From the Editor

Guest Editor: Merton Krunk

Every editor and compiler, whatever the nature of the collection on which he works, inevitably consults his friends and associates. The [Ass] Sex Incident 1 is no exception. Initially, this volume was to be a more focused anthology of non-fictional short stories called Spread Those Cheeks dealing with violent public displays of protosexuality in third world countries told from the perspective of doctors, transvestites and former women with unnaturally large breasts and orange hair. That project, after I had worked on it for hours – a whole afternoon, really – ran slightly thin on content. Why, you ask? Well, I discovered that copyright law on many such tales is very restrictive, since they all seem to be written by the same three people.2 Dismayed, I heard this news from my lawyer and considered a life of sadistic crime as an alternative. He strongly recommended against this. And though I hate him, I have never been one to go against the advice of someone so smitten with the law. So I gave in regretfully and began to think once more of a theme for an amalgam of topical literature. Each morning, as I sifted through hundreds and hundreds of final manuscripts, I would take a short time every half hour to check my personal electronic mailbox, confer via telephone with trusted associates, discuss ideas with my dog, Brutus, and shout harassment at fellows walking past my window in the crisp sunshine of a new day. And it was as I did this that the brilliant concept of this month’s magazine came to me:

“Hello, you there,” I shouted at this beautiful, manly specimen wearing a burgundy tank top and black Capri pants with a slight sheen. “When was the last time you read a piece of literature?”
“You mean,” he reached into his rear pocket, “a book?” He pulled out something and held it up to me, but I couldn’t quite detect it, visually.

Squinting, I asked, “What is that, young sir?”

“It’s my new favorite book,” he said. “Vivid Girls #1.”

Appalled, having actually heard of this nonsensical filth – a pornographic … comic book? – I scowled and began moving back inside, pulling my window downward. I only stopped when I heard him say, just before the wood touched the sill, “Hey, aren’t you Merton Krunk?”

I paused, considered this and realized, yes—Yes, I am Merton Krunk. I raised the window, never one to pass up a bit of flattery, and said so.

He said, “Wow, that’s like, awesome. I’ve read some of your work,” adding, “I thought you were, like… dead.”

Once again upset, I rolled my eyes and, trying but failing to salvage a bit of dignity, said, “I am very much alive, young man, and, believe it or not, I was your age once.”
“I bet you were… sir.”

“Indeed I was… slut. Do you mind if I call you slut?”
“Um,” he says.

Lost, not sure where this should go, after a pause, I hit him rather suddenly with, “Boy, if you could have anything… anything at all in the world, what would it be?”
He looked up to my third story window and stared at me for a longish moment.
“Anything?” he said.
“Anything you wish.”

“I want,” he said, dwelling momentarily, “the boundaries separating ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’ summed up, then eliminated.”

I pondered this for a moment. “Interesting.”

“Yes.”

“How then,” I said, “do you expect that might happen?”

“Not sure,” he said. “It’s my wish. Which means it’s not my job to think logistics.”

“Hm,” I said.

“Yup,” he said.

“Have you ever been with a man?”

“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”

Suddenly, in a wonderful burst that I won’t soon forget, his eyes lit up, hit mine with a glimmer, and he sang these words:

If you’d open up your eyes
You might find surprise
in knowing that you eyes
Are closed

Swept by this (his simple, elegant poetry and his young face, thrillingly tight pectoral muscles and wonderful hair), I invited the lad upstairs for a drink. We talked most if the night.

That evening, it struck me that after I got him severely inebriated, he began to ramble on an on about sexual-political ideas – how, for example, we must bring sex and sexuality further into the mainstream without a complete transformation of so-called American values – before submitting in mind and body to my every request. And, later, I thought that, even though he was naked and pathetic on my kitchen floor, there might be something to his ideas. Why? Because recurring themes seemed to appear in his sprawling, confused thinking. And those themes—those wonderfully chaotic views—were what eventually turned into the focus of this issue: one about viewing sex from afar, laughing when it’s appropriate, laughing again when it’s not, turning away when it’s gross, and loosening up when you’re bent over, grabbing your ankles, pants around your feet, awaiting one more warning you don’t need from someone you don’t trust.
And so on.

Merton Krunk
Guest Editor

While Merton Krunk was formerly the Arnold L. Windheimer professor of English at Alabama State University and a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, he now reviews pornographic films for Analboliq Chrome Warehouse, the largest dealer in adult DVDs in the nation, which sits less than a mile from an elementary school in Cranberry, PA. He is the former armchair of the GLBIA’s Committee on Scholarly Editions. Krunk specialized in eighteenth-century publishing and the history of book production before he went bugfuck crazy in 1994. Before then, he was the author of numerous essays and two books on editorial theory, the influential Scholarly Writing Processor (1984; third edition, 1996), and Unsafe Texts: Authority and Submission in Hell (1997).

1 Yes, friends. Sex itself is so boring. Ass sex on the other hand…
2 Who are all incarcerated and awaiting trial in Ecuador after allegedly being involved in a pretty serious, violent crime involving “A Pornographic Where’s Waldo Wonderland,” which is pretty much mumbo jumbo to me too, so don’t feel bad.