TOUCH THE WONDER: SLASH SLASH FICTION

Or,

"Appetite for Seduction"

I don’t understand slash fiction. That’s not saying I don’t like it, I kinda do; I think it’s an awesome way for writers to write and do interesting things with characters they obviously care about but don’t have the legal right to make money off of. Cool? Cool.

What I don’t understand about slash fiction is all the assorted bric-a-brac, the milieu and terminology, basically all the wackadoo terms that my fan and slash fic loving girlfriend spouts off to me when I try to unerstand her realm of mostly dude on dude fictional character sex epics written lovingly by devoted weirdoes across the world. Relax, I’m a weirdo as well there’s no shame in it. But I’m a weirdo who is far too lazy to actually research this culture anymore than asking my girlfriend a series of questions and then sit there dunderpated as she tries to explain things with names like “Alpha/Beta/Omega, OC, OFC, OMC, M/M, F/F OOC (apparently no one has time to spell out anything because they’re busy writing so much juicy slash fic) Lemon, No Lemon, MPreg (Okay that one I remember because it means male pregnancy and it occurs enough to warrant its own shortened handle, cream lemon (the lemon is super important; it’s about sex...actually everything is about sex basically) and then there’s squick. I thought squick would be like squee because of their similar sounds but it’s really not. In fact it’s pretty much the anti-squee. The similarities just reinforce how polar opposite they are, sort of like Venom and Spider-man.

Because I am but a simple creature upon god’s green internet the first thought I really formed about slash fic upon hearing of its existence and its name was, “Is there Slash slash fic?”

And there isn’t!

Well, not a lot anyway.

Which bummed me out.

Slash is more than just a great guitar player, he’s like a comic book character version of a rock star only he’s real and it’s not a gag. He’s an actual badass musician who also happens to cut one the coolest and most iconic looks in rock at a time when most of the good looks were thought exhausted. He was also briefly, in Guns N’ Roses’ prime the most obvious heir apparent to Keith Richards’ title of wasted glory guitar hero. And unlike the rest of the wrecks scrambling for that bent crown Slash lived. Before there was Fury Road’s Coma-Doof Warrior there was Slash and Slash walked the wasteland of late 1980s Los Angeles looking like an extra from an acid house revival of The Wild Bunch. And it was good. It was exactly what the world needed.

Did you know that David Bowie fucked Slash’s mom when he was kid?

It’s true. Which I know that can be said for a great number of people’s mothers. And I also know doesn’t really sound like an achievement on the part of Slash (more of a notch on Slash’s mom’s belt if anything) but look at like this: David Bowie fucked his mom and this didn’t dissuade Slash from becoming a rock star. This is remarkable not because walking in to find Ziggy Stardust going full on Suffragette City on your mom is a bad thing, good for her if she’s into it but for a young kid, to have life throw you such a what-the-everlasting-shit one of a kind type of moment and for this kid to be like, “Cool, but that’s not gonna be the most interesting thing that happens in my life. Not even cracking the top ten. I’m gonna bring back top hats (briefly) and shred face playing soulful rock guitar with a group of punk/glam/junkie/disco daywalking vampires who rise from stripper’s mattresses instead of coffins. Oh, and I’m gonna do all that with even having eyeballs from the years 1987-1993 and never letting my cigarette fall from my mouth either."

Axl Rose, former and now current confidant, partner and all around enabler once introduced Slash on stage thusly:

"And last, but definitely not least. In a world that he did not create, but he'd go through it as if it was his own makin'. Half-man, half-beast, I'm not sure what it is, but whatever it is, it's weird and it's pissed-off, and it calls himself Slash.”

Did Axl just reference Howard the Duck and John Carpenter’s The Thing?

Shit.

Slash is a goddamn legend; the fact that little to no slash fic exists that depicts him fucking other legendary men is a dark smear on the entire internet.

Let’s fix that.

Again, I don’t know shit about slash fic but I hope that since it’s founded on people making up their own things that my eschewing any rules or otherwise doing whatever the hell I want is at least in line with the spirt of the first folks who decided Spock and Kirk had one final destination to reach to fulfill their 5 year mission of boldly going where no man had gone before.

I’m talking about their buttholes.

Also mouth stuff.

But more importantly into one another’s hearts.

(This is already bad, am I doing it right?)

1.

