Not y’all acting up by resisting joyfully
It’s 05:35 P.S.T., February 12th, and there’s a Full Moon in Leo
Notes: Below, I have shared a drawing featuring pole and hole. Please sit this post out if you’d rather not see it. Love you :)
Dearest F@ggots,
As usual, I’m categorically ignoring the Superbowl. So, let’s talk about the Grammy’s instead.
Kendrick Goddamn Lamar went home with Record of the Year, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, Best Music Video, and Song of the Year!? “Not Like Us” indeed. Doechii happily accepted Best Rap Album for her mixtape Alligator Bites Don’t Heal dedicating her win to Black women. Pop off, baby! And that horse lady got Album of the Year. What a lovely night for black music! Now, without further ado, back to our regularly scheduled, Trump-induced spirals. Did anyone else peep the first White House briefing of the latest administration?
In regards to celebrating Black History Month amid the anti-DEI crusades, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for the Trump Administration said “we will continue to celebrate American history and the contributions that all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed, have made to our great country. And America is back.” Erase, replace, and re-imagine. That’s the white supremacist way at its finest. Nobody asked her scrawny behind about all Americans. They did, however, ask about Black Americans. Seeing such distinctions rhetorically dismissed is disparaging.
All things considered, I’m in the mood to celebrate. Got a light? My throwing arm’s itching to hurl a Molotov cocktail through a window. That’s the only kind of party I can stomach right now. As fascist flavored Neo-Nazis abound, my spite boils over. And, much to my chocolate chagrin, I, a chocolate American, feel deeply alone in the sentiment. People don’t hate white supremacy enough for me. No matter. Through thick and through thin, I am determined to enjoy myself. Before I leave, forcibly or naturally, I will revel in the dismantling of white supremacist worlds.
Sincerely,
E.Y. Washington
P.S. “You can’t hold on, you nightmare man. Your time has passed. Now on your way. Get gone and never come again. Change come fast and change come slow. But everything changes and you got to go. Shout, shout. Devil on out” has sustained me. Skip to 6:50 and let it sustain you too. There, Emmie Thibodeaux retells the story of decapitating the statue of a Confederate solider in her hometown. Her prayer (read: exorcism) is a moving celebration.
Gay Bookslut Caught Reading in The White and Wicked Wild:
After finishing Patrick Nathan’s The Future Was Color, I pivoted to Jules Gil-Peterson’s A Short History of Trans Misogyny unexpectedly. Their timely book sidesteps moral superiority by implicating the entire political spectrum. “Trans misogyny,” the prefaces reads, “functions less as anyone’s personal failure than something like the weather.” And what a terrible weather Americans have found themselves in! Executive orders rain down like meteors in the alleged Land of the Free. Guess who bears the brunt? Trans and non-binary folks. Guess who, in varying degrees, will experience the damage? Women and everybody else. My heart weeps for the former and the latter. Caught in the cogs of the American Scapegoat Mechanism, their annihilation is expected to restore Trump’s nation to its former glory. Fuck cis-het, white supremacist, imperialist ambitions! They are grounded in falsehoods that thrive off of sanctimonious platitudes. And yet, here’s Jules Gil-Peterson, doing the work of angels. “Relinquishing the drive to seek political clarity in the goodness, or badness, of your demography,” their preface continues, “might yield far bigger rewards. What awaits is a certain un-learning, a task for which this book might be a humble guide.” I look forward to unlearning with them. Trust and believe, I will report back once I’m at the half-way point.
Books with Pictures, Books with Words, Books that Caught My Eye:
Today’s Full Moon is brought to you by blossoming figurative artist @blkcatamyte. Their work in progress, “Honey, I Think I Spilled Poppers on the Couch,” experiments with story, form, gesture, and perspective. Our artist-in-residence takes inspiration from the dirth of domestic erotic scenes between black gay men. Add them on Instagram.
Notes (Part One): Once upon a time in 1922, a diva was born and for the next forty-seven years her singing gave faggots powder blue wings. To close the distance between their lowliness and her divinity, they lifted their hands, raised their voices, and worshiped her. Like excitable bluebirds they took to the heavens. Why, you ask? Because “divas,” queer sociologist David Halperin wrote, “disclose a form of power that gay men can claim as their own . . . [it] is not the terroristic power of male intimidation or domination, but the power of the victim who isn’t going to take it anymore, and who returns to triumph, ‘wounded and dominant,’ to confront her persecutors with the full force of her pain.” And joy. Don’t forget the full force of her joy. Judy at Carnegie Hall, written by essayist Manuel Betancourt, takes such sentiments, dives, and soars with earnest insight. Scroll down and read his instructive article on how to hear her music during bleak and unnerving times.
Notes (Part Two): Like God, I cannot mention Judy and not invoke her. Please listen to one of my favorite tunes, covered by one of my favorite singers. Her swanky “Joey, Joey, Joey” is passionate passionate camp.
How to Listen to Judy Garland in 2020
by Manuel Betancourt
Chronicler of the gay community Vito Russo once described Judy Garland as “an iron butterfly.” Her strength, he posited, was always laced with fragility; one couldn’t think about Judy’s resilience without somehow also calling up the frailty it kept at bay. Writing 20 years after Garland died, Russo mused instead about what it had meant for so many gay men to have clung to such a icon. (He even wondered aloud whether her death in 1969 had somehow caused the Stonewall riots. Answer: no.) “Her audience was never sure whether she’d fall into the abyss or soar like a phoenix,” he wrote, getting at precisely why certain men felt both so protective of her while also seeing in her a towering strength they themselves looked to. Until last year, this kind of assessment had been nothing more than an intellectual exercise for me. I’ve long been fascinated with how Judy once appealed to what one reviewer in 1967 had euphemistically referred to as “those boys in the tight trousers.” Now, though, I find myself enraptured with the potency of what that iron butterfly once stood for and what she keeps teaching us boys more than fifty years after her death. In the last year, Garland has been a comforting presence even as listening to her songs on loop can feel like its own form of masochism. She’s been both my rainstorm and my rainbow.
❤️ beautiful, intelligent, hilarious, and enraging (in the right way, the motivating way)
Not you giving us a little politics and a little kink! 🤪