Safe Words
Prologue
What follows is a project that once excited me—intellectually, conceptually, and, at times, in ways that defy polite elaboration. And yet the, um, research required quickly spiraled into something a touch more immersive than I’d anticipated. So I shelved it. Still, the beginnings remain. And beginnings—especially messy, half-mad ones—deserve their day in the sun.
Here, then, is the start of what was started.
SAFE WORDS
By King Kenney
2017
Foreplay
Bethany sentimentally presses the muzzle of a snub-nosed revolver into my left temple every Tuesday.
Today is Tuesday.
She does this because it’s part of her job description. Her trembling hands force the steel pistol into my skull, compressing futilely resistant flesh and reminding me of my mortality. Bethany does this because she has no choice—I’m holding a gun to her head as well. I twirl the blondish strands of her stringy hair around a gold-plated barrel. This bit of theatrics is my way of appearing psychotic—or confirming that I am.
I would never shoot her. But she doesn’t know that. One day, I may pull the trigger on my unloaded gun, and I need her to fear for her own life—even if it’s never actually at risk.
Tuesday is my favorite day of the week, mostly because it’s the forgotten one. Tuesday has no whimsical nickname, no association with professional sports, no memorable acronym, and no historically significant primetime programming. Tuesdays are just... Tuesdays. Much like me, no one takes notice—other than to acknowledge we exist.
I exist mostly in my own mind, and even then, only just.
I run a successful business that most of the non-deviant world refuses to accept as creative art. So, I’m just a guy with ideas—nonsensical ones that induce laughter, confusion, and occasional disgust. Much like the artisans and creatives who fill the pages of my weekly rag, I am good at something most people won’t call meaningful. I serve a purpose. I earn an enviable living.
I am good at what I do.
I should be happy.
I’m not.
I’m just here.
Most days, I don’t mind being alone in crowded rooms. But I never stop feeling bad for Bethany. She’s my secretary—or administrative assistant, or executive assistant, or receptionist, or personal assistant, or life planner, or whatever. I pay her generously, and she adds and removes items from my to-do list despite the maddening ambiguity of her role. Her only clearly defined task is to eliminate me at noon every Tuesday. Other than that, she keeps the allegorical lights on by juggling front-of-house madness.
Bethany is cute and smart and should really get a job elsewhere. I don’t want her to leave, but she should. I think she feels sorry for me. There’s a modicum of respect for my presumed talent, but mostly, she pities me. And that’s why she won’t quit.
To be fair, I don’t run the kind of business you brag about to your parents. It’s a satirical digital magazine that lampoons facets of the adult film industry and all things sex—while humanizing its many contributors and contributions. My aim was to combine first-rate journalism with empathy. The resulting venture is a standalone, soft-copy publication where highbrow satire meets compassion, called Cum Laude.
We review feature-length pornography, interview members of the adult-film and sex-toy industries, merge hentai manga with editorial cartooning, wedge miscellaneous creative misfitry in between, and advertise all things NSFW in the pages that remain.
It’s a growing shop with a lettered mob of twenty-four employees. Imagine a journalistic Geek Squad, with an edge. The preposterous level of wit ranges from staff writers being dubbed Cunning Linguist to comments sections being tagged sticky notes. It’s hilarious and problematic, contemporaneously. But it’s relevant.
Plus, I threaten to off my hardest worker if she doesn’t kill me first, every Tuesday.
Bethany really should quit.
Cum Laude started as an anecdote fashioned by a Blueberry Widow–induced haze. A year later, it has morphed into an extremely profitable bit of escapism.
Still, I want to die. And today is Tuesday.
Butter
In the beginning, there was Andy Warhol.
Aside from Marcel Duchamp, no “artist” boasts a portfolio more divisive. To some, pop art is a revelation: a welcome marriage of popular culture, allegory, and color digestible by the masses. To others—myself included—Warhol was a talentless hack who ushered in an era of kitschy punchlines via an outsourced conveyor belt.
