Sam Pink Is the Dictator – An Interview with Sam Pink

If I hadn’t gone to AWP, I might never have read anything by Sam Pink. Someone had told me he wasn’t a real person, that he was a pseudonym for someone else. I guess that turned me off from reading his stuff. I don’t know. I don’t really remember. But then one day at AWP I got bored and walked over to the Dogzplot table where Barry Graham shoved Sam’s book into my hand and told me to buy it. “Sam’s right there,” he said, pointing at this dude who looked like a cross between Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and my college boyfriend, Evan. He had a hood up over his head and was gnawing on his fingers. “You should have him sign it,” Barry said. It was kind of a dirty trick. What else could I do? I didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. So I bought the book and had him sign it and the next morning, alone in my hotel room with a pot of shitty hotel room coffee and nothing good on TV, I flipped the book open and started reading. 

Maybe if I’d been familiar with Sam’s writing all along, if I’d read the pieces that constitute the book here and there on various internet sites over the past year or two, I wouldn’t have felt so knocked out by them. It’s impossible to tell. Reading any writer’s work as a whole is an entirely different experience than reading one or two pieces by them at random, and, in Sam’s case, it has the potential to kick the shit out of you. Which is exactly what happened to me. I read the first and last (it’s called “Dead Horse.” It’s not online. Suckas. But I’ll give you the first line, “If I ever find a dead horse, I am going to beat the fucking shit out of it.” Nice, huh?) pieces in the book and after that I knew I was going to read everything he wrote from now on. 

Not that Sam Pink is for everyone. The lazy man’s comparison I guess would be to Bukowski but only because in both cases, their writing is completely raw and stripped down and honest to the point of being potentially offensive to the easily (or not-so-easily) offended. More than Bukowski, however, Sam’s writing reminds me of Kurt Cobain’s or Eminem’s, with a mixture of anger and dead babies and umbilical cords. It alternates swiftly from humor and playfulness to isolation and sadness. You might read a piece through the first time laughing your ass off, but if you stay on the page long enough, let the words really sink in, you soon realize, hey, this isn’t funny at all, actually, this is really fucked up and sick and heartbreaking as hell. I guess reading Sam Pink is sort of like watching a scene in A Clockwork Orange or Reservoir Dogs. One second you’re yucking it up, not a care in the world, and the next your mouth’s hanging wide open, no sound is coming out, and you can’t believe what the hell just happened.

I wish Barry could personally force this book into each one of your hands, with Sam lurking in the corner, looking equal parts scary and vulnerable. In lieu of that, I offer you this excerpt from a piece in the book called

 “I Am the Dictator”:

We decided that freedom could be a dangerous thing in our fort utopia so some form of political structure was needed. I said plutocracy but you countered with dictatorship and I quickly said, “I call dictator.”

You shrugged and allowed it because I was the dictator and if you fucked with me, that’d be it. Our first task was to enact the systematic exclusion of all unwanted elements. We created death camps. One for everyone. We killed everyone.

After the exterminations, you said you felt sleepy and you lay down on the fort floor and fell asleep. I put my hand on your stomach and it was warm. Inside was something. To that something went the blood of your body.

I ate another handful of cereal and pulled out a bunch of plastic bags from my pocket. 

I laid the bags out on the floor and straddled you.

I slid my forefinger and middle finger into your mouth along the crease of your tongue. My fingers felt warm inside. My stomach and groin tightened. 

You continued to breathe and I put my mouth by yours.
I said, “I am the dictator.”

Then I put my whole hand in your mouth and began pushing it down your throat. Your throat was tight and smooth. I got an erection. I kept my hand narrow. The mechanical hand searching for a stuffed animal.

* * *

And Now Sam Pink Answers Some Questions:

What brought you to writing?

the bad people made me do it.  they are mean.  the bad people make me sleep too long or they don't let me sleep.  the bad people look like air.

the other answer is, no one would play pogs with me anymore.

What if I want to be the dictator? Will that be a problem?

maybe there is an infinite amount of dictators and they state themselves into power in every conversation.  elizabeth ellen, you can become the dictator.  you have to dislike yourself so much that you're distracted into being mean to someone else.  then you have to actually like it.

That sounds like a lot of work. I changed my mind. I don’t want to be the dictator anymore. When did you first start publishing online and how did you come to find the places where your work is published?

the first thing was published maybe a year and some months ago.  the places either asked for work or i sent it to places i liked because of steady value, like LAMINATION COLONY,NO POSIT, ROBOT MELON, COCONUT POETRY and DOGMATIKA.

Would you really beat a dead horse if you came across one? Or is that just a figure of speech?

i found a deer skeleton on the side of a lake two summers ago and i showed it to someone, and the someone kicked the spine and some bones fell off and we walked away.  that is a true story elizabeth ellen.  you know, elizabeth ellen, i think we're going to make it, you and me kid.

