7/31/09

Magickal Winking

I don't really have any idea what's going on.

Last Tuesday La JohnJoseph was supposed to sweep into town and we'd begin a week of rehearsals and chit-chat and generally cutting up. I was so excited. It was, like, my project. I told myself that afterward I would focus on boys again. Then, I would try dating again, since it is August and my birthday month. Last Tuesday La JohnJoseph was stopped at JFK customs and sent back to the UK without having been able to see or talk to any of his friends. I was heartbroken. I went out with an old flame that night to comisserate. Wednesday morning I went to get a filling done and had a pretty bad accident. My tooth (almost all of it) was broken, turning what would have been a 2-hour $80 procedure into what is now 3 months of oral surgery totaling at least $3,000 (if I go to the budget clinic). I'm going to Berlin at the end of August to play shows with la JJ, I hope I can get some of the surgery done before then. It was horrifying and quick and painful and it is still not resolved.

Then, a few hours after this happened I returned to work to a frantic text message and gmail chat conversations with Joseph Keckler and Earl Dax, saying to call Earl ASAP. Still dazed from my newly missing tooth, Earl called me and said "What are you doing Thursday night?" Before I could tell him about my tooth tragedy, he said "PERFORMING AT THE NEW MUSEUM IN LA JOHNJOSEPH'S PLACE. THAT'S WHAT. Ok. I'm gonna make some phone calls. Let's work out the details with Joseph."

And so began my week of magickal thinking. In a way it was nice to have this tooth drama to sort of cancel out my stress about performing last night at the biggest / most important venue I've ever been in. Every day at work I would chat with dentists and lawyers and clinicians and social workers. Every night I would come straight home from work (I haven't been to the gym in weeks, I'm going crazy) and run my show, tweaking it slightly, tightening some screws.

And last night was the show. And it went really well, I think. I've felt really chastened by the Universe, lately. Not just with the tooth, but really since last October when my friend Spencer suddenly passed away. Things have been okay, up and down. But something's been amiss. I feel like the Universe is making me softer, nicer, more aware or something. Maybe the word is sensitive but I'm a pretty sensitive ("touchy") person anyways. Last night I felt so lucky and privileged to be at the New Museum, surrounded by my friends, and performing with Joseph Keckler. I was pleasantly surprised that there were some fleeting similarities in our pieces (interspecies love, cat-ness). I am consistently floored by his talent. It's really awe-inspiring. The HOT! Fest has been kind of a holy grail for me-- when I first moved to NYC I was writing "Scorcher" cause I felt left out, and I remember seeing Earl Dax introduce Dan Fishback's "Please Let Me Love You" at the old Dixon Place. I thought it was just the coolest thing in the world-- the show was incredibly moving and the festival seemed perfect. That, I thought, was why I lived in NYC. And I've been lucky enough to participate. And I feel pretty happy about that, and I haven't really felt very happy in a long time.

This all being said: I am still missing my tooth!
But my little brother arrives tonight and I am so excited to take him around NYC for the first time, eating all the best pizza, but very slowly and only on the left hand side.

7/27/09

Pray Prey

To begin with: my teeth are starting to hurt. I'm simultaneously doing eight things at once. I just want to fix my teeth and have it not completely disrupt my life. Easier said that done. I'm working on it but things are still pretty nasty. I hope I don't get an infection. I'm kind of putting any dental work on hold, though, until after next week, because

this Thursday night I'm performing with Joseph Keckler at the New Museum.

I'm excited. It's really good to have this to focus my energy on while I am working on resolving me tooth drama. It's so bizarre. I'm kind of really level-headed about this show, because I'm in pain and nothing makes you focus like being in pain.

Friday night we had a dinner for Bobo, who is leaving town this week. She's going to go travel the world. No kidding! I'm gonna miss her so much. We ate at Caracas and I had to eat very slowly. I got a really kick-ass milkshake. My night was good. Lazarus came over after and we watched TV.

Saturday I rehearsed and met Bobo for lunch on Bedford. I picked up my prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics and I am hoping I will not have to use them. Incredibly bored all day. Just did work. Just rehearsed and hung out at the apartment, mostly. Went out with Ptrick and Lazarus to the gaybar but I had taken a painkiller and was passing out just as PLD arrived. Kissed him goodnight bought a candybar and went to bed.

