Drag King Novelist

Bone Goblin

2007-02-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

Winter brings the Bone Goblin back. He sits on my back like a minor king on a throne, jealous and fragile, elongated toes embracing my ribcage with affection, chilled corpseflesh fingers digging into my shoulders for support. His teeth, incarnadine over ivory, rough seeking rough, snap on my neck, chewing on the vertebrae . A delicacy! A delicacy! Brute animal life, slogging on under his jealous grip. He must be careful, the Bone Goblin, not let his teeth meet around my vertebrae and thus sever the life he rides, remora to the mortality. The body must live for him to live. The scent is sweet, of that bountiful carnal red wine. So gently, gently, he closes his teeth a thread, a hair, until they scrape the ridges of my spine. Spring will come, or so they say. I’ve experienced it but for now, belief is dust. All my finer sentiments are an empty wineskin; stubborn is all I have left, mulelike endurance. I can only roll my shoulders and let the snow fall.

Tempus fugheddaboudit

2007-01-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

Time flies.
Flies in amber.
Reminds me of work.
No more poetry today.

Ok, so I recently re-read The Well of Loneliness, by that stalwart and miserable lesbian icon Radclyffe Hall. (for actual research purposes, I swear) I read it in college, in my early and miserable dyke years. It was in the How To Be A Lesbian handbook, I had to read it. Right after I refered to myself as a Lesbian-Feminist. I did this exactly once, in conversation with another English student, to see how it would sound.
The 70's are over.
No already tortured queer person should read that particular tome in their formative years. Trust me on this- wait a while, go get a few broken hearts, learn to have a little happiness in the world in the 21st century, then go read it.
I assumed that with time and experience I could go back and chuckle, knowingly, about how bloody depressing it was. How many things have changed!
Ok, second Well of Loneliness rule- don't read it in the winter.
I'm about to drink brandy and wander the moors.
Only I don't drink, and it is too bloody cold out to go wandering anywhere.
Dear God, Stephen! Stop being such an uptight ass and just keep your damn woman. There is no nobility, no honor, in driving away someone you love 'for their own good'. Meaning, so they will start riding the flesh pony, and get societal approval. Please, brother. Please.
In Radclyffe's generation, we plead for our right to exist.
Activism in the 90's- We're Here, We're Queer, Get Used To It!
2000's We're here, we're normal and we'd like some civil rights now, please.
next? We're not here right now, we're taking the kids to soccer practice, then Grandma's, then ballet. We'll get back to you.

Genderfukt!

2006-04-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

Gender Note: I refer to drag kings as he when using their stage name or in reference to a show, regardless of how they identify offstage. It shows respect. I also hope to influence a good general trend in this direction.
Really, can you imagine calling a drag queen in full regalia ‘he’?
Me neither.

The Genderfukt show was Friday night. They just keep getting better. Genderfukt is the brainchild of Skylar Rocket, drag king performer and producer, and his partner Em, who functions as both tech director and stage manager. Genderfukt shows happen in Toronto every two months or so, and usually sell out in advance. The show bills itself as a performance cabaret, combing drag kinging, burlesque, spoken work, live music, dance and theatre. This show in particular lived up to that.
Gender is a complicated, messy, wet, emotional topic in any circumstance, so performing gender, exploring gender, deconstructing gender, playing with gender, fucking with gender should be even more so.
I think Skylar and Em are on to something that is just starting to hit big. Genderfukt was recently ranked 6th best event in the world to find drag kings.
The list of performers:
- Brian Bedside Mannor, Justin, Kat.ass.trophy, Milo de Milo, Sabstien Cognito, & Skylar Rocket - Brucy Barnett - Cameron - Codi & Elton Schlong - Jaycub - Johnny Class - Junoon Walla - Mitch - property - Robin - Sabrina - sbaastien siobhan - Straightjacket Tyler - Strutz - Titty-Titty Bang-Bang & Janet - The Wet Spots!
These guys are rock stars. They sell out every show. They had to move to a bigger venue to accommodate the audience, estimated at better than 300 on Friday. The audience has favorites, the performers have their followings and factions, but the experience is larger than any individual.
We’ll start out with the MC. Genderfukt wouldn’t be Genderfukt without Deb ‘Dirk’ Pearce hosting. Dirk plays off stand-up comic timing laced with enthusiastic, cheerful vulgarity, bringing the crowd up and reining them in as needed. He banters, he cajoles, he introduces the acts and reads the bios, then encourages the audience to show their appreciation. He keeps the pace and the tone. It is an event in of itself, watching Dirk handle an audience member who threw underwear on stage for him.
I have my biases and favorites, but let it be said that I am just a big old fan boy of these guys all around.
Standout acts from Friday:
Junoon Walla, dancing to a Pakistani version of Pretty Woman in a dark vest and trousers that he then ripped off, exposing shimmering gold for the second half of the dance. He can move, he has stage presence, the music was great fun.

Johnny Class, blue shirt, blue tie, pinstripe trousers, black bowler, doing a sophisticated homage to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher. He can work a crowd. The audience was right with him, singing back every word.

Brucy Barnett, decked out like a cowboy with a guitar, doing Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee. Ok, Brucy is a charismatic performer, but I also love Alan Jackson.

Mitch, in a suit and bowtie, dancing to Michael Jackson’s Rock With You. Anytime Mitch dances, you are in for a treat.

property, performing while showing slides of volunteer work in New Orleans.

The Wet Spots, a bisexual husband and wife who perform lighthearted sex positive songs, like the utterly charming “Do You Take It (In the Ass?)”
They sang about everyone, no matter how advanced a sexual adventurer, having that one
stopping point- don’t lick my toes. They came back later to open the second act with a little ditty about not being able to buy a dildo in Texas. I love them.
Here, let me be a fan-boy and pimp them out- http://www.cassking.com/wetspots.html

A righteous commentary on media saturation, consumerism, the unholy relationship among advertising, politics, and apathy- in a number that had Skylar’s sensibility written all over it, with dashes of Brian Bedside Mannor, performed by Skylar, Brian, Justin, Kat.ass.trophy, Milo de Milo, and Sabstien Cognito.

The defining moment, and an example of Dirk’s ability to speak to a crowd, was one of the last. It was near the end of the night, the crowd in the bar had been drinking and celebrating sexual and gender freedom in a safe space for hours. Dirk stopped for a moment, and called a couple he’d just met up on stage. They were two women who had moved to Canada from Venezuela a year and four months before. Both women spoke, in English they were still mastering, about being grateful to be there. They’d moved to Canada so they could be together, and be married. Dirk put the evening in perspective. Cherish the freedom of living in a country where you have full civil rights.
I look forward to one day doing so.

Portraits- start of a new series

2006-03-10T08:11:00.000-08:00

Portraits: Most names have been changed to protect the guilty. The innocent don’t need no protecting, they are surrounded with swarms of angels wheresoever they go.

Ray was one of my library assistants. Close to 40 if he was a day. A biker who wore boots, a leather chain wallet, a trucker’s cap over thick, curly doe colored hair dusted with gray, every day. Walked with a limp and used a cane, after what seemed to be a series of motorcycle accidents. He had the most luxurious and enviable muttonchop sideburns and a goatee that framed a charming, impish smile. He was returning to school to study computers after a motley collection of jobs and adventures including: military service, armed escort for Utah strippers, bartending, sharpshooting, and association with drug runners, hunters, bikers, and outlaws. He lived in a Spartan apartment over a biker bar, and would often come in to work at the library red eyed and exhausted from staying up to close the bar, after the cops had been called, or one of the girls got in trouble, or some dumbass called him as the emergency contact. Once, he handed me a flier for a fundraiser for Biker Deb (her actual moniker) who had run afoul of some medical trouble and needed help. Ray was a good guy- generous, chivalrous towards women in a very working class rough handed way that reminded me of my childhood and felt instantly comfortable. He was shrug and a grin about me being gay; it was the least of things that he’d seen in his life. We would take breaks and stand out back of school and smoke his cheap reservation cigarettes and talk. We got on famously; he was my kind of guy. He could, and did, tell the best stories at the drop of a hat, usually starting with “There was this dancer I knew..” “I could tell you what I did in the military, but you don’t want to know. I’d have to kill you. ” Or, “They found a rifle I lost 30 years ago, and sent me a picture asking me if I wanted it back. I was out hunting...” “I might have an eighteen year old daughter.” “My buddy keeps coming to me and saying you have to fix my computer, it won’t run! I ask him what he did, after the last time I fixed it, by clearing out all the teenage Russian porn he’d downloaded. I told him to knock it off, or I would fix it again. Dumbass went right back to it, filled his hard drive up with viruses, and then his wife, who’s in school, went to do a paper, and the machine crashed. So she’s pissed at him, I’m laughing at him, and he wants me to fix it.”
Thing is, Ray would probably end up helping him out. He had an endless compassion for people, for their struggles, the compromises we all make in real life, for the hard, hard time most people have making ends meet, for the rigor of raising kids,. For how hungry people can get, and how sad, and desperate, and stupid hunger makes us all act. Ray graduated, and moved on. I miss him.

