7/31/12

Eat Sick

I did have just the best time at home in California. Most of the time I spent sitting on my parents' couch. Or walking around my quiet little hometown, Alameda. I definitely ate myself sick. And I slept too much. Can you do that? I just feel like I am overnourished; overindulged. I kind of always feel this way, in general: over-loved, spoilt, etc., but I really do think I got all my rest and recuperation into and then out of my system. Alright. Back to work!

While I was home it was, and still is, Mercury (fucking) Retrograde. So I did feel like, you know, maybe communications were a little bit fuzzy. Or, more appropriately, I feel like lately I'm being misunderstood, for whatever reason. But I don't feel like I need to really clarify? Whenever I try to make people understand me, it always backfires. So like whatever, get it or don't get it. My homegirl Cotton and I went out dancing and sort of inadvertently got sucked into a black hole of Mercury Retro bad energy with someone on the dance floor. And it was so fucked up, because, for me, the whole point of the conversation was telling this guy I thought he was cute. But then his friend ended up getting the impression I was making fun of him, and then came over to ask me to leave? Thank Goddess for the Intuitive Wisdom of Original Homegirl Cotton. She diffused the situation with some creative fiction and everybody got to be friends. Except for me and the random SF guy I thought was cute. But what's new, really.

I did do this reading as part of Michelle Tea's RADAR Series, with some amazing readers! I was so happy to be invited to come to the Bay Area and do my little thing. Especially with such luminaries such as Tea and Nomy Lamm. I'm such a big fan. It kind of seems unreal. After the reading I hung out with Cotton and his childhood best friend and my Birthday Twin, Sam! We drank champagne and ate vegan empanadas at Cotton's house. It was a really nice evening and then I retired back to the East Bay. But not before Sam told me about the PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX FACE ON MARS. I am, actually, kind of upset to know about this. It's not bad news, per se, but it does change things. Look it up! These are the kinds of revelations I've been having.

Spent a night hanging out with the Duchess and Mister J at their new West Oakland digs. I love Oakland so much. It doesn't love me, really, at all. Probably doesn't even know I'm alive. But walking around with Mr. J and Duchess, around downtown Oakland, I got so nostalgic for my teenage years. I used to go to shows at 924 Gilman St all the time when I was in high school. Not even to see the bands necessarily, I'd go on nights when I didn't even know any of the bands. I went to be around other punk kids, to see other gay kids, to see other people who thought the way I thought and beyond, who knew things I wanted to know, whether or not I knew it yet. And because I don't drive, I'd have to take the 51 bus to downtown Oakland, and then take the 73. But sometimes, coming back from Gilman, the 73 wouldn't be working, and I'd have to walk the couple miles, in the middle of the night, from Berkeley to downtown Oakland. It seems so strange in the daylight. I saw my little brother Julian's band, The Straight Ups, perform in Oakland as well. They were so good! My little brother is such a good singer it's a little shameful. It was another highlight.

My family and I went out to dinner to celebrate my Dad's birthday this week, he is also a Leo. We went to a really good German restaurant (really) in the Mission and I got veggie schnitzel, which is real. I can't even get into how much I pigged out the last week. I'm going super hard back into diet/exercise/asceticism mode. Not because I want to lose weight of have a sexy body (I don't need anyone's approval) but because I really don't like being able to eat whatever I want. It feels wrong. Good feels wrong. I feel like I don't know anyone who has a really 100% uncomplicated relationship to food. Maybe I'm problematizing it. Everyone is weird about food because everyone eats it. Almost everyone. Basically pretty much everybody I know.

Came home and went immediately to Woahmone! The wonderfully SF-themed dance party which was happening at the Spectrum. Perfect Little Daniel was working the door, Nath-Ann Carrera was hosting and DJane-ing, and deer heart Ben Ha'Bear was there after her own West Coast Soujurn. Such a nice time. Someone (Nath-Ann?) played Laura Nyro & LaBelle's cover of "Do The Monkey Time/Dancing In The Street" from Gonna Take A Miracle and although I say it all the time, it really is my favorite song. I danced so hard, by myself. I had a great time.

Sunday was the Metropolitan BBQ with so many dear heart friends and cute babies. I am glad to be back.
TONIGHT I am going to hang out with my best friend BOBO and I am just so fucking excited I could spit.

Here're two cute videos I don't know if you've seen them or not.

Bad Blood from alex da corte on Vimeo.


7/24/12

At Home She's A Tourist

My plane quite fittingly broke all speed records flying towards San Francisco.

I always think of this quote form the beginning of the second volume of Anaïs Nin's journals whenever I travel.



Also being home in California reminds me how much I loved reading Nin's journals in high school. It was such a big deal for me. But then I go to college and I went to a fiction workshop and the first thing my teacher said was how much she hated Anaïs Nin, because she was so self-obsessed. I graduated!

So I'm home in the bay area this week, overeating at my parents' house. It's great. My big thing is that I'm reading at Michelle Tea's RADAR reading series tomorrow night in San Francisco! You can see more info HERE.

