Invert(e)

March Publishing Notes

The buzz: Two bookstore closings of note: Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Manhattan, the world’s oldest gay and lesbian bookstore, will close in March. A Different Light bookstore in West Hollywood, Calif., is closing this spring. The gay and lesbian store's branch in San Francisco will remain open; a branch in New York City closed in 2001. **

British author Geraldine Bedell was banned from the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai because one of the characters in her new novel, The Gulf Between Us, set in the Middle East, is gay. The Gulf Between Us tells the story of a single mother trying to raise three boys in the Gulf emirate of Hawar in the summer of 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Author Margaret Atwood pulled out of festival in the wake of the fair's decision to cancel the launch of Bedell's book, then decided to participate in a debate on censorship to be hosted at the festival via video link-up. **

Bold Strokes Books and Casitas Laquita Resort are presenting the Third Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs California, March 5-8, 2009, featuring over twenty authors, including Radclyffe, Jane Fletcher, Andrews & Austin, Kim Baldwin, Jennifer Fulton, and Justine Saracen. For more information visit www.boldstrokesbooks.com or www.casitaslaquita.com. The resort is located at 450 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264.

Balance

February 21st was the last of this round.

It always starts on October 16th, the day I met my late partner, Jamz. That date marks a period of rollercoaster dips for me including his birthday, the day he fell ill and, finally, the date of his death. Most of the time I'm pretty good - depending on what else is happening in my life - and after seven years of this cycle, you'd think I'd be getting used to it. But each year is different and requires new coping strategies.

 Right after Jim died, I went to the gravesite at least once a week. I brought flowers. I sat on the ground next to him. I talked to him. I cried. That went on for three or four years. Then, I got to a point where I couldn't go anymore. I realized it was prolonging my grief rather than helping me resolve it. I stopped going, even on anniversaries where I wanted to. After all, I reasoned, Jim rarely visited his mother's grave. That assuaged my guilt enough.

On the 100th Anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto: The No-More-Future Manifesto

God is not dead. We are. God has yet to be fully born, whereas humanity is like a bacteria that threatened the host and is about to suffer the consequences of a planetary equivalent of antibiotics.

Intelligence is a sexually transmitted disease. Life is infinitely more beautiful without thought. Not to mention peaceful. Blissful. Spend the day up a tree. This is an order. Honor your superiors.

Plants were, are, and always will be the dominant life form on Earth. Animal life only exists to suck up the excess oxygen out of the biosphere.

Demand queerness everywhere. The 10 to 1 ration of straight procreational sex to queer recreational sex must be reversed. Knowing that it is too late to matter, ultimately, we still need to encourage the human race to decrease its number in the fastest manner possible, not only for our souls, but in order to take pressure off the life forms that will survive us. Suck more cock. Eat more pussy. Bang more butt. The penetration of the vagina by a penis must be seen as the tragic mistake it has always been.

Since the failed experiment of homo sapiens is coming to a conclusion, we are free to do anything. Politeness must be rejected. Fear is irrelevant. Obeying laws is absurd. War is too ridiculous to continue. Murder is redundant. Starvation is noble. In the very near future, we will all starve. It must become our new religion.

Only two paragraphs of one book will be relevant once the Earth becomes serious about the removal of humankind: pages 125-126 of The Last Three Minutes, by Paul Davies. Nothing will be lost. No one will get left behind. Only unanswered questions will send us back into the Hell realm once we find ourselves in the End of Time. "What if I had done this, that, or the other?" Stop thinking. Do it now.

Fever Night at The Poseidon

 

The Poseidon is a cursed vessel that always teeters but never fully capsizes, a semi-drowning, a plane falling in a lost autumn leave motion to the water, the flight attendants are nurses and the Poseidon is how I choose to call the Fast Track ER at St Paul’s Hospital, a true inner city hospital in Vancouver BC.

The story of this Poseidon has for me a flicking forked tongue, the medical history of gay men and AIDS in Vancouver and my tortuous medical fight with HIV and now with Hep C. I have been a good slut, partied hard, and cannot regret it, my body misses the grinding now and then, addicted, and charges its levy for the memories accrued: the guilt, the exhilaration, the numbness and the thrill of knowing that I have put myself in body and mind altitudes and valleys. This body also takes its toll for these spectacular acrobatics, the pooling of fluids, the friction of limbs, the obscenity of learning to stretch the skin wide.

A Wobbly Dismount

First of all, thanks to everyone who either commented or e-mailed me to commiserate on my recent job loss or wish me luck in finding a new one. You must be a powerful lot because I had a new job in less than a week.

What am I doing? Well, I'm working as an administrative assistant at a dialysis clinic in a long-term health care facility. Quite a switch from staff writer to health care administration, but just like any port in a storm, any job during a recession will work. And I got it through my friend, John - proving beyond any doubt that it's not qualifications that gets you jobs, it's who you know and how good your timing is. The paycheck is similar and the hours are actually better. I'm not getting paid for writing, but at least I'm getting paid. You can't argue with cash. Not only that, but I'm still doing freelance work for Out Front Colorado, so on the whole, I managed to escape this whole episode relatively unscathed. 

Last week, however, was a long hard slag. You know how that first week at a new job is - getting used to a new schedule and a new routine, finding a new route to work, meeting new people, fucking up new tasks, no full paycheck until you work a whole pay period, new bosses, new pecadilloes. I hate being the new kid on the block, too. At least I knew how to write - I know nothing about dialysis.

From Thing to Thing

I turned a recent blog into a poem.

