Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Instant Karma ... Just Add Porn.


The other day I was looking for photos of ice hotels (let’s just get past that) and I have no idea how, steered by what kind of fuzzy internet logic, but I was linked to a site featuring nothing but “inspirational stories.” Well, first of all, I didn’t even know it was a genre – I mean, it doesn’t come as any surprise, I just tend to veer away from the word “inspirational,” as in “inspirational speaker” – which is exactly the kind of inspirational it is. But anyway, print addict that I am, I started reading it. And as I was reading it – and it was pretty horrible, but more on that later -- I kept thinking, why is this so familiar? Wherever would I have read this kind of prose before? Wooden, stilted, with perfunctory dialogue, and an utterly -- comfortingly, almost -- predictable storyline. And then it hit me: porn stories. The internet is, of course, a repository for all the sexual flotsam that doesn’t pass easily through our social filters, and so there is no shortage of “erotic fiction” online, and I can’t say I haven’t dipped into that flotsam, so to speak, on occasion. Although I have to say that “erotic” is misleading, since much of this stuff is bluntly singleminded in its approach, far more suiting the word “porn” (which for some reason brings to mind the word “dork” – it’s about that elegant – and of course they both are four-letter words with “or” in the middle, but there is also another level on which they intersect; I think it’s the fact that “porn” + “dork” = “pork,” and “pork” is a smutty kind of word, in fact a horrible word, I would say, for copulation. And also: Deliverance). And of course bluntly singleminded is exactly what the inspirational stories were too. The whole story, in both genres, is a kind of sloppy construction that is supposed to allow the inevitable climax to seem like a natural, perhaps unanticipated, event.

Perhaps you would like to know more about what is contained within these inspirational stories before I go any further. Of course you do. You’re crouching at the peephole; I can hear your heavy breathing. Okay. The plot of the very story I was first linked to is this: There is a slow-witted, shall we say retarded, busboy working at a roadside diner. He is a really hard worker and earnest, but his good qualities are outshone by his appearance and demeanor. One day a whole group of bikers – bear with me here, I didn’t read it very closely and I’m not sure I committed all the salient details to memory – anyway, this group of bikers swings by. At the end of the day there’s an envelope at the till with the retarded boy’s name on it – let’s call him Johnny – and the waitress turns it over in her hands, wondering what it could be. When she opens it (I don’t know why he doesn’t open it himself) she finds $10,000, all of it for Johnny. Don’t worry, she gives it to him.

Another story: a woman in a Mercedes is stranded at the roadside. A poor man in a beat-up Pontiac comes to her aid. His name is Joe. After he gets her car started again, she tries to give him money, but he refuses, saying something like “Tell you what. You just do a good deed for someone else, okay?” Okay. So she’s motoring along and she decides to stop by a roadside café (!) to have pie and coffee. She notices the waitress (!!) is weary and pregnant but serves her with good cheer and never complains (!!!), so when Mercedes lady pays up, she leaves a $100 bill and slips out before getting change (!!!!). She leaves a note saying something to the effect of, Someone did me a good deed today, and I’m doing this for him. The pregnant lady is touched. When she gets home that night her hubby’s in bed, all tuckered out from his hard day at work. And the pregnant lady touches his cheek and says “Goodnight, Joe,” or words to that effect.

See? Both types of storytelling (porn/inspirational) end with the money shot. And of course, sexual ecstasy and spiritual ecstasy are not so removed from one another (I believe Leonard Cohen exists to illustrate this fact) but neither is achieved easily and without complications. However, in this fantasy realm, simultaneous orgasm and instant karma happen as easily as slipping on ice (who falls off logs these days?).

But the inspirational stories offend me more. They aren’t inherently more offensive – they’re no more offensive than anyone’s simple recipes for happiness. But when I ask myself which epiphanic moment seems more honest and less sickly, porn or inspirational, I have to vote for porn. Sex is already tawdry and furtive, with a goodly portion of selfishness, and so selfish little fantasies about it are not surprising. But the selfish little fantasies about instant karma (and they are selfish – the thrust of these stories is, Humility and hard work sees its rewards, so keep working, because – this is the important part -- it could happen to you and you want that money, don’t you?) seem to contradict the very point they’re illustrating. The best way to get a lot of money, these stories suggest, is to be the kind of person you aren’t -- someone uninterested in money. But you can pretend. Which is, in itself, in utter contradiction to the kind of moralism you’re subscribing to. Frankly, few things revolt me more than self-denial masquerading as high-mindedness. One thing you can say for sex: it rarely presents itself in the guise of virtue.

Now: look at the woman in the photo. Does she seem more like a porn star or an adherent of instant karma? No, she can’t be both. You can’t tell, can you? Well, read on.

That’s Kelly Foxton! Oh no, you probably know her pet better: the World’s Most Photographed Squirrel, Sugar Bush Squirrel! If you would like to experience the heady sensation of laughing at something that simultaneously terrifies you, visit the site! You will be positively a-tingle with fear and amusement, I promise you.

(After seeing the site there’s no question in your mind which side she falls on, is there?)

While I’m on the topic of terrifying/funny, the KKK has a line of merchandise you can see if you have the stomach, or balls, or guts, or whatever it takes, to visit their website. Confederate-flag hair scrunchies and necklace pendants (because teens are always so hard to buy for), a cross-burning mouse pad, KKK drink coasters (because even hate-mongerers worry about rings on their coffee table), a Confederate-flag dog collar. The banality of evil, indeed.