HAPPINESS IN RICH PROTEINS
Went to din din at Tender Greens last night with two of my oldest girlfriends Glen Meadmore and Dora from Ventura. I go way back with these tall drink of water ladies. Dora has owned a punky store up in Ventura for the last 24 years, and travels the globe to exotic locations looking for giant cock-a-doodle-do. When I first met Miss Dora she was a shy undergrad at Loyola Marymount and looked like a boy straight out of an early 60s film like Bye Bye Birdie. She and Bouffant St. Marie ruled a clique of young queens and admirers in Ventura’s small gay community. Dora would frequent LA and became a part of The Amoeba Records & Filmworks kollective that was headed by Gomorrah Wednesday and Quasi O’Shea out of Hollywood. She had her own club on Hollywood Blvd called Sissy USA. It was a blast catching up with her misadventures that included a stop at the old Flex Sauna where she shared a shag with James Frankenstone of Club F*ck and Sinamatic fame. Dora knew who he was, but he didn’t recognize Dora in a her masculine persona. I go way back with Frankenstone, and remember when he was a simple but trendy suburban lad from Arcadia who was straight with a girlfriend,but the minute he took his first whiff of Hollywood underground nitelife he was transformed. Seems like his penis is also going through some major transformations of the pumped kind. I’m not one to gossip so you know you didn’t hear it from me. I wonder what ever became of James’s black lover who was going to law school that we all referred to as Huggy Bear? James also had at one point a humpy negro beau who was a professional ice skater with Icecapades. One time James modeled for me in a fashion show I did at the old Lhasa Club on Hudson and Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood. He has always had a great physique but he was so stiff and uncomfortable on the catwalk-it was hilarious.
Met with Emi Fontana Tuesday of West of Rome. She took me to the Coffee Table for luncheon and we talked about her Pacific Standard project that’s in conjunction with the Getty next year at this time. Emi and I are born on the same day in the same year so its like we are twin sisters from different mothers. Her last West of Rome project featured Marnie Webber. So I guess I will be making a return engagement to Los Angeles sometime this year for research and development.
Wednesday Emi came over and we did more brainstorming for our project. It was really wonderful going over ideas and suggesting site specific locations that we might use for this piece. I am really interested in perhaps doing something at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the West Adams District or the former house of Mary Pickford on the private gated street Fremont Place between Olympic and Wilshire Blvd. This mansion was built in 1916 and in the 1970s Muhammed Ali lived there and I was invited to a reception given for top graduates from Los Angeles High School, which is my alma mata. The food was amazing and there was a chamber music quartet playing. I also think that the One Institute would be an interesting location as well, and using their archive like I did in Platinum Oasis would add to the gravita of the project.
Emi surprised me with a visit by artist Marnie Webber who I haven’t seen in many years. The last time I saw her was at a party of Tommy Gear’s for his ex lover Lyle Ashton Harris. Marnie is a big art star now. She gave me a copy of her catalogue Magasin. Emi gave me a copy of the book Insurgent Muse-Life and Art at the Woman’s Building by Terry Wolverton. The Woman’s building will feature heavily in the new piece I create for West of Rome. I’d also like to involve Phranc, The Jewish Lesbian Folk Singer who was one of the founding mack mamas of the Woman’s Building. The famous portrait that Cathie Opie took of me with the green hair was taken at the Woman’s Building. Later in the evening the massage therapist and performer Rage who lives in the duplex next door to Ron Athey’s heard my loud voice and came by to visit as Emi & I were brainstorming together. Rage is a hoot, and I’ve missed her.
Later Emi took me to dinner at Café Stella where there were lots of trendoids and celebutants like Eva Longoria with this dark haired man that the waitress told me was Penelope Cruz’s brother, also Hayden Christiansen the Canadian Star Wars star was looking chunky but funky with some funny looking but well dressed young woman, and a way too skinny and brittle looking Halle Berry with handsome French hotskin Olivier Martinez. There was some uncomfy scrambling when Halle’s ex Gabriel Aubry also showed up with a date.
Andre Balazs the boutique hotel god said hi to me as I was leaving. Mr. Balazs is quite a stud, and was with some stringy haired fugly blondine haired lady when he should have been asking me out on a date. The food at Café Stella’s is sumptuous. I ordered the lentil soup and Emi and I tore open our yummy pork chops and mash potatoes.
***
Received a lot of emugs from people who saw dejecta wanting a copy of the text read by Dr. Robert Summers. So here it is in all its glory:

Judy Garland Modalities and the Everlasting Lanconian Beauty of ‘Faghagotry’

It’s a well-known fact—it almost goes without saying—that Ms. Judy Garland was and still is (if only in a spectral form and force) the Grande Dame of the modern-day fag hag. Now, there were proto-fag hags: Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, the Virgin Mary, and the Non-Virgin Mary Magdalene, Marie Antoinette, which is to name only a few of the dozens of famous women in history. But, it must be noted that these aforementioned women were more “beards” (think females as ‘camouflage’ for gay men) than fag hags—proper. But, Ms. Garland, on the other hand, with a little help from narcotics, benzos and vodka, slowly re-configured and re-imagined the “beard”—which some people, nevertheless, still participate in today; however, it must be stated, at the beginning Ms. Garland also participated in the act of “breading;” for example, Vincente Minnelli and Mark Herron, who both were caught using a double headed dildo. And, at the sight of that, well, something transformed in Ms. Garland. The transformation of the beard to the fag hag was a slow process for Ms. Garland, as it would be for others. As another example of a beard, as it variously lives on, the woman Tom Cruise was or is married to, and artificialiality impregnating – if by ‘artificial’ we mean Collin Ferrall banging them raw – all the while Cruise was being barebacked by who knows how many hustlers – who couldn’t spell their own name even if you paid them more (or gave them a hit) – in Cruise’s Starwagon™. So, these women were breads (e.g., Mimi Rodgers, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, and Katie Holms), but they were also slowly being transformed—consciously or unconsciously—into a fag hag—as if touched by the specter of Ms. Garland, which you can always smell her presence from the aroma of Vicodine, benzos, and vodka—the ingredients of her new perfume that comes out in late November 2011, and exclusively at Barney’s.
Now to be honest, and I am not one to gossip and fabricate stories, but some women refused the role of the beard—and even the fag hag—to Mr. Cruise (e.g., Ms. Kidman), but it has been noted in numerous reputable texts that she can only have anal sex, as the National Enquirer has extensively researched; and her doctor told me over cocktails that “her anal cavity is a hole back to Australia.” He offered me a tour during her next visit. I said, “That is absolutely disgusting. Australia is hot, and I don’t eat shrimp.” Now on the other hand, Cruise’s other wives and girlfriends became fag hags.
To be more specific on the history of “faghagism,” and this will be on the midterm, in more ways than one, the fag’s (m)other—which is to say the hag—was transformed from an act and into a “being,” an identity category—which seems to have a relationship to the invention of homosexuality as an act transformed into an identity category in late 1700s, as the drug-using, barebacking, hustler-loving French historian / philosopher Michel Foucault has eloquently argued. On a similar point, more research must be done on the topic of the fag hag, using Ms. Garland’s inventions and transformations, as an identity category. Now, but going back to the beard, it needs to be clearly stated that the fag does have to come out of the closet—or the restroom stall or the bushes or People Magazine—in order to have the beard’s other become a fag so that the beard can become—but never cum—a hag of a fag.
Through my research, being a fag hag is a reciprocal relationship and highlights the polyvalence of power. I mean, all us fag hags—yes, I am a fag hag; nowhere does it state that one has to be a “woman” to be a fag hag; for historical figures look at Andy Warhol and Brigid Berlin (fag hags to each other) and before him Thomas Eakins and his younglins (meme chose). Truth be told, I am always taking care of my not-so-straight boys and the all-out gay ones too: all those early morning phone calls by the “straight” ones wondering it they are gay because they swallowed (who hasn’t), or the gay ones having me drive them back and forth to a Lesbian/Gay Center for a screening—they all have a punch card: “10th free with semen flavored lollipop”—all these boys’ hysterical and distraught need a (m)other (fuck the biologism of gender). Like any fag hag, I don’t really mind, but Jesus Christ of Nazareth, fuck me at least once, Ethan! Oh, Jesus Christ … we will get to that fag soon enough.
Moving forward on this train-wreck of a theory, a re-thinking of identity all us fag hags had to, at one point or another, give our fags, whether they admit it or not (like Zac Effron) all-out comfort, love, pills, and a lot of attention (as they leave at the bar to find, and we have to find our way back home). Oh yeah, “straight boys”—show me one—and I’ll show you a bottle of whisky—which, listen to me now, doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll get banged, but you will have your hands full. Oh “straight boys,” all of them only as straight as their erect cocks (otherwise known as a fag hag teasers). Yes, those endearing boys, what we have had to do, what we have done, what we continue to do is give them: courage to come out. And, I would call this one of the enactments, technologies of a “Garland Modality” or, a “Garland Faghagotry”—smell the pharmaceuticals and liquor? She is here, Judy?