Yesterday I woke up, went to the gym, had a panic attack about my teeth, called my mom and felt a bit better. I rehearsed my show twice. I met up with Joseph Keckler up at Columbia, where we did a radio interview for our show with the divine miss Gerry Visco. I think I may want to do a "Style Icon" piece of Gerry. She's such a scream. You probably know her if you run in the cool circles in NYC. She was introduced to me by Joseph Keckler and she met him by doing an intervie with La JohnJoseph. Fitting, I guess. La JJ is pretty much the key to the universe. Anyway here's Gerry lookin cute as always.



I arrived ahead of Joseph and it was a fucking downpour. We all got soaked, walking 20 feet to Gerry's office. Joseph works with Gerry sometimes and I'm totally jealzies! It looks like so much fun. We all dried off and had a little chitchat over gin and tonics before heading over to the studio, where we recorded an hour of conversation for what will be edited down to 30 minutes of interview. To be perfectly honest, I was kind of hungover from my pills the night before and pretty upset about my teeth situation and nervous about the show and in a really bad mood yesterday. But I had so much fun with Joseph and Gerry, it totally cheered me up. It was like benig in some alternate universe where everyone is smart and sexy and cool and people are possible. Hanging out with them is literally like being in a Francesca Lia Block book. You know, a world in which everyone is a cool girl. Except they don't smoke. Maybe no one in Francesca Lia Block's books smoke either, come to think of it. The books do take place in California, where absofuckley nobody smokes. Anyways, with J & G I had a great time. I came home ate noodles and went to bed.

Tonight I'm just reharsing and doing laundry and praying that my teeth hold up for the show on Thursday.


7/24/09

Signs Indicators and the Future Story Kisses

I've decided to edit my last post because I'm not sure if it's okay to put online. I am still missing almost all of my tooth, and now I am told that I will need a bridge. I'm going to be 25 in two weeks. I feel pretty terrified. I'm in a little bit of pain, but I'm mostly worried because a) the temporary filling covering up the tooth that was accidentally broken out of my head came off and b) everyone seems to think I'm going to get an infection. I have been to another, non-student dentist, who has confirmed the diagnoses and even took it upon himself to prescribe me some antibiotics and painkillers.

I am very scared and I don't know what's going to happen. Or, I know what's going to happen I don't know when or how I'm going to pay for it. Just. Like. College. I really feel a lot like my 17 year old self, these days. Kind of a "fuck the haters" and "fuck the poseurs" world-view. Exclusion and inspiration.

At least, now, I'm not getting a dental implant, which would be pretty gruesome. First they'd take out the nub of a tooth that's left in my face. That'd have to heal (one month? two?). Then they'd need to put in a titanium screw and let that heal in my bone. That takes 6-8 months, during which time there would be a gigantic gap in my teeth and I couldn't chew at all. Plus: I'd get skinny. Negative: In order to implant the titanium into my jaw, they'd have to surgically move my sinus cavity by cutting open my face and doing a bone graft. So everyone has decided that due to mitigating circumstances that I should just do a bridge instead. Which I am perfectly fine with. I just need to decide who's gonna do it and who's gonna pay for it. And meanwhile everything is very scary.

So one amazing, strange, beautiful thing that has happened. I am performing with Joseph Keckler at the New Museum next Thursday, July 30th. It's very bittersweet because I wish JohnJoseph was doing this show instead, as had been originally slated. I feel heartbroken. I'm going to be performing my piece Lover, Ferocious. It is exciting, too. I am beyond nervous about doing this piece again. I think it'll be okay. I've sort of made my peace with the piece. I think it will flow well. I'm just practicing the words and timings again. I hope the tech stuff will be okay. It will be. So mote it.

In other news, I went to see Justin Bond's show at the Highline Ballroom on Wednesday. It was fucking awesome. Jeffery and Cole did a cute little intro. They're like, famous, now. I guess they were always famous. But now they're like really actually famous. Not just for Wednesday night's performance, but just in general. Tonight is a new episode of their show, and I'm in it! it's on Logo at 11pm EST. Or online if you don't get Logo.

On my way to the Highline I stopped to get a piece of pizza. I had to eat it really slowly, using only the left side of my mouth. I had to eat really deliberately and carefully. And I want to tell you, friends, that it was the best piece of pizza I've ever had in my whole fucking life. So in the midst of what will be months of physical pain and probably more debt, there was one nice meal I had.

One final nice thing. My friend Dan Fishback got me this for my birthday present (August 7th, bitches), but because I had had such a horrible day he gave it to me on Wednesday. AMAZING, no?:


Tonight we're going out to dinner to celebrate Bobo's month-long vacation in Korea. I'm gonna chew slowly and sideways. And I hope it'll be okay.