Doves

2006-02-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

I wanted to deface a non-violence sign this morning.
Cover the sweet, peaceful blue silhouetted dove with barbecue sauce and hack it up like a Gaul on a rampage, like a Norseman gone bear-shirt crazy. Ber-sark. Berzerk.
Wouldn’t it be lovely, once in a blue moon, get a free pass to pure madness? Here’s your axe, here’s your loincloth, go nuts. Sanity just poof- goes out, like a candle in a hurricane. Like a tiny white nonviolence candle, held against the wind at an outdoor peace rally or memorial service for a great social justice activist who died on a hunger strike in prison to commemorate the suffering of the children in refuge camps.
Hand me the tofu but make it ironic.
Really, have you ever seen a cat steal a piece of tofu?
Cats will eat sock fuzz if they think it’s a spider. But they will not touch tofu. I’m just saying.
I was just cruising along minding my own business, clenching my jaw on the way to work, after a night spent grinding my teeth in my sleep to keep pace with my stress levels and parade of phantasms that call themselves REM sleep, and it hit me. Look, I was just minding my own business, officer! Editing, working two jobs, looking for work, occasionally having a life, on weekends. Managing, thanks, even feel a little like an adult now and again. I wasn’t looking. Lord knows, Gods know, the long nights I’ve prayed for it, in the past- Muse, find me worthy! Baptize me in your bloody inspiration! Taurobolium my worthless mortal self. Nuthing. Silence of the Hams. So, I go back to being normal and work myself to death, as I suspect most of the world does.
And, months later, when I’m reconciled to being where I am, inspiration wise, I get slapped upside the head by a Muse in a fool mood. Not foul. Fool.
She has a hell of a sense of humor.
My next book came and grinned like a eight year old holding a frog in my face.
Look, I argued, I’m busy. Bills to pay. Taxes. I need new tires. I’m editing. I have to find a job. There’s that emigration business. I do not have time for this right now! Where were you when I begged on my knees for a voice whispering in the dark?
Bupkes.
You can’t argue with Her. You do as she says, or know that you’ll be half the human you ought to be.
I submitted. The change was palpable immediately.
Cyd said to me, after a few days of my being a joy to be around again, “You’re a much better person when you are writing.”
Thanks. I know.

January and Aqua-net

2006-01-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I feel like such an alien to life. Life is too broad. Culture? Yes, that’s more it. Culture. It gets to feeling like every choice a person could make for a Normal life, I’ve done the left hand turn. My experience is so outside the boundary of a normal life, yet here I am in the nation of Normal, raised to speak the language and act like I belong. I can be good at it- I can make it seem like I’m as much of the soil as a Pelasgian, I’m from the Old Country, I’ve been here since the grasshopper came. I can smile ruefully with stories about growing up in a small town, growing up female, having a crazy family (or one just slightly off; most are) and so on. I get it, I sympathize, I understand. I laugh, with recognition and warmth and affection.
Then the costume starts itching, and the mask slips, the music is too loud, the make-up too garish, everything is just a bit off- I’m outside again. I made up that part about make-up, I don’t wear any. That’s part of the problem. I have never, other than a brief, despair fueled try in 7th grade, to not live forever as an outcast.
This, culture said, holding out a can of Aqua-net and blue eye shadow, are what being a woman is about. Go, daughter, and learn.
I gave it a stab, not because I was drawn to it, or to the power those symbols represented- power of attraction, which is status to a teenager. Or adult. Power of attracting males.
I tried, because by seventh grade it was crystal clear to me that I was no longer acceptable. Certain personal abnormalities and quirks you can get away with, or even trade on, when you are younger. Its fine to have personality as a girl in 6th grade. It will make you want to end your life in 7th. Don’t try this at home: say to a girl in 7th grade, you have a nice personality.
You might as well spit on them. You just told them they cannot stand within the rating scale of their peers. Even the consolation prize is an insult.
Now make it worse. Recognize that, by this age, girls are desperately trying to figure out who they are, how they fit with their group, and how the adult world can be managed. Without being chewed up and spit out. Keep in mind, that a girl by this will have experience with men, in her family and outside it. Likely, she’s already encountered the ugly facts of being female in the world. And, likely she’s absorbed the weight of silence- you cannot talk about what it means to be female in a world of men.
Rein it back in, before that horse bolts on me.
I stopped being a part of my peers’ social development in 7th grade. My life existed in a kind of stasis. I was well aware that my life was marginal, and I had no hopes of ever being anything else. Friendship, I had. That I got good at, and it saved my life. I have those same friends today, and I thank any God you care to name for them.
It did get better as I got older, left that small town and went to college. I got exposed to a broader run of humanity. I had the experiences my former peers might have had as teenagers. For a while there, I had a social footing, a set of experiences I could discuss with my peers.
Then I graduated, worked, went to grad school, and worked. I find myself working in a suburb, with a raft of normal people. Nice, sure. Pleasant, sometimes. Better trained than the 7th grade equivalents; they know enough to pretend everything’s peachy having me around. But I am still an alien. Women my age talk about: their husbands. Their children. More than anything else. I’m not in possession of either. You know, spouse-equivalent doesn’t always fly in idle conversation. So I get strangely neutered. My life vanishes. I borrow one, so I can talk about it. My weekend was spent in Toronto, with my lover. I talk about the kids I live with, the children of a friend. They are currency- I can say that the baby was up all night crying, suddenly I’m human and have a story everyone can empathize with.
My Aqua-net, and my blue eye shadow.
Even though I dress exclusively in men’s clothing. Even though I am ‘out’. Even though I couldn’t pass as straight, or even female, some days. I need a conversational crutch to get through the grind of being dropped down into a Normal existence.
Janus, the Roman god, had two faces- he could gaze in both directions at once. This is his month. He was lord of beginnings and endings, of doorways and gates. Progression from one state to another.
I know how he feels.

Kiddie Crack

2005-12-29T12:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't been around much lately, between work (with my assistant librarian gone) other work, editing, and holidays in both countries. So I thought I'd hang out at the house last night, and watch a movie with the adults. Cyd's cousin was in town. Morgan went to bed like clockwork, the kid never varies. But Rowan would not settle down.
Then her dad let her have a cookie.
I swear that thing was Red Bull in crumbly form. Rowan is 18 months, she isn't ready for that! It looked like a harmless, innocent little treat. But within fifteen minutes, Rowan was climbing on the coffee table, where she proceeded to dance and sing for the first hour of the film. That was interspersed with jumping on the dog (also visiting) throwing her brother's toys, stealing my book, and generally running around like an overwound top. The kid was in rare form.
Earlier in the evning, she'd been trying to master her latest linguistic challenge- "Ooh la la."
She'd heard someone say it, and spent the rest of the evening trying it out. First it was a sort of uuuh, then the secondary notes were added- uuuh le le. It devolved into a howl later on, just a pure owooooooooo! that she'd already learned, from Johnny. Part of the time dancing on the table was howling.
Her mom and dad had martinis. Rowan naturally wanted what they had, and zeroed in on the fragile glasses. She'd make a beeline for them if they were set down, and ask "Have bite? Have bite?" Her request for whatever food related item you might posses. She was denied.
But later, when the glasses had been moved to let her dance on the table, one ended up on the floor by the couch. Empty of martini, at this point. However, the baby found it- and proceeded to try to drink from it. She spent some time chewing on an ice cube, then cried when the glass was taken away from her.
She did crash eventually, but I have never seen such a show from her. I want one of those cookies.

Fictional amour

2005-12-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about the difference between real love, and fictional love last night. What makes a good story is conflict, suffering- brooding, angst, all that rot. Conversely, what makes a good real life love affair – connection, warmth, respect, understanding, are not the foundation for a good story. I’m a very, very lucky fellow- I have the real life love affair- passionate, honorable, connected, respectful. Not an angst ridden nightmare. So these notes are for fictional characters, or people trying to live like fictional characters. Ok, fine, they are for me ten years ago.

