NOBODY PASSES, darling

"Salvaging what's left after the masses have had their feed"

2009-12-07T00:53:00.000-08:00

The Scavenger, a brand new news & culture site based in Australia, has republished my article from a few years back, “Why the Gay Rights Movement Is a Sham” -- the "movement" is still a sham, of course, so now is as good a time as any to read this article if you haven’t already…

Malalai Joya is on fire!

2009-12-06T23:17:00.000-08:00

Here she is tearing up the US war machine, the Taliban, NATO, the Afghan government, and their cooperation to destroy Afghanistan, from a speech in Vancouver broadcast on Against the Grain...

Entrenched

2009-12-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

Even the personality of the group became kind of like mine -- our proclamations were always grandiose and flamboyant, meticulously grounded in politics yet queeny and absurd -- suddenly we were all calling each other Mary, yelling nurse! Sure, we were invoking a camp queer history of Marys, a respite from the masculinism of both gay and queer subcultures -- this was a personal history near and dear to me, but something new to try on for many in Gay Shame. Maybe it makes sense that the people who did the most work ended up with the most power, even though power was something we wanted to challenge. I do know that Gay Shame ended up failing me, even after everything it gave me, which was everything. And I think one of the failures was that people still saw me as the leader, even after years of our attempts to undo this. People still saw me as the leader, both inside and outside Gay Shame, even as Gay Shame meant less and less to me. Even as there were other leaders who would never have called themselves leaders, for whom it meant more. I would always hold a certain amount of power because I’d started Gay Shame -- I’m saying that now, because even though we never said it then, it’s what everyone believed. And it was true -- “not simple, not right, but true,” as poet Tara-Michelle Ziniuk says in an entirely different context.

I don’t know what it would have meant, in a nonhierarchical direct action activist group, to wear the badge that said founder, in order to undo its power. I don’t think that works. Or, I haven’t seen it work. I know it’s not what I wanted, not what we wanted, not what I want; I’m saying it now not to claim it, but to declare a different kind of truth than the one we were creating, the one that said Gay Shame emerged as a collective we, which was true too, but not really.

Maybe I need to tell you more about Gay Shame, because first it was just that one event, a queer autonomous space in the industrial ruins of our lives. That first event that drew several hundred people to this weird out-of-the-way space and people did crazy things like pouring concrete for a mosaic or providing child care in a space strewn with glass; someone dyed people’s hair; there was an argument with some guy trying to distribute AIDS Is Over flyers, which ended up in the bay; there were speakers about trans youth activism, the colonization of Vieques, prison abolition; someone even brought goats, although that person was there by coincidence. Most of the people who attended were dykes and trannyboys entrenched in the Mission scene, which wasn’t a surprise but what surprised me was the way in which Gay Shame could be consumed. The event had become a hot space for queer bands to play -- one band even argued about the order, they didn’t want to go first, they’d been around longer than several of the other bands, it wasn’t fair. We moved them to a later spot, but little did they know that the cops would arrive before they got a chance to play.

The bands undoubtedly drew much of the crowd, and the crowd ignored everything else -- drinking 40s inside or outside paper bags, they talked loudly over anything overtly political. In New York, radical-identified queers were so alienated that there wasn’t really a scene; Gay Shame provided something unique that still attracted a particular demographic of mostly young, mostly white queers, but it felt open and communal. At least it seemed that way to me. Our first event in San Francisco became the hotspot for the Mission scene; in spite of our success at drawing so many people with such short notice, some of us started to wonder how we might connect the politics with the spectacle in such a way that they couldn’t be so easily separated.

I do like these plants in the window...

2009-12-05T00:18:00.001-08:00

Is there still an ozone layer?

2009-12-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

I mean really -- I sit on the fire escape for eight minutes in the 50-degree noontime sun, and then maybe 20 minutes in the 4 pm sun, and guess what? Yes, sunburn…

Community through critique

2009-12-04T00:21:00.000-08:00

There was something else to do, and that was Gay Shame. For once I was excited while talking about New York, fantasizing about taking Gay Shame further, holding it in an outdoor public space like Tire Beach, a rotting industrial park on the San Francisco Bay where discarded MUNI streetcars were dumped and a concrete factory bordered a small area of grass and debris. Brodie got excited too -- let’s do it, he urged. He was drunk. We had four weeks until Pride -- we would have to scout the location, make flyers, wheatpaste and flyer all over town, find performers and speakers and a sound system and DJs and who knows what else. That sounds great, Brodie said. I was skeptical, but his enthusiasm turned on my manic button and then we were a team.

