Even if you haven’t heard of J Hoard’s name, you’ve definitely already heard his voice. His lyrical and vocal work earned him a Grammy for his work on the album Coloring Book, and has shared the stage with countless names such as Bilal, The Stepkids, Kimbra, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Pharoahe Monch. But his true prowess shines in his “Follow Me (Now) EP” released last October. The Brooklyn-Based singer-songwriter blends an eclectic mix of influences to produce his own soulful quality of work. Last Wednesday, J Hoard released the first music video from the project for the song ‘Pain on Repeat’.

J Hoard’s visuals resonate through its minimal design. With his signature hair wrap and flair, his vocals melt through the melody while the lyrics lay out a dark narrative familiar to all too many of us, one of pain and abuse. We got to ask J about the inspiration for the project and what’s to come from his next EP "Follow Me (Thru the Past)" set to release in October.

You mentioned part of this video’s inspiration was a clip from ‘Martin’, particularly a moment with the character Shanaynay. You describe it, “Shanaynay loses her man (that legit caused her physical pain) and cries in a corner ‘he'll be back’.”

I am intrigued by this side of Shanaynay you are referring to, where this otherwise strictly comedic character is allowed to show some real vulnerability and dimension, albeit one of pain and helplessness. Can you talk about how that scene in particular informed your lyrics and vision for this song?

I was finishing college at the time and hadn't watched "MARTIN" since childhood. My fresh adult eyes revealed how many of us make the similar mistake of Shanaynay and repeat cycles of pain. For those who aren't familiar with the popular 90's sitcom, Shanaynay is your typical/stereotypical ghetto girl and has "harsh", non-traditional features. Often times people like Shanaynay feel as though they deserve abusive, unfulfilling relationships because they have been discouraged to love who they are. My skin is dark, my features aren't "classic"; I look like a black man, no hiding it. I too have struggled with not feeling good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, gay enough, black enough- because I was raised in a country-world that has historically oppressed people who look and love like me. SO, I wrote this song to encourage the pretty, the ugly, the ghetto, the reserved, the gay, the asexual, EVERYONE, to love ourselves enough to NOT stay in painful, damaging relationships. 

The video is striking in its simplicity. The two figures and yourself display such an intense array of emotions in each shot. It feels very personal and human in its scope. The choice to show the characters mostly as individuals, instead of couples in relation to each other, was also effective. The ambivalence of the woman’s expressions towards the end of the video was particularly poignant, telling and real. What were you thinking when creating the visuals for this project? 

I consulted the director/videographer Roland Pfannhauser while touring through Europe this summer. I explained my vision, the whole "Martin" scene and everything. OF COURSE, she (me) wanted an extravagant set and storyline- beds to wake up in, doors to slam, parks to walk thru, etc. However, Roland suggested we keep the set simple, almost bare and "mirror" each character's emotions. This was executed by focusing on faces and aligning facial reactions to each person's cycle of pain. My character is omniscient, been there/done that, bringing the super machismo character to realize his toxic masculinity isn't the answer, and helping the female lead smile again with drink in hand ON HER OWN! In essence, myself and the two actors are looking into the mirror (camera) and processing our feelings of pain in an isolated space. My favorite example of this concept is when the female lead changes her hair styles and decides on her initial look because we ALL have done that! Essentially, myself, Roland and his DoP/editor wanted to make sure viewers feel inspired to be honest with themselves, face the person in the mirror and realize sometimes in order to love someone, especially yourself, you must provide space to figure it/yourself out.

How does this song and video relate thematically or musically as a whole to your upcoming EP, "Follow Me (Thru the Past)"? What can we expect from the project at large?

"Pain On Repeat" is from my "Follow Me (NOW)" EP released last year, however, all my music has a message of self-love. This upcoming EP deals specifically with the growing pains of life. By looking into the past I/you embrace the beautiful memories, heal and overcome the hurtful moments, and choose to learn how to love (myself/yourself) and grow (to love others). "Pain On Repeat" is exactly about that. Sure, you let him beat you- you let her talk down to and take advantage of you - you let them misuse and rob you of your joy and peace- IT'S OK. That was the past, let's go through it and mark each experience as a lesson learned to make space for an improved future. That's the theme of the project at large - with the energy and sonically inspired by Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder doused in 2020 production! 

Old exes can be a complete horror show.