If your new love object is troubled, filled with pain and unable to escape an old tragedy, offer them a firm handshake and therapy coupons. In fiction, pain is enticing. In person, pain is hideous and tragic and unacceptable. Nobody wants it. You do not need a tragedy to make you interesting. Particularly an unsolved tragedy. I’m not looking for the one who is suffering the most. What does impress me is someone who has suffered (as indeed anyone over six generally has) and who has developed good coping skills, a life of their own, and a sense of humor. Tortured sucks. Adaptive and gentle rocks.
“I will treat you harshly, but I can’t help it, I’ve been in such pain as you cannot imagine...” yeah, bullshit. I can imagine. I can go you one better, more than likely. Do not be unable to form or maintain long-term friendships- that’s just a bad sign all around.
Here’s a tip- everyone has suffered. Now tell me how you’ve grown from it, learned from it, created yourself as a better, kinder, stronger, more loving person from it, and we can talk. If you want to impress me, show me compassion, for yourself, for me, for the world. Not hatred, not bitterness. Compassion. I’ve suffered, so I know how things can hurt, so I’m gonna be nice to people and help out folks who are currently suffering. There you go, you got my attention.
Be kind to your friends. Be generous, and impulsive, and loving. That makes me hot.

Adminstration betting pool

2005-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

I'm a librarian at a small private business college. In the four years I've been here, I've gone through five changes of Deans, and four Campus Directors. The last Dean of Instruction, my direct boss, a man I charitably called The Undertaker, resigned in June. They've made no move to replace him as yet. The fill-in Dean of Student Services just resigned three minutes ago. She made it nine months, and we had an informal pool going to see how long she'd make it. We now have no Deans. To top it off, in a move of stunning arrogance and crassness, the email with all the attached discussion of how to frame it (when she agreed to be portrayed as leaving for 'personal and family reasons') went out to all staff, and had to be recalled. Less humanity than a pool of mollusks. My Christmas bonus was a tote bag, with the school logo. Happy Solstice! Maybe I will get hired elsewhere for the New Year.

Birthday

2005-12-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

Started the morning by going down to the basement, and finding the laundry I'd put in the drier the night before hadn't actually run, and was still wet, and ice cold. So I ran the drier, and chose other things to wear for work. Got to my car, parked in a small lot down the street where I'd been parking for, oh, ten years without a hitch, and had a $50 ticket.
Made it to work, and got swamped immediately. Spent the day putting out fires. Was informed that I'll need to stay even later than expected tomorrow on my already 13 hour shift.
But my best friend remembered my birthday, and sent out a warm message saying that he wouldn't be the same without me.
So go ahead and snipe at me, Life! Hailstones, nothing more. I'm a Sagittarius, dammit.

Anger

2005-12-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

Getting angry is like getting drunk. I find myself saying that much more these days. Like doing shots of bourbon, back in the day. I know that what I am doing will alter my perceptions, make me sick afterward and a bit weak, but during, it is hard not to feel the power of the heat. Hate/heat.
Used to think I didn't get angry all that often. I started noting, in the last four years, how much easier I am to anger, and how immediate it can be. How strong. Fire along the veins, clenched jaw, an uplifting rage for days, until it bleeds off. I don't feel as ill afterward, either. I ascribed this to a consequence of trauma and growing up.
Just now, I had a thought that made me cold. Well, cold-er, it is December in Buffalo.
I've always been this angry. I just repressed it, for the majority of my life, and it came out as depression. Cold rage just sucks. No uplift, no heat, just the sickness. It doesn't pass, either. It accumulates, like the Dead Sea. Try going fishing there, and finding anything to sustain you.
So what I've been noting, in the last four years, is my ability to get angry outwardly, and not keep it all directed at myself, until I roll into the depression and never come out.
I like the heat. Burns things down that get in the way. Clears out the refuse of life. In that sense, it can be healing, and a positive experience. All that Shiva Nataraja stuff.
But I have to admit, I like the heat.

Marriage Rights

2005-12-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

It has begun. Worldwide, the shift in cultural views on same sex marriage is happening. South Africa just became the fifth nation to offer its gay and lesbian citizens full civil rights.
Sometimes, we get drunk and sated on history, and think that everything has already happend, passed, come to its fulfilment. Nothing new under the sun. History is dead.
Hear that? Brothers and sisters, that is the drumbeat of history.
In North America, Canada offers marriage rights.
The United States, the country of my birth, is fouling itself to rush backwards against the change of history, and write as much discrimination into law as it can, before history catches up.
Plenty of people fought the ending of slavery, hanging on by their fingernails to the system that kept them in power and kept discrimination enshrined.
Who speaks openly, positively of slavery today?
Women have the right to vote. Is anyone working to take it back from them?
We're in a spasm of reactionary politics. It will get uglier before it clears. It always does.
But I think it inevitable that the US will wake up, perhaps long after the rest of the world, and look back with shame upon the current discrimination.
History is already being written.

Living in two worlds

2005-11-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

I like having a home. I make myself at home easily, the way any dog does. My toys, my place, my blanket, my person. Mostly that last one. I get real lonesome without the people.
I hate moving. Its a psychological distress for me. Its been more than four years since I moved last, and the thought of it still grips me with a quick terror.
Now I'm living in two places. I feel like I never stop moving. I've got anti-nomad sickness. I don't yearn for the open road, the broad sweep of the desert under a summer moon, the highway rolling under me, the displacement of leaving home to go home.
This part of the world is home to me- western New York and Southern Ontario, the same beautiful hills and orchards, the smell of grapes in the fall, the sere and elegant beauty of trees gone black and naked before the snowfall. It hurts my heart looking at it, the way no other landscape ever has. The desert numbed me. What started out with snarling antipathy wore down to brute survival.
If god painted a picture, it'd be the sun breaking through the gunmetal clouds over Lake Ontario, and the city of Toronto lit up with last long red fire, all the glass towers burning, as you roll into town. The Flame of the North. Pointed and pricked with snow.
Then the morning, the alarm. The disbelief, bargaining with time- five more minutes. Knowing I won't sleep, I'm just staying in bed for the warmth of the arms around me, five more minutes of that sleeping form pressed up to me. Five more minutes of feeling like I'm at home, before the day owns me.
I'm a good soldier. I shrug, and rise. Jacket, scarf, boots, backpack, coffee. Car still parked in front of the Kit-Kat store. Strapped in, fired up, back to the highway. Running across the two hours between one world and another. Back to the Peace Bridge, and that one moment when you hang beteen Canada and the US, over the Niagara River. Customs. Declare myself- I declare myself often.
And I go back to work.

Divine messages

2005-11-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

I believe that the great, unifying themes in truly universal expressions of art cross all genre boundaries. That, if you look, you can find the same loss, same yearning for love, longing for reunion with the divine, bubbling up in our shared mythology. Every so often, these conenctions present themselves to me, shining like threads of gold out of the massive tapestry of popular culture. The manifest unity becomes clear. I had one of those moments recently, while driving. I was musing about the early Near Eastern conception of death and the afterlife, watching the sun set over the Niagara Peninsula. How, in a tone of elegiac sadness, an unknown voice reminds us to feast, and put on our fine robes, pour perfumed oil for our hair, join with our beloved on the couches in lovemaking, for tomorrow we will all be dust. Then a song came on the radio.

-And whoo-wee
Shut my mouth, slap your grandma
There outta be a law
Get the Sheriff on the phone
Lord have mercy, how's she even get them britches on
With that honky tonk badonkadonk

It pierced my consciousness, and I was suffused in a ray of scintillating light. You know how certain words, phrases or themes can pop out at you from the most unlikely places, until they start to form messages? Clearly, the Gods were trying to tell me something. There it was before me, metaphorically speaking-one of the Great Unifying Themes. Whether we call it, charmingly, the bum, or crudely, in sharp, lustful sibilance, the ass- the posterior, the backside, the fundament, my hump, the badonkadonk. Crossing all genres, the appreciation of a fine b-double-o-t-y oh my.
To test my theory, I ran through a quick list of songs in my head, from whence the message had been revealed to me in recent weeks.

Queen- Fat Bottomed Girls. Telling lyric:

Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round

Trace Adkins, Honky Tonk Badonkadonk-
quoted above

Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.

Sir Mix-a-lot, Baby Got Back

I like big butts and I can not lie

My mind, at last, rested, well satisfied. The message was clear. The Gods love the bum. I'm too devout of a fellow to argue with them.

