AMPUTEE SEX: 18 X-RATED STORIES by Stewart Home. Sabotage Editions, London 2006, ISBN 0 954006348
AMPUTEE INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to Amputee Sex: 18 X-Rated Stories by Stewart Home. The title, rather than being gratuitous, serves as a metaphorical example of the phantom limb syndrome; and hopefully it will leave the less imaginative of my critics feeling hacked off about the fact that there’s virtually no coverage of ‘amputee sex’ in these pages. Pretty much everything I've gathered together here has been previously available, albeit scattered to the four winds. Anthologies of short fiction were one outlet for these pieces. However, it would stretch beyond breaking point the usual definitions of this genre to describe as short stories my two contributions to Suspect Device, the fiction anthology I edited for Serpent’s Tail. Consequently my various introductions to that tome are not included in this volume. Instead I've opted to draw together here works previously selected by other editors for inclusion in multi-author books. Other print sources for what is reproduced below include literary and underground magazines. The oldest piece, The Time When Nothing Happened, was originally published in the Californian fanzine The Monthly Bulletin nearly twenty years ago. To the best of my knowledge this is its first republication since then.
Cunt Lickers Anonymous previously appeared as a pamphlet issued as part of the Imprint 93 project run by artist/curator Matthew Higgs in 1996. Although only a couple of hundred copies were made, it generated more immediate interest than anything else presented in Amputee Sex. That was partly due to this piece circulating within the networks of influence that those satirised in it endlessly attempt to manipulate. Likewise, Cheap Night Out got a very strong immediate response, in this instance at least partly because I performed it regularly at ‘literary’ events. I like to think that the sheer ‘quality’ of these particular pieces was also a factor in their noisy reception. Both Cunt Lickers Anonymous and Cheap Night Out are pieces that commercial publishers wouldn't have touched with a barge pole. The latter was first put into print by Robert Dellar when he included it in the collection of punk rock stories he edited and self-published entitled Gobbing, Pogoing and Gratuitous Bad Language. Moving on, fans of industrial music will recognise the group Whitehouse who feature in the story as a genuine band, and all the song titles attributed to them as ‘real’. This piece is my own personal favourite among the works in Amputee Sex. I think of it as my Frankenstein’s monster, a truly post-modern love child.
Moving on, Carnaby Street was originally inserted into a longer piece I’d fabricated for Dust: A Creation Books Reader. Anyone interested in my ongoing acts of fictional detournment will want to check out the larger work. Just Thirteen may or may not have appeared in a literary magazine. It was accepted for publication but I don’t know if it ever actually made it into print. I sat on this story for a number of years before sending it out. I was concerned it might be misunderstood. I've gone over the legally entrenched differentials in power between adults and children elsewhere. My condemnations of paedophilia as abusive due to the nature of the power relations involved are hopefully well known. Just Thirteen is an attempt to explore how a paedophile might justify their abusive activity. The narrator’s logic should be understood as twisted and unsound, his views are diametrically opposed to my own. Shifting from ‘consent as content’ to form, I'm often asked why the style of my short fiction is so disparate. This is, of course, because I'm into difference as well as repetition. And while it may well be commercial suicide to chop and change style the way I do, this is no ‘breakdown on stage’. I'm not a romantic and my ‘schizophrenia’ may well be ‘the only sane response’ to capitalist social relations. Thus while some of my stories appear to contain straightforward expositions of ‘my’ opinions, my fiction is self-consciously ‘deranged’, and any ‘critic’ wishing to equate the views of ‘this’ author with that of ‘his’ narrators needs to provide an argument to back up such conflations. Likewise, while ‘Stewart Home’ is a self-conscious construction, he and ‘I’ are not responsible for all the fiction appearing under this name. For example, we had nothing to do with the very curious novel Stone Circle which was ‘falsely’ attributed to us.
‘Stewart’ and ‘I’ are not prolific as short story writers. That said, often there is no better way to experiment than to write short fiction. Our most recently published novel Tainted Love began life as a short story. It was only after we’d written what became the first chapter that we decided to use it as the basis for a book length work. Nonetheless, fabricating (anti)-novels and composing short stories are two very different skills. We've tried to develop both, albeit with a bias towards book length works. To sum up then, this pamphlet might be viewed as an addendum to our short story book, No Pity. Aside from that tome, those wishing to take in all our short fiction will need to consult Brit Pulp! edited by Tony White, since our contribution to that book, Sex Kick, isn't included here. Another of our short stories omitted from both No Pity and this pamphlet is Retro-Futurism, since that almost fictional tale can be found in our book Neoism, Plagiarism & Praxis. Other examples of our short fiction absent from both Amputee Sex and No Pity are brought together in the pamphlet Anamorphosis by "Larry O'Hara" & Friends. Our aim, both there and here, is to entertain and inform – and nothing is more educative than laughter… “Stewart Home”, London 2006.
SOME SOURCES FOR UNCOLLECTED STEWART HOME MATERIAL
●Rigor Mortis London Noir ed. Cathi Unsworth (Serpent’s Tail, London
2006).
●Do Me A Favour! (aka Why I Won't Fuck Janet Jakeman) The Idler #29
(London Winter 2001/2002).
●Waterloo Sunset Rrat Magazine #4 (Kent Town, Australia Dec 2000).
●The Down Beat The Idler #27 (London Winter 2000/2001).
●myflesh.com (aka Feel The Need In Me) The New English Library Book of
Internet Stories ed. Maxim Jakubowski (Hodder, London 2000).
●Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time) Time Out London Short Stories 2 ed.
Nicholas Royle (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 2000).
●Ohh Baby, You Turn Me On The Mammoth Book of Erotica New Edition
ed. by Maxim Jukubowski (Robinson, London 2000).
●A Second Bite of the Cherry The Idler #26 (London Summer 2000).
●Sex Kick Britpulp! ed. Tony White (Sceptre, London 1999).
●Toilet Love Intoxication ed. Toni Davidson (Serpent's Tail, London 1998).
●15 pieces in Conductors Of Chaos: A Poetry Anthology ed. by Iain Sinclair
(Picador, London 1996).
●Cheap Night Out Gobbing, Pogoing & Gratuitous Bad Language ed.
Robert Dellar (Spare Change Books, London 1996).
●Too Late It's Dark in London ed. Oscar Zarate (Serpent's Tail, London 96).
●10 poems in The Invisible Reader (Invisible Books, London 1995).
●Orgasm Addict Dust: A Creation Books Reader ed. James Williamson
(Creation Books, London 1994).
●Glib Vague #20 (London 1988).
●Time When Nothing Happened The Monthly Bulletin (Berkeley April 87).
●Ling & The Drag Act Caper The Monthly Bulletin (Berkeley Jan. 1987).
NOTE: Not all these pieces are included in Amputee Sex. Where multiple publications occurred, not all instances have been recorded.
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