I have a new piece up at slacktory called: “The first eight girls Justin Bieber dated before he was famous.”

The editor of slacktory, Nick Douglas, had asked me to “analyze the two-year outlook of tech IPOs in light of the newly volatile stock market.” I wasn’t really sure what that meant so I googled volatile tech IPOs and immediately felt dirty so I took a shower. In the shower I thought about a novel I was working on called “Paul vol. 1.” When I got out of the shower I looked at the part of the novel I was editing and decided to take out a long section that wasn’t working. I was afraid to delete this section so I put it in a new document and auto-replaced all the instances of “Paul” with the phrase “two-year outlook of tech IPOs.” This sort of fucked up the text so I changed some words to make it easier to read, but the phrase “two-year outlook of tech IPOs” was clunky and made the character not seem human. I was going to give up on the whole thing, but then a car drove by outside my window and the Justin Bieber song where he says “Baby” was playing. I laughed and auto-replaced all the phrases of “two-year outlook of tech IPOs” with the phrase “Justin Bieber.” Then I emailed Nick Douglas the document and he said, “I like it.” 

Publishing this Justin Bieber story sort of feels dirty because if the story still had the name “Paul” it would maybe get published at a small online lit journal and four or five people would read it, but the words “Justin Bieber” make it seem relevant and newsworthy. I imagine 84% of people who read the title of the piece and end up reading the entire story will be disappointed at the lack of juicy bieber parts. I also imagine 3.2% of readers will get to the end of the piece and say, “Wait, was that real?” 

Because I sometimes I have a strong desire to feel dirty I sort of want to write a book called: “Everyone Justin Bieber Ever Dated.” This book will explore the years when Justin Bieber gets fat. I don’t think it will be a depressing book. It would be too easy to write a depressing book that ends with Justin Bieber getting fat and committing suicide. This book will be a triumph. Justin Bieber will get fat and triumph as the greatest sex symbol of all time. If someone offers me a publishing contract I will write this book in twenty days.