That's right, bitches. I'm name-badged and all. New Orleans, guard your women and your whiskey. This is Corrosion: we don't take names, and we have no mercy. Throw us your fake restraining orders. Slander us. Try to play wicked mind games with naked photos and poor, unsuspecting tourists. See what happens.

Alright, apocalyptic posturing aside --

Good morning, heathens. A drunk dude left me $5 worth of credits on the jukebox just in time for me to get off work. I'm blissfully listening to this (don't mind the video):



It's been a while. Here's an update: I have a fabulous new job: I'm working at graveyard shift at Buffa's now, a nice little 24hr bar with a 24hr kitchen. I deal with far fewer crackheads. My coworkers are golden. I can't say I'm sad to leave the old job, even though there are some friends I see far less now due to scheduling. Ah well.

I still owe you an analysis of the Anarchism and Technology essay. I've been without internet access for a while, and have been essentially running with my head spinning like I've been possessed. I haven't done a drag show in months: I've been incredibly busy with Corrosion, as well as all the other social projects lurking in the wings.

But there are plans, my loves.

I've been doing a lot of editing lately. I've been working on some new projects: some art, some writing, some physical. I have designs on a keytar. I've got a two-day trip to my place of birth in the works, along with a lot of mischief while I'm there. I've decided to write a 'debunking sex books' book. I've lived off of Japanese pestle cereal, apples, and caffeine for longer than any human should. I've survived The Great December Flood of New Orleans. I am set alight with beauty and rage.

It's only the beginning.

Also, GO READ THIS NOW. It is short, sweet, and full of bad-assery!

It's been a little while.

I've been busy, and haven't had much time to read, blog, or even breathe, really. I still want to finish reading Anarchy and the Politics of Technology, but as I only have internet at work, and I haven't had time to be on the internet, well, shit happens. I'll probably try to finish it tonight.

For now, chew on this morsel of awesome, taken from Minor Compositions:

As a novelist and fiction SF writer, JG Ballard developed one of the most dynamic (and disturbing) exploration of collective psychopathology, excesses in organizational life, and the collapsing of the Western imaginary. From the fetish of the car crash to obscene hidden violence of the business park, internment camps to masochist fantasies directed through the mediated form of Ronald Reagan’s body, Ballard’s work ventures into territories that are disconcerting to explore, but from which one can learn a great deal. Rather than assuming that disorder and excess is a condition that management and organization must respond to, this event will explore the proposition that what might really be psychopathological is the desire to impose order upon an inherently ungovernable and excessive condition.

More later, my darlings. For now, know that I love you.

I just got off work, and I'm totally exhausted.

BUT! Listen up: I'll be DJing alongside MARTIN FUCKING ADKINS. Yes, you heard me. Martin Adkins, of Ministry and Pigface fame, will be occupying the same dj both as yours truly. We will be leading dance floors into gritty, dirty, raunchy boot pounding bliss. It will be absolutely glorious.

In other news!

I'm randomly trolling through my photobucket, and I found this photograph of myself:

I was trying to sell this stuff to fund my I REALLY DON'T WANNA GO TO JAIL fund, but holyshit I look weird. As in, emaciated high-dollar socialite weird. As in, my bitch ass can sneak in to any red carpet party and cause a fucking ruckus weird. As in, who the fuck is that person?! weird.

Considering the fact that my brain is far too fried to post anything in this blog of actual worth, I'm going to give you a rambling tour of my photobucket. Like all great (i.e. ridiculous) chronologies, we're going to start from the last page onward. Because that's just how I roll.




Year one of drag. This is the first time I ever strapped my tits down on camera. It was a photo project a friend and I were working on, showing the transition between girl and boy. There are more photos, but this one is the gem.

Again, year one. This is a rather iconic photo of Aleksandr. It's low quality, and not a great shot, but even at that point in my performance evolution, I think it shows a fair amount of bravado and hypertheatrics.

Everyone's got one. Don't lie.

The second evolution of Aleksandr. More balls, more bravado, more makeup, more androgyny. I've been told that, in this suit, I am "the devil's lawyer." It was Valentine's day. I prowled the campus causing havoc. I figure, if anything, I wouldn't be the devil's lawyer, I'd be the devil's fire-under-the-ass.