Now, a “Garland Faghagotry” is based on certain procedures, technologies—for example, in Ms. Garland’s case—and even lovely daughter Liza’s case (indeed, like mother like daughter!)—to help and heal a “boyfriend” or “husband” “to come out, come out, wherever you are, and see the cock-sucker you really are,” which, in the case of Garland’s husbands she would sing into the bushes were hubby and gardener were—and, according to dear, lovely hubby, he was “just helping out.” (And, as we know the same wasn’t all that different from lovely Liza.) So, Ms. Garland dated and married gay men and loved her fans, which also all happened to be gay.
Now, what many do not know about Ms. Garland is that she was the top (in more ways than one) in her marriages. She had the best stap-ons in the world. And, YSL, her dear friend, made her the most precious strap-on that money and love could buy—and, by the way, Halson made Liza’s. It is not a well know fact that Demi Moore bought Ms. Garland’s strap-on at an auction at Sotheby’s for 3.5 million—Ashton Kutcher is thrilled, I’ve literally heard him screaming in utter jouissance. Backtracking, eventually every one of Ms. Garland’s husbands would “come out,” in one way or another, and, indeed, some didn’t—it would be redundant—and join the circle of fags that would surround her—and, no doubt the same will happen to Demi and Ashton and his fuck-buddy Ryan Seacrest (no secret there). To be sure, us fag hags are always helping our boys realize their full potential, as well as take their part in so-called “gay life and culture”—oh, so marvelous for them, no? I’m usually still finding my way back home from the bar my fag-friend left me at for a horse-hung stud, donning Diesel jeans, V-neck t-shirt, and some name brand tennis shoes. These latter boys are called fag-hag stealers.
Recently, I had tea with my good friend Liza at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we discussed her faghagetry that was inherited by her dear Mother, and which Liza fully accepts and promotes and her dearly departed friend, Andy Warhol’s, “hag-fagism”: which is kind-of like “faghagism” but without the weight problem. Anyway, Liza told me that Judy always topped her (gay) husbands, and she experienced more than one mudslide. So, I asked Liza how Ms. Garland handled this—I mean we all know she hated messes! And to my surprise I found out that Liza was a medium. So there, at the hotel, we contacted Ms. Garland: I asked her (via Liza) how she dealt with shit shooting out of her hubbies butts like a proverbial “Old Faithful.” She said in her crusty, vodka and Vicodine induced voice, “if you can’t feel your body, then you can’t feel the shit, or smell it either! In a sense I am always ‘over the rainbow’.” Yes, she was, she was.
Liza, whom I didn’t know was so gifted with contacting the spirit world, also helped me channel back in time, to the night of July 22, 1969, just weeks after her 47th birthday, and which may have been the catalyst for the gay riots at Stonewall Inn, which welcomed in the lesbian, gay, and trans movement. In this moment of channeling to the past, I saw Ms. Garland on the floor of her bedroom with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a ruby slipper in the other, which I think had some shit on the heel. She looked up, as if into the sky streaked by a rainbow, and she cried aloud, “Why hast thou forsaken me … I don’t know if I am gonna make it over the rainbow, but hopefully these pretty, little pills will get me over it.” Then her spirit slumped out of her body; she died. Yes, like Jesus Christ, but with a drug and alcohol problem (so like Jesus Christ), a gay husband, a baby fag hag daughter, and a ruby shoe with shit on it. The scene was like a beautifully tragic death scene painted by the sodomite Caravaggio—like so many images of his oil paintings of Jesus Christ suffering and dead. Like Jesus Christ the Superstar, Ms. Garland not only went out singing, but she died for all of our sins, and especially for all the fag hags, whose right is the Kingdom of Heaven—or at least Nieman Marcus—because we have given our lives to gay men who wont ever return the love; we have been there day and night for our fags—all those men who use and abuse us but whom we love, and will continue to love as long as there are narcotics, liquor, and, yes, chocolate. So there is an everlasting lanconian beauty of faghagotry, which I have only touched upon—but alas this is all the time I have today. See you next class.
***
Theoni V. Aldredge the Greek born film costume designer died the other day. I loved her work in The Great Gatsby and Eyes of Laura Mars. She got her big break from actress Geraldine Page who was in Tennessee Williams film version of Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman. Page persuaded director Elia Kazan to hire Aldredge. She was 78 years old.
***
Today one of my Rock Hudson boy beauties from my MoCa piece dejecta came by and visited me in Silverlake. We had a wonderful time shooting the breeze at the flat I am staying at, and he took me for a drive in his cute convertible car. The weather was perfect so I decided to give the young man a Vaginal Davis style tour of Los Angeles and took him to some of my favourite haunts in the city which included Barnsdale Park, Melrose Hill, Harvard Heights and Koreatown. Since this 20 year old child is Greek from London attending USC he really enjoyed my take on the city. He told me something very disturbing about one of his tenured professors at USC named Walter Williams who teaches Cultural Anthropology and who he filed a sexual harassment complaint against that was ignored by University officials. When you have tenure in the fagademic world even if you kill a student you can't be fired.

HUHU-TUNTEN
The Vaginal Davis doll is exhausted to no end. I went to bed last night at 8pm after Andrew Gould my former Bricktops partner and his ex-wife Charity Hope Valentine and her new gorgeous Eurasian beau Tashi came by where I am housesitting in Silverlake.
MoCa put me up at the Standard Hotel Downtown which was very comfortable. The Hotel itself is a little too trendy for my taste. I did checkout the rooftop pool but the lunky’s hanging out got on my last raw nerve.
My room was fantastic with a great view of the elegant California Club and across from it what use to be called the Arco TwinTowers. Peaking out of the foreground the imposing Library Crump Crawler. The weather this week has been dreamy, not too hot and not too cold. Just perfect with clear blue skies and gentle breezes. Its freezing in Berlin so I am lucky to be back in my old hometown.
Mounting my performance installation dejecta/protecta in a few days was draining. Jonathan Berger the production and set designer and his collaborators Adam Levine and Marcus Pontello worked round the clock. Talented Marcus designed the Grecian tunics that all the girl living sculptures wore. They all looked like Ava Gardner from One Touch of Venus. It was really lovely.
Jonathan Berger is such a talented young man. I have never seen such agility and focus, and he really galvanized a large group of people into an unstoppable team.
Curator Suzanne Isken from the MoCa Education Dept was a life savior, making the impossible happen. We also had assist by pretty Dana Isken and Stacy Enoch. David Bradshaw took care of all the audio and lighting, plus a zillion other things and was a pleasure to work with. The last time we did something at MoCa together was in 1991 for the famous Helter Skelter Exhibit at the then Temporary Contemporary which is now called the Geffen Contemporary.
And the beautiful art students from all the local colleges and universities who volunteered to be in dejecta were just extroidinary and so creative. They went way beyond the call of duty working long hard hours and never griping or complaining. They looked so beautiful escorting the public to the dinner table holding their hands and flirting shamelessly. ZacKary Drucker and Wu Ingrid Tsang were the hostesses of the dinner party and were visions of graciousness and gorgeous composure. Wu is a master chef and created the minimalist cuisine that was served to the audience with assist by Dr. Jennifer Doyle working as her sous chef. This elevated the event far beyond anything that I could have imagined. The smell of this delicious gourmet food prepared so lovingly wafting through the Ahmanson Theatre was mind boggling.
The performances were great! The Boyfriend----just hysterical and in good voice with their dapper outfits, props and campus cutup behavior. Glen Meadmore looking dazzling in a white Rhinestone Cowboy getup crooning splendidly with everyone being able to understand his inventive lyric play because of the low tech acoustics. Bricktops girl Jean Spinosa as Lucia Joyce was so sexy and charming with latin hunkster Martin Matamoris and Buster Keatonesque Rick Whitmore. And the lecture by Robert Summers on Judy Garland Modalities and the Lacanian Beauty of the FagHag. I gave Dr. Summers who is a young brilliant art historian the title and he ran with it coming up with such a crazy and inventive lecture. My favorite bit was when he said that Michael Jackson was his own faghag. That left the audience in stitches. Darling Larry Bob Roberts of Holy Titclamps and the webmaster of my website read from his new book The International Homosexual Conspiracy and also expounded on Sodomite Eugenics talking about the twink gene and bear gene. Just ribald. Last night I introduced Larry at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip where he was doing a reading from the book, and Larry has gone from a shy retiring dork to quite a seasoned performer. I was really proud of his transformation. Coming out to see Larry read was the self absorbed silver fox of a gay writer Trebor Healy, who hasn’t aged that much, Big Dicque Dave who use to be an editor at Unzipped Magazine, bon vivante Clint Catalyst looking like a gothic Ray Bolger, and film critic David Ehrenstein who gave me so much juicy gossip that I can’t remember it all but I did write down that he said that when the French director Andre’ Techine was a young hustler he had an affair with philosopher Roland Barthes. Before the reading Larry Bob and his wonderful lover Tommy took me to Real Food Daily for a splendid vegan dinner that was pure ecstasy.