Though relationships end, they echo. Sometimes they leave us with good memories, decent sex fantasies that will last a lifetime and a sense of emotional growth. And other relationships leave us with straight-up PTSD.

Wes Craven's Scream 2 is definitely about the latter. 

It is also a comment on horror sequels. It is a fun time revisiting favorite characters. It's an opportunity to see Jerry O'Connell and Timothy Olyphant at their most young and handsome. It has Neve Campbell at her most badass and Courteney Cox with her best hairdo of the series. It has raised stakes, a compelling mystery and a higher body count than Scream. 

But from the perspective of the character Sidney Prescott, Scream 2 is about the ways her twisted ex-boyfriend, his mommy issues and his diabolical mind fucks continue to haunt her from the grave.

Maybe your ex was abusive, drunk, passive-aggressive, randomly angry or seriously damaged.  Maybe they were cruel, mean, manipulative or angry. Maybe they took the insecurities you already had and played them like a piano, so you didn't know who you were anymore or how to escape. Most of us, particularly in our community, have been through that a few times, unless you've been incredibly lucky.

To recap Scream, in case you missed it, our heroine Sidney's ex-boyfriend Billy Loomis was a deranged serial killer who murdered her mother and was hacking up her friends, then he gaslit her into sleeping with him when she felt guilty for ever doubting his love and innocence. And their breakup involved her stabbing and shooting him to death at a party when he (and his superhot dudebro Stu) tried to kill her.

The Sidney we meet at the beginning of Scream 2 carries with her all the strength and resourcefulness she'd gained by the end of Scream. But she also carries all of the baggage - the trust issues, uncertainty and self-doubt - that comes when some horrible, random incident has turned your world upside down.

When we meet her new boyfriend Derek, who is handsome and seems kind, we wonder how Sidney could possibly date someone so soon after the massacre from the first movie. And we know that Derek is in trouble - or he is trouble. And Sidney cannot convince herself either way.

Rebounds are always an iffy prospect.

In 1997, when Scream 2 was filmed on several college campuses all around Atlanta, including Georgia State and Agnes Scott, I was a 21-year-old journalism student in Athens at the University of Georgia. And a guy I was dating was the target of multiple hate crimes on campus, his dorm door set on fire multiple times over several weeks until the campus was in a panic.

One night, he was crying in his dorm room, moved by all the attention and press the situation was getting. He was building a scrapbook to show his mother, saying one person could make a difference. Feeling overwhelmed, he started to cry.

"It's not your fault," I said to him. "It's the fault of the person doing this to you."

Eventually, the police captured a suspect, who confessed to the arson after hours of questioning. The arsonist was the guy I was dating, who had staged the hate crimes against himself. And he got expelled and punished.

It messed things up for gay people all over campus. It caused a lot of stress, a lot of bridges had to be reconstructed between gay rights organizations and the university. 

And, personally, it caused me to wonder, "Maybe I just attract bad, crazy people. Maybe I deserve bad, crazy people."

Some days, I still wonder that.

Sidney spends all of Scream 2 wondering the same thing about herself. When all her friends and classmates at Windsor College start getting butchered, starting with cameo appearances by Omar Epps, Jada Pinkett Smith and Sarah Michelle Gellar,  Sidney is warned by Deputy Dewey that the killer is probably someone she already knows, someone perverse who gets off on being so close while wreaking such havoc.

And though she describes Derek as "nice guy, pre-med, no apparent psychotic tendencies," every seed of doubt about the guy - and about herself - leads Sidney to think that maybe she picked a bad dude all over again. Do we always repeat the same patterns and the same mistakes? Can we fix ourselves enough - from the damage done not only by bad partners but by a culture that so often makes us feel like we are mistakes or wrong or sinners - to deserve good love?

Scream 2's answer for Sidney is surprising. And the fraternity necklace that she wears for the remainder of the entire Scream series, given to her by Derek during a tension-breaking, cathartic, big-gesture silly love scene in the middle of a horror movie, is proof of that. You can learn to accept good love, but sometimes it won't make you happy, sure or safe. You can get a hot pre-med sweetheart and not know what the hell to make of the situation, and that's OK. Sometimes, when things seem too good to be true, that's our own insecurity.

Scream 2 tells us to fight for ourselves, just as Sidney does. She keeps her guard up and uses her defensiveness to her advantage. She becomes a model of strength, even when surrounded by doom. 