Cocaine shoot. My friend wants to be a photographer. She wanted to do a shoot. I was all about it. The blood on my face is actually tattoo ink. Totally doesn't look like me, but whatever.

Oh hai, I'm a strange looking high-fashion model. OH WAIT. I'm Oscar Wilde. OH WAIT!! Identity crisis OH NOES. In this photo, I was on my way to a shoot, and asking a friend for advice. This photo also got me in a lot of trouble later on, but that's a story for another day.

Right.


So, there's my photobucket. I skipped over the random images of bright glaring things, grafitti, street signs, comics, and vhs cover jackets of nunsploitation films (if you haven't taken an internet look at the, YOU SHOULD). But there you go. A history of me in film.

There are more recent photos of me (that last photograph is about, eh, two years old), but they're already on here. SALUTE.


To quote the man beside me, "would you like to be in a cubicle somewhere, just typing away..?"

Because apparently, being on a machine means being in a cubicle.

I just got out of an employee meeting (I know, ugh: but really, it wasn't so bad. Kajun's doesn't work like other places), and opened up an essay I've been trying to read while on my shifts (I get all of my internet time whilst working).

Anarchism and the Politics of Technology

It's a bit lingo-dense, and the academic language is a bit heavy, but I've never been turned away from that kind of thing. I've only read up to the end of the articulation of Promethean and Primitavist arguments for technology, and thus far, I think this essay has a lot of illuminating points. I'm just now getting to the build up for the meat of the essay, which is a theory of anarchism and technology that goes beyond these two modes of thinking.

I've got some more reading and thinking to do, but I'm pretty interested in this essay thus far, and would like to analyze it further (you know, when I actually *finish* the essay, perhaps? I've got a problem with getting really excited about things and wanting to gear up for discussion prematurely -- but hey, at least you have all been forewarned about it now, so you can be prepared to discuss with me!)

This piqued my interest:

As technologies are being built and put into use, significant alterations in patterns of human activity and human institutions are already taking place . . . the construction of a technical system that involves human beings as operating parts brings a reconstruction of social roles and relationships. Often this is a result of the new system’s own operating requirements: it simply will not work unless human behavior changes to suit its form and process. Hence, the very act of using the kinds of machines, techniques and systems available to us generates patterns of activities and expectations that soon become “second nature.” (11–12)

I also get the feeling that there's going to be some Cyborg Manifesto re-reading very soon.

I am deeply invested in ideas of technology and the evolution of the human in general. Figuring out how to apply that to class relations and social structures as a whole is something I'd like to think about and work out more. The idea of 'posthumanism', an evolution of the human being from what it once was, integrating ideas of modification, technology, tearing apart and refiguring the structures of what we are and what we could be has been on my mind a lot lately. Watch closely. We're going to blow this shit apart.

MICHAEL IS MY HERO KTHNXBAI.

you may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

I'm at work, and incredibly zonked from Halloween and all of the festivities (I'll try to find photographs from someone, but let's just say I worked a shift and sauntered around the French Quarter dressed as a back-alley-abortion-nun, blood covered rubber fetus on a coathanger and all).

I'm doing what I do best when the bar is dead: prowling the internet. And I found this great little site for a collective in New Zealand. They've got a lot of great things to say, but I was particularly moved by this part:

Yanked from Beyond Resistance:

We reject patriarchy and fight for the empowerment and liberation of women. We stand in solidarity with feminist struggles, and believe that actively challenging the personal and interpersonal manifestations of patriarchy is equally as important as working towards structural changes. Both need to happen together to create a new society free of male domination.

With this in mind, Beyond Resistance aims to have a radical feminist perspective, in several ways. Firstly, we need a radical feminist analysis of our society that challenges male dominance, compulsory heterosexuality, and the bipolar gender system. Secondly, our internal operations (organizing structure, roles and responsibilities, meeting procedures, decision making, etc.) must ensure women’s participation and be strongly aware of practices that tend to favor men’s voices over women’s, and we must work to overcome them. Thirdly, we must not neglect radical feminist political struggle, particularly those kinds which connect struggles against sexism with the class struggle and building dual power. Finally, our future vision must be feminist. It should imagine a world not only without sexism or homophobia but one in which gender relations are completely transformed and liberated. Toward this end, we recognise resistance to masculine/feminine gender borders and encourage people to critique and explore their desires rather than repress them.

