A Pornographer’s Farewell

Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times Al Goldstein was seldom at a loss for words, even toward the end.

Of all the surreal communications I received over the years from Al Goldstein, who died this morning, one was captured in its entirety.

It was a voice mail message he left me in 2007, a typically late-Goldstein mini-epic of elegiac narcissism.

We ran it then, slightly expurgated of course, and resurface it here:

Andy Newman, a strange voice, Al Goldstein.

I’m losing my teeth, and life sucks,

but I wanted to thank you and your wife, I hope the baby’s good.

No need to call me, again I have no teeth.

The noise you hear may be a cue ball on a pool table.

I’m going to a dentist today, borrowed $10,000 from [name withheld]

The best thing I’m doing is I’m writing a weekly website, not Google, it’s Booble, B-O-O-B-L-E.

If you ever have time, read it â€" it’s the best writing I’ve done.

I don’t have a job,

Christine and I broke up.

40 years is too big an age difference…

I’m living in Rockaway.

But I just wanted to send my love and appreciation

for your many kindnesses.

Maybe I’ll get a job at Starbucks.

I’m looking for a job at 10 bucks an hour.

I’m 71. I’m old news, I’m yesterday’s paper on the bottom of a bird cage

But I just wanted to thank you

because I was thinking of how kind and fair you’ve always been to me.

[Name withheld] is still an incompetent lawyer.

And again the weekly website’s good because it’s a $1,000 a month not a week,

But again it’s the best writing I’ve done.

Say hello to your wife, if you have another child.

My son, I haven’t talked to in eight years

‘Cause as you know he didn’t invite me to graduation at Harvard.

Basically life sucks.

I won’t kill myself but I would love to die.

I would love to die because I feel that if there was a relationship…

I ruined it. I went for hedonistic orgasms

Instead of building up intimacy.

I have been the biggest fool in the world

I regret my successes in pornography

I regret my failure in relationships…

I regret how even though I read John Stuart Mill to Jordan every night

I [expletive deleted] up that relationship.

And the shrink at the V.A. told me why:

‘Cause Jordan wanted to be respectable

And I’m an outlaw.

Expensive lesson.

Anyway good luck to you.

I last spoke to Al Goldstein in April of this year. The voice at the other end of the line at the nursing home in Brooklyn was thin. A stroke had robbed him of much of his coherence.

“I don’t function,” he said. “And I’m sort of … ephemeral, I don’t do that well.”

Toward the end of the conversation, he rallied a bit.

“I had a love letter from this girl Vivica, who is leaving from Oklahoma on her way to Michigan,” he told me. He wanted to tell her of his impure thoughts. “But I haven’t made any sexual move in 10 years.”