7/21/09

I don't know why it bothers me so much. I'm such a grass is greener person. My psyche (ha! my emotional landscape maybe) is divided by chain-link fences. It's really all just an excuse to lean on a chain-link fence. Anyways I'm always looking at what;s on the other side and wishing it were happening to me. But I know, rationally, that it is no fun. I'm looking into my past: I've been there, like, six months a year two weeks ago. That was happening to me. And it was awful! And I wanted it to be over! And now I want it back. So shut up, I guess.

I'm really excited cause La JJ is on his way into my life again right now. We're gonna rehearse tonight. I can't wait. We'll see, I guess.

7/20/09

Deserving Shadow

eclipse tomorrow night. dump your stupid boyfriend. be mine.

Sunburn on the back of my legs cause I was reading a magazine. Silly me. California.
Growing up when I'd have my birthday parties as a baby in Griffith Park my mom brought a cooler of otter pops I want them again this year.

I've been sick and I'm in bed right now. I'm gonna watch that Godard movie Contempt to get caught up, if you know what I mean. Back in the loop, I guess.

got this in the mail this morning:


Listening to Jarboe's 13 Masks it's very Troop Beverly Hills, in a really good way. Her at her poppiest, maybe and it's still super great. Super weird and southern gothic and stuff, but really great. Speaking of blue-blooded Southern Gothic Experimental Pop Divas, La JohnJoseph is coming back into town and we're gonna rehearse tomorrow and I can't wait to start in on him. But he's kind of like Jarboe too. They're both redheads. She's a sometimes redhead. I will expound on this later, but my life lately is a lot like how my friend Cotton tried to trick his friend Jimmy into liking Dolly Parton which turned out to be a shame because Dolly Parton's actually really great. Anyways, so is Jarboe and so is her first record.

And we never even fucked. He would just like to sleep in bed together he was always freezing and needed to cuddle for warmth. It was winter, yeah. But I always thought he just poor circulation cause he was part dead zombie, reptile, fish, metal. Something cold, and bloodless. Politically incorrect, actually. Politically opposite. And still with my arch nemesis we'd kiss until our mouths were raw. He hadn't shaved. it had chaffed me and I complained the next week about how I was breaking out or something from his sandpaper face all over mine cause he wanted to be VERY, VERY, CLOSE (remember mother?). When I told him I was breaking out he just said "Well that's cause you smoke too much weed." But in fact he smoked a lot more weed that I did and I knew it was from him not shaving that I had the zits and he didn't shave cause he smoked too much weed, a lot more than me. I remember this really clearly because at the time I was using really expensive face wash every fucking day. It was the winter and I wanted to look my best, look like Laura Bush or something. I wanted the skin on my face to be REALLY FUCKING TIGHT. And I think I succeeded, make-out zit notwithstanding.

And then in the morning we woke up and the first thing he said to me was "Do you think we look alike?" And I said no, why? And the second thing he said was "My mom thinks we do". And it was early and we were hungover and I had no idea what to think of that moment until years later today when I thinking about it when I heard Kathy Acker say "Virginity doesn't know it's own name".

7/17/09

Going Grey Going Blue

I don't want my weekend blog status to be so fucking SAD so I want to write a love note about my friend Grey.



It is true that my real sexual life began in earnest in the summer of 2005. I wasn't a virgin, but I was living in NYC and for the first time it was possible that someone might want to fuck me. This blew my mind. I slept with a couple of boys that summer none of whom particularly liked me and we didn't see each other much. I joined Manhunt, which was really weird. The only person I've ever met from that site was Grey, but that wasn't his name at the time. He's probably the most pivotal person in the development of the Sexual Billy.

He wrote me a message and all it was was "well-played". I thought that was the best pickup line in the world. So after interminable manhunt then myspace messages we decided that we should meet. As it turned out we liked all of the same records, he was really into the corny kind of Cibo Matto stuff that I was. I think the premise for our first date was actually to watch the Gravy Train!!!! Stame the Batch DVD. After a lot of talking about it we set a date for our first date. When I asked for directions to his house I found out that in fact he lived across the street from me. I had actually seen him once before at the Metropolitan BBQ and thought he was cute. I won't go into gross details, but our first date consisted of about eleven minutes of the DVD, him handing me a bottle of Jack Daniels (which he chugged-- which completely impressed me) and me making fun of him for having all the Matthew Barney books. At the time Grey did drawings mostly, and some paintings. His big sexy move on our first date (sorry to give it away) was to handcuff our pants together when I wasn't looking, so that we'd have no choice but to take them off. Smooth, huh? He has perfect teeth and lots of tattoos. By the time I met him in 2005 he was already over Misshapes and the nightclub scene in general years before the rest of us. He dressed like a San Francisco lesbian bicycle messenger. I was fucking smitten.