Word, word, and AMEN.

A world in qhich gender relations are transformed? Where gender borders are smashed just as sure as nationalist ones? Where we are free to explore our desires instead of beat them into silence?

My kind of world.

Sexism, Anachism, and Men.

Man, I really need a computer.

So, I think I'm going to start reading this eBook: From the Kitchen: Sexism, Anarchism, and Men

Unfortunately, right now I am keeping my computer at work, and don't have a printer to get a copy of this to read on my own. And most of the time I really have to read is after I get off work (or in bits and pieces during my shift when it's slow -- good for reading smaller essays, harder to really analyze a longer work). But I really, really want to read this. Just take this quote from the introduction:

This zine has been produced by a group of anarchist men in Otautahi as part of an on-going process of working on our own sexist behaviour in our everyday lives. It is not just for men to read but the primary function is we hope, to encourage more debate and more discussion about issues of sexism amongst ourselves.

Now, that's something I can get down with. As a androgyne culturally raised as female (with a penchant for drag and a sometimes-boyishness, or Aleksandr), "male-ness" is a frontier I'd like to know more about. Men in feminism is rather dicey territory: there is, of course, the male privelege issue, as well as the cadre of feminists who believe that a men can never be feminists: at best, they can be 'male dissidents.'

What would make me, an androgyne who feels no real affinity toward either gender as a whole? Who feels more neither than either, who feels like both a dress and a three-piece suit is equal drag? Who has a more fully carved out 'male' persona than 'female'? Aleksandr has a bit more of a defined gender role than 'Sasha,' -- I feel more 'male' as Aleksandr than I do 'female' as Sasha, and I was born a female.

I'd say, of course, that I am a 'gender dissident', but not just against patriarchy. Though, in a way, I guess it is. Patriarchal systems have certainly lent us an oppressive binary, though who is to say that might not've happened in a matriarchal power structure?

No gender -- trans, non, girl, boy, androgyne -- should have any more power than the other. We, at our best, should all be fucking dissidents. I might not be a 'girl,' but god damnit, I'll call myself a feminist if I want.

You want to try to stop me? You'll have a pair of ass kicking combat boots aimed straight to your face. And when it all topples, I'll be here on the other side with you. And I'll offer you a hug, a shot of whiskey, and pie.

Binary Systems: or, ASSIMILATE OR DIE.

So, I was reading over Mike's blog (Hi, Mike!), and laughed out loud when I read this:

Of course no one thinks of the poor as more than one thing. Nope the poor is unified, we are the poor, we will assimilate. Poooooor.

It is an incredibly valid point, but I emphasized this because I admire the way Mike can talk about really serious things while keeping his sense of humor. It's a trait I think most of us should cultivate.

Annyway, to continue on his point:

It is a bunch of crap and I really hate it when people talk about the poor as singular and solvable. They are people and their various situations are as varied as they are.

Amen, anyone?

The ideas of class and privelege aren't something we can lump together in one great big fucking box of 'disenfranchised' and 'evil as fuck'. There's more subtlety to it, more nuance, and it'll do us a lot of good to think of things as more of a spectrum of experience than a binary system set in metaphysical stone.

Binary systems, as an enterprise, are flawed from the get go. The roster list of facisms we inflict on one another due to binary systems is staggering: gender, sexuality, morality, and the more amorphous bunches like truth-claims (things are "true" or "untrue", without the possibility of multiple truths and fictions or evolutions of truth-forms) and memory (something "happened" or it "didn't", and memory is always "concrete", a "static" thing, or it is not memory: when really, memory is something that is constantly refigured in our own minds). Binary systems, as a rule, I find to be limiting: the very act of definition is, in a way, a microfacism (though one that is often necessary), and to define something with only two variables seems, to be frank, ridiculous.

On fictions

I'm at work, yet again, with a mostly-quiet bar, which of course means I'm piddling around on the internet. While prowling through various message groups, I found a book review about this:



Mythmakers & Lawbreakers looks like a book I really want to read. As someone very invested in the power of fiction and the study of literature, it seems only natural that I'd be ridiculously excited about this.

