Andy Warhol, Knives, 1981

We shouldn't have had our wedding in a knife store. My dress is stained. So is yours.
"Now we exchange this gift of knives. Now there's blood." (Huggy Bear, Weaponry Listens to Love, 1994)

Frightened but I won't let it show

I am in the zoo or something. There is an animal in the cage and it is starving or sick. I want to go near it to help it, to let it out of the cage. Whenever I get close enough it starts growing and attacks me. I get scared and I get scratched. And then I get angry and I walk away.

The brave thing, the right thing is not always the thing that makes you feel good. I told this once to my dad, while we were smoking a joint and I started tearing up. I said You think you're doing the right thing for someone because it makes you feel good to do it, but that's not true. I started to cry, and I never cry. And I remember we were listening to opera or something on the radio. My dad's a big opera fan. You think that if you really tried hard enough, you could set the angry animals free and they wouldn't hurt you. You think that if the lion eats you while you are trying to save it, then it will be worth it. But that's not really right either.

So I walk to the phone, and I call animal control, I call the cops, I call your mom across town, I call my best friends, I call my mom across the country. I call the zookeeper and then help someone who can deal with it gets the animals out and no one dies.

It's eleven o clock and I am just now eating dinner and I am being calm. What if strange cute boys said sweet things to you on the phone? It'd feel good I can say. I'm supposed to be writing a story right now, and I guess I just did, but this isn't the story I was supposed to be writing tonight.

Kylie, especially this song, matters. Right?

Toof, bitten

I am so exhausted.

My whole sleep schedule has been all weird and fucked up. I haven't gone to the gym in a long time, and haven't really been eating very well. I have vague annoying physical abnormalities (am i really breaking out but only on my forehead? Really?) but I am just too tired to even be a hypochondriac. That is something to be thankful for, at least. I'm too busy to worry if this canker sore is cancerous or not. Last night when I posed this question to my friends, Tommy and Mickey, independent of each other though in unison, both answered "Yes, it's definitely cancer. Obviously." without even looking up from their respective magazines (Mickey was reading the Vogue Italia "All-Black" issue which I obviously pore over every day-- shoot me in the face, and Tommy was reading Chinese take-out menus, that's what I mean by magazines).

Yesterday the Trannibal crew (most, anyway) came over to my apartment. Paps shot me for a secret photo project that I can't reveal but it involved a lot of laying around. Mickey Pussy brought over her button maker and we all made buttons of our faces. Is that weird? I made a bunch of Courtney Love buttons. Tommy and I watched cartoons and ordered take-out.



I wanna go off by myself and just sleep, for a day. Soon I'll get to. Not really. I dunno when my next entire day off will be. When I was a temp, calling in sick was such a beautiful thing. I wasn't "really" working anywhere, and nothing I did as a temp was incredibly vital (I once spent seven hours, at my boss' behest, to "just check email so people will see you on a computer and you'll look busy"-- for $16 an hour, too). I could just call in sick. I'd stay in all day listening to records and writing letters to my friends and doing laundry and catching up with myself.

I want a vacation. Or something.

I really like this song, it feels very "springtime" to me. I wish I was as bouncy and optimistic as this.

New Moon

Richert, love of my life, made this really amazing video for QxBxRx. He shot it at the anniversary party recently and I think it's pretty cool and I like how I look in it. (Is that conceited to say? Do I care?). It's from his new exciting sexxxy new project Dark Room. It is absolutely, gloriously Not Safe For Work.

Anyways: the video below IS safe for work (pretty much-- everyone loves butts) and is so PRETTY!



What's really getting to me today (lately) is how fucking DESCRIPTIVE everyone's being. This whole thing of wanting to "relay an experience". I feel so overwhelmed from everyone else's experiences that I don't want to have any myself, really. Which is just as well, I guess. Because I don't know how descriptive I feel like being.

Okay. It's sometimes really helpful to remember the universal propriety of our emotions. Like "God I feel so freaked out right now I must be crazy." This is how I often process things; "...I must be crazy." In fact I am not crazy, not really. Being freaked out is the appropriate response. I am right on time. I am perfectly on cue and just fine the way exactly the way I am. And "the way I am" involves a substantial amount of freaking out, and I'm doing that today. Hopefully I won't have to do it again tomorrow. Stay positive! Think big!

On the plus side I feel like I look really cute today even though I'm so incredibly tired. Maybe it's not working for anyone else, but I think I look cute and that's the only opinion that really matters.

God, I'm starving.

Went out last night with Sister Pico and Patrick the Witch to a new party in the LES. Met Lazarus and Jiddy there. Chatted up cute boy but had to beg off and leave early cause of work today. Work today will end, for me, at 3am, then start up again at noon on Saturday. Seriously. I'm such a fucking professional.

I sort of feel like if the Apocalypse came today, that would be fine with me. As long as I get lunch first. In fact, if I could get some indication that the Apocalypse was actually happening today (preferably this afternoon, 4:20 would be more than appropriate) then I would go and eat a really big expensive lunch, without guilt.

