12/30/10

Fantasy Castle

Mercury is direct today.

But that doesn't really make me feel much better. I dunno. I am deeply disappointed, now, three days later, by the fact that my flight was canceled. There is new room mate shifting, my lovely BF ALSO lost his flight, I kind of let work stuff get out of hand, and it's stressing me out. I just feel really down, or something. Been thinking a lot about San Francisco.

Yesterday I met up with my friend Grey for lunch, then hung out with my old homies Cotton and JiceCake. Talked a bit about how life would be if I lived in San Francisco. I don't know if I could do it, really. There're so many alternate realities. I feel really conflicted lately.

Been reading Beth Lisick's genius book Everybody Into The Pool while I've been home. It's hilarious and brilliant. I've been a fan of Lisick's for a long time, I saw her perform at the first Ladyfest in Olympia ten years ago. And more recently at Dixon Place with our good friend Erin Markey. The book is sort of about growing up and finding your place in the world. Ideas of boundary cultures. Really reassuring.

Alternately also reading Mary Daly's Beyond God The Father. I just started it and it's blowing my mind. She talks a lot about the power of language, and the imperative to free language from its historically patriarchal context.

I think I'm just really looking for things to turn me on and inspire me. I feel just sick with worry today. Travel, generally, fills me with a weird anxiety/dread. Not the actual mechanics of flying. That, I don't mind at all. What bugs me is the stress of, like "will I or won't I make the flight / get a cab / be delayed?" And, really, you can never have certainty anytime. So it's a good reason to practice finding comfort in the uncertain. But it's really hard.

I feel pretty lousy right now and I dunno what to do about it. Trying to get myself psyched up for the New Year, and New Year's Eve. But I'm bummed that I can't be with my bf for it, and I'm stressed about work stuff. I have some exciting events coming up too, but right now it feels really scary to have things to work on. I'm sick from hibernating or something.

Sitting in a cafe in Alameda, answering some work stuff and trying to catch up correspondence / keep my life in order. I wanna really keep a record of this feeling: feeling really bad. I dunno. I am positive that I will look back on this exact day and moment and laugh.

In fact, the coffeehouse just put on that Blues Traveler song, and the harmonica line at the beginning always makes me crack a smile. Also innaresting in terms of someone performing as someone else.

So much of feeling bad / on a bummer / anxious is really about creating your own reality. I know, I know. I've been in California for too long, and I don't wanna sound totally woo-woo, unless woo-woo is yr thing or whatever. But seriously, when we let our feelings rule us, it makes things seem, feel and then in face be very different. So. Trying not to make myself a bummer house cuz I do not want to live in a bummer house.

I want to live in a Fantasy Castle.

2010 has been such a crazy year. Right? I am really struggling to invest myself as wisely as possible. Like, not worrying so much about dumb shit. Working on a new short piece, I guess. You know: focus.

Going to read it on January 9th in NYC at a really exciting new event I can't wait to tell you about.

12/28/10

So my flight to New York, scheduled for yesterday morning was canceled.



TYPICAL MERCURY RETROGRADE. i was so sleepy and groggy at the airport that when they made the announcement that all flights to JFK were canceled, I couldn't even get upset. I was very calm and sweet, I thought, to the Ticket Lady, who rebooked me on a flight on New Year's Eve, arriving in NYC at 4pm. Just enough time for a disco nap, shower, and partytime. I was told that it was "a real blessing" that I got that booking. It didn't seem like a blessing, but EVERYTHING ELSE IS ALL BOOKED UP. So maybe it is.



I'm just hanging out at my parents house today. Planning some shows in NYC. Eating cookies. A little bit bored but also not complaining. I mean, there are definitely worse places to be stranded. Right? Right.

12/25/10

HOMETOWN TOWNHOME

Yesterday I went and did Alameda proper. I went to the comic book shop, which moved from the ritzy part of downtown to the more run-down, un-gentrified part of Alameda (where my parents moved in 2002).

(In my town, there is a street called: VERSAILLES STREET. The locals pronounce this as: "Vur-SAYLES.")

There was a sale at the Salvation Army. I got a bunch of big boxy black and white work shirts, and ladies polka dot trousers and a miniskort. I was walking around with this big mass of black and white fabric and I thought of LA POODLEGOTH. Had a burrito at this fake chic restaurant on the main drag, Park St. It was kinda nasty. Yuk!

I went to the mall, formerly Southshore, now reborn as Alameda Town Centre. Really I went to cruise the weirdos and pay a visit to my favorite place:

ALAMEDA BEAUTY CENTER!

