Cocktails for a Cause

This Week in Fabulosity - Mean Little Deaf Queer (& Other Assorted Faggotry)

I was very joyful to get out of the house this weekend.  I was nearing a total meltdown with school, and frankly that didn't fully resolve until late last night when I cleared a thesis with a professor, realized I had plenty of time to write it, and calmed my raggedy over-achieving Virgo ass down.  But I digress.  This Saturday, my fabulous sex blogger flatmate Sarcastabitch reminded me that Giovanni's Room has having both an author reading and Holler, their (relatively) new open-mic night which I have attended previously.   Side note: Sarcastabitch is so intensely, delightfully, snarkily and brilliantly fabulous that she'll also be guest blogging for The Evil Slut Clique because her wit and swish cannot be contained to just one blog.

The evening started with Terry Galloway dramatically reading from her memoir "Mean Little Deaf Queer."  (Follow the link to buy the hardback from Giovanni's Room, or here to get it in paperback edition when that comes out shortly.)  She was pehomenal and an off-the-wall wonder.  She read/performed three excerpts.  The first was about meanness as a way of coping with deafness in her youth, and the second two about passing.  One was passing as less disabled to order to feel less an outsider, and the other about passing as more disabled than she really was in order to make sure she qualified for public assistance in getting new hearing aids. 

It was the latter that I found the most interesting of all, though both about passing made me think about behaviors in which we, whether queer, disabled, ethnic or racial minorities, etc., may take on a very affected behavior outside of us in order to demonstrate ourselves to be either "enough" or "not too much" of whatever it is we think we have to be for the audience we're currently performing for.  Performing different versions of ourselves and others is something that most or all of us do in adolescence or in college or other times in our life that are formative of our emotions and identities.  To see someone not only recall this in their own life but to recreate the performance for us was captivating and it begs the questions: "How does she perceive both her own disability, and that in the context of her larger identity?  How does she perceive her disability compared to others' disabilities?  What does this performance of disability tell us about her perceptions, and do they seem accurate either to us or to her in retrospect?"

Overall, Terry's reading and answering questions for the audience afterward was unwaveringly energetic and captivating; in addition it was, at turns, laugh-out-loud hilarious, cringe-worthy, sympathetic, tugging at our heart strings, and, in moments, cruel.  The title of the book, after all, is "Mean Little Deaf Queer."  In little more than an hour she took us on a real journey that certainly left me wanting more, and so I joyfully purchased the book and had it signed, and am glad to report that Beacon is already looking for Terry to write a sequel.  In this endeavor she has all of my best wishes, and I cannot wait to finish the first, and read the second when it comes out.

I've had so many things to say about Terry's fabulosity that I'll sum up the rest of the evening in a quick stream of consciousness: most  read from anthologies, I from GENDERqUEER, though one young man performed a monologue on performing queerness (performing identity = evening's theme) with great hilairty.  "I am a Christian Woman!" he exclaimed.  Delicious audience member with beautiful braided hair.  Delicious hummus afterward with some queer gals and one "butch tranny fag."  Baklava and coming out stories.  His fascinated: first as a dyke, then as a trans man who has a wifey, is queeer, is "down for the tranny cock" (as in, other trans men like himself), does not love cis-men's penises.  My cock barely bristled; not everybody can love it.  More than enough do and that's fine.  Strawberry-vanilla hookah and homemade baklavah.  Deliciousness abound.

Kisses,
Pistol

This Week in Fabulosity - Cabaret, College & More

Thursday - I started my internship with First Person Arts and, as with pretty much everything in my life right now, it's not just that it's fantastic and contributing to the fact that this is the happiest I've been in my whole life (see also: I got fired from a job I hated, I adore my flatmate and my puppy, I've been hanging with fab New York authors and performers).  This is more than just an interhsip for me.  Like my most recent dating experience, it's a short term attunement to be what it is to be treated well, have open communication, and feel that the energy that I contribute is honored.  This hasn't been the case in past dating or work experiences, and I'm on my way to unbelievable creativity, a career and a relationship.  This is great training for how to do that.

Friday - I headed out to see The Big Mess Orchestra perform Big Mess Cabaret at the Trocadero.  The Troc is one of my favorite things about Philadelphia and, like First Person Arts and the film festivals, will be one of the things that I miss dearly when I move, and that I will visit when I come back.  I've seen Pansy Division there, a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show, attended great dance parties and more.   However, it was nice to see cabaret there as one of the many historic incarnations of The Troc was as a burlesque hosue with cabaret and vaudeville.  

Right: Miss Carlotta in her 3rd frock of the evening. Girl can rock the purple sequined micro dress, but I'm sorry I missed a picture of her holiday dress.

The show had a great live band, flamenco, smoking elves, an insane singing ten foot tall nun who was also an insane ten foot tall singing Christmas tree (under her habit, naturally), vaudeville, stripteases, and the auctioning of dresses for an HIV/AIDS charity.

Despite all of this immense talent and hilarity, the favorite performance came not from a performer, but from Mic Boy, who rearranged the mics for each performer...in a jockstrap and work boots.  Yum.  Have I mentioned lately that I love my people?  I mean, straight people in Europe might be that cool, but the the U.S. of A. I'm sure as hell glad to be an urban dwelling fag.

