{"id":11049,"date":"2014-04-23T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=11049"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:15:27","slug":"bullshot-joe-ponepinto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/bullshot-joe-ponepinto\/","title":{"rendered":"BULLshot: Joe Ponepinto"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>PW<\/strong><b>: <\/b>The narrator in \u201cThe Decline of the Swan\u201d asks:\u00a0\u201cWhy can\u2019t he will this ridiculous urge away? Is the curse of lust eternal?\u201d\u00a0Well, is it?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>JP<\/strong>:<strong> <\/strong>Men today may\u00a0not call sexual attraction lust, but the reaction to a pretty face or well\u00a0proportioned body seems to last throughout life, regardless of age or whether\u00a0or\u00a0not the one who lusts has a shot. Is sex part of our animal nature? Is the\u00a0idea of sex at any age a result of our cultural conditioning? Z doesn\u2019t care to\u00a0ponder these\u00a0questions, but I think they\u2019re inherent in the narrator\u2019s description\u00a0of Z\u2019s silly pursuit of Lulu.<\/p>\n<p>And because Z, stuck in his juiced little world, can\u2019t stop\u00a0and look inside himself for very long, these pursuits become a curse, almost an\u00a0affliction. He only knows he\u2019s\u00a0required to take that shot in response to the\u00a0eternal challenge of manhood. I used the word curse deliberately, to describe\u00a0what happens when we choose obsession over\u00a0thought.<\/p>\n<p>Which makes Z (or Zeus, if the reader prefers) a perfect\u00a0choice for the protagonist. My first idea for the story was based on a simple\u00a0question: what if the gods were still\u00a0among us? As I envisioned the narrative,\u00a0I realized something about the nature of a god\u2014in reading Greek mythology I\u00a0don\u2019t ever recall an instance of a god taking part\u00a0in self-examination. The\u00a0gods acted. Selfishly. They did not stop to think who might be hurt by their\u00a0choices. Interesting, I think, that creatures representing our base\u00a0emotions\u00a0were created as objects of worship at the beginning of western civilization.\u00a0Have we changed much since? How much do those values guide us today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author of &#8220;Decline of the Swan&#8221; discusses &#8220;lust&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[747,748,14],"class_list":["post-11049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-lust","tag-mythology","tag-sex","writer-pete-witte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17511,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11049\/revisions\/17511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}