I'm so excited to be part of this! I'm a huge fan of Michelle Tea, obviously, and I just found out that Nomy Lamm is also reading, and of course I am a huge fan of hers as well. So I'm really excited. I feel a little bit nervous, as I've never done a reading or "real" performances in my home town-area of the Bay. I was never really a grown-up here. I was a teenager here and then I went to New York and now I come back and it almost feels like a tourist.

What is that song? "At home she's a tourist"? Who sings that?
I could look that up, I suppose, but being home in California, land of the Avocado-Eaters, makes me so lazy. I sort of regress into my teenage, childhood self when I'm at home with my parents. I revert to a time before the Internet.

So I'm really excited and really nervous to read tomorrow night. If you're nearby you should come! It's free.

Also a little bit nervous for the content of my reading? I was going to put together some New Pieces, but they're not ready yet, and I want to something I'm a bit surer of, so I'm doing some unexpected Old Favorite(s), but I worry about, you know, will people know. Will people know it's funny? Will people know I'm not the person I wrote about a few years ago? Yes, they'll know.

A little bit worried about cussing in a library. But I'm excited to do it! I love cussing.

Okay, so. The night before I left, I went to the Dirty Looks On Location event at the Kitchen to see This Is Not A Dream, a really great documentary about queer artists using video, which was just made by Gavin Butt & Ben Walters. It was so cool! It features many luminaries, including deer heart Miss Lady Pink Cherry Blossom Princess Cole Escola, as well as Vaginal Crème Davis. Here's the trailer:



I was so inspired by the film. Miss Vag was talking about making a community, making a scene happen around her in LA by simply saying how great what she was doing was. She cops to the fact that she was using hyperbole, but admits that that's all it took to make it real, and says "...and you can still do that!" It was so heartening. I'm so inspired when people want to make their own thing, rather than, say, get on MTV or something. Right? And Davis also made zines about her friends, made it about more people than her. It wasn't about her just going around saying how rad she was all the time, it was about making a world she wanted to see and then it was there. That's how it seems to me. Beth Ditto says that Vaginal Davis invented punk and she's right. Y'all should also always be reading Miss Vaginal's BLOG, which is like getting something so cool and valuable for free.

So that was great. Some more things are:

Last week I went to the opening of "Testimony: A Living Exhibition Of Queer Youth" at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery, where a portrait of yours truly by Amos Mac was on display. People came up to me to ask if I knew Frida. She's such a fucking star.



So here's a photo of me and Sam Weekend Party Update McKinniss and PLD at the opening. We were having fun, I swear. But you sure can't tell from that photo, huh? After the opening we went to Sam's studio where he showed us some of his new work-in-progress and we talked about (what else?) Sade. It was so great and I had literally thirty eight glasses of delicious white wine.

Another cool thing is that when PLD and I went to the Yayoi Kusama opening a little while ago, while we were waiting in line, we got our photo snapped by the Idiosyncratic Fashionistas!



So cool! I love them! They're maybe the best-dressed ladies in New York. This is me wearing all my CdG finery, terribly unwisely in the heat, but what can you do. That show was so cool.

So now today, my mom is on her exercise bike, listening to the Cure on her headphone and singing along. My dad is listening to opera in the backyards and lifting weights. I'm going to go to the old folks' home down the street form my parents house. They have a thrift store run out of their rec center which is only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays, from 10am-2pm. It's actually the best thrift store, but it's like Brigadoon or Shangri-La or The Fun Part of Queens, it doesn't really exist. So I'm going. Then tonight my girlfriend Cotton and I are going dancing at Aunt Charlie's.

Taa.

7/16/12

Hell to Yay



Tonight's the night! I'm reading the poetry of Roy Garrett with Mike Albo, Nick Burd, Lasto, and Casey Spooner. Introduction by Robert W. Richards, and organzied by Dirty Looks and Spunk Arts Mag.

The Phoenix at 7pm. You can see moire info on Facebook HERE.

I'm looking forward to this. Garrett's poems are actually really fantastic, and I am of course in thrall to my fellow readers. Please come!

--

Additionally, so excited to go to San Francisco next week, where I'll be reading at Michelle Tea's RADAR series on the 25th. Are you in San Francisco and reading this? Please come to the reading if so.

--

Thee Ewok Vixen aka Jiddy No-no aka Julia and I had plans to hang out last week, but then she undertook a pretty ambitious renovation project in her blessèd art studio, in preparation for her upcoming MFA studies, so she couldn't go. Instead, she handed over the invite to me and Perfect Little Daniel and I went to the opening of the Yayoi Kusama show at the Whitney. It was so fantastic and special and I wore all polka dots (and black). So much about Kusama's work is really admirable, not the least of which is the fact that she's had this incredibly influential and prolific career under circumstances which make her continued success almost impossible. I don't know, it's so heartening to see the strength, the sense of self one is able to cultivate by working so hard and for so long, and for being so consistently honest, forever. Is Kusama a romantic? I think that she just may be.