Yet, one undeniable novelty in an otherwise deniable career is Blue Movie: the first uncensored and widely distributed depiction of real-world intercourse. Whether Warhol intended to challenge convention or cement his legacy as modern art’s seminal deviant, both aims were achieved.
Prior to Blue Movie’s release, Warhol had created a series of verbs-as-films in which the “doing” of a thing served as the film’s beginning, middle, and end. These mind-numbing flicks were simply titled Eat and Sleep. Despite the futility of each film’s artistic direction, I cannot deny Blue Movie’s relevance in the canon of erotic imagery. The work is equal parts unimaginative and thought-provoking—channeling its auteur at every turn.
During a foundational assembly of the Cum Laude collective, we agreed that covering porn’s Golden Era was critical to our credibility as risqué journalists. Addressing all things pre- and post-Blue Movie became priority number one.
Rebranding my blog was a necessary crucible. It required significant planning. Our first issue couldn’t be limited to porn reviews and sardonic interviews. Tackling topics like “The Dealdo: Clarifying Everyone’s Questions on Lesbians and Penetration,” “The Geopolitics of Erogenous Zones,” and “Missogyny: How the Patriarchy Has Caused Women to Hate Themselves” marked a shift toward differentiation—but it wasn’t enough.
We needed more.
We needed to transcend existing classifications. Being pigeonholed—even as “The New Yorker meets Hustler”—would be a disservice to our talent. We decided on a feature that would punch. Drive divergent traffic. Startle and stick. A retrospective on erotica’s genesis and a full disrobing of mature viewing’s illustrious hoorah.
Where Blue Movie was a muffled whisper, Last Tango in Paris was a megaphone to the masses. So we decided to lead with the latter—alongside a much-needed conversation on consent.
She-la is my managing editor: a riot grrrl and Jayne County disciple who lost her job at The San Francisco Chronicle after a tryst with her channel manager ended in workplace theatrics. See: revenge porn sent office-wide by an ex.
She was looking for something different. I was in search of incomparable talent.
She-la came recommended by my weed dealer, Jungle. Though I published under the pseudonym Pothos, Jungle knew I was the rag’s author. Unlike the late arrivals to the bandwagon, Jungle had always believed. He’s responsible for Cum Laude in more ways than one—he sold me the dope and the delusion that sparked it all.
Before She-la, Cum Laude was just porn reviews and analytical asides uploaded whenever I sobered up. The site averaged 18,000 daily views, but monetization was elusive. Researching porn manically three times a week was less stressful than corporate work but increasingly exhausting.
Jungle said one of his clients might be perfect for my expansion plan. That recommendation changed everything.
I scrawled my vision on a legal pad and met She-la at Plum Bar. When she walked in—imagine Angela Davis meets Coffy—I froze. She was all presence and precision. I ordered a drink before launching my pitch.
Turns out, talking to her was easy. We agreed on everything: where The Onion lost its bite, why The Daily Show rose, and how humor is the only bearable lens for an unbearable world. Long-form readers still exist, but they want social commentary that rivals high-reaching benchmarks established by Richard Pryor and George Carlin, inscribed with Hannah Arendt’s deft power.
She-la didn’t overuse like as a filler. She quoted de Beauvoir and daydreamed aloud about Samira Wiley. She was a linguistic virtuoso and an ethical anarchist.
I pushed the pad toward her.
She scanned the pages. “What am I looking at?”
“My idea. Standalone soft copy. A weekly. Satirical journalism—with a twist. Bizarre, but real.” I said this with a straight face, but I was certain my fear was palpable. She kept looking around, in every direction. “I can handle it. If it’s beneath you, I can handle it.”
“Beneath me? Seriously? So this is real? This is the thing?” Her smile uncurled. “I thought this was a joke. I was waiting for the ‘gotcha’ moment when the cameras appear and everyone explodes in laughter. But this is real? This is your idea?”
“In its entirety,” I replied.
“Well, I’m here. And I like you. I mean... it’s... this is real?”
“Yes, this is it. This is what we’re doing.”
There’s more, but that’s enough.