Ask the Author: Tim Dicks
[Roxane Gay / August 4th, 2010 / Interviews ]Tim Dicks has two witty poems in the July issue and talks with us about bad oral sex, his very own sex position, and escaping Florida.
1. How bad must the oral sex you’re getting be if you can write a poem during it?
It must be absolutely terrible and heartless like what the guy offers in this poem or it must be the sort that sparks blue through your brain so that your awareness flashes out through the world for a while and catches on something new. If it’s mediocre you’re doomed to concentrate too hard and notice the dust fuzzing the ceiling fan or the sound of your air conditioner or the knock of traffic outside.
Of course, if you’re literally going to write a poem, the quality of the oral doesn’t matter so much as the willingness of your partner to let you scratch away at a notebook.
2. If you were a sex act or position, what would you be?
I would like to think of myself as a liaison in a walk-in cooler in the back of a pizza restaurant, propped on boxes of frozen dough with chopped-peppers and pineapple spears close at hand.
3. What science fiction cliche would you punch in the face?
I would punch a great many in the face. Straight in the throat. Are there not a horde of cliches blighting the speculative fiction landscape? I’d deliver violent blows upon stoic protagonists, sexy and narratively unimportant women, inept but honorable friends, noble outcasts, benevolent super beings, honest scoundrels, talking dogs, and happy endings.
4. Who would you go back in time and do? How would you seduce them?
This is surely the most agonizing question I will ever be asked. History’s male chauvinism has kind of robbed us of the ability to crush on women from before the middle part of the last century. Maybe Ada Lovelace? I don’t know much about her except that she worked on proto-computers and had a sweet name. I would charm her with modern computational texts and detailed schematics. If I was into dudes I would totally share some drinks with Voltaire. (I’m actually right now trying to write an SF update of Candide that addresses this very sort of question.)
5. Where in Florida are you? Why haven’t you escaped yet?
I am in Orlando. I landed here in 08 knowing nothing of the city and lived above someone’s garage in the boat-owning section of town. Now I live in the last hovel crouching among the condos and parking garages of Thornton Park. There used to be an indie bookstore about two blocks off but it went down last spring. They had a final sale and I bought The White Tiger and a Tin House and a cup of coffee. A youth literacy and writing program, Page 15 (page15.org), still uses the space.
I haven’t escaped because my car’s engine blew up. Afterward, I went on an adventure with the most religious tow trucker you can imagine. He kept a staff that had been sent by God in the cab of his truck. I made the mistake of telling him my father had been a preacher. Anyway, since then it’s been fantasies of the long drive to Minneapolis, Oakland, back to Des Moines, or really anywhere, but once I leave I’ll miss these winters.
[...] asked me some smutty questions and I responded with smutty answers. Really there’s not too much smut [...]