At the Whitney, we dined on free wine, and red and white gumballs (like polka dots, natch).

--

I was telling him about how I couldn't get it to together, how I was so confused, bewildered by observing other people in the world. Like, how did they manage to not feel shitty all the time, the way I did, and why didn't everything feel disorganized and painful to them, the way that it did to me? I felt like a child, overhearing an adult joke (this is a position I had been in before), and not understanding what they find so funny. They couldn't possibly explain it to me, and even if they could, I wouldn't understand. I felt left out, forever. I've concluded that the reason I feel so left our and feel so confused and can't understand other people and can't stop feeling shitty is me. Some deficiency of faculty on my part. I just lack the capability. I don't know why, but I keep coming back to that conclusion. I was telling my psychoanalyst that I keep reflexively forcing myself to understand my life in only the most miserable terms. "Everyone secretly hates me," "I am doomed to always fuck everything up," etc.

PSYCHOANALYST: Maybe you just want to be miserable.
BILLY: That's right. I seem to.. want to just be miserable all the time, or something.
P: Maybe you're just not meant to be happy.
B: It feels that way, man.
P: Maybe you're, uh, just destined to feel like a fuck-up all the time, then.
B: Yeah...
P: Miserable in all aspects of you're life. Maybe you're just meant to be miserable in your art, miserable at your job, miserable in, uh, your social life, miserable in your sex life...
B: Yes.
P: Maybe that's just who you are. Maybe you're just meant to be miserable all the time, if you want to be miserable.
B: Right.

And, at this point I actually did start to choke up, which is very much unlike me, as I Never Cry (see for yourself), it's one of those things about me. I never cry, and I never vomit and I've never in my life had a brain freeze. I sometimes puke, I guess, when I am wasted, but my eyes were watering and my voice was quavering, there, on my psychoanalyst's couch. I was surprised to hear myself.

B: But like, that sucks. That's, like, not fair. I don't want, I can't understand why. It just doesn't seem like it should have to be that way--
P: Well, we're out of time.

I looked at the clock and it said 8:15pm. Our session was over. I stood up and got my bag, and headed for the door.

B (sighing): Right, so. I'll see you next time.
P: Yep. Okay. Hope you have a, uh, miserable week.

--

Don't you guys think that Raf Simons 1995's new hairy hoodie is sort of actually literally ripping off the B0DYH1GH aesthetic, the construction of which we've been so careful with? Maybe this is a great minds thinking alike thing.



Maybe he's ripping us off. What it probably is, actually, is that Raf is a huge Hunx & His Punx fan, and has been following us for a couple years now, ever since seeing PLD star as queerbait in that fantastic music video directed by Justin Kelly.



I guess what I'm saying is, Raf, babe, dude, sir: send us those fucking hoodies.

--

Did a fantastic reading on Saturday night. And I got to trade zines with some of my fellow artists, which does make me quite happy. I finally got a copy of Scott Hug's brillian HELL TO PAY, which I treasure so much. More like Hell To Yay!

Also got a copy of Anthony Thornton's first collection of poetry, The World Owes Me Something. I had never seen Anthony read before, and have only ever read his brilliant writing online. I am an immediate and instant fan. His poems are so carefully considered, so really fucking smart. It's this wonderful feeling of looking forward to something, and then it totally living up to and perhaps surpassing your expectations. Here's a little snipped from the chapbook:
Look away from the mirror
Your downward glance opens a
door I can enter.
Sweetheart golem, face of a
pugilist.
My gaze can shear off so
many years and make you
young again.
So brilliant! The zine is in a highly limited initial run of 25 copies, published by DAKHMA, and is available for $5HERE.

--

Last night after a pretty uneventful but relaxing day wading through the deep humidity and crushing heat, I went to my friend Ben's house for a private in-progress performance of his new show. I don't know what I can in good conscience reveal about his work, since, like all good things it will soon be put up onstage for you to see. My point is that it was such a fantastic way to end the weekend basking in my friend's glow. I'm so curious, so really fascinated with how to put something together. It's so trippy to me the way in which aesthetics and logic seem to occur to everyone in radically different ways. Like: I love how Ben thinks. I love how people respond to things, I love how people feel totally secure and reflexive in their assumptions, and yet we're all doing different things, thinking in radically different ways. And no one is wrong, or right, or anything.

--

Maybe I need to become a therapist. I'm just so tickled, turned-on, finding myself personally indicted and called-upon to be in the world. But without having any sense of where or how or to what end. Like: to be empty. Once it used to be an insult to be called vapid, vacuous. I used to get a little upset when people called me those things. But only a little. I know what my job is and it is exactly to be more vacuous, more vapid, more air.

The thing about being the center of the universe is that you are responsible for all of the life which you behold. You light up the entire universe and pull everything into your orbit, and everything bends toward and worships you, but at the same time nothing can reach you for the incineration.

