ECHTE HANDARBEIT
One of my wonderful pals from Los Ang the vivacious and extremely talented chanteuse Ms. Jane Cantilon sent me a lovely emug detailing all the recent exploits of collaborators like Michele “Meesh” Mills who use to work on Tyra Banks’ Americas Next Top Model TV Show, but is now a star producer of the reality TV genre. Meesh was my door gal at Bricktops and did my make-up & hair for the famous Catherine Opie portrait that is now hanging in the Guggenheim in New York. Four foot tall bombshell Selene Luna who co-stars with Margaret Cho on her new TV show also was a Bricktops door girl. I don´t have a television set so i won´t be catching their products on the boob tube anytime soon. Jane Cantilon who i have known for over 25 years is a gorgeous buxom lass with oodles of irresistible sex appeal, who refuses to age. Word to Hollywood. You don´t need plastic surgery just a youthful spirit. Jane was once a producer for Entertainment Tonight and i loved her stories of being a wild bohemian girl working in the conservative mainstream entertainment industry... When i think of Jane i am also flooded with memories of Janet Cunningham who ran C.A.S:H.- Contemporary Artist Space in Hollywood, an incredible venue in the heart of LaLa in the early 1980s. Janet would serve red beans and rice in homage to New Orleans the city she left to move to Hollywood. Lawrence Fishbourne of the Matrix film series worked as her door bitch.
Flashback: At a soiree for the Los Angeles International Exposition Film Festival-FilmX I met director Francis Ford Coppola. This was in1975 and I was a 13 year old junior high school student. Coppola became enamored of me at this party, and I got an audition for a part in his epic film Apocalypse Now. Also auditioning was Lawrence Fishbourne who i recognized from his role as a juvenille deliquent on the ABC daytime soap opera “One Life To Live”. Lawrence Fishbourne got the part. Both of us were way too young to play this small part of a vietnam era soldier. Looking back it is amazing that i met a famous film director at a party and from that i get an audition for a big budget Hollywood picture. In those days anything could happen if you were at the right place at the right time.
Even after i didn´t get the part i got to hang out a bit with Mr. Coppola. He was always a perfect gentleman and never tried any hanky panky. He introduced me to this British guy who was Christopher “Superman” Reeves. This man was a complete letch, and was all octopussy hands. He had some liver lipped black boyfriend who wore tight seemless pants that showcased his enormous endowment. Even in front of his drug addled dinge lover he was still trying to get some nuggie from me. The more i resisted the more he tried. I wasn´t attracted to him in the slightest. He looked like a squat pigeon chested version of Oliver Reed. I did enjoy that he was constantly trying to seduce me, but i instinctively knew that if i gave in he would soon grow tired of me. One time after a night out dancing at Studio One we came back to his apartment in the poor section of Beverly Hills north of the Academy of Arts and Sciences Building interrupting an orgy in progress. In the bedroom were 12 naked men all interlocked. His black lover was in the kitchen getting that giant penis of his slurped on by Sam Bottoms, the youngest of the acting Bottoms brothers. Sam was a co-star in Apocalypse Now. I had a crush on Sam´s older brothers Joseph and Timothy. I even acted in a scene with Timothy Bottoms on the ABC TV show Gideon´s Crossing in 2000, and said how i adored him in the 1973 film Love and Pain & the Whole Damn Thing where he played Maggie Smith’s college age lover.
Speaking of a Coppola, Francis Ford´s daughter Sophia Coppola was married to the director and Spiegel heir Spike Jones. Jones was a regular at Jeffrey Hillbert´s queer club Trade in the early 90s. Back then Spike was the editor of Dirt Magazine, the boy version of Sassy Magazine, and was also directing some skateboard videos. At that time he was fag about town having a homosexy love affair with this cute muscular kid with super high cheekbones named Ke, who later was signed to Elton John´s vanity record label. Ke had moved to New York, and was good friends with apple granny director Richard Glatzer(The Fluffer, Quincenera). Ke would often come back to LA to visit. The last time i saw him was when Frank Rodriguez and i had our joint birthday party at that coffeeshop bar Silver Spoon(formerly Theodores) on Santa Monica Blvd at Crescent Heights owned by the same people that run Astro Family Restaurant in Silverlake and that cute coffeeshop on Beverly Blvd near LaCienega.
