The youth of today is a marvel. Straight up, there’s an openness and a willingness for a multitude of so many tears and I love you’s. There’s nudity and honesty and a permission for mistakes and casual sense of scrutiny that’s only gentle and rarely pointed. There’s a sharpened sense of accountability that isn’t defensive. There’s an openness about sharing and an exploration of selves. And there are drugs. There are drugs. There are drugs. There are drugs.

CRICKETS was in NYC preparing for Honcho Campout, it was all I needed to do, just the task of preparation. Rehearsing with JD and Michael, re-learning the songs and mapping out a plan for our show that we’d do in a tent at the Campout. That was it. No obligations, no promises, no errands, no engagements, just rehearsals. Even with nothing to do I was late getting to the car. Go-time was noon and I was late. I’d dawdled in FIDI, looking at Lizzi’s ceramics and gone to my unfinished apartment and played with the new baby in the building and by the time I checked out of my hotel and repacked my bag and was walking to the car, I was late. JD and Charlie and Monica were there and it didn’t matter, they didn’t care. The theme of the trip, it turns out, was that there was no agenda. We just had to get to a campground and chill. For five days. The car was already packed when I got there, there would have been no room for my suitcase, I’d had to take it somewhere else so it didn’t ride with us.

I’d never met Charlie or Monica and on the ride to the camp, Charlie told us about our spirit animals. I learned that my spirit animal is a turtle. A turtle. Someone else in the car was a pretty rabbit, the kind with pretty fur, an Angola. JD was a hyena. Monica was something regal, I can’t recall what. Mine is a turtle. This set the tone a little bit, older turtle joins the minions of children for a youthful rave in the forest.

We stopped at Walmart. Walmart. Of all the ridiculously obscene and offensive institutions. Enroute to a progressive queer rave and we stopped to shop at Walmart. That was a bad call, I was driving by that point but I wasn’t making decisions, I just followed the directions the others brought up on their phones. In the Uniontown Walmart the children were challenging. They are spitting and complaining in the aisles, they hate their parents. The parents are filling their carts, they don’t care. The products are screaming too off the shelves. There’s everything, nothing not. Apple Jacks and tubs of honey cashews and oat milk and cat litter and Coke and Coke Zero, gallons and gallons, beach blankets and glow in the dark sticks, flip flops, cartons of basketballs, a million other duds of landfill. JD’s dad had told her, ‘If it’s not at Walmart, it’s not worth having.’ There was that essence for sure. Not lacking anything, Monica bought gluten free Oreo’s and I forgot to look for Gruens but we got pale produce, oat products, wasabi pistachios, camp chairs, toothpaste, scrunchies, Walmart’s got it all. Of course it’s cheap and it’s so clearly hell. There were two queers in the parking lot, we started to spot the ones on their way to camp. A trans woman and her partner running across the lot, she had a baseball cap and a shirt with Palestine on it. They looked panicked and in a hurry. They had to get to camp.

We arrived before dark and everything shifted. Like instantaneously. The conversation, the light, the pace at which we moved, there were less words, we arrived and everything changed. Mostly everyone was camping. Amongst the trees, nestled into folds of forest, on large swaths of lawn. We moved into the artists bunks. I kept describing it for people who asked, other campers who were in tents, they’d say, ‘What’re the artist bunks like?’ and I’d say, ‘Have you seen The Parent Trap? The original one, with Hayley Mills?’ A lot of the kids had, not as much of a generational gap as you’d think. The artist bunks were like that. Screaming teenage girls all crammed in together, sheets separating them from each other so that when you slept you could smell, hear, feel the breathing of the stranger in the next bunk. It was a lot for JD. She couldn’t deal with the snoring, my snoring, let’s be frank. But so many people were snoring. Dean, our friend who wrote a book and did a workshop on conflict over the weekend said later, ‘yeah, no one over 40 doesn’t snore.’ He’s right, there was an orchestra of it. There were queen beds reserved for couples upstairs and when Lizzi and Sadie left I moved into their queen room without asking. It felt ok. I offered it to Shannon first, she deserved it but she insisted I take it so I did. When I feel greedy or presumptious at camp I say out loud that I’m 63 and it makes me feel less of an asshole.

During the day it is on. The looks alone, the one’s put on and the one’s grown into. Naked looks different than naked used to. There are gender signals in so many varieties. Mustaches and vaginas and sculpted lats and bellies hanging over and little penises and pierced ones, thick and swinging, chunky labias, long fingernails and tattoos and braids and wigs and shaved heads and all of it dressed up or naked, so much naked. Just walking naked and not a word to be said about it. All of the tendencies and the wide swings and the gestures of eccentric, none of it is acknowledged, nothing is said, everything’s cool. It’s like a circus of performance with zero reaction. It’s being taken in, we’re absorbing it all, but it is all just cool We’re all commoned out, flatlined and on the same level, there’s no hierarchy and no judgment and an abundance of love and hugs and tears. ‘Tears are the new I love you,’ I said just earlier and Sophie who I saw on her golf cart, she’s supplying smoothies, said the hug of today is to press our hearts together and that, says Sophie, makes all the difference. She’s so right, it so does. Pressing your heart against another’s, why hasn’t this always been a requirement of hugging? That connection.

The tears, though. Everyone’s absolutely invested and in it. I am. The Light Asylum show was unlike anything I’d seen. I’d listened before but it wasn’t a thing that was prevalent in my musical hemisphere. I might have been too late. I know Bruno who was in the band earlier and in my head I didn’t go there cause he was gone. Maybe I took sides when I didn’t need to? But wow. Wow. I didn’t know. Light Asylum in that tent, in the Critters Lounge, packed as thickly as packed could be, was the best show I’ve ever been to. Hands down. Ever. It was just Shannon onstage doing her thing, a strong and powerful black dyke who held ground in a way I’d never seen. I can’t even liken her presence to anything I’d ever. It was similar to Peaches in the stature and grandiosity of stance but so different. Her voice. Her authority, her warmth and taking of the crowd, all of us, to her chest. There were tears, there were emotions and we were all so much in it. At one point, in the middle of that song that we all knew, at the breakdown in the song even, when Shannon reached to the audience and we all knew the words and were chanting them.... the power went out. Something happened and everything stopped. We kept singing but it was a malfunction and drama and there we all were. The silence, I’m not gonna lie, the fuck up, the power going out, was painful, it hurt, it was like your insides tugged out and a hollowness, an immediate ache. Our pulses were still going strong with the rhythm that had stopped and our fists didn’t really ever go down, they were in the air, our hands were waving still and we didn’t stop screaming. Shannon literally walked off and was like, ‘This isn’t for me to fix... Someone....’ and they did and it came back and when it did, oh my fucking God, we were so appreciative and the tears again were flowing. It didn’t stop, it felt like it went on forever but it did stop and we were all just sitting in it breathing fast and exhausted.

There were moments and experiences like that again and again. We cried as a community, we listened and we cried tears of happiness. Charlene brought it in so many ways. I saw her naked walking alone, I’d never seen her not talking. She’s never not expressing and talking and gesturing, it was perfect to see her quiet and naked and walking alone. At the end of campout, when she introduced Nita for the final performance, she screamed into the mic and she’d lost her voice. There were feelings over and over. My new friend Ben played a DJ set that floored me and I hadn’t realized it was him until the last song played, Monkey Gone to Heaven, so odd and perfect on the dance floor. I had to see who was playing that and it was Ben. There were kismet moments and coincidences constantly, I met who I met because I needed to, the world was intending me to. The kids in all their glory and individuality but the community, it was mostly that. The community was high on drugs, I can’t implore that enough. The amount of drugs was insane. They were everywhere. Little mirrors were out doing lines and little keys up noses with bumps. Everywhere, no one hid it and that was liberating, honestly. The shame of drugs wasn’t in the mix but oh wow, the amount of drugs. It opened a portal or a window to a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. The wellness of the festival though, there was a center that checked drugs for toxicity and the results are posted for all to see. There are AA meetings and I leaned into those. Miraculous. Again, the tears. What a group we were, it doesn’t get more edgy than a group of sobers at a rave. We were the edge. We acknowledged that and we’d meet twice a day over the course of the festival. I met new friends, so many new friends.

There was a man on the dance floor the final night near me and he had a cup on his head. It was a plastic cup, the one he was drinking out of, and it was balanced on top of his head. He was sweaty and out of his mind but his balance was intact and that cup sat on the top of his head for over five minutes. I know because I watched. Finally, finally, he took it down and sipped from it. Things like that over and over.

A popular event was a younger man in a mask who liked to get peed on. The consensually of it was everything. He set up a kiddie pool in a field and over a hundred people gathered around. Not just men. People peed and people cheered.

Michael danced naked after he swam naked and I swam naked later after my crew left. It was a slippery place to be, amongst all those drugs with everyone gone. I could have gotten away with anything. I’d go to the place where they sell cans of drinks and coffee and every day there was that pack of American Spirits on the counter that I could just buy. I’d eye them and the person behind the counter who eventually became my friend would look at me in the eye and say, ‘Is that all?’ They knew I wanted those cigarettes. I did so bad. And then on the last day the cigarettes were gone and I asked the person, innocently, ‘Didn’t you used to sell cigarettes?’ They looked back and said, ‘We ran out, do you want one of mine?’ and what could I do? Answer me that, what could I do?

The CRICKETS show was just insanity. We played in the tent and it was an expression of live music that wasn’t really represented. Michael’s guitar was the only guitar in all of Honcho. Like all of that music making, every day, 24/7 and only one guitar. It was with us onstage and I feel so privileged. It was the first year they did live music performances and CRICKETS curated a day of us and friends. The friends put out. We were challenging, I’m not gonna lie, live music for the queer people who are there to rave, it’s challenging. IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY. It was amazing. People were challenged and stepped up to it and our time in that tent could not have been more precious. People were on their feet and feeling it. Raul was draped in crepe and presented like a doll, precious and spooky, reaching a point of horror that was unrivaled. Smitten, we screamed. A queen ran to the front of the stage and pounded the ground. Our hands were in the air, all of us. Nile showed up in a kitten costume and crawled to the stage meowing through an audio squaw box. He joined Hayden onstage and recited a poem and they did a duet. IUD brought as IUD does. Lizzi and Sadie were live and unregimented, there was no MIDI, there was no quantifying, it was reckless and loud and full of effrontery. In the best possible way. Lizzi crawled on the ground and howled. CRICKETS played and we got them on their feet and the show ended in a crazy culmination of an oncoming storm. There was word out and there was panic. Low key panic. It didn’t matter. Ravers fled and there was a looming danger, it made sense, especially in the low areas in camp, there was a danger of flooding and being in a tent seemed treacherous and potentially problematic. At the end of the day, Sunday, the last day of the festival couldn’t have been prettier. The rain cleared the air and there was a light layer of mud everywhere but it was soft and lush and I danced and ate a snow cone and felt it on the floor, losing myself by myself and with others. The dance floor in that last hour was packed and wet and muddy and a miracle. I’d never felt so alive and I’m not sure I’d go back

.

Yesterday we lost Jennifer. I never could bring myself to call her Precious. Is it bad? It’s not cool, I acknowledge, not fair. If someone asks you to forget their name and call them something new, you oblige. You don’t hang on to the old name with pride like I do, you adhere and oblige politely. I didn’t. It was never Jennifer, either, it was always Jennifer Finch. I met Jennifer Finch when she was like 15. She had a crew of cooler girls, a little older than her, who took her in but she outshined them all immediately. They were older and cooler but all you could pay attention to was Jennifer. I met her through Courtney. Jennifer Finch was living with her dad in the 310, kind of near Westwood, over there, an area I’d never dabbled in. It was a residential neighborhood near where my dad worked. Jennifer had 310 pride, she scoffed the east siders. Courtney was floating around and staying where she could and Jennifer took her in. Courtney lived with Jennifer and her dad. I met her dad a couple of times, he was big and white and silent and put up with Jennifer, they were a team somehow. There wasn’t a mother and Jennifer was adopted. Courtney told me that no one would adopt Jennifer Finch for a year. She was a baby in waiting. Maybe her persevering through that waiting, a baby getting stronger and more independent, not really needing a mommy, a daddy, that made her who she was. Courtney needed a parent and was an orphan when she met Jennifer. How did Jennifer’s dad even deal with that? The two of them. I remember Courtney living in their house with them for that summer. The hair dye, the telephone calls, the drugs. Did her dad have an accent? It seems like he was maybe British. I met Jennifer Finch on the street, she was working something, I’m not sure what, I met her outside of Club Lingere and we couldn’t get in. It was a crisis and Jennifer was all over the place with it, working the front door person, scouting out people who exited, trying to get their hand stamps on ours somehow, trailing the band that loaded in. Jennifer eventually got in but I didn’t. Courtney and I both met Pat Smear through Jennifer. From there I met Celebrity Skin and my world opened up into outsider freaks in LA. She was a very connected young person. Later on I knew her as a keeper of things. She took photographs and kept track of them. She held on to things, memorabilia, she knew what was important. She seemed like more of a manager than a member of a rock band but she was so young. And barefoot and scrappy and holding things together in the way that kids from LA did. She was a professional who paid attention to the needs. She was hilarious, her mouth was huge and she laughed with a crooked laugh. Her eyes would get serious and she’d busy herself with an issue but was so quick to laugh and join in. Hers is one of the phone numbers I still remember, I can rattle it off. I did in my book, the actual number, it starts with a (310), but when I shared the pages of my book with Jennifer, she asked that I not include that number so it won’t here now either. She also requested, in a professional manner and one that surprised me but didn’t, that I list her in my book as ‘Jennifer Finch, the bass player of the Los Angeles band, L7.’ As if. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t how I was treating characters in my book. Even though I’d written about her and the time she put the first needle in my arm on the roof of a house on the side of the 101 freeway, she wanted to be cited as Jennifer Finch the bass player of the Los Angeles band, L7. She wanted her due in only the way that a kid from LA would. Me writing about her shooting me up didn’t phase her, she’d needed her props clear and defined even in that way. I ended up just calling her Jennifer in the book, ‘I don’t really use last names, it’s not my style,’ I told her. She was ok with that but last year I was in Los Angeles and I texted her when she didn’t show up at something. Someone told me she was sick so I texted, ‘Are you feeling better?’ and she texted back, ‘Yes.’ This was weird. We had a full on friendship still, we loved each other a lot, we were never not in touch. And that was all she wrote. I thought maybe she’d changed her number so I texted, ‘It’s Roddy.’ My message went ‘read’ but she didn’t answer. ‘Are you doing ok?’ I texted. ‘Read’ but still nothing, I called her and it went to mail. I continued to text and it freaked me out. I thought maybe she was mad at me for the book. I kept texting and my messages went ‘read’ but still nothing. In kind of a panic I reached out to Donita and sniffed around a little to see if maybe I was in the doghouse. I couldn’t bring myself to ask Donita what was up with Jennifer, I felt funny about it and I just let it go. I talked about it more, though, to friends and my sisters, and I worried about it. I left her messages some more and I texted some more. My texts always went ‘read’ but never got answers. Then in New York, after I left LA, I got a message back from her boyfriend who had Jennifer’s phone. I’m writing too much about the present. Jennifer was in L7 and as far as I was concerned it was Jennifer’s band. She wore the pants as far as I could tell. Does anyone remember Shove, the first single that was on SubPop? It’s still devastating. Jennifer might have been the boss but for me it was all about Suzy. I hadn’t even considered Donita at the time, Suzy is a goddess, I couldn’t get enough. When they eventually toured with Faith No More (wow, the name of my band is a weird thing to type, I don’t know why) they were strict about taking on the support act gig. They asked to read our lyrics and make sure everything was cool. We ended up touring Europe and it was wild. Things were good and things were messy and I was high on dope for a lot of it. Dean who was playing guitar with us at the time started hanging out with Jennifer and they were a couple for some years. Jennifer was sober at the time and I remember when I rode on their bus once, Jennifer was taping me with her camera as I was nodding out. She brought it up years later, that she still had the footage of me fucked up and nodding out on their bus and it made me cagey but what can you do? No shame, no regrets, that was a time. Jennifer was so young to be sober but it was just like her. She was sober forever and got sober before most of us. She really owned that shit. She did meetings, NA, I think, not AA. She and Suzy were both sober. Jennifer carried herself in that world like the badass she was. Funny but responsible, she always had a foot in the responsible. She did it really well, I think she took care of her dad in that same way. We talked about boys and I loved where she’d go and how she’d spin. She was so frank about what she was doing and what she wanted. Her boyfriends didn’t always work out. She housed lots of kids it seemed like. She was good at the internet, she’d morphed into that kind of workhorse, the kind of kid that is savvy, she had always been that. Her father passed and she held on to the house and then maybe moved to another, that part gets fuzzy but I remember she took care of people. There were always multiple renters and people in other rooms, sober people mostly, or boys with skateboards getting sober. That sums it up for her periphery. Boys with skateboards getting sober. And rock. And barefoot. She was always barefoot. Her energy was unbridled and barefoot. All business and barefoot. Her boyfriend, Jack, reached out to me when I was back in NYC and let me know that Jennifer was sick. There was a long text explaining her situation. ‘The treatment is going well. Her improvements are subtle but continuous, however, her ability to communicate is one of the things most affected. Her speaking and awareness has improved, but there is still a ways to go. When I saw your message came in today, she gave me the thumbs up to connect with you. I think she initially kept her diagnosis discreet in the hopes that her recovery and treatment would be quick enough to not cause worry or concern for others. ( plus the desire to share this publicly when the time was right.) I understand this can be a lot to take in, so I apologize for breaking this news to you. She loves you very much.’ I loved her very much and I never saw her again. I heard the room in the final days was peaceful. Courtney was there with her two dogs and helped facilitate a smoother passing. She told me there were hundreds of friends that came through. Hundreds. ‘Dyed black hair with grey roots,’ she kept texting me. I get it. We’re all older, we’re mostly sober, we’re all still covering up things. I loved Jennifer so much, part of why this is hard is because of her spirit. Jennifer Finch was unstoppable. The strength of who she was, the victor she was in a city that’s so skeptical of victors. Her laugh and her spirit and her bossiness and her triumphs. Jennifer Finch is the best. Like, the best

.