Grey didn't really care that I was still in school and didn't have super cute abs and didn't know anything about the way the world worked, let alone the world in which wild punk boys fuck each other in the summertime like animals. He was patient with me. He's maybe a year older than I am and I teased him incessantly about this. His room mates hated me, probably because they were all living in a big loft space with strung-up sheets for walls and I talk in bed. I tell this story often and it's true-- Grey and I had violent sex. Because he was one of the first guys I slept with in New York / as an adult, I sort of assumed that everyone liked violent sex and I would find out later that this was unfortunately not true. He's a Sagittarius, he needs proof. (Which is different from being Leo, when we just need acknowledgment: we don't need to see all the math).

I don't know how many dates we went on, but it eventually fizzled out after I went back to college in the fall. He came up and visited me once, and I got to show off the Hot Guy From New York City as a senior. I came into town to sleep over at his house and we had some kind of falling out, I don't remember. I wrote something probably passive-agressive and snotty about it on my livejournal, knowing he'd read it, and he stopped speaking to me. My senior year of school a lot of really fucked up shit happened in my life, but the thing that most upset me by far was getting 'dumped' (I guess that's the word for it) by Grey. I was completely miserable, and trolled his myspace page for months, looking at all the sexy guys he was dating.

After I graduated I moved back to the same apartment. By now, Grey had moved. He called me out of the blue one morning my first weekend in town after graduating to meet him in Williamsburg for brunch. Before we hung up he said "You better still be cute". I wasn't but he was. After brunch he took me on his bike on a little tour of the neighborhood. I was terrified we'd get hit by a car but he wasn't. We went to every little weird boutique we could find, he sort of showed me around. I saw his palatial new apartment in Greenpoint and helped him re-paint his bathroom. Well, I watched while he repainted it and drank fancy drinks and played with his cats. By now, his room mates didn't hate me and we became friends.

Grey and I are good friends because he never judged me, or, really, anyone. If someone did something really stupid or awful, he'd acknowledge it and move on. If he couldn't repair a relationship with someone he didn't agonize over it the way I did. He got on with his life. He didn't ever make me feel like I wasn't cool / butch / tough / smart / femme / top / bottom / whatever enough. He just worked with what he had. It was amazing. Even when he'd get freaked out (he had an insanely stressful job in design-- I wrote my old song "Boy In Fashion" about him) he managed to just get shit done. He threw the most amazing parties and always cleaned up afterwards. We'd go out to the bars together and sometimes we'd end up with boys and sometimes not and it was okay either way. Once at the Metropolitan I saw him throw a full whiskey coke across the room at someone because he didn't want that someone talking to that other someone. If I thought a boy was cute, whether or not he knew them (or had fucked them), he'd saunter over and interrupt their conversation and say "Hi XXX this is Max, Max, this is XXX. I'm gonna be over there if you need me." And no matter what would happen, we'd almost always go to brunch the next day to talk about it. It was.. what's the word? Easy.

We had certainly had fights though. There were months in which we did not speak to each other, even if we saw each other in public. We had both, by turns, stormed out of bars / parties for some stupid thing the other one said. We're both fire signs, and a little teensy bit dramatic. Our relationship was also marked by physical violence. We had bruises. Bite marks. But we always made up. There was a period in 2007 in which Grey and I would spend all sunday at his gigantic, beautifull decorated apartment, among all his totally insane, dark, psychedelic oil paintings, petting the cats, watching porno and cartoons and smoking weed. Often these friend-dates would end with us ordering Thai food and watching the Simpsons and seeing how far into sex we could get before the food got there, and then eating while having sex and watching TV. It sounds gross, but it was pretty magickal at the time.

Our friends all knew each other and we'd often go out together, but Grey and I had this sort of weird discrete relationship, which was untouchable. He had slept with my exes and I had with his, but with Grey we could laugh about it. [Grey is referred to as Blue in the story "Curator Blue" in the new issue of my zine, if yr curious]. Whenever one of us would start dating someone we'd introduce them to each other and get each other's reactions. It wasn't make or break, but we wanted to know. Grey's taste ran the gamut, and pretty much everyone I'm attracted to looks just like Grey. He nursed me through a few broken hearts and though I am apparently physically incapable of comforting another living creature, I'd like to think that in some way I was there for him at some point. Maybe when his kitten died-- mysteriously (we do not discuss it).