7/11/12

Mom Not Mother



- I guess I just really don't, like actually really truly do not know what to do. I remember reading a zine that said that one thing you could do in this situation was organize a potluck. Like to rally support. I guess what I am saying is that I want to rally support. Like, I want to be surrounded by loved ones and the food they've made. Maybe for my birthday. Not much of a celebration.

Who wants to come to a potluck?



- I fucked up my back, in bed, on Sunday night. Asleep. I had a dream about earthquakes, that I was in Seattle and there were earthquakes and I had a cat and I wanted to leave the cat at home, but it insisted I carry it around with me outdoors, downtown, to see the Earthquakes. The cat told me psychically that it would be okay, that it wouldn't mind if I took it out, it would let me know when it wanted me to put it down. But then these earthquakes kept happening and while I wasn't exactly scared (I like earthquakes) the cat was terrified and was clawing at my chest. Also in the dream, the woman who was driving us around town to go to the Earthquakes, who I felt like was my mom but wasn't actually my mom, left us alone and then went into an apartment condo building. She went in, and then a helicopter bombed the building (she had been a spy?) and there was another earthquake and I woke up. So I fucked up my back real bad, woke up in pain.

To fix my back I did a yoga class podcast last night. I didn't do the one my friend Ben recommended, and the instructor who was leading this one wasn't very clear. I feel like I was doing the poses wrong. I've never done yoga by myself. I should be more confident. I kept looking up postures online, which was distracting. I thought: it's probably supposed to feel difficult. I know it is. If I was working alongside someone I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Alone, however, I doubt everything.

Maybe it felt strange because my bedroom is on a slight slant. Some muscles have to work harder than others. Maybe that's what my problem is. A broken mattress in a slanted room. Keep zooming out, taking in a wider view. The axis is the problem. Now my back feels a little bit better, and strange asymmetrical muscles are sore.



- People want moms but they don't want mothers. They want, it feels good to people when their stamina is noticed. It's a good way to flatter someone: "You've been through so much and you've done such a good job" or "I know it hurts" people want you to recognize something about them which they have trouble articulating themselves. But it's such a fine line, because people don't want to feel condescended too. They don't want you to impose your own values onto them, they just want to see themselves reaffirmed without asking for it, I guess. This is what I am saying, a mom but not a mother. Just some ambient nurturing force, without blood, without a pulse. Certainly not. The hand that feeds you, so to speak, this is not a human hand. We want machines. We want love-pills. It is too much to ask so you learn eventually not to, maybe.



Always loved that Shannon Wright song.

I feel kinda pretty blue. Blah-blue. It feels grey, evacuated. Bored and upset. Inedible and yeah temporary, I guess.

7/10/12

DOUBLES

Two very exciting readings coming up, children!

First, this Saturday night:


Saturday July 14th 2012

CODEX is proud to present:
SWINGERS: An Evening of Readings featuring Evan Burton, Max Steele, Anthony Thornton, Mary Walton and Joseph Whitt.

Doors: 8:00 p.m., Performances: 9:00 p.m. (sharp)
$ FREE
Directions: CODEX is located at 600 Johnson Avenue., Brooklyn NY 11237 (one block from the Jefferson L train stop in Bushwick).

Open bar provided
Music: weisenheimer

This is event is strictly RSVP ONLY. If you wish to attend, please RSVP as soon as possible to codexeventlist@gmail.com. If there is space available, a confirmation e-mail will be sent to you the following day. If not, the venue has been booked past capacity.

I will be reading some of my own material and will be selling back issues of Scorcher at the event.

More info on FACEBOOK.

And then next Monday:



Monday, July 16th, 2012
7:00 pm
The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street, New York City


Spunk Arts Magazine in association with Dirty Looks: On Location presents:
HOT ROD REPRISE: 25 poems by Roy Garrett
Read by MIKE ALBO, NICK BURD, LASTO, CASEY SPOONER, and MAX STEELE.
Introduction by ROBERT W. RICHARDS

[The reading is preceded by a screening of Jose Rodriguez-Soltero’s Jerovi (11 minutes, 1965), part of Dirty Looks: On Location, a month-long series of queer interventions in New York City spaces. (onlocation.dirtylooksnyc.org)]

ROY GARRETT danced in Manhattan's Ramrod theatre, Big Top, and The Gaiety before moving into adult film. From 1979 through the early 80s Garret made a dozen films—five of them for Joe Gage (including his lead role in Gage's Heatstroke). In 1981 he met his lover Bob Shane. Roy performed his own poetry in an act called Hot Rod To Hell, and released an audio cassette of the act, with "musical scenery” by Man Parrish (who also did several soundtracks for Joe Gage). Shane died in 1987 and Garrett in 1992, both from AIDS complications.

More info about the event on FACEBOOK.

I will of course be reading some of Mr. Garrett's poems, which are just fantastic. I am so excited to be part of this reading, reading along such esteemed company (yowza!).