I happened to be reading a lot in Los Angeles, I’ve taken my craft seriously, the craft of writing, I’d never of thought I would care so much. The post I made that I got in trouble with my best friend for a month or so ago… it was all about me caring too much, pretending that I didn't, and getting my feelings hurt. When I care, I get hurt, when I hurt I act out disproportionately and wildly. For instance, just now, If I let my anger do what my anger wants to do I would publish a list, here on Substack, of all the people, heroes of mine, artists I admire, ones I’ve sent my book to…. and a chart that shows the ones I haven’t heard back from. I do got to check myself on this, though. A writer friend recently told me she’d been recommended my book by Sofia. Coppola. Who was gonna be on that list of artists/heroes I’m mad at for not finding the time to read my book. So, I’m not always right in my acting out in anger. My point being Sofia had read The Royal We, she’s recommending it even. So what do I know? I do know, though, I’m pretty certain all the people on the list haven’t made time and that hurts my feelings. I want to shine in their eyes, I want to be respected, I honestly am looking to share because I support those that do. I know also that it’s a big ask, for people to read the book. I gush and am so appreciative when I meet people who tell me they like it, my first reaction is, ‘Thank you so much for reading it, it’s a lot to ask,’ I say. Cause it is, reading a book is like hours and hours. It’s a big ask.

Silent Book Review Episode 1

That said, I happened to be reading a lot in LA cause I need inspiration and want to be IN it. The more the better, I was reading more than 10 books a month, bringing a book everywhere and when I wasn’t reading I was listeninging to a book. I’m listening to my peers and I’m appreciating their craft and I’m honing my own. At the same time I was reading so much I was also taking breaks cause my phone is right fucking there and looking at the stories on IG that review books. These stories start out with big stacks of books and it’s a tease, we stick around to see all the titles that the author exposes and reviews. Titles are titillating. All I wanted was the titles, quick recommends, a critique maybe wasn’t even necessary in the process. I just wanted the titles.

That’s where Silent Book Review came from. It’s just me plowing through the titles, quick as fuck, doing nods or no’s or kisses. It’s the rapidity but let’s be honest, y’all love the kisses. And the tee shirt. For whatever reason I get as many comments about the tee shirt I’m wearing as I do about the content. Which is fine. It’s part of it.

Silent Book Review Episode 2

I’ve posted lot of IG stuff in the past but this Silent Book Review, far and beyond. I get a crazy amount of likes and have increased my followership by a lot. Which… I’m tickled. People who read??? Fuck yes, what could be better? I’ve found my people and they’re onboard. That’s all I’ve wanted. I’m getting suggestions and praise and recommends and even books from writers in the mail.

There are naysayers but not so much, most everyone is into it. There were a couple, ‘If you really love books, you wouldn’t throw them. Horrible.’ Which… ok. I was tossing them, ok? Tossing. And when I countered that first comment with ‘I do what I want,’ I got over 500 likes. 500! So for whatever reason it’s struck a chord, y’all get me. I’m really happy with it because the ask now is of me to read at least 10 books a month to keep up with the demand of the gig. Which is great. I’m fine-tuning what I read and learning so much. It’s a little bit getting in the way of writing my novel but I think in the end it’s helping my process, not prolonging it. Garth Greenwell, whose Small Rain I’m reading and loving, suggests that even two hours in the morning is enough. To write the novel. I can tell it’s gonna take a while but it’s getting good and I’m well into a world that I’ll eventually share.

Silent Book Review Episode 3

Thank you all for coming here with me. We remain, as always, a we. Send me your recommends. I lead with queer literature but I’m open to absolutely anything that floors you.

Silent Book Review is on my Instagram account @roddybottum

Lots of love,

Roddy

May 16, Saturday

It starts.

I dreamt awful anxious things and woke up at 5:45 unrested. It’s eight hours to Pittsburgh and tail-lights are at 8am. Through the night I was asking the phone the time. It’s not a good feeling to do that, to break the silence in the room for that. It feels like a betrayal to a safe and quiet space and I wish I didn’t. I hate that I do. The dreams were of me losing my phone, missing the start time of the tour, arguing with Joey, who was challenging me because of my bad attitude. I was wobbling on a slippy edge of getting things done and not. It doesn’t matter, they were just dreams.

It’s 6:01 and I need to leave the apartment by 6:30 to get to Frank’s by 7:00. We’ve taken the seats out of the big van, I can’t remember what we call those big vans. It’s grey and the tinted windows, says Elsner, are its greatest asset. Later we refer to it in our text chain as The Grey Goose. We’re not allowed to take the seats out and that was a big undertaking. It required special tools, an allen wrench, a hanger, a zip tie, a paper cutter, a hammer and some YouTube videos. Elsner was bent over for too long figuring it out, I worried for his back, but now there’s space for the half Marshall and David’s new bass cabinet that he had sent to the house, these go up in the front section between where we sit and the driver and the navigator seats. When I arrived on the first day of rehearsal, David, the straight twin, was knee deep in bubble wrap and cardboard, the amplifier had been sent to Frank’s from someone he bought it from for $350. He’d borrowed Joe DiNardo’s many times. It feels like Joe finally drew a line and suggested buying one on Reverb, which David did. For some reason, the removal of that trash is the thing that’s most important to Frank. He is insisting that the debris is bagged and moved. That while there are two rows of carseats in his basement blocking the washer and dryer and the stairs that go up to the main part of his apartment. Yesterday the twins and I were smashing the bubble wrap outside on the cement. It felt like the beginning of something.

In my carry-on I have two books, a big boy book by a popular Irish author that’s on the Oprah list and a young adult book that I’ve never read about falconry in the wild. I’m hoping to share the falconry book with someone that will take the bait. In the same bag there are my leather shorts and cap and vest, biker shades, poppers, black socks, free floating twenty dollar bills, reading glasses, my wallet, my Phanton of the Opera sweatshirt, and a bunch of bookmarks. As I type this I catch myself worrying over my dream and assure myself I haven’t lost my phone. T time in 23 minutes, I need to finish packing the main bag.

I’ve checked my messages and my friends’ brother took his life last night. The world will carry on whether or not this tour happens. I remember Sebastian, the friend who lost his brother, telling me the most important thing he learned from his father was, ‘Bring your swimsuit.’

Sunday, May 17

Tail-lights were at 8am but we stopped around the corner. Coffee and egg sandwiches, I’d had oatmeal and just got an egg croissant for Elsinor. As we waited, the twins were doing exercises in front of the parked van. The younger twin, the straight one, was doing pushups and had put brown napkins between his hands and the street. The younger gay twin had stretched into one of those yoga stretches where you point kind of like a dog and twist your body and look up over your shoulder. I was surprised they weren’t shirtless, it’s how they typically roll. The drive was over seven hours to outside of Pittsburgh. We arrived at a church and loaded immediately onto the stage. We were playing after Brown Angel and before Traecheotomy. In a church, down some stairs, in a community basement. There were children and parents and pals and cliques and mostly bearded young dudes but some women with colored hair. I hadn’t seen that kind of thrashing. When I started doing that, it was pogoing. It turned later into the skank but it’s different now. It’s like invisible karate, each kid taking up a lot of space. At one point there was a caterwaul that threw Frank and knocked the merch table all askew. An older man helped Frank up. Later it comes up again and again and it turns out maybe Frank is upset by it.

The show went off without a hitch, we put on our makeup and hit it hard. The twins went immediately into the audience. The children, they were mostly children, didn’t know what to do with us. Our theatrics and our presentation took them by surprise. Eventually lots of them moved their bodies to the music. In the audience as I look out there are mostly questions. Confusion and questions, perplexities. I am definitively ok with this. I do not appreciate resolve or answers. My goal is confusion.

My book on the merch table, after the show, was a big seller and the big concern about the lack of vinyl was kinda moot. I don’t think we sold one record. We sold shirts. What does that say about us, them, the world?

Load out and group activities are tricky. My new catch phrase is ‘All hands on deck.’ It sums it up. It’s a shout out to motivate the collective. Without all hands, things are slow and the load out takes forever. We all help and then we get distracted and float off, if we all engage together, collectively, uninterrupted, things move fast. I was moving slow, I don’t feel great, it’s a cold, something in my throat. There was an incident with the opening band, Brown Angel, and the way that one of them spoke to the others. In his defense, he was under duress and needed to put a heavy thing down, physically, as he moved the bass drum from the stage to the side of the stage. He was shouting at his bandmates for help in an aggressive way. I couldn’t help but get to the bottom of it. It was over the top. We carry ourselves like a family and don’t speak that way to each other. ‘Which one of you threw a tantrum?’ I asked when we did a group picture with Brown Angel at load out. The tantrum thrower explained himself. He kind of needs to chill.

We decided to drive on and it was hard. We drove for over two hours and it was Saturday, finding a hotel was tricky. Lots of hotels were sold out. We located a Days Inn next to a Cracker Barrel that was $234 for three rooms. The deal was good. It took a long time. We picked up beer on the way and people drank beer as we drove. It surprised me. Elsner was nervous that the tee shirt boxes piled high over the back windows would be a problem. He hadn’t given the drinking beer in the van a second thought. I didn’t want to be a buzzkill but I had to later remind the group when we stopped that Elsner would go to jail if we were pulled over. The voice of reason is a drag. In a haze we’d stopped to pee and got lost in rural Ohio, ending up on a dirt road that led to a large form Faith Center.

In the lobby of the Days Inn the television goes between a No Doubt reunion and the mystery of Richard Simmons. Gwen Stefani is not of my generation. Richard Simmons though.

Tailights at 11. There’s talk of Cracker Barrel for breakfast but I’m not going to give my gay dollar.

Monday, May 18

I woke up sick and took an over the counter medicine that the older gay twin had. It helped but I sat in the back back by myself and kept quiet and read my Oprah book while the others went through two big boxes of tee shirts and rubber banded and labeled them. By the time we got to Huntington, West Virginia, I felt better. I’d mistaken a rabbit for a donkey that was outside a store, a large sculpture, randomly next to an American flag. It confused me for a lot longer than it should have.

We rolled up to The Loud at 3, our soundcheck was at 3, it felt like we were late but we were early. Napalm Death were all really nice. One’s name is Cookie. I told him I was gonna love saying that over and over and that it felt really gay. I’m not sure if that was too much and the straight twin asked if Cookie knew I was gay. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied and the straight twin said, ‘Well, look at you.... I mean...’

This surprised me, I was still under the impression before yesterday that I read as straight. ‘Your voice,’ the straight twin added. Which…. again, not aware of. But ok.

We checked into a motel, a Day’s Inn because the straight twin was developing a migraine and the Days we’d experienced the night before was so rewarding. There was a tailgate party going on in the parking lot and someone at the end of the lot was fucking around with noonchuks. The rest of us did a price comparison for fun between Red Roof, which was next door, and the Days, even though the straight twin was already checking us in. We ended up staying in the Days. Three rooms. Frank and I were in Room 201, next to the janitor closet. There was a woman yelling at her bucket, coming out of it. We saw her again and again on the stay and called her Amber. An Amber alert when she showed up. She was mad at a styrofoam cup she’d dropped when we saw her last.

We ate at a Chinese all you can eat buffet and our table number was A-9. There was ice cream and a hibachi station and lots and lots of kung pao, chicken fried, may variations of chicken. Soda pop was filled up as we drank it from the sweet woman who was a little reluctant to move our plates off the table but all was good. We took pictures out front as the sun set. In a mall in Hamilton, West Virginia.

The show was an absolute massacre. No one left unsurprised. I did poppers at the front of the stage and we all stared down the audience. Frank did the trick I learned from Penn and Teller years ago; at the end of the set, he dropped down off the front of the stage and walked through the crowd directly back to our merch store. The children followed him like rats.

Elsner and Patrick were sitting out at a table in the patio after the show. Their friendhip is monumental, so cherished. I’m respectful and jealous of two men who love each other so much. I mentioned it to the straight twin and he said he’d heard Elsner say to Patrick, ‘I didn’t know you didn’t drink milk.’ As a kid, he meant.

Napalm Death are insane. For lack of a better descriptor, they are outsider art. Subversive. They are political and rad and today when we go to the river, they will be doing a Tiny Desk performance in Washington DC. I suddenly want the Napalm Death cap, a patch, a shirt even. Their set was preposterous, our load-out took forever. People help in spurts, that’s the issue, spurts. My rally remains ‘All hands on deck.’ It’s disturbing to always think I know best but I’m the oldest one in this van and the person with the most experience. I don’t know best and it’s always wise to remind myself as much.

It was a long time from dinner through the set to when we drove back to the Days and we found a Taco Bell that was open until 3am. The order was insane. There were over 8 crunchy tacos, I settled on a bean burrito that, honestly, was sub-par. It was a splurge for me because I’m not eating carbs or flour and it was not worth it. We discussed Cinnamon Crispas and the Bell Beefer which Elsinor remembered and I did not. It was a taco in the 80’s but with a hamburger bun and not a taco shell. More like a sloppy joe than a taco

.We had a financial party after Taco Bell in Room 308 when we got back to the motel to discuss the numbers we’d done at the merch stand. We shared lots about the security of the underground in DisneyWorld, Elsner had been there twice. Detained twice. Patrick once. I shared that my high school teachers, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Nichols, english literature and science, were heads of security there and my sister Catherine had been down in the underground after being caught shoplifting in one of the shops. Lots of stories about how quick the security was to shut down bad behavior in the park.

We are making a slow trickle of money, they financial meeting revealed. We’re gonna be ok. We are getting more money than I thought we would. Which is to say we will break even or, fingers crossed, make enough to pay for the recording session we’ll do immediately after the tour.

We’ve checked out and are at the Youth Pastor smoothie joint. Tail-lights are at noon and we are headed to New River Gorge. We got details and suggestions from Patrick last night who ran The Loud. Patrick bought a book from me and I signed it. I’ve got my speedos on underneath my shorts. I forgot my poppers and my sunglasses up in the backstage last night but life is good. Patrick at the end of the night was sexy as fuck.

Tuesday, May 19

The day is off and when the day is off it’s rarely good. The day was spectacular. To a point. The destination from Hamilton, West Virginia, was to the New River George. The drive felt like we were looking and looking but we had suggestions and directions. The road winded and twisted and spaghetti’d until there was water peppered on either side. Lakes mostly but we settled on a river. The swim area of the lake read like an ugly span of a beach with families and bikinis and we opted out. Elzner drove mostly until Frank took over. The mountains of Virginia are insanely beautiful. The inside of the sprinter van is starting to rot. There is too much food. Bags are spilling over and individual coolers smell bad.

The spectrum of the vista where we swam was shocking. The water was the coldest I’ve swam in and everyone partook. If just to get fully emerged, we all did it. I’m going to say it was colder than fifty degrees but we sat on huge rocks at the base of a valley and the sun was hot.

At a diner in the morning I’m wondering if it’s permissable to choose the section I’d like to sit in based on the server. I wouldn’t have chosen mine.

The show goes off as best as it can which is to say we are a victory and a triumph. Those who aren’t confused and those who are buy shirts and ask questions and the feeling of the South is one that’s of acceptance and curiosity and also drunk. A young woman comes to the merch booth and wants answers. ‘Is it a family?’ she asks. ‘Those are twins,’ I tell her and she’s surprised. ‘So the man between them... he’s their father?’ In a way, I answer. Yes, it’s very familial.

I sit on a porch during Napalm Death and finish my book until a man from the opening band whose name is Steve Austen comes and talks. He’s done speed metal all his life but has finished a country record. He’d played in the band after NASTIE BAND, I don’t remember what it’s called, all of NASTIE loves it. He was meticulous in the recording of his country record, using old microphones and a simple arrangement, Martin guitars, an old legitimate session drummer, all of this done right after the pandemic. He is a man of legend, he feels things strongly, he doesn’t let me talk but I listen enthusiastically and buy his record from the merch stand. Most of us are drunk and I drive us back to the hotel. We’ve opted for $30 more per room and the fancy suits us and we’re grateful. The finance meeting in room 308 reveals where we are at. Joey and I called this time of day the ‘favorite time of day,’ when we tally up what we’ve made on tee shirts and records and books. My book is officially sold out at the merch stand. Weird people read.

Wednesday, May 20

This Tom Petty song in the diner seems to have gotten slower. Free Falling is plodding. Plodding. You can’t believe how slow the song actually is. There are cops in the diner. I’m wearing my GULF OF MEXICO shirt and I want it to sting. Yesterday’s waitress seems put out that I’m not in her section. She wasn’t that great. It’s the diner that is asking a historical, a retrospect from a disgusting time that we’d all just as soon forget. I did like American Graffiti but.

I talked to the woman at the front desk politely and asked for a compensation. The water had been off for two hours in the middle of the day and I worked it to our advantage. We got a major recoup on checkout and I felt like a hero.

There’s an urgency and pull from beyond the road in all of us. The drama that continues to roll as we’re away from it. Frank deals with his art fair, the people in his life who are troubled, the gay twin considers a job offer and navigates a relationship that is questioning his core, I’m constantly piecing together the things that I’ll move to the next place I’ll live in my interim. It’s more comfortable to be out here without needs and extraneous tasks and responsibilities. To be solely of the road would be ideal. It feels safe and familial but still, the twins clip in their seatbelts constantly in the back seats.

We drive to Philadelphia today and it’s another show of ours without Napalm Death. Load in is at 2 so we aim to get there by 3. Sometimes wrong decisions need to just be addressed and corrected, even if we aren’t the ones to make that decision. In our defense, we’ll let them know on the way. Alex will come tonight. I can’t wait to share this weirdness with her. She’ll bring me a book that her daughter made.

I have cuts and scabs on my body, I’m not sure where they’re from. Don’t You Want Me Baby is on and it’s one that I can do the harmonies on pretty well.