Another highlight: nine foot singing purple penis.

Saturday - My college (re)acceptance letter from TCNJ arrived! In less than a year I won't just be a whip smart actor/writer/handsome gentleman, but I'll have a piece of paper (from on of the finest institutions in the country, I might add), that certifies me in at least one of those arenas.  Or something.  So yeah, huzzah to me going back to finish my degree in gender studies at the same time as I intern, continue my Meisner training with the Ward Studio, and keep my expenses down while I'm living on unemployment, all without losing it.  Wish me luck!

Sunday - A great schlep out to West Philly for our Solstice Heart Circle, which I blogged about here yesterday.  What a great way to celebrate the end of the year with some of my favorite Philadelphians, and some beautiful new ones as well!

My First Person Arts Story Slam

Embedded here is the story I told at a First Person Arts story slam.  I had a LOT of fun doing it and it made me want to start writing fictional short stories based on my (ridiculous) life.  Since I've been blogging here as much as possible and trying to generally organize my life post leaving Penn I haven't done that, but I definitely hope to at least tell a story at another slam sometime soon.  In the meantime, I've actually started interning at First Person and I'm absolutely loving it.  More on that later.  For now, I leave you with my wonky ass story:

(Also, check out the story by Chase on the same night.  She was the audience favorite and had me in tears I was laughing so hard.)

Guest Blog - A Giovanni's Room Story

The following is a guest blog from The Phaggot.  He is a self described artist, writer, wine drinker, objector, citizen, homosexual, computer geek, activist, super hero, and grad student. Most importantly, a CUTE homosexual.  He does a lot of great work in Philadelphia, and I am very appreciative to him for sharing his story below:

I grew up in a poorer section of the great NorthEast corridor. Money in our family was spent frugally, better to feed the 7 kids then spend paychecks on any type of luxury. The VCR was a gift from an Uncle. Clothes were always hand-me-downs or Wal-Mart fresh. Our worn-out television was so old it bared the RCA logo. What few books we owned were dog-eared and smudged, passed down from father to son, to brother, to sister. Although our Encyclopedia was out-dated enough to talk about 48 states in the Union, we loved all our books.

My school system, while under-funded and under-appreciated in that rural American kind of way, did have an excellent set of librarians. These women (yes, they were all women) worked overtime to make sure books were available to all students. Classics, science fiction, romance, adventure and horror, they were all stacked on the shelves. For a voracious reader like me, this was heaven. I found inspiration in the stories of Hans Brinker, John Carter, Thomas Jefferson, James and His Giant Peach, and those four Little Women. What I didn’t find was was role-models or people who seemed like me. My school’s Dewey Decimal system didn’t extend as far as the Kinsey scale.

In my teen years, when my hourly rate at Dairy Queen allowed me some financial freedom, I was still in a sexual book bind. A small town in Maryland is still not a place a teen boy can find a Playgirl, much less any works of our great gay authors. Neither the Christian Light Bookstore or K-Mart’s book section carried any of the titles I needed.

At 17, I visited a girlfriend attending Drexel University. A born fag-hag, she had known far before me what my destiny was in life. After a long walk on South Street, we took a detour north. We ended up in the middle of Philadelphia’s Gayborhood.  Lacking a sophisticated fake ID and born with a non-stop babyface, my initiation into the world of big city homosexuality would have been cut short without the most important shopping moment of my life: Giovanni’s Room.

I didn’t buy much on my first visit; after all, I still shared a room with two brothers. There was only so much I could hide. Hefty purchases would be saved for later visits. But that wasn’t what made Giovanni’s Room special. The important thing was that Giovanni’s Room was THERE. It represented the first time I knew that there were other people like me out there, and that we were OKAY enough to have books about us! And while my parents had never said much positive about homosexuality, if anything at all, I did know that books meant something, something good and something important. I also knew, that a place devoted to our tales, catering to our fears and desires, and built upon our past and looking toward our future – that kind of place had to be for me.

Losing Giovanni’s room wouldn't just be a loss to your bookshelf. Not for me now, and certainly not for the old me either. While it’s a tremendous bookstore with shelves and shelves of delightful gay fun, that is not why we need Giovanni’s Room. This bookstore transcends retail; it’s a place that is pivotal to the gay community – to our people and culture. We Queers are not just drinkers, or activists, or networkers or marchers. We are not always going to congregate in the squares with signs, or on social media sites with secrets. Not all of us want to join, and some of us are shy. Some of us, either always or at different points in our life, need a place were words are on pages and ideas are in front of us. Were we can learn the news, exchange in the arts, and see a little tushie too.

Not in my City of Brotherly Love

Buju Banton, virulent and violent homophobic rapper, is scheduled to play the Trocadero tomorrow night. His charming lyrics call for such violence as the flaying, burning and murder of gay men. is this the same Trocadero where I have seen homo-punk band Pansy Division and sung along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, both as part of Q-Fest?!

Call to complain at 215-922-5483.