Also, SPUNK Arts mag, the sort of mommy-host of this event, is having a launch party for their new issue (which features, among others, work by the lovely Miss Joseph Keckler) this THRUSDAY in NYC at Envoy Enterprise. INFO ON THE SPUNK PARTY HERE.

Okay I will see you kids at both (all three) things!

7/9/12

Intimate Strategy



Right, so. On Thursday, Kyle and PLD and I went to the opening of B-OUT at Andrew Edlin Gallery, curated by Scott Hug. It was pretty fucking amazing. It features so many great queer artists from NYC (and the world, I guess), and at exactly the right moment. It was installed beautifully, and there are so many really great pieces in it. There's a series of performances, screenings and readings in conjunction with the show, which is up until 8/18 and totally worth checking out.

I've been thinking a lot about how with Anderson and Frank coming out of the closet, so many already out, usually white and liberal queers are being cynical about them coming out. And I was thinking about Wynne Greenwood, and how she talked about making coming out a process, or being able to do it more than once. Like, we can keep coming out. I think that's a great idea. And I think it's great to come out, as anything, any and all the time. Like, to come out as straight or asexual or whatever. Anything. I just think it's cool to say the thing out loud, that you are. Because the thing that you are, that you come out as, is always changing, and is always great, so keep doing it, right?

So Scott's show, B-OUT is sort of, to my mind, about coming out. It's almost overwhelming, how much cool stuff is in the show, but not in a bad way. In a way that makes me excited to be out, paying attention. Very cool stuff.

So after the opening I went to my psychoanalyst and we had a real great time. After that, I went over to Erin Markey's house where PLD and E and I drank champagne and played Uno. I didn't know how to play it but I did get the hang of it. It's kind of hard to play with just three people. Maybe not hard, but intimate. It requires Intimate Strategy.



Then on Friday I went to go see Dan's show, The Material World in the Dixon Place HOT! Festival which was very exciting. I love going to opening nights, you know? The show is great, an epic and beautiful, surreal fantasy by dear heart Dan, and I am excited to see how the show has developed since it's last iteration. Dan is such a great writer, and the show has so many really great things. Not the least of which is Miss Molly Pope, who has one song in the show, a solo, and it totally destroys everything. She's so fucking fantastic it hurts. This isn't news. Michael Musto just wrote a totally on-point article about her. She is literally a gem and everyone should go see her in Dan's show. The rest of the show is extra magickal, loverboy Cole stars and there are some fantastic new songs. Highly recommended.



Saturday I got up early, went to the gym, meditated, watered the houseplants, and hurried to go to Feminist Brunch at Cafe Colette with David and Colin. We had rosé cocktails and exceedingly good food, and then after brunch went to the East Village to go to the witch shops, you know, like you do. I was exhausted form the heat, and took one hell of a nap before going out to Metropolitan with the girls. I had so much fun that at one point I did actually tell Sam that was "rekindling my love affair with vodka". The things we say. The Shapes We Make. So, that was cute. I ran into pretty much everybody there, like you do. It was gag. I wore a mesh t-shirt (inspired by David's Feminist Brunch Luke, earlier that day, I must say), I had maybe a litte too much to drink. No remorse.

Sunday I didn't do a ton until meeting up with Erin, Becca, PLD and Dan at the Rusty Knot for JD's new party Scissor Sundays. It was cute! New gay experiences! I do like being down by the water, and a nice change of pace. I had a fairly disgusting drink, the name of which I've mercifully forgotten, but it was beer, hot sauce, lime juice and ice, in a salted glass. Why did I drink it? Three of them? Gross.

We hustled across town to see Miss Joseph Keckler perform at Joe's Pub, which was of course dark, stormy and delicious, as usual. My old room mate Cassaundra from the Soft Butch days wrote a really rad article about Joseph for BOMB, so it was cool to see her at the show and to celebrate Joseph's new work-in-progress, I Am An Opera. She sure is.

And now today I am home sick from work. Kind of hoping the plumber will come by to fix the leak in our kitchen. It's hot and I feel gross.

7/5/12

Be My Be My

Tuesday night I got ready to go out with Ptrck, Perfect Little Daniel and Lola. We all had Wednesday off work so there was a real kind of Friday-night energy in the air, even though it was only Tuesday. Lola came over and we all had some cocktails at my house. She brought Diet Mountain Dew (my favorite!) which she had drank on her way chez nous.



Isn't Lola gorgeous? She looks to me like a Pussycat Doll. Is that a weird way to compliment someone?


Remember this song?


So we hung out at home for a minute, then babygirl Colin Self came by and we all got ready to go out to Westway for their West Gay party. I'd never been to it, and we took the subway there but I still haven't been because there was an insane line down the block and they weren't letting anyone in. Oh well! PLD and P and Lola and I went downtown to Home Sweet Home for GAY VINYL, which was a really good idea. Even if the people dancing there were not gay (which they most certainly were not) the music was really great. Shayne from Hood By Air was DJing and it was a good, laid back vibe. We further retired to the good old fashioned Metropolitan, where we ran into deer heart Thain who told us about a cute Fourth of July idea. It was late, after that, and I went home.