The drive is insanity, what promised four hours and some minutes has turned into nearly eight. We miss our soundcheck and arrive, through heavy, heavy rain and constant traffic just minutes before the doors open. No one is not hungry. I’ve shared my rice cakes and peanut butter, the peanut butter in the van is ridiculous. It smells and it’s runny and it gets on peoples hands, we try to soak it up with a plastic bag. The twins had smoothies before they got in the van and got sandwiches and additional smoothies from the smoothie place so they are set but the gay twin has a rice cake anyway. It’s his hand in the back seat that gets covered by peanut butter.

We were at Kroger’s and the gay twin bought 18 eggs. We still have four shows left on the tour, I don’t understand. ‘Do you have a hot plate?’ I ask. He puts three raw eggs in his smoothie. With protein powder and roughage and other stuff. At a rest stop I catch the two of them sipping bone broth from cardboard cartons, the little cartons you see on grocery shelfs. I’m haunted by this still. We’re all still hungry when we arrive and the venue is a brewery like I’ve never seen. It’s the size of Willy Wonka’s factory and there is exposed machinery behind glass cases, that trick that straight people love to do. Everyone has beards. The opening band, all bearded, are TRUNK, they’re very cool and aggressive and supportive. We eat food, pizza and a buffalo chicken. bowl which is... I don’t know how to start. It’s like a bowl of dog food but not in a bad way. It’s tasty, very tasty, but it belongs on a bed of noodles or with some rice at least. It’s like eating a bowl of sauce. It’s a tasty sauce but it’s a sauce. The gay twin loves this bowl, has no issues with it. We perform and Alex is here and forgot to bring her daughter’s book for me. She is seeing us for the first time. We’re very close but she’s never seen me onstage. Frank remarks he’s seen me in every iteration. Alex has lots of feedback. She’s enthusiastic and leaves in a blur. We pack our things quickly to drive back to New York City and we get paid $300. We get paid $300.

I wake up in my Bedstuy sublet like I’ve been pummelled by traffic over and over, spun around on the ground under a semi and left in a bed. I’m exhausted. There’s drama regarding future projects and there are zoom calls and texts that reach a fervor. My hands are shaking as I hone in on the Nastie responsibilities of the day. There’s too much to consider while I navigate the arguments on Zoom. Looming set, sound check, load in, guest list. I’m not a supporter of guest lists. Unless it is a sold out scenario or people can’t afford tickets. Not in any other case. I’ll take the C train from Bedstuy to Chelsea to get to work. I thought I’d be able to swim laps with my oldest friend, MaryJo at the Bedstuy YMCA but I just can’t do it. I’ll eat oatmeal and take it from there.

Friday, May 22

Playing shows in NYC have become nothing but joyful. Somehow I’m able to lean into a patience that used to be eager and anxious. Conversations are focused and concentrated. Friends are there in ways they often aren’t and I’m constantly impressed by the people that come to shows. The flipside is I’m scourging those who aren’t there but that usually comes later, in bed, recounting the night. In the moment, though, the details and the nuances are heroic and imperial. What could be better? Those of us in the room are royalty, privileged, regal. Our night together is a gift, the treasure of a lifetime.

I hadn’t met Eric who helped with our load in. There were stairs so godbless him. Despite the gruntlings, NY staff’s are helpful and professional and right on constantly. Joey and Josh and Peter worked our sound and we were mighty beyond belief. Besties were in the house, I looked into friends’ eyes and loved life.

I sat with Primitive Man backstage in our little room while the others ate fish tacos. They are from Denver and we got into it. Onstage they were a miracle, unlike anything I’d seen. Kind of like the barrage and cacaphony of My Bloody Valentine but no decipherable stops or starts. All sludge and might, power and triumph. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I gave John my book and then bought a tee shirt of theirs. I got to school them on Margiela, they were real eager listeners.

We drove back to Frank’s after a chaotic but refined load out, most of Nastie were wobbly and the gay twin had taken off. The straight twin was refused the opportunity to stop for pizza but I did it anyway, pulling over at a horrible corner place on 16th and 6th Avenue. Frank protested loudest, he tried to get him back in the van, we decided to go to the Birria taco truck next to Union Pool, that would be it but we couldn’t pull the straight twin out of the pizza. Frank went in to physically do it, shouting, ‘You’ve been outvoted.’ That had worked at River Gorge when the twins decided to hike down to a better spot to view a bridge. They were outvoted and we let them know and they were forced to return to the van, heads hung low. He bought the pizza, not even warm and we drove to Birria. Eating side saddle on the truck, spooning our consomme, life has never been better. We couldn’t get the alarm in the sprinter to engage but we left the majority of the equipment parked on the curb in front of Frank’s apartment anyway. There are two shows left.

Saturday, May 23

I was peeing, standing at the urinal in the boat’s bathroom and the wobble set the tone. How can it not? It was that way the rest of the day. We loaded our equipment over a gang plank, there were gates on either side but it felt incredibly vulnerable, like the equipment could roll off and go into the bottom of the water. There was pizza at first after soundcheck and all the bands were onboard and we floated to Manhattan to pick up the passengers. The boat was then packed for the Nastie Show. As we started our set, the boat left the dock and that felt prolific. For some reason we all were moving more onstage. There was motion in the crowd too. There were ones who were inspired, like genuinely, moving around and propellering and creating a raucous. A definite connection.

I woke up this morning and looked at me naked in the mirror. I’d meant to perform in my black panties and leather vest, shirtless, but got scared cause I look so lumpy but this morning I look good. Today is the last show and I should just go for it.

My friend, AF, the photographer was there and I caught up about Antonia and Barcelona and post pandemic living with a baby in Spain. Chip and Caitlyn and Katie English were onboard. They read to me like the models who are on the cover of Roxy Music records, gorgeous, supportive, decorative. Mike from Sleeping Glossalallia, his friend from Opening Bell, Annabell, Tal, Jackie’s ex with his dog, all of the people that make NY what it is. To get on a boat and watch the likes of Napalm Death, those types of people. Cheers to the people that came and pity on those that don’t.

I got to watch my favorite band, Primitive Man, again. I’m smitten. They do something I haven’t seen, it’s preposterous and bold and so loud. The visuals are beautiful too, we are in a world with them, a disturbing schitz of lights and interruption that doesn’t just swallow the stage, it bleeds over and encompasses the audience. I can’t get enough.

The talk amongst us in the band is nothing short of enlightening. Every aspect and detail we have and absorb and spit back at each other feels pertinent and mind bending.

Saturday, May 23

Like in most bands, the day started with a difference of opinions. Mine was we were leaving too early. Sound check was at 5 and it’s a two hour drive but I am outvoted. I wanted to sleep more but the rest insist we leave at 12:30. To get there at 2:30, 3 at the latest. For a 5 o'clock sound check. I’m still rolling my eyes. I committed to panties and no shirt and left my leather shorts and my black tee shirt home. It feels good onstage and to walk around the club in just that. I like being looked at. J and Luisa came with their friend Jessica. It turns out Jessica is Frank’s ex’s best friend and they fall into a deep sofa that swallows those that sit on it. Elsner is watching the game and rooting for the Knicks but the Lakers is his team. I’m pretty sure it’s basketball.

The band performs superbly. It feels like we’ve caught on, like the world is being turned on to NASTIE BAND. There are people moving in the audience and screaming and buying more tee shirts and records than they have. It feels like the scene in the movie about the band where things turn, it’s impossible but that is how it feels. The audience is energetic and lots of their fists are in the air. If we were louder or later in the bill, a headlining spot would not be crazy. We are that. We are stunning and visceral, we command the stage in a way the others don’t. The theatrics and the confidence are very NASTIE. We are owning ourselves and today we go into a studio to record what we’ve been performing for the past week.

It’s all about confidence. I sat later on the sofa that swallows people and stared into space. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t doing anything, I was just relaxing with no pressure and it felt right. It felt sad to see Primitive Man for the last time. Saying goodbye to Cookie from Napalm Death was precious. On the boat he had opened up to me about a breakup he was going through and we connected. Later Cookie offered me a make-up wipe that he had in his pouch. NASTIE had run out of them, none had been left behind for me. Cookie had one. Cookie from Napalm Death had a make-up wipe in his pouch and he gave it to me.

Goodbyes on a short tour are hard. I’m relieved no one from our camp asked for a picture with the other bands. We waited for the twins and then drove home in the rain. We are better for it.

The funeral was a safe place though. The people I saw, the people I recognized, the faces I was drawn to were of my past and quite honestly, Los Angeles is that also. Most people I recognize are my friends.

The faces I see are older and fatter. I look into the eyes and there’s history, depth, a story that I’m either ashamed of or encouraged by. Emotion. Fervor. Recognition. I just watched the Sugarcubes on SNL, them doing Birthday. I can barely stand it, the performance, the song, the revelation of what that song was in that moment. Looking into Bjork’s eyes as she does the ‘dum, dum, dum da dum da dee dum, dum dum dum,’ part at the end, I’m wrecked. I’m overblown and affected in the same nostalgic way, what a gift. What is it of memories? What is it about the second go round? Why is the recognition of an older experience so potent? The revisit is always, inevitably, more remarkable. What is it about the retrospect? Think of this. What of the first time? I think of the first time I heard Birthday. Did it resonate? Was it powerful? I remember it being something special and intense but clearly now, as I watch it on YouTube, all these years later, I’m taken to tears. I’m not even exaggerating, I’m crying. Why were those people at the funeral so magnificent to see? And this is for certain true, they were absolutely and 100% not so remarkable the first time around. I’m laughing. Were they? I don’t know, the nuance of that sleu of relatives, they very much could have been.

Pammy looked amazing, so did Megan, Tracy hurt her knee, she’d fallen down outside the church and had a bandage on underneath her torn stocking. Sonny had gotten bigger, what’s he like 9? He plays piano now but that’s not all, he’s playing drums too. How did he know to tell me this? Maybe Michael, his father, had tipped him off. Kara I recognized immediately and I hadn’t even barely known her, I held onto her for dear life when he hugged. It’s what nostalgia is, does? It breathes in me and around me and I cling to it.

In the heart of the funeral, it’s easy to not pay attention. I know the script all by heart, I’d heard it as a child so many times, I know the lines, I know the responses, I know the commands to sit and stand and kneel and stand and then sit again. My sisters and I sit in a row and don’t respond and only do the commands in a sheep kind of way. It’s a little bit of a protest. We are not down with the molesting of children or the shitty politics of the church, we are not onboard. We’re not making like a statement or anything, we’re just bored. I think of nothing but the mundanity of the melody lines of the hymns. They are so random and we talk of it later. ‘I will hold him up,’ it seems like these melodies change every time. There’s rarely a tune in the church I can wrap my ears around, something I remember hearing before. The hymns are as if written by a bunch of tone deaf people, placing notes and tones randomly, in a row, up, down, wherever. No sense at all, no soul. Zero soul. That’s what it is. This is the church and my sisters and I sit in it and disagree with it at the same time. We’re with family though and content. My mind wanders. There’s… is that… it is. It’s Eva behind us. I kiss her hand. It’s Brian two rows ahead and his brother, Kevin, in front of us. At the sign of peace he clarifies this and we all nod and react enthusiastically. We’re in the church, though and we hold it in, keep our expressions in check, mildly.

We didn’t know David, the bereaved, well. He did real estate later in life and then for a minute he was an artist. He had a studio downtown and painted. We dug into this as we sat. David was an artist. His only boy, David also, told me later he’s happy to not be wearing shoes. He lives in Cayucas and wears shoes just twice a week.

‘What do you wear the rest of the time?’ I asked innocently.

‘Flip flops.’

I nodded. I got it. I’d been to Cayucas before. With the same cousins he had. I pictured it. Dark wide sand in front of the water. Like brick it was so saturated, hard to run on, like pavement. It stretched forever. We dug at it as children and threw sandballs at each other. It stuck together so firmly. There was the rock. Morro Rock, out there in the ocean just sitting there like a sculpture. People drove to it and looked at it from the edge of the coast, parked their cars and spent a day with it. As if. ‘It’s just a rock, people,’ I thought as a kid. But now. What I’d give to look at that rock. I remember now being smitten. It wasn’t just a rock, it was a phenom. Out there in the water, covered in bird shit, I imagined getting to it, if I’d swum, and tried to find a place around it from where I looked that would be approachable from the water. There was a spot. A jagged entry point that was splashed on that I thought I could make work. My mind wandered and I looked up at the chandeliers of the church and imagined them falling. I always did this. Imagined, prayed for the chandeliers to fall on us. Crush us. Splinters of glass and wood and pews and us screaming in the aftermath.

When we got to the A frame in Oxnard after the funeral, after the afters, there was glass everywhere. The shower door in the downstairs bathroom stall had shattered. Little cubes of glass in the tub, wet, the soap on the shelves had fallen in the event and were in the tub too, glass sparklets everywhere, all over the floor, into the hall, into the rugged room next to the hall. We stared at it and couldn’t make sense of it.

‘It’s so weird.’ We said it a million times. A million times, we kept repeating it. Eventually we looked it up on the internet because what else were we supposed to do? Apparently it happens. We cleaned it up, swept it first with a broom and filled the plastic trash can with the glass and the containers and the brackets that had fallen into the shower. Then we went at it with the Dyson, picking up the fine particles. It was devastating, not gonna lie. We waited for the third sister to arrive. We hid the car so she didn’t know the other two of us were there, and at a verbal cue, Elizabeth and I launched into The Vamp on the piano upstairs. It was a song my mother used to play. The reveal was pretty precious. We all hugged and convened and walked and swam and reveled in the memory that was to be. The water was cold but we got good with it. If you put your shoulders down into it and stay there, it all becomes normalized. The sun eventually set and we drove in the traffic back to Los Angeles.

I made a post two days ago and had to take it down. I got called out on the inaccuracy and the problematics of it and I need now to address all that. I flippantly said in my post that readers are smart, smarter than people who don’t read. That’s indulgent and flippant and classist of me to say. I’m sorry that I said it. I was being overly ridiculous to make a point but the point was lost and not made at all. I’m frustrated with the world as people stop reading and I take it personally when people don’t read what I’ve written, specifically, but that’s where that stops. It’s just a frustration and it’s not a judgment. I’m sorry I insinuated anything more.

I wrote about Will and Lynn who are in Imperial Teen and complained that they hadn’t read my book. Which isn’t true. Will is reading it now and so is Lynn. In my head somewhere I was writing under the guise that poor victimized Roddy whose best friends weren’t reading his book was more of an interesting read. It’s not my place to misrepresent that situation to better the course of my written narrative and I’m sorry I did that. I had feelings about how long it took them to get to my book, but those feelings should never have been judgments and I’m sorry I went there.

Nothing’s worse than saying the wrong thing. I’ve had a lifetime of that. Sometimes there are repercussions and sometimes there aren’t. I’m trying to speak truths and it’s a specific place to be in writing, this world of memoir. It calls for an accuracy and a responsibility. In my book there were a couple times I swerved away from that. When I couldn’t remember things I made them up. I amped up situational conversations. I overdramatized emotions and sentiments that were encouraged and felt. Maybe it’s alright to make changes like that when the narrative is about you. But when it’s about others it’s not really permissible and I’m sorry, Lynn and Will mostly, for having misrepresented your truths. Will and Lynn are two of my smartest friends, ones I’ve shared creation and music and the gift of all that for almost thirty years. Imagine not respecting that gift and hurting it in some way. Imagine that. That part doesn’t feel good, so shame on me and I’m sorry.

I’m taking the lead and trying to live a good life. Love you, apologies.

Roddy

These rooms, I say, the ones I’ve spent the last week in.

Those rooms were what they were, they were sober places and it’s what spirited them.

These rooms now across the country are different and exactly the same.

It’s the spirit still.

In 1999, freshly and painfully sober, those rooms were on fucking fire. The energy and the loss and the desperation, it was mostly the spinning desperation. We were mostly sober, everyone, for the first time and the stories and the tears and the stories and the reveals and the crying and the whining, not in a bad way, it needed to get out. People died and people cheated and stole things and weren’t to be trusted but suddenly were and that didn’t sit well, the burden of being trusted was way too much to handle, we overflowed with pain and the pain, it was vocalized, It was so loud, we heard it amongst ourselves. Our skin was cracking and breaking with the need to be felt. Being heard. The actual volume of the voices, the way in which the voices carried up to the ceiling, so loud, the the walls and even beyond so that if you were late to a meeting and came upon it you’d hear it as you got close to the door, the sheer pitch of humanity struggling and screaming as a clan.

‘These rooms.’

So many times we’d repeat that phrase. 'The voices in these rooms,’ or ‘you in these rooms for the first time,’ or ‘the honesty you feel in these rooms.’ These rooms. Those rooms.

The folding chairs, the collapsing tables with store bought cookies, the big thermal’d vats of coffee or hot water, the trash can at the side of that with that overlapping trash bag, the coffee stirrers fresh and used, styrofoam, all of it disposable and ugly and so revered, a huddle around it until things started. The walls and the things on them. Those walls, rec-rooms generally, multi purposed in so many ways, kids were in them earlier, rolling around or playing basketball, after that, women doing yoga, and that dichotomy, the freshness and innocence of youth and learners mere hours before and now us, speaking of pain, the torture, the want and the need and the recovery. The recovery, the pain of all of it, the pain is the spirit, and the spirit bleeds. The air and the aura and the blood of all of us, it bled into the room and the room absorbed it. These rooms. Those rooms, they were of us but they were of our stories, they held them and they breathed them like we breathed them. The walls took us in, the ceilings soaked us up and that was those rooms. They became cathedrals and keepsakes of our pain.

I think about theaters in Times Square. Physical spaces all of them and the history of those rooms. The emoting, there can be no denying. What it takes to make people believe, the conviction, so many hearts on so many sleeves on so many stages, it is a potion of passion, so potent, so concentrated, so powerful. The actors, bless their profundity, bless their craft, bless their work, it bleeds off those stages and the audience absorbs in return but think on it please. Consider. It’s absolutely naive to assume that energy stops there. Or to assume that energy as it plunders from the stage would dissipate. It doesn’t. It stays and it’s thick and it’s physical like the actual chairs.