Mistaken identity

2005-11-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

Was in Toronto for the weekend. Johnny and I walked to the small store down the street to get vital supplies, such as chips. We have a habit of strolling through the neighborhood arm in arm, or hand in hand. This can look comical as all get out, seeing that she's six feet tall, and I'm at best five three. But love always looks silly, and feels great.
We were sitting on the front porch of the house, J. was smoking a cigarette. A woman was walking her very small dog. I'd estimate her age at mid eighties. She said hello, and started up the path to the house, saying that her dog wanted to say hello. I think she wanted to say hi, and chat a bit. I got up and went immediately over to greet her, and the dog, who was a bit indifferent to all this. I'm a total sucker for dogs, and will often stop in the street to say hi and pet any dog who seems the least bit friendly. J. says that its nice being with me, as I never look at other women- I'm always cruising the dogs. A pretty woman will walk by, and I'll turn and say did you see that gorgeous Rottweiler? What a handsome fellow! In fact, I once said to her, what a gorgeous Rottie! J. was surprised, thinking I'd commented on the body of the woman walking the dog. I hadn't even see her. She laughed, when I explained what I had said, and told me that the woman had been attractive. I hadn't noticed. The dog was stunning.
So I pet the small and rather unresponsive white dog, whose name was Baxter. The old woman started talking to me, and in a moment I knew all about her family, her health problems, her dog, and so on. She lived a few streets over. The woman gave me her name. I gave her mine, and introduced J. by her given name, Adrienne. J. waved from the porch. The woman said, I've seen you walking around the neighborhood. Is that your son?
I blinked for a moment. How to handle this? She was a lovely woman, just out for a stroll and a bit of a chat. I was a friendly face and a listening ear. How much did she really want to know about me? Were gay people even in her scheme of the world? Would she react badly?
I turned this all over in my mind, in a matter of seconds, and decided on honesty.
No, I said. She's my partner.
Oh, that's nice, the woman said. She and Baxter bid us goodbye, and continued on their walk.
It was so nice to get such a low key reaction that it put a smile on my face. How lovely, to be perfectly ordinary.

Zen perfection of small things

2005-11-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

Part of living in two countries is an acceptance of driving as a way of life. Commuting becomes anything under two hours. 100 or so miles (140 kilometers) seems perfectly reasonable. Life is a matter of time and distance, I used to say. I was young. Now, I’d say- life is a matter of how you endure time and distance. If you can accept with a shrug and a smile, anything is possible.
We alternate countries on weekends, and it was Toronto’s turn. Slow weekend for once. Spent some time with J.’s friend Erin on Friday night, went to a Jann Arden concert at Massey Hall with her parents on Saturday evening, spent Sunday doing perfectly normal things around the house. Did six thousand dishes. Made breakfast for brother-in-law Conan. Went to the market. Cleaned the bathroom. Nothing grand to it, just monumental in its ordinariness. And it was one of the best times I’ve had with J. All the little things were there- knowing that she was feeling down when I arrived on Friday, but watching her start to thaw as we made merciless fun of the new fight film I’d been so hot to see, Ong Bak. Or, Mmm-bop, as J. says. Going over to see Erin, and hearing J. laugh. Dinner with Barb & Marv, then the concert. Standing in the wind, on the third floor balcony with J. as she smoked, telling her I was glad she felt better. Hearing her say, “Sometimes I just need you.”
The passion she showed me, in welcoming me home. I left for my commute to work in the States on Monday morning, feeling like my ribs had been crushed, having to walk away from her.
The simplest words, the most ordinary of moments, can break your heart, or fill it. Romance isn’t always “Light of my life, fire of my loins, razor sharp edge of my sensual being!”
Give me the Zen perfection of small things.
On the drive down the QEW, I sometimes get impatient with the radio reception and let it flip to anything that will come in. Thats how I ended up listening to “My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.” I just about laughed till I cried, while driving. Could not get that out of my head, though I did try, for the rest of the day.

Letter from my brother

2005-11-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

Qbryzan, my brother, wrote me about the last post-

"I didn't want to spoil the serious tone of the subject you blogged, but when I saw:"No dick, no care" my first thought was: Rejected early titles for "No woman, No cry"
Thank you, I'll be here all week - tip your waitress.-Qbryzan"

I wish I was as funny as he is.

Can you catch the gay?

2005-11-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.hetracil.com/index.html

That'd give a whole new meaning to drag racing- catching 'the gay.' When sweaty men in tiny shorts race after one another, muscled thighs pumping, and reach their sinewy hands back for that reassuring slap of the long, smooth rod- that is relay racing. This is different.

Several fundamentalist Christian organizations promote reparative therapy for homosexuals- the 'pray away the gay' method. You can find them if you go look- search under ex-gay. This used to get my back up something fierce- the underlying argument being- gays are sick, we can cure them. Homosexuality is, in of itself, a disorder. Moreover, it is a sin, and one of the biggies. God doesn't just dislike homosexuality, as he dislikes Democrats and liberals. He hates them, and will make them burn in hellfire forever. So we, out of the lovingkindness we learned from our Lord, will either push you into suicide with iron despair, or make you so broken that you pretend to be straight and never touch a man again.
Funny how they are all about the faggots. Women, dykes, eh, not so much. But men, that gets them all sweaty. Seems that God is much more interested in the deployment of penises. Penii?
No dick, no care.
Just a hint of women's status to them there, gentle readers.
Anyway, I'd get all riled up about the pray away the gay folks, and how they try to destroy vulnerable gay teens, and troubled adults, by making them deny the most basic of human drives. If you can't fix it, just stop acting on it. The best they seemed to offer was a life of celibacy and self loathing.
Yes, I had a friend of mine from grade school hang himself because he, at fifteen, had absorbed enough hate to choke him, and couldn't deal with being gay in this world.
Now he's dead, and still gay. But I digress.
So my point of view was set, and righteous. Being gay isn't a choice, and the pray away the gay crowd is a bunch of fascists trying to not cure gay people, but eliminate them from society.
Being gay as a choice is the cornerstone of their argument. If there are biological factors involved, well, that just makes them look like a raving bunch of homo-haters. Who hates a group of people, fellow citizens, for an immutable characteristic? Oh yeah, racists. We don't like them, so we have to prove that gay is a choice, and then we can hate them all we like. We get to hate people for choices they've made. Like religious denomination.
Then Sheryl Swoopes came out. Sheryl is an African American woman athlete at the height of her game, a WNBA star, an Olympic champion. Also, she says, gay by choice.
Oh heck.
I'm amazed with her courage, and applaud her for coming out. I awaited the backlash- nuthin'. I'm thinking its because she's a woman. Who gives a hang about women athletes? Yeah, you're a dyke, whatever. If Shaq came out, the world would end. She was married to a man. Says she wasn't gay then. Now she is.
She was just humming along, straight and married, and she caught the gay.
Oh heck.
I'm programmed to respect what she says, she's a woman doing something brave, and she's a sister. My mind started curling around the edges. If I accept her assertion that for her, being gay is a choice, then I have to examine my loathing for the pray away the gay crowd.
I personally feel I was gay before I hit the air. Gay from the womb. Gay gay gay.
But, my experience is only that, mine. Much as I'd love to market myself as the universal human.
So there's more under heaven than we thought. Most likely, being gay is a mix of biological and experiential factors.
I still think that taking vulnerable people and telling them that all their troubles stem from the gay, and that God hates them and would rather have them die, is sick as hell and needs to be exposed.
But a potential for gay as a choice? I'll accept that.
That means that we can start that recruiting we are always accused of doing, and I think the Southern Baptist Convention would be a fine place to start. Maybe we can get the relay race going, as it were.

We have nothing to declare, except our love!