When I say that Brodie and I were a team, it doesn’t mean that we agreed on everything. Sometimes it seemed like we didn’t agree on anything, except for this project that became so much. But no -- that’s where we disagreed the most. We were a team because, even if it immediately we harassed everyone we knew, and soon enough there were maybe 10 other organizers, and then the event itself brought in all different levels of participation, even though Gay Shame was nonhierarchical by definition, even though we always made decisions by consensus, even so it was Brodie and I who made it happen. For the first two years, if either of us had stopped, Gay Shame probably would have stopped too. Unfortunately, even in nonhierarchical organizing, people want someone to coordinate.

Returning to San Francisco and expecting to connect with a culture of radical queers I imagined and remembered from the past, I was verging on hopelessness when faced with the reality of the present: if those cultures had ever existed in the ways I remembered, they did not exist in those ways when I got back. Yes, there were plenty of radical-identified edge-trendy queer scenesters looking for the coolest parties, but that was about it. Gay Shame was a conscious attempt to bring the politics back into the party, but the truth was that I wanted to make the politics into the party, and Brodie wanted to make the party into the politics. Maybe that sounds like the same thing, but actually we were manifesting an old tension that stretched back through generations of queer organizing. Perhaps one difference from generations before was that neither of us talked about the politics versus the party, but it still felt that way when we argued about the direction we wanted Gay Shame to take, argued inside and outside meetings where battle lines were drawn, relationships made and unmade.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we made the flyers. They asked: Does gay pride make you feel desperate and alone? And: Are you choking on the vomit of consumerist gay pride? And they declared: darling, spit that shit out -- Gay Shame is the answer. And recommended: dress to absolutely mesmerizing ragged terrifying glamorous excess.

In the past I’ve mostly talked about Gay Shame as an amorphous and ever-changing we, but the truth is that, initially at least, most of the rhetoric came from me, and it was Brodie, with his years in the Mission scene, who managed to draw the numbers. But if Brodie was the one everyone knew, I was the one in the public eye. I was the MC for every protest, delivering a sensational incantation in lavish outfits made of glitter and tattered gowns -- if Brodie’s talents lay more in the mechanics and mobilization of each event, I was the one who created soundbites on the spot. And so, when I say that neither of us wanted to be seen as leaders, I don’t mean to suggest that we didn’t like the attention.

Our group of organizers reached consensus on issuing press releases, but no one actually wanted to talk to the media. Except me -- I thought it was crucial if we were going to create a culture of resistance -- how else would people find out? People outside of our circles. Even if we were misinterpreted every step of the way, I thought media was crucial. In every interview I emphasized that Gay Shame was a collective project, that I was simply one instigator and not the founder, but that was never the dominant perception. If activists demand leaders even when engaging in nonhierarchical work, the media requires them. In the public eye I became Gay Shame, and perhaps this made sense because, when I said that we wanted to create a home for the culturally homeless, I meant that I felt culturally homeless. When I said that we wanted to build our own culture on the ruins of the rot surrounding us, I meant that Gay Shame gave me hope in radical queer dreams, in creating community through critique, relationships through activism, accountability through action. I needed that hope.

Once you go back -- and me!

2009-12-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

Band of Thebes asked 56 authors to choose the "Best LGBT book of 2009" -- I chose Douglas Martin's Once You Go Back...

And Gary Indiana chose So Many Ways to Sleep Badly!!!

Oh, no -- I got back from giving a fun fun talk for a class at California College of the Arts, and now the microphone for my voice software isn't...

2009-12-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

... working -- hopefully I'll be back soon...

Pride

2009-12-02T00:25:00.000-08:00

It’s funny when your friends tell you you’ll like someone, and then you meet that person and you’re really not sure, but you decide to go with the recommendation. So I went with Brodie to a party in Hayes Valley, a neighborhood colonized by fashion boutiques and interior design stores -- I know what you’re thinking: another party? Yes, let me tell you about another party. This was a different scene -- it was a bunch of bougie art fags trading barbs and trying to act scandalous. Or scandalized, depending on who was listening. Of course I thought of New York; I thought of New York anytime I went someplace horrible. But Hayes Valley is actually kind of trying to be New York, except it only goes on for three blocks.

Back to the Mission, where it was no longer cool to be a dyke: you could be trans, or you could call yourself queer but refuse other labels. At this point, the trans guys who inhabited stereotypical masculine traits were the ones considered the hottest. I remember watching one of these guys screaming at his femme girlfriend from across the street: hey bitch -- you skank, you skanky ho -- where do you think you’re going, you slut? She came right over, and he slapped her -- it didn’t look like a joke; people were watching like they watch abuse in public, unsure of whether to do something; their friends giggled.

The Eagle became the trendiest bar for this particular scene, and no one talked about its long history of hostility towards women, queens, people of color, and anyone perceived as feminine -- now it was queer ground zero, the best place to go to hear bands. Certain faggots whispered cautiously about whether misogyny was a required part of transitioning into masculine realness. The most daring femmes joked about testosterone: um, did somebody have too much T in their coffee today?

