Interview: Joey Comeau

Lockpick Pornography
by Kathy Cacace

Knowing full well that the most pretentious way to begin writing about a book is to make a sweeping statement about the cultural climate (especially a review of a book that is all about fucking shit up), I’m doing it anyway: times are tense.  An even worse way to begin a book review is to strike the 9/11 gong, which I’m still going to do after this colon:  since then, terror has taken on monstrous characteristics and vague proportions.  Elevations in the Terror Alert level are as common (and colorful) as approaching rainstorms on Doppler radar.

It’s impossible to talk about a book like Joey Comeau’s Lockpick Pornography without first considering the way things like terror, gender, family values, and even the publishing industry are currently constructed, because every page in this grenade of a novel is written to blow them to bits.  Everything is fair game to be smashed and reconstituted, from the boundaries of gender to the proper way to handle a closed door.  This tiny, self-published spitfire also manages in turn to be funny, awkward and tender, all strung together with explicit, cover-your-kid’s-eyes sex and violence.  

The first seven chapters of Lockpick Pornography appeared on the internet several months before the book began arriving, hand-addressed, in mailboxes across the globe.  Comeau, also known as the wordsmith behind web comic A Softer World, posted his then incomplete novel (and a small Paypal donation button) online in order to raise money for his tuition bill.  He and a friend later formed Loose Teeth Press, published the book, and distribute the copies themselves.

The DIY spirit behind Lockpick Pornography’s production is also a major driving force of the novel itself.  Opening with the narrator kicking his boot through a TV screen and ending with haphazard kidnapping, the story unwinds in a series of home brewed, grassroots plots to save the world from heterosexuality.  The narrator, his lover Richard, their friend Michelle, and her lover Alex, who toes the line between man and woman (and Richard and Michelle) comprise gang of subversive queers bent on redefining gender and sexuality by whatever means necessary.  Their revolution, in its infancy, comes in the form of Jackass-style pranks pulled on unsuspecting heterosexuals at the mall.

As interested in distributing transgender children’s literature as they are fist fighting in the mall, the foursome evolves in small steps from radical activism to what could be called terrorism with the decision to commit a kidnapping.  As the narrator moves through increasingly intense situations in the name of a cause that becomes less and less clear, the line between justice and malice, like every boundary Comeau presents, grows fuzzy.  Is it justified to kidnap a hatemonger’s child?  Is it right to slug a girl if she is tall, blonde, pretty, and benefits unfairly from her genetic advantage?

Is a woman not a woman if she has her breasts removed?  Is a man a woman if he takes hormones to have them?

While Lockpick Pornography may serve as a wrecking ball to perception and expectation, it’s not all so dire.  There are cartoon masks and one-liners.  There are bits bound to be reenacted by teens in Burger Kings across the continent.  Perhaps most importantly, there is the motherly stranger on the other end of the narrator’s phone, chosen randomly from the phone book.  Throughout this kamikaze novel, she serves as a reminder that tenderness can be found, even in a disparate and hostile world.

Kathy Cacace: Lockpick Pornography is full of situations and characters that make right-wing organizations want to put a hit out on the responsible party. Have you gotten any kind of scary, "family values" feedback?

Joey Comeau: At first I got some pretty angry reactions from the far left actually.  Like, accusations of "setting back the movement" and stuff about how anger wasn't the solution. I think as the later chapters went up, people realized that this wasn't a manifesto, it was a novel. I'm not the main character. Some people don't get that, though. They get really angry if they disagree with the guy, and they turn that anger on me.

KC: If you could sneak your book to unsuspecting school children, or even their unsuspecting parents, would you?

JC: Oh man, would I ever. In a way, the Internet lets me do that. I get a lot of emails from 14 and 15 year old kids. Like, "Is it okay to mail you cash for your book? I'm queer and I don't want my mom to know, so I can't use her credit card. Will you mail it in a plain envelope?" or like "I don't want my mom to see a book with 'pornography' in the title."

KC: Do you send them the book?

JC: Yes.