2005-11-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

Friday started out typical, worked, drove up to Toronto to get J., drove back. The QEW is not a road to take on a Friday afternoon during rush hour, and it added an extra hour to our travel time, but we made it back to Buffalo by seven. We were due at the Hamlin House at 8:30 for Kate’s birthday party. Margaret had arraigned everything- invited half of Buffalo, as Kate turning 30 is a hell of a thing, and a hell of an excuse for a get-together. There have been times when I wondered if that firebrand would make it to 30, but she did.
J. and I got dressed and ran over to the hall. Now, the Hamlin House is the American legion hall, and we’ve rented out the back room, with the stage, often over the years for drag shows. I’ve performed at Hamlin a few times and have fond memories of it.
When we got there, the Friday night tradition of fish fries was still in full swing, with the restaurant/bar section still full, so we had an interesting overlap between a wild queer/theatre party, and the old guard out for dinner.
Margaret had me working the door to start out, collecting donations. A fine gig if there ever was one, because I got to see people I haven’t seen in years, then hug them, then ask them for money. Like working the reception line at a wedding. Everyone was there- actors, poets, professors, drag kings, writers, drag queens, legends. The poet Paula Paradise, writer/painter Kastle Brill, playwright and labor hero Manny Fried, Milky and Rawa from the Ujima Company, down to people I haven’t seen in far too long from the HAG days, Eileen O’Brien, Sarah Birnie, Janell in from New Mexico, Cristina Pu from Oakland, the beautiful local legends Cyd, Garland, Celia White, Terence in from Brooklyn, Amber and April, Phoenix – and on. A parade of fabulosity. Margaret booked Kinney Star to perform, followed up with local act The Stripteasers from Roxy’s, then Kate’s partner, the incomparable Leah Russo, sang to our wild child, now a grown up troublemaker.
I met Kate when she was seventeen. I was handing out fliers for our first drag show, in a gay bar. This handsome girl, who looked like a fifteen year old boy, took a flier, looked at me funny, and told me she was the director, Margaret Smith’s daughter. I blurted out –“You’re only 17!” Shocked, to find her in a bar. Ok, I blew her cover. Not very suave of me.
We’ve been through hell and high water since. Kate’s a natural leader. Fierce. Intelligent. Charismatic. Volatile. Far more grounded these past few years, but you still see an occasional flash of the angry young butch she was. Kate’s the kind of person you meet, and never forget. She’ll tear the world up, and it will never be the same.
Johnny’s been hanging around Buffalo for a year and four months now, so she knew 75% of the people at the party, and had a grand time working the room and seeing everyone. A girl after my own heart.
She talked me into dancing with her, briefly, and managed to make me look good doing it. Bless her.
After we’d worn out our welcome at the hall, we went on to Roxy’s for a bit, before crawling home, spent.
Saturday we had company come in from out of town- MK from New Jersey, in town giving presentations on her work with the Alternatives to Violence program in the Congo. Rini and Eric came in from Rochester to see MK- we all go back to college days together. They stayed at the house, and it was a regular bed and breakfast, filled with conversation that went on long into the night. J. was supposed to study, but I’ve noticed that, in Buffalo, I’m very deficient in providing study time and space for her. We’ve had so much going on recently.
Sunday, after coffee and breakfast with Rini and Eric, we managed to pack up and head back to Toronto, and J. did get a bit of studying done.
We always cross into Canada from Buffalo’s West Side, the Peace Bridge. When we get close to the customs booth, we usually rehearse what we are going to say. I have a habit of blurting out all manner of silly things at the border, and they always ask us how we know one another. I start out with “We’ll, I wrote this book, and she picked it up in a bookstore in Toronto, then-“ and I keep going until the agent either gets bored with me, or lectures me on my European distribution, and tells me to expand in that market. J. tells me its fine to just say we are partners, and leave the rest out. So, we rehearse. “You’ve been in town since Friday, at my house, I’m coming back to the States tomorrow, we have nothing to declare.”
This time, J. looks at me, and says, in the worst Maurice Chevalier accent you can imagine, “We have nothing to declare- but our love! Oh ho ho!”
I’m trying to not drive off the road laughing, while approaching the booth.

Request for comments

2005-11-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

Come on now, more than just people wanting to sell me penile enhancement read this, I have the stats. Leave a word or two, let me know you are out there. Hi from Japan, or Singapore, or Spain, or the UK, or my kin in Canada- anything. That's the request for the day- leave a Rosetta Stone for the author.

Cheers-
Smitty

Happy New Year

2005-11-02T16:17:00.001-08:00

Johnny wrote a stunning post about our time in Buffalo over at http://www.livejournal.com/users/johnny_class/ roughly the same time I was writing this. Amazing, beautiful, generous human being, that Johnny Class.

Here's my take on the weekend.
I had J. with me for the weekend, and she had piles of homework due, so I tried to leave her alone to study while I went to visit my old friend Celia the poet-librarian. Celia and I went to library school together. Her dog Mariah, my god-dog, is now five years old. We like best doing things that involve making Mariah happy, so we settled on taking her for a walk, through an abandoned orchard out by an old closed down nunnery. We walked, we talked, and caught up a bit. I haven’t been around much lately, so it was lovely to just get some time in talking and catching up.
It was one of those so beautiful you look around for the camera moments, when you can believe in any number of gods just from the perfect slant of golden light down an apple branch. I stopped and wished I painted, wanting to engrave it on my memory. It is a gorgeous, wild place- full of deer and snakes and this time of year, fallen apples and people walking. Perfect late afternoon autumn light, smell of apples in the still green grass, the dog romping into puddles and out again.
I then went home, rescued J. from studying, and we hung out with Cyd and the kids. Rowan now knows how to say pumpkin- well, she says it 'bum-kin'. And she is at the stage where saying hello and goodbye are very important, so whenever she hears anybody move the gate
and walk down the front stairs to the door, she runs over, yells "Bye! Bye!" and blows kisses. She's into kissing everything now- the old, loud cat Zoe (Rowan calls her Floey) the ArtVoice as I was reading it, and so on. She can name every dog in the neighborhood, and
more- she can identify them by their bark. Her first word in the morning is 'doggie' or 'puppy', or the names of the dogs she knows, in order- 'Wiley, Ozzie, Sake, doggie, puppy, owoooo!' J. taught her how to howl after saying the list, so now she has to say all of it. She's also mastered Johnny's name, and runs around the house "Johnny! Johnny!"
I am still Za. I taught he how to throw her hands above her head and cheer Huzzah! But sadly, that's my name- she throws up her hands and yells Za! when she sees me. I like the clapping after, though.
So we played with the kids- watched them, Morgan and Finn and Rowan and Jack-Jack and Eliza, as Cyd snuck out to get her haircut. This was Saturday.
Then more studying, once Cyd got home and took over.
We retreated upstairs, she read her Autobiography of Malcolm X., I read a bad Michener novel I'm suffering through. Eventually I made dinner. We studied more.
Then there was quiet...the kids went to bed. Then there was noise- I went downstairs, and Tank, a little black mix dog I know met me and wagged her tail, expecting me to go find a flashlight. I always play her favorite game with her. She chases a flashlight like a cat. I said, "Hello, Tank! If you are here, Phoenix must be."
Phoenix being her human.
Phoenix is a voluptuous woman with bright orange hair, who wears mostly orange. And there she was- at the kitchen table with Cyd and Rebecca, drinking port and red wine, making boats for the Samhain ritual, the voyage to the island of the dead. The remembrance for all people who have passed in the previous year, as Samhain is the New Year. Cyd leads the ritual every year, and we go down to the lake in Delaware Park, put small candles in the
boats, and launch them.
They were having a heck of a time folding the paper boats. So J. and I sat down, and helped them. J. did the helping, being both dextrous and helpful. I'm crap at making the boats. J. tore the ArtVoice into paper squares easier to fold, the other three women drank wine and made boats, I hung out. Neither wine nor boats for me. I'd been waltzing with a headache for three days, stress over job related nonsense.
So we sat, and got sillier, and got to hang out with the women and laugh and have some Samhain time, as J. wasn't going to be here for any of the celebrations- she had class Monday.
It was near midnight, so we called it a day. She'd done some good studying, and I promised her that I'd make her read the History of Sexuality article on Sunday.
Sunday, we slept in, well, she did. I haven't been sleeping much, so I got up, did laundry, paced, and she woke up and came down, got the baby on her hip, and found me. I made omlettes. We talked.
Gorgeous day, pure sunshine through the trees, and the family all went apple picking. We were alone in the house. I was supposed to make her read her Foucault article. We just kind of said forget it, and ran back upstairs and made good use of the house to ourselves, and a shaft of sunlight on the bed.
However, at 3 we were due at the teahouse to hear Kastle Brill read some poetry, in an event Celia had organized. I'd told Celia we were coming.
So we got out of bed at five to three, slapped clothes together, ran off to the teahouse, and made the poetry reading. We had steamed dumplings and a pot of green tea, commemorating our
first real date, a year and four months ago. When she'd come to meet me, to spend the weekend, she'd gotten in to town late late Friday night- and we finally got out of bed late Saturday, to go meet Celia at the teahouse. I felt the same stunned joy at being alive last Sunday that I did on our first afternoon.
Celia was the first person outside of Cyd and family I introduced J. to, as my lover, and the
teahouse was our first outing. So it was a nice echo of that first afternoon. Heard Kastle read, and she was inspirational as always.
Kate, Margaret Smith's daughter, turns 30 and is having a huge drag show/party next weekend, so I told Kastle we'd see her there.
Ok, no Foucault is getting read. We go home, we pack, and drive back to Toronto- its Sunday.
Then I drove back to Buffalo for work on Monday, wasted more hours of time than I knew I had, and was off again, to run over to Storm and April's to hand out candy for Halloween, and stayed to hang out after. Jet is back in town, and itwas great to see them. I'd missed the pumpkin carvingthe night before, I'd been in Toronto, and that's a tradition I don't like to miss. Now I am here at work, wondering why I never sleep.

melancholia

2005-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Have to distinguish between what is natural to feel on a wet, drear late October night during a 13 hour shift at work, and what is a ghost in the brain. What darkness folds its wings on me. I've felt despair; this isn't it. But Despair leaves termite trails in the wood of your self. Like old veins shifting dust, not the heady rush of lifeblood. Veins that shrink and cower and tremble like a kicked dog at the intimation of a drought. Bleak. Have I grown used to the taste of worm meat? Supping at the Mortality Deli. Whatever strength life is, I can't filter it through my teeth.