Soon, trans guys would start doing drag in dresses, wearing pink, identifying as fags and not just in a denim-and-leather kind of way. The conversations would get more complicated: was it okay for trans guys to identify as straight? How could one remain accountable while assimilating into male privilege? Trans guys brought their own conversations more into the public domain: of course it was possible to continue challenging hierarchical norms instead of swallowing the whole package! And: fuck that tired excuse that testosterone makes us act like macho assholes -- that’s just biological essentialism! All of this challenged my own assumptions about masculinity as everything to be avoided: what about a masculinity that was chosen, negotiated, and transformed?

But first, it seemed like there were a lot of trans guys rejecting everything they and I had learned in dyke cultures, not just the guys who wanted to pass or who now identified as straight, but also the trans guys assimilating into gay culture, what could be worse than gay culture? So, at that terrible party with ‘70s porn projected on the walls and fags in designer clothes talking about how dirty they were, but not as dirty as pussy, Brodie acted surprised when I went off on gay misogyny, not surprised that I was going off but surprised when I said it was consumed and assumed in pretty much every gay space. I wondered if, in Brodie’s new hope for belonging, he was neglecting the obvious. Then he asked me what I was doing for pride. Pride -- was he kidding? Hiding inside my apartment -- what else was there to do?

Yes!

2009-12-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

What else might be possible

2009-12-01T00:08:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in all this was my relationship with Derek, the only friend left in San Francisco who I called family. When he went on psych meds, I could tell immediately that they made him more manic and more depressed, so nihilistic that it was scary, but I’d already expressed my disapproval beforehand, so it didn’t help when I said it again. He kept changing meds and it kept getting worse. He would talk about buying a gun, he wanted to keep it under the bed; I told him I wouldn’t come over if there was a gun in the house. I felt like he was abandoning everything that health meant to us. When he started eating meat again, he said it was for health reasons, but then he would grab a hamburger at Burger King. He was angry at me for judging him, and maybe I deserved some of that anger.

But the hardest part was when Derek started lying about everything, maybe this was after I told him I couldn’t deal with hanging out when he was drinking, because he became a macho asshole instead of the friend who meant so much. He would tell me half of everything, or maybe half of the half he remembered, or wanted to remember, and I had to figure out what to believe. Sometimes it was obvious, like when he stopped to get cigarettes and he came out of the store with a fifth of liquor in his hand -- I thought you said you weren’t drinking tonight, I said, carefully. His face got all red with anger: I’m not drinking, this is a Coke.

He might have even said: don’t you trust me, why don’t you trust me? People were starting to talk about the market crashing, but no one could tell the difference yet, I mean no one we knew. Derek and I heard about a squat party on Market Street. That sounded ridiculous -- who were they kidding? It wouldn’t last more than 10 minutes. We headed over to see. We got to the address and it was a huge, boarded-up theater, dozens of bikes locked up outside. We walked up the stairs into a cavernous room full of brightly-painted murals and hundreds of people dancing to live music. Everyone was dressed to the nines in thriftstore artistry -- sure, it was sceney as all hell, but these were the weirdos I remembered. The party lasted for hours, without interruption, and without the arrival of the cops. I wondered what else might be possible.

My sinuses, oh no!

2009-11-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

Technical writing

2009-11-30T00:19:00.000-08:00

When I moved back to San Francisco at the end of 2000, I went to a Chanukkah party. At this point I didn’t generally go to parties, even though I keep writing about them, but a Chanukkah party sounded innocuous enough. It was at the house of one of JoAnne’s former lovers, who lived less than a block from where we used to live. Actually, their house was kind of like our house, in the way that it became kind of like a destination. It was the house where I stayed when I went to San Francisco after JoAnne died, in Laurie’s room -- that room kind of looked like the middle room in our old apartment, only one window facing an air shaft, so when I first thought about that time I kept thinking about that other room: did Laurie really move back in? That didn’t make sense. No, it was down the street, and Andee was staying there too but I didn’t remember that until he mentioned it. The building was falling apart, but they’d painted the walls so many gorgeous clashing colors that it welcomed you with mania.

At the Chanukkah party, I thought we would sit around a table spinning dreidels and eating latkes, but when I got there it was packed and the rooms were dim, all those clashing colors jumping in shadows. Everyone was working the rocker junkie look -- trucker caps and eyeliner, fake fur coats so ratty they looked like they had skins, and maybe they did. It was like the worst New York high-fashion disaster, except cheaper clothes and harder drugs. So many glazed eyes it was hard to keep track -- heroin here, crystal there, some acid in the hallway and there’s the doorbell -- cocaine!

This was the new San Francisco: peer around any corner in the Mission Or South of Market and you’d see enormous luxury lofts that looked like they were made of particle board and aluminum. Drunk yuppies crowded the sidewalks in front of posh bars in practically every neighborhood they were afraid of: a new discovery! Hummers sped down side streets like they were doing reconnaissance: they were looking for parking. One famously-cited driver admitted he ran over someone’s grandmother to avoid spilling his cappuccino, inspiring a bus shelter ad.

