Dirty Books

Next in my series of interviews to celebrate the release of the brand-new Outcast Press anthology Slut Vomit: Volume 2, here are Brandon Mead (‘Toppings’), JD Clapp (‘Lot Lizard’) and Annabel Costello (‘Dead Fish’) discussing their respective contributions!

Firstly, how would you pitch your story to potential readers?

BM: ‘Toppings’ is a darkly humorous, brutally intimate look into the world of queer adult film, exploring performance, identity, rough sex, and survival. Feenix Blu identifies as straight, but that doesn’t matter—his job is to pretend, just like everyone does in some way to get through their workday. He doesn’t need to like his coworkers; he’s there to play his role and create art (even if it does end up just a looped gif ripped from a DVD copy of Pig Breeders 6). Between takes, behind the pizza boxes and cheap craft services, there’s tension, cold cream of mushroom soup in a syringe, and quiet calculations of what each scene costs. Because whether it’s sex work or any other job, the truth is the same: we trade pieces of ourselves for a paycheck, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, there’s pizza involved.

JDC: A chance encounter between a dying man heading on one last road trip and a young, runaway lot lizard results in a tiny bit of grace for both.

AC: ‘Dead Fish’ is a story about Bunny, a (part-time) rent boy who gets a gig role-playing as a corpse for some (part-time) swingers, which isn’t all that much different to how he normally feels when getting fucked. It seems dark on the page, with Bunny mostly just going through the motions of how people want to have sex with him sex rather than having any personal interest in the act himself, but I hope people can see the humour in it too. Someone who is seemingly stuck in this bizarre situation, but who finds it isn’t even half as bad as anyone might expect – turns out he’s actually pretty good at it. ‘Dead Fish’ is a story about bodily autonomy and alienation, it’s about judgement and about how sex isn’t always about sex.

Themed anthologies offer a unique challenge. Did your story turn out how you expected?

BM: I started with the idea of sex work as a job like any other—one where you have coworkers you may not like but still have to collaborate with, just like making it through an eight-hour shift at a more “traditional” workplace. But beyond that, I wanted to explore how all work is a form of performance. In the story, Feenix Blu is pretending to be gay to do his job, just as people in any profession perform as versions of themselves to fit expectations—whether it’s customer service smiles, corporate small talk, or suppressing parts of their identity to appear “professional.” The pizza in the story became a stand-in for the small rewards we use to push through the performance, whether it’s a paycheck, a bonus, or just the relief of being done. I wanted to challenge the idea that some forms of labor are more valid or respectable than others, when in reality, we’re all selling something—our time, our bodies, our personas—to make a living. In the end, I think I achieved what I set out to do, showing that work is work, and we’re allowed to be proud of the things that we’re good at, even if society refuses to see it that way.

JDC: I carved this story out of a chapter of a novel in progress I was writing. It was dumb luck that the call came out just as I was finishing this chapter!

AC: The first volume of Slut Vomit was a fantastic read, literally full to the brim with brilliant writers and unconventional stories, so I had a pretty good idea of where I could take my own piece when I started working on it for Volume 2. ‘Dead Fish’ was specifically written with Slut Vomit 2 in mind and it began with one question: what would be an interesting fetish to write about? Corpse-fucking (faux, of course) turned out to be the answer. I started with the straight forward series of events – boy meets swingers, swingers want to get freaky, boy plays dead – and then looked at how that story could be told. With a close-third person narration that serves partly as Bunny’s inner monologue, it leaves a lot more space for developing the character (especially as this is Bunny’s debut, as well as my own) and providing details as to why he navigates the situation as he does. I don’t think I entirely expected how well my chosen fetish would align with my character. Bunny already existed in my mind – and in some haphazard drafts – but I think I surprised myself with just how much of his backstory could come into play. With writing for Slut Vomit, it’s a case of the more perverted the better, anything and everything dirty is encouraged, and as it happens, it’s very fulfilling to use all the dirty stuff as a vehicle for the anguish.