Those rooms.

I’ve been in homes where people have died. Those rooms are dank and stuck and committed to the death they’ve held. You’ve felt it, have you? ‘Someone died here,’ it’s said, I’ve said it. ‘I can feel it.’ We all feel it. Intuition is cheap, not cheap so much, but rampant is what I mean to say. it’s a sense we all hold, don’t say you don’t. You can smell it, can you? You can feel it, can you? I can.

I bought drugs in a room on the second floor of a hotel looking building in Sydney in the centre of town, I’d been sick and there was an adjoining parlor where we were allowed to shoot up in. That room. There were cushions on the floor and a couch that was two colors, half of it dark navy and half a stained yellow. The death in that room was outstanding. The room was loud with death, screaming with it, hurting my ears it was so loud, literally I put my hands to my ears to make it stop and looked around incredulously and asked with no words, ‘Are you hearing this?’ And a junkie skater boy too young to be in that room, looking for a vein on a cushion by the door, he’d flopped down immediately near the door to make himself better, we made eye contact, I saw his eyes behind his bangs and he looked into mine. Nothing needed to be said, he heard it too. In the physical space of death and disparity.

Think of the hospitals and the haunt of those. Can you even? Think of actual churches, no don’t, I don’t trust that haunt but the all of them is most definitely in the walls.

The rooms of punk rock, don’t get me started. Where we are as a youth, as a celebration, as a rebel in our lives at the pinnacle of what matters, politically, protesting, being together and the sheer volume of the music as it comes off the stage, the pits, the shine of those shows, the drunk dumbness of becoming who we. become and the strength of that.

These rooms I’ve been in this past week, though. They are literally screaming. It’s a passion of a people who need more. I’m talking of the bookstores I’ve been visiting. That’s been the reward. Getting to those rooms and addressing us as a grieving nation. We are all in grief, all of us. I am, the people in the chairs are, the moderators are, we are all crying on the inside. Some of us show it and most of us don’t. We’ve been taught and coached to be stoic but the women are honest. The artists also are more giving in their reveals. The men more precious with their conceals, the gays more generous also. It’s best when we’re able to share amongst ourselves what we’re going through but god damn it’s hard. We all are going through it. In that way the rooms, the book stores have become havens. They’ve been well attended and I’ve tried to time my arrival to the tee. Mostly it’s been that way, and it’s perfect when it happens this way. I get there and the seats are filled and I cheer and people cheer back and it starts. That’s the beginning of the share and the bleed of spirit. The ease with which we aim for release and evoke. So much pain. Every day is something new, and not just the politics and the ICE and the fire and the struggle of making it work but the constant belittlement of our standards, the ridicule of who we are, the sweeping away of democracy and care and purpose of ourselves, it physically hurts. That pain in these rooms is apparent.

I show up and boom, it starts, not to herald myself as anything more than a man who’s been through hell and is sharing it. And ok I wrote a book about it. It’s not so phenomenal, that, but as a pinnacle or a weather vane of what’s been and what’s now and what’s ahead, a person in a chair in front of others can be that. A person with a microphone. I’m owning it and I’m leading with it. I’m so grateful for these rooms. They’ve been overwhelmingly resonant and institutes of strength in this. The store in Baltimore. Atomic Books. I was a half hour late and so stressed out, the train just stopped on my way there. Stopped on the tracks and didn’t move for so long. I hate to be late, I’m that person, I can’t stand it and it was eating me, and then, finally, after 30 minutes the train went forward.

It was the day of the nation wide blackout in terms of commerce and to comply with that I paid for and made a gift of my books to all the sweet people at Atomic. It was a powerful and strong crowd which at first I didn’t see. I got to the store with my suitcase and my purse and the big front window of the store was well lit and I could see into the store and it was empty. I faltered and said out loud, ‘is this it?’ After all that, the announcement of my book giveaway, the train, my sweat and getting there…. and then the woman at the door as I opened it and walked in said, ‘they’re all in the back,’ and oh wow. They were all in the back and I couldn’t help but scream when I saw them, it was a room full of people in pain but people on the eve of a powerful day, all huddled and wrapped up, it was absolutely freezing out, scarves and coats and gloves and fogged glasses, they screamed back, we all whooped and put our hands in the air. It was such victory on our part. Good on us. We were all in that room. Together in that room with our feelings and our need to be heard. Kenn made the announcement that I’d be buying them all the books, they kind of knew this already, but he followed that up with the promise to buy all their drinks at the bar in the back of the store. This was glory, this was resurrection, this was church, this was sanctity. The talk, Rahne Alexander, who spoke with me, her volume and spirit, the return of the audience, the Q&A, what we shared that night, what we spoke of, what we promised, what we lived, indefinable, soaking into the space and making the room more of what it was.

All of the rooms have been that, they’ve soaked up the passion of us as we get through this. And not to toot my own horn but fuckin TOOT TOOT. It is what it is, yes, I’m a conduit, a mere conduit but ok, sometimes that’s all it takes. In this volatile fragile world, we only maybe need a person in a chair with a microphone to stir that on. This time around it happens to be me.

I’m on break, back in NYC for four days. I finished in Cambridge. The history of that room spoke. A man I’d seen before, big and tattooed, spoke of being an altar boy and wanting sex. Another man, a writer, spoke of living in the margins. I talked about that time that we shared our stage with Pussy Riot, how that decision was hard because our crew was certain they’d not be allowed back in Russia if we let it happen, the promoter let us know we as a band would certainly not be allowed back into the country. And we did it. That conviction, that promise to the world, that belief in what was right. That might have been the last thing we spoke of in that room in Cambridge. That truth, that passion was soaked into the walls, I felt and I believe we all did. That room, an inevitable result of us, who we were and are two nights ago, that doesn’t go away.

On my knees and bowing and grateful to Atomic Books in Baltimore, Politics & Prose in DC, Moore Books in Havertown, Odyssey Books in South Hadley and Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Those rooms, they opened themselves to us.

Sunday I start again. In Providence with sweet Amra, a special union itself. Then Chicago, then Portland, then Seattle, then Atlanta, then Nashville, then Birmingham. Please, do us all a favor and show up and we can grieve and heal and pray together in the way that we do. Like minded smart people who read and who emote and who feel things the way we do. It’s passionate and it’s political. We are all one and I am so grateful. The world, even America, is a precious space and we are all one.

Love you,

Roddy

Book Tour was set to start today but tonight’s event in Brooklyn at Greenlight has been postponed because of the snow. Sorry if this has inconvenienced anyone but a later date is gonna happen.

Regardless of the cancellation i’m back on the road and back in the mix.

I’ve honestly only toured and performed with bands. The process has only always been a democratic collective, making group decisions. In vans and in busses, all of us together, loading in, loading out, equipment, soundchecks, figuring out where to stay, the sense of us making it work has always been exciting and suffocating and stifling. Imagine the opposite of that process, me alone and all I bring is a book and the stories of my life. Just me and my book and my voice.

The freedom and the liberation and independence I’m afforded by this process is overwhelming. Me not only reading but sharing, talking, expanding on what I’ve written. It’s all about the share. Spoiler, there’s gonna be tears. It’s emotional and will only be that. In the today we’re all suffering from it makes sense, let’s all hunker into it.

It feels a little random when I look at the cities but it’s not. There was a blizzard and a shit ton of snow. Don’t know bout y’all, Brooklyn, but some of the best shows of my life have been in blizzards. There’s something about making the effort to get there, the trudge through the snow and the commitment. It was gonna go off because of that and p.s. it’s fuckin Brooklyn with my best friend, Frank Haines, who’s a wizard and a provocateur. But alas, we’re gonna make room for those that can’t make it work. It’s gonna happen, just not tonight.

Frank’s voice I’ve relied on and believed in since we met. He isn’t necessarily a musician but he joined as the drum machinist in my first presentation of Sasquatch, The Opera. Because I believe in him and from beauty comes truth. He’s an artist and a performer and in lieu of the blizzard event that’s been cancelled is the performance of NASTIE BAND, the band I’m in with Frank at Union Pool on Wednesday, the 28th. One of legends. It’s gonna be major. If you haven’t seen NASTIE BAND, I kind of don’t know where to start. There is a pair of twins, there’s a man who shreds guitar, there’s a rad heavy heavy drummer, there’s amyl, there are masks, there’s screaming, there’s a sense of horror, there’s a lot of fog, the band is covered in mud. It’s scary and profound. The show at Union Pool is gonna be a counterpunch to the cancelled event and I can’t recommend it enough.

From NYC I’m gonna take the train, sounds romantic, right? First to Baltimore where I’ll do an event on Friday with Rahne Alexander, a musician and artist I’ve never met. She’s one I don’t know but people keep reaching out and saying, nicely done with the moderator. I’ve done research and I think she performs barefoot, she’s badass. Rahne. I like her name and I can’t wait to talk to her. From Baltimore I train to DC where I’m gonna do an event at Politics & Prose with my friend Rich Morel. He’s smart and a DJ and a musician and a producer. He co-wrote some songs in Kinky Boots but he also plays in a band with Brendan from Fugazi. He’s got a dreamy voice. It’s deep.

Then the train to outside of Philly. Alex is gonna pick me up hopefully from the station there and we’ll drive to Havertown. Moore Books is really excited to host me and I can’t wait to go there and tear it up. They’ve been so supportive, I can’t wait to meet who’s in charge of this thing. They like, are too into me. I mean, I like me but they really like me. I’m flattered and honored. Alex Auder is gonna moderate, she wrote a book last year called Don’t Call Me Home which is an insane memoir that I go back to again and again, mostly cause I love Alex so much and I miss her when I’m not around her. She’s hilarious and disrespectful and intuitive. I haven’t asked if I can spend the night with her but we had a really funny scenario in which I sneak into her bedroom at night and blow her husband. He thinks it’s her in the fantasy, it’s dark etc. I don’t know. We laughed really hard when we cooked that one up. Fingers crossed.

From Philly I’ll train up to Western Mass. Luisa, one of my besties, is gonna pick me up there and take me to South Hadley. Hopefully I’ll see J (yeah, that J) and Rory, their kid. They live close to South Hadley. Odyssey Books I’ve never been to but the moderator there, Andrea Lawlor is an insanely astute author. She wrote an incredible book called Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, that is amazing. I met Andrea in Provincetown and in that way I feel kind of related to her. I’ll sleep at J and Luisa’s that night. There’s a bedroom there that Joey and I have slept in many times. There’s a stuffed cat from Germany on the bed. I love that cat. I’ll have breakfast hopefully with Rory before he goes to school in the morning and hear about his graffiti and his college plans and moving to NYC. Rory is so cool. Sometimes he lets me and Joey pretend we’re his parents, it’s so fun. We boss him around and he behaves like a real-life son.

From there it’s on to Cambridge where I’ll be doing an event at Porter Square Books with my friend Bitch. Bitch is a badass, dyke performer who I also know from Provincetown. I’ve seen her show lots, she’s really outspoken and she barks for her show down Commercial Street in Provincetown on top of a truck with a megaphone, screaming at the tourists to come and support. She plays electric violin and I’ve had good chats with her. She knows how to laugh. This will be one of them.

Then it’s a little break. I’ll train back to NYC for a couple days. It’s a weird time. Joey and I are moving and I’m between places. It’s triggers to when my apartment burned down and I had to move out for four years. Everything is in boxes somewhere and up in the air and I have no sense of normalcy. There’s something special about it, though. I’ve got nowhere to live and it affords me a big old window of nothingness. That’s from where this book tour comes.

In Providence I’m going to talk to Amra Brooks. She’s one of my best friends and a writer. Her book will come out in 2026 on Michelle Tea’s Dopamine press. Providence will always be insane to me. My memories of that city are filled with chaos, I’m not sure why. Things happened there randomly and chaotically. I was nearly hit by a two by four that flew off of a building scaffolding once and another time I ate boiled hamburgers with some teenagers at a weird spot called Maven Brothers. I met these teenagers randomly on the street. They were obsessed with Huey Lewis’ record Sports and had started their own band called Super Greg and Water Park. What became of them?

From Providence I’ll take my first flight on my tour, I’m considering swapping the ticket out for a train ticket. Chicago. How far is that? Can I train it in two days? I’ve got a day off and then my event at City Lit with Nate Lippens. I never met Nate before but read his book called Ripcord. Is calling someone funny an insult? I go back and forth, being the gay clown I am. I’m being facetious but as a people, gay men are straight up jesters. People rely on us to provide comic relief. It’s kind of our job, to alleviate tension and offer that. Nate isn’t that. Trust, but he’s hilarious. I just felt weird when I wrote him that in our introduction. He’s so much more. He’s deep and dark and introspective. Chicago’s going off.

From Chicago it’s a one two punch on the west coast. I’ve already done LA and SF, coming up is Portland and Seattle. Wouldn’t you think I’d know a bunch of friends who could moderate in these cities? They’ve been tough. For Portland I reached out to Donna and Jody from Team Dresch but both were unavails. I was bragging about this ask to JD, who loves Team Dresch, and she had the bright idea to reach out to Carrie Brownstein. Of course. I was able to get her email address and reached out. Still no response. I moved on to Chuck Palahniuk who lives in Portland and got another no response. It’s hard, cause honestly, who even cares, who even reads, who even answers emails? At the end of the day I decided to just go bareback; in Portland it’s gonna be me alone. Which…. fine. I got this.

In Seattle I was thinking Dyan Carlson of EARTH. It was either Dylan or Dina Martina. Both weren’t available and then I remembered Cedar. Cedar Sigo is a poet, someone I’ve known not well for a really long time. I’ve seen him read and own his books. He’s sensitive and thoughtful and we’re gonna have a time of it.

From Seattle I’ll do Atlanta and Nashville and Birmingham, boom boom boom, all in a row. Joey’s gonna meet me in Nashville and after Birmingham we’re gonna drive cross country to Los Angeles.

There’ll be a lot more stories and details after the fact, it’s hard to write about what’s coming up. Projection isn’t my speciality. What say the sooth? It’s exciting and I’m gonna deliver and trust me, these for sure are rooms you wanna to be in. Join me, please, come and share and introduce yourself. Bring questions and bring an open mind. We’re gonna work through stuff.

Love you all,

RB

It was in Brazil. I’d been a fan since Controversy. If you’re on my team then you’re the same. We all joined Prince at that juncture. I still don’t know honestly what came before Controversy. I remember hearing at one point he opened for The Rolling Stones and got booed. That would have been before Controversy. I’m certain The Rolling Stones fans were oblivious and stoned and completely not ready for what came before the Stones on the stage. I know the feeling. Just not being too open or verse to something new when all you want is familiar and crusty. I get it, I’ve been there, and like I said, I don’t know what Prince was doing pre Controversy. I like to think I would have been open to what he had to offer but who knows. It seems like a stretch, I wonder how his opening for them happened. Like, The Rolling Stones sought out Prince? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Controversy though. It came with the poster. It’s Prince posing in a black g string in the shower for those of you who don’t do vinyl. That visual! Who would, why would, how could, Prince did. But then the song, how it starts and the thump of it as it begins and the poster unfolded, relentlessly sensual and soulful and painful and screaming of sex. And the word, honestly… Controversy. Yes. It was that. It was owning a certain sex that preceded drag, it preceded gay branding, it came before all of that and also Prince was a black man. To couple that though still with religion? Religion in the mix of all of it? Like Prince recites the Lords Prayer in Controversy. Did we forget that? As the poster opens and I was poring over it, Prince posing in the black g string all wet and sexy fuck me in his face and then… the Lords Prayer? My closests and me were so in. So in. People call me rude, I wish they all were nude, I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules. Shit, man.

The record plays out like a sexual jackhammer. Yeah, there’s Do Me Baby, the ballad of all fuck ballads but for sure Prince led with his sex. I can’t skip over 1999, by then we were in the throes, but it was Purple Rain that changed me and the world. For whatever reason it was the storytelling, that’s where Prince went and that’s where I followed. I haven’t watched it since I did in the theatre cause I’m scared to. In the same way that I only got my Tarot cards read once. The results were so good that I never went back. Prince’s intuition to tell the story of Purple Rain spoke to me. I’m a story teller too, Prince. There’s nothing that gets me off more than the journey of an unfold of a tale set to the backdrop of songs. It was like a musical but not as cheesy because it was Prince. We were so onboard that summer. Me and my sisters we’d run around the house and punch each other we were so excited by it. It was so prevalent, I remember Greg Gardner driving me to the airport that summer and saying, ‘Should we listen to it one more time?’ and turning on the radio in the car and there was Purple Rain, the song, on for the millionth time. We couldn’t get enough.

This isn’t a Prince discography or anything, I’m remembering how I met him but I need to remember first how he lived and then how he died. Which is insane because I remember nothing. I blocked it out, it was painful and I didn’t want to know it. I still almost barely do. Did he pass during Covid? Was it before? Don’t answer me, I’m not asking, I’m talking to myself and querying the universe in the absurdity of it. Did Prince honestly die? He did and when he did I really just couldn’t deal and well, clearly, I still can’t so I’m going to lean into the memory of our meeting.

I’d never been to Brazil, it was my first time there. Brazil is such a crazy fantasyland, I was instantly smitten, I can’t believe I never moved there, I loved it so much. I got there after a red eye type of plane trip and we drove from the airport to the hotel where every band in the world was staying. It was Rock in Rio and the lineup was astounding. Guns n Roses, Judas Priest, George Michael, Run DMC, Dee Lite, NKOTB and yeah, Prince. We were all staying in the same hotel and it was mayhem. I remember being delirious and wanting drugs and it was early, early, early, and the driver told us over their shoulder as we drove through the morning traffic from the airport to the hotel, ‘I must insist you take everything from your pockets, leave your jewelry behind, please, no colorful clothing and do not leave the hotel by yourself.’ Which. Ok. I love a challenge.