My closest friends had warned me, but they had also convinced me to move back -- we’re you’re family, that’s what they said. The two people who said that the most left San Francisco within a few months -- I guess that’s what family does. Most people I knew had moved to Oakland and they said I should live by Lake Merritt, I would like the buildings, but Oakland wasn’t like Brooklyn -- you couldn’t get around after midnight. I needed to live in New York without New York, I knew that meant the Tenderloin. The dot-com frenzy was in full swing, so I found myself entering buildings without front doors, walking down bare hallways lit by exposed bulbs, to enter moldy thousand-dollar studio apartments facing other people’s fire escapes. Often I didn’t even have enough time to wonder if it was possible to live in these dumps, because they were already taken -- or, there would be a dozen people with computer jobs, checkbooks in hand, all vying for the manager or realtor’s attention: Is the neighborhood safe? Is there anything nearby? How far is Union Square?

On my application, I became a technical writer who made a preposterous amount of money -- everything except my name and social security number was fake. I got lucky, and ended up with an apartment on the top floor, set back from the street because of a burned-down building next door, facing Polk Street and the sun. Or, okay, maybe I didn’t get that lucky -- I had to outbid someone to get the lease, but it was the nicest place I’d seen. I didn’t know about the roaches or the rats or the pigeons yet, but the kitchen was big enough that I could put my bed in the dining area with a screen between sleep and vegetables, which felt luxurious. Certain people thought it was a strange set up -- why did they put the bedroom over there? No, darling -- I did.

Of course, my technical writing consisted of giving blow jobs in plush off-white hotel beds while the TV flashed stock prices behind me. I remember one Tuesday night, after my third trick and on my way to a fourth, stepping into the W and finding so many people in the lobby that they spilled into the elevators to make deals on their cellphones, cocktails in hand. Outside the Ritz-Carlton, there was a couple who looked like they couldn’t be older than 25, stepping out of a Rolls. The guy was wearing a waistcoat and holding a cigar in one hand and an attaché in the other; the woman was wearing a full-length fur and gold slip-on heels. At least I was making cash. In fact, I was making more than the outlandish figure on my rental application: no longer would I take the bus to save money, or turn down tricks who called when I was hanging out with a friend -- I would show up within a half-hour, in full preppy drag. The tricks loved it.

Names names names...

2009-11-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Yes yes, I’m changing some names around for my next series of posts -- in case you notice, and get confused. It may just be temporary, we shall see…

Flowers, yay for flowers!

2009-11-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

Northwest air

2009-11-27T00:11:00.000-08:00

I guess the good thing about forgetting to open the bathroom window before going to sleep is that now I know that it really helps. I mean I never suspected that it didn’t help, but now I really know. Because I wake up with so much congestion in my nose, just from the lack of air circulating -- the other windows were open, but it’s the bathroom window that brings in the breeze, gusts of wind really, and the air from that side is always cooler, I’m not sure how really but that’s one of the things I still like about San Francisco.

Today is a strange day to say that my trip was worth it, before I was thinking about that balance between complete exhaustion and inspiration, how it’s always hard to figure that out when I travel because travel wears me out so much but then it also gives me energy to interact with people in these different places, to interact with people interacting with my work it makes me feel useful. What’s going on in these places: I get a little glimpse -- here is what queers are doing at Oregon State University; they have a drag room in the basement of the Pride Center but the erotica books are in a separate room from the rest of the books; there’s a flyer about internet dating among all the safer sex info, plain STD flyers but also more elaborate and updated ones coming from all over the place. Here’s what the co-op is like in Corvallis, I love the co-op in Corvallis; here is the parking lot in front of the hotel, the back of a movie theater and stripmall sadness but oh that enormous spruce tree, the mountains in the background, the way Oregon towns can be sprawl and conservation at the same time I mean of course that’s not really conservation. But the mountains, look!

At my event, someone asked if I’d ever thought of writing for children and I hadn’t, but it was interesting to think about anyway, especially in the context of reading from So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, telling my story through my books and other work and what would that mean to tell that story in some other way that I can’t imagine. I mean almost all the writing for children I’ve ever seen is so polluted, hideous and simplistic, empty and filled with false hope and imaginings leading nowhere. So it was a good question.