In the afternoon I went by Kustom Creative to visit with Jeffrey Hilbert and Little Papa Frank Rodriguez at their independent ad agency. We had a marvelous time together gossiping about Tyler Perry’s film version of For Colored Girls . . .though they were busy with deadlines. Both Jeffreyland and Frank came to my piece and loved the sexy boy beauties.
To try and unwind I went to the Los Feliz Theatre to catch the Darin Aronofsky film Black Swan starring Natalie Portman. Just heard that the star and director are nominated for Academy Awards. The movie isn’t really that good, but it isn’t completely bad either. The tone is just so off in a way I really can’t describe.
Getting back to dejecta/protecta. Julie Tolentino and PigPen aka Stosh Fila presented their lovely endurance piece Cry of Love-The Honey which captivated the crowd at MoCa’s Ahmansen Theatre with its delicate beauty. For 4 hours Julie stood with honey dripping all over her. It was such a nice companion piece to the minimalist dinner. We couldn’t have done dejecta without the help of Julie and PigPen who is an expert in getting materials to use for any occasion as she works in the film industry building, painting and designing complicated set pieces.
O and I have to shout out to filmmaker and visual artist Janie Geiser who screened two of her flawless 16 milimeter films The Fourth Watch and Terrace 49. Janie is a stunningly attractive woman and so sweet and personable. I had first seen her films through Billy Miller’s program at Basso Kollective in Berlin and when I mentioned I wanted to show some 16 milimeter films as part of the piece, Jonathan who worked with her as a teenager recommended Janie and her husband Lewis Klahr and they were perfect in every way possible. The music in their films also went well with the music I was using throughout the piece. Talk about serendipity. Lewis showed his collage film Downs are Feminine which is very edgy and sophisticated.
Jean Kim who I worked with so well for Speaking From the Diaphragm in New York did all the video work for dejecta/protecta. Jean is so quiet and serene. She is such a calming force of nature and a pleasure to work with. On a tight schedule she filmed the screen tests of the Rock Hudson Boy Beauties and Dorothy Arzner Dance Girl Dance Lovelies. Along with Hector Martinez taking photos used as a wallpaper backdrop the films had this ethereal quality like they were floating in time and space. Jean is so talented that the mainstream has been sniffing at her door. The MTV remake of the incredible British teen television show Skins hired her to do videos. And now everyone is going to want to use her services.
The roster of celebutants attending the four shows on Jan 22nd of dejecta/protecta reads as a who’s who in almost every field imaginable. Here is the list, and other names have been coming to me as well: MoCa director Jeffrey Deitch brought with him photographer David LaChapelle,Simon de Pury, Chris Johansen, Bennett Simpson, Dan Colen and Nathan Sawaya. Others who got to sit at table: Emi Fontana of West of Rome, Craig Roose, Marc Frietas, hockey player Anze Kopitar,
NY Socialite Waris Ahluwalia, PC Valmorbida, Sebastian Jondeau with Brad Koenig, China Art Objects gang who will be selling my makeup paintings in the LA Art Fair, Lisa Mark with husband Channing Hansen, Stella of Stray Pop, Sean deLear, Nicky Giovanni Leonard and wife Sandra O Noshe Didn’t, MarLou DeLuna & Hal Marinas, Tom Guinness, Andrew Garfield, Karen Lofgren, and Michele Carr of Velvet Hammer.
***
This sweet note came to me about dejecta/protecta:

Lovely Ms Davis,

Dejecta/Protecta your wonderful performance tonight was absolutely beautiful funny amazing really really enjoyable. My buddy Hector came with me and we both greatly enjoyed ourselves.

That was really cool how that auditorium space was completely transformed with all that fabric and the creepy big doll things off to the side and that gorgeous lady in the corner with gooey sticky honey dripped all on her and that guy standing above her on the platform, and the very idea of the dinner setup was funny interesting uncomfortable fascinating and special cute beautiful too. May not make sense me putting it in writing, but that's how I think it in my head and felt it inside, you know? Funny how the book thing on the table in front of me had my mom's first name on it and the lady across from me mentioned the title of the book in front of her, and it turns out to be this book I tried hard to read 15 years ago and it was so unnerving painful to read it that I only made 20 pages and had to give up. (And I never give up!). Those young people are so lovely! Are they students of yours? I looooved how they personally seductively led us into the dining room. The podium presentation of faggery haggery history was reeeeelly interesting and yes funny. The film with music was great too, those male boinking images and naked lady images remind me of a deck of male cards I saw at a neighbors house in Silverlake and a set of trick drinking glasses that one of my aunt's husbands has at home. Mmmm hmmm. Glen Meadmore!! I liked so much seeing him hearing him again after all these years. I do recall some of his polaroid photos montage artworks at MOCA some years ago in a show we had, but onstage.....well he was wearing a lot less clothing last time I saw him. I was pleasantly glad he was a part of this performance.

You! You! You! What a most beautiful smile you still have on your gorgeous face! You really did look exactly like the last time me and my buddy Hector saw you at the old club on Virgil and Santa Monica ages ago.

Your voice and presence was so wonderful so close to all of us in the audience. What you said really sparked up in my brain about a lot of things. And not all of them frivolous and smiling. Which my dear Ms Davis is a wonderful effect to have on someone. Thank you for doing such a great creative work at MOCA. I am so honoured to have seen you and your talented group performing. Thank you sooooo much.

Breathe In The Love, Breathe Out The Jive.

Rosenda.
***
And now to bring me back to reality I get this email from my sister Teresa about my family and my oldest sister Gracie who is dying of cancer:

Gracie keeps getting up from chemo. But her clothes are falling off of her because she's lost so much weight.

Now Marky(my nephew) is in a Rehabilitation Center. He still has short term memory loss and needs to be reminded to bath and dress himself. Both sides are recovering from stroke. So he is weak. With his heart working at 15% it's not likely he will get much better. Gracie has gotten power of attorney so Kim (Marky’s ex wife)can't take his money. She did try by getting checks from the bank-even with his name on them only. So Gracie wants me to be power of attorney when she dies... He really can't remember when to take medication or how to cook or when to eat. So he can only live by himself with In Home Support.

Darren (My nieces husband) is about to go away to prison for his criminal activity. Terri is relying on his unemployment. So the reality of what he did is sinking in. And, he is very worried about Terri and the kids now. Of course this is too late. Terri had to have emergency surgery on New Years' Day. We were all at Victorville when she got strong cramps. She got her tubes tied but she got pregnant in her tubes. The tube ruptured and she was bleeding internally. She had to have a c-section to remove the fetus and repair the rupture before she bled to death. After the surgery her hands were very cold because she lost a lot of blood. But now she's better. But she can't look for work until she gets healed. So times are still hard for her. Darren cried because he does love his kids and he did want the baby. Of course 5 children is impossible. And Darren said he is very sorry for everything now. He's just one of those people who learn the hard way!

Hope to see you next week. Let me know! Love you!

***
So yes Vaginal Davis wasn’t exactly hatched as many people think. She actually came from something resembling a human family.