I haven't read the book yet, so I've got no commentary of my own, but the review of the work got me thinking about some things. Let me give you a snippet of the review:

A third theme to come out of these interviews wasn't so surprising: politics. Anarchist fiction writers grapple with politics all the time. The politics of writing fiction when the world is dying (see the Derrick Jensen quote, above). Creating an anarchist utopia that is more reality and less utopia. Accurately reflecting the political struggles of everyday life-- including the lives of punks, traveler kids, hackers, pagans, earth first! eco-warriors, and direct action activists. In every interview, Killjoy asks what it means to be an anarchist and a fiction writer. The responses he gets demonstrate how fiction is a political act. While most anarchist writing of our day is limited to real-life ("boring as fuck" -crimethinc.) theory and analysis, anarchist fiction writers play the important role of dreaming what could be and distilling useful stories from what is.

What does it mean to be an anarchist fiction writer? Do we have responsibilities, and if so, what are they? What of 'art for art's sake'? Could it not be said that any true, honest articulation (that particular breed of honesty that is only possible in fiction) of the human experience can, in some way, be an anarchist act? That to look at the world, to relay experience with an unflinching eye toward the real core of truth, is itself a pure distillation of anarchy in action?

In some ways, I believe that fiction can do just as much towards the illumination of truth(s) as "real life.. theory and analysis." I would agree that fiction does indeed play a pivotal role in the oh-so-vital part of our literatures that, I have previously said, we seem to be lacking -- hope. Possibility. Lights in what sometimes feels like an endless void of set-backs, betrayals, fascisms, and heartbreaks. Being able to connect with one honest experience, even if it is seeded with vice, let downs, and unrealized potential (hell, perhaps it is even more valuable if it is), is immesurably important toward creating a new world, even if that experience is one learned through the pages of a novel.

The role of story tellers and fiction weavers is one that I feel we, in our propaganda-saturated, lie filled world, have delegated to the sidelines. In many ways, I feel we don't trust fiction, because we are force-fed it by the media, by those in power, by the very people who claim they are here to "protect" us. But in fiction's defense, I don't believe that every fiction is a lie. Just because we haven't reached that horizon yet doesn't mean that dreaming of it is an act of deception.

How can we create a world if we cannot dream?

B-I-N-G-O!

For now, that is all.

Click on the image to see the whole of the awesome.

Occupy, Resist, and Produce

"There's only so much protesting can accomplish. At a certain point, you have to talk about what you're fighting for."

While at work tonight (tending a mostly dead-bar: amidst the occasional dance-party, I was essentially paid to read essays -- my kind of salary), I read this essay: Are We Addicted to Rioting?

I think this essay makes a lot of good points and, more importantly, asks a lot of really vital questions that some of us aren't asking.

If you roll a dumpster at the police, why are you doing it? To prove a point? To block a street? To open a street? To cause a diversion to pull off another action? To impress the media? To impress your friends? To get it out of the way? To get it in the way? These are relevant questions, far more relevant than whether or not it's morally acceptable to roll a dumpster around. But then you must ask yourself why you are trying to achieve that tactical goal. Are you blockading a meeting? Are you causing chaos to make the summit look bad? Are you trying to get media attention? Do you want revenge on the police? Then you must ask yourself why you are blockading the meeting or causing chaos or trying to get on TV. Who are you trying to effect? Who's your base? If you want media attention, who are you trying to reach out to? What is your message for them? If you are trying to cause chaos, what is the purpose? Who is it serving? How is it advancing your goals? What effect will it have on your movement next week, next month, next year? What is the follow-up to all of this?

I think these are the kind of things we need to be asking ourselves. As individuals, as comrades, as we gather up arms in solidarity, I think we need to be thinking about why we're doing what we are doing. How our actions will ricochet and what effects and after effects those actions will have. We need to take good, hard looks at ourselves and really ponder our own motivations, what pushes us to fight, and how hard we are willing to do the grit in the teeth, backbreaking, hair pulling, tedious day to day work. The work that makes us feel like our tongues are bleeding and our fingers are breaking. The work that makes us feel like, sometimes, we're taking two steps backward with every step forward. The work that is bleary-eyed and anything but glamorous.