YES MA'AM!

In high school my friend Elaine worked there and got all kinds of discounts, it was, how do you say... RAD. Anyway they were having a sale on Fiercely Fiona, and I thought it would look good on my toenails.


Um, it looks okay. I guess.
It might need another coat, or something.
MERCURY RETROGRADE!!!
Anyway Merry XMAS.

Creatures

Here is an amazing new picture of PLD and I (B0DYH1GH), taken by the illustrious Christian Coulson. He came to practice a few weeks ago and then just put together this image. I feel like he really "gets" us. He's a genius. And he's also a really great performer. Way cool.



Also makes me think about the following:










Dig.

12/24/10

Mountain Region

Cotton brought up a really good point yesterday when we were hanging out. Well, two really good points. The first is that Lil' Kim is kind of the rap Courtney Love. There're so many parallels and shared qualities.



Not the least of which is that they both sort of look like this now:

Except Charo still looks great and always has and probably always will?

It's barely 8am. I am up so EARLY!
Jet lag, I love you.

Memory and the Multiverse

WHAT TO FORGET:
- Guilt
- Shame
- Regret
- Grudges
- History

WHAT TO REMEMBER:
- Ecstasy
- Ease
- Understanding
- Curiosity
- Memory
- Magick

How to measure a winner, right? To put it in a better way: There are two of us running on a track. Maybe there're more of us, a whole team or something, but when it comes down to it, one of us is going to win and one of us is not going to win. And we're so evenly matched! It's gonna be so close. The winner and the loser and coming to the finish like and what will tell, what determines the winner is who breaks the tape at the finish line. A split second. I'm trying to use the example of a current sticky situation as an example to make the winner the runner-up.



Like, my first response is: FUCK THIS SHIT. And to feel really indignant and ashamed and scared and freaked out. But then that doesn't actually affect change. I don't know that anything can, really. (Let's not get into it and say we did). My second response is: OK. BE COOL. EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING. And I like this feeling a lot more, so let's just go with that. Really hard to turn it around like that.

Thinking a great deal about my childhood best friend in Los Angeles. His mom was a lesbo, but married to his dad, who was I guess just really cool. We mostly just played video games together, but he lived on this weird piece of property in the hills and his backyard was sprawling and included so much weird wild land, as well as a cave. It always smelled like pee and was always empty. We'd play in it as pre-teens. Totally harmless, pretending to sword fight with palm tree fronds or something. Play imagination games. It occurs to me now how nasty that cave must have been. But then I judge that revision of my memory, like, why do I have to imagine hobos peeing and having sex? Mapping different experiences (my own real experiences, imagined experience of hypothetical other people) onto a place / time / idea.

There's that cliché expression, "There's no telling". That's bullshit. There is, in fact, plenty of telling. There's always telling.

12/23/10

Five One Oh Four One Five

Oh hi. I am home in Alameda. My flight was OK. I got to the airport ridiculously early, like I always do. When I got to my folk's house, there was this weird noise in the backyard, and their dog ran outside to chase something away. My dad showed me on the patio-- these gigantic, child-like, clawed footprints. There had been a raccoon! I could see it in the back corner of their backyard, this gigantic... thing. Just staring at us. I guess he was eating the dog food which my parents left outside (accidentally). I was thoroughly freaked out, until my mom said to my dad: "Oh honey, are you gonna tell Max? About the attacks?" and my dad replied, sort of annoyed "No, honey. No." What attacks, you ask? Oh nothing, just that my hometown, Alameda, has apparently been under siege from raccoons lately. They attacked a woman in the park in broad daylight, and they also entered a house through the doggy door and tried to drag the dog that lived there outside. Presumably (in my imagination), to eat the dog while the dog was still alive.

So anyways: I'm hella scared, y'all! I mean, I am no fan of the canine population (as even casual readers of this blog / my life would know) but I wouldn't wish vivisection upon ANY species. Yikes! Speaking of species I would like to protect from the wrath of nature, I've been hanging out with my cat that lives at my parents' house, Nora.

Isn't she soooo cute?


She doesn't like it when I hold her like this for the photos.


No one ever said showbiz was easy, Nora! I remember in college once my friend Marcus visited me in California the summer we got Nora, and he called her "Norad" (we knew a girl called Jora in college-- we called her Jorad). I think Norad is such a cute name for Nora. It kind of perfectly articulates her dorkiness. She's a total dork. I mean, I love her and she is a dork.