So I was dressed in all white with all the jewelry I could muster and recently money changed Brazilian real stuffed in my pockets and out on the sidewalks that stretched along the beach of Rio looking for not necessarily drugs but anything that could get me closer to the core of the city that I’d never been in. The tiles on the sidewalk I remember being swirled and dreamy and surreal, intricate and full of a depth I didn’t know. It felt like a boardwalk like Venice Beach but there was a smile on it and a musicality and a celebration that was alive and fresh. There was a man in front of me walking in a thong and kicking a soccer ball expertly. There were fruit stands that were selling coconuts with straws and there was music, not recorded, but live, coming off the beach. Ensembles of men and women with percussion and flutes and guitars and singing and people around them joining in. Naturally and present and in a way I’d never seen. It felt exotic and it was taking me someplace I needed to be.

The hotel was on the water and it wasn’t the rockstars so much as it was the riff riff that accompanied them. I saw Rob Halford in the swimming pool in a speedo and I wasn’t honestly aware of who that was. I never did rock in that context when I was young but I’d caught wind of the fact that he was gay and not open about it. He was in the shallow end with a sexy beefy dude that was like beyond. Speedos were suddenly in the mix in a way that was sexy and macho. All the Brazilian dudes wore speedos. I think I was mostly bent on meeting Dee Lite. I wanted to hang with DJ Dmitri. He was sexy and Russian. I never saw him, that was a miss. Lots of them I didn’t see. I didn’t have the wherewithal to know that I shouldn’t have presented so ‘available’ but it wasn’t clear to me that I was famous or of that ilk. I was like a tourist and as a tourist I was mostly asking questions and hearing about things.

Maoro, our translator, bodyguard, security detail told me he’d been with George the day before, all day. George Michael, another man in the rock world performing at the festival who wasn’t out of the closet. It’s hard to imagine but I remember Maoro being covert and speaking a secret speak in terms of George being gay. But letting me in on what he’d been up to nonetheless. Which was nothing, honestly. It amounted to a date he had with someone he’d been fucking on the beach. They were on a quiet beach and they held hands. Maoro had been his bodyguard the day before and had witnessed that. But that was something I took in as part of the whole.

Prince was probably the most elusive in the mix of who’d been there and who was going to perform. Because it was Prince. He was the pinnacle of mystery and the most interesting, honestly. The word on Prince was that he had asked for 200 white towels to be brought to his room. That. That was enough. Two hundred white towels. I mean, wrap your head around that. What the fuck, my mind spun. What is Prince using two hundred white towels for? And the audacity of the ask. Astounding. My band and I talked about it with anyone who would listen.

The synergy of the Brazilian people and the rockstars in the hotel hinged on the thick rope and a throng of young people behind a barricade in front of the hotel. I hadn’t seen that and it hadn’t occurred to me that I was part of the circus that was being cloyed at. I jumped in. I signed autographs and talked with the kids, I didn’t care, it was a closeness that provided a window to a part of where we were and what we weren’t seeing. It was mayhem, the interaction but it was that and it was all wild and loud and boisterous. Without engaging, though, there was a separation and a hierarchy.

That night we arrived there was a party and it’s where I met Prince. I remember I was wearing all white still, I had on quarter length baseball pants of some sort that I’d found at a sporting good store and puffy white sneakers that were popular then and a long sleeved white shirt that said NO BONES on it. That was the name of my best friend’s hair salon in Los Angeles. I had hair that was kind of cut in a bob and I had an eyebrow piercing and I had on beads that I’d found for sale on the beach of Rio when I’d walked that morning. They were round wooden beads that were big and on a necklace. From the start we knew that Prince was at the party. He was in his own space, with us, but separate, and I went for him immediately. Like a magnet, I scoured the big dance floor and its perimeters and I found him. There he was. There was Prince. He was in a chair. In my memory it was like a throne. It wasn’t a normal chair, that’s for sure. He was sitting in a throne behind a velvet rope. Again, my memory. It was definitely a barrier between Prince and the rest of us and in my head it was a velvet rope. I’d left the band and I was drawn to him, blindly and like a convert or one of the minions or a worshipper at a temple, I approached the edge of the rope and there was Prince. Sitting there in the chair, looking at no one at all. Through those eyelashes. It was the eyelashes more than anything. That was the expression of Prince to me, to anyone, I’d felt compelled and convinced to acknowledge, Prince’s eyelashes. Like they were fake but they weren’t, they were long and alluring and sexy and suggestive and he batted them slowly and calmly, it dictated his every gesture. He led with the eyelashes.

‘Can I… may I?’ I had to address his bodyguard who was on the other side of the velvet rope. He was invisible, a thick man in a suit with a walkie talkie clipped to his lapel and nervous and of course, protective, doing his job. I explained to the bodyguard, ‘I’m in the band Faith No More, we’re playing tomorrow at the festival and I just, I just wanted to say hi….’ The bodyguard didn’t look at me at all, he went directly to Prince in the chair and leaned over and into Prince’s ear said what I had said. I couldn’t hear this, the disco music was playing loudly and it was hard to hear, but I knew that this was going on. The bodyguard was saying what I had said into his ear into the ear of Prince as I waited on the other side of the velvet rope for Prince to respond.

I mean, that’s enough right there. To be right specifically there. To have said something that is being parlayed to Prince in a throne behind a velvet rope as you wait? What else is there in life? Why go on? Why wait for an answer? What could possibly happen or occur that could live up to that expectation or want? Nothing. I considered just walking away. What a statement that would have been but also I was absolutely smitten. I was staring at Prince as he listened and watched him, watched his eyelashes, his legs were crossed in the fem style, his boots were pointy beyond belief, he adjusted subtly and slowly in his chair and he nodded to the bodyguard. Prince nodded and in a flash too fast to even clock, the velvet rope was removed and I was expected to approach Prince.

I did, I approached Prince. It was maybe four steps and there was me standing before Prince. He looked at me directly and unwaveringly from his throne and I wanted to do that thing with my arms where I do a kind of a roll with my hands in a present of ‘I am a peasant and you are nobility’ and I’m not saying this in any sort of judgmental hierarchy, I am saying this because it is what it was. I was standing in front of Prince and Prince is a miracle and a deity unlike no other. He was in a throne and he was looking directly into my eyes. The first thing I noticed, even before I collected myself and focused in on his eyelashes was his smell. The smell of Prince wafted off of Prince. It was an aura and a cloud and a periphery of purple. I can only describe it as such. Prince smelled of purple. What else would Prince smell like? It was lavender, it was a floral, it was a spice, it was anything but bland, it wasn’t of Brazil, it wasn’t of a space, it was a fervor of a flavor that was wild and punctuated with ripeness and a sexuality but it was most definitely more than anything… purple. I basked in it and I looked back into Prince’s eyes and god damn. Prince was not just looking at me, he was making eyes at me. I’m not exaggerating or speculating, Prince and I had chemistry. There was no doubting this. We were looking into each others eyes and his eyelashes, those dreamy too long lashes were batting, slowly batting, and his lips pursed out a tiny bit and out of a very fast heart beat I began my pitch to Prince.

‘I’m in Faith No More, my name is Roddy, I play the keyboards, I’m such a big fan, I’m a huge fan. We play tomorrow night. Did you already play?

Prince took me slowly up and down and his lips pursed some more, just a little bit and he said, ‘Yes.’

Prince was ok with the silence that followed. I looked at him and he looked at me and nothing was said. It was like a game of chicken that I was not going to win, I was nervous and in the presence of a spirit, clearly, I gave in.

‘So,’ I kind of stammered, ‘you’re all done, that must be a good feeling, What are you gonna go back to…’ and I pretended like I was trying to place in my mind where it was he was from or where he’d going back to when, obviously, I knew, we all knew. ‘Minneapolis?’

Prince got me. We had something. He could see right through me and he liked me. He smiled just a tiny bit and then said the most he’d say.

‘Argentina.’

And it ended somehow. I think it was my nervousness that exited me out of the conversation and the situation, I can’t completely recall, it was as if a dream and I went away and I don’t think I stayed at the party because how much more could there have been? I’d done it all, all that mattered.

I might have said, ‘good luck,’ to Prince. I can’t remember how we finished up. As if Prince needed my luck but I don’t know. It’s so great to hear, ‘good luck,’ from absolutely anyone. It felt amazing to say, also. Like me and Prince, he’d already performed and was moving on and we were just two people, checking in with each other. I love Prince so much.

Peanut butter is disgusting, everyone knows it. Nutty is sick, it’s like vomit. The smell of the chewed up nut in its oil, ground down and to a paste, so gross. Also, in a similar way, the stench of sweet, not sugar-sweet but fruitiness. Revolting. There is nothing grosser than papaya. Banana too, honestly. All baby food. Anything puree’d or chewed, with a sense of sweetness it turns the stomach. It’s all so sickening.

Rot. Things going bad. There’s a smell. The world, me, us, our heads listening to what we listen to. Watching what we watch, settling for what’s offered. The low caliber of it all, it smells bad. We shit it out and it’s only bile and bad and gross and horror. We all stink, our breath, our bodies, our sweat, our feet, the smell of our underwear, the socks we take off, the dental floss, the dirty of our days, disgusted and gagging, I’ll vomit and that’ll smell. I’ll cum and it smells too and the sweat that it takes to get there overtakes the room. The shit from the toilet paper, the smell of the room that I shit in, it’s all revolting, it’s us, it the world living and decaying and dying. What a world we’re expected to partake in.

I’m not as sensitive as some, there are noses that are so particular and offended so easily. Mine isn’t even one of those. Still I go on and on. The noses that take pride, that are so adept and so sensitive, they really suffer. They must. How do they even get by with the horror of the world? Are there enough good smells in the world to combat the ugly? Honestly, if there were two columns and in one were the bad smells and in the other the good… cmon.

Maybe the nightmare of nasty smells is just us getting through it all, is it? Just kind of wincing around every corner with wrinkled up noses? Offended. Gagging. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for me to want to find a better place.

I bought a perfume in France. It was expensive but so fucking worth it. I’d met Florence at the perfume mart a couple years ago. She works there, we’ve had a long standing friendship. She’s a little bit odd. Also a little bit old for the shop, all the other kids are young and fashiony. Florence is older, not as old as me, but older than her co-workers. And in turn, she’s so much more intuitive. Somehow in our dealings we’ve gotten onto music and she’s a big fan of…. she was trying to explain it to me, our back and forth is tough, her English is not as bad as my French, we have a really difficult time at it. We get by but it’s a struggle.

‘From of Mexico, a band of sound of typical Mexico,’ she’s suggesting.

‘Mariachi?’

‘No. Noise,’ and she imitates a riff and pouts her lip and makes a ‘vhvhvhvhvh’ like the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

‘Oh, death metal,' I suggest.

‘No…’ I’m getting closer and she imitates the singing, puts an imaginary microphone to her mouth and chants something really deep and satanic.

‘Oh, grindcore,’ and she nods and settles for that, though it’s not quite it. Apparently there’s a scene, specifically from Mexico, not grind core or death metal, that’s noise driven and goth. This is what Florence is currently into. I love France.

She suggests a smell when I tell her I don’t really care for cologne. The tropes of it, the cliches, the perfumery, she gets me and pulls a bottle from the shelves.

‘It’s the scent of computer, but burning.’

I’m intrigued.

‘Of the cleaner,’ she’s looking for the word and can’t find it. ‘The machine, no, the place of clean.’

‘Laundromat? Launderette?’

‘No, of industry,’ she’s still looking for the word.

‘Drycleaner?’

‘YES. Drycleaner.’

‘It’s the smell of drycleaner?’

‘Yes,’ and she takes the cap off and sure enough. It’s immediately the smell of the dry cleaner, whatever that weird synthetic, hot-ironed waft is that comes from the back, through the hangers and the plastic cloaks on the pressed shirts and the paper on the hangers, it’s all perfectly condensed into this little bottle in Florence’s hand. She knows me, she gets me, I buy it, I wear it constantly and it helps. Florence suggested I use it as a base but she and I both know that it works on its’ own.

On the plane home I have it in my bag, the perfume of the drycleaning. I’ve read about it and it’s apparently based also on the smell of a laptop on coals. As if that’s a smell. Fucking France. I love it and I spray it into the napkin from my meal and hold it to my nose and breath it in. The smells on the plane are so heinous and it’s a perfect escape. I’m thinking of Florence and our time and I’m thinking about where we’d go if we traveled together and whether or not we’d share a room. I’ve got a pretty good idea that Florence prefers her own room.

I was coming home from Brazil once on the plane and I’m remembering that particular flight. We’d never been there as a band, it was our first time, and I’d met a group of kids who loved a scent, Lanza de Perfuma. It was a disinfectant that came in an orange can. They’d told me about it and I was intrigued enough for them to go and get me a can for the trip. As a sort of farewell gift. It wasn’t a scent, per se, it was a cleaner that was used on machinery but if you inhale it deeply it takes you places. Not like amyl, it was more of an auditory sensation. We sprayed it in our napkins the way I was spraying my perfume on the flight home from France and passed it back and forth, huffing it deeply. Hard to describe but most like a ‘boing boing boing BOING BOING BOING (i’d make the letters bigger if I could),’ getting louder and shriller and then softer and quieter as the high subsided. It was more of a noise than anything. So fun. We did it again and again and got headaches and passed out.

There’s that book about smells and it’s French. Kurt had given me his copy when he was alive. Something about a perfumer making a smell to replicate the scent of the body of a girl he’d smelled in passing. Perfume. It was kind of straight and creepy, I’d revisit it but my docket is full. I’m reading The Bell Jar again and also Blood Meridian simultaneously. It turns out two things together is absolutely doable. I can read both of these and get equal joy. Somewhere in the combination of these two flavors is where I’m writing from with a new project. Maybe it’s the same with smells, I can intake the horror and also dab it with a fixer smell like the dry cleaning smell. I’m gonna work on this.

Anyway I’d meant to say before I got distracted I’m going to do some East Coast readings and talks coming up. In January, there’s gonna be Brooklyn and Stamford Connecticut at a Library and Baltimore and DC and Philly all in a row. I’ll be speaking with best friends, writers, artists. The readings that have gone down have just been superb. I can’t even. It’s a weird place to go in my head to have to compete with what I’ve taken part in over the course of my ‘performing’ life. Like readings might some bland or dull and not enough reason to leave the house compared to the intensity and bang of a loud rock show, but trust me on this. The nostalgia and beauty and memories and passion that’s been in the house of the past readings I’ve done in NYC and in California: sublime. Just amazing. Those of you who’ve been in the rooms, thank you, I love you, you get it, you get us, we are royalty.

We Are The Royal We.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve only ever shared, it’s the way I was brought up, what’s yours is mine, that’s family. The flip-side being gimme gimme, is that so crazy? The transactional back and forth is how it works, fair and right. I am a couple days into the share of my memoir and it would be great to sit back and expect nothing in return. To say I don’t expect a reward or accolade would be lying.

I met a writer named Charlotte. It’s one of the perks of my new job, meeting smart people. OMG, the dummies I’ve known. Just kidding but the entry into the world of books has opened a portal. It’s a unique type of person that follows an idea through to the fruition of an actual book. It blew me away, holding mine.

You’ve really done it this time,’ I told myself.

I committed and I followed through. In my head, thinking of me as a doer has always been a stretch. I guess that’s inaccurate, I’ve known I always do, in my head, I just seldom finish. Charlotte clearly is a finisher and she’s written an amazing book about her life journey that takes her to a monastery in France where she gets clean and rests in a thrush of self discovery. Her book is stunning and I’m getting a slow, steady understanding of sitting in the now. (Practicing Dying by Charlotte Northall is out on Pilot Press and I can’t give it a high enough recommend).

What if the expectations were nil and I was able to just give, unreciprocated, the gift of my life and my words and my craft, things to scatter, letting it stop there. I will say I’ve gotten better. I used to make a lot more money. I had huge crowds and would sell thousands of dollars worth of merch every night. Cut to today, all my recent projects I feel very fortunate if I can break even and that doesn’t necessarily happen. My point is I am fine making less but what if that less is a nothing? I’m aiming to be ok with that.

The read itself is a big ask I’ve learned. Who even reads? Does the same policy hold? If no one is reading my book, my Substack, the words I craft… is the gift still a gift? I need to check in with a buddhist. Is the gift just the giving? Is it ok to stop there? In buddhism the end of my project could very likely be my written words on a page, end of. Ok but hell no. The smell of the face paint and the roar of the crowd. I’m way too vain, I love the appreciation. I told the audience in London as I was reading last week, ‘all I ever want is to be appreciated, patted on the back, and to hear someone say ‘good job.’’ Someone from the audience shouted back, ‘Good job, Roddy,’ and wow that felt good.

Let me know your thoughts. Love you. There are book events coming…

November 13 at The Strand in NYC at 7pm with Paul Soileau NYC Event

November 18 at Skylight in LA LA Event

November 19 at A Satellite of Love Book Shop in San Luis Obispo

November 20 at City Lights Books in San Francisco SF Event

I’d love to see you all and make new friends.

Roddy

You fly then you’re there, then the fashion, the looks, the hair, the clothes, the edifice, the cobble, the buzz, the shoes, the bikes and the poo on the streets.

The things I’ve seen are all I can think, I’m telling stories and reliving my outcomes before I’ve even experienced them. I can’t wait to share, it’s my downfall but a talent, I’m sharing before even I’m living. A testament to me, I’m that way but still. I’m sitting in a laundromat in Paris, trying to just chill.

The hilarity of Paris is astounding. I’ve never laughed harder. The first retelling, it’s not so funny but the intrigue is French, twisted and coy, twee and crooked, winking, winking, winking....

Pony and I were in front of the gallery space with Michael who we’d just met. The crowd had cleared and the alley street was mostly empty and as we wrapped up the event a dog walked by. It was a well kept handsome dog with a collar and so odd to see him walking alone like that. I spoke of the dogs in Mexico City, the mongrels that roam sniffing and snarling, often in packs. This dog wasn’t like that, he was French and obviously from a good home.

‘We could...’ Pony started and I agreed. An animal rights advocate would grab him and hold him and contact the owner on his collar, he was on his own and in danger. And then as if on cue, the dog, who’d reached the corner, crossed the busy street, just crossed it in the crosswalk like a person would, not looking both ways, but the traffic stopped for him.