What do the people in your "real life" think of your writing?

from the way i am thinking about how i remember these people thinking out loud about the writing, it seems they don't care at all and they seem to know that that would be how i would write something.  i only ask someone what s/he thinks by getting really close to his/her face and pressing my forehead into his/her forehead unblinking, and repeating the word "huh" over and over.

You know how in "Painful Gender Reassignment Staple Gun Steroid Injection Maternal Crucifixion" you say, "I will claim you as my own when everyone else disclaims you"? Is that true? Do you really mean that? Or are you just bullshitting me?

elizabeth ellen, you know it is true.  elizabeth ellen, i will claim you as my own when everyone else disclaims you.  why would i bullshit you elizabeth ellen.  you know it is true.  the writing you are referring to is an autobiographical account of my twenty second birthday which i spent in a garage alone, trying to reassign my own gender with tools and hormones.  the hormones didn't work because they were just empty tylenol capsules filled with gasoline.

A lot of your pieces, though unquestionably comedic, also have a romantic feel to them. Do you consider yourself a romantic?

i am going to use an answer countdown for this question for no reason other than possible entertainment:  5, 4, 3, 2, 1--

i think everything that is said in the book is paralleled by something that says the opposite.  so it says nothing.  but it makes sense to me because i can't figure anything out.  it makes sense to me to feel one way, then immediately feel the opposite.

Well, I think this is what’s so compelling about your writing. And why it’s both laugh-out-loud funny and extremely powerful and honest. It’s also what sets it apart from everything else. I feel like you’re incapable of writing bullshit. Or untruths. Everything you write feels very stripped down and immediate and raw. Do you edit your pieces after you write them? How long do you typically spend working on a piece before sending it out? 

if i read something i wrote and get the sudden urge to breakdance, then i know it is ready to be sent out. i haven’t sent anything out in a hot minute though. i think i want to. i like journals. cool journals make my life less poopy.

Did you have a particular person in mind when writing these pieces?

i thought this question three times in a row and i kept answering it the same way so here it is:  yes.  yes, elizabeth ellen (special note for elizabeth ellen:  this is going well, i think people who read it are going to like it, i really do.  will you play mariokart with me, i can beat you don't yell at me when i pinch your knee)

(special note to sam pink: I don’t know. I get the feeling people online are all too ready to hate. and argue. And be assholes. So I assume many people will be making mean comments before they’ve read half the interview. (Oh man, I sound really cynical here. Why am I so cynical, Sam? Actually, there are just as many nice, supportive people online as mean, argumentative, asshole ones. So to answer your question again, I’d have to say, I think some people will like it and some people won’t. Also, I just realized I put all my questions/comments in bold so that I seem more important than you. Think it’s working?) I do not know what mariokart is. Therefore, no promises, re: yelling. I guess you just have to take your chances.)

elizabeth, you have become the frosting on the generic poptart i eat with a burning stomach in the morning when i don’t know what i am going to do with the day.

What's with your obsession with dust/hair/dirt/fingers/bones/intestines/insects/dead leaves/eyelashes? Are you really Kurt Cobain? Did you fake your own death like Elvis?

i don't know what's going on. i only remember feeling one intense moment of need for my mom and that was when i was seven and i started at a new school and i didn't want to do it and i cried walking in and i held her arm tightly.  i felt stupid and weak.  sometimes i believe that saying, 'i hate myself' is the only thing that can be said truthfully.

So you are Kurt Cobain then.

i am tupac.

Do your genitals really stay up after drinking whiskey as you claim in "I Am the Dictator"?

the only thing that softens my genitals is the kind of sadness you get where you keep thinking, 'i am an ugly idiot.'

Man, now I feel like an asshole for asking. Your answer made me sad. You were supposed to say something funny there, Sam. Are you trying to break my heart or what?

i just imagined your heart broken and it looked like when a nerf football gets ripped in half and doesn’t really fit back together.

What sort of email do you get in response to your pieces? Do you get an equal amount of love and hate? Do chicks seem to dig you more or less than dudes?

i don't get a lot of emails but the people who email me are always nice. people are very polite.  it would feel strange to open an email that took time to express a dislike for me.  i would be confused.  i vaguely think that i have received more attention from chicks than dudes, but maybe dudes are being all quiet and shit when the chicks are just like, 'fuck the dudes i'm finna say something' but then dudes overhear and are all, 'hell nah chicks' and then the dudes make mean faces and get more quiet, but the whole time, chicks continues to email, and you know, really present a case for their superiority, casting dudes to a role of insignificance compared to chicks.  though i think what i really happening is that dudes are presenting themselves as chicks to fool me into thinking more chicks like me so if I brag then dudes'll be like 'no you're wrong because we are the chicks you idiot' and then dudes will laugh while chicks remain an inconstant part of my life.