But for better or worse, we all know that the Apocalypse isn't coming until 2012.

anyways. on a lighter note this totally turns me on and is also about being angry (i think).

hubba hubba

My horoscope for today (one of them) said that I would have hurt feelings. The other ones were more optimistic. I'm choosing to not go there today. I don't need any encouragement. I mean, generally, I don't need much encouragement.

And I don't get too much. So I don't need it. My ego doesn't hang on people urging me to continue because if it did then I don't know if I'd get much done. Anytime someone tells me they like something I've done or said, the conversation immediately becomes "I can do that too, y'know". It is really weird and really hard. Like, any sentence I get finished saying, I often feel like people are always ready to diagram it, correct its syntax. This usually happens with people who are in-between "friend" and "stranger". They feel like they need to "take me down a notch" because if I get my photo taken I must be self-obsessed and narcisisstic and it is their job to tell me exactly why I am not so cool. Okay, got that.

On the other hand, any sentence I finish saying is immediately repeated back to me, 'better'. In a weird way it's flattering, in that whole "imitation is the sincerest form of" thing. I am resisting the urge to feel defensive and possessive and territorial.

Growing up, everything was shared between my brother and I. Or at least it felt like that. I sort of wanted something just for my own, just for the sake of having some single thing that could be entirely mine and that I wouldn't have to share with anyone else. Something I wouldn't have to defend. I think about this often. I still have this sort of psychic poverty outlook. I am so defensive. I should try to connect with people, more, I guess. It's really hard.

It's especially hard because most everything I do (work, eat, sleep, write, sing, dance, blog, walk, talk, think, feel, etc.) is a series of exercises in communicating. I think we are all doing this all the time, "artist" or not. It's really frustrating. I am going to think about this and try to find a way to use this as an opportunity to connect with people and do something beautiful.

ICON: LYDIA LUNCH

"IT'S ALL ABOUT GETTING FUCKED. THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT."
Loving Lydia Lunch

I've been in an awful mood this afternoon. Tuesdays never fail to bum me the fuck out. One of the many possible ways for my day to be MADE, though, is that my sainted mother ("Style Icon: My Mom" forthcoming, just you wait) just mailed me a bunch of my records from my high school days, now that I have a new record player. I got her to send the old Need, Heavens to Betsy, and CeBe Barnes Band 7"s, and some old Swans stuff. But really, I wanted my Lydia Lunch records.

I don't even have the energy to write a STYLE ICON report on Lydia Lunch. It could be a master's thesis, really. She's just done so much, and on so little. Hers is an art using very old technology.

And it's sort of pointless to write a fanboy letter to / about Lydia Lunch. One of the most consistent aspects of her work, the dominant theme across all of her output and the message of her iconography is there there is no iconography. Burn the motherfucker down. Take rock and roll and gut it. Push past the point of ugly, push through the point of fear. Pay attention. Fuck off.



My homegirl from our Cali suburb days Cotton and I went to go see the Teenage Jesus & the Jerks reunion show last summer. In between songs (Lydia would "end" a song whenever she felt like it), Lydia would interrupt our applause, screaming "Fuck You!" and "You have no idea how much I hate this fucking city and everyone in it." It was perfect. Inexact but pretty close quote: "Thurston! Play the fucking song! Uh oh-- he has to TUNE HIS BASS! I guess that's what happens when you get a member of Sonic Youth in your band. FUMBLE! I'm kidding-- I love Sonic Youth. We love Thurston. We love Kim. We love Lee, because Lee is Free. And Steve... we just love." Then when the band attempted the next song, Lydia would register her dissatisfaction (artistic, existential, political) by simply turning her back to the microphone and screaming to her drummer "AGAIN!!!"

I was entranced. It was a dream come true.

I have a very vivid memory of turning 16, in my parents' house at midnight. I remember thinking to myself that by 16 Lydia Lunch had already destroyed punk rock. Basically by herself. And what did I have to show for myself?

Her books Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary, and Incriminating Evidence (written almost entirely IN CAPS, YOU UNGRATEFUL FUCKERS) deeply shaped my thinking when I was a teenager. I wish that all 15 year-olds had to take a mandatory class in 'Lydia Lunch Theory & History' in high school.

Here is a video of Lydia Lunch after she moved to NYC and began hanging out downtown, but before she became the Lydia Lunch we know her as today:



Freaky, huh? Fast forward a few (very few) years:



Lydia Lunch is significant. This is where these ideas come from. If I had watched everyone in the world rip me off for the last 30 years I'd be pretty pissed-off too. Here is the trailer for her glorious video "The Gun Is Loaded". Be amazed.



She made Queen of Siam, a totally classic, scary, and I guess kind of lounge-y cabaret album at AGE FUCKING 20. What the fuck have you done?

I can't wait to spend springtime making out with boys listening to Hysterie and learning and re-learning the teachings of Miss Lydia.

