Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey
TO SAY THAT Peter Sotos is a difficult writer is to describe Jeffrey Dahmer as a man with exotic tastes. Known for his frank, unapologetic accounts of rape, murder, incest and combinations thereof, Sotos is responsible for some of the most vicious writing you'll ever encounter. His first zine, Pure, first published in 1984, was sprinkled with now-well-known names like Richard Speck, Peter Sutcliffe and Larry Eyler, with chapters bearing titles such as "KIDDIE TORTURE," "LUSTMORD," "KIDFUCK" and "KID KILL." Pure and Sotos' later projects, Tool and Parasite, were stark, nasty compendiums of child torture, Nazism, murderers. They were also the first of their kind, preceding the zinester serial killer craze by several years.
As with attempts to accurately describe a taste or a smell or sound, one cannot discuss Sotos without offering samples of his work. From his new book, Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey:
I want her to be about eleven or twelve here. A smartass little butt like the one she's parading around her photo-filled house. And the other side. Bald but starting. Under that garish disco fabric. Tight as any child that is just starting to grow into masturbating three or four times a day for the rest of her life due to a sad fascination with all things available and cheap and fuckable. But right now. She's as flat as a boy without a cock.
Selfish, Little is a smorgasbord of unabashed vulgarity. The first section of the first chapter is filled with brutal, degrading sexual encounters, as told by a narrator who may or may not reflect the true Peter Sotos. The second section spends a lot of time on masturbation; the third offers up a fair share of pedophilia.
"He's friendly enough, as his apologists take great pains to point out," observes one colleague who knows Sotos in passing. "Sadean philosophers always give me pause, though. Something about their caring only for their personal pleasure makes me suspect their intentions may not be so pure."
I don't know Peter Sotos, so I can neither confirm nor deny that he is, as another colleague put it, "a real sick fuck." But I've long believed that he is provoking with purpose, that by dropping us into the minds of men such as Ian Brady-who raped, tortured and killed the titular Lesley Anne Downey as part of England's infamous mid-60s Moors Murders-he's challenging us to confront fantastic demons. "Fantastic" as a form of the word fantasy.
I think about [her hands] masturbating me before she puts my cock into her mouth. Her full bottom lip especially. I would have to look for her cheeks to blush just a bit like they are in the bikini picture. Her hot little head and bikini top.
Is this fantasy any more demonic than the average man's worst sexual daydream? Probably not. Had I included the surrounding paragraphs, however, you would've just read an explicit kidporn fantasy from Selfish, Little's first chapter.
There's nothing worse than cheap provocation. Boyd Rice comes to mind-all that ranting and raving. G.G. Allin comes to mind-happy to be videotaped defecating on women, eager to promise a suicide, unable to go through with it. These kind of men may be the real thing in their own local circles, they may even believe what they're saying, but ultimately they do little to help illuminate true transgression.
In 1985, police raided Peter Sotos' Chicago apartment, where they found a copy of Incest #4, a kiddie porn mag that he kept under his bed "for years" until he "stupidly, regrettably, handed it over to the police searching my loudmouthed apartment." According to an interview in Total Abuse, a compilation of Pure, Tool and Parasite published by Jim Goad in 1996, Sotos spent two days in jail and underwent a three-year trial that resulted in untold hours of psychiatric evaluation at taxpayer expense.
He's certainly got the credibility part down. He's an underground legend who's endured persecution either as a vile kiddie pornographer or as a misunderstood free-speech martyr-it's your choice which to believe.
And there's the classic problem: Does the life of the artist matter when considering the art?
The little made-up fucking tart is pushed into a corner in this too-large outfit. She's standing up against a wall and looking off to the side. I know her make-up wasn't placed all over her by her own little fingers and designs and hot little advancing ideas. The fucker that took the picture of her standing straight, long arms at her side, is the same fucker that might have told her to pucker up while he drew lipstick over her big child lips.
Few today look to art for challenge. It's an alarming trend that first appeared in mass culture, but has now trickled down to many alternative and independent media outlets. Too many people are interested only in having their opinions reinforced. Call it the blog epidemic-a proliferation of simplistic, knee-jerk opinion. Instead of forcing us to consider new ideas, contradiction now breeds crippling confusion.
In the passage reprinted above, there's more insight into the mind of a child pornographer than you'll find in a dozen criminal psychology essays. Sotos challenges us to consider the difference between pornography and exploitation, between fantasy and degradation.
But it's not all blood and guts and kiddie rape. There's humor in this book, too:
I thought I had crabs but I just had extremely bad eczema.
And pith:
I'm absolutely positive that the retarded are better equipped to get something more out of their lives.
And soul:
[She] made it a point to kiss me on the lips to prove to me that we used to do it and that she knew, underneath everything else, that I was still kind. I kissed her back and stunk up her life with a new tiny yeast infection.
Admittedly, it's humor, cleverness and soul for particular tastes. Difficult artists such as Peter Sotos are important and books like Selfish, Little are important. The role of the artist in producing such art is up for discussion, and only you can decide if you can stomach the art itself.