Body to Job

Christopher Zeischegg Body to Job (2018)
I don't know how it's taken me so long to work out that The Magician wasn't actually Christopher Zeischegg's first, but better late than never, I suppose. It's two years since I read The Magician, but Body to Job inhabits similar territory from what I can recall, being grown from the same autobiographical soil without necessarily bringing forth the same fruit. Zeischegg was enough of a name in the porn industry to accrue fan mail, and Body to Job is about that. A few sections are obviously fictional, although there's otherwise no clear line drawn between reality and allegory, presumably on the grounds that certain events are better described as at least partially fictional. Honestly, it's not the sort of subject to which I'm ordinarily drawn, but Zeischegg is one hell of a writer.

I don't really have a problem with porn, my take being that I'm not entirely sure what I think about it, or even whether whatever I may think about it matters. I understand Andrea Dworkin's reasons for wanting it banned but, realistically speaking, I suspect this may be one genie that's never going back in the bottle; so I suppose beyond certain reforms, I simply believe it should be more difficult to access. On the other hand, I distrust sex work replacing older, apparently more offensive terms simply because I distrust grown men dressed as either ponies or little Japanese girls screaming whilst waving sex work is work placards, because I'm disinclined to enable debilitating psychological conditions, and because I don't actually recall anyone ever claiming that sex work wasn't work, one branch of which is reputed to be the world's oldest profession, after all. Anyway, Zeischegg seems attuned to where I'm coming from.

Neoliberal pundits whining about my job to earn ratings and book deals and spouting bullshit advocacy claims for people they'd never met pissed me off. So I decided to take a stance and balance out the conversation.

This is more or less what this book does, being the word of someone who has lived this stuff in detail - as distinct from simply having opinions; and so Body to Job is fascinating in describing territory quite unlike what I guess many of us had assumed was a map. His prose is tight, functional and efficient, delivering meaning without drowning everything in mood, adjectives, or anything surplus to requirements, because nothing described herein requires a melodramatic soundtrack telling you what to feel about what our guy is going through with his doomed porn shoots, gynecological misfires, and that endless line of strangers waiting to have sex, rip him off, or both. It takes skill to write with this level of precision, delivering meaning without dressing it up in bullshit; and it works and is refreshing given that bullshit is traditionally the means by which most porn is communicated, I would argue.

Body to Job isn't porn, although that's what it's about - not even the sort of joy of squalor variant you might expect of transgressive fiction - if we really have to use that term. On the contrary, Zeischegg's testimony borders on cheery, or at least amiable, regardless of what he's going through. The possibility of sunlight is implicit during even the darkest passages, and yet without turning it into just the sort of empowerment bollocks I was grumbling about two paragraphs back. There's even a comic undercurrent felt here and there, just like you have with real life.

'Okay,' she said. 'Carry on.'

'The name of my film is Death and Sports Bras.'

The professor shifted in her seat. 'I still don't understand. What are your characters' motivations in this story? Who is the protagonist?'

'Well, I've been listening to a lot of black metal. And I have this thing for sports bras. Because they look kind of like an androgynous, uh, futuristic uniform. But I guess that doesn't really answer your question.'

About half way through this novel, autobiography, collection, or however you chose to frame it, I realised Christopher Zeischegg doesn't actually remind me of any other writer that I've read, which is kind of a rare thing; and yet his voice is strong and distinctive which seems to make the lack of obvious parallels all the more unusual. It inhabits a world we probably take for granted, the oldest profession, cargo cult enactments of the most fundamental human transactions, the deed upon which most of our jokes are based, and Zeischegg reveals how little we really know, perhaps about anything. Who could have foreseen that something quite so profound could feature so much screwing?