Justin Chin has told me more than once that a piece is a short story or a poem or an essay, but it is not cool to rewrite a piece while going from form to form. I understand his point, and Justin is way smarter, and more talented, and more sucessful than I am or probably ever will be; nevertheless, I still don't have to do what he says. I think the blog cum poem might work for an audience, I like it anyway, and to hell with any intellectual fallout. I plan to read it, and some other damn thing, at an event this Friday evening, the details of which follow. (It is 2009, so perhaps it's time for me to stop being shy about self-promotion, and for Heaven's sake, don't say that is 'so last century': I'm treading water as fast as I can already!)  Lots of wonderful reader-performers, even if Justin isn't one of them. (God, I wish he'd get out more; he is so brilliant and there is no one else like him. But that's life. It ain't easy for anybody.)

My Sucky Valentine

A Valentine's Day Celebration of Love Gone Oh-So-Wrong 

Featuring Carol Queen, Simon Sheppard, Charles Gatewood, m.i. blue, horehound stillpoint, Daphne Gottlieb and Kirk Read. Hosted by Thomas S. Roche & Produced by John Bouvier 

Friday, February 13^th, 2009
Doors @ 7pm, Show 8-10pm
Location: Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission Street, San Francisco
Cost: $10-$20 sliding scale at the door (no one turned away for lack of funds)
All tickets at $20 or more and any auction items purchased are tax deductible!
All Proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture and the St. James Infirmary

Come and say Hi!

The Return of Idiotic Hore

I saw the devil stretch his wings last night

What shoulders he had. What a magnificent chest. Creamy skin, the heaviest tats ever, the darkest nipples. Wide Neanderthal nose.  He picked up his drum sticks and stretched out . . . I swear I wasn’t tripping, hadn’t smoked anything, but I almost saw the shadow of huge dragonlike wings for a microsecond sweep across the stage of The Fillmore.

Eagles of Death Metal were strapping in, to piercing screams and ecstatic applause from the audience. Josh Homme, I’m thinking, sexiest man alive (People Magazine opinions notwithstanding); he’s the drummer for E.o.M.D. Right? Well . . . .

LET'S GO, BATMAN, YOU AND ME . . .

Christian Bale can sit on my face and scream obscenities any time he wants to. Can’t you just hear it? “You fucking little prick. Shut up and take it. No. Noooo. NO!! Motherfucker. You want me to fucking shoot all over your fucking face? Do you? Fucking cock cum fucking shooting, no, no, no . . . “

This could go on for hours.

Everybody loved ‘The Dark Knight’ but me; I was extremely disappointed. Bale exploded off the screen in ‘Batman Begins,’ but it seemed as if someone was sitting on his chest in the second film. Heath Ledger exploded in that film, lots of gadgets and shit exploded, but not Batman. He pissed and moaned and took it. Actually, that makes him sound sexier than he was. For me, the lack of sexual energy just killed the whole movie. I love Christopher Nolan, but if he can make a movie with Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Aaron Eckhart, that doesn’t turn me on, well, something is wrong somewhere in the universe.

After all, I once began a poem with these lines:

     This is America
     And if I wanna eat mushrooms and go watch a flick
     Then declare from the rooftops that ‘Batman Begins’ is
             The Best Movie of All Time
     I not only can but it’s my duty
     I mean, God, are you fucking kidding me
     Somebody’s gotta have some fun in this battle-scarred, plague-ridden
              nest-befouled, lunatic no-asylum in the void
     It sure the fuck isn’t the people I serve

Q on the Tube: Inside Track

RuPaul is America’s most prominent drag queen. He’s played himself on numerous TV shows over the years, but now he’s hosting his own. 
 
RuPaul’s new reality series debuted Monday Feb. 2 on LOGO. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is as it sounds–a contest to see who is the best drag queen among nine contestants considered the top drag queens in the country. The contestants range in age from 24-year-old Akashia to the 39-year-old Victoria Parker.
 
Before the queering of America, true drag was marginal. Of course men have dressed as women for centuries–just ask William Shakespeare. And in modern TV times Milton Berle dressed as a woman for comedic effect on his variety show as did a host of other comedians like Jack Benny and all of Carol Burnett’s friends.
 
Dustin Hoffman was still talking about his role as Dorothy Michaels in “Tootsie” last week on David Letterman where he was plugging his latest film. Hoffman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in the 1982 role. And “Late Night’s” Craig Ferguson continues to do drag routines almost every night. 
 
But all of these men have been playing drag for laughs. None were/are gay. None were bridging the chasm between the queer world and the straight world or even attempting to. In fact at times drag by actors and comedians has been a clear put down of both women and queers.  
 
But for more than a quarter century the 48-year-old RuPaul Charles has been turning drag into the art form he’s always asserted it is and without trashing women in the process. There’s far more disrespect for women on “America’s Next Top Model” than on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

Switch Hitter

Tired of “watching trans movies where everybody dies or is really sad,” filmmaker Brooks Nelson felt compelled to film his own, Switch: A Community in Transition. 

The documentray suggests that comunities shoulder much of the “responsibility” for their trans memebers’ gender transformations.

“I didn’t change,” Nelson insists.  “I became more who I am—so really, the burden falls on everyone [else].  I peeled back stuff to reveal who I really am.” 

Meanwhile, he says, friends and family members—and the tightknit progressive community in Portland, Oregon—were forced to switch gender pronouns, incorporate new names and examine their own assumptions about what it means to be male or female. 

 “In all the different spheres that we all occupy,” Nelson argues, “People in them have different responsibilities to the person who is transitioning.  My boss’s responsibility is really different than my partner’s responsibility. I’m expecting different things from him…like[to] step up as an employer and say, “This is a bad law for some of my employees,’which means a lot more to somebody making those laws than you or me calling in.”

  “I feel completely blessed to live in this kind of amazing community. If anybody is going to have a stab at some of these frank conversations we wish would go on, it would be this community.  Its age diverse, its race diverse, its got class diversity—ability—everybody gets to bring this kind of unique perspective to the table.”