When i was in my mid teens i spent a summer running around with the Australian director of the Mad Max films George Miller, who was a big drunk and coke feign. When he was in town he´d always stay at the old Westwood Marquis Hotel across from UCLA in the giant penthouse suite. He would always be chueffered in a limo. I would accompany him to parties and clubs like Backlot, The Oddysey, 9000 Sunset Blvd, and Julie´s Disco inside the Pacific Design Center. When we´d get back to the hotel, he´d suck on my raisenette titties for a while and munch on my garden salad. He was a major titty and ass freak. Thankfully he’d always pass out in a drunken stupor with his face buried up my asstrovar on the couch in the living room area so i would have the super Kalifornia King all to myself in the bedroom. I wonder what happened to him? The last movie i recall him directing was The Witches of Eastwick. I have to check IMDB to see if he is even still alive.
Getting back to Lawrence Fishbourne---later in the 80s he played the cowboy on Pee-Wee´s Playhouse, the saturday morning live action series starring PeeWee Herman. A lot of people aren´t aware that Mr. Fishbourne has a post punk past. He was a regular at nitespots like The Zero Zero, Cathay De Grande, Fake Club, The Garage (which was an amazing underground funk club inside a downtown parking garage), Haunted Studios, The Veil, and The Hideaway which was run by this cute nerdy black dude who ran a vintage clothing store next to the Vista Theatre in Silverlake. I don´t remember this guys name but since there weren´t very many blacks in the punk and post punk scenes he stood out. He was also a fashion designer and would have fashion shows at The Hideaway which would feature black models like Roach who was the lead singer of the new wave band Roach and the White Boyz. Roach was the girlfriend of Brian O’Neal the leader of the all black new wave band The Bus Boys. Does anyone remember them? The BusBoys and their music was featured in one of Eddie Murphy´s tired old movies. Eddie has always been a notorious queen and tranny chaser. Marsha Hunt the sexy black singer of the new wave band Marsha and the Vendettas,.who had a kid with Mick Jagger would also model at the Hideaway fashion shows. God it is hilarious what things i remember. The black guy who ran the Hideaway later opened another vintage store on West Washington Blvd called Checkerboard, then i heard he moved to Seattle and became a school teacher. Let´s see what other black folks were around in the early 80s: Mrs. Michael Glass who was was part of Exene Cervenka of X´s entourage and later the genius behind Amok books editing their famous Dispatch publications. I think Mrs. Glass also worked with Stuart Sweezey on the famous Desolation Center Concerts in the High Desert. The Desolation Center first brought Sonic Youth to Southern California. I was at that show which also featured The Meat Puppets and Psi-Com which was Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction first and best band.
Oh there was also crazy Tequila Mockingbird, of New Wave Theatre who used to hang out at the Japanese punk store Tiger Rose, and at that hair salon on Melrose that featured the German punk stylist Atila. Someone recently sent me a link of some online column that Tequila was writing. She is one of Hollywood´s best known two bit grifters. Miss Tequila does have some talent, but it is negligable. Her funniest band Krew Kuts Klan had everyone playing childrens instruments, and another music project called Trouble For Nora was her most polished. She even served a stint managing poor Nina Hagen when she lived in LA and ran some alien space plug church.
There was also Sean DeLear aka:Tony Cosmos who was part of the San Fernando Valley punk clique who was a featured performer in Brian Grillo´s Grillo´s Follies. Brian Grillo later led a band with Tom Morello before he formed Rage Against the Machine. Sean DeLear was known as the west coast lover of downtown New York cabaret star John Sex, who was a notorious dinge queen. One of the most shocking sights i ever saw was at a New Year´s Eve party at 666 Attack Gallery where Sean D was sprawled out on the dance floor having sex with Mike Ness of the Orange County punk band Social Distortion. I was so jealous because i had a major crush on Mr. Ness and wanted him for myself.