Slash/Abraham Lincoln

                  In

“I Don’t Need No Civil War”

Because they both have top hats.

That’s it basically.

Okay, Slash and Abe bond over their shared affinity for the champagne of men’s headwear but deep down they build a mutual respect over one another’s desire to keep their respective unions together despite the racist blowhards in their outfits who want to secede and do ill advised shit like form their own shoddy solo forms of government, like Chinese Democracy.

Also there’s some sweet wrestling action as the two top hated men annihilate each other’s inhibitions and form a most perfect union between their two sweaty hard bodies. Because skinny guys can fuck forever. Also there’s a gag about Lincoln logs get lost down Slash’s snake pit in there somewhere too.

2.

Slash/Dean Winchester

In

“Sweet Chai O’ Mine”

My girlfriend just interrupted me to say I should make one of these entries something called a “Coffee Shop A.U.” Apparently this is a popular (how?) framing device where the A.U. stands for “alternate universe” and the words “coffee shop” stand for coffee-fucking-shop which means these stories take these fantastic characters and you place them in another world wherein they work at a coffee shop and eventually bone and make frappes and shit.

I really, really don’t understand slash fiction.

So I guess Slash and Dean Winchester (he of the TV show Supernatural) are two baristas who make wake up juice for yuppies but then fall for each other once they figure out that they're both rock and roll fanatics. They’re both bad boys but also oddly responsible and father figure types to their little brothers (Izzy, Sam) so I think they’d get along pretty well. But they might be too similar to have any lasting tension which all truly great pairings need to sustain themselves and keep the audience interested.

3.

Slash/Spock

“Live Long and Let Prosper: The Search for Cock”

The o.g. of slash fic is Kirk/Spock, it’s really a perfect combination, two conflicting characters who actually compliment each other nicely because of those very differences. Kirk was a rock and roll captain, he had groupies, played shit by ear and he looked damn good doing it; Slash can easily fill those boots. Plus, my girlfriend informed me of the Vulcan tradition/condition of Pon Farr. This is when Vulcans go into heat every seven years and basically have to fuck or die. Yeah, this is not some crazy slash convention (I mean, it is now sure, but it was adapted from Star Trek first) this is from the original TV show.

What?

I guess there are a few escape clauses where instead of shagging out their fuck fever a randy Vulcan can just kill somebody (seems excessive) or meditate it away (lame) but Pon Farr of the Vanities is a serious matter and for our story both Slash and Spock will be suffering from it. Why Slash? Because it turns out dude is half Vulcan on his mother’s side and all those sweet licks of his were just him applying the Vulcan nerve pinch to the strings of his guitar. So Slash and Spock are marooned on an island, both in total horndog slut or slay mode and forced to face their differences and see if they can coexist or if they’re doomed to destroy each other. They’re totally gonna hook up, spoon and mild meld after and maybe next morning after Spock makes them breakfast he can show Slash how to actually beat the Kobayashi Maru and then Slash can teach Spock the solos for “Nightrain.”

4.

Slash/Axl (OTP)

IN

“You Could (Still) Be Mine”

Sorry prom kings, OTP stands for “one true pairing” and can there really be any question to who Slash’s is? Have you seen the music video for “November Rain?” How has this not spawned three trillion slash fics about these two? Seriously, if that video came out today there’d be an embarrassment of slash fic devoted to it alone.

If you haven’t ever seen this Jodorowsky level, Jungian lush symbolist jungle, fever dream of a video in it, basically, leader singer Axl Rose gets married to a famous model Stephanie Seymour (and then maybe kills her or she dies of cancer or they ran out fo coke and she didn’t show up to set for the final days of shooting… I have no idea, this video is part 1 of a 3 part vague as fuck trilogy of music videos…because Guns ‘N Roses only showed restraint when showing restraint) and at their wedding Slash is supposed to be holding Axl’s wedding ring but when it comes time to hand it over Slash forgets where he put it. This is because he’s an affable drug addict who misplaces trivial things like rings and deeply buried and never spoken of romantic feelings for his ginger haired mercurial lead singer. Well, not to worry, Duff, the bass player, has the ring and as Axl is wed Slash saunters out of the church super broody because he can’t even deal with this.