Yesterday on the real fourth I woke up, went to the gym, did not meditate (oops) and went with PLD to his friend Ana's house in Greenpoint, where we listened to Soul Coughing and talked about love. It was cute. From there we went to Erin & the Irish Horse's new digs, where we drank some cold champers and cracked our backs on their athletic devices. And they fed us (they're really good cooks). It was almost dusk though and everybody had places to be. I took a bus to the train to the lower east side, where I met up with Thain and Tommy and Lola and Alyson in a community park on Chrystie street to watch the "all-natural fireworks display": 90 fireflies released into the garden! Well, they were released. But they sort of decided not to light up! Not right away, anyhow. After about half an hour of standing around the park, a couple fireflies were getting into it, but it was sweltering, and some other kinds of non-luminescent bugs were sucking the blood from my ankles and I was exhausted. We all went to our homes.

I made a huge salad and ate it in bed, listening to SWANS and reading about narcocorridos.

Everything is exciting and weird. I don't know. Feel up!

7/4/12

excerpt form Scorcher #7

I was late to work today because I was at home jerking off. It was a thunderstorm, there was lightning. I thought how romantic.

What I actually was thinking about was how lightning is magick and I was going to make a wish during the thunderstorm and masturbate to the thought of this one famous artist, here in Fag City, who I’ve always had a crush on. I thought: this oughta do the trick.
The toxicity of stardom. The cancer of attention, like radiation. Radiation and attention are the same thing. In small amounts they are good, they nurture life, but they also destroy. By degrees kill, overlove.

7/3/12

Mad Beers Son

Friday night after work I met up with my friend David and we went to go see the Christer Strömholm exhibit Les Amies de Place Blanche at the International Center for Photography.



The exhibit is a collection of photos of what would now be called trans sex workers, in Paris in the 1960s. And it's really gorgeous. I don't know. It seemed sort of oddly topical, too, with regard to the current vogues (pun intended) for drag, gender, etc. Of course in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Paris, many of the girls who worked in the hotels downtown were pied-noir, of course the context was totally different, but there was a lot that seemed to speak to some of the... tensions of contemporary gender politics. This was an context in which it was unsafe for anyone but men to be out alone at night.  Or even during the daylight, in some neighborhoods. And yet so many of the photos (posed as they certainly were) were of the women out in public, kissing each other, holding hands, playfully flirting with each other in front of the camera. It did not look 100% fake and it was sort of gorgeous and comforting and inspiring. It was a fun way to leave the work week: to do go a museum. The Strömholm show is up until September in NYC so please go see it.

I went home and got a burrito and then went to take the bus, which I am all about for Summer 2012: the Bus. It's such a stupid idea, I can't believe I never thought of it sooner. Waiting for the bus, I stared up at the sky and I could barely see the Moon, it was like a yellow smudge buried in the clouds, like a bruise, I thought. I went to a fun rooftop surprise birthday party for a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend (seriously) in the East Village. But the birthday boy's name was Max, so I felt pretty okay about being on his rooftop, drinking his friend's wine. Happy birthday to We.

You guys it's almost my birthday. I have just over a month. What should I do for my birthday? Fuck.



Last year I sang a cover of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" at the JUDY party and the guy from Mugler was there and also so were all my friends. I was wasted, it sucked, I bombed, and I had the best fucking time. So. I'm gonna have to top that, somehow.

Right, so then after the birthday party I went to CHAUD LAPIN that fun new dance party at Nowhere bar. I shouldn't say "new" since it had it's one year anniversary on Friday, but I hadn't been in a long time, and it was really fun. Lots of cute queer people, and JD from Le Tigre was DJing, and playing that Kelly Clarkson song "Since U Been Gone" and the girls were actually living for it, it was amazing. I kind of thought, like, it was almost as if these cute babyqueers had never heard that Kelly Clarkson song before, and I was kind of taller than a lot of the people there (what's new pussycat?) but I had this paranoid drunken fantasy that I was taller and older than everybody there and it was like: maybe they're dancing like they've never heard this song before, because they really haven't ever heard this song before? Or, for them, it's retro. But then it's like: I guess that song is really old.

I guess everybody has a song that came out when they were in high school and is for them a special and timeless dance jam. For me, one of those songs would be Kelly Osborne's cover of "Papa, Don't Preach".

I woke up early on Saturday morning and sort of cleaned my room, then got lunch at Vanessa Williamsburg's Dumplings, then went to the city to have a meeting about an upcoming reading which I am very excited to be part of, reading the work of Roy Garrett. More on that very soon. I'm actually doing a bunch of readings, and some of them are RSVP ONLY and some of them are totally public and fun. More details soon! So a fun meeting and I'm excited for this project.

