Ugly Man
Ugly Man is a short story collection published in 2009.
This collection includes:
- Jerk - a multi-layered metanarrative framing of True Crime as entertainment.
- Ugly Man - a vignette about somebody who hires sex workers even while knowing that he has extremely contagious leprosy(?) eczema(?)...themes of acquired disability, rethinking pretty privilege, capitalism ruining human connection (even the narrator's live-in lover gets written a check and can quit being a live-in lover as though that's a gig), and something along the lines of there being no thought crimes and no thought heroism (the narrator doesn't divulge how contagious and fatal this illness is, but thinks of the prostitutes as "saints" for going through his same illness and death.)
- The Boy on the Far Left - The narrator or speaker chooses the boy on the far left ecause the boy on the far right and the boy in the middle have life circumstances and emotional issues.
- Graduate Seminar - a professor spent 8 years in prison for a snuff film that a student claims changed his life and wants the professor to say more about. The professor seemed to think that film would make him rich and famous, and re-define art well enough for the court of law to excuse the murder he facilitated, but it didn't. The onstage performance, or the academic discourse of psychology or film history, poorly contains the "nature, red in tooth and claw" that human beings are capable of—but maybe still contains it better than like actually doing all that murder. (Or does it?)
- Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford - Wouldn't it be fucked up if Santa Claus were a child molestor?
- The Hostage Drama - a chatty and twitchy innocent young boy who the older teen narrator beats up for being too talkative about nothing, an age-peer friend of the narrator who has some designs on the narrator's younger brother—and then everybody dies from murder.
- The Brainiacs - A group of friends get high and talk about mass-murder and then I think there's an innuendo that the narrator interprets as an insult.
- Knife/Tape/Rope - Steve with the body image issues becomes a Satanist along with his nominal friends, who think Steve would actually make a much better human sacrifice.
- The Guro Artists - What the title says.
- The Anal-Retentive Line Editor - Notes from a line editor who pontificates interminably about why a work of writing is not good, and then asks the same writer being negged out on a date.
- Oliver Twink - a heartfelt conversation between Oliver and Chris who want to murdersex each other as long as it's not in a gay way.
- Brian aka “Bear” - The boy in the title finds religion, becomes ex-gay, and honeymoons with the bride at the same beach where they came out to each other and hooked up. A bittersweet memoir-vignette that also has a thuggish incestuous older brother.
- Three Boys Who Thought Experimental Fiction Was for Pussies - This could be a light novel title. They have sex and one boy says to another that he wishes his (the other boy's) penis were bigger. Uh, rude...
- The Worst (1960 –1971) - moments from the narrator's childhood and life that have been formative.
- One Night in 1979 I Did Too Much Coke and Couldn’t Sleep and Had What I Thought Was a Million-Dollar Idea to Write the Definitive Tell-all Book About Glam Rock Based on My Own Personal Experience but This Is as Far as I Got - What the title says, rimming added.
- The Noll Dynasty - six profiles
- The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites - what the title says.
- The Ash Gray Proclamation - an exploration of internalized homophobia during the Afghanistan-American war.
Ugly Man contains the following literary devices: