So, exciting news for midwestern literary fans - the newest branch of the "826" writing schools was recently opened here in Chicago, and has been going great guns the few weeks it's now been in operation. I've known about 826 Chicago since it was first announced, in fact, and have been on the mailing list this entire time that's been distributing updates on its progression. And to be sure, I've been really impressed with everything they've accomplished already, and have such a strong desire to volunteer there myself, but doubt that I actually will - and that's because I'm trying to learn from my past mistakes, and remember all those times I got involved with organizations and then had it turn out to be a nightmare, and said to myself, "Jason, don't get involved with these organizations anymore as a volunteer, because you'll just ruin your relationship with them before your arts center is even open."

Granted, the 826 network would be something great to get involved with - it's the child of McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers, a growing network of youth writing centers in urban centers, all of which combine large donations, references from the rich and powerful, and volunteer tutoring from local artists to accomplish their mission. And especially in my particular life, it would be an almost perfect match - I could volunteer my tutoring skills, which I'm pretty good at; help a very proactive organization I admire; and of course make all kinds of great contacts for this arts center I'm trying to open these days.

But anytime, it seems, that I get involved with such organizations at this level, things always end up in one form of trainwreck or another, with me just hating everyone in question and them hating me. And let me make it clear off the bat that I blame mostly myself for these situations - that I just don't get along with others very well in professional environments, can't play that nicety-nice game that so many others are so good at. And that's my issue, and one I'm working on and trying to get better at; but my point is that that's just how the situation currently exists, and I seemingly keep telling myself every year how I should simply avoid these situations in the first place in the future.

I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm going to have to cooperate with a lot of groups once this arts center is open, and it's an integral part of the business plan and of the center's success. But that's an entirely different thing, because I'm approaching those groups in that situation as a peer or even a superior, not a small cog in the chain like in these other situations. Ultimately what drives me crazy in professional environments is all that schmucky little middle-management shit that I've been dealing with since a teenager - all the "you got time to lean, you got time to clean" attitudes, the management platitudes about teamwork that are emptily said but not actually followed. I have no problem getting along with others professionally as long as I'm perceived as on the same level as them, where it's an exchange of information and not the issuing of moronic orders that I don't feel I should follow. That's what always seemingly gets me into so much trouble, no matter what the industry or what the position.

As a matter of fact, I'm envisioning three types of organizational collaborations with my arts center, for those who are curious. The first type is one I've talked about here before, the eight "outsourced" shows I want to set up per month, two per week on (say) Tuesdays and Sundays. These would be with groups of equal scope or less of ours, who are out there doing interesting things in other media - literary websites, student organizations, lit magazines and the like. Their nights at the center, then, would just be this special semi-regular chance to do shows laterally supporting what they normally do with most of their time - much like the live shows Bookslut.com sponsors monthly at the Hopleaf currently do for them. And this would be a pretty straightforward partnership, with all the details explained in advance - that we'll pay for publicity, pay a fee to their feature and host, that they choose whatever performers they want, and that in return we keep the cover fees that were charged that night.

Beyond this, then, I also see the center contacting some of the larger events that only happen once a year - say, for example, the Chicago Humanities Festival, or the Chicago Underground Film Festival - and volunteering our space for hosting one of the events. And I'm not seeing this as a peer relationship nearly as much as us merely being one of the sponsors, and getting listed in the program or whatever along with all the other venues that volunteered a space. And then the main benefit of that, of course, is that it gets an entirely different crowd into the center than our usual one, which at that point we can bombard with material about our usual programming, and hopefully get some of them switched over into new fans.

And then there's the third type of collaboration, which would be between groups where there exists some overlap in our products and services - where instead of being competitive about it, I'd love seeing us setting up semi-regular co-produced events, and promoting both groups simultaneously. And this is where a group like 826 Chicago would come in, as well as maybe such groups as Columbia College, and Quimby's Bookstore, and the Guild Complex, etc - where just every so often they and we sit down and say, "Wouldn't it be fun if we co-produced an event soon, and pooled our resources into creating this really great experience?" Like, think of all those touring writers that are coming into Chicago every year, and how what they need more than anything is: 1) advance publicity, 2) an enthusiastic audience, and 3) a chance to sell their book. It'd be great, I think, to set up an ongoing partnership with Quimby's for such events, where sometimes the readings are at our place and the store brings over their traveling retail kiosk, and sometimes the readings are at their place and we host it, and sometimes with bigger authors we hold events at both places on consecutive nights, etc. I'd love a chance to do something like that - to work jointly for the common good, instead of fighting over whatever small crumbs exist in the world of underground literature.

So yeah, it'd be nice if in three years, four years, whenever this center of mine is finally open, I could approach a group like 826 Chicago about working together - about maybe sponsoring a fundraiser for them every year, or formalizing a system for recruiting local poetry slammers to be tutors at their center. And it'd be a shame if I messed that all up three years early, by actually volunteering there and ending up pissing a bunch of people off and getting pissed off by a bunch of people. Which is why I doubt I will be volunteering there, even though I have a lot of respect for them and would love to help out. And like I said, I'm working on this problem of mine, so hopefully things will be getting better with each year and someday I won't have this issue at all. We'll see, I guess.