Blessed Be.

NOTHING FEELS SEXIER THAN FEELING SEXY.

Some Good News

• Big Boi's favorite artist is Kate Bush. "Babooshka" is his ringtone.

• Alec Empire is a feminist. "I was totally into the riot grrrl music, I see it as a very important form of expression. I learned a lot from that, way more maybe than from 'male' punk rock." Kathleen Hanna raps on the Atari Teenage Riot song "No Success"

• For the new (astrological) year, I've decided to forgive everyone. I am hereby as of March 22nd dropping every grudge that I've been holding. Everyone's off the hook. I still don't trust you bitches at all though.

• Today Jiddy told me that she learned from her father recently that sculptures of Hercules always have the cutest butts.

I am the Sun. I am the New Year. I am going home.

Today is the start of an astrological new aear. I think it's appropriate that it was snowing this morning. Like a reminder of where we've been and where we will go back. Oh yeah, don't forget it snows sometimes. Don't get, as Justin Bond famously says, too comfortable. I definitely feel like I could use a New Year. My favorite part of anything, especially writing, is the punctuation. Astrology and the concept of a NEW YEAR feel like punctuation to me. It organizes, contains as in a system or structure, but ultimately serves (when I'm doing it) as decoration. Lovely, lovely, lovely. So I feel cautious and scared and really burnt out from too much worrying and everyone making me their mom. Bring on the new year again and bring on the semicolons and parentheses, put it away.

I had this horrible temp job two summers ago. It was on the Upper East Side, 10 blocks from the nearest subway station, and I had to wear a suit and tie every day. I would come into work at 9am drenched in sweat and feeling disgusting. I was horribly depressed about my life and was getting scarily into Janis Joplin. In the secretary pool where I was stationed was a chatty Canadian assistant, another temp, like me, but a lifer, someone who's put on "long-term" temp status forever. She was really into house music, that was my favorite thing about her. I remember coming into work to find that not only had I fucked up the office supply order by buying the wrong size manila folders, but I had managed to buy 10 giant crates of the wrong sized manila folders. I was upset. She said "Max, You can restart your day at any point!" I thought that was so insensitive, so dismissive. But now I'm kind of into it.

The thing about deciding on an end point is the guilty of deciding when to do it. I can cleave the last 12 months away-- take 'em, I don't need the pain. The Sun moves into Aries today. This is exciting and dangerous. I guess knowing it takes some of the danger out, thank god. Something along the lines of "I am getting ready for unanticipated decisions, I am carefully meditating on my recklessness". Every one of the 11 horoscopes I read today all tell me something along the lines of how I need to get my money together, how I need to get my love life together, how obsessed I've been with feeling bad and I just need to get on with it. Okay. That makes sense. There is also a theme of forgiving, starting anew. I think this is appealing to a lot of us, especially Leos. Especially if you're a Leo like our gorgeous president and you said something stupid on TV last night.

New Year! Do-Over!

HOW DARE SHE?

Jong thoughts. Girl thoughts. Feel a little guilty for lumping all the inspirational women into this pool I don't think they would want their ideas associated with one another's, maybe. But this is the internet!

Apoplectic, right? Indignant. How to counter someone else's shock? You don't. Toni Morrison said (let's see how much how many I can cram in here, okay kids): "I can't be the doctor and the patient." So thinking about Anaïs Nin for the first time since high school. Sort of the balm of the self. We can and do make ourselves and each other better by working when we feel down. We know that it is risky and that it is 'scary' and humiliating but one spark spurs on another, right? "How to defeat this tragedy...?" Anaïs asks, then answers "Make Literature". Now I'm not gonna write a book or anything, but I always think it's a nice idea. Someone sees you being scared, you know. Someone sees you giving someone else permission.

Kiki Smith: giving permission, right?

"Maybe they'll realize, if she's getting away with it, maybe I can totally get away with this thing that I think is better." -- Kathleen Hanna

eXXXcerpt

(from "Cash City")

Darling and I are at a rock show, we get in for free because Darling writes for the magazines. We met because we were both go-go boys at the punk club, but Darling stopped dancing to write more. He’s really smart but he has a really sexy body too so it is a tough but uncommon decision which thing to make your money off of. We are wearing cool black clothes, tight. Siouxsie Sioux is an hour late to get onstage (but those of us IN THE KNOW know that that is par for the course (course).

Darling and I are bored and talking about our dates later that night and drinking beer (butch mama). We talk about fashion: He says that he would want to be a model. I say I would never want to be a model, I don’t think. He says he would do it for the glamour and the clothes, because it’s not good enough money, and he’s right. The clothes never occurred to me. It does not seem particularly glamorous. Not what I would call glamorous, just rich people.

I decide that night, when Siouxsie comes onstage with big black feathery hair and a harlequin spandex unitard that I will become a model and not for glamour clothes or money just because I can. And that was a year ago and now I am and people pay me to take my picture. And it feels exactly the same.

