when i wrote the first part of this post, it was with the full intention of coming back in part 2 and doing a point-by-point response to the reviews of this blog referenced therein.
thankfully, i'm sober now and back to my usual semi-indifference to the opinions of others, so i'll spare you most of it. but i did wanna address a couple things.
first, one of paulo's readers weighs in:
what strikes me most about gregory's review of my blog--aside, of course, from its typical compassionate-liberal viciousness--is how it completely misses the point. no sense of humor?! this whole goddam blog is nothing but a dark cosmic joke, and i thought i'd made that fairly clear. so either gregory's an idiot, or i've been deluding myself as to the extent of my supposed cleverness. god, i hope it's the former.
as for paulo himself, while he professes to love the blog, he seems to see its author as nothing more than an amoral, aging lothario drunkenly crowing about all the boys he's nailed. to this, i can only respond with the following, from an email i once wrote to faithful commenter noblesavage:
the reason you cringe at my trick stories, rob--in fact, the reason so much of what i write is cringeworthy--is because that is the intention of this long, five-year gutter-morality tale. or, to put it another way,
oh mother, tell your children, not to do what i have done(and yeah, will, i know--the animals did that one, too.)
where paulo nails me to the wall, however, is with the following observation:
I believe that even though one should have some courtesy to the person reading their drivel, paying a reader too much mind can fuck with your head as a writer.
boy, is he right about that. i'm starting to care about what you assholes think, and it's clearly fucking with my head.
