SINCERE GAY PORN

THIS IS A SHORT STORY

Once upon a time there were two sincere American fiction writers. They both published writing online. The older of the two, David, nearing the end of his thirties, included his legal name and a picture of his real face alongside his writing. He believed it would be insincere to hide his face and identity. The younger writer, Lane, near thirty, agreed with the sentiment but he did not show his face and his name was a pseudonym. Lane thought that including his real face and name with his writing would impede his ability to be completely sincere. David agreed with the sentiment.

Both writers were of the New Sincerity fiction movement, first given explicit life by David Foster Wallace. Neither writer would describe themselves as such, but if accused of being sincere writers, they would not disagree. This was also true of the word “artist” for the sincere American fiction writers—it was a label which could only be conferred by others.

Each sincere American fiction writer wrote about a multitude of topics—science, history, the history of science, the science of history, philosophy, genetics, current events, conspiratorial interpretations of current events, historical conspiracies, contemporary conspiracies regarding the interpretation of historical conspiracies, progress, stagnation, growth, stories about love, stories about hate, murder, incest, religion, atheism, cults, technology, families, insect social structures, material conditions, and spiritual conditions. Being artists, or at least, often being accused of such, the sincere American fiction writers were concerned with the eternal, but they were well aware that they were bound up in history, in certain unavoidable material and spiritual conditions, which imbued their art, their appreciation of the eternal, with certain biases which were unavoidable like being sincere American fiction writers.

Neither man had ever met the other but they both published writing online, an unavoidable material condition of the age in which the sincere American fiction writers found themselves, and each writer enjoyed the other writer’s writings. Their mutual appreciation manifested as “liking” or re-posting the other’s writing online, which each sincere American fiction writer recognized as something perverse, bordering on demonic, that art, a tiny slice of man’s communion with the eternal, should be experienced in the same way a person ordered a new pair of mass-produced pants online. But the sincere American fiction writers also recognized that their recognition of the smallness of all internet interactions, the tendency of the compression of all experience towards the same flattened, commodified image on a screen to be physically stroked then forgotten, was endemic to the historical, material conditions in which all people found themselves, and so, as such, focusing their art on exploring the contours of this material and spiritual uniform was to lose sight of the eternal. It was bad art. But it was also the uniform each sincere American fiction writer found himself wearing, and being sincere American fiction writers, the writers could not lose sight of their uniforms entirely, because that would be insincere, that would be lying, and, first and foremost, the sincere American fiction writers were concerned with the truth, which is eternal, unlike the sincere American fiction writers, who were mortal, who would die, who swam through history, unlike, possibly, their art, which wasn’t their art if it was good, it was something eternal, it was something they could hopefully discover and could reach beyond them. They each thought they might as well try, anyway, and that’s why each sincere American fiction writer liked the other’s work. They were both trying.

But still, sometimes it was hard to take off the uniform of material conditions. Sometimes it was difficult to keep one’s head above the surface of the roaring sea of history. The sincere American fiction writers had never met and they had never talked but each felt a certain desperation, it was clear in their writings, that their concerns and their work were pointless. Each could interpret this desperation materially and historically: they were Americans writing fiction in the year 2025, all civilizations grew and peaked and declined, they were, historically speaking, living through a decline, and it was as simple as that. They could extend their historical analysis to art itself, the communion with the eternal, and saw rotting corpses: orated epic poems were once the voice of eternity, a masked Greek chorus once spoke for eternal Gods, video killed the radio star, why wouldn’t fiction die too?

And so, the sincere American fiction writers toiled as Spengler’s soldier of Rome at the conclusion of Man and Technics: they would die burning, attending to their duties. Their duty was, of course, sincerely writing American fiction lamenting that they were sincere American fiction writers. They lived on a tightrope straddling an abyss. Each would say “living” when they meant “writing” because they were sincere American fiction writers, they were artists, which meant that they recognized the greatest art of all, living, which at its best was beholden to, in awe of, reverent to the eternal, just like the best art. Living was art. Writing was art. Writing was living. Everything became autofiction. Sincerity was of the upmost importance. The art was bad if it was insincere. David couldn’t hide his face and tell the truth. Lane couldn’t show his face and tell the truth. Each sincere American fiction writer thought the other was more sincere.

