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Zombie Divas

Marlene Dietrich is slumped in a wing back chair chain smoking in the corner of our living room. She is clad in her trademark top hat and tuxedo, although the ensemble is far from crisp and clean. I am on the leather settee across the room, drinking my second cup of coffee while reading the Sunday New York Times. I embraced technology and began to read the newspaper on my iPad last year, but recently I had to switch back to the hard copy. Marlene is strangely drawn to the light of the iPad. As soon as I open it, she starts hovering around, trying to paw at it. She got her hands on it once when my partner Tim carelessly left it open on the credenza. This resulted in considerable damage, which of course I had to pay for. Now I keep it locked in my briefcase and only use it for work purposes.

Sometimes Tim and I talk to Marlene, but she rarely responds. When she does, it is with incoherent mumbles shrouded in a thick German accent. Most of the time she just sits there, staring off into space with a look that might be described as profound sorrow or excruciating boredom. It’s open to interpretation. What is certain is that she is constantly smoking cigarettes. She smokes like a … well, like a fiend. There’s no other way to put it.

The constant smoke is pretty offensive, even if it does simulate that hazy effect in which she was photographed for her films. When Tim and I realized that the acrid smoke was masking a more ghastly smell of decay, we stopped complaining about it. Tim always liked to burn incense and scented candles anyway; now he has gone full-throttle with air fresheners, perfume oils and room deodorizers. There is an apothecary on Lafayette Street that sells $150 cheesecloth bags of a special potpourri blend created specifically to eradicate the stench of the divas. Tim visits there pretty much every week, although I can’t help but think that Emiliano, the part-time model behind the register might also have something to do with the frequency as well.

I tried to explain to Tim that we can’t afford this extravagance – the nightly news suggests that a simple $1.49 box of baking soda would do the trick. But as with all matters financial, he doesn’t like to talk about it. He seems to think that as long as our credit cards are not declined, then we have the money to pay for anything.

I go to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup. Tim is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. His shoulders are tensed halfway to his ears, his mouth a taught crimson bowtie as he shuffles the eggs around the pan, shaking his head slightly.

“She drank the rest of the gin.” he says curtly.

“How do you know it was her?” I ask. I turn to the sink and begin to nonchalantly rinse out the crystal goblet which I had used for the previous evening’s nightcap.

“Just look at her.” He nods towards the corner by the garbage can, where Edith Piaf is rocking back and forth on her feet, twisting a tortured handkerchief in her fists. The empty bottle of gin is lying in the recycle bin next to her, right where I left it the night before. She will burst into song shortly, most likely “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rein.” It was quite jarring at first, but now we see the signs: first the rocking starts, followed by the handkerchief twisting, then the low, guttural moans begin and eventually form the familiar tune that used to flood through our home on many a Sunday afternoon. I have grown accustomed to it. Tim, however, has not. “Fucking lush,” he mutters.

From the living room, I can hear the sounds of Marlene on the move: Every day, like clockwork, she heads out on a quest for cigarettes – dragging her filthy shoes across the antique Persian rug. Tim and I used to be fanatic about trying to maintain all of the fine furnishings we had purchased when we moved into this apartment together. Here, we had created our dream dwelling: a chic little paradise with an art deco design scheme. We were setting the stage for an endless series of sophisticated cocktail and dinner parties that never materialized: these are different times. Besides, we were working too hard to even think about entertaining. And then the divas showed up. Now there are stains and cigarette burns and everything is hopelessly caked with mud and ashes and god knows what else. Our broken Dyson vacuum lies in a heap underneath the baby grand piano.

“Why doesn’t THAT reanimate?” Tim cracked. I thought it was funny but I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t in the mood.

I return to my newspaper with a fresh cup of coffee. “See you later Marlene,” I say with faux exuberance. She flicks her hand over her shoulder as a sign of vague acknowledgement. At the front door, she softly begins warbling “Fawwing in wuv again… nevuh wanted tooooo….”

Theories abound as to the cause of this phenomena – 24 hour news channels devote considerable programming to speculative hypothesis involving a century of electronic sound, radio, and television waves intersecting with static electricity and wifi hot spots or possibly some other random factors that resulted in these reanimated corpses taking on the forms of our dear departed divas.

The idea that the subject has to be deceased is cause for even more speculation. There are no reports of Madonna, Britney or Cher zombies. It’s those that have been mourned and continue to be revered. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

I should also explain that these are not your garden variety “shoot ‘em in the head to kill ‘em” movie type of zombies. Go ahead and destroy your Lena Horne – by dawn the next day, another one will be back in a glittering pantsuit, angrily shout-singing “Stormy Weather” around the apartment.

There’s no point in maiming them, either – our friends Thomas and Ed had a Dusty Springfield that kept gesticulating wildly, smashing knickknacks and bric-a-brac with every dramatic swoop. They accidentally tore off her arms while trying to restrain her before she destroyed every last piece of their precious mercury glass collection. The next morning they awoke to a ghostly rendition of “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” as a fully intact Dusty zombie hurled, one by one, the remaining contents of their china cabinet down the hall towards their bedroom.

Our Judy is perched on top of the dresser in the corner of the master bedroom – she wears a fedora, black tights and a dress jacket…. eternally snapping her fingers to the intro of “Come On Get Happy.” She rarely ever sings, but ya gotta give credit to that corpse: she’s got rhythm. Even as the flesh wears away on her fingers and falls onto the floor, she keeps steady time.

It’s not really them – we have to remind ourselves that. And some of these zombies are cast wildly against type for the roles they are now inhabiting. I saw a TikTok of a little old Asian Mama Cass that really had the moves down. But it’s not the same.

Our divas disappeared – often prematurely, tragically, suddenly. What we were left to comfort ourselves with were their images, movies and recordings – these are the trappings that most likely brought them forth in their most stereotypical and obvious incarnations. Now that they have been among us, even in these imperfect decaying forms, we can’t go back to having them at arm’s length. Not anymore.