So, I borrowed Auto Focus from a friend last week, the incredibly faithful movie adaptation of the incredibly disturbing sex life of actor Bob Crane. And once again, like when I saw it in the theatres a couple of years ago, I was struck with a powerful thought - "God, what a creepily effective job Paul Schrader did at capturing sexual addiction and the swinger lifestyle." See, I've had a whole lot of brushes with the world portrayed in that movie, although I would claim that I've never fully fallen over into that dark side of it all myself; I did, however, date a sexual addict for a year who was in recovery therapy, so learned a lot about the subject from her, and did of course get involved with the swinging community for four months, while writing my 2002 book Slut Summer, and met a whole wide range of people because of that. (And of course I've teetered on the edge of some addictive behavior myself in the past when it's come to sex, specifically the subject of collecting porn; but see my book Celibate for more on this subject.)

There is quite a bit of debate these days, in fact, over whether sexual addiction actually exists in the first place, or is simply the product of a hypersensitive therapy-obsessed society. And I don't really care enough to try to convince others, but I myself believe that sexual addiction is real - or at least as real as an addiction to gambling or starting fires. And that's what I think is so great but so creepy about Auto Focus, is that Schraeder does such an efficient job at portraying sexual addiction as I believe it exists, and showing why it shouldn't be related to a term like 'nymphomania' and snickered at, but rather taken as seriously as it warrants.

I mean, it helps that Bob Crane had such a stereotypically addictive sex life to begin with - I've read the nonfiction book the movie was based on, so know that Crane's true story was pretty much lifted verbatim and transferred to the screen, with all the horrors of a fictional movie already there. What a sad position in history to be caught, I think - to be a guy compulsively obsessed with filming himself having sex, right at the time that the counterculture is gaining power in the late '60s, and everyone is having orgies and talking about free love; right when home video is being invented as well, right when he's rich enough to afford the hard-to-find equipment, and already in the entertainment industry so has contacts with the people selling it; and of course when the concept of sexual addiction hadn't even been invented yet, with certainly no one on the lookout for the warning signs or even discussing the idea of recovery.

I'm not saying that Crane was fated to be a victim - he still made his conscious choices, and could've walked away from it all whenever he wanted. What's interesting about Crane's story, though, is how perfectly it shows the sneaky nature of addiction, and how something that can be simply a healthy indulgence can easily turn into obsession through circumstance alone. See, Crane apparently always had this fascination with the recording of sex, photos and magazines and super-8 films and whatnot - but as long as his career was moving forward (first as a smartass radio DJ, then as the star of "Hogan's Heroes"), his fascination remained just a part-time hobby, limited mostly to girly mags and nights to a swanky strip club with his Hollywood buddies. (Schraeder makes such good use of this in the movie, too, and of the fact that Crane used to sit in as a drummer sometimes at these clubs, as a way of meeting the strippers - how charming it was in the early '60s when he first started, and how it was simply part of the overall 'hepcat' lifestyle back then, but how it had become this seedy, dark thing by the '70s, when Crane was fully into his addiction, drumming at the clubs now because he had nothing better to do with his time.)

This was, in fact, the downfall of Crane - when first his show was cancelled, and then he found it harder than expected to get more acting gigs. Both his real story and the film adaptation do a good job, I think, of showing one of the bigger dangers of addiction when it comes to this topic - how Crane's fascination with auto-eroticism turned slowly into obsession, then addiction, because of the details of his normal life falling apart. And it's a mix of things, as anyone who's gone through the process can tell you - all that extra time on your hands, all the stress and frustration of your life falling apart, having this one single thing that makes you feel better in this otherwise shitty time in your life, which you already have a borderline obsession for, which just encourages you to partake of it more and more.

Crane's life was particularly creepy, of course, because he was a full-blown dyed-in-the-wool unresponsive addict - someone who could not only tolerate a high dosage of his "drug" (sexual bliss in this case), but also refused to acknowledge that he had any problem, even when he lost acting jobs because of his sex life, even when his wife left him. Crane was so bad, in fact, that he started rearranging his professional life so that it would complement his addiction as much as possible; he bought the rights to a play, to be specific, started a touring dinner-theatre production with him as the star, then specifically booked the tour in cities that had unusually large and active swinging communities.

But boy, the creepiest part of all is the truly sick relationship he had with John Carpenter, reconstructed excellently in the book through letters and overheard conversations, and deftly portrayed in the movie. Carpenter, see, was this creepy little ugly dude in LA, who happened to be one of the first-ever American salesmen of home video equipment, which is how Crane and he met. And Carpenter was a sex addict too, but kind of a scuzzball and bad at meeting women, but really good at working this expensive and tempermental video equipment. And so Crane and Carpenter had this fucked-up relationship because of it all, where Crane was lining up girls through the swinging community and Carpenter handling the camera, and Carpenter basically getting the "leftovers" from these encounters, when Crane was done fucking the women himself, and it always being group sex and it always being videotaped, and Crane and Carpenter sitting around a lot during the day and jerking off together to old videos, when there weren't actual women around.

Grr, out of space! Okay, looks like this topic is going to spill over into tomorrow's entry, so check back then for the rest of my thoughts.