One day, after years of enjoying and liking and re-posting each other’s writing, each sincere American fiction writer re-posted the same review of Infinite Jest with the same words, “well worth a read.” Each sincere American fiction writer clicked on their own timelines after posting this and were surprised to see the same exact post from the other sincere American fiction writer he enjoyed reading. The review of Infinite Jest was about communion and how life at its best was a communion and how art at its best was a communion and it seemed fundamental to the two sincere American fiction writers, who, by virtue of their historical and material conditions, found themselves totally isolated, never communing, and yet reverent to the communion, that they could, in spite of their maddening isolation, commune through time and space with their sincere American fiction. They could also say “hello” to each other. They both found this funny and ridiculous and so, for the first time, each sincere American fiction writer sent the other a message at the same time, “I like your work.”

And so, the completely isolated, bred in captivity, flightless birds AKA sincere American fiction writers in 2025, started messaging one another. Being sincere American fiction writers, they were tempted to write about this newfound interaction through their fiction but both felt a resistance. They were then, of course, tempted to write about the resistance to writing about their newfound interaction, but they felt resistance here as well. And being sincere American fiction writers, they told each other about this feeling of resistance and instead of writing fiction and further isolating themselves in another attempt to commune with the eternal, they just talked to each other. And they were shocked to discover the joy this brought them. It brought them more joy than writing sincere American fiction. And they wondered what they were doing.

They talked about sincere American fiction and the eternal and Spengler and the role of art. They talked about novels and movies and poems and philosophies of media. They talked about their families and their home towns. They continued writing sincere American fiction but they did not write about their internet-mediated friendship.

One day Lane asked David, “Why haven’t we written about this?”

David said something like, “Well, we are both sincere American fiction writers. You use a pseudonym and have shared with me personal details about yourself, I don’t want to betray that. I’m enjoying this privacy. I didn’t know it would feel good to keep things beyond writing. I haven’t wanted to soil this.”

To which Lane said something like, “I’ve had similar thoughts and it’s making me wonder about writing sincere fiction. If fiction is a defilement of the sanctity of this friendship. It feels that way. Then have we always been defilers? Have we always been writing autopsy reports?”

“Maybe you have been but I haven’t.”

Lane couldn’t tell if David was joking.

“Maybe we should do something instead of write. Maybe that’s the problem. Writing itself. After all, we met online. Everybody is online. Who can even read besides us? Isn’t the point of our work to discover something eternal? Are we singing epic poems to dead gods? The novel of the future will probably be porn. Maybe we should be making porn.”

The joke was deadly serious and each sincere American fiction writer knew it because they both laughed. They logged off and went to bed with the idea of making porn rattling around their heads. When they awoke they jumped online.

“How would we do it?”

“It would have to be POV.”

“No doubt.”

“We could show your face and it would be my POV in keeping with our sincere internet personas.”

“Kinda fucked up but I get it. Is it good?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like am I supposed to enjoy getting sodomized on camera? Are you good at sodomizing me and do I enjoy being sodomized?”

“That’s a good question. Are you a gay porn star?”

“Not yet. But I am a sincere American fiction writer.”

“Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Sincere fiction, gay porn, sincere gay porn. I can’t believe making gay porn was the culmination of our life’s work but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“What do you mean the culmination? The gay porn is just the beginning. In the same way our fiction is, in part, responding to our recognition of our material conditions, a painting of the snapshot of the bones littering our foundations, we’re obviously going to have to review our porno.”

“Ok so we’ve gotta make gay porn then review it in keeping with our material condition of being sincere American fiction writers posting writing online—the analysis is as important as the content. And we are aware of the importance of the analysis, being immersed in the same digital ocean and what not, and so we have to analyze our gay porn. This sounds kinda gay.”

“It’s not as gay as writing sincere fiction.”

And so, the sincere American fiction writers made gay porn. And after they posted their gay porn online they recorded a video, from the same POV shot as the gay porn, reviewing their gay porn video. They posted their gay porn review online to an audience of no one. The end.