What is your favourite transgressive novel or short story collection, and why?

BM: Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted sticks with me—not just because of ‘Guts’, though that story’s structure is legendary—but because of how the collection frames suffering as entertainment. The whole book is about the human need to make something out of pain, to turn it into currency, whether for fame, power, or survival. That resonates with me, especially in ‘Toppings’, where the main character builds his identity around what others want from him… and also what he’s willing to do to get a jetski.

JDC: For me it would be Factotum [by Charles Bukowski]. I think it is a great example of folks living on the fringe. I like the time-period as well.

AC: The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. Not only is this my favourite piece of transgressive fiction, but it is also hands-down my favourite novel of all time. Told through the pages of a forum dedicated to rating its members encounters with the rent boys of Los Angeles, we find ourselves as bystanders to a world of exploitation, depravity, and violence (of all varieties). I’ve never read a book that made me feel so complicit in a character’s suffering. The kinks and taboos documented in this work go to some of the furthest extremes and Cooper holds absolutely nothing back – the good the bad and the ugly are all on display and only draw you further in because you just have to know how far it’ll go. The epistolary structure of the novel is tight and intricate, each thread and each user woven together to create an astonishingly realistic forum experience on the page. I promise I am not exaggerating when I say this novel changed my life. It changed how I approach the ever-growing True Crime “community”, it changed how I approach and engage with fiction full stop. It compelled me. This is the book that made me want to write the stories I write, that made it feel possible to write the stories that I want to write. If I could write anything even half as compelling and upsetting and gut-wrenching as The Sluts, then I could die a very happy woman. The rest of Dennis Cooper’s bibliography is staggering too, of course – he’s got an unmistakable voice, a sense of total authenticity when giving us insight into the gnarly, dark mundanity of the situations he writes about – and while the George Miles Cycle is infamous for a reason, I’ll always have a special soft spot just for The Sluts.

Finally, if you could pitch an anthology focused on any subject, what would you choose and why?

BM: I’d love an anthology on planned obsolescence, but applied to people—bodies with expiration dates, relationships designed to break, careers with built-in dead ends. Transgressive fiction thrives on exposing the cracks in systems we take for granted, and what’s more unsettling than realizing you were never meant to last? It’s a theme that invites stories about disposability—of workers, lovers, even entire identities—while challenging the idea that self-worth is tied to usefulness. It could manifest in horror, satire or something surreal, but at its core, it would be about the fight to matter in a world that’s already planned your replacement.

JDC: Well… I’m putting one together now! Anxiety Press, Holiday themed. Working title is Merry Gritmas!

AC: An amazing question, but also a difficult one. Slut Vomit itself is such an amazing anthology concept, and lines up so perfectly with the type of stuff that I love to read and write – weird people having weird sex. But, if I were to pitch my own anthology, I think it’d be about a theme I’ve touched on already: Sex That Isn’t Sex. There has been a bit of a resurgence in using more macabre or rather obscure concepts (cannibalism, vampirism, contact sports, industrial machinery) to represent sex and sexuality in fiction. Is it a response to the rise of modern purity culture and our fears over the growing surveillance state? Probably, but it also feels inherently queer to find connection through the strange and unconventional. I am a huge lover of finding sexuality in unexpected places, and the as well as looking at how a certain sort of detachment from sexuality allows you to engage with it in a completely different way. I’d love to read more stories about sex-that-isn’t-sex. Sex that doesn’t feel sexual and kink that isn’t about pleasure. Then on the flip side, I want to read stories that explore passion in ways that might not be perceived as sexual but most definitely are. Alienation from conventional sexuality. Eroticism in something other than the body. An anthology like that could lend itself not only to realism and transgressive works, but genre pieces too – horror and sci-fi are so full of questions about humanity and our responses to the bizarre or awful or strange – and the beauty of sex is that it’s up for interpretation. What do you consider to be sex that isn’t sex?

Amazon UK link.

Amazon US link.