Not Here To Make Friends

Sister Pico has another Birdsong video confession, presumably in response to the entry I posted a few days ago.

Beware me, I guess.



(That's me yelling "NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS" in the background at the end, lover)

STYLE ICON: KELLI ALI / JAMES MONAHAN CALL ME

STYLE ICON: KELLI ALI

This is serving a dual purpose. On one hand, of course, Kelli Ali is a big style inspiration. I won't belabor the point but Becoming X, the first Sneaker Pimps album, is completely necessary and anyone who tells you it's a one-hit wonder thing is an idiot. When that record came out, spurred as it was by the success of "6 Underground" (maybe the least interesting song on the record), Kelli Ali (known then as Kelli Dayton) immediately had a class of converts. It is clear that she's the frontwoman of the band, I feel like I knew even then that she wasn't a full-time member, but I may be mis-remembering. The other boys in the band had this sort of anonymous patina of electro rocker thing going on. Kelli was the focal point. She was calm, creepy. She sang for a techno band but she was a total goth girl. She smoked weed and clove cigarettes, you know it. She listened to punk records. She performed in platform boots. She was the center of gravity for the band (at the time), managing to seem both coy, sweet, and depraved. Her lyrics were claustrophobic and freaky and I wanted to be her so bad. Taciturn.

"Spin Spin Sugar"



But there's another reason. I sort of stopped listening to the Sneaker Pimps after Becoming X, I think a lot of us did. (Sorry). By the time I was in college I almost forgot about them, being as I was at the time a Radical.

There was this boy I went to college with who I was totally hung up on. I went to a really small school and I would see him everywhere, all the time. It was 2002 and he was doing this Gregg Araki / Dennis Cooper / Runaway / Cybergoth thing. He had very few friends and kept to himself and dressed as if he was always about to run out to a nightclub. Platform shoes and leopard print coat and dyed hair and metallic prints. His name was James Monahan and I was incredibly intimidated by him.

"Tesko Suicide"



Eventually, I became friends with his friends. His friends consisted, basically, of this straight couple on campus. The three of them were pretty much nocturnal. They were obsessed with horror movies and drugs and fanciness. Their bedroom was basically a California king size bed with computers, music equipment and DVDs scattered around it. It was insane. We hung out almost every night, because I sort of thought that if I hung around long enough eventually James would somehow decide to like me. We went on a couple of actual dates. We'd go to the nearby coffeehouse and talk about Kylie Minogue and sociology and gay men aping black female gender identity (this was what his thesis was on). I was so shy. I sat and listened and quietly adored him while I chainsmoked. We only ever went to first base. He was laconic, quiet, and content to not say anything for hours at all. It drove me up the wall I wanted him so bad.

I would hang out with James and his friends nightly in their big bed. They played me the Scissor Sisters for the first time, in 2003 or something. They were already "over" it, but we'd listen to the demo anyway. This is long before "Filthy/Gorgeous" or "Don't Feel Like Dancing", when the Scissor Sisters really were an underground NYC club act. These kids were so cool. We'd watch Japanese horror movies in which women gouged out their own eyes, cut off their genitals and ate them onscreen. They were practically nocturnal, they never went outdoors during the daytime and all three of them had the most perfectly unnatural white goth skin. I was totally jealous. They subsisted entirely off of Chinese take-out, cigarettes, Vivarin, weed, and Pepperidge Farm Dark Chocolate Mint Milano cookies, and they were rail thin and gorgeous. James especially.

They smoked catastrophic amounts of grass. I was (and remain-- "like a virgin") a total lightweight. I would have one hit of the joint and be hallucinating and staring into James' face while he talked about this new hacking software he heard about and describing this cool Timo Maas remix. I was just trying to keep up so that at the end of the night I could walk home with James, and ask for a kiss. It was the dead of winter, I'd be stoned out of my mind, often so bad I couldn't stand up. My heart would be beating so loud I was afraid he could hear it. He bought jewelry online from South America. It was cheap, but it was real gold. Real diamonds. He was an amazing kisser.

"6 Underground"



He knew I was totally smitten but I don't think he felt the same way. I am a year younger than him and at a school that small, my being 19 to his 20 was tantamount to me wearing diapers and being illiterate. Once when we were all hanging out I smoked a joint and we talked about Mariah Carey. I drank half of a small bottle of Smirnoff Ice and smoked 14 cigarettes in an hour and excused myself to vomit just outside James' dorm room door. Probably fairly, he thought I was a dork. It was a difficult thing to accept, so I just didn't.

Once, at the Couple's dorm room at our usual rendezvous time of 2:49am, we watched the Sneaker Pimps DVD. James started gushing about how hot he thought Kelli was. He said she was the reason he didn't identify as "gay"-- he wasn't sexually attracted to women, as a rule, but he would totally flip for Kelli. I think he wanted to be her, too. I was so jealous of her, because he wanted to fuck her but didn't want to fuck me. I'm writing about her because she represents the sexy thing in the mind of the boy I think is sexy.