Madame Spivy: I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night

*Madame Spivy photographed by Carl Van Vechten (1932)*

“This song is dedicated to a friend who suffers terribly from hangovers. It’s very sad and we must be very quiet, please…”

Ladies and Gentleman, it is time once again to revisit that late great dynamic lady of song, Madame Spivy LeVoe (1906-1971), also known simply as Spivy. A lesbian entertainer, nightclub owner and character actress, Spivy has been described as “The Female Noel Coward” – to which I add “…. if he had been born in Brooklyn as Bertha Levine.”

In case you missed them, these are our previous Madame Spivy posts:
T he Alley Cat
The Tarantella
Auntie’s Face
100% American Girls
A Tropical Fish
I Brought Culture to Buffalo In The 90’s
Why Don’t You?
Madame Spivy: Movies & Television
Madame Spivy on the Good Time Sallies Podcast

In the Spring/Summer of 2020 with the pandemic in full swing, cabaret performer extraordinaire Justin Vivian Bond was livestreaming weekly shows from The House of Whimsy, aka their home in upstate New York. Imagine my delight when Mx. Viv covered Mme. Spivy’s “I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night” – one of my favorite of her recordings.

*Justin Vivian Bond as Auntie Glam, belting one out in The House Of Whimsy (2020)*

As with “Auntie’s Face“, Spivy uses her familiar spoken intro for “I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night”: A solemn pronouncement that “This is VERY sad and we must be VERY quiet, please.” One can imagine that it was a playful way to get the attention of a noisy nightclub audience.

Spivy wrote the song with John La Touche providing the lyrics. Today, La Touche is best remembered for his Broadway musical The Golden Apple and for his lyrical contributions to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. He also collaborated with Duke Ellington on the musicals Cabin In The Sky & Beggar’s Holiday.

Spivy and LaTouche met in the mid-1930’s and had a tumultuous lifelong friendship. At one point Spivy paid him fifty dollars a week to supply her with songs. During one falling out in 1938, LaTouche referred to her as his “enemy.” “Poor Spivy,” he wrote, “hysterical, glandular, ugly, charming, and so talented.” After another disagreement later that year, he wrote to her; “I’m sorry; you can hardly afford to lose a staunch friend and neither can I. But both of us are always doing things we can’t afford.”

Of the 15 songs Spivy is known to have recorded, 5 of them were written or co-written by LaTouche: One was a solo credit, two were written with Spivy herself, and two were in collaboration with Goetz Eyck, a German-born musician who would go on to a film career as Peter van Eyck.

One LaTouche composition that Spivy did not preserve on record was a highlight of her live performances: “I’m Going On A Binge With A Dinge.” She often concluded her set with this racy little tune detailing a biracial protagonist going uptown for a tryst. “White people / Don’t be offended … ” the song begins. Other lyrics: “Gonna end up in Harlem / With my end up in Harlem”

Unfortunately, LaTouche’s work for and with Mme. Spivy has generally been forgotten or dismissed. In Howard Pollack’s 2017 biography The Ballad Of John LaTouche, the author spends several pages analyzing the lyrics and structure of these compositions before concluding that “the literary attractions of these songs, heavy on irony, outweigh their musical interests.”

Is that so?

Like Spivy, LaTouche was a heavy drinker, which ultimately led to both of their premature passings. He was just 41 years old when he died of a heart attack at his home in Calais, Vermont in 1956. Spivy was 64 years old when she died in January, 1971.

I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night

Doctor dear, come over with a stretcher – I’ve never in my life felt quite so rotten.
My brain has snapped in two and my face is turning blue,
and everything I eat tastes just like cotton.

Oh yes I did everything you told me – I practically never left my room.
I observed your special diet, had lots of peace and quiet.
So why do I feel like something in Grant’s Tomb?
Lord knows why I don’t feel well – I didn’t do a thing last night.

I had a few friends in to play bridge with me,
And I sipped a little gin, just to keep them company.
Then a pal of mine named Rhoda came in with such a crew,
I gave them scotch and soda and I had a teeny one, too.

Then Vero P.T. Roth brought me some chicken broth,
which is insipid, doctor, don’t you think?
So someone in the party added a soupçon of Bacardi
it really makes a very nourishing drink.

At nine my cousin Andy made such insulting cracks,
that I had a little brandy just to help me to relax.
He tried to grab the bottle and dragged me out of bed.
When I saw that it was empty, I broke it on his head.

He’s still lying on the carpet and my maid insists he’s dead.
Oh doctor dear, why do I feel queer?
I didn’t do a thing last night.

At ten, Princess O’Ravivovich said; “Today is Pushkin’s birthday.”
So I had a little Slivovitz just to help her celebrate.
Then that fool Tessie Zackary upset my Dubonnet,
so they shook me up a daquiri to chase my blues away.

Those pills of yours were dry, so I washed them down with rye,
And I thought some exercise might help me rest.
I dashed down the avenue ’til somebody yelled “Woo!”
Good heavens – I’d forgotten to get dressed!

By then I felt so dizzy, to tell the honest truth,
They made me something fizzy out of vodka and vermouth.
At one, Rear Admiral Nipper, the old man of the sea,
arrived with his battalion, they had to sail at three.

But doctor, I just noticed: They’re still in bed with me!
It’s all so mad and I feel so bad,
and I didn’t do a thing last night.

At five, my old friend Tony said that doctors were baloney.
He said “Yoga exercises cured all pain.”
Doctor dear, I was a wreck with my legs around my neck,
and it took four hours to get them down again.

They sent for rubbing alcohol to rub away the aches,
but they couldn’t find the stuff at all – I’d drunk it by mistake.
Oh yes, I slept just like a baby, ’til I woke up right now.
No, the drinks did not affect me, I’m as flaccid as a cow.
Except I have a tendency to suddenly go “WOW!”

Why in hell don’t I feel well? I didn’t do a thing last night!

John La Touche songs recorded by Spivy
Fool In the Moonlight (music: Goetz Eyck)
I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night (music: Spivy)
I Love Town (music: Goetz Eyck)
Last of the Fleur De Levy
Surrealist (music: Spivy)

Unrecorded La Touche songs performed by Spivy
I’m Going On A Binge With A Dinge
Moonlight

David on The Robin Byrd Show

The recent brouhaha over exposing Michelangelo’s David to impressionable Florida public school children reminded me of the classic sculpture’s 1998 appearance on Robin Byrd‘s Men For Men. For those outside of Manhattan, this was a late night cable TV show featuring strippers and adult film entertainers that aired nearly every night of the week. Apparently, poor Dave had fallen on hard times and was shaking his marbles for cash on 8th Avenue. At least that was the way it appeared on my public access show, Bri-Guy’s Media Surf.

