Lockpick Pornography
| Written by: | Joey Comeau |
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| Synopsis: | |
| First published: | 2005 |
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We’ve already got more than our share of gay Gandhis. We need a General Patton. |
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Lockpick Pornography is a 2005 novel by Joey Comeau. Features knives, robberies, philosophical crank calls, gender identity, lockpicks, pornography, random violence, gay Coke, and corrupting the youth of America.
The narrator is so incredibly angry at the heteronormative system that he (sometimes) believes that any acts against it are justifiable, up to and including the above robbery and kidnapping. Most of the book is him and his friends driving around, pulling pro-queer pranks and committing crimes. They steal from the married. They crash frat parties. They break into elementary schools dressed as cartoon characters to distribute kid's books about being gay. Eventually, stuff gets out of hand.
Once available as a free pdf at the author's site but no longer, it seems.
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On the street I flag down a guy on a bike. He stops beside me, and grins in his shiny glasses. “Are you heterosexual?” I ask him, and his grin gets wider. “Fuckin’ ay,” he says, and I kick him in the dick. |
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- All Gays Are Promiscuous: Played straight-ish. The narrator has sex with random bookstore employees and is against monogamy on principle. There is a gay couple portrayed (though the narrator is cheating with one of them). Also, the narrator says that he would want to be monogamous with Michelle, were she not a woman.
- Author Avatar: Averted. The narrator is extremely similar to Joey Comeau (who is also queer, picks locks, and enjoys chess and violence) but when fans tell him how much they loved the narrator, he says "But I hate what that character does!" The narrator is a part of Joey, but a part with considerably fewer morals.
- Badass Boast: It's a lie, but:
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“I used to race at Daytona,” I say. “I had a car with those rims that keep spinning after the car stops. I think they would have kept spinning, anyway. I never found out. Do you know why?” I say, and I lurch the car to the left again, passing an SUV. “Because I never stopped.” |
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- Berserk Button: Narrator has several. Whenever he sees a certain pro-family activist on TV he kicks the TV. One time he brutally attacks a random blonde teenager for looking like Paris Hilton. Then he hits on her boyfriend.
- Cast Full of Gay: All the main characters are queer.
- Destructo-Nookie: Well hey, it's got the page-topping quote.
- Depraved Homosexual: The characters enjoy playing off everyone's fear that they are this. Eventually, the narrator ends up doing some vaguely depraved-homosexual things (kidnapping) not because he is one, but because he believes he must be extreme enough to make up for all the anti-queer hate in the world.
- Dream Sequence: Aaaah! Insects that become sexual organs! Aaaaah! Representing the protagonist's insecurities! Aaaaaaaah!
- The Fundamentalist: Dr. Verge. But, his son isn't so much.
- Genre Savvy: At one point, the narrator buys a bottle of liquor and goes to see Michelle in the night.
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When I get there, I’ll have to speak like I’m drunk. You have to use the right words in the right order. I’m the drunk man, showing up to fuck her. I have to remember to be obnoxious. There’s a script to be followed. |
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- Harassing Phone Call: The narrator keeps calling a certain woman's house he chose at random and makes speeches about gender construction to her. Later, they become friends.
- "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It" and Black Comedy Rape: Subverted. The narrator comes up with a plan where they'll all go to a frat party, Michelle will seduce a straight boy and sexily blindfold him, and then Richard will give him a blowjob. The narrator thinks this is totally great because it's messing with the straight boy's perception of his sexuality - he just got a great orgasm that he thinks is from a girl, but it's really from a man. After the plan fails, the narrator's friends point out to him that, hey, that's rape.
- Magic Realism: Sort of. There's definitely no explicit magic, but near the end, as things are getting really crazy, a green laser beam inexplicably appears in the sky. The narrator wants to reach it.
- Moral Event Horizon: Many candidates for this. It's your choice as to exactly when the narrator and his friends cross the line, or if they do at all. Or if they do from the beginning, when they steal the first TV.
- kidnapping Dr. Verge's son
- when David stabs that guy
- Misaimed Fandom: As said above, the narrator does a lot of things that make you want to cheer for him. But, in the process, he hurts some maybe-innocent people. The book is playing with this trope. See Author Avatar up there.
- Recursive Crossdressing: At one point the narrator and his friend Richard crash a party for lesbians. They disguise themselves as bad drag kings so no one will think they're actually male.