‘No,’ we shouted, and it was too late, he was gone.

An anomaly, the dog and his journey. We went back to deciding on dinner, then walked, the troupe of us, towards a Vietnamese restaurant in the direction the dog had gone. After the busy street that the dog had crossed we walked as a crew in threes and passed a school front where nannies with strollers were waiting outside. The bell hadn’t rung and the doors were shut but the nannies were waiting for their charges, the children, ostensibly, inside, still learning. And there, at the frontest part of the closed door to the school, sat the dog, waiting.

Later at the Vietnamese restaurant Alex (@alexauder) let her hair down. She’s my favorite person in the world. She’d been at the head of the table, typically, pulling out her boob again and again. Her talent is the ability to hold things under it. Heavy things, impractical things, a pair of glasses, a bottle of hot sauce, which she did earlier during the meal but the focus had shifted to her hair. I looked up as if stoned and seeing her hair for the first time I thought it was a wig (it had been up all day). ‘Where did you get that?’ I bewildered and realized, no, it wasn’t a wig at all, it was Alex’s cockeyed doo, a haystack, a tromp of different lengths and the shape of a big spread taco. Holli was examining it, picking at it and theorizing like she does. She’s the best hairdresser in the world and she had ideas. There was a tiny bit of tsk tsk but not judgmental and in a beat, Holli snatched the scissors off the table, the ones we’d been cutting the meat with, wiped them down on her napkin and brusked Alex outside to the front of the restaurant and started chopping at her hair. ‘Is there a vision?’ I asked obliquely. ‘Of course there’s a vision,’ Holli muttered, she was deep in it, chopping away. Alex in the center of everything, quiet at last, me recording with my camera and Pony and Leon laughing and swarming around it all, I’ve never laughed harder.

The next night, there was a ventriliquist in the mix, I can’t say I’ve ever seen one perform. She brought the doll out of a box, a crate, an old luggage parcel and my heart has never beat faster. Something about her shoes, the doll, her name was Ronny, I was mortified and fascinated and I didn’t blink for so long. She was very into her hair, Ronny, she brushed it back away from her face a million times, she was sassy, she didn’t take shit and at one point she made out with her owner. I couldn’t. I clutched at Macy and Capri and I started to hyperventilate.

I asked the ventriliquist later if she kept the box locked. Ronny was back in it and I need to admit forthrightly that I was scared. ‘No,’ Sophie said. The ventriliquist’s name was Sophie. ‘Does she get out?’ I ventured. ‘At night sometimes she’ll get up and make herself something to eat,’ Sophie said. My heart was still beating so fast. ‘Don’t you wanna lock it?’ I asked. ‘Why would I lock it?’ she practically interrupted me, kind of angry. ‘Of course not,’ I tried to take it back, ‘yeah, why would you?’ I was so scared, the box was right there at her side.

Later at dinner Alex whispered in my ear, ‘Ronny’s here,’ I thought she was fucking with me, I’d finally calmed down but sure enough, Sophie had come into the restaurant. Randomly, she was with a friend and had come to the same place. My heart picked up again, ‘Is she here?’ I asked her, and she immediately knew what I was talking about, ‘I left her at the hotel,’ she said. I started to spin again.

Goddammit, Paris. I’d arrived here after so much. I left Provincetown and recorded my audio book for a week which in and of itself was an emotional war zone, played a mind-blowing set with CRICKETS at the Parkside, then moved my entire apartment I’ve lived in for fifteen years with Joey, on his birthday, to our new home on Bond Street, flew to LA and drove to Oxnard to meet Will where we worked on lyrics and drove back to LA to finish recording the Imperial Teen record. Then to Paris for the launch of my memoir.

It makes sense, I finished it here. As it did to have Florence read before me. Florence Derive is a painter and the Frenchest person I know. She taught me about the history of French and the architecture and the literature when I was here last year. Having her involved nailed it. It was all about that. The reading and the week at the Journal Gallery was sublime. The people that connected and met. Holli and Pony met Alex and I met Alex’s husband, Nick, and Amanda showed up on a scooter and took pictures and Capri and Macy were in the mix and we laughed so much and I got to meet Whitney (@whitneymallett) who is a dream and Tony who is Skype Williams (@skypewilliams) whose reading blew me away. I met my favorite supermodel, Leon Dame, Michael Portnoy performed and Alex read and rolled around on the ground and did her boob trick. And the surprises, Michael Stipe and Tomás, Kim Gordon, Tabboo, Marianne, Clemency, Cyrus, Sinisa, Evan… Art Basel was kinda whatever but I got to see that gorgeous Martin Wong painting, the round one, and two ones by Paul P I never had. I’m so lucky to be alive. Thank you for having me, Paris, I’m moving here.

I love the sound of my voice. Getting through the recording of the audio version of my book and god damn. Going through it. Hearing myself is like telling myself what I’ve already lived, what I already know, where I went with my life. There aren’t really surprises but shit goddamn. It’s a lot not only to have lived but it’s a lot to share, to put out in the world. Part of the drama and the impact of what I’m feeling this week is the realization that others are going to experience this. Putting it out on the world is a big responsibility, that’s the know, that’s the take away from this process for me.

Back when JT Leroy first happened and Sarah came out I made contact with him. I talked to him on the phone, he lived in San Francisco and was 19 or 20 and his first book had come out and he was shy. I don’t remember how we got in touch but it was before the entire world got onboard. Eventually he became friends with Courtney and Wynona and Gus Van Sant but at this stage he was doing his first book readings of Sarah and asked me to speak for him at Skylight Books in Los Angeles where I lived at the time. I was happy to because as I’m certain he recognized, I am a delightful and engaged speaker. I was the most famous person he knew at the time and I told him I would love to. I did and I told this story:

‘I love the sound of my voice. I don’t get along with my niece, Charlotte, she’s four and she’s been a real bitch since I’ve moved down here from San Francisco. My sister, her mother, asked me to read to her bedtime stories the other night so I went into her room. She was in the bed and I sat on the edge and picked up a book. I wasn’t at my best, I’d grown weary of her skepticism of me. It was a book about a whale and I didn’t put my all into it, I was a little reserved. Still, my reserved is more engaging and captivating than the rest, I am animated, and like I keep saying, my voice is special. I got a couple sentences in and she stopped me.

‘Roddy. Roddy. Could you just read with a normal talking voice. The way you’re doing this is kind of annoying.’

Obviously I slammed the book down and left the room. She was four at the time.’

Just as a follow-up, we’re good now, me and Charlotte. Couldn’t love each other more.

The readings are coming up and the difference between reading and what I’ve done my whole life, playing music, couldn’t be sharper. With the readings there is no equipment, no set up, no sound check, no cords, no instruments. All I do I show up with the book. Or even without the book, I’m sure they’ll have a stack of them somewhere onsite. So I just show up and stand alone and read. I couldn’t be more excited about how seamless it’s gonna be.

That said, I am putting my all into it. For the actual audio reading, in a Times Square adjacent studio with a smart and engaged engineer named Kyle, It took the everything I have out of me. I can’t explain it but I asked Dolly last night if she experiences that when she acts. It may happen onstage, she claims that with TV there are breaks so it’s not as intense. I saw Jinkx Monsoon as Mary last week and I figure, as a stage thing, also, to do that type of performance, to throw yourself into it that intensely, it’s gotta be similar, the exhaustion must take it’s toll. Honestly though, my what I’m doing is so personal. It’s my life I’m reliving in this process and I can barely move. Like bless you, Jinkx but you’ve got a script. I wrote mine.

I sat on a barstool and ate some light lunch after the final read. I could barely focus, my eyes must have looked dead, I had no time or energy for the chatter of the people next to me, they’d wanted to engage but I couldn’t. I didn’t have it. My leg had fallen asleep on the stool, has that ever happened to you? For some reasons, stools, my leg fall asleep. And get this, has this ever happened to you, when your leg falls asleep and you don’t know it? You get up and surprise. I stepped down and my leg, my foot just collapsed, dead. I fell down in the restaurant on the ground and everybody, I just gave up. I just laid there. Damage done, I didn’t care. People looked and came to my aid and it was a whole thing. I got up, a man in an apron helped me and the hostess who was kind of a bitch just let it all go down and went back to her iPad.

Later I went to a reading by Laura Albert. We hadn’t spoken really since I was duped years ago by her avatar, she had clearly been in on it, I’d heard snickering now that I think back on it. I was talking to JT on the phone, he in SF and me in LA, and he ended the conversation abruptly in his Southern she-boy drawl, ‘Ok, listen, I gotta go poop,’ and then there some laughter in the room on the other end of the phone. I know now that was probably Laura. I’ve let it all go, like I do. Laura was doing what Laura had to do to put her voice out into the world of literature and now 15 years later, she’s in New York and I went to her reading. We’d talked on Instagram a little bit and over the years but our past had never been discussed and we’d never met. She’s a smaller woman, gothy and witchy as I knew she would be and she said, ‘You’re a really good hugger.’ Thank you, Laura, I know this about myself. As well as I know what a good reader I am, I know what a good hugger I am.

I came home and put on Earth and tried to play piano to it. What a crazy notion that is. I asked Dylan who is basically Earth to play with Imperial Teen over 30 years ago. It was as ridiculous as an assumption back then as it is today to play piano to this grinding guitar sloth. Some things are just meant to happen.

After the CRICKETS show on Sunday I’m gonna move. Joey comes down for his birthday and we’ll move apartments that day. That seems fucked but kind of apt too. Then I’m gonna go to LA to meet Imperial Teen and finish our record. Then I’m gonna go to Paris to meet Alex and hang out and celebrate my book. Paris is going to be my first book launch which makes no sense but also sense. I finished the book there for a month last year at that weird little library. No sense and sense together.

In the same way, I’ll go to London right after that and do a couple book events. One at Rough Trade and one at Donlon’s. Then down to Brighton and then back to Paris and in mid November I’ll start my readings in America.

Come and find me.

I only do this for you.

My first book, The Royal We, comes out in November on Akashic Books. Order it here: Pre-order The Royal We

And one more thing, I’m looking for projects, editorials, essays, interviews, reviews. I’m feeling good about my voice and want to engage. Hit me up for projects. xo

The Tip of the Cape

A town that sits on an island that sits connected but not to a long stretch of land called the Cape. It's at the tip, there are a lot of jokes about it being just the tip. The undeniable thing about a tip is it’s the very end, the ultimate stop and the place that’s there when there's nowhere left to go. To continue would be to leave, to walk off of the tip and to land in the water, to disappear, to sink and eventually drown. Provincetown is the moment before that. The last breath and flicker before it all falls away. Landing on this geographic is as far away from the rest of America as you can be while still being connected. That is the point.

There's talk about the drive and where we sit on it and the inconvenience of how long it took to get here. It's a big part of it. The commitment to make the travel and to get away and to separate yourself with as much distance and gusto you can muster from the rest of the rotten country. The space, the isolation… there we have it. Provincetown (prǒ-vins-tǒwn) noun, a separatist feeling of becoming yourself by means of leaving the rest of the world.

I’m realizing, as I write, the similarity between the tip of the Cape and San Francisco, the city I lived in for twenty years that I just finished writing a book about. Sailors, vagrants, wharfs, fog, a haven for queers, costumery, history, drugged out bliss, there are many like things. They’re both separatist spaces, unto themselves, uniquely different but sisters still, holding hands, touching fingers like in that Michelangelo painting, from all the way across the big country.

It's always mentioned, the 'magic' of Provincetown, and when I first came I wasn't having it. I took a red eye here that first trip, from LA to Boston and then from Boston in a tiny plane that seated eight. We sat according to the pilot's wishes, he pointed at each of us and moved us around in the seats, we’d had to weigh in to balance the plane out. It was Bear Week and there were mostly bigger guys. I'm a bigger guy. There are feelings that come up, being weighed, telling your weight, being addressed according to your weight. Part of Bear Week is owning the largeness of our bodies without shame. It's difficult, though, when you're being assessed on that physical aspect in the way that it might make a plane crash. Blame the fatty sitting in the wrong seat, he killed us.

Jack picked me up at the smallest airport I'd been to, it was just a landing strip that didn't have enough room for itself between the two waterbodies on either side. Jack was in shorts and sandals with his dog Chico and David Macke who didn't stop talking. My head was spun from not sleeping and everything looked off and weird. His house he was renting was on the bayside just a minute, less, on the edge of town. He'd been to the Bowie exhibit in London and had left Bowie guitar picks in a bowl at the side of my bed, like mints on a pillow. Outside of the window of the top floor bedroom was the low tide. I'd never seen anything like it. It looked like mud, abandoned, potholed stretches of mud, boats sitting in it, people far out, walking on it with buckets, that reached water far off in the distance. This, Jack told me, was where we swim, and I only thought how? I went to sleep, I'd been up all night and when Jack woke me the tide had come in. The light was sparking on top of the water where the low tide had been and we went out to swim in it. It was still weird, I didn't get it.

I grew up in California, the prettiest beaches in the world. For all its faults and bumps, California owns what is parks and rec. They do it best and I've been spoiled by it all my life. California is unrivaled in that department and Provincetown was fucking weird. There was that mud and the cobbley crook of the landform and the crust of the people, the fishermen, the sailors, the boatmen, who I guess were of an ilk of Moby Dick. And then there were flies. There were black flies, big ones that landed on you on the beach and bit your skin, chomped pieces out of you in a painful way that's beyond what even a bee sting might be. 'I'm sorry,' I said under my breath, not magic.'

And then it was.

The magic is multi-faceted but first of all it is the people, starting there. In the beginning of time, Provincetown was for Greenwich Village refugees, writers who ran from the confines of the McCarthy era, artists accused of siding with Socialism. It was immortalized in Reds, a passion project of Warren Beatty’s and Diane Keaton’s, made in the early 80's. It's a deep journey of commitment and love and betrayal in the face of a political clunk that I saw with my parents in a week I was punished and only allowed to do things with them. I've seen it since. The characters in the film flee to Provincetown and find a haven in the outsidedness and endpoint of the geographic. There's a fury and wildness to the portrayal that resonates today. It's why we go there, reasons of the want to be part, the search for connection. It happens in that specific way. The people I meet in Provincetown end up being in my life. J, Luisa, Rory, Kim, Mary White Horse, Ryan, Sascha, Dolly… The casual conversations become more intense, the quality condenses in the way that two becomes four becomes eight becomes sixteen becomes thirty two becomes sixty four and quickly we are one hundred and twenty eight amount of quality between two people. I'm wondering as I'm typing about the flipside of that dynamic. Does the chemistry go equally sour at times, does the other direction happen? It hasn't a lot for me, I'm usually smitten and engaged, seldom angry, seldom turned off.

This all said. I don't live here, I'm not from here, I'm not a part of the fabric in the way that locals are. I feel that, I'm not accepted here in the way that the locals are. Townies have a strong sense of pride and I'm not one. Which is fine. It's just a bit of a disclaimer in my writing is all. An older man asked if I'd moved here for good and I said no and he said, 'You will.' And in my head I was like, no I won't. I love the opera too much and the urgency of the subway and the business of the city. But this isn't about that, it's about Provincetown.

Disclaimer aside, in addition to the community and the connections, there is the light. I must lead with the light. It's the ultimate, the reason why painters and photographers and maybe even poets gravitate here, what keeps them engaged is the light. At most times of the day. I need to get up at sunrise because I haven't been up yet at that time but the rest of the day, particularly the twilight, is, yes, magical. More than magical, it's spiritual and godlike, that color, that hue, the way that it falls on certain things and then even on the things that the sun isn't on, it's all a splendor I hadn't experienced before here. There's got to be scientific studies on it, I imagine they'd talk about the way the land here is surrounded by water. The refraction and the reflection, the bouncing of the sun off of that, the shine and the sharpness of it all, how brittle it is coming off of what's wet and how the diffusion happens in different shades and shadows and shapes. There's a typical window of time with it, it's strongest at that specific moment as it goes away, the sun, but most of the day is sparkling and resonant in a way I'd never encountered before.

And then the flowers and the way that everything grows in the presence of that special light is insanity. The hydrangeas. Hydrangeas. It's all about the hydrangeas. There are mostly white ones, there's a wall of them on my yard that come out at the end of the summer. It's a vertical field, an active and shimmering work of a canvas, it doesn't seem real, the flowers are bursting out of themselves, showoffs, dandies screaming amongst themselves, you've got to see it. So many times I'm riding my bike or walking with Joey and we just can't believe it. I have to stop and feel it, touch it and break off a piece of a leaf and put it to my nose to prove that it's even real. The underside of the leaf is matte, almost dusty, the top, exposed to the sun, it shines and between my fingers the smell is like a mint or maybe a rosemary not yet dried, fresh and sharp. All the flowers are this way, they are remarkable in bloom, unlike any other.

There are physical attributes, so many but know what Provincetown does best? It looks the other way. It's a helpful life lesson and a guideline the town provides.

If out of the corner of your eye someone is falling down or there's an adjacent or looming catastrophe, it’s not necessary to look directly at that or take that in. How much more gracious to give that mistake some distance, it's just respectful. Let that accident or participant learn on their own without your scrutiny or involvement.

Ptown is sort of that. Some celebrations of self don't need to be applauded. Fuck wildly and bump up your enthusiasm, in Provincetown you can explore yourself without an audience. It's not that no one cares but quite simply no one cares to look. The town is giving the town the space it needs to be itself. That dark room in Purgatory there are outrageous things happening, just let them be.

I parked in a fucked up way on Saturday and it went ignored. Typical. When I walked through the men fucking in the back of the club, I gave the walk of nonchalance. I have an advantage, I’d learned the art of distance growing up in Los Angeles. There are so many celebrities, we learned from an early age, to let that pass, to not stare, to let the whole of the experience live in itself and not draw googly attention to it. It’s what the town does to itself, it doesn’t look. The police don’t much care, the townies stare straight ahead, the tide comes in and goes out and comes in, the regularity of it sets a tone. There’s nothing to see here (when clearly there is, there is, there is).