A little over a year ago Grey took up dancing, at 25, quit his fancy job, changed his name to Grey and moved to San Francisco. And I miss him a lot, especially in the summertime. I remember being new to the city and getting lost in the Village listening to Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette and worrying worrying worrying that I'd make it to the train in time for my date with Grey. That's a favorite memory. I wish I could see him again, we've been talking some online. I want nothing more than to wake up tomorrow morning and meet him for an overpriced extravagant brunch that neither of us can afford and then to ride his bike around Brooklyn, ogling boys and stopping every time we saw a cute stray cat.
Dusty and Jess and I spent hours collecting ourselves. Coming our bangs and teasing our hair and adjusting our bangles before Dusty picked us both up in her car. Listening to Azure Ray and Bratmobile and smoking clove cigarettes as we drove around town. We bought green pink and blue bottles of Boone's Farm Wine and drank them underneath the bridge. The official curfew is 10pm and now it is after midnight but we didn't care because in two weeks we were all leaving town. Dusty and I would go to New York and Jess moved to San Francisco and all the arguing we could do about whether or not Bikini Kill saved the world didn't really matter. I kept saying that the records and the zines did mean something because they kept other young white middle class punks from killing themselves cutting instead. Jess said that if it didn't happen in the 1960s then the revolution Kathleen tasted in her kiss was never going to happen. So what, then, was she tasting? I know that for my part I tasted smoke and fake fruit and a little bit of malt liquor and we all tasted boredom. Choking with it.

Walking through a gated community we laughed about boys. They are so transparent. We are. Automatic security lights flick on as we stumbled from one expensive driveway to another. It would be another six or seven years before the world confirmed what we knew already: these mansions communities and moneyed lives were fictitious and as Buddha said dying that all conditioned phenomena are subject to decay. Dusty had a boyfriend who would flip out and get really aggro and start fights with her even in front of her two best friends Jess and me. We'd tease her about it but now I see that that was the wrong way to go about it. Just cause it's wrong and just cause it hurts-- these aren't sufficient reasons to stop. Nothing gathers as much inertia as a young person realizing the horrible fact that the distances we've placed between ourselves and our dreams slsh futures are false. That every rock star every famous poet and movie actress all doubt themselves and the pessimism is contagious and terminal.

Laying down in the middle of the street I don't remember but I am fairly certain that we promised to never stop being friends even when separated by the continent. Dusty dropped out of school and when she moved back to California I think she and Jess were friends again. They never spoke to me again, that is for sure. By then I was in college and living a bourgeouis life I had no right to. A drag act that takes me up to the current day-- I'm still fake. Lying on well-manicured asphalt we all swore up and down to heal ourselves of our teenage wounds and like our supposed best friendness we knew this was never going to happen. The mean boyfriends racist sexist homophobic punk jerks who ran the nightclub who wouldn't let us in or hold hands, who grabbed our hair and made fun of us, threw empty bottles at us-- we prayed that they'd get their own karmic retribution but knew we could never stick around to make sure. We can't heal our young tiny virgin selves we could only wait for scabs to become scars and pray that underneath there'd be muscle.

Dusty said it was time to get back in the car to go home. Her parents were really sick. They might have died since then-- I don't know. She finished her bottle of basically dyed green beer with sour apple effects and hurled the empty bottle as high as her babydyke arms could manage and we all looked away and covered our heads. Shattering in the middle of the nicest street in the nicest little suburb that had it's creepy old white guy fingers down all three of our throats at once. Lights in every house on the block lit up and though Jess and I were mortified of being arrested Dusty just kept laughing. We all know now that just acknowledging it doesn't make it go away. We've all spent years (I'm sure though no correspondence can confirm that) fingering the little golden chains. Describing them because to measure something is to change it. We all hoped that the cartography of our own deceit, our basically empty little heads would make The Thing That Hurt smaller. It didn't.

I ran into C.T. on the street in New York years later. He was the one big bullethole of my adolescence and he did not care even a little bit about that. SO much ink I had spilled in my high school fanzines about it. I saw him in Union Square while I was having a screaming match with someone possible my parents on the phone. I was wearing a business suit and he was still dressed like a gutter punk because his parents had raised him to know that no one had the right to limit him and I wish I had been able to be convinced of this. But seeing him and feeling no hard thing or hurt thing reminds me of the feeling I'm having right now which is that once we've locked something away from ourselves we can keep it there but it takes more and more effort. Like the centrifugal force of fucking waking up.
Last night was my reading at the Hot! Fest with Tommy and PLD. It was great, I was happy. I saw Jeffery and Cole's new show afterward that was really cute, incisive.

