Porn cinemas and motorbike heartthrobs
Is it time to smash the delete button on in and out lists?
Most of my hot or not predictions for 2024 failed: I didn’t watch a single Verhoeven film (with the lads or solo), I didn’t meet any sailors and I didn’t read any works of fiction about motorbikes and the men who ride them.
I didn’t see enough ballet, I missed both of The Erotic Review parties and I didn’t have sex in the shower. Neither did anyone else I know (ok fine, everyone said that third-base action at the gym showers carried on as always but that’s such a standard it’s almost boring).
Philippa Snow is still in Norwich - but her first full-length non-fiction work on fame and the price women pay for it is coming out in time to become the book of the summer. Rob Doyle didn’t publish a single book, let alone two, but the wait is over: his fifth book, Cameo, has an official release date for Thursday 6 November 2025. It is his first with his new publisher W&N Books, following a decade of publishing and three books with Bloomsbury.
2025 is a major year for Irish writing, with Eimear McBride, Oisín Fagan and Seán Hewitt all returning with new releases, and John Patrick McHugh and Róisín Lanigan putting out their debut novels.
Sky Ferreira is out of the Capitol chains and a free agent. Edmund White is coming back with more tales of his sexual adventures. My favourite film genre, Younger Man/Older Woman, is now mainstream, thanks to Nicole Kidman’s new film Babygirl. I watched a few films in this genre this year, including White Palace (hot) and Queen of Hearts (disturbing). I reread Tampa (hilarious for its oversexed, impossible villain) and Seventeen, a lacklustre new addition to the canon that could have been the most important book on the topic but failed by talking down to its own audience.
There was a depressing study about the decline of sex scenes in film, something about teens preferring friendship over fucking (?!). Hell bent to prove otherwise, Bruce LaBruce is hosting a porn cinema at an undisclosed location in London to mark the release of his film The Visitor, a loose reworking of Teorema. The event aims to revive cruising cinema culture. When I DM’d him to ask whether that will include the audience having sex in the cinema itself - aka viewers fucking in their seats while the film is playing - he answered yes, followed by an AI-generated Luigi Mangione sticker. I replied I’ll be there, forgetting I’m out of town that weekend - a PJ classic, always missing things.
There’s no equivalent of a report of this kind for books and Dennis Cooper might have the answer as to why: “Nobody gives a shit about books anymore!”
Serpent’s Tail began reissuing his five-book George Miles cycle as a classic in 2023. In his interview with The Guardian, Cooper talks about the renaissance of American independent publishing, name checking Apocalypse Party. For a more personal look into the cycle - and a no-shame confession by moi - you can read my interview with him in Buffalo Zine’s 20th issue.
More from Dennis Cooper X Paul Johnathan here.
Two years ago Diesel dropped 200,000 condoms on its runway, a call to action of sorts to suit up. (I cannot remember a single scene in any book about condoms. Has no-one written about this or were they just referred to in passing?). Paris handed out 300,000 condoms in the Olympic village, although all my slutty friends in France said these (allegedly) weren’t used, with lots of athletes going raw. Obviously, any self-respecting Parisian who was stuck in the city during the Olympics tried to fuck an athlete. Or, in one case, multiple members of one European Olympic team.
Now halfway through the decade - called the whoring 2020s in this newsletter - it seems my prediction has come true: we’re having reckless sex, or at the very least, more reckless sex, that is according to The Face.
Is any of this a sign that we’re moving in a new, more sexual, direction as a culture?
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