Ok, little giddyness, anytime now.

Pronouns

2005-10-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

I belong to any number of organizations/email lists/informal associations that are primarily women. Nothing exclusive- my views on biology and destiny have changed over the years, and while I once crossed the gate into Michigan, I wouldn't do so now. I'm not a separatist. I understood that point of view better, once, but never shared it.
Some of that comes from my own ambivalence about being called a woman. Female bodied, sure, no argument. But a woman? I mean, sometimes, maybe. But I'd rather be called a man. I'm not a transman- I don't plan on taking hormones or having surgery. But I am transgendered by most definitions. Female bodied man, I'm used to saying, to the right audience.
I'm also at a point in my life where I don't make a big deal about it. Call me she. Call me by my given name, if you work with me. Kids get to call me anything they want. My in-laws as well. People over 80. My parents.
My partner has it down to a science and an art. Calls me 'he' in most conversations, even with the in-laws. Calls me Smitty. Will use 'she' around strangers and children. J.'s bi-gendered, and gets it, better than I do most days. Go back and forth with the pronouns in the same sentence.
Usually, belonging to these groups, and being a 'woman', I end up party to some variation of the 'we're all women here' conversation starter. Usually followed by some assertion about how women really are, or men. I always shut the hell up and listen politely.
But its is starting to get my back up, every time somebody asserts that 'we' are all women here- I keep wanting to say, uhmn, no, not really. Or when someone makes an assumption about women not having to deal with gender. Or gender not being a part of lesbian relationships. I absent myself from the conversation. I'm unqualified. I'm not enough of a lesbian if I say I'm male. Or not enough of a male if I don't get my chest cut off and take hormones. Or a traitor to the cause, upsetting the comfort and security of the subculture by pointing out that the lines aren't so clearly drawn as they were in the 1970's.
We're not all women here. They aren't all men over there. That big old Michigan feminist dyke might be a conservative man in a few years, stick around. Or that man might be your sister.

First drag persona

2005-10-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

At the Genderfukt show, Deb "Dirk" Pierce talked about trying to change a tampon while in drag, and dropping his cock. I've said similar things over the years- you want to feel manly? Try changing your feminine hygiene product while packing. The cock keeps getting in the damn way. And bloody hell, do hormones make me nuts- I am far more aggressive as a man when I'm bleeding.
I was sitting on the third floor smoking balcony with my beautiful boy, late last night, at the house in Toronto. We were talking about drag personnae, how in my experience kings starting out when I did had to work through levels of stereotypes about men when they started to perform. My drag lineage, if you will, comes from Margaret Smith, who took a workshop with Dianne Torr. I started doing drag in the early 1990's. We started with a theatrical scene that we (the four kings) wrote through collective improv, then rehearsed five nights a week for months. It was the capstone performance of a lesbian drag show. We had developed characters, and created backstory of how they knew one another as boys. It was theatre work. My character, Steve, was a stereotype- working class, a bit repellent, surely the kind of guy who drank too much, smoked too much, lived in a trailer, was more than a little misogynist and small town. Not a slick, sexy gallant drag king. Not the broad humor of a Mo B. Dick. Just a portrait of a blue collar guy. He had his pain, he had his weaknesses.
J.'s experience was different. Johnny Class is slick, handsome, confidant, sexy, suave- a dancer, a gallant, a gentleman. J. pointed out to me that drag is different city to city, let alone country to country. I had to agree- I am just now getting a feel for drag in Toronto, after my rust belt American experience. So I wonder about other kings- when you created your first personae, when you did your first performance, what was what guy like? Do you still perform the same character? Do you always do drag under the same name? What layers of stereotype did you have to work through? We never come to any art form as a blank slate. Steve was the guy I could have been, if I had been a straight man, and stayed in Pleasant Valley. He was the sum of my fears about my own maleness, not a ladykiller, not a rapist, not a cocky boy- a broken, blue collar man. Not a guy I even like all that much. But I still think about him, from time to time.

Hate the sin

2005-10-19T01:05:00.000-07:00

Heard this bigoted bullshit too many times. Heard it on my way in to work, a radio personality interviewing an 'expert' on how the Bible says gay people are awash in sin, God hates us, and we need to cease to exist right quick or God will smite the nation.
Look, I can take a lot. I have heard this horse manuere in every possible form since early, small town, Methodist childhood. I grew up, read the Bible, read everything else from the Old Testament Pseudoepigraha to the Egyptian Aten prayers, learned my Christian history about all the different warring interpretations, and sects, and beliefs. Also read every other major holy books, and studied the rest of the religions galloping around the Near East during the centuries when the Bible was being compiled, edited, destroyed, revised, and stapled together.
Frankly, anybody quoting Leviticus to me had best keep the rest of the Old Testament laws with precision, or I will laugh my head off at them. If you want to be a fanatic for Yahweh, go for it- just go all the way.
Don't worry, I'm headed right for hell for being a drag king-

Deu 22:5
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so [are] abomination unto the LORD thy God.

So here's my rant, that makes as much sense, Biblically, as loathing faggots exclusively. God hates hypocrites and liars, too, by your own book. I am writing in character, keep that in mind.

"We come together today to give the Word of the Lord, in love.
Now love isn’t a pallid, effeminate virtue that liberals parade around today- Make Love, Not War-
No! The Lord says, make war!
Love that allows degradation of the spirit, that allows the defilement of the body, is the love of the Devil. The fallen angel who rules this world. No, the love of the Lord is a strong love, a father’s love- a love that punishes the disobedient, for their own good. The Lord gives us his word on how to live righteously- and remember, the Lord will turn his face away from the nations that revel in unrighteousness! This isn’t my prejudice, brothers and sisters; this is the word of the Lord! Right there in the Bible-
Genesis 9:20-
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."

The Curse of Canaan, son of Ham! The Lord himself set Noah above all other men in righteousness, so when he was lying around drunk off his ass and naked, with his robe up over his inebriated head, what did his unrighteous son Ham do? Looked at the drunken spectacle of his naked old man, and told his brothers. For this, his son Canaan is cursed by Noah, and that curse is backed up with the full power of the Almighty, making the sons of Canaan- that’s black skinned people, brothers and sisters! Making the sons of Canaan servants of servants. The Lord Himself set them up as slaves, marked by their skin! They bear in their flesh the mark of Noah’s curse! Who am I to argue with the Almighty, if God wants it this way!
But we have to share the world, the liberals whine. We have to be nice to one another. Discrimination is wrong.
Let me tell you, this isn’t about the works of man; it is about the Word of God! He backed up that curse, and we can see its fruit today. Didn’t that hurricane go wipe out a city with his righteous anger?
And what kind of people were in that city?
Prejudice is wrong. Nobody wants to be labeled a bigot, a racist! The liberals will level that charge, that hate word, at anybody who wants to share the Truth, in love, of the Bible with their afflicted neighbors. You cannot let people pull you down with a word. It’s not prejudice, its love, to tell people the eternal truth that God hates them for existing, and has marked them in their flesh. So, if anybody ever confronts you as a racist, tell them-
Hate the skin, love the skinner."