I was supposed to go-go dance tonight at this fag bar but I feel sick so I'm canceling. I've had a cough for a few days and last night for some reason I only slept for three hours. I hate insomnia, it's like my worst fear. I couldn't sleep, then couldn't stop thinking about how I couldn't sleep. I feel like my chest is full of cattails.

Today is really hard. It's just a really hard day. And I wish it was over, but it's not. And I am acknowledging that.

7/15/09

Knowing

Well. last night was so much much. Joseph Keckler had another of his "Inner Beauty Parlor" events at Envoy Gallery. It was really inspiring and I really enjoyed everyone's performances. Joseph did a piece about his aunt dying and being at her funeral and recognizing people in the crowd from the local gay bar. Erin Markey did a fucking AMAZING piece about Michael Jackson's death. Gerry Visco read a really sweet piece about how to get your mojo back. I read some of my astrolusty pornoscopes. I may post them up here. We'll see. It was the type of evening that made me really FEEL NYC. I wish I could have told teenage Max about it. Like , "hang in there, cause some day you'll get to perform with really talented freaky queer artists and it's gonna all be worth it". Super sweet. I came home and watched a documentary about Patty Hearst and THAT was really inspiring too. So maybe I'm just feeling generally inspired.

I guess that would be a good thing, that feeling, cause tomorrow night is our big reading at Dixon Place.

FAG CITYan evening of queer punk readings by Max Steele, Tommy Pico and Daniel Portland.

The event is THURSDAY JULY 16th at 9:00pm (for real).
At the upstairs lounge at DIXON PLACE.
161 Chrystie St.
It is FREE.

It even got featured in NYC's newest Queer "what-to-do" paper THE GAY LETTER.

We're all really excited about this reading. I'm going to read two short pieces. One by me and one by Kathy Acker. My piece is new and I'm a little scared about reading it. But Dixon Place and the Hot! Festival are all about showing new work and experimenting. So I hope it goes well. Daniel and Tommy are both super talented and I think it's gonna be a really fun event.

And while you're there, stick around afterward to see the VGL GAY BOYS in the opening night of their show JEFFERY AND COLE MAKE IT BIGGER. I am really excited to see what these kids can do onstage. I've been really lucky to have been able to work with them on their smash hit comedy show Jeffery and Cole Casserole and I can't wait to see what their live show is like.

Exciting days.
I'm hungry.

7/14/09

Formerly Lover Ferocious



The best part of being in love is that it is invisible/magickal/unobservable/secret, and that secretness is between two of you. Scott and I had a lot of inside jokes, and one of them my favorite was this ongoing game called "My Next Boyfriend." The game is that we imagine our next boyfriends, competitively. Who can imagine the better future boyfriend. It is also a way to attack each other without actually criticising each other. So we could do it whenever we wanted and it didn't count as fighting. Just inside joking. Inside, you know? It's just a joke so when it would hurt my feelings Scott would be 'just joking' and I would be 'acting like such a baby' again. It's a deceptively effective game.

Like when I would be a big baby and complain about something, Scott would say something like: "My NEXT boyfriend would never do that, what you just did right now. He would NEVER do that."

Billy: "My next boyfriend won't humiliate me in public. He won't wanna hurt me and embarrass me."

Scott: "Well, my next boyfriend won't be such a baby."

Billy, being mean and cunning: "Well my NEXT boyfriend won't be a Panther. I think I'm gonna only date vegetarians. My next boyfriend? After you, Scott? My next boyfriend's going to be a vegan."

Scott: "My next boyfriend won't care about being 100% vegetarian the way you do, Billy. That won't matter to him cause he'll be really involved with, you know, real activism. Like improving people's lives. He's gonna be in politics. It's gonna be hot."

Billy: "I hope your next boyfriend is really busted, Scott."

Scott: "That's fine. That won't matter to us so much. Cause then I'll be the hot one, so..."

Billy: "My next boyfriend won't have slept with anyone I know and won't know anyone I've slept with. That'll be a nice change."

Scott: "Actually, I hope your next boyfriend has already hooked up with my next boyfriend so that then we can gossip about how bad in bed your next boyfriend is when I'm finally together with mine."

