Cocaine, easy women, dreadful writing and "retouched labia" were all in a day’s work for John Mendels(s)ohn in 1980 when he worked for Chic magazine (an offshoot publication in Larry Flint’s Hustler enterprise).

The local actor/writer/critic will be performing his one man show about this experience at Restaurant Magnus tonight (and again on April 29 and May 6). He’s performed "Wm. Floggin’ Buckley" occasionally since the late 90s. The name of the show comes from a British character in the monologue who screams out, "I didn’t say we needed William floggin’ Buckley, did I?" When he performed the show ten years ago in San Francisco, the city’s alt weekly wrote, "Mendels(s)ohn throws himself into all these characters, and if the story is hard to follow it never lacks crazed energy or color."

Mendels(s)ohn sat down with me recently to discuss porn, bad writing, the unfair realities of the world and being a "universal object for female desire."

Tell me about your one man show.

Well, you know I went through this stretch when I was very young – right out of college – where I got rich and famous very quickly. I was kind of like a second level rock star in L.A. just by virtue of my writing, even though I had a band. The fact that I was writing for Rolling Stone and the L.A. Times and others made me quite an A-list person. I was told at one point that parties were judged failures or successes by whether I deigned to attend them, which greatly amused me. By the time I reached my early 30s, it was all gone. I broke up with my girlfriend and was reduced to living in this art hovel. It was inhabited by all these artists. [Simpsons’ creator] Matt Groenning lived downstairs. I was destitute. I kept thinking, ‘this isn’t fair – I’m John Mendels(s)ohn!’ I still imagined that the world was a fair place and that, even though I didn’t think that I was very good writer, I thought that having been famous should get me a few jobs. So, then, this guy who’d been a fan of mine who lived in New Jersey, I ran into him. We’d stayed in touch. He was working with Larry Flint. I guess he mentioned my name and my background to someone there, and they called me up. The position paid a lot of money and I thought "I’m not in any position not to do this." But I found the whole idea extremely distasteful.

Why?

Looking at luridly retouched close-ups of women’s labia is not exactly what I’d like to do. I would not really trust anyone who got pleasure out of doing so. As I say in my show, (Hustler) was full of luridly retouched close-ups of women’s labia, racist cartoons and rabid denunciations of just about everyone in American public life. So, I found this very obnoxious.

But don’t you run your own porn site?

Oh, kinkk.com. I would say that’s not remotely pornographic.

Why not?

Well, most of the women depicted on that website are the ones who hold the power, for one thing. It’s completely different to me. It’s witty. Hustler’s not remotely witty.

But women can hold the power in porn.

No, I think Hustler not only objectified women but objectified particular parts of their body. Playboy fetishized breasts. Maybe it’s just cultural, but I thought breasts were more palatable than retouched close-ups of labia.

So, what’s your definition of porn?

I don’t know. I guess, that which makes sex tawdry. See, I have no moral objection to the magazine existing and I have no moral objection to anyone who got off on it.

So, it’s an aesthetic objection that you have to Hustler?

Yeah, I found it distasteful. Look, my interest in BDSM and certainly what I’ve learned about homophobia teaches me that I’m not in a position to condemn anyone else’s sexuality. I often think about homophobia: If I had been born years earlier, would I have figured out that it’s wrong? I like to think I would, but I’m not so sure. People my dad’s age took it as a given that (homosexuality) was sick, perverse and horrible, in the same that they thought racism was right.

So, you were hired at Chic.

The job I was hired to do had absolutely nothing to do with sex. Nothing. Chic wanted to be a more exalted National Enquirer and have exposes of political malfeasance and, you know, expose hypocrisy and stuff. It was meant to be the more respectable sister publication to Hustler.

So what did you do at Chic?

I edited these unspeakably dreadful articles about political and other phenomena. The one that I talk about in my show was called "Doomsday," an early piece about the greenhouse effect. When I say edited, I mean, rewrote from scratch. Really dreadful, every last one.

Why was the writing so bad?

I don’t know. They were paying well. During the end of my five weeks, I made a campaign to get some people who could really write, but I wasn’t there long enough to implement change.

So, you were there for only five weeks.

You know, I expected the typical employee to be chopping perpetually on the soggy remains of a damp cigar, having damp underarms, murderous body odor and worse breath, and forever exclaiming, “Hey, would you get a load of the gozangas on this one!” How wrong I’d been. These were the same people you saw working at your bank or, a couple of years later, at a Whitney Houston concert. Nice folks with clean fingernails and framed photographs of smiling loved ones in polo shirts displayed proudly on their tidy desks.

I can tell you’ve rehearsed that.

Well, I should point out that I think I’m gaining a reputation at the Westside YMCA as a lunatic. I go there, get on the exercise bike, close my eyes and I start reciting my show. My lips are moving and I’m doing some of the movements. Like the editor-in-chief [does an impression of a man wiping his nose and sniffling a lot] – he was one of those people who did an awful lot of coke.

What made you decide to leave?

The fact that they told me to get out.

What prompted that?

In my view, what prompted it was their being stark raving mad. It was literally a madhouse. You’d hear screaming down the hall virtually daily. The head guy would scream, throw things, would need to get physically restrained. This was the first time I’d see the world work in this way. There was a guy at the office while I was there who was a real Sammy Glick-type [the hero of the novel What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg] – this slimy guy who connives and cheats his way from a job to the mailroom up to editorial director really quickly. It was really horrifying. He was really stupid, and everyone could see what he was doing, but Larry Flynt’s wife, Althea, the former 14-year-old stripper, was strung out and she was running a show. In my show I talk about going in to meet her. She’s got a cigarette going and she’s trying to find a match, and she’s got another cigarette going in the ashtray. She’d say, "So, what are your plans for...?"—"The magazine?" –"The magazine!" – And then I didn’t have to answer because she literally fell forward into her salad. It was a madhouse. But they didn’t think I was performing up to their expectations.

So, where did you go after that?

I was a copy editor at Playgirl. That was a new low. You know, I was going through a very strange period where I suddenly became Warren Beatty, where I suddenly became a universal object for female desire. I would get in elevators, and all conversations would stop. I would go to doctors’ offices, and all the female staff would find a reason to come out to the reception area. It felt really strange. The world began to find me quite good-looking. Larry Flynt’s sister-in-law was coming into my office virtually daily and closing the door behind her and offering herself to me. It wasn’t fun at all. She was really scary because she was married to Larry Flint’s chief bodyguard who was known to have caused the disappearance of a young man in the mailroom who’d she’d taken a shining to.

John Mendels(s)ohn will be performing “Wm. Floggin’ Buckley” at 10 p.m. tonight, next Tuesday, April 29 and again in two weeks on May 6 at Restaurant Magnus (120 E. Wilson Street). Chris Berge will present, with musical accompaniment by Justin Bricco of the Blueheels. “General Public, $10. Students, $12.” Call 258-8787 for reservations.