In other totally exciting news, due to a rare confluence of circumstances and magick, the Maison Martin Margiela leather jacket I've been obsessed with was reduced in price to a mere pittance, and I happened into a little bit of extra coinage, and I made some decisions and made it work such that I was able to get my grubby little mitts on it. I had it mailed to my parents' house in California, and I met it on Tuesday night.


And now I own it. And it is officially the Nicest Thing I Own. And I am Pretty Fucking Psyched about this. Bringing up so many different conversations in my head, however. About entitlement and the collective imagination of the bourgeoisie. And also about how in NYC you can totally tell who is rich and who is not rich and the way you can tell is: rich people dress poor and poor people don't want to look like we're gross or dirty or anything, so we tend to dress cleaner and nicer. Do you notice that? Anyway not gonna let it ruin the fact that I am so, deeply, truly in love with my new leather jacket. I spend definite Minutes every day just staring at it. Weird? Let's let Goddess be the judge of that.

So far it's been nice to be back. I went to Berkeley yesterday and bummed around all afternoon. I went to Japantown to get fancy magazines.


The Vogue came with a cute little Pucci compact mirror. I'm about go to get dressed at go into San Francisco to meet up with Cotton in the morning and then Grey in the evening. Cotton lives on Valencia St. and Grey lives in the Haight. And it's so crazy. As a kid in high school, I would dream about lives that included living in those places. I never thought I'd ever call New York home. And I had no idea what Brooklyn was.

It's been raining the last few days here but today it's nice.
Off we go!

12/13/10

Remedy Diner

Mercury is Retrograde.
I'm worried about Aretha Franklin. I think she's gonna be okay. I'm listening to Hey Now Hey and thinking good thoughts for her.

Burning Cedarwood incense and also a green candle for good luck, good money luck for a friend of mine. And a little for me too. Lots of burning going on. It's snowing outside.

Saw this cute little bit up on Diane Pernet's blog, courtesy of the always correct Mister Walt Cessna. Walt is such a constant source of inspiration. We took those photos at his house a few weeks ago, and he gave me a pair of prints he did for fashion spreads in the late 90s and so now, I have an art collection. I love them so much. Treasures!

Last Thursday was the most recent installment of Earl Dax' legendary queer arts festival (I feel like that is the word for it), PUSSY FAGGOT. Perfect Little Daniel and I performed as B0DYH1GH during the special East Village Boys happy hour. Special projection videos and original remixtape interlude sets were made by UNNUUNNU. It was such a treat!

Here's a still of the video projections we performed alongside:


and then we went upstairs to the fantastic deck lounge where Liz Liguori snapped this photo:

Cute, huh?

Such a fun night! Penny Arcade MC'ed and was so fucking real and great. As always. Woosh. Also performing was soul sister Lady Ben Rimalower in his show about Patti LuPone. It was fucking great(!). After the performances we went to Lady Rim's house and chitchatted late (but not too late) into the night.

I had the following morning off of work. I went to the gym on Friday morning, the new one near my house. And left in a daze. I passed so many familiar faces and I felt really thankful for my neighborhood. I like that sassy lady who is drunk all day, who stands in the middle of the street, screaming at oncoming traffic, her hair in an impeccable / impossible bun. A guy selling empanadas with a cassette boombox which is playing freestyle. It felt really nice.

Friday night was, of course, the BIRDSONG event, at a new space (knock on wood). It was great! They served white wine sangria which I obviously loved. I read a piece from Kathy Acker's Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec. We went out to the Judy! party and danced for a bit. Judy is always so much fun. I wish every party, everywhere, was muppet-themed.

Last night I went to go see Jack Ferver's new show Rumble Ghost at PS122. There's a pretty cool review of it in the Times. My friend Christian was in it as well. I thought it was really fantastic. I use that word a lot but it was literally fantastic:
1. Quaint or strange in form, conception, or appearance.
2. a. Unrestrainedly fanciful; extravagant: fantastic hopes.
b. Bizarre, as in form or appearance; strange: fantastic attire; fantastic behavior.
c. Based on or existing only in fantasy; unreal: fantastic ideas about her own superiority.
3. Wonderful or superb; remarkable: a fantastic trip to Europe.

I mean it as wonderful and superb, but also having to do with FANTASY. I thought it was spooky and sweet and sad and funny. Christian is such a great performer, and gives a really good husband vibe. And Ms. Ferver, happens to be making some of the most important work in the world right now. Like, if you think about it, right? Yeah. Kids will study it, I think. (Or they won't? In the future will there be school? Let's talk about it). Anyway I was really impressed. I hadn't seen a show like that in a while. I was really inspired to do some THINKING.