"Post-Modern Sleaze"



James graduated and he's not into Myspace or Facebook or anything so I can't try to find him. But if anyone reading this knows James Monahan-- tell him I said hi.

Like that Blur song, y'know the one about boys like girls like boys

"I always feel very precious about Comme des Garçons just because I've been wearing it for so many years, and even before I could afford it, just knowing that they were doing what they were doing made me happy. It was like, Yes! Go, girl!" - Björk

WALK WALK

Isaac Hayes- "Walk on By" (1969)




+

Cecile Grandin- "Le Scaphandre Blanc" (1968)





EQUALS:

Hooverphonic- "2Wicky" (1996)

How We Saw It

From Lover, Ferocious (The Horrible Time You Tried To Kill Me) by Max Steele
February 24th, 2009
Dixon Place, NYC
Photos by Melissa Fortunatti

Uptight Hang-Up

So anxious, so nervous. I'm looking for actual proof. I want to know something for sure, y'know? Spent most of Friday night bragging about my (no longer only) hypothetical modeling career. Sister Pico, Perfect Daniel, Patrick the Witch and I all hung out in our kitchen getting drunk off of vodka and smoking cigarettes and talking about records. Walked to the Metropolitan, feeling like a wolf. Feeling like a monster but a monster that spends a lot of time as a human. Feeling like a girl with a secret. Met some buddies at the bar, drank some beer. Took a cute guy home with me.

Saturday I visited Jiddy at work and went to see Marina Abramovic and Joan Jonas give a talk. Marina talked about learning to let go, and exposing shame onstage, failing onstage. Very inspiring. I went over to Sister Pico's house at night to work on various assorted projects. Birdsong Micropress now has a fancy new blog and we all did some video confessions a la The Real World.



Stayed up very late with Sister Pico and Chantal, talking about philosophical things and the world around us. We kept listening to that Amy Winehouse song "He Can Only Hold Her" over and over again and I started to quietly lose it. I don't even know why I've heard that song a thousand times but I got super shemotional for some reason. Immediately hungry for embarrassment. I became convinced of the fact of the feeling, so I went out cruising for a bruising. I think that's a fantastically accurate way to describe me last night. Went record shopping, tried to avoid anyone I knew. Visited my gorgeous friend Matthew Nasser at work, went with Bobo to an art show in an apartment but felt antisocial.

Went to a party at this house full of cute queers who I want to make out with. I have a huge crush on the host, in my mind we are having an emotional affair. We keep sleeping with other people in front of each other, taking other guys home. And it makes us incredibly jealous but I always get more jealous that the Host does. As a result of this jealousy I have done very desperate things, lost at least one friend entirely, spent a few sleepless nights. The boy I brought home on Friday night is a friend of Hosts. He had a crush on me and Host saw us necking. So there. So he invites me over to a party I go and it is all boys and we are all drinking and smoking and carrying on.

I think to myself, consciously, "Isn't it great that a room full of catty faggots are not competitive and awkward and childish? That no one is projecting how much they hate themselves onto everyone else. How wonderful." (Cause that is what people are really fighting about, you know, how they feel about themselves, they just P-R-O-J-E-C-T). Anyways, the Host has broken my heart a few times, and I keep forgiving him it's not important. At the party we keep sneaking off to make out on his bed, he keeps telling me that he wants to date me like for serious when we're sober not just at the bar he takes me seriously why can't I take him seriously too? He's real he wants me to know that his love is real. I feel cool, sexy, indifferent and aloof. We smoke grass and the Host starts yelling at people. I keep trying to convince him to calm down and be sweet. He accuses me of flirting with the other boys to make him mad. Then the Host starts flirting with them too, to show them that really he doesn't hate them and he is sorry. That is all okay. Eventually people start to leave and the Host invites me to stay the night.

I notice another boy at the party who has been silent all night long and he is wearing the exact same shoes as me, and he is not getting up to leave. Whenever the Host passes by him, this other boy keeps kissing the Host, putting his hands all over him, grabbing him. There are four of us: me, Host, Other Boy, and Roommate. Room mate says: "Hey Host remember when you invited two boys over?". I pull Host aside and ask him what is up with that why is that other boy with the same shoes as me all over you? Host says to relax he is just a friend. I do not believe him and I say so. The Other Boy is sitting all quiet on the couch and comes over to sit next to me and says "Are you embarassed that we're wearing the same shoes?" I tell him no. I say no I wasn't ambarassed until a second ago. I like these shoes I see no reason to be embarassed about them. I call a car and they are imploring me to stay but it's just so they won't have to admit that Roommate blew it and Host blew it and the Other Boy is a dead man.