Genderfukt

2005-10-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

Friday was the Genderfukt show in Toronto. This is the third I've been to, and it keeps getting better. Produced by Skylar Rocket, the show is held semi-monthly at Sneaky Dee's, a straight club. That is a sly bit of activism right there- take the drag show out of the gay ghetto. Genderfukt is always sold out, wall to wall crowds that love their drag. Loud, raucous, stomping, hooting and hollering, cheering, and tipping the performers with Drag Dollars, sold for that purpose. I was front and center with a fistfull, and part of the joy is throwing money at your favorite kings.
I've been hanging around the drag king scene in Toronto since last July, and am starting to feel acculturated enough to comment on it. Shows are put together by kings themselves, culling performers from an incredibly vast and talented pool of regulars. Performers have to provide their own act, music, costumes- the show provides a venue, a name, lights, sound, and crowd. No director, an act of theatrical bungee jumping that at first, made me dizzy just contemplating it. It works because of that pool of performers, many of whom come back show after show.
What is brilliant about the Genderfukt shows is the diverse nature of the performers. The goal is to deconstruct gender lines- and it shows. I love the broad interpretation of drag that has evolved here in practice: drag kings, high femme, burlesque, comedy, political commentary, erotica, and performance art are all regularly represented. Biology isn't a barrier, which is particularly lovely. Several of the regular performers and crew are trans. For the record, when refering to a performer who is performing as male, I will use the male pronouns, regardless of their identity offstage.
Some of the absolute standout acts from an outstanding show, all my opinion of course:
Roxy Heartbreaker, doing a high femme dance number in a smashing historical costume. Roxy's a veteran performer. She can move like an angel, she's sly and innocent alike in playing with the audience. Perfect timing in a building number.
Sebastian Cognito and Elton Schlong in a comic dance of unrequited love.
Titty Titty Bang Bang in a sexy and funny interpretation of "Pour Some Sugar On Me", complete with assistant doing just that. She's a larger woman who projects a powerful sense of her own sexuality.
Johnny Class, in a true genderfucking drag number, performing as both Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, going back and forth between them with only minimal costume pieces, ending up as both. Communicated gender as performance through movement beautifully. Subtle and lovely, as Johnny knows how to move from boy to girl to boy/girl with ease.
Mitch, in a sizzling hot dance number as a handsome boy.
The three sisters, all drag virgins, doing the Beastie Boys song "Girls".
The Beaver Puckers, in an inspired hockey number they will be taking on to IDKE in Winnipeg.
Some standouts in various numbers during the show were:
Flare, a real professional with miles of charisma and talent who could steal a scene upstage in the dark-
Justin, a boy with a beautiful face and a seriousness onstage-
The new king from London (sorry, I didn't get your name!) doing his first show- and he nailed it- a slow song, which can be deadly, but he pulled it off with excellent timing and a beautiful interaction with the audience; Dirk Pierce emceeing with his usual biting humor, breaking the mould to call his mom for her birthday during the second act. Dirk asked the audience to say hi to his mom, and the noise was deafening.
I wasn't sure what to make of drag in Toronto at first- far more lipsyncing and dancing than I was used to. I'm starting to see, and appreciate, the variety and diversity of performers and numbers. They pay thier kings, a very nice touch. The standards of performance are all self determined, but the level is high, with all the talent. Next show in November, I'll post details before and after. Go see it.

Life is a messy business and involves a lot of cheese.

2005-10-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

Every so often I have one of those weekends I cannot keep up with, even in outline form. It is like describing a painting- if I can evoke the emotion, then I am happy.
I've had the same best friend since I was fourteen years old.- CJ Hurley. We were a unlikely pair at first- he was a longhaired sarcastic heavy metal listening thug. One with some status, if a perverse status. I was a wallflower nerd, at best, the lowest possible rank of human in a high school environment- the ugly girl. I was a girl who did not wear makeup, was not known to date, was poorly dressed, awkward and I read too much.
It was a match made in art class. The only thing that could bridge the gap between our worlds was art. We've never talked about it, but I think we both had a crush on our teacher, a young dark haired woman who rather liked us. We ended up doing an art project together that involved spending time outside of school. I would take the bus home with him, but he made me sit someplace else, so nobody would know we were together. Even the implication of a friendship was too much, he'd get raked over the coals.
I understood the social hierarchy, and agreed with him. I bring this up every so often when we get together as adults, so I can make him squirm. He suffers so about it now that we are grown. But teenagers are mean as hell, and eat their own dead. I understood it then, and I do now.
We started on the project, away from school, away from other's eyes- and that was the start of it. We recognized in one another a brother in all but blood. We shared many deep interests.
We were both illustrators then, and dreamed of drawing comic books.
Fast forward 23 years or so. He's been my best friend ever since- he knows me, how I think, what I secretly dream about, what moves me, what destroys me. He's seen me make absurdly stupid relationship choices, struggle with depression, accept that I am not an illustrator, I'm a writer, endured the eternal dance of anguish with my family, respected and loved me as a brother. Doesn't matter how much time has passed, I am always thrilled to see him, and happy in his company. He lives across the country now with his wife, a woman I am proud to call my sister.
I get to see him a week a year, usually. I fly out
He's an artist. There's an understatement! The man is a genius. He's starting to get recognized, but mark my words, he will be recognized far more in the years to come. He was clearly born a few centuries too late, his work has a deep cultural and historical understanding behind it, he dabbles in mythology. His ability to devote himself with Zenlinke precision to the ideals of beauty and design are unparalleled. And he'd be languishing in a garage apartment somewhere muttering to himself as he paced around in paint stained clothes, if not for his wife.
Barbara is an artist, a designer, a teacher, but more- she's an astute and gifted businesswoman who can market and promote the genius' work. Ok, he's a genius. But he's just lost at many thing, including talking about his own work, how the world of self promotion works, and so on. Without her, he'd be forgotten before he's discovered. So here, in the perfect marriage of belief and design, they workl togther. She believes in what he does, he trusts her entirely, they create and travel and sell the work. http://cjhurley.com/index.html
Last wekeend they had a conference at the Chautauqua Institute here in New York, about an hour out of Buffalo. CJ is a Roycroft Renaissance Artisan- he ressurects and masters forgot art and design forms. He specializes in the Arts & Crafts Movement, with dabbling in Art Nouveau. Both of them are historical experts.
I got to bring J. with me when we drove down to see the Artisan's show. I'd brought CJ and Barbara to Toronto to meet J. a few days before, we'd all gone out for Vietnamese and had a lovely time. But here was a chance to show him off, let him shine at his forte.
J. and I drove down to Chautauqua on Friday afternoon. CJ and Barbara had gone down earlier to set up.
The Artisan's Show was in the Athenaeum Hotel, in a room facing the lake. The day was cold, gray, rainy, typical October in Western New York. Beautiful in its own right, the way the frission of mortality is beautiful; we remember that time is passing, that we age and change, that we all will pass, but for now we are alive and the light shines on us.
His section faced out, toward the windows. He had a series of paintings with him, examples of work, more of the larger design materials were shown on the laptop Barbara had set up.
Barbara and CJ both work black; he simple, she elegant. Barbara has an absoulte gift for lighting up when she talks to people- she shines, she shows interest, she makes you feel like you are the most important and fascinating person alive. She's always had this gift, since I met her- back when she and CJ first got together, going on 20 years ago.
I sat down, and watched, as CJ talked with a slightly crazy woman interested in one of his paintings. I glanced across to my left, and saw J. sitting, talking with Barbara. Barbara had been telling, on my prompting, the story of how she and CJ met in an art class and got together. I saw, for the first time, the similarity between J. and Barbara- not appearance, though they are not dissimilar. It was that gift. They both light up when they talk to people, and show that unalloyed interest and passion. Watching the two of them talk to one another, I felt Time set his hand on my shoulder. I looked at my best friend, and saw him talk about his work with a customer. The woman bought the watercolor study for a gesso panel- one of CJ's Goddess images, the Lady of the Lake. I was so proud of him, of his gifts, of the choices he's made, of his unmitigated luck in choosing his partner, of the way J. walked right into this moment, the closest space near my heart, and made herself exactly at home. How much she fit.
There was a frenzy more of activity that weekend, Canadian Thanksgiving with the in-laws, a drag party where brother-in-law Zombie Boy dressed up in J.'s girl clothes and rather confused me, more time with our guests. But that afternoon was the center for me.

Aww...............

2005-10-04T19:03:00.000-07:00

Sleeps like a cat. I'm of a sentimental nature, but come on, this is a beautiful picture.

2005-09-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in my office in the library while one of my student-assistants, a hilarious woman named Margo, walks around with a Buck Rogers style canister vacuum that you have to wear strapped on her back. Now, I never ask my assistants to vacuum. She just saw the maintenance man, Carmen, wearing it, and wanted to try it. So I’m doing big important librarian things like drink coffee, read the comics and write, while she strolls past my door wearing that damned canister.

