly this book has yet to be pulled from that site, possibly because very few people know about it.

I'm fairly certain that's it, but I've been drunk for a solid decade and change, so something might have slipped through the cracks. Only a handful of people know who wrote that last book, and I'd like to keep it that way. But in all honesty, looking back on it, that book has my style stamped all over it. I'd be shocked if someone who knew me well read it and didn't think I'd written it.

Good luck getting that title out of me, by the way.