I went to the CdG BLACK store and bought my much-coveted pair of dyed black denim shorts. I had another pair of BLACK shorts, made out of wool, and if you know me you know I wore them all the time, and they're kind of falling apart, so I wanted some new ones. And I got them! And they're cute and I sort of need to break them in, because the denim is way stiff.

I hustled home to water the houseplants, go to the gym, meditate, and then zoom back to the city to see Caroline Contillo perform at the Dixon Place lounge with Joe Mauricio. It was so funny, and deep, and great. I was so glad I went! I wish the show had been longer, maybe, and that I had shown up more on time so that I could have gotten a seat right in front of Caroline, but it was pretty rad nonetheless. Deer heart Thain was bartending, and I remembered that I once heard him bragging about making the best dark and stormy in NYC. And so it turns out: he's totally right, he does.

Went back to Brooklyn, deep Bushwick, to go meet Tommy and Paps on a rooftop, for another bday party. It was a gigantic house, and we were sitting on astroturf and drinking a lot of beer. The moon was huge and clear and almost blue. It was incredibly hot out, and sort of... the only word I can think of for Saturday night is delicious. I've been reading Colette, like I did last summer and the one before, and it's just as much of a bad idea now as it is then, because it makes me extra sensual. All I want is fresh fruit and drugs and cats and to pull the shades down. So, to me, the night air felt positively delicious and I did stay up too too late kiki-ing with the girls and drinking mad beers, son. Mad fucking beers.


Patriotic bed

Sunday I woke up and installed my air conditioner and went grocery shopping and did laundry and I'm serious, I was like a fucking machine. I wanted everybody to come meet me at the Metropolitan BBQ but no one wanted to go right at six when I wanted to go, so humbug or whatever. I still had a fantastically productive day. Not the least because the new Chanel F/W nail polish colors came out.



There was also this weird glittery-brown one that I thought about, but this seems somehow more put-together. I get so much shit for wearing nail polish. I gotta say. I get a ton of comments, both good and bad. I like wearing nail polish, though, and often Chanel makes the best colors. The girls at, say, my dermatologist's office, are impressed. Men on the street, on the subway, will be vocally upset at how out of place it is on my hands. Like, I made the wrong choice and perhaps did not understand, maybe they should clear it up for me. I think sometimes, guys who I think are cute and would make a pass at, they'll sometimes be grossed out by the fact that I have painted nails, and this is actually a really good thing to know, early on: that we're not a match. Sometimes guys will be grossed out by my nail polish but will still want to make out with me, and I don't blame them. but it's funny (to me). The lady cashier at the restaurant where I eat lunch, who sees me often, will stop me to say "You know, I was thinking, Do you like to paint your nails?" I reply that I do, and she says "Because other men they don't do it." And I do feel compelled to correct her "SOME men don't." But when I spring for a manicure, the nail salon is always almost half filled with men. I've seen other young hip boys, maybe wearing gladiator sandals, waiting for their turn, clutching bottles of Chanel polish. I know that I am not the only one. So painted nails: it's a really heavy trip, a surprisingly heavy trip. Is it fucked up to live your life in a way where you feel resentful of the attention you get? What a deep question.

Hey speaking of, the new COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS S/S 2013 collection. The theme is "Poor King":





I had originally, when I saw the red hair and the headbands and the long graceful silhouette, thought, of course, of Mx Justin Vivian Bond. It does seem more than conceivable that Rei would know about JVB and use v's iconic look as an inspiration. I don't know. But the theme, at least as far as it's been publicly revealed, is "Poor King". Which, I know it's translated, but makes me think of PORKING. I like that it's a look about poorness, for one, as well as royalty. An interesting combination. I'm totally obsessed with the headbands, which are made by Fleet Ilya.



The only useful application of studs, or spikes, I realize, could be this one. It's like the logical conclusion of this whole studded story: a crown, right? A pauper's crown.



I never wear headwear. I'm a Leo, I have a beautiful head of hair and a very engaging and attractive face/head/body, so it never occurs to me to adorn myself in that way, BUT these are cute, right? I could do this.

The whole thing of a poor king is about, you know, losing power. Like, being the king but not having anything, so then are you really the king? A kind of inexact cognitive dissonance: royalty and wealth are not mutually exclusive, you realize. It could be secret royalty.

Listening all morning to the Haggard's first album, A Bike City Called Greasy. God, speaking of records you lived in high school.



I feel like I saw them perform a lot. One of the perks of living on the west coast. I remember, specifically, seeing them perform at the Thekla in Olympia, WA during the first Ladyfest, and this emo boy, this cute androgynous queer kid with slicked, dyed-black hair and polyester pants and eye makeup, was in the mosh pit, wearing these gigantic heavy creepers, and he stepped on my foot, and I didn't mind because I thought it was cool that gay people looked like that, and that they were into hardcore music like the Haggard. I wanna go get their second album, which I guess I've never heard.