I have written about Media Surf in the past – it ran on Manhattan Neighborhood Network from 1997-2007. In the early years, I created short segments using stop-motion with my video camera. Most featured a portly salt shaker named Maria. After a while I grew tired of the time consuming technique. David’s striptease was one of the last that I created.

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I wanted to utilize my set of David refrigerator magnets on a red metal background. It had to be metal for the magnetic properties, and the red would emulate the lurid background on Robin’s show. I was still trying to figure out how to execute this when I came home one day to find that the apartment doors in my building had been re-painted glossy red. Perfect! I propped my door open, set up my camera tripod and went about creating the frame-by-frame striptease. Luckily I lived on the top floor and was uninterrupted by puzzled neighbors wondering what the hell I was doing.

In the version that aired 25 years ago, David was dancing to Madonna’s “Erotica” – a song that every third performer on Robin Byrd’s show seemed to use at the time. Unfortunately, Madge and Warner Brothers Music are most intolerant of the unauthorized use of their recordings. Rather than risk having the video removed from social media platforms, I switched it out. David now shimmies to Man Parrish / Man 2 Man’s “Male Stripper,” a much better choice of song that I wish I had used in the first place.

I was planning to use a clip of Robin’s generic “Lie back, get comfortable” guest introduction and then cut to David’s performance. It was pure luck that I happened to be recording her show one night when she introduced a guest named “David.” Sometimes the stars align to help create a classic piece of work. 😉

Yes Virginia, There Is A Spotify Playlist (2022)

*NYC Santas photographed in the late 1970’s by Susan Meiselas*

I know I am not alone when I say that I take comfort in the annual repetition of the holidays: revisiting holiday-themed music, films, television shows… and now internet posts. Dave Holmes’ account of Patti LaBelle’s disastrous performance at the 1996 National Christmas Tree lighting is worth an annual revisit. Trust me.

In fact, the post that you are currently reading has been reworked and updated from the past two Christmas seasons, not to get meta or anything.

I find it interesting that we immerse ourselves in certain pop culture favorites for exactly 6 weeks of the year and then pack them up in mothballs with the ornaments until next year. I mean, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” is currently at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Burl Ives and Andy Williams are also in the top 10! Are any of them on your 4th of July playlist? They aren’t on mine.

*Gabe Pressman (left) with Marilyn Monroe (1956)*

I used to look forward to the annual Christmas Eve tradition on NBC New York’s evening news when reporter Gabe Pressman would read “Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.” I taped it in 2011, knowing that the tradition wouldn’t last forever. The self-described “little Jewish kid from the Bronx” was 87 years old at the time and continued to work at NBC until his death at age 93.

NBC New York reporter Gabe Pressman’s annual segment on Virginia O’Hanlon’s 1897 letter to the New York Sun Newspaper.

In keeping with this revisit, my other blog posts of Christmas past are back to haunt you like A Christmas Carol, Mr. Scrooge:

My Canine Christmas Tail is a true story about my dog Sunshine, a basset hound with an appetite for tinsel.

Here is my take on the 1987 Motown Christmas Special – which featured very few Motown acts.

I recently updated my post of 10 Things You May Not Know About March of The Wooden Soldiers, the Laurel & Hardy classic holiday film.

Have you watched Christmas In Connecticut yet this year? How about that delivery woman?

Here’s a little backstory on that classic holiday tune “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” & Augie Rios, who sang the original version.

Copyright issues kept my 60 Degrees Girl Group Christmas playlist out of commission but now it’s back! I plan to post other episodes of my old radio show in the new year.

If you prefer Spotify, I have this to share:

Way back in 2002, when Limewire was a thing and people listened to music on silvery discs, I started creating Christmas CD mixes that I would mail out or give to people. These were received with a heartwarming combination of feigned delight, veiled indifference and deafening silence. None of these CDs had a pressing of more than 20 copies. I’d like to call them “much sought after” – but no, that’s not really the case, although every once in a while, someone really got into them and would ask for copies of other volumes.

And so, I’m offering this simple playlist…. for kids from 1 to 92. Unfortunately some of the tracks on these dozen CDs are not on Spotify, but I keep adding songs that would be on the current CD volume… if there was one. And now the playlist is over 16 hours of holiday tunes. I recommend listening on shuffle – there’s something to irritate everyone. Enjoy!

Here’s one more nugget to stuff in your stocking: This vid went viral in 2011. Choreographed and performed by Alex Karigan & Zac Hammer of the Amy Marshall Dance Company, it was filmed in one continuous take at the New 42nd St. Dance Studios. There’s something infectious about it: the joy, the corniness, the celebratory queerness of it all. It makes me want to dust off my jazz shoes. Once a year.

You Picked The Wrong Fat Guy.

When Olivia Newton-John passed away and I was revisiting her oeuvre, I listened to “A Little More Love”, a minor hit from her 1978 Totally Hot LP. At 9 years old, I didn’t realize how dark the song was. There is a line “Where did my innocence go?” which my sisters and I always sang as “Where did my Anacins go?” We thought she had a headache and couldn’t find her aspirin.

I thought of this song again this morning as Toby was laying out some Advil for me to take. And then I had to Google “Anacin” to see if they still make it. They do. But nobody asks for it by name anymore.

The Advil is for a broken bone in my foot. It’s the hallux sesamoid, a stupid little bone in the ball of the foot that some people don’t even have. Apparently the tiny chip that showed up on the X-ray could have been there for years, but the fact that my foot is swollen and purple indicates a recent trauma.

On Saturday we attended a wedding on the Upper West Side – a very nice affair even though they did not play any Olivia Newton-John. The subway system was not cooperating with us on the way to the event. The A train was on the C track and running local but only to 59^th street, where it went express on the D line headed into the Bronx. The trains were clogged with puzzled slow-moving tourists. Typical of weekend mass transit. You really can’t blame visitors for being confused. The Google map prediction that our subway ride would take 8 minutes was off by about half an hour and the wedding ceremony was in progress when we arrived. Four hours later, apprehensive of further subway drama, we boarded the downtown C train headed back to Penn Station.