When we hold ourselves up above all the untrue, vicious shit that everybody wants us to tell us about ourselves, when we fight the shit that our own brains tell us about ourselves, we are survivors. We are the Final Girl staring down a never-completely-dead monster, shooting it  to death a dozen times, just in case.

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On Wednesday, October 9th at 7pm— WUSSY and Plaza Theatre present SCREAM 2 hosted by Brigitte Bidet and Molly Rimswell. Grab your tickets here for this special one night event!

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Benjamin Carr, a writer and storyteller originally from Buford, Ga., has previously been published in The Guardian, Pembroke Magazine and other publications. He is one of the founders of gutwrench, an online literary journal.

Rainer Warner Fassbinder is a name highly associated with ‘70s art house cinema, stained by post-Nazi Germany and an incestuous art community who built themselves like cult followers around a cocaine-fueled workaholic filmmaker. The output this openly bisexual visionaire managed to produce within a culture affected by the Nazi regime and in an age of pure nihilism was massive. Though not without its philosophical depth, deviation and damage were the essence of his work and, on a personal level, infiltrated all of Fassbinder’s inseparable creative and romantic connections. Even within the vitriol and tragedy of Fassbinder’s films, they were so magically and beautifully shot that one single still could influence an onlooker to seek out the full experience. There are no happy endings, but sometimes a shred of truth will pull a character out of denial to face it all in the end, an air of understanding.

Around 1972, Fassbinder entered a new era with the intimate embarkment of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Fueled by dreams, estranged by delusions, fashion designer Petra is a bourgeois narcissist whose interactions with the women around her alters dramatically after falling in obsession with aspiring younger model Karin. Petra’s physical appearance shifts with her declining emotional stability over the course of the film in detailed artistic symbolism, place holding acts in a play (as Petra was originally penned to be) in a film that is emotionally tumultuous and overblown intentionally. 

“I don’t find melodrama ‘unrealistic’; everyone has the desire to dramatise the things that go on around him. Everyone has a mass of small anxieties that he tries to get around in order to avoid questioning himself; melodrama comes hard up against them.” 

-Fassbinder, Sight & Sound

Petra is one of the few films that Fassbinder designed himself, typically working with on-and-off lover and actor Kurt Raab for 31 of his films. Petra is more creamy than the signature Fassbinder/Raab neon-lit aura influenced by director Douglas Sirk, who affected not only aesthetics but the tone and movement of Fassbinder’s more developed work. This conversation of influence has been ongoing over the decades, imprinting other directors as reflected by Guy Maddin and Todd Haynes (below). 

“They were films about every possible minority:  people of color, gay people, anarchists in the 3rd generation. All of the subjects of Fassbinder films are as much the victims and perpetrators of the power dynamic; that is his real critique in these films,” Haynes says. “He’s very interested in the ways in which victims in fact participate in power dynamics that are ultimately the products of societies. It’s a very different kind of approach.” The double standard of the characters in Fassbinder’s films, suffering and simmering with hopes to receive some kind of resource from one another, and how the audience member can recognize this in their own interactions and change it, is a poignant observation from Haynes. 

During a time where accountability was not as discussed or practiced, Fassbinder was presenting decorated psychosis in order for the audience to see the err of raw realities and their communications and treatments. The constant stream of wealth versus poverty, promises of fame or protection, the emotional tenderness that becomes cross-wired with agenda and intent, is the basis for every single one of his films, yet reaches into a deeper framework of cycles that haunt the human condition no matter the era or the country, the identity or the disposition. 

Instead of the thematic struggle of racial, homophobic and sexist entities, Petra’s setting is seemingly full of upper class pleasantries:  a white all-female cast with a hint of lesbian romance. Of course lesbian groups protested the film, missing the point completely. It’s not to say that Fassbinder was never a misogynist, but bringing expectations to this particular director about how he must portray any character was barking up the worst of wrong trees. Fassbinder’s needed examples of bad behavior in order to reflect the struggle and suffering of power dynamics that most art at the time tended to eschew as too political or too aggressive. 

Ironically, the relationship between Petra and Karin was deeply personal to Fassbinder, as it was inspired by his own gay relationship with a younger actor. Within Petra, Fassbinder found a way to make a film about microaggressions inside the bubble, seething with intensity, stirring a tale of possession, fear of abandonment and ego death at the forefront. Felt deeply by audiences, most of Fassbinder’s films were mirrors of his own experiences. Because of the generational gap of Petra and Karin, and their sadistic and masochistic energies, the unhealthy codependency of Petra reveals a stinging truth in love gone wrong. 