7/13/09

Sky Pies



Watched Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story the other day. It was really inspiring. She comes across as really funny and likable in the movie, everyone says really nice things about her, even her OCD stuff. It was really cool to get more inside information on her. She's a really underrated part of Warhol's Factory scene, as John Waters says in the film, cause it was mostly made up of "beautiful women". I think Brigid is beautiful too but not a very conventional (by 1960s standards) way. I never realized, before seeing the movie, about Brigid Berlin's own art career story. A lot of the things that Warhol used to great effect, like polaroids and tape recording, he got from Brigid Berlin. She had been doing polaroids and double exposures first. She had been tape recording people first. She would give these live performances, "satanic masses" in which people would gather in a theater and she would make phone calls and broadcast them over the theater. I think that's just great. In the movie Brigid talks about how Warhol would jsut install her in the factory. Put her on a couch in the back with a microphone and just have her talk all day. About anything that came into her head. That sounds just great. She has a big part in my favorite book, Warhol's a: A Novel. I was tuned into this book my senios year of college for my Advanced Art History Course. It's really trippy and beautiful. The premise of the novel is that Warhol and Ondine take a lot of drugs and record 24 consecutive hours of thought. They ended up not doing exactly 24 hours, adn spreading it out, and there are all sort of typing errors with Warhol leaves in because they look cute. But the idea to write a novel, according to Warhol, was just so that they could sell the rights to make a movie and be played by hunky actors. I just like the premise: 24 hours with a drugged-up superstar. Warhol just records everything, totally uninflected and with no narrative agenda.

Kind of an interesting idea.
If you do it right, I guess.

We're babysitting a friend's cat. She's a kitten, really. Her name is Figaro and she is truly adorable, though she utterly lacks the murderous heart i so prize in a feline companion. She's very skittish.

Anyways we've had her for a few weeks now and apparently she's come into heat. She moans at me a lot. And I find myself responding, with grunts, to acknowledge her suffering unfuckedness. In the kitchen I am making another Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich for the fifth day in a row and I am grumbling as she moans Yeah, Me Too. I know. It's oddly strange, freaky, inspiring. sexy. More than a little annoying. I hope her owner gets her soon. She sprayed a little in my room and as we know, Everybody Gets One Chance, and then That's It.

Time You Took

Friday night was the big show, O.T.K. Discipline at Starr Space, organized by Gio Black Peter and Brian Kenny. Super cool and a little bit overwhelming. Particular highlights were seeing LEIF do an amazing but too-short set. He is so wonderful. I cannot get over it. A bunch of my friends came, Bobo Jiddy PLD and Kevin among them. Kevin just apparently launched his new website which is pretty exciting. It features his paintings, which I really like. This is "Land of Kevin":



At the OTK show I played piano while Gio and Brian spanked some boys onstage. The OTK Show also had a bunch of movies playing onstage throughout. Art films, movies of boys wrestling. Various psychedelic / sexy imagery. Including footage that was apparently shot at the Metropolitan. Every year for GAG!'s anniversary they do a photo-booth thing, for like mugshots. Evidently last time they were taking video, too. Because I'm watching various Brooklyn luminaries mugging for the camera on this big screen, see at least one ex-boyfriend, then for a second see my own self, drunk, falling off the camera. Trippy! Gio did a really cool and short set, joined onstage by Brian. No Adam and the Ants cover, I'm afraid. I lured my friends into singing backup for me while I did "Intimidation". I think it went well, but there's no way to verify this. Gerry Visco and Joseph Keckler showed up, covering the event, for the press darling. Gerry snapped a cute photo of me which I've typed over.



I'm performing with both of them tomorrow night at Envoy Gallery for Joseph Keckler's Inner Beauty Parlour. I'm going to be reading some of my pornoscopes and go-go dancing in Gerry's piece about getting her groove back. It'll be really sexy and exciting.

My friend Tim, who looks pretty similar to myself and PLD, showed me this pretty cool site. By now probably everyone has already seen it, though. Still worth looking at. Very pleased to see my old buddy Alex Da Corte's photo up there. Hit 'refresh' to get newer images. I think I'm going to re-do my links at the sidebar. Don't get pissed if I take you off. Just saying.

Saturday I go-go danced at QxBxRx. I had a great time. Ran into old old friends and new ones. Too much fun. I am so chatty. I stayed chatty well into Sunday, too.

I gave myself a haircut and I'm going to the dentist tomorrow morning. I'm really nervous about Thursday night. Tommy and PLD and I are performing at DIXON PLACE'S HOT! FESTIVAL SPONSORED BY EAST VILLAGE BOYS POST GALLERY CRAWL HAPPY HOUR. We're doing a reading. We're all still deciding what to read. It's hard! I'm nervous and I have almost no reason to be. How strange.