Cause he's doing this quiet, shy thing. This "nice guy finishes last" thing. And sure I could have taken off my clothes and gotten the Host into bed I could have been that bitch I could act confident and convince you that I am enough of a 'slut' (funny we use that word, but we do). But fuck it. I refuse to compete for affection. I don't deserve that (no one does, hi). I don't want to get up on my high horse but motherfucker I am literally beating them off of me with a bat. I, for one moment this weekend, am convinced that statistically someone must think I'm cute and worth sobering up for. So the Host cowers in a bedroom because he knows I'm probably not going to come back to try to woo him anytime soon (but I will fuck his Roommate, finally). I let Other Boy have the "satisfaction" of "winning" by just sitting there and twiddling his thumbs all night while I rolled a joint and boys kept manhandling me in the backroom so you've got to wonder who the real winner is. So fucking smug. I feel like Ike Turner's first wife in What's Love Got To Do With It where I can't even be bothered to give a warning. I'm out. Fuck this. (Again).

I 'm still obsessed with Fear of Flying but I feel like such an uptight, un-liberated woman. I'm reading my horoscope to get some advice on how to deal with this boy Host I'm so hung-up on. My horoscopes tell me that I have to move on. But I don't want to.

I write horoscopes, too. I wrote them yesterday and I planned what I would say about you. I looked up your birthday and I wrote a little love letter to you and turned it in under a fake name. I think I'm getting sick. I'm drinking soup and thinking a lot about what I'm going to work on tonight. I'm going to the gym and then going home to listen to my new records and write a story for this new fag zine out of Philly started by these really cute boys.

Adorbs

JEAN-CHARLES DE CASTELBAJAC

ZIPLESS FUCK

I don't know if I want to write in-depth about the things in my life that bum me out. I want to acknowledge that it is ok to feel bad, but I don't want to give negative thoughts / people any more airtime. Especially when there are so many other things that really cheer me up. So whatever, I felt sort of awful. But it was punctuated by so many really groovy things. And there's a full moon coming up, thank goodness. So at least I'll figure it all out.

One fun thing was that I go-go danced at QxBxRx on Saturday night. I was really feeling insecure about my body but I ended up having the best time. I got a lot of tip money (for me) and had a great time with Richert and the new go-go boy Israel. Standing outside smoking cigarettes on the street in our underpants, people throw a lot of shade at us. It's kind of fucked, cause like obviously you don't become a go-go boy if you hate getting attention... but come on people! Why do you THINK there are three heavily made-up sweaty boys in matching underpants all standing outside of a NIGHTCLUB? Someone wrote a weird "review" of the evening where they complained about everything except for me. I think I know who wrote that, and flattery never goes unpunished. Also, someone posted a Missed Connection about me from that night. So I feel okay about feeling insecure, since apparently no one noticed! Maybe I'll keep the winter weight forever. Anyways. Some fucker tried to pick a fight with me outside. He was super drunk and I told all of my friends to beat him up and they would have except we all saw him try to order a beer at the abr and then fall flat down on his face so ha ha ha.

Finally got to talk to that boy who I think is cute. For, like, a second. It's always at the time when I feel most insecure, least deserving and sure of myself, that the guy I have a secret crush on appears, right? Went with Tommy and Perfect Little Daniel et al to Metropolitan for famous last call. Insanity ensuing.

Saw Joseph Keckler's show Human Jukebox last night. It made me feel really good and redeemed and weirdly optimistic. His shows are kind of like the way Gary Lutz writes-- part of the appeal (for me) is that you get a sense of the machinery at work. But with Joseph it's, like, PERFORMANCE instead of just reading it in a book. Really cool.

Right this second I am eating the most amazing lunch which I made myself. It is a kind of salad made of black beans, quinoa, red onion, red pepper, salsa verde, gala apples, cucumber and chives. And black coffee with agave syrup. And I just got a beautiful vinyl copy of Bratmobile's brilliant Pottymouth. So things are looking up.

Anyways.



I've been reading Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and it is pretty much blowing my mind. I sort of only knew a tiny bit about Erica Jong. Last summer I read Kathy Acker's "Hello I'm Erica Jong" at the Wojnarowicz tribute and it went over really well. I think because people really liked Kathy Acker, not because we all want to make fun of Erica Jong.




I don't want to make fun of Erica Jong. I really appreciate her writing and her cultural significance even / especially if that significance changes dramatically over time. For one thing, she and I both like to write (and therefore like to read) about sex that uses a non-heteronormative power structure. Erica came up with the term "Zipless Fuck", describing it like this:

"The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one."

Kind of interesting to map onto the fag idea of "topping" and "bottoming", right? I think I'm onto something. For the record I have had more than a few "Zipless Fucks" in this regard (it's been a long time since Fear of Flying came out in 1973 and also fags are different). I think I might only really have Zipless Fucks. It's the only kind I want. Also, Erica Jong has really cute blond hair and I do too, sometimes. That's another thing we have in common.