Fassbinder was not about healthy depictions. He was about grim realism, wrapped in a gauzy glamourization and yet so many of his female characters were brazen and bold molds, less sad eyed than Godard’s muses and less gaudy than Fellini’s follies. Fassbinder elevated his own trope of undocumented woman. Woman as the kamikaze, fallen drug addict, met with empathy, the audience nail-biting to see her somehow escape. The BRD Trilogy encapsulated such passionate belief in the narratives, it’s possible that Fassbinder found pieces of himself within all of the main characters. 

But like many creative children who came from a lineage ravaged in dictatorship, Fassbinder’s touch of unnerving violence is very raw for some preferences in art. Querelle was the last film Fassbinder ever made, released in 1982, the same year he overdosed from cocaine and barbiturates. Between 1969 to his untimely death at the age of 37, Fassbinder directed over 40 films and various shorts, televisions series, plays and beyond. In a cliche, Fassbinder was a tortured soul who grappled with wanting to be loved but abusing himself and those around him, standing in his own way. 

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Queers on Film presented by Wussy Mag and Out on Film will screen Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant on October 7th at Plaza Theatre. You can purchase tickets by clicking here.

Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.

Few entertainers have nuzzled themselves into the American psyche like Judy Garland. But the beloved star was also a drug addict, alcoholic, and spent the majority of her adult life battling an eating disorder and depression. The eponymous biopic currently in theaters focuses on her last set of performances, six months before she died of an accidental overdose. 

Loosely based on the play “End of the Rainbow,” Judy depicts a Garland most of the public won’t recognize. In 1968, the Wizard of Oz actress is 46 years old and her career and personal life were in shambles. She was in severe debt and struggled to hold down jobs because, by then, her demons had developed a reputation of their own. An opening scene depicts Garland making a public appearance for a mere $150, for which she is paid in cash, in a paper envelope — like a caterer. 

Broke and with virtually no other prospects, Judy is forced to book an extended engagement at a popular nightclub in London. This five-week residency is backdrop for Judy. 

Renee Zellweger plays the down-on-her-luck star of stage and screen. Admittedly, she’s a bizarre choice, but the aughts rom-com queen is fully up to the task. The way she inhabits Garland’s frail-beyond-her-years physicality is impressive enough, but even more so is how Zellweger captures the late icon’s inner anguish. Wildly insecure and admittedly desperate to be loved, Garland in her later years exuded a palpable vulnerability that, though sometimes disturbing, made her a completely disarming performer. While a fantastic vehicle for its modern star, Judy ultimately feels hollow without its subject’s singular voice. 

This is particularly problematic as the film is built around a concert series, thereby relying on the payoff that comes when the audience sees that despite her life being nearly extinguished, Garland’s star was not. Zellweger reportedly trained extensively with a vocal coach, and though her efforts are admirable, her renditions of Judy classics (which are subsequently American songbook classics) like “Trolley Song” feel stilted. This derails all the considerable work the script and Zellweger have done to paint Garland’s portrait so vividly. She may nail Judy’s mannerisms and speaking voice, but when she attempts the singer’s signature vibrato during the performance scenes — of which there are many — the impersonation begins to show, and Zellweger almost looks like a drag queen. 

Nonetheless, she is the film’s greatest asset, and when the frame isn’t focused on her, the movie falters. At times, the filmmakers impose their modern sensibilities, such as conjuring

up a fictionalized gay couple, obsessed with Judy to the degree that they pay to see her perform several times a week. Plausible enough, Garland was and remains a queer icon. One night after the show, the lonely star asks them to dinner. Nothing’s open, so they take her back to their place where the threesome shares a night of song and booze, culminating in Garland calling them her “allies.” It’s a fantasy and a heavy-handed one, at that. 

Then there are the flashbacks to Garland’s MGM days, depicting how the Hollywood film studio routinely diminished her confidence by insisting she was both not a natural beauty and too fat. This all really happened. By the time she was 19, Garland was already addicted to prescription meds, thanks to studio caretakers force-feeding her amphetamines to work long hours and then barbiturates to come down afterwards. Granted, this is crucial context for the viewer, but scenes which depict studio head Louis. B Mayer wagging his grubby fingers feel gratuitous and try too hard to evoke Harvey Weinstein comparisons. 

