You don’t like Max because he reminds you of your essence. His irrational behavior towards a relatively simple thing like unnecessarily provoking(?) ire causes you to see the fundamental irrationality of not only yourself, but of your entire industry; at whatever level. You want money and your customers want fantasy. You desire the products of rationality, while offering the means towards irrational indulgence in return. Your customers want irrationality, while offering the products of their rationality to you. You trade in – and you exist because of – the unreal.

But you evade all of this. It’s easy to do; it’s relatively a complicated issue.

But Max Hardcore? Well, he’s hard core. He doesn’t evade as much as you. He senses this more than you do. He is more consistent about it. He takes his irrationality to another level. To a level that forces the issue. To a level that forces all pornographers to justify pornography, not just on terms of freedom of speech, but on terms which say to the censors: “Look, yes, we know what we do is fundamentally unproductive and irrational, but you should let us do it. Not because it is equal to what you allow, but only because to censor it, and to establish the precedent of censorship, would be *more* irrational.”

Psychologically, it is not possible to be aware of that for too long and remain even relatively sane. To know that what you do is fundamentally useless. Hence, all of your rationalizations about non-essentials like tactical stupidity on the part of Max. You know he’s right. You know that what Max does is essentially no different than what you do, but you cannot live with knowing that every day. You absolutely have to convince yourself – and others – otherwise. It’s a matter of survival.

Hence your “mixed emotions.” They are, at root, no different that Hardcore’s handcuffs. You are both after the same object of evasion; you just take different routes. You do it through denunciations, petty rationalizations, non-essential distinctions, monetary reinforcements, and social confirmations. He does it through out of the way attempts to get in legal trouble – and thus be taken care of by someone else. But underneath, we all know it is all the same.

For god’s sake, Paul, ask Santa for a copy of Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”.