The book is also sort of about being married to one's psychoanalyst. This makes me think of my good friend Marcus, who is a writer but is becoming a psychoanalyst. I haven't seen him in a little while because I've been so busy, but I really relish hanging out with him. I wonder if he could become my analyst. I think that might be fucked up, like a conflict of interest, but people fall in love with their analysts all the time, so why can't I be buddies with mine? I sort of want to do a STYLE ICON report on Marcus. He has one of the most realized personal aesthetics of anyone I know. When we met in college he was a punk, doing this sort of effete rocker boy look (which I now emphatically rip off) but some time in our junior year of school Marcus started dressing like someone in a Godard movie. It was really weird because everyone still wanted to talk about Broken Social Scene or whatever (not feeling it), but Marcus just listened to Gainsbourg and drank Maker's and lived in this strange deep red basement room out in queens, writing these socialist missives. Such a cutie patootie! He has two adorable cats and he lives in the East Village and makes really good coffee.

But then I fantasize about him becoming a famous analyst, and then becoming MY analyst, and how inappropriate that might be. Then I think it would probably just look like that scene in the documentary "The Return of Courtney Love" (or whatever) where Courtney Love seeks out Carrie Fisher for advice and they talk about how lovesick and self-destructive they get. And in this fantasy Marcus is Carrie Fisher and I am Courtney Love and I can't really deal with this so I abandon it there.

Jiddy is coming over tonight and we're gonna talk about our performance on Thursday:

Mandinka

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAN'T SEE THE FLAMES

STYLE ICON: JESS PAPS

STYLE ICON: JESS PAPS

Jess Paps has the bouffant romanticism and sexual poise of Brigitte Bardot but dresses like Janis Joplin. She likes big earrings, tight pants and velvet. But unlike Janis, Paps is a bona fide beauty queen, her eclectic beads and feathers are more put-together, styled than Janis' street-urchin look. It's not surprising that a big inspiration for Paps has always been Kat Bjelland. The "Swamp Pussy" singer's style invokes the ugly, the slovenly, the unkempt and out-of-control as a site of feminine abstraction. Paps doesn't do the bleached out proto-dreads of Babes in Toyland, but she does use the untucked shirt, bedhead, and occasional smoky eye as a feminist indictment of "beauty standards".

But Paps is also really different from Kat Bjelland, she's not "raw" and "primal". These are words that are often used to describe female artists. Paps' music isn't exactly like that. There's an emotional immediacy, sure, but she's also intentional. Her songs are a bit more self-assured. I think that's kind of more radical and empowering or whatever-- the songs can happen even without your attention, they are independent and free-spirited, just like Paps.



Paps has such great style. She doesn't fall into that 1980s trap that everyone else seems to be doing. Paps is sort of like what Grace Slick would dress like if instead of discovering LSD she discovered that you could just drink the blood of virgins and stay young forever. So Paps can wear really "romantic" sort of cowgirl Tammy Wynette glitzy stuff, but she also wears punk rocker girl accessories, big fringed boots. The tightest jeans. Suede.



Paps is a Leo, like me. We have the exact same birthday, in fact. She writes beautiful music. It's sort of blues-y and country but in form only. She sings a beautiful ballad dedicated to her mother, the lyrics are:

Mama, I wanna be a cunt
Mama, I wanna be a cuntry
Mama, I wanna be a cuntry singer



Cuntry is the name of Paps first album. She has other little EPs and random demos floating around, but you have to be in her inner circle to hear them. Once, at QxBxRx, I pressed a copy of the album into Allison Wolfe's hands. I wonder if Jess Paps has read Inga Muscio's super inspiring book Cunt. I think Muscio and Paps would get along, because both of them inspire you to acknowledge the things in yr world that make you feel good / empowered. Which is nice.



She has a really cute cat named Sid. Sid has black fur with fiery red-brown splotches. She kind of looks like a meteor. She's very shy, and I like her.

Paps knows how to have a good time, without bragging or name-dropping or being obnoxious. She's kind of like a superhero, there are so many details about her. She really likes Sparks, when she found out they were discontinuing it she wrote a really beautiful blog post about it and then Sister Pico and she turned it into a zine and now we're all millionaires. Also, Jess Paps' musical inspiration is T.Rex. I am assuming it is, she hasn't told me that it is. But I know she's a fan of his early stuff and I think it makes sense. Paps knows that a glam rocker, a self-destructive supernova is really at heart a folk singer. A stoner folk singer who wants to talk to you about the wizard's cap and all that shit. Jess Paps is like Marc Bolan if Marc Bolan hadn't been so terrified of punk rock. Jess can take them both in stride. Did you know that in addition to country music, Jess Paps loves to listen to stoner metal? When I found this out I almost gagged I was so happy. Finally! Someone to listen to the Melvins album Stoner Witch with me! At last! Once I listened to that whole record with Paps at a secret party she was having on her rooftop, and we all drank 40oz. It was my high school dream come true: to get wasted with girl rock stars in the big city.