At Times Square / 42^nd Street, the doors were just about to close when a guy snatched my iPhone out of my hand and ran out of the train. I was looking at my phone as he did this. I don’t remember saying “What the fuck?” but that was what Toby heard me say as I bolted out the door after the thief.

I wasn’t even sure if Toby got off the train before the door closed – I was focused on getting my damn phone back. On the platform, the guy slowed for a second before he realized that I was right behind him. He sprinted for the stairs but I kept up with him. As he darted up the steps, I thought “Here we go…”

I have never tackled anyone in my life. Well, outside of the bedroom, anyway. I had no idea that I had a football tackle in my arsenal. But I dove at this guy, who was not a very big man. In the cartoon version of this, my suit-clad 220 pound frame completely flattened him on the stairs. With only his withering hand sticking out from under my girth, he let go of my phone and it clattered onto the steps.

I remember saying “Betcha didn’t think I could run, did ya? Asshole.” I grabbed the phone off the stairs – it couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds since he took it out of my hand on the train. And now Toby was on the guy too, pulling him by the legs and just about to land a punch when an undercover police officer grabbed his arm. Suddenly we were surrounded by police. We soon learned that they had just finished issuing a summons nearby when this unfolded.

Our little felon was taken away and Toby and I got to spend the next 2 ½ hours in the transit police station filling out forms and repeating our story over and over. EMT checked out my bruised hand and swollen foot. We collectively determined that rather than sitting in an Emergency Room for hours on a Saturday night with non-emergency injuries, I should go home, apply some ice, and see how I felt in the morning.

The next day, Toby and I had a couple of additional bruises and minor soreness… except for the foot, which still fucking hurt. I went to the hospital where my superhero sister works as an ER nurse and X-rays confirmed that there was a broken bone.

Although I have lived in this city for over 30 years and I have never actually been robbed, there are plenty of comparable actions that one can easily get tired of putting up with. The unfairness, inconveniences, and the feeling that you are being ripped off can be dismissed as things to deal with in exchange for being allowed to live in The City So Nice, They Named It Twice. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do: Leave. Period. Nobody cares. The End. Another hundred people just got offa the train.

But on this day, a fine Saturday afternoon, instead of feeling beaten up by the city, I felt pretty good. I landed on top, literally.

I would feel very differently if I didn’t get the phone back.

I have to add this:

New York City is not the crime-ridden hellscape that Republican politicians want you to think it is. Crime is still lower here than at any point during “the good ol’ days” of the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. And the people whipping everyone into a frenzy about rampant crime also tend to be against any kind of gun control. Don’t even try to figure that one out. Media saturation does not improve the optic. There is surveillance footage of everything now – not to mention phone footage. So the nightly news can report on every crime with a clips of it actually taking place.

There might be footage of the tackle but I’m sure that my cartoon visualization is much more satisfying.

You can also read about my friend Kenneth’s incredulous iPhone snatching incident from the summer of 2021 here.

You Know The B-52’s Song “Roam” Is About Butt Sex, Right?

The B-52’s are currently in the midst of another farewell tour. It seems like a good time to revisit this blog post from the summer of 2018:

A couple of months ago, the internet burst into flames when Bunny Wailer, songwriter of “The Electric Slide”, confirmed rumors that the song is indeed about a vibrator. (It’s electric!).

An article on the Aazios site quoted him as saying that he wrote the song after a girlfriend told him she didn’t need him because she had a toy she nicknamed the “electric slide”. The story went viral.

Singer Marcia Griffiths was not happy about it. “I don’t sing about vibrators,” she said. “I sing to teach, educate and uplift.”

“Why not both?” I say.

Huffpost, which initially reposted the Aazios story, then printed an update that it was not true… noting, apropos of nothing, that Aazios is “an online source of LGBTQ news and entertainment” – as if that had anything to do with Bunny Wailer, the vibrator, or the validity of the story.

Snopes has labeled the story FALSE with a quote from Bunny Wailer that reads like a statement prepared by a lawyer to protect a client from litigation: “At no time have I ever lent credence to a rumor that the song was inspired by anything other than Eddie Grant’s “Electric Avenue“. To state otherwise is a falsehood and offends my legacy, the legacy of singer Marcia Griffiths, and tarnishes the reputation of a song beloved by millions of fans the world over.”

The problem is… Wailer wrote the song in the 1970’s, years before Eddie Grant’s 1982 hit. The song was dusted off and reworked to ride the “Electric” coattails of that hit record. Thirty-five years later, it is still a dance floor staple at a certain caliber of venue. It is understandable that someone who still makes money off of this record does not want to suddenly admit that their cash cow is about a dildo.

Bottom line: It is or it isn’t. Either way, you now have a topic of conversation to slur loudly over your 9th cocktail while your mom and Karen from finance are knocking into each other on the dance floor.

So… now can we talk about The B-52’s 1989 hit song “Roam“? You know it’s about butt sex, right?

Of course, nobody is going to step up and confirm this now. The B-52’s still make a nice living touring the world performing “Roam” along with party classics like “Rock Lobster“ and “Love Shack“. One song they haven’t performed in years is “Dirty Back Road,” a track from their 1980 Wild Planet LP. Co-written by a guy named Robert Waldrop with band member Ricky Wilson, it’s not that much of a stretch to figure out what this little ditty is about:

Wreckless driving / Like a sports car / God I want you / Like a fuel engine / Energized line / Like a road / You ride me / Like a road / You ride me / Foot on the peddle / Feet in the air / Sand in my hair / Don’t look back / Don’t look behind you / Reckless drivin’ on / Dirty back road

Pretty obvious, right? Well… of course not, according to YouTube comments. People will argue about anything. I know, I know. Never read the comments.

Now lets move on to “Roam“: The song’s lyrics are credited again to Robert Waldrop, with music written by the surviving members of the band. Ricky Wilson had passed away from AIDS complications in 1985 during the recording of the Bouncing Off The Satellites LP. After taking a few years off, the band came back in 1989 with the LP Cosmic Thing, which would be the biggest commercial success of their career. The singles “Love Shack” and “Roam” topped the charts around the world, garnered the band their first two Grammy nominations and still get regular airplay today.