I spend a lot of time in the hotel, staring out the window at that spruce tree. Really, I’m so exhausted that I can’t do much else -- groceries, dinner, chatting with my host and breathing that Northwest air I love so much, oh it’s my favorite. There’s a hot tub in the room, I mean a big bathtub with jets, huge and I soak in it a lot, it really helps with my pain and I sleep better there than at home, 12 hours every night and I wonder if it’s something about being in a smaller town, without so many types of electrical current and a cell phone tower right across the street from me, and of course it’s way quieter and darker to in the hotel room I need better blinds at home. Or maybe I sleep better in Corvallis just because I’m so exhausted that I can’t do anything else and then when I get back, the train arrives at 8 am, the worst time in the entire world, and I’m ruined, but only for a day or two until now, when I’m ruined again but from something else or maybe not something else probably still the train that’s why my sinuses are a disaster but anyway somehow I decide that it was worth it. I mean I hate it when someone asks me how I’m doing and I say I’m exhausted, sometimes they say but you’re always exhausted, right?

But wait -- I was trying to tell you that I’m exhausted. I mean maybe they’re trying to be understanding but they end up silencing me. But that’s not what I’m feeling now, even though right now I feel terrible I feel like maybe I’ll be okay.

Wait -- was this really my fortune in Corvallis, no wonder it's hard to read -- don't tell anyone...

2009-11-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

Whoever said... that you can't get jetlag from taking the train... was wrong!!!

2009-11-25T22:06:00.000-08:00

Slipping away

2009-11-25T00:08:00.000-08:00

When I got back to San Francisco, I tried not to go to the Mission. Luckily I was staying with Chris in the Haight, earlier I was thinking that JoAnne was the only person who I’d shared a bed with for a month, but actually I stayed with Chris in his bed for a month too. In a tiny room barely larger than the bed, I think he paid less than $200 for it and we split that for the month. It was kind of like we were lovers except we didn’t have sex, we just talked about everything and slept with our arms touching shoulders around backs lips brushing against necks and sometimes Chris would wake up screaming and I would pet his head and say it’s okay, it’s okay, just like when we first met. I guess it was a while before I couldn’t sleep. And did I really say it’s okay? It’s not like anything was okay, except in that bed with Chris and I wondered if we should have sex but I didn’t want to lose the safety. So I didn’t mention what was maybe under the surface.

I ran into Zee at a café in the Lower Haight -- we hadn’t talked since I’d left San Francisco because he didn’t want to talk to me and I even threw out the Cocteau Twins album that was always on when we were fighting, were we falling apart because of that album or did we put it on as soon as everything started to come apart? But then I ran into him and it was like suddenly we were friends again. We made plans to go with Chris to Corona Heights to watch the sunset, but then I got a trick so I couldn’t go and then Chris and Zee ended up sleeping together. I hated that narrative -- the uncontrollable gay desire -- why couldn’t they have said something to me first? Chris didn’t even tell me for a week.

But then the strange thing that happened was that I actually kind of liked seeing them together, they were arguing right away and that was the part that stressed me out; I tried to help them to get along. This was when everyone was talking about how expensive San Francisco was getting, it was hard to find a room for less than $400 but I found a place for $247, in a huge flat in the Lower Haight with all these random people who talked about what they were going to do for Burning Man -- it was eight months away but they were already planning. One day, the person who had the lease came home from work with a vintage black Mercedes, and I knew something was wrong. He had some kind of computer job, but people didn’t use the word dot-com yet. At least not people I was around.

When I did go to the Mission, I looked at the buildings and all I could think about was death. Chris and I were planning to get an apartment together, but then he and Zee ended up moving to Oregon to work at a retreat center -- this was their faerie phase, and I stood there at the bus station with tears in my eyes, I felt like they were leaving me. I mean they were. What was I doing in San Francisco? Chrissie Contagious came to stay with me -- remember her, she was screaming naked in a tree when I met JoAnne. And Zee that same weekend, back at the March on Washington in 1993, I guess that was only three years before but it already felt like several world ago. Chrissie was another one of JoAnne’s close friends, when someone so important to you dies like that you become closer to the others who are left; you have to. This was when I’d decided that K was the only drug that was safe for me, it was the answer, and I ended up buying a ton of it for someone who disappeared, so then I figured I’d sell it, Chrissie and I could sell it together since she was the party girl. But then I’d come home and she’d be cutting it up on my mirror. Oh well -- might as well do some.

One night we went out to the Hole in the Wall, the bar that was the most popular at the time for faggots trying to act like they weren’t trendy, just masculine, they liked rock and beer and tattoos, if I wasn’t having sex in the back then I was scaring everyone with runway. That night Chrissie met someone and afterwards they wanted to go to Blow Buddies. I’d never actually been to Blow Buddies before -- even though I’d heard it was mostly circuit queens, it wasn’t like I was ready for bed, I was never ready for bed when the bars closed. While we were in line, Chrissie’s new fling took out a credit card and poured some crystal on it, then held it up to my nose. I’d always said that people should do their drugs in public, so I got caught up in the moment and inhaled, then the first thing I thought was: oh no, I’ve just ruined my life. And then: might as well have fun. So I ended up doing more crystal than ever before, but first we got kicked out of Blow Buddies for saying girl too much, and then Chrissie and the fling tried to fuck in my bed while I rearranged the room and tried to pretend I wasn’t thinking about more crystal until they took it out again -- oh, sure -- just a little. Then when Chrissie went to film a porn video I was waiting at the End Up and I bought two more quarters, I was alternating it with huge bumps of K and then on the dance floor it was like I was 10 feet in the air but somehow my feet still touched the ground and I could bounce in the stars except it was daylight now I was still bouncing.