So, while writing this blog entry, I'm watching this:

The Take

There's a slogan that comes from this video: Occupy, Resist, and Produce. Just recently, I was talking with a comrade about the state of modern literature about anarchism. I mentioned how disheartening it is to me that so much of the language we use to articulate the struggle is entrenched in negativity, in destruction, in "smashing the state". There is nowhere near enough literature out there based in positivity, in creation, in joy and wonder. Where is the joyous outpouring? The sense of hope? I know it's out there, and I find it saturated in many of the late-night conversations we have with one another, shoulders tense with passion, leaning toward one another like parentheses holding tight a well guarded secret, stumbling over our words and shaking with fever and the possibility of what-could-be. But where is it in our literature? It is a sprinkling, an echo.

While I understand that criticism is necessary, that serious inquiry and investigation are of crucial import, I think we need to take more time to revel in the glorious madness we call life. We need to dance in the streets, to embrace with earnestness and without fear, and to come to live with both a tenderness and a fire. That's the only way we're going to win: it's love, not hate, that will get us through this.

"It's a dignified struggle, full of beautiful experiences. But we have a big obstacle. The same people who dragged us into misery and unemployment, those who took everything from us, are now trying to come back."

We can't fucking let them.

Breaking the Spell

Do I even need to explain the absurdity of this?

"Men's" and "Women's" bathrooms have always bothered me. I think all restrooms should be gender and sex neutral. Making the assumption that there are only males and females is, alone, pretty fucking insulting (where do the intersexed people use the bathroom, the fucking hallway?). But the entire massive scale of gender, from transpeople to androgynes to non-gender specific people -- how and where do they apply?

I say we all start pissing in hallways. If I were more comfortable with showing my ass in public, I probably would.

In other news:

Might I say that this image is positively fucking bad ass?


Seriously, I'm making a petition for this now: MORE FUCKING NINJAS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE REVOLUTION. Seeing shit like this makes me want to get back in the habit of lifting weights and running. I want my body to be in the utmost of physical strength endurance for the fight that will come.

I intend on carving out time in my (admittedly ungodly hectic) schedule to start physical training. Between work, drag, DJing, and the novel (which I've begun again -- I've even got myself an editor now: Hi, Mike!), I must admit I don't have much time. But I'm going to need to make it. Admittedly, I could be lifting weights right now, but I'm killing time before dealing with the Evil Entity of Regions Bank. Besides, I did promise to start writing in this little thing more.

I've been listening/watching this while writing this blog post:



I recommend it. Go watch it, and let it put the fire under your ass.

I've got thirty minutes before the bank opens. I think I'm going to talk with my coworker for a bit, and try to get some editing done on the novel.

Until then, comrades, beauties, harlots and heroes: I'll see you in the streets.

Tango

Hello, internet. I'm back again.

That picture was lifted from the website of my current place of employment. Kajun's Pub has just put up a website, and it's totally unfinished, but whatever. It's rare that I find a picture of myself that doesn't make me want to set fire to the world (Aleks is far more photogenic than I, the bastard), so there you go.

Story of my life right now:

I'm on the prowl for a new place. I'm crashing with a friend for a while (I lent him $250 towards the deposit for his place, so it's not like I'm abusing his generosity). There's a place in the works I should be looking at tomorrow. It's in the ghetttooooo, but I'm down with that. Makes the 7th ward I just left look like the fucking Garden District, but hey, I'm a big alien. I can handle myself.

I've started DJing with Corrosion now every other Wednesday (or, at least, it seems like every other Wednesday). I'm still doing drag show at the Bourbon Pub. I've amassed quite the collection of glitter. I also work in lingerie once a week at the bar, so for the first time in my life, I've got quite an assortment of frilly, girly underthings. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. This is coming from a person who knows more about sporting a shirt and tie than a well accessorized cocktail dress. My version of accessories tends to be random stuff assembled from craft stores and street corners. I never said I was classy.