Oh hey speaking of thinking, there's a tiny little essay I wrote up on Dis Magazine: WEAR 2 BED.
Obviously, I'm totally into DIS and you should be too. The photos are by Paul Sepuya. I have been a fan of Paul's work for a while now, so I'm particularly excited. (Speaking of Paul's awesome photographs, check out his new set on East Village Boys).

I have to get back to work on this new story I am finishing in time to read this Friday night, at the record release party for my friend Enid Ellen. It is a release party for her new CD, titled CANNIBAL DISEASE. She is performing with the lovely and talented Greg Potter, and it's at the Wild Project this friday from 7-10pm. So I am working on this new story to have ready to read there. Enid Ellen is a total future legendary child. Maybe she's already legendary. I hope so. She's one of the most spectacular singers and performers I've seen in NYC in a while, and I'm excited to do a show with her. But don't take my word for it:

You can tell that Enid Ellen is real.

Well, I guess I better get back to work.

12/7/10



Woke up sort of this morning sort of feeling sick. I think it's a combination of the arctic fucking frigid temperatures and my nuclear radiator. Sometimes if I don't crack open my bedroom window enough, it gets stifling, and I wake up (as I did this morning) with scratchy throat, dehydrated, woozy. Feeling sick? I hope not. I'm gonna do healthful things all day today. But anyways.

Feeling shitty and disoriented on the uptown C train. Listening to Sleater-Kinney's "Rollercoaster' to gather some strength, pump up some inertia. Getting lost in my little head. And then, over the squalls of noise, Carrie Brownstein shrieking "wanna go back to the way things a-wuh-hurrrr" I heard another source of squeals, louder than the guitar feedback. Perched in one of the tiny bench seats at the front of the train were a pair of kids. They could not have been more than 14. Why weren't they in school? It was a tough, thick-set girl with long unruly frizzy black hair, feebly pulled into a loose ponytail, wearing baggy jeans and basketball shoes. And a tiny, wiry little boy in tight jeans and a hoodie, purple keds, and a huge mass of red hair. Braces. They were tickling each other, telling jokes. It woke me out of my reverie. Not because, say, I like children or adolescents per se. But because I could hear, in the timbre of their hormonal voices, virginal sounds, that these kids were so fucking queer. It was really heartening, in a way, to know that young queer kids are finding each other and making it.

We (those of us who have more or less escaped the immediate horrors and dangers of a queer adolescence) talk a lot about changing the system, equal rights, it getting better. And sometimes the discussions are focused on the problems. On solving the problems. On how fucked-up our lives and the world is. And that's valid. But there's also something really simple and beautiful about seeing these two kids on the train this morning, making it. They were unspeakably awkward, weird growth spurt bodies and voices that were cracking with New Yorkese. But they were also really beautiful, too. I had this overpowering sense that someday this tough butch girl and sweet femme boy would grow into the most gorgeous queer adults, and I had this vision of them helping each other, everyone. It's so corny but between that and Sleater-Kinney and no coffee, it really lifted my spirits.

12/6/10

Two Ideas This Week


http://pussyfaggot.net
http://eastvillageboys.com
http://b0dyh1gh.tumblr.com

AND THEN:


http://birdsongmag.com

12/3/10

Excerpt from CASINO



It’s early summer and friend Lola and I are going out. Lola’s little sister Sophie is visiting from out of town. Suburban blonde soft femme lesbo softball player, and just 16. Lola and I are taking her to a queer glam rock dance party. We tease our curly hair and put on eye makeup, drink warm underage vodka mixed with sweet diet cola and put on bright tight outfits. New in town, our slutty little hearts beat hot wet and fast underneath neon spandex.

(RINGRINGRING)
“Um, hello?”
“Hello?”
“Luck? Is that you?”
“Yeah, hi. Billy? What’s up?”
“Luck? Let’s be ladies tonight."

Stomping through the West Village, pausing to smoke weed and check our reflections in store windows. Lola is condescending, salty, sage and sarcastic older sister to Sophie. Rolling her eyes, calling her “kid” and secretly protective. I’m so jealous.

“But Lola,” Sophie whimpers, trailing behind us, “do you think they’ll let us in? I don’t have an ID or anything.”

“Sure.” Lola says. “You just have to… go in. Just show them that you know that you belong inside.” She nicks a breadstick from an outdoor table at a bistro, and chews on it like a cigar. Waiting at a crosswalk, Lola absent-mindedly fingers her breasts through her bodysuit. She catches me staring at her.

“What?” she asks, “I want my nipples to be hard when we get there.”