Maybe 20 hours of drugs later we were back at the Hole in the Wall, I figured I would do this huge bump of K, like a whole capful, the kind of thing that normally would guarantee you a K-hole but I figured I’d be fine because of all the crystal. Soon enough I was sinking into the corner, the lights a toy for my eyes I couldn’t speak but it was okay, I knew this feeling, it was okay until the bar started to close and K wasn’t big in San Francisco yet, they didn’t know what it meant when my friends said she’s in a K-hole; the staff picked me up and dropped me onto the sidewalk outside. Then I couldn’t get up off the ground because my head felt like it was cracking open, I was holding Rick’s hand and I felt like if he let go I would be gone. I didn’t mention Rick before but he was the one with barrettes who I told to leave Brown, and then he did, and when I got back to San Francisco he was there too and we would go to bars together and try not to go to bars together, this time we ran into each other by coincidence and I was holding his hand because I could feel my life slipping away, eyes closed but everything was flying by. No one knew what to do until this homeless guy came over and said pour cold water on him and it’ll bring him down, my friends weren’t convinced but I nodded and they poured cold water on me and it worked. After I recovered, I decided to go on a food elimination diet, to figure out all my allergies, and also the strictest anti-candida diet because when else wouldn’t I be drinking? I wasn’t drinking because alcohol just made me think that of course I would decide to do drugs, even if I hadn’t had anything to drink. I went to look for an apartment, but they all emphasized the credit check -- my credit wasn’t good and I didn’t want to live in San Francisco anyway; I decided to move to Seattle so I could feel calm again.

Just to be provocative

2009-11-24T00:28:00.000-08:00

When JoAnne died, it was important to all of us to say that she didn’t die of an overdose. She died because the hospital refused her health care. She was kicking heroin and they admitted hooked her up to an IV for two days but then said you need to leave. She had active TB and a bladder infection. They gave her Tylenol. She couldn’t walk, her roommates carried her home. Later that night, they found her in the backyard, naked in the grass and laughing. The next day she was dead.

I don’t know why it mattered so much for us to say that she didn’t die of an overdose. Either way, the hospital had killed her. JoAnne never made it to visit me in Boston, where I was still living; New York would come several years down the line. I’d just confronted my parents and it was awful, I thought I’d feel some kind of release but I guess I felt all the release I would get while preparing a 15-page document saying what I remembered and what it had done to me and how I was healing, and that I wouldn’t talk to my father ever again unless he could come to terms with it. And then I sent that document to my four grandparents and my sister, Express Mail so they would get it at the same time as when I confronted my parents. I planned all this so that my father couldn’t twist everything around, everything I wanted to say was in that document. I knew he wouldn’t let me speak so I handed him the envelope first and said I know that you sexually abused me that you raped me that you molested me and right then he started screaming; he told me I was psychotic. We were in a public park and I walked away, away from my father’s screaming I was worried he was going to come after me and when I looked up at the buildings for a minute I couldn’t figure out where I was. Then I was stuck in Boston with nothing really except Gabby and drugs, and I was trying not to do drugs. A few weeks later I got a call from Laurie saying that JoAnne had died and I flew out to San Francisco the next day.

I didn’t want JoAnne’s parents to get her journals, that was the most important thing to me at the time. San Francisco welcomed me like a widow and that’s why I decided to move back. I returned to Boston to prepare, decided to take the train cross-country in a few months -- in those days, you could buy one ticket and travel anywhere you wanted for 30 days, I guess I knew I was going back to San Francisco but first I wanted to spend some time in Minneapolis and Chicago and Seattle, just to see. A friend of JoAnne’s from Seattle leant me her one-bedroom apartment in Chicago, she went to stay with her girlfriend -- I couldn’t believe she had so much space, in a fancy neighborhood even; Chicago was still cheap back then. I was in Chicago for the music, the music that I lived for, that hard clanky knock-you-down magic. The problem was, I didn’t know where to find it exactly -- it wasn’t what they called the Chicago sound, deep and soulful, it was the new Chicago sound. But I found the place that sounded right, from the description, and I put together an outfit that was relaxed enough for a Thursday but not too relaxed -- this was when I was really into tights with shorts, when my grandmothers came together to visit me in Boston I wore the crazy neon plaid ones, with contrasting polyester plaid cut-off shorts, of course, and maybe clips in my neon hair and they couldn’t believe I wasn’t doing this just to be provocative.