Did i forget to mention that Janet Cunningham of C.A.S.H. later became a casting agent specializing in freaks, punk rockers, drag queens & bikers. One of the biggest projects she cast was the famous punk rock episode of the TV drama Quincy starring Jack Klugman of The Odd Couple. Taking over the casting reigns of freak-a-zoids these days in Hollywood is the agency Dragon Talent run by Robin Esmeralda Cameltoe, who use to be the wife of Jake Miller aka Buck Angel the famous F2M man with a pussy. Jake was actually the one who came up with the idea and name of Dragon. Jake´s sister is a police officer and in police code Dragon means drag queen. On the east coast the colorful draq queen personality Mz. Understood runs a similar agency.
*
Was straightening out some photos that i used in my installation Present Penicative and came across some provacative pics featuring two pretty teenage Hamburg hustlers i met named Thorsten and Denis back in1996 when i was performing my piece “Intimacy & Tomorrow(Stupidity, Today) as part of the Six Sex Weeks Festival at the Schmidt Theatre. These two boys were middle class kids who just hustled for kicks, and not because they needed the money. They both came from good families but were wild and wooly libertines with tight rock hard bodies and vulvic thrombones. In fact they cooked me and my then assistant Crepe Suzette Mathelson a masterful feast of Tuetonic delicacies on our last night in Hamburg.
*
I´m listening to gay Congressman and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank on NPR Berlin. I met Mr. Frank back in the early 1990s when i was invited to perform at the ICA Boston. After my show I was invited to a Sunday brunch at this gorgeous back bay apartment, and Ms. Frank was putting the make on every young good looking boy at the soiree. He was really a hilarious hoot grabbing at the genitals of all the pretty little boy art whores.
*
Russian artist Slava Mogutin sent me a link to a web site devoted to sagging. Sagging is the urban youth phenomena where pants defy gravity, hanging low exposing underwear. I feel like sagging doesn´t go far enough. First of all these boys shouldn’t be wearing underwear. Show off those prodigious bare rumps. And what about sagging up front? Lets take that one step further and in homage to the Wilde Boyz of Weimar Germany packs of young adult males should be running around with their genitals hanging out of their pants or liederhosen so you can see right away if they are up to snuff.
NACH WILDEM SEX LÄSST ER SIE EINFACH SITZEN!
A tiny elderly woman approached me on the street. I told her my German was limited, but she paid no mind and continued talking to me in an animated way. I smiled and nodded, realizing i could actually understand her. Her short cropped white hair reminded me of Mrs. Bailey, my old Finley Arms apartment manager from when i lived in Los Feliz Village in the early 90s. My neighbors at that time were writer Dennis Cooper, and a pre-fame gangly teenaged Leo DiCaprio who would hang out at the Amok Bookstore on Vermont Avenue.
I really loved that old flat on Finley Avenue at Hillhurst above Franklin. Faustian rocker Glenn Danzig lived around the corner on Franklin in an old witchy poo looking house that suffered a lot of damage in the earthquake of 1994. The French windows in my apartment opened out to a priceless view of the Griffith Park Observatory and the smell of jasmine. My friend Lancelot Garcia, of the Ventura Homo House contingent moved into a single on the first floor of the Finley Arms. Lance worked as the manager of the Virgin Mega Store in Universal City right next to Universal Studios. Lots of celebs use to come to his store, and he gave me tons of juicy fodder for the gossip column i wrote at the time. I was the first person to break the story that Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Hauser fame was a hornacious homo hound dog years before he was officially outed in the blogosphere and then the mainstream media. Lance had a young muscle twink friend from Oxnard with pretty green eyes who was always visiting him at the apartment. An old predatory troll lived across the hall from Mrs. Bailey, the live-in manager. This yucky man was always swooping on Lance’ pretty twink friend offering him marijuana. The geezer kept a revolving door of Asian and Latino concubines, who he constantly abused and mistreated on a regular basis. Mrs. Bailey couldn´t stand him, and neither could i. That Mrs. Bailey was really one right on old lady. She actually liked, and felt sorry and protective for the “young sweet boys” that evil queen kept. I loved her strong sense of fairness and justice. When Mrs. Bailey was young she was probably a fag hag or even had some lesbian tendancies. She looked a little like a bulldagger with her short cropped hair and no nonsense ways. She was ultra friendly with this middleaged black dyke that also lived in the building. They even went through a lesbian drama period and weren´t speaking to each other. Lance and I were Mrs. Bailey´s favorite boys along with this super cute El Salvadorean faggot.