When did I realize that “Roam” was about butt sex? I couldn’t say. I just always knew. I saw Robert Waldrop’s name in the cassette booklet, read the lyrics to “Roam“ and thought “Look at that. He cleaned up his ‘Dirty Back Road‘.” Well, not completely – the second line has them “dancing down those dirty and dusty trails.” It may not be as blatant, but it’s there.

The phrase “Take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness” is repeated about a dozen times throughout the song.

The chorus: Roam if you want to / Roam around the world / Without wings without wheels / Roam around the world / Without anything but the love we feel…

And then there’s this verse:

Hit the air-strip to the sunset / Ride the arrow to the target / Take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness / Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

(at this point in the video, a banana goes through a hole in a bagel)

I would like to make it clear that I do not make these pronouncements as some sort of slander. Believe me, I am a big fan of butt sex and partake as often as possible.

In posting this piece, I realize that there are people who will get annoyed or upset that their favorite B-52’s hit is all about taking a ride on the Hershey highway, but really… if you think this is shocking or not possibly true then you never really understood the band and/or their sense of humor in the first place. People who only know them from Top 40 radio might not remember that they were/are a predominantly gay party band. They were messy, subversive and more than just a little punk. Fun punk.

If a clueless fan does not know that, it is akin to saying that you love John Waters because of the films Hairspray and Cry Baby, but have never seen Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble.

Like many other bands before or since, the B-52’s started out edgy and moved towards mainstream pop as their career progressed. While their current tour does pull heavily from their first two LPs, their bread and butter is still playing the hit songs. They are a business – not so much a band as a corporation like their contemporaries the Go-Go’s and Blondie.

Even if the B-52’s issued a statement today that “Roam” never was or is about getting popped in the pooper, the motivation would not be to tell the truth, but rather to protect their own livelihood. Case in point: The Village People, Inc. When faced with anti-gay protests for a gig in Jamaica back in 1998, their representative had the balls to issue a statement declaring that there was nothing gay about them. The fucking Village People, people. I would like to think that the B-52’s are still way too cool to ever do such a thing.

So… I just thought you ought to know. “Roam” is about takin’ it up the ass. Something to think about when you hear it wafting over the airwaves at the supermarket or when you are in line at the bank. I am not going to debate the evidence. It is what it is. I think it’s a hoot – it makes me chuckle whenever I hear it. But if you feel a strong opposition to the theory… may I invite you to hit the airstrip… and teach yourself the Electric Slide. Boogie woogie woogie.

UPDATE: Since this was piece was first posted in August, 2018, an expanded 30th Anniversary edition of the Cosmic Thing LP was released. The band did a considerable amount of press, reflecting on the songs and recording process. Not surprisingly, nobody mentioned that “Roam” is about butt sex.

“‘Roam‘ has many meanings, but it’s a beautiful song about death,” Cindy Wilson told Classic Pop magazine in 2019. “It’s about when your spirit leaves your body and you can just roam.”

Well, yes. Some would describe it like that.

We Got Hitched

The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun…
This will be our year
took a long time to come…

“How come you don’t write about me? Or maybe you do.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Or, I assumed they did. He texted this to me, so it was virtual skepticism that I sensed.

My partner of 9 years is artist/musician Toby Hobbes. He is also my editor/proofreader and the person who set up this blog 5 years ago and told me to get to work. While he does get an occasional mention from time to time (see Circle In Monkeyshines or Scenes From A Pandemic), any essays specifically about him or our relationship remain unfinished.

This was one piece I started:

It was our second date. We were heading out to dinner after a few pre-game cocktails at Nowhere Bar in the East Village. I pulled him over by the side of a building to get out of the First Avenue foot traffic. I had something that I needed to tell him and didn’t want to keep it a secret any longer. My gut was telling me that we were heading into a relationship, so there had to be honesty. And he was new to this – at 37, this was his first same-sex dating experience.

I took a deep breath and said; “Listen there is something that I need to tell you before this goes any further…” I was still holding onto his hand. He looked concerned.

I continued on, talking fast just to get it over with. “I know I told you I was 39 years old. Well I’m not. I am 44. I know. It’s stupid. It’s just a number. But 44 sounds so much worse and I didn’t want you to feel like it was too big an age difference. So now you know. And I hope it’s not a big deal.”

The concern faded into puzzlement. “Why would I think that was a big deal?”

I went off on a diatribe about gay men being ageist and that I had shaved off exactly 5 years when I ended up single again at 40, which seemed to be a big cutoff number for most men on Match and Grindr and Scruff and Growlr and Fluff and Squirt and…

Toby let go of my hand and took a step back. “I have to tell you something too,” he said. “I have a kid at home. Well, he’s my nephew. I’ve had custody since he was 10 and he’s 17 now. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid that you wouldn’t want to deal with all that.”

In that moment, my opinion of him – of his character, his heart – went right through the roof. He was a responsible adult.

Besides his nephew, there were also two dogs, a cat, and the long shadow of the ex-girlfriend that had left his finances in a shambles. On our first anniversary, we agreed to move in together. This was partly out of necessity and also because we felt like we were ready. For me, this meant leaving Manhattan after 22 years, as there was no way we could afford adequate space for our crew. We settled in Forest Hills, Queens, which I highly recommend.

At the time, people would congratulate me for being “selfless” or ask how I could take on so much responsibility. For me, there was no choice – no question about it. I realized that I loved Toby very quickly. And he loved me with a totality that was unlike any of my previous relationships. I felt like the last 4 years of frustrating dating experiences were just The Universe’s way of keeping me in a holding pattern until he showed up at my apartment with a six pack of Sam Adams.

________________________________________________________________

Fast forward to July 30th 2018: I proposed to him on The High Line above West 23rd Street with my family hiding in the bushes taking pictures nearby. We made no immediate plans for the wedding but assumed that we would be married the following year.

Then Toby got accepted into a program at the International Culinary Center (formerly the French Culinary Institute) and we decided to wait until he graduated. Then I was suddenly unemployed. So we waited again. And then there was the pandemic.