I wanted them to see me as me. I showed them the photo booth pictures from the clubs and they asked if I was a transvestite. I told him that language was outdated. Do you wear dresses? When I’m in the mood. In Chicago, I was wearing the silver tights, which were thigh-highs so I used the clips that looks like garters too, with striped red polyester cut-offs, a big mohair sweater and a pink scarf. On my way I stopped at a bank machine, maybe I noticed two guys in a car looking over at me like I didn’t deserve to live, but this happened all the time. I realized I’d walked the wrong way, so I went back down the same street, a dark street really but I hadn’t thought about it -- that’s when they jumped out of the car, from behind, one of them held a gun to my head and the other one said give me all your money, so I did, but it was only 20 dollars, they said something like let’s teach this faggot a lesson or maybe they didn’t say anything but I knew.

No, first I remember thinking: what are you supposed to do, what are you supposed to do when they have a gun? Oh, scream, scream for help and so that’s what I did, and then they hit me in the face with the gun, several times, and then slammed my head against a brick wall, and then they got in the car and drove away and there was blood everywhere, pouring down my face and onto my pink scarf and I remember thinking okay, at least I know where I am, I’m right by the apartment, I can get back, I’m right by the apartment. And then, once I got upstairs, I thought: don’t get blood on the carpet. In the mirror everything was red, especially the pink scarf and I didn’t know what to do so I wiped off the blood with paper towels and got some ice for my face but there was too much to cover. I called Melissa in San Francisco, maybe because her roommate was a nurse or maybe I didn’t remember that, I’m not sure, but her roommate said Mattilda should go to the hospital right away, with a head wound she might have a concussion, and then I remembered her roommate was from Chicago, so I said where should I go? And she said oh, she’s in Chicago, don’t go to the hospital -- wait until tomorrow, and go to a clinic.

Roses

2009-11-23T00:33:00.000-08:00

But I don’t like where all this is leading -- I want to tell you about the time JoAnne finally came to Boston, after Gabby and I had moved into our own place, we had a three bedroom to ourselves. JoAnne loved the list I had tacked up on the wall in the living room, actually it was all of my daily lists taped together, maybe a month of them -- various colors of scrap paper with tricks’ names and numbers; grocery lists; and then certain things written over and over again like INCEST, because I was getting ready to confront my parents. Sometimes JoAnne and I would stand in the living room and look at the lists -- there wasn’t any furniture in there, and we didn’t like looking outside at the kids leaving the school across the street -- JoAnne would look at me like a professor, purse her lips and ask in an exaggerated parody of a British accent: children, what are we going to talk about today? Then she’d wind her hand around in the circle with her pointer finger out like she was getting ready to read, Boston style, and boom the finger would land right on INCEST. That’s right, Professor JoAnne would say -- incest. Repeat after me: incest. Spell that -- I…N…C…E…S…T… Exactly -- now, go home and tell your parents.

Or, when Andee and I went to that party in New York -- it was a birthday party for Gregory, this boy who I had a crush on for at least a year, I mean we were friends and there was all this sexual tension but I knew he was never going to sleep with me because I was a whore. That happened a lot in New York, not the crushes but the part where they wouldn’t sleep with me once they found out what I did for a living. Anyway, that night I was in an after-trick spending mood, so on the way to Gregory’s house I thought I’d buy him a dozen roses, half yellow and half peach, but the person at the flower stand got confused and mixed two dozen together -- oh well, I thought, I guess I’ll give him two dozen. Globalization was hard at work providing roses for scarily cheap prices to East Village consumers like me. When we got to the party, I was embarrassed because Gregory’s boyfriend had brought flowers too, but only three Gerbera daisies. This was the party where, at one point, Gregory and three other fags were comparing Nikes -- they were all wearing the same ones, and I said something like: that’s enough to fund an entire sweatshop. Then one of them looked down at my boots, and said: well, together you’re wearing a whole cow on your feet. I want to tell you about how JoAnne jumped in and said: these boots are vegan! Then, on the way out, she somehow managed to stuff all the roses into her bag without anyone noticing, I should’ve bought them for her in the first place.

That was around the same time when my roommate’s brother started staying in our apartment -- we shared this enormous commercial loft space so there was plenty of room, but it was still kind of annoying the way Devon’s brother literally pitched a tent in the middle of our apartment, and then he would bring home women to fuck and there weren’t any walls and they would make all this ridiculously gendered hetero noise. I want to tell you about how JoAnne decided that if my roommate’s brother had moved in without asking, she could move in too, so she got a bigger tent, and pitched it right next to my roommate’s brother’s tent, and then when he and some new fling were fucking she started screaming along with them. Later things got messier, after the landlord broke in and stole everything, but at least we didn’t have to listen to my roommate’s brother. But back to Boston, Gabby and I were selling K to save money so that we could take the train cross-country and figure out where the hell to move -- we needed to get out of Boston, that was for sure. But then, instead of saving money, Gabby ended up doing more drugs, and I want to tell you about how JoAnne ended up going with me, but I can’t because JoAnne was already dead and I was moving back to San Francisco.