It used to freak me out a bit when a kid would write to me and tell me about their life, and their asshole parents, and what it was like being where they were, the Midwest, or Texas, or wherever. I don't know what to say sometimes, and so sometimes that email just sits there unanswered. Or I say like "I'm glad you like the book, and I'm sorry your parents are fuckers."

Also, sometimes they try to talk dirty, and I don't respond to those emails at all. I'm glad they found the book, though. I wish I'd found Kathy Acker's "Rip Off Red, Girl Detective" at 14. Or like, Dennis Cooper.

I don't remember what I was reading at 14. Isaac Asimov, I think. Ray Bradbury. Those are good books, but you know.

Actually I used to buy those collections of erotic science fiction and horror stories. Like, the Hot Blood series edited by Jeff Gelb. That stuff blew my mind.

KC: You, like your main character, know how to pick locks. What's the best place you've ever gotten into without use of a key?

JC: We used to climb up on building rooftops a lot, and we got up on this hotel downtown. There was a little building up there, with all kinds of pipes and machinery and such and there was a trapdoor on the floor. We opened up the trapdoor and it was a hallway in the hotel. So we dropped down into the hall and we all felt like James Bond. That was pretty cool.  It didn't involve picking any locks though.

KC: The quote that opens your book is from a 2Pac song.  Did his music particularly influence your book?  Which other artists informed your writing this novel?

JC: That 2pac quote captures the main character's feelings pretty well, I thought, and I was listening to a lot of 2pac during the editing stages of the book. Elmore Leonard was a big influence on the writing style, I think. And Morley Callaghan.

KC: Why self-publish?  Do you plan to publish your next books (there will be next books, right?!) as well?

JC: Putting the book out ourselves was Mike's idea. It was just a right-place, right-time kind of deal. We were on this month-long road trip all over the United States, and in between cities we just sat on the train and talked about THE FUTURE. You know, don't stop ‘til we get our names on a blimp. Mike wanted to start publishing books. He published PINE magazine, which was awesome. Half fashion magazine, half lit mag. I had published the first 7 chapters of Lockpick online, and that's how I paid for my tuition that year.

We both agreed that a place like Random House wasn't going to take a chance on a book that a) was already mostly available online for free, and b) was fucking filthy and angry and queer as shit.

So we made it happen. Loose Teeth Books.  And we're not going to stop, either. We want to put out another book soon. It might be the A Softer World book, or it might be something else.

KC: You seem use the internet to your great advantage for promotion and distribution of your work, which JUNK knows more than a little about. Do you see web comics, blogging, and other online publishing as a stepping stone to more traditional publishing arenas, or as its own viable medium?

JC: The internet is awesome. It's like with A Softer World. Emily and I wanted to do a comic and we wanted people to read it. So we paid for the hosting, which at the time was like fifty bucks, and we just started putting it up online for free for anyone to read. And people started reading it.

The Internet won't replace books or magazines, but there's a lot of stuff that it makes possible. Good, fun stuff!

KC: So, will there be a totally ass-kicking book tour?

JC: That's the plan. Actually, right now it's looking like two book tours.  Maybe an East Coast tour and then an everything else tour. I'll be sleeping on couches and I'll probably get murdered at least twice. When I went across country with Mike, we covered like 17,000 miles of track. It was insane, and I don't know if I'm up for doing that all at once again.  It's hard on the system.

KC: I’m going to draw on a vintage JUNK question here.  Given the amount of punching that goes on in your novel, I'm curious:  have you ever been in a fistfight?

JC: When we were Kansas, Mike and I were fighting on the side of the road, and the cops showed up out of nowhere. We actually have this exchange on tape somewhere. We're drunk, and the cops are asking us questions. They get our ID and Mike and I keep saying, "No, it's cool, we're like best friends."

"You don't look too friendly a minute ago," the cop says.

"We're from Canada."

That was our excuse for everything on that trip.

I hate violence. But fist fighting with your friends is something else entirely. I don't know how to describe it. It's like that feeling you get when you trip and smash your face on the ground. It's like being high. Your body starts feeding you adrenaline and you feel invincible.

Leave a comment: