When I thought my collection of short stories, The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing, was ready (it wasn't, but that's another story), I sent it to an agent I had met through a friend, who told me it was very good, but that it just wasn't for her.

She wasn't that into it.

I was living in France at the time, and it was a painful letter to get. I answered her letter with one of my own (this was in the 80s, no email), asking if she could think of anyone who might be "that" into it.

She suggested someone, and I wrote saying, dear Bill/John/Sarah, Wendy says you might be interested in this collection of short stories.

Well, Bloomsbury is publishing Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex this month, and I'm one of the contributors.

You can order the book by clicking here.

My essay--actually, it's more like a rant--is about foot fetishism.

Here are the first three paragraphs of the essay:

Get in a cocktail party conversation about sexual turn-ons, and everything from hair to ass is fair game. Red, shiny, pulpy mouths are substitutes, preferable to some, for pussies. Legs are a vee-shaped embrace leading to the promised land. But feet? You mean those filthy things down there, pounding the pavement, collecting every imaginable smell and disease. Are you some kind of submissive wussy-man? Do you like to eat shit too? Do you want me to piss on you? How about a knuckle sandwich?

I hate Rilke. I have often had to rub shoulders with that effeminate German, Rainer Maria Rilke, because of the alphabetical proximity--an accident of nature.

I contain pages of the most masculine of poets, Wallace Stevens. Wallace is a name that fills your mouth with contentment, allowing you wallow in the pool of his sonorous vowels. And his last name, Stevens, an exclamation in case there was any doubt, yes, that here is a man.

But Rainer? As in whiner? And Maria? Excuse me, but isn’t that a girl’s name?

I can’t tell you how infuriating it is feeling a volume of Rilke’s sliding against my jacket as some delicate fingers pry it from the shelf, followed by the inevitable sigh, how gorgeous, how sensitive!

(Short Story)

Nothing hurts a lion more than when he loses his pride. Life nails you to the ground. New story, same as the last. You try to tell the kids, but they just don't feel the need to listen. Fuckers figure they'll live forever. Having trouble sorting your life out? Try being a lion, for chrissakes.

(Short Story)

Ernie tells it like it is. Or not. Take his advice. Or not. You're better off meeting Ernie here than at his office, which is the formica counter of the Eat Here Diner. It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.