Yeah. Nervy.

7/11/09

Bobo and I got some new posters to decorate our bathroom. Here we are posing with them.


7/8/09

CRITIC OF MASCULINITY

I'm going to dinner tonight with my friend Kevin. We're going to my favorite restaurant even though he's not vegetarian. So there's at least one thing to look forward to.

I'm working on a new written piece for my HOT! Festival / East Village Boys event next week. It's next Thursday, July 16th, at 9pm at Dixon Place in the upstairs lounge. It's free! Tommy Pico and Daniel Portland are both reading with me. So I'm working on a story about how I was sleeping with this one guy in the winter and now I sort of slept with him again in the summer, but his doppelganger. I've been thinking a lot about "doubling". It's funny how I'm not really writing about sex. Like not the mechanics of it. I think I'm interested more in writing about / exploring desire. I mean, writing about it so that I don't have to feel it.

Anyways, I'm really into drawing parallels between disparate men I've been with. Boys. Guys. The French have a better word: Mec. The two people actually know each other. One of them intimated to me that they've slept together, and I think that's so hot. Not even the people together necessarily, and not even me making a catalogue of my Little Black Book. I think I'm just really turned on by the idea of like ORGANIZING or DESIGNATING one's sexual desires. Like I don't want to even look at my 'list' (I made one recently, at the behest of a boy I was seeing, it was not a 100% pleasant experience and the list, now, two months later is out of date). I dunno, the idea of interacting with your desires, making paper dolls out of the past appeals to me. Maybe it won't work though. I'm trying to relay an experience. That's what critics do, relay an experience. To a certain extent. I should maybe just refer to myself as a boy critic. CRITIC OF MASCULINITY.

(Now I'm in over my head. I realize that).

On Friday I'm gonna be part of this really big art show / performance in Brooklyn called O.T.K. Discipline. It features basically every gay artist. Almost all of them. I am so totally excited to be part of it I'm actually trying to not think about it a lot because then I'd get nervous and wanna chicken out. But I'm not gonna chicken out! And neither should you! Come to this awesome thing!



Then the very next day I know I'm gonna need to drink a 5-Hour energy drink to go-go dance at everyone's favorite queer punk party, QxBxRx.

My feelings / attitude are best expressed by comparing them to Bus 75's facial expression as she raps at the beginning of this song. Also the song is pretty rad and reminds me of the late 1990s. But everything does, these days.

7/7/09

Full Moon in Capricorn. Lunar Eclipse.

Tonight I'm going to clean my apartment. Normally when I get off work, if I don't have something to do or someone to meet, I go to the gym or I cook. Not tonight. Tonight I am buying a new mop and cleaning supplies and I am gonna go home and scrub the shit out of the place. I don't know what has possessed me. My little brother is coming into town at the end of the month. And I just feel like I want to live in a clean house. I was reading my Susan Miller horoscope the other day and it warned me about my teeth. I'm terrified of having tooth pains. I don't have dental insurance though, so going to the dentist becomes an ordeal which is maybe the point of the warning. I don't know.

I feel so shitty lately. I don't really wanna talk about it, cause I don't know why. Anyways. Visual perception and thinking in terms of symbols myths recipes.








7/6/09

Penser



On Thursday night Sister Pico and I went over to Jess Paps' house. At a bodega nearby I found horoscope lighters which sent me into a tizzy. Especially three or four hours later when I discovered that the lighters have a tiny pocket light inside of them that projects an image of my astrological symbol. My New Favorite Thing Ever.



Some sights. Weekending, bending. Testing.














7/2/09

I told you if you came over this is what we were gonna do

I saw MJ perform this show (parts of it) when I was in high school at an old shut-down movie theater, with my mom. Wynne Greenwood's old band with Sally (before she was "Dark Sally" and "O Sally How's It Feel With A Fake Hand?") opened the show, MeMe America. It was probably the biggest a-ha moment in my life and few things have ever topped it. I'm really glad part of this show is online.

SYNONYMS FOR IT:
  • Namer
  • Pleaser
  • Obliger
  • Reader
  • Giver
  • Listener
  • Introducer
  • Encourager
  • Chauffeur
  • Horse
  • Ride
  • Fortifier
  • Teacher
  • Teller
  • Sister
  • Believer
  • Hustler

(things to cross off of my list of things to be, things to not be as much anymore)

7/1/09