Cordell has an erection for close to 100 straight pages. Yes, he has a persistent erection. If you've ever found yourself in a highly aroused state, the erection goes on forever. But especially if you feel as though something has been taken from you. If

Cordell has an erection for close to 100 straight pages.

Yes, he has a persistent erection. If you've ever found yourself in a highly aroused state, the erection goes on forever. But especially if you feel as though something has been taken from you. If you're just happy with somebody, it's sometimes yes, sometimes no. But this guy's in a very fevered state.

Are you worried this might paint you as a tawdry writer in search of a lucrative controversy?
No. It'd be funny if people thought that. I believe that Americans, especially the under-40 crowd, are urgently looking for someone to tell the truth, and the sexuality of this book reeks of truth. Every day in this world of ours people are raped by their parents, abandoned by their mothers, lied to, deceived, disappointed. But everybody falls in love, and everybody has sex. In America, we say, No sex here! I'm shocked that there are no other books like this in mainstream literature.

Did you have trouble shopping this around to publishing houses?
Yeah. Initially, publishers' reactions were along the lines of, The story doesn't seem to work. I said, "What the fuck are you talking about? This is my 30th book. If this isn't a good character I've never written one." There's a whole lot of people out there like Cordell. I'm looking for Mister Everyday, and Mister Everyday has a dick, and most people don't want to talk about Mister Everyday's dick, even though it's the most important part of him. More important than his knees, toes, his job, what he drives or buys. You need to talk about it in literature. It's like having movies where nobody ever goes to the bathroom.

Did you have trouble coming up with a sexual vocabulary that wasn't repetitive? Did you run out words for the penis?
It was a challenge. I mean, you don't want to write phrases like "throbbing member," or "the straining of my cock against the fly," or "her pussy just opens like a flower." That sort of garbage takes away from the story. The trick is to say exactly what happens physically: "You feel his cum splashing on her ankle." It's sexual, very brutal in a way. But it's unexpected, and it brings you somewhere. I continually tried to get to a place where the language is fresh. But that's not just when you're writing about sex, but in all kinds of writing. You want to avoid clichés like "the clouds are like cotton candy." Clichés suck whether they involve clouds or cum.

You just wrote a young-adult novel called 47. Did you find any problems transitioning from that novel to this one?
Not at all. I mean, I don't think that a child would mistake Killing Johnny Fry with a kids' book. That would be the only problem I would see, but I'm quite sure they'll be in very different sections of the bookstore. I write everything from political to mystery to science fiction to so-called literary fiction. So I don't have a problem crossing genres. The book exists in your head. What a writer does is hold onto the notions, and the notions grow.

I'm sure you've read erotic writers like Henry Miller before, but were there any you sought out to prepare for Johnny Fry?
I've read a lot of Marquis de Sade, and Miller, and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, but over the course of my life, not when I was writing the book. For this, I read Hogg, by Samuel Delany. It makes my book look like the Hardy Boys, and it's every bit as good as Toni Morrison.

When you're writing anything, you're using words to create images. There should be no out-of-bounds. None. But a lot of things have changed today. Nabokov could never publish Lolita today. Death in Venice could never be written today. But we have to go there, to find out what we're all about. Who human beings are is deeper than what they believe. You can't exorcize Freud. In this culture today, people are lonely. We want to believe that all we have to do is do this or say that and our life is perfect. But you know what? You can just walk home one day and everything changes.

"Look, if you're asking me, Have you ever had anal sex? then I will tell you, Yes, I have"Sexually, are you a better man for having written Johnny Fry?
Well, I don't know yet [laughs]. But knowing that I could write that story, and place it in the world of sex, was very good for me. In America, you specialize in something, and you do that thing. I put the left front hubcap on the Toyota. That's my job. I can't put on the hood ornament, or the steering wheel. I have had to work to not be just a hubcap installer.

Were you surprised by the finished product?
I was surprised that I was so cruel to Cordell. In a way, walking in on your "loving" girlfriend getting fucked in the ass is perhaps the worst thing you could imagine. I mean, you're seeing your loved one having more fun with another partner. It's the worst thing you can think of. And for Cordell to slink away like that, without confronting them.... It's emasculating.

Why do black men like white women? Vengeance?
Cordell asks himself that question toward the end. He says, "no."

What are your thoughts on modern pornography?
I'm not an expert on pornography or its development. But there's no place you can go in history that doesn't have a great deal of it. The Canterbury Tales, ancient Rome. Have you watched that HBO show Rome? The sexuality there is outrageous compared to today.

Is there a correlation between sex and politics?
I'm quite anti-Bush but just as strongly against the Democrats. When people ask me about politics they say, Why did the Midwest vote for Bush? I say, listen man, you go to a party, you meet two gorgeous women, one says, You are so much like my father—I would love for you to come with me and be my boyfriend and meet my father. The other says, You're hot—you want to go someplace after the party? Which one is telling the truth? The one who wants you to meet father. Which one are you leaving with? The one who says you are hot. Because there's a chance there. One thing that our president understands is this: I only have to compliment them in a certain way, and they'll do what I want.

Photos, from top: Vincent Laforet; Getty Images

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