There was also this gorgeous ginger haired man that lived in the building. He was around 30 years old,with a nice lean build and drove a 1955 Chevy. He was nice but kept to himself and had an Asian girlfriend who didnt live with him, but was around quite a bit. Of course i hated this girlfriend because she had him and i didn´t. The girlfriend always gave me dirty looks because she could tell i had designs on her hot man. A lot of people in the building would move away but always wind up coming back because the rent was so cheap and the owner of the building didnt ask for first and last rent or a security deposit which is almost unheard of in Los Angeles. My apartment was a very large single and the rent was only $320 a month.
*
Michael Crichton of The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, Coma and Jurrasic Park fame died. I met him once at his palatial estate in Santa Monica. He was taller then i am, standing 6 feet 9 inches. He lived in the same neighborhood as the salt n pepper art philanthropist couple Eileen and Peter Norton of Norton Utilities. Their giant compound was basically a home museum for their contemporary art collection. Michael Crichton´s ex-wife Ann Marie Martin is the sister of Chris Teen Martin. Christ Teen is the Canadian born star of my feminine trilogy The Three Faces of Women(1991) and a co-star in Bruce La Bruce´s 1992 flick Super 8 1/2 . She is also the muse of one of my favorite sisters in the clothe Glenn Belverio aka: Glennda Orgasm of the legendary Manhattan Cable show Glennda & Friends. I´ll always remember Chris Teen introducing her brother-in-law Mr. Crichton to me saying, “and this is Ms. Davis”. I was dressed in boy drag, but he didnt miss a beat and casually said, “nice meeting you Ms. Davis”. His daughter who was just a toddler at the time and looked at me in that strange way children do when contronted with someone of dubious gender. Her mother just picked her up and said to the child that i was both a boy and a girl. Later i read about their big bitter divorce and custody battle. Ann Marie had been an actress who was lucky to marry well and become a pampered Hollywood wife. Ann Marie was sweet and pretty, and fascinated by me as one of her bohemian sisters crazy, arty friends. I think the Crichton´s were Scientologists. Now Chris Teen is a lawyer and is married to another lawyer, and lives in Bryant Park in Manhattan. But when i knew her she was a lesbian, and one of the sparkling downtown brainy beauties who performed at Jackie 60´s and was part of the Miss Kitty House of Domination clan. She was also known as Baby Annie Sprinkle because of her buxom figure and resemblance to the post porn modernist.
AUF DISTANZ HALTEN
Whatever happened to David Hayes? I don´t know why i am getting these nostalgic feelings for my past, but i am. So i won´t ignore it but will just explore where it is leading. David Hayes was this “high yeller” very light skinned black boy who i went to elementary school with. He was never referred to as “Dave” or “David” but everyone including teachers only called him “David Hayes” like the Peanuts character Charlie Brown.
David Hayes was chubby, and his pants were always falling down showing plumbers crack. He was cute with a sweet smile and rosy cheeks, but everyone hated him---teachers and students alike. I could never understand why he was so generally disliked. He was quite intelligent and had an impressive vocabulary. Looking back i gather the reason why he garnered such disaproval was due to homosexual panic. Even in fourth grade David Hayes was a bit of a perv in training. Somehow he always wound up exposing himself, fly unzipped with penis dangling.
He was also quite bold in his courtship of one kid in our class named Edward Taylor. Edward was a peaches and cream complexioned blondine, a bit goofy but completely adorable. One of the few caucasion children in my elementary school. Edward came from a large hippy-ish family of radicals who remained in the inner city during white flight. The Taylors could have easily afforded to move to the suburbs like other whites during the 60s and 70s. The family lived not far from me in a big stately three story craftsman house on Harvard Blvd not far from the home of Hattie McDaniel who was the first black to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With The Wind.