On Sunday afternoon I went record shopping, and ran into my old buddy from Alameda at he record store where he works. It was such a nice surprise. Kinda funny, too, because I had been wearing this t-shirt from my middle school, Lincoln, with a picture of our school mascot, the Lincoln Lions. And all day people around Brooklyn had seen me in the shirt and assumed I just got it at some thrift store without any knowledge of the Lincoln Lions of Alameda California and were making fun of me. Like the bouncer at Metro, was like "Where'd you get that?" to my shirt, and it's like: I'm not faking. This is my middle school mascot. Step off. So nice to run into another Alameda soul, who understood. At the record store I found a beautiful vinyl copy of this Grace Jones record:



And, like, all her albums, they're all weird records, right? But this one might be the weird-est. I think it's the first one which she co-produced? It's a little bit disconnected from reality, it's so pop, so mass-culture, that it ended up being about and from the future and the world still has not caught up with whatever she was thinking when she made it. I'm not kidding.

Of course you know my favorite song off the record, my favorite song in the world and personal power anthem, "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You)":



7/2/12

New Paisely

A few years ago I was too tired to go out on Friday night. I don't remember what or why, but I know that I didn't want to leave. I went to the bourgie grocery store near my apartment, which my room mates made fun of (for being so expensive). It was the only thing open that late at night. I think I bought cookies or papaya or something sweet, knowing me. But, the point is, that I saw Scott Panther there. This really cute guy who I guess lived near the subway stop, who I had been seeing around for months. He was the cutest boy I had ever seen in my life. And we always used to stare at each other, I don't know.

So that night when I decided to stay in, I saw him at midnight at the bourgie grocery store and we did that passive-aggressive staring flirting thing and he left before I did. I saw him outside, though, seemingly waiting. He had bought a huge container of milk, and was smoking a cigarette. I was, I gotta say, sort of turned off by the fact that he had all that milk, but he was a panther, and anyway the fact that he was just sitting outside the bourgie deli, smoking, was kind of bad-ass. I thought maybe he was waiting for me. I passed by him on my way home and kept turning back and we kept staring at each other. But I was too shy to say hi. I came home, breathless, and told my room mate Cassie, saying "I don't know, did I blow my chance, do you think?" (She and all my room mates, a group of Cool Older Queer Girls, we called our apartment the Soft Butch House then, were all apprised of my feelings about Scott Panther, the cute boy who lived near the subway stop).

"Yeah," Cassie said "probably. Why didn't you say anything to him?"

"I was scared." I said.

So, anyway, I never got to meet Scott Panther but it ended up being okay because it was sort of the genesis, or part of the genesis, of this show I made called Lover, Ferocious.

So anyway things change. Now I have new room mates, and the bourgie deli is now a chain with locations all over the place. On Thursday, on my way home from the gym, I went to one of the new locations. I never used to go to the gym, but then I started a couple years ago. I feel no compunction about going to the deli or a restaurant (or the liquor store) right after the gym. I'm full of endorphins. Even if I look and smell horrible, I'm full of chemicals and I feel great. So I went to go buy some papaya or something at the new place, and I saw the cutest boy. I mean it. He was, like, maybe my soul mate or something. he was a little bit shorter than I was (everyone is) and had bleached hair and a sort of "punk rock style" or something. He was standing in the produce section, right by the entrance, holding his little baby chihuahua up to his chest, scoping out some leafy greens. I mean, I hate dogs, they're not really my thing, but if you are going to get into dogs, then I guess a tiny, rat-like one is clearly the way to go. I felt so gross around him cuz he was cute and I was ogling and I was all red and sweaty, wearing my big drapey black gym clothes.

I wandered around the store feeling flushed and amorous and self-conscious and we wound up at the checkout together. He was still clutching his puppy to his chest, and was paying for his vegetables using one hand to reach into his pockets. His arm was covered (it seemed to me) in a tattoo sleeve of black and white paisely.



But only one arm. Sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure tattoo. Like a sort of coloring book arm, you know? It made me think of that Broadcast song:



Anyway, I was entranced. I saw that he was wearing tight black criss-cross suspenders, which i think is sort of unnecessarily fussy, Steampunk, and cute. Is that condescending? My big thing that I fell in love with, though, is that he had, tucked into the back pocket of his exceedingly tight jeans, a bottle of Annie's Goddess dressing.



I'm obsessed. You know who else is obsessed with this is Erykah Badu. One of the things we have in common is that we both Worship the Goddess dressing. I don't know. I was too scared to talk to him. I watched him walk away with his dog. He wasn't turning around to check me out or anything. I was probably not even visible to him, and I felt like I looked pretty gross, so it's kind of okay. This sexy soul mate guy was clearly going home to have healthy feminist salad for one, with his cute little rat dog. I went home to eat raw celery sticks and, I don't know, worry about a three-sentence passage while listening to Heavy Metal or something. But I was so smitten. Endorphins all, yeah. But now there is a new fantasy. And just in time!