In the spring of 2021 we started to look at wedding venues. I was determined to get hitched before we celebrated our 10th anniversary as a couple. Besides, after this pandemic, we all needed a party. To celebrate LIFE. Also, neither of my sisters ever got married, and my mom was itching to finally have a wedding for one of her kids. We secured a venue and set a date: Sea Cliff Manor, May 19th, 2022.

About that pesky pandemic… I thought; “Ohhh – surely that will all be behind us by then! Just a masked blur in our rear-view mirrors.” Silly, silly fool. I failed to remember that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

In the months prior to the wedding, it became clear that COVID was not going to be gone, so we decided to specify on the invitations that attendees needed to be vaccinated. Imagine our surprise when this turned out to be a deal breaker for some, as a few formerly enthusiastic friends and family members suddenly ghosted us.

We went into planning this wedding with the awareness that, at some point along the way, we might encounter people who were a little more churchy than we realized and they might object to our Big Gay Wedding. Thankfully that did not occur. As it turned out, our big ethical divide was not religion. It was science.

Ultimately this was for the best. Better to know who people really are when their masks come off.

The three weeks before the wedding are bound to be stressful, as anyone can tell you. We were finalizing the guest list, DJ setlist, photographer, tuxedos, favors, seating charts, menus, programs, obtaining the marriage license and wedding rings. And the vows! We had to write the vows.

But then other stuff started happening.

On Saturday April 30th, Toby cut his finger on a meat slicer at work, requiring 12 stitches on his left pinky. Three days later, I got sick with COVID. The next day, while taking the final reception payment to Sea Cliff Manor, my mom & stepdad were in a car accident. Thankfully, nobody was injured. Two days after that, on his birthday, Toby got COVID as well. We were both vaxxed and boosted, so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else, although we were starting to feel like some homophobic anti-vaxxer was practicing voodoo shit.

We soldiered on. This wedding was going to happen whether we were ready or not.

The big day arrived and everything went off without a hitch. It was a family affair with Toby’s nephew as his best man and my sister as my best woman. My mom & stepdad walked me down the aisle.

We asked my friend Merri to sing The Zombies’ This Will Be Our Year. When I chose the song last year, I thought it was a pretty obscure choice. Turns out to be a wedding standard as well as the jingle for Target’s “Back To School” ad campaign. Ah, well. The chorus of “This will be our year / It took a long time to come” certainly struck a chord with us.

While the planning was crucial and paid off in the best way, it was actually a spontaneous moment that I keep revisiting from that day. Luckily we opted to live stream the ceremony, so there is footage to look back on. When Toby and I joined hands to say our vows, he started to bounce up and down with excitement. It was the defining moment of the day. I turned it into a gif captioned “Life Goals: Marry someone who is this excited to marry you.”

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And now it’s done. After nine years, we are hitched. Married. We tied the knot and jumped the broom. It took a long time to come.

Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me: John Weir

John Weir is pissed off. Rightfully so.

He has a new book out. An award winning book. It’s called Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me (Red Hen Press). It is described on the cover as “linked stories” and won the Grace Paley Prize for short fiction. God forbid you call it a memoir or a short story collection. But we’ll get to that later.

This month, his two previous novels: 1989’s The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket and 2007’s What I Did Wrong are back in print with Fordham University Press. You can easily order any of these titles on Amazon or Barnes Ignoble. However, if you want to throw your business to an indie book seller, or more specifically a gay bookstore, it appears that you will have to go to one that he has personally walked into and asked them to stock his books. He’ll come back and sign them, too.

The Strand also does not have copies in their store. He went there and asked. Something to do with distribution, although you can order them from their online warehouse.

*John Weir on the cover of The Advocate (1990)*

I have been a fan of John Weir’s work since Eddie Socket‘s original release. I purchased a copy at, uh, Barnes Ignoble, and was thoroughly captivated by this groundbreaking book – winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel and one of the first to address the AIDS crisis.

The book kept me company on a miserable theater tour in the fall of 1991. I strongly identified with the protagonist, and when he contracted AIDS halfway through the book, it scared the hell out of me.

I wrote some of my favorite quotes in my journal:

Though he didn’t think that God existed, still, it was nice to just sit somewhere with people who believed that he did.

And

My feelings are clichés and that bugs me, so I try to hide it with other slicker clichés, and with everything in quotes, at least I can remind myself that I know better than my feelings, which are really the drippiest, most sentimental, self-pitying things.

I pored over it for so long that one of my cast-mates finally said “What the hell is with you and that book?!”

John Weir was working with ACT UP on The Day of Desperation in January, 1991 when he and other activists (including fellow writer Dale Peck) interrupted the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather:

It’s interesting to hear him mention his mother in the clip above, as she is the subject of several stories in Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me, written 25 years later, after their relationship had evolved into an adult child/caregiver situation.

In the intervening years, Weir was Contributing Editor at Details magazine and published nonfiction pieces in The New York Times, Spin, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. In addition to his writing, he has been an associate professor of English at Queens College since 1993.

I have been following John on Facebook for years. He would sometimes post new material and share extended witty, hysterically funny conversations with his mother. I also followed Sukey Tawdry, Mrs. Weir’s beloved pooch who had his own Facebook profile and passed away just days after she did in 2018. (John’s tribute is posted here.)

For all of the platform’s faults, John’s connection to Facebook is evident: he dedicates Nostalgia to his 5,000 followers.

Weir has a crankier social media alter-ego, whom he refers to as “The 3am Guy.” This allows him to rant about various topics at all hours of the night and then perhaps soften the edges or clean up the mess the following day – a tactic more people should adopt, IMHO.

It was Weir himself and not The 3am Guy who posted the following – a stinging encapsulation of what it is like to be a gay author of a certain age, on the first day of Gay Pride Month, just trying to get his work in front of its target audience.

This is his entire post, which I have reprinted with his permission:

The Self-Pitying Author Asks: Why Are None of My Books on the LGBTQ+ Pride Table at My Local Groovy BKNY Bookstore, Next to *The Town of Babylon* and *The Guncle*?

It’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and I plan to spend the month ashamed! Mostly because I have this new book out and I haven’t done enough to promote it. Here’s a funny thing about the book:

*John Weir Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan*

What’s its genre?

Is that like asking a book its pronouns?

Maybe!

