Slightly ameliorating my recent self-pity/loathing is the receipt in the mail of my contributor copies of an anthology I wrote a story for. Fucking Daphne is, well, I’ll let the promotional copy do the talking:
When Daphne Gottlieb first found herself the character in someone else’s story she was intrigued; over time, as she appeared in more and more stories, she started to wonder about the implications of what was real and what wasn’t. Did it matter that there were published stories of her having sex in bathrooms, vacant parking lots, on the balcony at a party in an old bordello? Did it matter whether or not they were true?
This question sparked the idea for Fucking Daphne, a collection that blurs the lines between reality and fiction and begs the question who is the real Daphne? A pill-popping wild child? A soft place to fall with a broken heart? A dreadlocked vixen?
Contributors include Hanne Blank, Stephen Elliot, Sarah Katherine Lewis, and Ariel Gore, who describe, watch, and engage with a character that is not Daphne Gottlieb; Daphne is a projection, a fantasy, a zeitgeist. We are all a multitude of people in bed. We are all Daphne.
Harnessing the playfulness of the hoax, the seductiveness of literature, and the edginess of the avant-garde, Fucking Daphne is unique in a culture hungry for sex, information, and most of all, understanding.
Here’s an excerpt from my story, "Shaken, Stirred":
A Daphne walks into a bar. It’s not the Daphne you know, or the Daphne I know now or knew then, it’s some part of both and a lot of other Daphnes and not-Daphnes. A fucking Daphne walks into a fucking bar. Does she even have dreads back then, or all that ink? I don’t think so, but that’s the only way I know how to see her now, to see us then: It’s eight-thirty, it’s 1998, it’s San Francisco; the Martini Monday crowd has wobbled on home. There’s nothing going on tonight, just me and D holding court in some dark corner bar for our respective sadnesses, which, come to think of it, fill the place quite nicely. Daphne falls in love with me when she’s sad and drunk. I’m a bartender. And she’s a regular. And she’s nearly always sad.
When the book’s been out a while, I’ll probably post the story here – it’s germane, to say the least. For now though, check out Fucking Daphne – it’s bound to be interesting. I’m taking my copy off to New York for a few days after which I may have more to say about it.