I’d never paid attention to the tide but I know now that when high tide is at midnight, the moon is at its’ fullest. Explain that one. I can’t. I won’t pay attention to it out of respect but I clock it silently in my minds eye. We swim at the high tide, it happens twice a day, every twelve hours. We meet, our crew, at first rock. We walk far out on the breakwater, it’s a pier of sorts made from thousands of huge stones, plopped down somehow by who knows who, years and years ago. There are older gays who’ve been here longer and are fancier that travel out to second rock, further out on the breakwater, but we’re not them. Their swimming place is farther and nicer and I hear there’s a sort of shelf that makes it all the more easier to get in and out of the water but that is not us. We have our place and we go there most days, together, six of us, when the water is at its’ highest. It’s a place of magic, certainly, the times there are of the highest potency, livid and large, raucous and thoughtful, sarcastic and sweet.

There’s an unaffordability that exists, it’s an encouragement to open our doors. There are houseguests throughout the summer and Joey pointed out that we are suddenly living with roommates. It is what it is. The community and the visit of guests makes it what it is also. Mostly these guests are collaborators. I’ve written so many songs and encouraged projects with friends. It’s where I came to start finishing my book. Imperial Teen’s new record spawns in a large part from here. CRICKETS creations came from our laundry room. MAN ON MAN, the project with Joey is all about Provincetown, so much so that we named our last record that. Provincetown is where I get up in the morning and write. It’s where others do. The ripeness of what it provides is deep and promising, the horizon is far but in reach.

There’s an artist named Pat de Groot who lived in Provincetown. She worked within the confines of her environment, making horizon paintings of the view off her porch. She used a palette knife and never a brush, she was married to an older painter named Nanno, she sunbathed naked in the dunes and roamed the town with a dog that was rumored to be half wolf. Her works are subtle and striking and I bought one last year. It’s the favorite piece of art here and sums up what I love about Provincetown.

There’s so much more to share but that’s what books are for, the depth, the details, the elborations. Please hold.

Being the sole provider, there’s definitely the potential of me getting resentful real fast. There’s not gonna be any, ‘What’s for dinner?’ going on in our house. We’re gonna take turns making the meals, taking the trash out, watering our hydrangeas, vacuuming, tidying up the apartment, moving the car on Tuesdays or whatever, I don’t care what it takes. Their age isn’t gonna be an issue, they’ll have to adapt and use oven mitts and be careful with the stove and stuff.

For their first six or so years they’re gonna wear the same thing every day unless we have like a special event or a gala or something. I’m not expecting much resistance cause at that age they’re not gonna care what they wear, honestly, and it’ll just be more streamlined and make our mornings easier. We’ll all know exactly what the deal is getting up, what to wear, what to expect. So for years one through six it’s gonna be just sailor suits. Jepetto like a little Querelle and Viva, his sailor sister, in a blue and white frock with a red bow around the collar, like Judy Garland in that movie when she did a duet with Mickey Rooney like that. Both of them in maryjanes.

If I need to do something on my own, some alone time, we’re gonna set up a system with walkie talkies. No cell phones, I don’t want them on screens all day, not the family I’m raising, ok? We’re gonna learn morse code, all of us, and we’re gonna communicate that way through the walkie talkies. I don’t want a lot of gab and questions when I’m out so we’ll just do the morse code. Morse code is gonna be like their second language. Simple concise messages that are set to vibrate so as not to annoy. Respect, ok. And back at you, Viva and Jepetto. If they’re needing time and space, they’ll get it. I imagine they’ll be close with each other but who knows, they might fight and if they do, totally fine. I’m not gonna say I won’t take sides, I might. Jepetto might want another macaroon when there isn’t one and take his sisters, I don’t know. They’ll both love coconut cause kids love coconut and I’ll make them macaroons, it’s one of my specialties. Not the French kind, the kind with just like shredded coconut and egg whites and sugar. They’ll pronounce them like the French pronounce their macaroons and boy they’ll be surprised when eventually they come in contact with the pretty patisserie ones. It’ll be one of their first lessons in appreciating where we are in the world and how we’ve moved on from their actual roots.. Other than that, we are not gonna put a lot of time or space into where we’ve come from. It’s more embarrassing than anything and we’re not gonna dwell on it.

There’s not gonna be a dog in our life and I’m sorry, this may be controversial for some, I understand the love of dogs but it’s not for us. We are gonna need to hone in on family responsibility in a different way, a way that applies to our direct needs. Bringing in a dog is like… we may as well just get another sibling and that’s not gonna happen. We’re not gonna create more work with another roommate. Two are plenty. I’m gonna assign financials/accounting to one and social calendar to the other. They can pretty much lounge around in the daytime but nighttimes are gonna be booked. We’ll be at art shows and concerts and dinners and functions seven days a week. It’s gonna be our together time. Daytimes, do the fuck whatever. Spend some time reading or catching up with neighborhood stuff, take a walk on the Seine, take time for you, kids, but nights are for us. Family time. I’m gonna need to be strict about that. A bite to eat, casual like, then out on the town. We’ll hold hands, me dressed up all dandy and Viva and Jepetto in their sailor suits, them chattering away in French and me struggling to keep up, learning from the kids.

Early on I’ll get them scooters. I’m amazed when I see kids on scooters and how easy of a time they have at maneuvering. Balance at that age comes so naturally, I’m gonna lean into that and get them on the scooters by like age three. If all goes the way I want it to I’m gonna research circus schools for both of them. Tight rope seems smart, juggling, trampoline, obviously, trapeze and maybe a special one night a week doing clown stuff. Not too much of an emphasis on the clown stuff cause it seems like they’ll want to branch out in their daily wardrobe if too much emphasis is put on dress up, but I want to give them a taste of what fashion can be. After six, sky’s the limit, ‘Wear what you want,’ I’ll tell them in French. It’s gonna be up to them, they’ll need to source their outfits from what they find out on the streets or in thrift stores, like I did when I was young. I’ll tell them stories in French about what their papa did when he was un petite garçon.

They’ll call me Papá, with the accent on the second pa. Or Pá for short. I’ll make music lessons available for Viva and Jepetto but only if they’re interested. They’re gonna need to ask for it. Politely and in French. I’m not gonna force it on them like I’ll be forcing the balance lessons. Music is gonna be treated like an elective. Embrace it or don’t, kids. Balance and French are requirements. I’m looking forward to the day when they’ll choose their electives cause anything will go. Whatever they want. My hope, but again I will not push is that one of them will want a chimpanzee. As controversial as I know that is, it would make me such a proud father. A chimp would be 100 times more educational than a dog and the French have pretty lenient laws about chimps in homes.

I don’t have an ending to this story. Puberty is gonna be a tough one, not gonna lie, the idea of it freaks me the fuck out. I don’t want to have to resort to canvassing other parents for advice, it’s not my style, but I’m scared that the puberty years are gonna be overwhelming. Maybe that’s not a bad thing but I want to be able to send them off to boarding school if things get too crazy. It’s a decision I think we’d make together as a family, I’m just thinking aloud here and considering what’s gonna work best for all of us. As a family. Could be we just all coast through the teenage years together and make it work. Most likely, that’s gonna happen. I’m up for the challenge. After that, hard to say. College is expensive but I’m willing to make it work for both Viva and Jepetto. Again, it’s gonna be a family decision that we can hopefully navigate together.

Part of it for sure is gonna be the unknown. Keeping that in mind. I love an adventure.

There was a TV show called Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. As kids in Los Angeles we were privy to things that other kids weren’t. We had a connection to the entertainment industry. Isn’t that odd? Young kids being all savvy with that shit, talking industry talk, getting head shots taken, working on our tans, we were all part of it. Our neighbors were actors and directors and grips and character actors and there were TV faces that would casually sprinkle our everyday world. I saw Dolly Parton driving an old beat up car, Jodie Foster at the florist, Walter Matthau paying a parking meter on Beverly, Ronald McDonald lived down the street. We were surrounded by it. We became oblivious to things as we got older and the rolling of our eyes at the ridiculousness of it all created a buffer between us and the rest of the world. A cheeky sense of sophistication that we relied on. This was old school Los Angeles, I’m talking the kids that grew up there. I hear people bragging about how long they’ve lived there now, it’s not the same. Unless you actually grew up there, sorry, you don’t understand. Our relationship with the city came from old school roots of show folk and craft and dress up and make believe but then also assholes in suits. To us it was kind of a land of make believe. It felt like H.R. Puff n Stuff or Lidsville or the Bugaloos, the sets and the streets and the nooks being overblown colorscapes we all made fun of and felt part of. Fantasy lands specifically for us.

My family lived down the street from Paramount Studios, we could walk there and we did. The Arquettes moved into the back house of our best friends on our block and we all hung out in a group. On Tuesdays the tourists would line up outside of the stages of Paramount an hour or more before and get in to the live tapings of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Those were our favorites. There was no age limit, we’d join the tourists and wait in line and get seats and follow the prompts of the audience men, clapping and laughing on cue. We were 10 or 11 and our younger sisters, Patricia, Stephanie, couldn’t have been older than 9. We tired of it quickly, that’s how blasé we’d become. At that age. Over the notion of celebrity and glamor. The advantage of being children in Hollywood.

Punk rock and radical behavior as children stemmed from that. It was a fuck you to the dress up and the phoniness. Some of us embraced it and became eventual parts of it. My best friends do hair and makeup and direct films and write successful things but the ones who grew up in Los Angeles have an inert sense of what the charade was and is. Anyway, I’ve never digressed further but you’ve got to admit it’s fascinating.

Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was a sort of variety show on TV. I could do an internet search and read about who Don was but I’m gonna pass. In my memory he’s a sideburned pirate of sorts, a womanizer and a troubadour who was probably friends with someone in Fleetwood Mac. Like Gwynneth or Martha Stewart perhaps, he had taste and a sense of how to throw a good time. In the 1970’s, in Los Angeles, that knack had a lot of merit and got traction and he ended up as a host of a TV show. It was a show that bands performed on, there were videos and then a special guest performance

In 1979 there was a flavor and an attitude that was popping up musically, it was straight up rebellion and us not having the pomp and tan that was Los Angeles. I don’t know how I heard about DEVO. The first album was produced by Brian Eno. Me and my crew were somehow aware of that, the credibility factor of that endorsement. The DEVO record in the bin looked odd and it stuck out. Its yellow graphics were a cheeky throwback to some sort of radioactive era that preceded where we were in time. The music was insane and experimental and like an inside joke. There was the cover of Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones that resonated so profoundly, poking fun at the type of person Don Kirshner probably was. And then side two. Side two was way more exploratory than side one and it got scary. Come Back Jonee would start and my sister and I would run. We’d run. Just that feeling of overwhelmption, needing to run. Around the living room, maybe we’d hit each other, Rozy was there too, we couldn’t get enough.

I had started smoking pot by then and my grades were bad. As a result I was in summer school. Summer school was low stakes and I barely partook. Who does homework in the summertime? Ridiculous. In the yard of Daniel Murphy High School that summer some funny looking kid named Adam was talking about Patti Smith. That name was odd. Patti Smith. Like 50’s but weirdly brash. I mouthed her name to myself. Patti Smith. Adam heard on the radio that she’d danced off a high stage at a performance in Florida and for whatever reason the fact that Patti had fallen off a stage was hilarious. It was a punk ethic somehow that an injury in that world was comical. It was different and odd and then it came up about the performance of DEVO at a television studio close by. That day. It was a taping for Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and it was free, we just had to get there hours before and wait in line. The high school was in Hollywood so it was easy. We ditched the rest of the days classes and walked, there were three of us. I’d waited in line before but this was different. The other kids in line were like us, young and adventurous, sarcastic and in the know. There were a couple looks but most of us wore similar clothes, basically OP shorts or Dickies straight long legged work pants and tee shirts, untied tennis shoes, noses burnt by the summer, dirty fingernails, hair as unkempt as we could push it.

We were corralled into the studio and DEVO were already there, up on the stage, waiting for us. They were wearing the yellow jump suits with DEVO on the shoulder. The paper glasses that were like big versions of the 3D glasses that a movie theatre would give out. They looked like mannequins. We were shy and unsure about how to engage. They didn’t break character and stood at their instruments unmoving. There was a prompt from a stagehand over the sound system and the show started way quicker and more suddenly than we’d expected. Their performance was orchestrated and choreographed, they were lit largely from below and it gave a sense of, I don’t know, horror? Scary? Mystery I guess. Weird and inviting. We got Uncontrollable Urge and then Mongoloid, just two songs. They were faster than on the record, it felt like much faster, I couldn’t fathom how they were keeping up. It felt unruly and urgent and precise. The songs ended and then in true Hollywood fashion, they played them again. They needed the footage for the edit and we were instructed to act in the audience as we had for the first go round. As if we’d behave differently.

It wasn’t really a show but I’m calling it a show and it was my first. From there the world opened up and we started adventuring into punk clubs and places in Hollywood. DEVO was the beginning of it all for me, though, the weirdness opened up there and it helped me turn on Hollywood and the norm and that was part of why I left when I could and moved to San Francisco.

What was your first show?

‘Quit being so rose colored,’ they say in the room and I’m listening to that. I am rose colored and as a middle child I’m smoothing things constantly. There’s a house guest who sits on the bench out front and records the birds. There’s an app that identifies the types by their song. She brings it in and reports to the rest of us. Maybe this is the beginning. To acknowledge what is out in the world and spin from that place, to use that source as a jumping point. I don’t know what I say and oftentimes I’m straight-up poppycock. I admit that. On this cusp of delivery, at the time when my book is near and my voice is reaching an audience, it makes sense for me to make sense, I’m aware of that too. I’m just not sure if I’m capable of sense right now. Know though, that I’m aiming for sense. Sense in a peripheral way.

I’ve become someone who counts. Counting! What’s more pedantic and ordinary than numbers, one after the other? The passage of what… time? Paying attention to the sand as it slips between my fingers? Focusing on the sand, can you even? Have you been there, can you relate? The tedium is deafening. Counting the stairs as I climb up them, holding my breath and reciting numbers as I look over my shoulder and reverse the car out of a spot, from 1 to whatever as I get through it. Typically I count through the things I don’t want to do. I’m keeping track of how long it takes to do them or for them to pass. There are lots of ways that I’ve become old and this particular one is ugly.

The flip side is the way I deal with beauty and joy. Perhaps not enough attention to it, the splendor unfolds til my noise clouds it in a blur of fuddle and how lack of spirit is that? The clocking of dazzlement passes me by while I keep meticulous track of the tedium. What sadist, what monster exists like this? I’m exaggerating clearly but also not. I’m sitting in a paradise and its splendor is lost on me.

I’m not ungrateful but I’m often blind to accomplishment. The notion of gambling has always been lost on me. I don’t care if I win. The wins in life, in this example, the successes, the fruits pass me by in silent oblivion. What’s front and center are the abhorrent, the travesties, the terrors of the world. I’m way more apt to notice and criticize and mourn than I am to honor a treasure. Why is this and who am I? When did I become this way? As we all ponder at this stage in life, am I my mother?

As the day starts I try and change my ways. I do my best to better not only myself but my attitude and approach to the world. Instead I can’t help but make a list. A lot like the counting, I’m making a list. Starting with Gaza and followed by ICE and ending with my fixation on the half of the world that doesn’t give a shit, the neighbors living to my right and my left. To sit with that list and stir its contents is to mourn. My due approach won’t disacknowledge this list, this list is with me and will never evaporate, it’s moist and thriving forever like a fungus. With the list in my pocket I lean to a place of pushing a fruitful foot forward.

I started today by writing another check, promising money to another who suffers. This maybe chips a tiny piece away at the list, an almost indecipherable chip, but it sets a tone. The promise to help, the recognition of the storm that pounds. After this I’ll swim and note as I do the entitlement of a big body of water at my disposal. Like honoring the land we’ve stolen and how I’ve become one who does that. This water isn’t mine and it isn’t available to everyone. I won’t not swim though. I can’t not swim.

As I swim I pray, Oh mother, make room in the world of bounty. I honor you, let me bask in it and become part of what is right. There is a peril in withering away in the shit and the spoils. I will rise like the cream amongst the shit and wonder. As I sift through it, does shit always sink?

This horror, not to dwell, but this horror. It’s a constant and our struggle is universal. There’s a sadness that moors us to each other and to the dock of despair. Misery doesn’t necessarily love company here but there’s a magnet to its horror that pulls the best of us to it. And here we all together, all sitting in it as a community. My mother was miserable, I know that now. I can recognize her beauty in this exercise. She enjoyed butter. She enjoyed ice cream. She enjoyed white wine. These fruits aren’t for me but there was an emotion there and it wasn’t all bad. Again, in the funnel and tornado of incitement, I try to look outside of what’s rotten. I try to walk two steps ahead of it. More often than not I am sitting in it.

What is the solving of this misery riddle, is it possible to check things off a list? Where is the answer and is a resolution attainable? I need saving. We need punishing. Someone punish them. Someone honor the living who suffer and someone punish those who act out. How does it turn around? How do we fix ourselves? Who even reads or would read this? In a way I’ve never felt more futile. Throwing darts or arrows or paint splashes out into the dark I listen to where it might land but there's no ground that missives gravitate to. Help me. Someone. Something. I’m scared, we are all scared.

There’s talk in our house this morning of a drag queen that came into town from the campground. Her hair was bad and her makeup worse. ‘Campground Drag Queen Sings a Song,’ we sang. What could be better? Bringing beauty from the campground. Her end result of course isn’t the point at all. The drag queen made herself up in the campground and brought it to town. Let’s all continue to be better.

‘The power we have is to heal and change and grow’

-JD Samson

CRICKETS

PRE-ORDER MY BOOK

It’s a proud moment. It is. I worked really hard with it and the time has come. I’ve spent months and months finessing and fine toothing this and here it comes. My writing is where I want it to be, it engages, it flourishes, it’s odd and it has a pace. The words on the pages land effectively, there’s a rhythm and a personality, there’s color and attitude and there are no apologies. And that’s where the feelings start, I’m scared I’ve said too much. I’ve always been an oversharer, it’s a reaction I have to a tight lipped world.