On the surface I’m sure the makers of the video are trying to suggest that Slash doesn’t like that his friend Axl is growing up, maybe Slash is worried that Axl’s priorities have shifted and the band is no longer what’s most important to him, something along those lines. But watching the video, whatever their intentions, what comes jumping out the screen is that Slash is bummed, and possibly even hid the wedding ring on purpose because he knows it should be him up there with Axl. His hair is better than Stephanie Seymour’s anyway and he smokes his cigarettes with way more style too.

So what does Slash do after ditching his best bud’s wedding? Dude drives his big dick car over a fucking cliff Thelma and Louise style and either jumps out at the last minute or returns as a guitar wielding, chaps wearing spectre of distilled longing and unrequited passion that proceeds to lay down one of the most yearning filled guitar solos in rock history. This is also a captured in a really impressive aerial shot in the music video that is basically a time capsule of why people got tired of the excess of the image of bands like Guns but actually is pretty epic when you watch it now. No bullshit, it works. Slash’s playing and then his acting sell it.

And that’s just in the video that already exists. I want a story that picks up after that moment, where either one of two things happen: Ghost Slash find Axl on his wedding night, cracks open a big bottle of ecto-cooler with him (yes, in heaven that shit is served in bottles and aged properly and whatnot) and is like, dude, I’m dead let’s run through “Rocket Queen” only I’ll be the moaning chick in the bridge and you, you’ll be you. Or Slash just pulls a Ghostbusters blow job ghost on Axl as Stephanie Seymour sleeps besides them zonked out on Xanax. Or we follow the remaining plot of the music video and she just dies on the spot. The shock of ghost Slash taking her beloved Axl direct to “Paradise City” in front of her is just too much. Or she could just leave his ass. I could see her being really, really tired of Axl cheating on her and this being like the fourth ghost she’s walked in on him fucking and that’s shit is getting so old it’s dead.

Or, (stay with me) Slash did not die in the gloriously car wreck and he stumbles back to the church where Axl is taking a really long time to finally complete his vows and then Slash slams open the big double doors of the building and everyone is all aghast, except for Duff, who gives the guitarist a knowing nod and smile and is like, “Go get it, my dude,” only he says it with his eyebrows. So Slash looks up at Axl (Stephanie is furious at this point) and before Slash can say anything Axl is like, “I heard you playing your guitar in the desert, you’re playing was so powerful and heartfelt I assumed you must have been shirtless, also did I hear your car explode?”

And then Slash realizes, as I have just realized, that no, he drove the car off a cliff in an entirely different music video (“Don’t Cry”, part 2 in the aforementioned pretentious music video trilogy) and Slash says, “Never mind that, Axl, I’m tired of using my illusion, parts 1 and 2, aren’t you?”

Axl takes a step towards Slash, it’s a step away from Stephanie Seymour at the altar. “You’re crazy.”

Slash walks up to the middle of the aisle. “I think about you.”

“Wait, Slash, I don’t know if I’m ready… I’ve been walking the streets at night, just trying to get it right…all we need is just a little patience.”

“…it’s so easy.”

Axl looks back at Stephanie, who’s already making fuck eyes at Duff. “I used to lover her…”

Slash takes another step forward. “I think you’re one in a million.”

Axl smirks. “You ain’t the first.” Then his face goes still, serious and he has tears in eyes. “My way…”

Slash starts moving towards him. “Your way…”

Axl runs into his arms. They both say, “Anything goes…tonight.” And then they’re all over each other. Axl’s crying eyes disappear behind the corkscrew curtain of Slash’s hair. Axl takes the top hat off of Slash’s head, puts it on his own then pulls away from him to brush the hair away from Slash’s own eyes. He stares into his bared face for a moment. Then he kisses his lips and now Slash is crying along with him. Against his ear Axl whispers, “Where do we go…where do we go now?”

Epilogue:

The Graduate scene, they’re on the tour bus, all the roadies are looking back at them. Axl looks to Slash, they share another boyish smile. But when he looks away Slash’s face drops. The question repeats in his head: Where do we go now?

P.S.

Okay, as stated earlier I did little research and have now discovered there is a ton of Axl /Slash slash fic, it’s called Slaxl and is beautiful.

Here are Slash and Axl as lions, which makes sense.

Art by Ravendyn, check out more of their art here.

But despite these last minute finds, I still think there needs to be even more Slash fan fic out there. At the very least he deserves better than what I've done here.