You needn’t look this hard for Garland’s trauma; towards the end of her life, it’s on her face in every interview, her timbre in every performance — which is why the absence of the real Judy’s voice feels so significant. 

The biopic, while imperfect, still has moments which captures the late star’s magic. In one scene, a doctor examines Garland’s health, asking her she’s taking anything for depression.

“Four husbands,” she quips, “didn’t work.”

“And you are underweight.” 

“You’re flirting with me now,” she mimes, tragically. 

A consummate performer until the end, it does us no good to gloss over her demons. Judy succeeds in showing a modern audience a much forgotten part of its subject’s legacy. Liza Minnelli may not want to see the film (she, like her mother, would grow up to wrestle with substance abuse), but I’d argue the collective public should confront what our expectations do to the person beneath the celebrity. When Judy Garland sung, “If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why, can’t I?” it meant something very different than when Dorothy Gale sung it. Don’t you forget it.

Judy directed by Rubert Goold is currently showing in movie theaters nationwide.  

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Jacob Seferian is a Texas-bred journalist living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @disco__bitch. That's disco, two underscores, bitch.

Hey, Black girls! Let’s talk about hair.

We all know that it’s quite common for a Black girl to wear a protective style in place of her natural hair. The way that Black women are socialized based on the way our hair looks often causes us to have negative self-images. Short, natural hair is masculinized by way of being called nappy, unkempt, animalistic, and so on. We are chastised by the media, and by those within our own community, for how we choose to wear our hair. Thus, many Black women ‘loc it up (pun intended) in an effort to save themselves from ridicule. 

And there’s nothing wrong with rocking a few extra inches! It does, however, become a problem when we mistreat our hair for the sake of upholding societal standards of beauty. It becomes a problem when we allow for the continued perpetuation of anti-blackness in regard to our hair. It becomes a problem when what is seen as “manageable” and, therefore, beautiful, is reserved to those with loose, wavy curls. What’s under our coveted weaves, wigs, and sew-ins deserve love and appreciation, too. 

For Black trans women in particular, this is an extremely difficult conundrum to navigate, especially in a world where many people have preconceived notions about our gender identities. Our appearances are policed from the way we dress, to our muscle densities, to the levels of bass in our voices and beyond, so for a Black trans woman to have short, kinky hair would inevitably invite some transphobic behavior. We are not rewarded the same representational leeway as, say, a white trans women, in that our transitions are invalidated up until the point that we put a wig on. We risk getting misgendered, jeered at, and threatened if we do not endorse the stereotypical notion of long hair equating to femininity. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: a trans woman’s natural beauty is valid. 

Furthermore, a Black trans woman’s natural beauty is valid. 

If you are a Black trans woman reading this, I strongly urge you to pour into your natural hair. The sooner we are seen embracing the ferociousness and femininity that comes with being a Black natural, the sooner we can change the derogatory language surrounding our lovely locks. Nurture that crown, sis!

Watch as Culture Editor Iv Fischer discusses the implications of natural hair for Black women.

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Ivana Fischer is the Culture Editor of WUSSY and a film and media enthusiast who specializes in cultural studies. You can find her across all socials @iv.fischer

Photo by NaturallyBoudoir.com

Meeting Royal Tee is not for the faint of heart. She is a beautiful (both inside and out) burlesque performer who is well-known in the City of Atlanta - and beyond. While she is, she admits, both femme-and-straight-presenting, she is unapologetically queer - another trait that makes being in her presence disarming.

My own personal story of meeting her involved a workshop at Dad’s Garage in Atlanta, where I’m an improviser. My goal for taking the class was to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and taking a burlesque class was the way to do it. When I walked in and saw Royal Tee, my first thought was, “This makes sense.”

Royal Tee exudes confidence and grace. She embodies the very essence of what burlesque is - you can see it in the way she moves, whether she’s dancing or not. In her classes, she stresses that burlesque and stripping are two different art forms, and that burlesque is more about the “tease” - though stripping can certainly be about that as well. She is knowledgeable about the history of burlesque, and her entire face lights up when she starts delving into how burlesque is truly a global phenomenon that’s affected large parts of society. She’s mesmerizing to watch both on and offstage, and we had the pleasure of sitting down with her to talk about, well, pleasure.