Edward Taylor´s father was handsome and tall, and looked like Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. He was always wearing sandles with big gold buckles on them, and had very large feet, with toes as long as fingers. He even wore a toe ring, and had both ears.pierced. Boy did i have the hots for Edward’s dad.
Edward was an amazingly talented artist who could copy any image freehand. Edward and I were friendly with each other but not exactly friends. My mother was a major loner. She was friendly when people went out of their way to engage her, but she kept everyone at a respectful distance. I am a little bit more outgoing then my mother, but similar at my core.
Edward and David Hayes would engage in these major make-out sessions in class or on the playground. I found their little romance odd in that Edward had treated David Hayes with disdain like mostly everyone else. I was the only person who actually talked to David Hayes on a regular basis.
Suddenly they were together all the time kissing. It was very bizarre. Especially the intensity of it. Of course this did not sit well in 1971 at Hobart Blvd Elementary School. Everyone was grossed out by them, but that didn´t perturb them one bit.
Somehow David Hayes received all the brunt of the blame and Edward got off scott free. David´s mother was quite the portly pepperpot, and was always having to come to school for parent conferences which consisted of teachers and administrators complaining to her about the sexual picadilos of her son. Patti Hayes was also very light skinned, and looked like a tubby Lena Horne. She denounced the school authority figures and didn´t see anything wrong with David Hayes´s experimentations and was quite articulate in defending him.
One day David Hayes upped the fourth grade anti engaging in what i could only consider as an early sex positive performance art piece. Right next to the tetherball court David Hayes very cooly and elegantly unzipped Edwards pants, and began felating him in front of a group of girls who started to scream in protest. This became a huge scandal. I couldn´t believe that Mr. Homet the school Principle didn´t expel David Hayes.
Edward and David Hayes continued to heavy pet. Everyone just sort of got used to it. Then one day they stopped. I asked Edward why he wasn´t kissing David Hayes anymore and he looked at me like i was crazy and just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don´t like the way he tastes”.
David Hayes tried to get me to kiss with him, but at that age i was very germ phobic, so the last thing on earth i wanted to do was swap spit with someone. I never even liked being kissed on the cheek by my mother or sisters, so i wasn’t about to kiss on the mouth with David Hayes. I rejected him nicely and he accepted it.
We actually had a lot in common. We both loved the L. Frank Baum Oz book series, and spending hours in the the public library. By the time 5th grade rolled around David Hayes had become a local TV personality starring in Student News. He would leave class early to go to KTTV Metromedia Studios in Hollywood for the daily tapings. His stardom only made the teachers and students despise him even more. His mother Patti Hayes became a casting director for television who later worked on the sci fi series Battlestar Gallactica. David wound up leaving our school in the 6th grade when he and his mother moved to the valley.
Fast forward to high school junior year, and David Hayes makes a reappearance. He looks exactly the same. Soiled unbuttoned shirts, and pants falling down showing plumbers crack. His voice remained high pitched like he had somehow managed to avoid puberty. He was still hated by everyone who came in contact with him. I was the only person happy to see him after so many years.
He caused another scandal by making a pass at some cute boy named John Plunksy who beat him up. The infamy from that incident caused him to leave for parochial school.
The last time i ran into him was when i was working at Retail Slut, the punk rock clothing store on Melrose Avenue in the early 1980s that one of my Afro Sisters Urethra Franklin aka: Helen “Bed” O’Neill owned. David came into the store on a Saturday afternoon and still hadn´t changed a bit. He was excited to see me. That particular day in the store we were visited by a number of celebrities including Andy Warhol, Cher who was a regular and bought alot of the original clothing in the boutique designed by my other Afro Sister Fertile LaToyah Jackson and Michael Jackson pre-Thriller, and plastic surgery. With all that excitement on one afternoon i have to admit that i was mostly thrilled to connect with David Hayes again. He hung out in the store all day chit chatting with Helen and Diane Paillette a wild punk girl from Ventura who was spending the summer down in Hollywood. David Hayes even went on a food run bringing us snacks and ice cream. He also bought a copy of my zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson. I could tell that he was lonely, and intrigued by my life as a punkette minx.