Well, *Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me* calls itself “linked stories” on the cover. That’d mean it’s a collection of short stories: fiction.

Somebody said maybe it’d get more notice if I had called it a novel, “because it reads like a novel” (presumably because the same dude is the narrator of all 11 stories, and the stories follow him – not in order! – from like 1974 to 2014); and the thing is:

It got published because I submitted it to a writing contest – the Association of Writers & Writing Program’s (AWP’s) Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.

I submitted to a contest, which I’d never done before, because: my agent wasn’t interested in the manuscript, which meant I no longer had an agent; and of the *12 agents whom I queried to see if they’d represent me* – well: None. Of them. Even. Replied. Not even their harried assistants wrote back to pretend they were the agent and say, “No thanks.” No one. Not an email, not even a form-rejection email.

Then in fear and self-loathing I sent the manuscript to a friend, who is also an agent (generally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have an agent who’s a friend), and they said, “Love this, can’t sell it.”

So I submitted to a contest.

Which specified: “Short Fiction.”

*Author Grace Paley, photographed by Jess Paley*

Like the kind of stories Grace Paley wrote. A prize in her name! And I was all, “Well, I’m not Paley, and not that the judge has to pick a Paley-esque collection, but: I do sort of do the thing Paley does of writing stories as if they were just what happened that day.” (Not to put myself on her level of genius!)

A lot of Paley’s stories are written as if they were unstructured suit jackets, they fit fine but without the expected ribbing: her work feels impromptu, copied from everyday ordinary life (even if that ordinary life is extraordinary); and so but then you realize that every word is deliberate, she has a distinct aesthetic and a project, her writing isn’t random, nor is it cinema verité, though it’s often presented as if a quirky documentarian were given a camera to record whatever is in front of her.

So my collection got picked for the Grace Paley Short Fiction Prize, the reward for which was its being published by a small press that partners with the AWP: Red Hen Press.

So it won a Story prize, so it’s Stories.

I guess it was my idea to use the phrase “linked stories,” because short story collections don’t sell that well, and I thought maybe people would be more likely to buy it if they thought it was gonna feel like a novel.

I don’t think it’s a novel. I don’t really care if it’s a novel. I don’t know what it is; but then some people have been:

It’s a memoir. It’s autobiography. It’s a series of essays with a dude in the middle saying “Ow.” It’s nonfiction misnomered as fiction!

“How dare you misgenre me!” it’s thinking, sitting un-bought on a low shelf in the Fiction section at your neighborhood Barnes Ignoble.

Well, but back to Paley: I can’t call it nonfiction because I lied about stuff; compressed 6 real people into one fictional character; took scenes from real life and put them in a different month, with other weather; invented conversations; collapsed 8 different events into one; made shit up; gave all my best lines to other people; left things out that’d make me look bad if you thought I committed them; mis-remembered the past; manipulated my mis-remembered past to satisfy narrative arcs. Gave stuff tidy endings that, in real life, are never-ending.

I used techniques of fiction, in other words.

But I wanted it to read as if it were happening right in front of you, happening *to* you, right now, in this moment that you’re reading it.

I wanted it to read like nonfiction. Or like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, maybe.

I wanted you to think, “He must have just written down what happened.”

“Why not say what happened?” Elizabeth Hardwick said to Robert Lowell, when he was stuck on a poem; and then he emptied all her letters into his book! Her aggrieved, enraged letters about his leaving her for another woman.

Sleep with a writer, wake up in print.

So I can see a person’s assigning my book in a course in, like, I dunno, “Personal Narrative?”

Argh, I think the term these days is “Autofiction,” which I hate. I always hear, under that name, the accusation that all a particular writer ever did was obsess about themselves; and that an “auto-fictionalist” was deficient because they could not make shit up.

Is there a notion lately that a “writer” is a person who works entirely from “imagination,” and that to base a story on true events is somehow not to be as glorious as a person who works solely from imagination?

As if “saying what happened” did not involve using your imagination.

As if “autofiction” is somehow ethically suspect because you’re invading the privacy of people whose lives your work is based on. But there is such a thing as an emotional autobiography, where the arc of feeling is lifted from your own life, if not the events. And even a science fiction writer is surely modeling characters on people they know in real life (see Philip K. Dick’s books where one of the main characters is clearly based on Bishop James Pike of California).

Argh, anyway.

And then there is this thing of, If you’re a homo-dude like myself over age like 55 and you’re writing about stuff that happened in the first 15 years of the global AIDS crisis, 1981 -1996, you are automatically *historical*, and your writing is going to have no useful application to stuff that is happening today, it’s gonna be retrograde at worst, merely “interesting” at best, yet another traumatized recounting of an era that properly belongs in a theme park, AIDSWorld.

O and alas. Call my book what you want, it doesn’t have a genre. But if it reads like nonfiction, that doesn’t mean it’s without an aesthetic; and if it reads like a novel, that doesn’t mean it’s not a series of stories carefully revised and assembled in a particular order; and if it reads like memoir, don’t expect it to be telling the truth about everything; and if it’s just some Wicked Aging Sodomite not letting go of the past, well:

Maybe we live in a country and moment when we are deeply aware of having *let go too quickly of the past*; and maybe the refusal to account for the past is a right wing strategy; and maybe the past is not even past, as Faulkner says; and maybe a book is not a weighted blanket, maybe it’s not meant to help you fall dreamlessly to sleep, maybe its point is to fling you into a stage of inconsolable grief at 3 in the morning.

Follow him on Facebook. Follow him on TikTok. He’s @jwierdo on Twitter.

Buy the fucking book.

Costello Presley and 80’s Gay Porn Guilty Pleasures

Amy Sedaris is the queen of Instagram – her offbeat posts highlight the weirdly funny and/or oddly sweet. I am just one of her million+ followers. If you need a daily pick-me-up – and who doesn’t at this point? – check out her feed.

A couple of months ago, she posted this:

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This clip has more than 300k views, 23,436 likes and 897 comments…. but apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t just click the heart, post “LOL” and move on. No. I’m the gay porn nerd spewing info that the general population really does not give a shit about, pointing out that it’s Eric Manchester & Billy London admiring Dean Chasson’s talents in Head Of The Class (1988). Music by Costello Presley!