The view from the hotel in Corvallis: Oregon produce, textured wallpaper, and yes I thought those logs were real...

2009-11-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

Camaraderie

2009-11-22T01:03:00.000-08:00

JoAnne was turning tricks on Capp Street, I can’t remember when she started but Capp Street was the bottom of the line for hookers, why not take out an ad? JoAnne said she liked it on Capp Street, the girls watched out for each other, she wouldn’t be able to turn tricks on her own -- and I’m a fat dyke, she said -- no one would call my ad. JoAnne was proud of being a fat dyke, she was just reading the marketplace. She would get in cars for $30 blow jobs, but it was so convenient -- Capp Street was literally a block away from the house where we used to live together. In Boston, sometimes I went to the boy block, usually it was empty but I did get my best trick there, I mean the one who paid me the best, by the hour. We would always talk for at least two hours before doing anything else, but then during the sex part it was so hard for me not to freeze because of the way he touched me so soft and his body was all bones. I want to say that he was a crackhead, but actually I don’t think there were drugs I think he was dying. I liked the part where we talked about music, he would get all excited and even though it was classical music I would get excited too.

The first time I worked the boy block, my friends got worried because I didn’t come back for a while, they left me notes on the parking meters: call us as soon as you get this. We’d gone out to the block together but they hadn’t turned tricks before or if they had they weren’t admitting it yet. Gay culture was scary, but I did appreciate the camaraderie. It wasn’t so lonely at the clubs, waiting for the music to become everything. I mean I still had to wait, but it didn’t feel so lonely. Now Gabby and I would rush to the photo booth to get pictures of our outfits, at the big club that happened every Sunday, the highlight for Boston gay nightlife and I always stayed in the back where the music was harder but we would all reconvene at the end of the night to get home or to figure out the next stop. JoAnne started taking care of one of her lovers who was kicking heroin, she’d hold her in all that shit and vomit and I can’t remember what happened to that lover, I mean whether she got off heroin but then JoAnne was trying to kick, she sent me a book that I never read because it was about recovery from drug addiction as a spiritual quest and I wasn’t interested in spiritual quests. In the margins JoAnne wrote: considering my place on the social totem pole I’m rare to be alive at 21. And: addicts are my teachers now.

JoAnne didn’t want me to leave San Francisco, and I’m not sure I wanted to leave either, I mean right at the moment when I did leave it actually felt like home, at least in our kitchen, making stirfries and reading everyone. Later I would realize that always happens right before you leave. Afterwards, JoAnne tried to be friends with Angie again, or the people who were friends with Angie, or both, and I was never quite sure why except that it was hard to be a certain kind of dyke in the Mission unless you were friends with certain people. But now JoAnne was a junkie and the rule in the Mission was: a junkie will steal everything from you. It’s not that they didn’t talk to her, but they wouldn’t let her in and I blamed them, blamed them for everything.

I always had rules for my addictions. I never did drugs during the day, unless I was still up from the night before. Every week I would stop for several days and everything would get much much worse unless we went out for cocktails, yes please cocktails. Sometimes I would stop everything for a week or even a month, just to make sure I could do it, and everyone around me would be stunned and JoAnne would say: you know you’re an addict, right?

You can move to Boston, I said -- we could get an apartment together, you’d be away from all your sources. But JoAnne said: you don’t want to see me this way. She moved back in with her mother, in the Seattle suburb where she grew up, a town getting richer and leaving all the earlier inhabitants behind, the ones who were just middle class. Her mother wouldn’t let her leave the house slone because she was worried she would get drugs, that was one of her rules for JoAnne staying there so I went to the health food store in Boston and borrowed the largest size containers of all the fanciest vitamins and sent them to JoAnne, along with a 36-ounce bottle of Bragg’s liquid amino acids. Her mother remembered that later: JoAnne really appreciated those vitamins, she said -- she talked about you all the time.

But first, JoAnne’s mother kicked her out, after JoAnne left the house and went to Seattle for the day, probably to get heroin. Soon JoAnne was back in San Francisco -- Melissa was doing outreach on Capp Street when she ran into her. Melissa said: JoAnne doesn’t look good. What does she look like, I asked. She’s lost a lot of weight and you can almost see through her skin, Melissa said. JoAnne called me to tell me about running into Vanessa on the street, JoAnne was spare-changing and Vanessa wouldn’t give her any money but she told her she looked great, she might’ve even said amazing.

JoAnne was so angry about that -- Vanessa had never complimented her in that way before, it was because of all the weight she’d lost.

Now, this is gorgeous!

2009-11-20T00:55:00.000-08:00

Chicago is certainly lostmissing now!!! (thanks, Yasmin)

2009-11-19T00:50:00.000-08:00