(This is Paps in the center of a party, flanked by our favorite muncher MICKEY PUSSY and Paps' beau BILLY RHODES-- he's an academic)

Paps is also a film maker: she made one movie, called Ramona in Mourning, that might be my favorite movie of all time. It's just images of a woman driving around, taking baths, listening to her answering machine, and crying. it's shot in this very beautiful, intimate way. I remember this movie vividly, and I don't remember a lot of things from that period of my life very vividly, so that says a lot. (It was junior year of college and Sister Pico had just discovered that you could buy ativan online from Mexico so things got a little... comfortable). She is multi-talented and my style icon.



Also she writes a really incredible and funny BLOG.

She wants to know

BUT WHERE INSIDE OF ME?

I Saw Blood In Your Mouth

Friday night Lazarus, Patrick and I drank caffeinated malt things and beers in our living room, then went to Sugarland. Violet Temper, old college chum, was MC-ing, and was so funny. Richert was there go-going like a real professional. It was an okay time, but then we went at Lazarus' urging to a "sex-positive party" in Wburg, which I kept referring to all night as "that gross orgy Lazarus wants us to go to.". It wasn't really an orgy but there were some naked people. It was sort of just like the parties I went to in college, I guess. Except this was all adults, people who should have known better. A lot of neon acrylic blacklight bodypaint. Some very nice people.

Saturday I laid low in anticipation of the long night ahead. Lazarus and I went record shopping and I sort of lost it because I found Debbie Jacob's Undercover Lover as well as Laura Nyro's Tendaberry, ELi and the 13th Confession and Smile. So into it.

I read a new story at the Birdsong party. There were so many people there! I was really impressed with everyone's work. Jiddy performed a tiny set with Jess, it was so adorable. Perfect Little Daniel read a poem and also some Black Eyes lyrics. PLD and I went home to drink vodka with Patrick and then went out to the Hose for the POO Party. It was fun and they played good music but I didn't think there were enough people dancing! Not enough people for my taste. If it were up to me, I would have put more people from the bathroom line (which was crowded) to the dance floor (which was not crowded). I solved this little dilemma myself by dancing while I was waiting to pee. I implored the other fabulous queers in the line to "please there's a whole back room to do drugs in or give blowjobs or whatever I just need to pee please please please". Sometimes I'm so fucking adorable I wanna throw myself out a window. PLD and Patrick and I were too broke to order many drinks at the actual bar (though I really honestly tried) and so we drank some beers in a parking lot and I started going off about strategies of queer resistance and articulating our desires and the radical possibilities of subjectivity and all that. So you know how I was feeling.

We skidaddled back to Brooklyn where we met up with Tommy at Metro. His fabulous friend Becky is in town and she was hilarious and I love her a lot. Last call at the Metropolitan is, in some ways, the most fun to be had anywhere. Here's why: it's just people screaming at each other. I had a lot of fun, even when a nasty girl tried to pick a fight with me.

Her: "So, like, hi."
Me: "Hi"
Her: "So if youweregunna make fun of yourself? Like if you walked into the room and saw yourself what is the first thing you would make fun of yourself for?"
Me: "What?"
Her: "What would you hate about yourself?"
I decided not to take the bait. Me: "If I saw me when I walked into a room I would be jealous of myself."

Which I guess is the same thing as, you know, taking the bait. But that's what she wanted to hear and since I am a professional showbiz performer I like to, in the words of Dynasty Handbag, GIVE 'EM WHAT THEY WANT! Speaking of professionalism and showbiz and performance, I'm performing at a new multimedia dinner theater cabaret, thrown by the Secret Faggot crew, called BEARDED HEART.




































I don't know what exactly my performance is going to be. I was gonna just sing and dance but that seems a little too "energetic" fr dinner theater. Plus I'm playing with such superstars. I mean, Novice Theory and Glenn Marla? It's hosted by House of Ladosha. I'm intimidated! I want to do something that's part talking and part singing. I think I'm gonna sing "Bloody Saddles" or a cover song and tell a little story. La JJ gave me some advice on this and I think it was right-on, as usual. Please do come out, regardless.

After we all got kicked out of the Metropolitan, we bought more beer (I insisted that we buy candy, too) and retired to Sister Pico's apartment. There we watched Mo'Nique's I Could Be Your Cell Mate until it got too real / depressing / inspiring. At some point, screaming and rolling around on Tommy's roof, I had the really distinct idea that: "Why do I have to go to sleep? Who says? What do I have to live for, anyway?" I evidently passed out and was put to bed, along with PLD and Becky. We woke up the next day to find out that the rest of our party had gone out for mroe beer at 8am and ordered breakfast at 9am and didn't wake us up! I tried to get Tommy up on my way out, so that he could sleep in his own bed, but he was passed out on his kitchen floor and no amount of me whispering sweet nothings into his ear (I kept saying the words "Pizza Burger, Tommy! Pizza Burger!") could rouse him.

I spent almsot all of Sunday laying in a pile of clothes on Bobo's bed, reading some. Eventually met back up with Pico and crew to waqtch television shows at Paps' house. Ate candy bars in bed and woke up with a tummy ache but it was totals worth it.

Btw I want everyone to notice how I'm not complaining about the snow.