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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
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May 22, 2009 www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com
Letting it all hang out, again
Debut novel borrows from the author's porn past
David Allen Cox
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by Anthony Glassman
Jaeven Marshall is a man on a mission.
He wants to become a famous writer, revered by all who read his words.
He has a few handicaps in his quest: he's homeless, he does too much crystal meth, and turning tricks to make money to survive doesn't leave him a lot of time to get writing done.
His plight is detailed in Daniel Allen Cox's debut novel Shuck (Arsenal Pulp, trade paper, $14.95).
Cox himself is an interesting character, so it won't be much of a surprise to discover that there is an autobiographical streak in the novel.
Moving to New York City? Yep. Doing porn as an entrée into more "legitimate" work? Check.
One would hope that most of the book was fictional. Certainly, the desire to see Cox shielded from the darker side of Jaeven's life is foremost in the mind, and his "sugar daddy," who finds inspiration for his artwork from Jaeven's pain, is an odd aspect.
However, as the clock ticks ever closer to New Year's Eve 1999, Jaeven finds himself wondering whether the naysayers were right and the world would cease to exist in a massive Y2K bug.
Interspersed between clips of
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Jaeven's life-his start as a hustler, his rise to porn mag cover boy and adult film actor and eventual decline as a has-been-are jarring, disjunctive observations of the world around him. There are lists of odd things he sees in the melting snow. Things in his pocket.
Cox takes narrative structure, smacks it around and makes it his bitch. He hogties it and pulls its pants down and spanks its tuchus until it's as red as Rudolph's nose.
Cox's novella Tattoo This Madness In, a 2006 release from Dusty Owl Press, dealt with rebellion against the Jehovah's Witnesses, the religion in which he was raised.
With this novel, he takes a step forward in his life, dealing more with what happened after he got out. And, according to an interview with the Montreal Mirror, it was a little strange for him to touch on his porn career again, having now gone "legit."
Reporter Matthew Hays asked Cox, "You'd already done nude photos and porn. But did you have any reluctance about letting it all hang out all over again, in this form?"
"I had concerns about this," Cox admitted. "After leaving porn, I went into a quiet mode. I became more literary and less nude in public. This felt like a merging of my personas. I saw it coming though. There was almost no
FARAH KHAN
way I could not make it happen."
"I'd get e-mails every now and then with someone saying, 'Aren't you that Brad Cox from those magazines?' Or I'd be at the Y, and I'd have men in the sauna say, ‘I have your movies, you know,' he continued. "People were
beginning to figure out that there were two me's out there. It then struck me that I had this book in me."
"I then realized that it would be very good for me to get rid of all the shame I have about sex. One thing I don't need in life is sex shame. I can get rid of it, and I felt that I can write with emotion," he concludes.
"In my Internet searches, I found an online group that are fans of my porn work. So that was funny. There was a lot of nostalgia in this."
Beyond painting a half-fictional portrait of his younger self, a more attractive, attention-deficient version, he also wanted to bring attention to the plight of sex workers, both on the street and in the porn industry.
There is little protection for them, and no pension plan. If a hustler gets sick, he seems almost a disposable commodity.
"Our sex laws are archaic and they need major updating. And you know what? I think it's time that we acknowledge the people we fuck," Cox posits.
While the book is steeped in sex, it is far from a tawdry piece of erotica.
Cox's quill is aimed at the head on top of the body, not the one in the middle, and he hits his mark.
Perhaps the only thing that can really be said about Shuck is, one can only hope Daniel Allen Cox ends up being a very prolific writer.