After that day i never saw him again.
*
Yma Sumac, the Inca princess of the Andes died. They think she was 86, but no one knows for sure. She was living in an LA nursing home. Perhaps she was actually born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and re-invented herself as an exotic siren.
*
The other day on the street i saw a boy who looked just like Andrew Gould, my former partner with Bricktops at the Parlour Club. I was taken back a bit, thinking that maybe Andrew was on holiday here. But the boy i saw was in his early 20s and Andrew must be hovering around 30 these days. It is hysterical how someone´s doppelganger could even possess the same mannerisms. This boy seemed so frail and fragile, and damaged in just the same way that Andrew is. Of course i found that quality very alluring about him. I took some amazing photos of Andrew during the Bricktops days. He is very photogenic. Most of the Bricktops pictures from the first few years of the club that i had in my installation Present Penicative i took with cheap disposable cameras. Remember those? Later Andrew got a tiny chocolate bar shaped digital camera for Christmas and i would use that for the last Bricky years. Some of those pics i took i used to decorate the club every week. So that people from the week before who were wearing great outfits would see themselves the next week as part of the club´s decor. It was something so simple but quite effective. I wonder what happened to those photos. I know that Andrew downloaded them on his computer, but since our relationship deterioted after the end of the club i´m sure he must have erased them. What a shame as some were quite engaging.
It has been three years since Bricktops ended. I miss those Friday nights, and i do miss Andrew. Time can heal all wounds, so i am feeling less betrayed by him now that there is an ocean between us. Can you imagine how i would have felt if we had been romantically or sexually involved. Well there was a tinge of the romantic in our friendship, though i didnt find his body particularly sexy. I really dont find ultra skinny, bony, brittle boys that desireable. I like my boys with some flesh on the mound. Andrew did have a big penis, but big dicks on too lean of a frame is such a turn off. I’ll always remember sharing a bed with Andrew and Marc “Ears” Frietas who ran my record label Spectra Sonic. “Ears” was in town to participate in VD as VB US Navy and was also part of my “Topping From the Bottom” installation at the second Platinum Oasis-La Terra Vista Dalla Luna salute to Pier Paulo Pasolini at the historic Coral Sands fist fuck Motel in Hollywood. Andrew and “Ears” hit it off bigtime. I woke up about 5am and they were going at it. If you added up those dueling dicks you´d have over 20 inches of man meat. I left the room to give them some privacy
I can admit now that i was a bit jealous that Andrew and “Ears” hooked up at my event--- in my installation room. I was probably the only person who didnt get any sex that weekend. Ah the poor hostess who can never get hers, but provides the opportunity for all the little squirrels to climb up the tree to get their proverbial “gnut”.
I still love Andrew Gould. What a bright and well read Brit. His longtime boyfriend Lenny Young prided himself in not reading books. Poor Lenny. The only thing interesting about dimunitive Lenny was his gypsy background. I was fascinated by that. Lenny was quite a strange character, and him and Andrew made such an odd couple. I could see why Lenny was smitten with Andrew, but what did Andrew get out of Lenny? When they met Andrew was around 20 and Lenny was in his mid 30s. So Andrew left his father´s home for Lenny´s home. When he came to LA he only brought a backpack with him, not even a suitcase.
I actually feel somewhat sorry for Lenny. If Andrew ever leaves Lenny, he will be hard pressed finding someone else, as he only finds young boys attractive, and would never seek a relationship with a peer. During the Bricktops days Lenny was in his 40s and was always going gaga over juicy slim white boys in their early 20s. He is one of those types of men that can´t handle being alone. I wonder if the global financial crisis has hurt his business schemes. Did he go back to being a low level producer of Hollywood movies? For Lenny to find a new boyfriend he will need lots of cold hard cash.
Oh Lenny is not so bad of a character. Sometimes he would put in great effort in trying to be sweet. It just wasn’t in his nature. Lenny Young i salute you. You will always remain a casualty of advanced capitalism.
Getting back to Andrew Gould. I do wish him well, I still love him, and i miss his awkwardness, and cute British accent.