My writing in a big part comes as a response to the world and where it’s gone. Like most of us, I’m let down. I’m repulsed and indignant. Particularly with America. They’re a part of why I write and why I wrote what I wrote. I write in response to their agenda. Racism, bigotry, deportations, Christianity, pride and money and greed and the waving of that ugly dumb flag. They’re going to be that outright and flagrant and in our faces with their presentation? They’re going to say things out loud, they’re going to spin their hate in a place where children are listening? Their intention is to sow their ugly oats in public? Then game the fuck on, people. In this day and age, I can let go of my fear and any reservations about oversharing. Like I said, no apologies.

In my book I talk about drugs, I talk about sex in public places, I talk about subversive behavior, I talk about the things that have made me who I am. I share candidly about drug addiction, cruising for sex as a child, shoplifting, making bomb threats, outlandish expectations, young passion, hopes and dreams, dreadlocks, dismantling the powers that be, the things I grew up with. These sentiments, the things I tell, they’re coming from a place of growth, of spirit and of liberation. They’re inspirational. The things that keep my artistry flourishing, these are sources that break down walls and dismantle boundaries, they’re feelings that encourage compassion, they’re unapologetic sentiments that beg a collective nurturing. My intention is to encourage myself and my people to become better.

My good intentions don’t come without a price. I write about things that people are going to hate me for. My Christian cousins are gonna be talking about it over Thanksgiving dinner. Like, honestly, fingers crossed, that’s entirely what I’m aiming for. Not the cousins specifically but as we settle into this world where right-leaning bullies hide behind doors and throw things at the free thinkers, I want to be among those that proudly and defiantly throw back. Leaning into my provocative self and what I’ve done and what I do, I come out fighting. Fighting the tedium and the vitriol, the hate and the ignorance with a truth and a passion and a sense of spirit that adds to the rebellion of dismantling the establishment. Not to overstep or to exaggerate, but my book is subversive in that way.

The memoir is a tricky terrain, for sure. I don’t love the art form. There’s a supermarket book with photographs in the middle, it all comes down to the photos in the middle. The ‘tell-all,’ you know the kind I mean. That specifically is a million miles away from where I wanted to go with this. Those of you who know me, know me, I aim for high brow. To lend my voice to that sub-genre has been complicated for me. More than anything, visualizing a finished book I’d write, I didn’t want to be in the ROCK section, I want to be in POETRY or PROSE. It’s a tricky ask and not altogether warranted. The truth of it is, though, the book I’ve written is a tell-all, it’s just not that kind of a tell-all. It tells but at its core, it’s passion and prose and poetry.

There are name drops and characters. There’s Courtney and Kurt and Axl Rose but only because I couldn’t not. The flavor these people and their names have added to my story are part of it all. The trappings of the genre of the memoir though are confining and rigid, the writing I’ve written will hopefully challenge the genre and the reader that picks it up. I think the book reads well, it follows the course of a narrative than anyone can relate to, I just want to be appreciated for the craft I’ve employed here.

My memoir is called The Royal We and it takes place mostly in San Francisco. That’s the core of the book, it’s the place and time in my life that I pulled from. The adjectives and names and memories and feelings that come up when I look back on that city in the day. The day before the internet, in a time when we read flyers on telephone poles, looked up places on maps, bought records on whims, gambled on decisions and came out on top. There was a freedom to how we lived and to do that as a child was one of my most fortunate trajectories. Bicycle messengering, starting a band, sticking opium up our butts, swapping clothes, trying wheatgrass, provoking bullies, stealing meat from grocery stores, riding the bus for free, forming a community and becoming heroes. Who I was and where I got to be when I did it was a privilege. Sharing that is a privilege. I’m so happy to be able to be honest about these times. The book truly is an archive and telling of what that place in history was. It’s gone. It was and I lived it.

Starting in November, the book comes out and there’s no going back. Pre-orders for the book are open. There’s a super cute bundle that I’m proud of. It’s the book I’ve written, the hardcover, all 253 pages of it, autographed by me and then also a book of poetry I’ve written. The book of poetry is called The Drugs and the Drugs and the Drugs and it is beautifully ensembled and laid out and artistically directed by one of my favorite artists, Christopher Garett. There’s also a tee shirt that I designed. The front of which is a cheeky reference to Herb Caen and his column in the SF Chronicle in the 80’s (IYKYK), the back is an assemblage of names and personal homages to SF in the 80’s and 90’s, calling out clubs, local heroes, and bands that I worked into the shape of a graphic crown, a reference to the title of my book.

So get the bundle or get the book by itself. This remains a proud moment and I appreciate any attention you’re willing to give it. I’ll be on a book tour starting in November after the official release of The Royal We. See you then.

Love you all,

RB

BUY THE PRE-ORDER

I started before I started, the melodies were in my head. I’d sit on the bench and create things, fleshing out directions and combinations of notes, musical wobbles that made sense just to me. Then I’d enlist my sisters. We’d sit in a row, three of us on the bench (the oldest couldn’t be bothered) and make interpretive pieces of fury, dramatic rollouts of modern noise, pounding and slapping at the keys like banshees. We’d put the family dog up on the keyboard sometimes and marvel at the results, letting her walk around, stomping out a cacophony. We’d climb up there ourselves, two or three at a time, walking up and down the scales in our socks. We’d open the top of the piano and pluck at the strings with wooden spoons and pencils, we’d engage the pedals and pound on the low notes for hours.

My father had gone to Notre Dame, a college in Indiana and at one point my mother taught me his school’s anthem. I was 5. I played the learned piece in the basement of the church for a talent show. I wore a cape. It got an unexpected laugh and I realized I’d been kind of a monkey or a pawn in some sort of football rivalry amongst my parents and their friends who had gone to another university. Damien Pascale won the contest with a performance on an accordion.

At my insistence I started lessons with a teacher who came to our home. Her name was Mrs. Rhodes and she wore two pieced suits, monochrome polyester with brass buttons, sometimes a hat. She had a prosthetic leg and a cane and read a little bit like Willy Wonka. It was our game that I’d scare her when she arrived at the house, I’d wait behind a shutter on the front porch and jump out as she rang the bell. We’d laugh and start our lesson. In a spiraled book she’s write down my weekly exercises. Scales to rehearse, a list of the pieces I’d work on and notes on what we’d talked about that day. After every lesson she’d write ‘Good Lesson’ or sometimes ‘Excellent Lesson.’ After 10 ‘Excellents’ I’d get a plastic statuette of a composer of my choosing. She was gentle and sweet and maternal and as another reward she’d find sheet music for me; songs I’d heard and wanted to learn. ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ and ‘Morning After,’ the song from The Poseidon Adventure. I’d spend a lot of time with the actual sheet music, poring over the artwork and the fonts. This was before I’d learned about records and record covers. Mrs. Rhodes understood me and we became close.

There was a boy in the neighborhood that was flashy and better than me. His name was Walter Witt and he lived in a big house on a corner. I didn’t know him but I knew him. At my mother’s encouragement we sought out who his teacher was and we bid a sad adieu to Mrs. Rhodes. My mother kept insisting I’d outgrown her and maybe I had. The new teacher and I did not get along. She was reserved and polite in front of my mother but a tyrant and a bully when we were alone. Full transparency, I was a problem. I’d take the bus to her house up in the Hollywood Hills, such a tedious trek for a young boy. I’d been harassed by a group of friends who’d recently turned on me and my days at school were long, the travel to piano lesson a sad and lonely journey. My face pressed against the inside window of the RTD bus that went up Western, the longest straightest street in the world, from near South Central up into Hollywood. I walked up through her backyard once and carved FUCK MUSIC into her freshly paved patio. I was a monster and she brought it back.

We’d fight to the point of physicality, it’s hard to believe she never hit me. I always wanted to hit her. We hated each other that much and our passion found its way into my playing. She had two pianos side by side, two grand pianos, and I remember her imitating the way I played. She sat at her piano, next to mine, flopping her hands upside down, making noise all willy nilly, insinuating my disrespect and inferiority, she was so mean. I cried on that piano bench so many times and I remember her doing a ‘boo hoo’ kind of thing with her fists, squinting her eyes like she was crying, mocking me. There was a harpsichord next to my piano, her crown jewel and musical relic she treasured. She let me play it just once. It had very very thin strings, it was from the 1800’s, she’d insisted I play it only ever so gently. Like barely touch the strings, it was so fragile and quiet. I was too heavy handed, she pointed out, another of her cruel criticisms; I lacked the sensitivity. Once when she went to answer the phone in the other room I leaned over and with my thumb pushed down on the high note of the harpsichord as forcibly as I could until the string broke and went TWANG.

My standing up to her got worse and worse, I really can’t believe we never hit each other. She took a sadistic turn, I’d see it in her eye, in her squint when I arrived for the lesson, no hint of compassion or shared sense of musicality or leadership. We both began to look forward to the vitriol. The energy was unbridled and furious. Her eyes would narrow as she ate her sandwich from a plate on her lap and waited for me to finish a piece so she could make fun of me. I was good. I knew this. I was very good and it became a game for me to try and force her to acknowledge my talent but her acknowledgement never came.

One day after a lesson I went to her study to use her phone to call my mother to pick me up and saw a book, a green book, a paperback in the shape of a music book, big and long, about Saturday Night Live. I flipped through it as I called home and stuck it in my pants, stole it from her home. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing with this, she was an older woman, in her sixties. It turned out it was her sons’ book, she called my home later that day to ask if perhaps I’d ‘seen it’ in her study when I was there. I of course denied it.

The book I stole became a theme of our lessons, she’d bring it up constantly. My insistence that I didn’t know what she was talking about enraged her. She brought it up again and again and I’d play dumb. Eventually our fights got so bad that I quit.

A girl had moved in across the street from us who was very serious about her piano. She had a strict mother who made her practice over three hours a day. At that point I was practicing an hour before school and an hour after but I would constantly cheat the timer that we’d set. I was smoking pot and shoplifting with my derelict friends at that point and it was taking up much of my time. Still, the girl across the street was very good. She raised the bar of what a child could do. I watched her at a recital her family hosted. She was sitting on the stairwell by herself with her eyes closed, lost in the passion of what she was hearing as another child performed a piece. She winced a bit, I noticed, at a sour note, but her commitment and attention to the craft and the musicality was extraordinary. I wanted what she had. We sought out her teacher and started taking lessons with him.

He smelled like tuna fish, a larger doughy man who was skeptical of me from the start. I played him a boogie woogie piece I was proud of, mostly knowing that he’d hate it. It seemed like a feasible place to begin, to take him to a place of discomfort. Politely, he played a piece for me. Chopin. Beautifully executed and sensitive, fluorishes a little over the top for my taste, but beautiful. My piano improved with him but I wasn’t as serious as he wanted me to be. My stealing and cigarette smoking and plights of teenage had taken precedence and I was nowhere near a place where I could take him seriously.

Before one of our final lessons I found myself on his front porch as he finished with the student before me. Bored, I’d gone through his mailbox and found a Times magazine that laid out in detail the story of the Jonestown Massacre. The bodies. They’d all been encouraged to drink kool aid and killed themselves, a mass suicide in Guyana that wasn’t only a horrible and high number of deaths but after the initial bodies had been moved it was found that there was a whole other layer underneath them, making the grand total twice as much as was initially calculated. This detail. The bodies under the bodies. And then the willingness to take their lives. The haunted realm of sacrifice in another country, hot and humid and oppressive. I quit piano soon after reading this.

I get better at smoking and stealing and moved to San Francisco where I flourished as a derelict. All of my lessons were disregarded and I bought a synthesizer and relied on the simplicity of a single finger. It was easier and way more effective but without the lessons of the complicated scales and navigating of the human condition I would have been a different kind of artist. Music is effective in wartimes, inspiration is taut and feverish under duress, beauty comes from horror more often than not. We will get through these times and we will blossom into a different kind of flower. Bless us all.

I hadn’t posted in a while and I forgot how much I love the attention. It is straight up why I do what I do. For the attention, I’m a greedy whore for it. It definitely isn’t for the money, you get me. This Substack is free and I’ve got no interest in monetizing it. Know that, it’s the core of my life and what this post is about.

How much does Carrie Bradshaw make? For the life of me I can’t remember her ever mentioning it. She just opportunes her way into situations and dinners and apartments and clothing and shoes and shoes and shoes. Just like me. And it’s like a mystery. How does she even do it? In the end she had Big so that’s how she afforded that big old Gramercy Park place in AJLT but before that… all of the shoes? How did she pull that off? Her column made her that much?

I just got back from a CRICKETS week. CRICKETS is honestly New York City’s best kept secret. It’s a band that comes from my personal history of who I’ve been and how I’ve lived. I knew JD, of more than anything, and met her full on when Shannon, my best friend last decade who took his life, and I DJ’d a party of hers together. I remember Shannon being so drunk and being bit by the bartender and things getting so messy and we ended up riding bikes away from the party to a second something and I made him stop and eat a bag of nuts, thinking that would soak up his drunk. He remembered that part of it forever and would bring it up, ‘Roddy, Roddy, remember that time you made me eat a bag of nuts to make me less drunk?’ There’s a photo I have of that afternoon on the West Side Highway of me and JD and Shannon, it marks when we first really met full on, me and JD.

Michael who plays guitar for CRICKETS was in Los Angeles when we met. We were both going on a walking tour of a record that Colin Self had put out. We met in a neighborhood and put the record on our phones and listened through headphones walking a pre-determined map that Colin had made through Silverlake and Echo Park and meeting at the end of it. Michael was in MEN with JD and I still have him in my phone as Michael MEN. He and I walked with an older woman, it was a special journey.

The CRICKETS musical connection is based on restraint. It’s a whole concept. We strip away the excess. For me it comes from the resistance to add overdubs to a sound. All my life I’ve been in bands where things are added. That tambourine sounds good, let’s add a keyboard part, how about a harmony on that vocal? Know what, double that vocal, and then the oft repeated, ‘it’s not something you necessarily hear but you feel it.’ More and more and more. It’s what the opportunity of the studio provides. Adding to, supplementing, building, piling on additions, more and more and more. In defense of what I’ve done and created and added to… it does always sounds good, the overdub, there’s nothing that doesn’t sound good. I amn’t capable of creating something that sounds bad, I say that cheekily but honestly. That is the point right there: just because it sounds good doesn’t mean you got to do it. In CRICKETS it’s our credo and our exercise to not only not add things, but to take things away.

Our sound is special and unique and if you haven’t gone there, I encourage you to have a listen. We are synth and guitar and drum machine and JD singing. It’s a dark and empty sound that kicks in its simplicity. As we leaned into this past week… we embraced the haunt. The EP we made on the brink of epidemic came and went but wow, it is a special endeavor. Mark Cross put the record out on his very unique Muddgutts label and the vinyl only release came in a white paper bag that was craftily silk screened with an artwork by Bay Area artist Alicia McCarthy. It is truly a work of art and I am so proud of what we achieved. ELASTIC on this record and shared below is honestly THE anthem of a generation. It was the power wallop song that we imagined in that massive crowd moment in the quintessential EU festival. I could honestly write an entire essay on that one song and what it means to me, JD, Michael, our generation and the world. It truly is the best song that dropped and was never heard. Not to be redundant but we blame it on the pandemic.

(ELASTIC- THE ANTHEM)

We stopped playing together after the record came out.

We recently reconvened.

There was no drama or reason for the break, we just all had other projects. Michael had a baby and plays with his Grateful Dead cover band, High Time. JD is a teacher and did a bunch of Le Tigre shows, I had my band with Joey and was writing my memoir, we all were doing things. Then a window opened for all of us and we jumped through it.

(INTENTIONALLY PASSIVE- the song CRICKETS love to play best)

We had a retreat up in Provincetown this winter and started to write again, molding songs for a new record. We don’t play often but we did a show at Union Pool with IUD and SUO. Last month we did a staycation retreat week together in New York City with a show at the end of it at the old Pyramid on Avenue A. The days together and the time we put in were a collective high five, a trophy of champions, an exhale of purity and that thing they say at the end of a meditation. It couldn’t have gone better. It starts from a place of loving each other and goes from there. Could you imagine being a studio musician? No shade but can you even imagine? Not having a connection to the people you’re making noise with?

The show was a banger. Bottoms played their final performance and they were rad. Hairbone brought it. Jessie is a miracle. I don’t understand Raul but I applaud him a million claps. CRICKETS knocked it out of the arena. There was a tightness to the totality of the show that was unprecedented. Those there know. Those who weren’t will never and the night remains in selected hearts.

If I tallied up the hours, and this is the point, if I tallied up the hours we spent together and then added on top of that the travel times and the planning and the preparation for the rehearsals that we did on our own, it would total an unfathomable amount of 40 hour work weeks, multiple less than minimum wage chapters of life work. If we took a calculator, which is how it’s done, right? Can you even imagine what the amount would be? Straight up we made $300 for the show. I’m not gonna feel weird for promoting a project that gets paid this much. It’s not vanity, it’s vanity, it’s self worth and confidence and a trailblaze of fury and prowess and work and content that is invaluable. To me, to you, to us. This is the reality of the arts in today’s world. We make absolutely nothing while providing everything.

We all do what we do and we make a world for ourselves. We provide examples, we provide fodder for thought, we provide inspiration, we make a world for ourselves and others. We don’t get paid for it. We expect support. Not from the government or from even purse strings that could subsidize us. That happens but I don’t see it ever. We expect support from you. Let’s just start there. Don’t sequester and don’t stay home and quit blaming the world. Shut up. Not really but shut up. Let’s applaud ourselves, let’s support our scene, let’s encourage each other to make a better world. Let’s appreciate things in the flesh, let’s see each other in the pit, let’s be here for each other and hold each other up. Go Zohran because that is an extension of what I see happening with people who show up.

What will come is a new CRICKETS record. We’ll continue to write it and record it this summer. I personally can’t wait.

Show up.

Do you but do me too.

Do us.

Love you all,

RB