Or maybe you’re actually a chick like J.T. Leroy and the jokes on us.

i am actually an improv group from chicago. we take turns. that’s why the material is always different.

What inspires your writing?

feeling like a small rock in a Home Depot bucket hidden in someone's garage.

So if one day you woke up and suddenly felt like a big rock, do you think you’d no longer feel compelled to write? 

i think if i woke up a big rock i would think negative thoughts about myself until i was a small rock again. then i would maybe be interested in being a big rock again.

Why Slayer? Why not Metallica or Anthrax? Also, are you a Satanist? And/or my college boyfriend, Evan?

this is sincere:  it isn't 'why not _____?' it is 'yes slayer.'  i have never been listening to slayer and thought, 'this is stupid i don't like it.'  i think there's a point during the anthemic 'altar of sacrifice'during which tom arraya says, 'enter to the realm of satan' and is then followed by one of the song's eight whammybar solos.  need i say more.  I don't ironically like slayer.  i genuinely like slayer.  to answer you last two questions:  i, as satan's spirit, inhabited the body of your college boyfriend [experiencing first feelings of the interview not going well]

Do you write every day?

Yes

You've published a couple plays. notably, one in mlp press. Why plays? Who do you think you are, Eugene O'Neill?

i think i actually remember the reason.  the reason was that i wanted to write longer things that were like fiction but i didn't like to write paragraphs and have to write out full ideas.  it is easier.  if i were eugene o neill i would buy a coat with huge pockets, or like i would sew giant purses into the coat and then fill the pockets or purses with copies of 'the iceman cometh' and i would let them drop out around people and be like, 'oh, huh, what's this shit?' while holding my driver's license next to the book.

elizabeth ellen, eugene o neill accomplished more than i ever will by blinking once and then thinking about it.

The thing I find maybe most interesting about your writing is your ability to make the reader feel they know you intimately, without ever revealing anything personal about yourself. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? There are no specific details about your mom or dad or ex girlfriends or childhood or sex life. And yet, by the end of the book, I totally felt like you were one of my best friends and I’d known you a very long time. So either I’m a total sucker (and, believe me, there’s plenty of evidence to support this theory), or you’ve pulled off something almost impossible to do when it comes to writing (or both. Why can’t there be both?). Are you conscious while writing of retaining your personal privacy? Or are you just uninterested in revealing personal details about your life history and those who play(ed) a role in it? Do you think you will ever write something that includes those sorts of details?

i am glad you feel like you are my best friend. my goal is to make that happen with everyone then use everyone for like, free rides and places to sleep and food. i consider the work to be all about my personal life, just not in a direct way. i am proud of my ability to be mean to myself, so i feel like i am not interested in protecting myself and maybe that’s a friendly quality because i don’t want to be a liar to people. i think the phrase “i am not important, so be nice” all the time.

I hope you remember this and are nice to me when you come to Ann Arbor in May. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview, Sam. I hope everyone who reads this buys your book. Or goes to your website and reads everything that can be accessed online for free (sorry, Barry!). Also, I hope you remain a small rock because I want you to keep writing. Is that mean to say?

motherfuck yeah! read it all! buy the book or break into barry’s house and steal it!

thank you elizabeth, this was the shit. fa sho. 

Comments

[blake]

i love the both of you very much

[team HOBART]

awesome. as long as you love it, blake. that's all i care about. and i'm being totally sincere.

-ee

[g]

this is so fucking ill. sam and elizabeth. two of my favorite upcoming writers. upcoming as opposed to up-and-coming because it sounds like vertical cumming and also like headlights you see out of the corner of your eye when trying to cross the tracks and realize that train is going to smash you dead, fly angels.

[barry]

if anyone is going to break into my house to get free copies of sam's book, please let me know ahead of time so i dont kill you accidentally. i just bought a .38 ruger with my tax refund and im itching to use it.

sam, you are supposed to end everything with "i love everyone who reads this"

ann arbor will be fun. im moving the week after, so e, you should make me a going away cake. chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

[sam pink]

i want to buy a .357, where can i get a cheap .357 that bangs like a motherfucker. i love everyone who reads this.

[team HOBART]

barry, wtf? you can't leave the week after! i'm going to cry. everyone leaves me. seriously. that is fucked up, man. still, i will make you a cake. just don't give any to sam cuz he doesn't deserve any. blake and mary and simmons and you and everyone else. but none for pink. promise?

-e.e.

[barry]

stop making me sad.

you and aaron will come visit me on the jersey shore? yes?

i could never promise such a thing. my cake is sam's cake.

[sampink]

we finna eat sum cake yall$

after typing that i punched my own ear