No students in today, and its a half day for me, so I am killing time until I get to- go to my favorite barber, Chick, and get a bloody haircut, as I am now officially more shaggy than Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, then fill up on way too expensive gas and drive to Toronto. I drive a 99 Mitsubishi, my newest used car ever, that I mortgaged my soul to buy back in March, when I blew up the last 88’ whatever it was (it was red) on the Queen Elizabeth Highway between Buffalo and Toronto. It used to cost me 26 bucks to fill the tank, US funds. Now costs me 40. Considering that I must drive, all the bloody time, as I live in two countries, that is just unholy. Wrong wrong wrong. But who listens to me?
I live with Cyd and Anth and family during the week, and with my partner, the drag king Johnny Class in Toronto on weekends. Johnny rents a three floor brick house in the High Park district of Toronto, along with both of her brothers- Zombie Boy and Conan, and a six foot three 300 pound British weightlifter/high school friend of her brother Conan’s. A very male household to say the least, but she has the third floor to herself, with a sitting room and a balcony, so we have a nice retreat. Though I swear, I spend more time cleaning that bloody kitchen when I go there. Living with three men, two of them very large, means lots of mess. No better than a bear cage, I swear. At least Zombie Boy is a skinny little artist guy, with a very Goth girlfriend. They mostly smoke cigarettes and watch movies, and lay around looking pale, but they are entertaining. Everyone in the house has a passion for the color black, so we, when go out together for say Vietnamese food, or to a local tavern, look like a punk band or a depressive’s club. Too much black, too many tattoos, and leather, and metal bits everywhere. I’d be scared, if two of the men with me weren’t larger than most trucks.
Johnny turned 21 in March, and is back to school at the University of Toronto full time. I got to keep her with me much of the summer, and made all the requisite trips to visit my family in the South. It was funny as hell, the car trip we took to Tennessee to visit my sister Robin, her husband and her two daughters.
Now, Robin and I have been estranged for six years, and I’d never met her kids. But she wrote to me, told me she was turning 40, and invited both J. and I to come. So we did, just to surprise the hell out of her. We all got on well, everyone liked J., including my parents. Robin and I made up. I wrote a children’s book for her oldest daughter, now 4, and illustrated it. J. hand lettered the entire thing and did the cover. Hope they liked it.
Poor J. just about fell over dead when, in the middle of a conversation, she heard me lapse into a Southern accent, like the rest of my family and their neighbors. She actually hit me, and told me to cut it out. It scared her.
I, for my part, am coming along well on my Canadian accent, and sound more like I’m from Toronto now, eh?

I performed in my first drag show in Toronto in August, along with J. We did Annie Lennox’s “Money Can’t Buy It.” She wore fishnets, heels, a tear away skirt, next to nothing, really. I was a guy in a suit trying to pick up a prostitute. She set me, er straight, that she wasn’t for sale, but was willing to play for love. Mostly a dance number, and thank God she has 15 years of classical ballet behind her, she choreographed it. I was the suit clad prop, mostly.

J. has a drag show in October. I’m audience. I prefer writing.
My old publisher went out of business, a new one signed me for the reissue of the first novel and the second. So I’ve started doing author appearances in Canada. Book should be out by August 06, so my appearance schedule will be heavy around Pride next year. I’ve enclosed the photo of me for the new publisher’s website. The hands are Cyd and our friend Gretchen. Anth shot the photo in our house, the red wall is the stairs coming in. Both the women had a bit of wine, and Anth told them to grope me. His idea, but a great shot, so I went with it as my publicity photo.
Oh, for the open QEW before me...

How to have cybersex with women- part II

2005-09-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Swimmerboy: Give it to me, Daddy!
Me:Can you take it?
(embarassing sexual posing described in outline form)
Just as it was getting hot and heavy, and I was conviced this was the real thing, an actual electronic sexual encounter, my partner in fantasy threw a spanner in the works.
Swimmerboy: Wait! I can't do this. I'm straight.
Me: Relax, I'm not a man.
He hung up on me.
That was my first and last attempt to have cybersex as a gay man. Fitting.

So eventually, after being single for a while and, feeling bold, I started to 'date.' Lesbians in the audience may now start laughing. Really, do women even 'date' anymore? Did lesbians ever?
That was my thinking going in. Evidently, women do date, you just have to find them.
To find them, I registered with a number of online dating sites-meet hip queers, fierce femmes, out dykes, the whole shebang.
Having abandoned the idea of cybersex, I discovered..the modern erotic letter. Oh, email, my sweet friend.
Online encounters move in stages. First profiles, then an interested message, then perhaps, an email exchange. The goal is to get to know one another, weed the list a bit before any face to face encounters. What I noticed was, once the preliminaries of who, what and where are out of the way, email quickly turned into an erotic playground. Not every time, but often enough that I saw the pattern. Once the opening email started, coy turned to cunning. Email allowed for just the exact degree of protection and abandon to expose the erotic imagination. Nothing like having a woman email you, with progressive intensity, just how wet she is, and how much she needs you to fuck her, during your workday. Oh, glorious, glorious...the women who I will never meet, but who shared a bodice-ripping good time with me for that instant.

How to have cybersex with women- part 1

2005-09-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

I like starting out with a bang. For the title, not for having cybersex with women, or phone sex, email sex, or any other variety. In fact, if there's a rule to start with:

1. Do not start out with a bang. We will expand on this later.

I was single for a number of years, between major relationships. Let me tell you, I am not a stud, a playa, a Lothario, a ladykiller, or even hot. Nope, average as all get out. Butch. The kind of fellow a woman might not glance at twice in a bar.
I've also been blessed by women who, for whatever reason, find me interesting.

I credit this to the Internet. Man, if they'd had this thing available when I was a teenager I wouldn't have spent all my time playing Dungeons & Dragons!

The two are similar, if you look at it closer- D&D allows a nervous, socially awkward terrified teenager to create a bold, virile, dragon-slaying hero in a loincloth and then become that character for extended periods of time. Bloody intoxicating. Had a bad day in Math class, teased on the bus, laughed at by the girl in the purple sweater who thinks you are a great big giant dyke? Go strap on your loincloth and shoulder your battleaxe and kill a legion of goblins as Blastarr, the Warlord. Shake the blood from your knotted fists, rake the sweaty black mane out of your blazing eyes, and cry yourself to sleep.
The Internet has the same intoxicating properties. Create a character, or personae, and launch yourself into a make-believe world. You can be anybody! Ok, that's not true, and we'll get to that later as well. But in the beginning, you think you can. Pretend to have all those personality traits you wish you had. Be suave, or an asshole. Who hasn't wanted to be an asshole, even for a little while? Assholes have fun. they don't give a fuck what people say about them. They get in fights, act like, well, assholes, and women love them. That's the mythology. There's a grain of truth to it. Confidence attracts.
So I did what any self respecting dyke would do-I became a gay man.
Made up my profile-hot uncut 9'' Latino top looking for a bottom with a smooth swimmer's build. Ventured forth into the brave new world of gay male chat. Got hit on right away. We slipped away...

2005-09-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

Smitty is a handsome, brooding warrior king novelist. Smith was once described as a nice, small town boy educated well beyond necessary, but not nearly enough to please her. Smitty is in love with books - from reading them to writing them. She’s been a writer, drag king, director, and librarian. Perhaps by luck, or fate, Smitty had lived in Buffalo, New York and spends an inordinate amount of time in Toronto, Ontario. While old fashioned in a very modern way, Smitty still does not understand that coffee is never just coffee.
Of Drag Kings and the Wheel of Fate, 2 ed.
August 2006
Dr. Rosalind Olchawski is an expert on Shakespeare, Nineteenth century poetry, and being the best friend you've ever had. She's been described so often as warm Rosalind has come to think of herself as a sweater or a pair of mittens. Set up on a blind date at a drag club in downtown Buffalo, Rosalind is mesmerized by the performance of the drag king Taryn. Can a grown woman go mad over a girl who looks like a boy? One night of adventure threatens to tear down everything Rosalind has come to believe about herself. She discovers the soul behind the girl's handsome face and cannot look away. The connection between them is irresistible, and Rosalind is drawn into a world of love, sacred madness, witchcraft, and gender transgression. The witch Rhea has her own connection to Taryn and warns Rosalind to stay away. While Rhea believes that the past has determined all their lives, Rosalind wants a fighting chance to shape the future. Can love and magic hope to change the course of Fate?
Drag King is a novel about history, sex, drag, paganism, death, and the formation of family. Using an ancient myth reset in the queer community in Buffalo, New York, Smith explores gender fluidity, sexual diversity, and the deeper questions of love and identity that make us who we are.
URL http://www.azarnes.com/
Email azarnes@yahoo.com