The comment garnered no “likes” or “responses” – it just dissipated into the air like a public fart as crickets chirped in the distance. Whoooo cares?

Taking my killjoy vibe to the next level, I would also like to point out that the blond, Billy London, was brutally murdered and dismembered in Hollywood back in 1990. He is sometimes referred to as “The Gay Black Dahlia.” Circus of Books filmmaker Rachel Mason is currently working on a documentary looking into the unsolved crime.

I know I’m not the only one interested in finding out more about these videos. Amy Sedaris reposted this clip from Instagram user @homomacabre, whose followers also care about the minutia. His posts highlight the kitsch of old gay porn, with acting thinner than the flimsy sets, not to mention the tacky period clothes and hairstyles. And then there’s the music of Costello Presley.

I wanted to do a blog post about the mysterious synth-pop wizard who scored several dozen gay porn films in the 80’s and early 90’s, but have not successfully uncovered any info about him, including his true identity. I am not alone in my appreciation of Costello Presley: There are multiple soundcloud files and a reddit post with a filmography of approximately 40 titles that feature his music. A porn-adjacent friend of mine does not remember his real name, but assures me that Mr. Presley has left the building.

In 2017, synth band Parralox did a faithful cover of Costello Presley’s “Animal Reaction” from William Higgins’ Class of ’69.

In addition to Head of the Class, another Scott Masters/Catalina video in the Costello Presley oeuvre is John Travis’s Powerline (1989), which also starred Eric Manchester. This film features one of my favorite unintentionally funny scenes from that era.

I purchased a VHS copy of Powerline while on spring break from college. I had gone into New York City to see a Broadway show with some school friends and was about to head back to Long Island. I couldn’t manage to break away from the group and go into a porn shop, so I said my goodbyes at Penn Station and headed down to the train platform. Once the coast was clear, I ran back up to 8th avenue and went into the first smut shop I could find.

I made my way over to the video racks as a stripper in a silver bikini and stilettoes danced on the mirrored stairs leading to the upper level, beckoning shoppers to partake of something more tangible. I grabbed Powerline and headed to the register. With a $39.99 price tag, it was more than I would normally pay for a porn videocassette but my train was leaving in 5 minutes.

All the “acting” scenes are priceless but this one is my favorite, featuring gay-for-pay cover model Tom Steele as the cable guy with Lou Cass and Troy Ramsey as the couple from downstairs who catch him jerking off on the roof.

Porn legend and uber music fan Lou Cass was a frequent guest on The Robin Byrd Show in the early 90’s when he was dancing in New York. The Bay Area resident still has a strong social media presence and occasionally releases his own music. This is one of several versions of Pat Benatar/Nick Gilder’s “Rated X” that he has recorded through the years:

If and when I find out more information about Costello Presley, I will be sure to update the post.

Madame Spivy: I Brought Culture To Buffalo In The 90’s

Ladies and Gentleman, it is time once again to revisit that late, great dynamic lady of song, Madame Spivy LeVoe (1906-1971), also known simply as Spivy. A lesbian entertainer, nightclub owner and character actress, Spivy has been described as “The Female Noel Coward” – to which I add “…. if he had been born in Brooklyn as Bertha Levine.”

In case you missed them, these are our other Madame Spivy posts:
T he Alley Cat
The Tarantella
Auntie’s Face
100% American Girls
A Tropical Fish
I Didn’t Do A Thing Last Night
Why Don’t You?Madame Spivy: Movies & Television
Madame Spivy on the Good Time Sallies Podcast

Our latest offering is one of her signature songs: “I Brought Culture to Buffalo in the 90’s”. Curiously, on the recording Spivy introduces the song as “Intimate Memories of Buffalo In The 90’s.” This is the fourth side we have profiled from her 1939 album Seven Gay Sophisticated Songs. The lyrics were written by Everett Marcy, who also co-wrote (with Spivy) “Why Don’t You,” another song from the album. Marcy also had a few Broadway writing credits including New Faces of 1936.

The music is credited to Prince Paul Chavchavadze (1899-1971), a writer, translator, and deposed Georgian royal living in New York City. And with that nugget of information, I have to say… whenever I look into the eclectic array of international bohemians associated with Spivy, I am reminded of the party scene at the beginning of Auntie Mame. This is also a fitting scenario considering Spivy later played Mother Burnside in the Broadway production.

Oscar Wilde plays a part in the lyrics of the song, as a guest in the home of our fictional hostess. It should be noted that he did conduct several lecture tours across the U.S., including speaking engagements in Buffalo. One of the topics was “The Decorative Arts.”

I Brought Culture to Buffalo In the 90’s

I Brought Culture to Buffalo in the 90’s. When Wilde was there, he visited my home
I showed him all the glories I’d bought so cheap in Greece
and all the wonders I’d brought home from Rome.
He was spellbound at the splendor of my whatnot and the cigar butt Papa got from General Grant.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from my bay window and the maidenhair beneath the rubber plants.

I Brought Culture to Buffalo in the 90’s – the year I took the iron dog off our lawn.
In its place I put a Venus in a nightie and a rather naughty but authentic faun.
I completely reproduced the Versailles garden though the Erie claimed they had the right of way.
I swore I’d die before a tie was laid to desecrate Versailles. I made Buffalo the place it is today.

I was the first to have a Turkish corner though plenty followed suit, you may be sure.
I produced a pageant based on Jackie Horner and the deficit was given to the poor.
I Brought Culture to Buffalo in the 90’s. I made the natives conscious of the nude.
In my dining room I put “Boy Extracting Thorn From Foot” and my guests that winter scarcely touched their food.

The season that I gave my talks on yoga was one I felt I never could surpass.
I had a negligee cut like a toga and all my candelabra piped for gas.
I Brought Culture to Buffalo in the 90’s. When Wilde was there, he visited my home.
Filled with all the treasures of the ages and a nugget Uncle Nate had sent from Nome.

I showed him all the house right through the garret and said “What one thing does it still require?”
When Oscar looked at me, I could not bear it.
“A match,” he said, “Madame, a match to set the goddamn place on fire!”

This newspaper blurb (courtesy of the Queer Music Heritage page) mentions the song being “rented” to singer Bea Lillie:

Category: humor