I've got some goals in my head now. I'm going to spell them out here, so I can be held accountable by the Iron Hand of the Internets:

o1]: Pay off debt. I've only got about $700 left, then I can start chipping away at what I owe UWF.
o2]: Get my sorry ass back in school. I'm so close to being done with my undergrad, it'd be ridiculous not to.
o3]: Start working on the novel again. I've left it untouched for so long, it's pathetic. I really need to get cracking on that.

There are other goals I am going to be working towards, like lifting my body weight (I want to take aerial circus classes), learning to tango (because every android in a three piece suit should have an ace up its sleeve), and getting my license unsuspended (because who knows when I'll need to drive someone's car in a pinch).

I've been so busy lately, I feel like I have no time to sit still. I'm going to invent time. I'm going to take a fucking bath for the first time in years (there's a claw footed bathtub at my friend's house, and I figure the new house could likely have one as well). I'm going to buy a bottle of nice Spanish wine and get a quart of raspberries and sit on the porch and read comic books. I'm going to have picnics. I'm going to get a warm jacket and ride my bike in the middle of the night when it gets cold.

I'm going to create time for the holy moments, because god damnit, life is too short to stay out of breath. But there's always time to be made breathless.

Apples?!

I have, in the past, been accused of stealing $17K from an anonymous someone (who probably doesn't exist) who was "using that money for rehab" by a boy who claimed to hop from roof top to roof top wielding a missile launcher and shooting people in alleys in broad daylight to "protect my honor." I've been accused of stealing kazillion dollar heirloom diamond rings from grandmothers who died in the Holocaust. I've been accused of stealing wives, husbands, senses of moral dignity. I've been accused of stealing cars, motorcycles, heavy artillery, and once I was accused of kidnapping a child (not including all of the women I supposedly impregnated. Yes, I know. I don't get it, either). So, pray tell, why would I want to steal your shit? With a track record like that, I can already fund a small sized country, and even support a harem to boot. What could I possibly want with your things?

Also, I've garnered a shiny new insult to add to my record: predator. Now, I've got quite a roster list of insults under my belt. I've been called everything from heartless to heartbreaker, cocktease to slut, bitch to bimbo to ball breaker. I've been called an ice queen, a heathen, a harlot, a cunt, a psycho, a homewrecker, a prude. In the public's defense, I've also been called a lot of really nice things, but let's stick to the subject here. Predator? Really? I mean, I'm certainly not a pushover, but a predator? Predators are those people who stake out the badly lit areas of bars and wait for the first signs of someone getting just a tad-too-drunk. Predators drive windowless white vans and dangle candy from the locking slide-open door. Contrary to (apparent) popular belief, I don't need to engage in stake outs for human company. I'm quite content with the average, run-of-the-mill, "Hi, how are you?"

A friend of mine told me that I should wear Predator like a badge. He said, "Predator is a much better title than cocktease!" And, okay, I can see his point -- it's original (it's not every day you get to be called and entirely new derogatory term!) and it removes that whole heteronormative thing that ticks me off (just because I have a cunt doesn't mean I only like cock, you silly sex fascists of the world).

I wonder what kind of predator I would be, in the natural kingdom. And if you say black window, you deserve to sit through the Spice Girls discography on loop until your ears bleed.

And for something completely different: I have Apples to Apples. Who wants to drink whiskey and come play?

Written on the Body

I have always been intrigued by the idea of the body as a text. How memories, actions, accidents, are reflected and translated by skin. Through scars, through body modification, through wrinkles and blemishes. How a sleepless night inscribes itself beneath your eyelids, how joy and sorrow are carved along the brow, the lips, the corners of the eye.

I've entertained the notion of having script tattooed all over my body. But what would it say? I am both aesthetically and erotically invested in the idea of language written upon my skin. The way desire is transmitted in the idle tracings over fingertips across my back, in the crook of my elbow, the palms of my hands. Heat pressed hard into my cheekbones, firm against my thigh, cradled softly and possessively along the sharp line of my jaw. There are certain types of touch that will stop my heart, steal my breath, and leave me dizzy and wanting.

I like the idea of Henna. Markings that are beautiful because they are temporary. The idea of messages being painted along the dark, secret places of my body that are only shown in moments of intimacy. Brands of desire in red, brown, and black. Or paint, something that smudges and smears as the body grows damp and hot with sweat. Gold, silver, bronze -- liquid metal that grows illegible, an analog to the loss of control and logic.

Not to mention, I like the way words look.

This picture was taken over five years ago (I know, I haven't aged a bit. Call it dumb luck, call it the blood of virgins, whatever). I had just come back from a three hour drive after staying up for two days after working an eight hour shift after writing a term paper. And all of that without cocaine, or meth, or magic fairy dust that flits me off to Never Never Land. I don't think I've ever been that exhausted.

Except perhaps right about now.

It's been, yet again, well over a month since I've last posted on this blog. How stupid of me. Why even carve out your own little piece of the internet if you aren't going to use it? Well, let's see kiddos:

[ 1 ]

I work four days a week as a bartender in a 24-hour St Claude bar. If you don't know anything about New Orleans, let's just say that St Claude, and the surrounding neighborhood, is home to sleazy prostitutes, crackheads, and demanding dickwads who don't know how to leave a tip. Sure, we get our fair share of artists, interesting characters (remind me to tell you about Sir Leningrad), fellow service industry slaves, dancers, swingers, preachers, refined call girls, rambling packs of fetishists, travelers, anarchists, scholars, and all around fun people. But when you work the graveyard shift like me, more often than not, you're going to deal with crackheads.

If I were paid a dollar for the amount of times I've been proposed to, propositioned (was offered $100 just to take my shirt off, once; an all expenses trip overseas to let this bloke to put his face in my cunt), cat-called, offered drugs, got in a fight, kicked someone out, or played match-maker to a hook-up just to get some douche bag to leave me alone, I'd pay for a fucking Ivy League education within a month.

For now, I'll deal with the crumpled bra-dollars and the paltry cigarette cellophane as a tip.

[ 2 ]

I'm typically performing in two different shows each week, sometimes three. One show is on Bourbon Street, the other on Rampart. Both bars have their ups and their downs; on Bourbon, there's a bigger crowd, which is always fun: on Rampart, I never have to worry about appeasing anyone.

I'm still becoming accustomed to queer women's society here in New Orleans. It's far different than any other I've seen -- the gay bars here in NOLA are, of course, overwhelmingly geared toward gay men. It's been like that in every place I've ever been. But the gay women here in NOLA don't seem to really have a presence of their own, though there are some women trying to carve out a place for a queer women's culture. There are three different drag king troupes in this town (which, trust me, is a lot), but no real feeling of community. Everyone fights, everyone's a rival, an everyone's got to sign their allegiance somewhere. It's silly, and I'm not really sure how to deal with it, so I don't, and I stay out of it. Hence the Rampart show: I'm the first king to perform with them, and I can't say that I'm not proud of it, because I damned well am, but it's not a king thing -- it's a queen show that just so happened to let me hop on board.

Aside from those two main points, there are a million other things in my day to day life that drag me away from coming to this blog, but I intend to put a stop to that. I might not post every day, or every other day, but I'm going to make it a point to come back here. Treat it like meditation, maybe.

'Cause hell, I've got to do something other than sling drinks, scheme, and prance about on stage. At least every once in a while.

Wow, it's been a while.

Needless to say, a ton has changed. I have a weekly drag show at the Bourbon Pub, which affords many chances for fabulous glitter and feather extravaganzas. I've booked another show at a small local bar next week. I've moved, I've gotten a job as a bartender, and I rarely sleep anymore.

But, of course, sleep is for the dead.

I don't really have any photos of me recently, but here are some photographs of me from Mardis Gras. My costume is part Siouxsie, part doll, and all together creep-tastic.

The dress is actually from the late sixties, and is for a little girl. Buwaha!

So, I'll write more later. I think I'm going to actually start trying to do the blog thing again. Woah-hey!

I know it's been a while. I'll really get back to blogging shortly, I've just been incredibly busy with my actual writing work that I haven't been able to come on and blog for fun!

But, in other news, my dream has come true -- Gareth Pugh and menswear.


I'll do a real, step by step of what I loved from this line later, but for now, let's just say that I need some wealthy patron of the arts to buy Aleksandr the above costume for my show this week. Seriously.

DO. WANT.