Tell us a bit about who you are, and what you do.

I started taking ballet and tap as a two-year-old. I came out of the womb dancing. I was a dancer my entire life, even through college as I studied musical theatre. In college, I was always pigeon-holed as a dance captain or an ensemble member. I enjoyed it but wanted more. Being in an ensemble in a theatre production wasn’t really where I wanted to spend my life. It was hard to live in the shadows of the tall, skinny, pretty girls. 

I’ve always been chubby and thick. I’ve always gotten called fat. And I always wanted to be in control, but my entire life, I never had control. I was a people-pleaser. It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago that I started doing burlesque.

Now, I’m a burlesque performer, producer, instructor, and advocate. Within those fields, I’m trying to present art that is new, fresh, exciting, inclusive, and queer. My goal at the end of every show is that I want the audience to leave wanting more. My tagline is, “Prepare to be royally teased.” 

With burlesque, I have the power. I’m in a power position. I can be evil and also heroic. I really believe in what I’m doing, and I never feel like I’m kissing anyone’s ass.

How do you work a queer narrative into your art?

I definitely feel more relaxed in a queer space. I think it’s super validating to perform for your [queer] family. It’s exciting and fun, and it kind of fills that cup up. It’s important for me to have the ability to educate people on using the correct pronouns and supporting queer art in general. Coming to shows. Consuming live art. I think once a lot of people are there, they’ve learned something. That’s something they can take with them later. 

I sometimes feel like my identity is all over the place. As someone who on the daily presents as femme (and most of my art presents as femme and straight), I make it a point to let the emcee of a show know that this is a queer performance. My intention behind my creation and performance is queer-directed. I may not always perform to a queer song or have a queer message, but the intent behind what I do is to be queer. 

I do that, too, when I’m producing. It’s important to have diversity and to allow people to create within a safe space. It’s hard to do in Atlanta, because we don’t have a burlesque theatre. This hasn’t happened in Atlanta, but in Chicago, some people would come into shows expecting one thing and getting something completely different.

What I love about burlesque is that most of the time when you’re watching burlesque, you’re going to be watching someone who is queer. Sometimes people are fully straight or monogamous. But burlesque allows people to expand. We do have a lot of queer people. We do have a lot of poly people. We are so comfortable within our own existence. You’re going see at least a few queer performers. I wish people knew that. I wish people knew that they could support that. It’s available for them to support. Even in the queer community - I would love for more queer outlets to support the burlesque scene. I think sometimes burlesque is seen as too much or not enough. I feel a little sad when I see a drag show without a burlesque performer on it. I do make it a point to reach out and say, “Let me know if you want some queer burlesque.” If I’m traveling to another city and people see burlesque and love burlesque, they might want to see more burlesque. I want to grassroots begin a venue that is catering to providing space to burlesque performers in Atlanta. Getting the bug in people’s ear that this is something desperately needed. We need more venues. This is all of Atlanta. We need more space to create. We should eventually have an Atlanta burlesque festival. I want people to know that we exist. There’s so much burlesque in Atlanta now.

Tell us your favorite burlesque story.

My first time ever performing a solo was in Chicago. I created it from the ground up. Before that, I had performed in scripted shows or performed a choreographed dance, but it was always the vision of someone else. I performed this show on Halloween. I performed as Walter White transforming into Heisenberg. It was an oversold show. 

I had rehearsed it and worked it into the ground, creating all the moves and concepts. When I walked out, people recognized me as Walter White. People saw that, and they were freaking out. I choreographed it to counts, which was good, because people were shouting the entire time. People started standing up when I pulled the “blue meth” out of my underwear. People were losing their minds. 

I came off stage. I had to take a minute - I was crying. I was on cloud 9 for a week or so. I’ve never been so high from performing. That was the first time I created a character that was solely mine. Those are the moments that make me feel like I can breathe into what I’m doing. 

We’re our own worst critic. I want to continue down that path of being unapologetically queer and being unapologetically in this body that I have. Carrying those strings of validation. I feel grateful for those moments. I want to continue to provide those moments and provide space for people who want to experience that, too. That’s why I teach, mentor, choreograph, produce. It’s still a big part of me. It’s important to me as someone who has the privilege to create a space for diversity. 

What do you see yourself doing in terms of your career within 10 years?

I recently started doing Draglesque. Within that, I don’t usually lip-sync, but in this act, I do. It’s in a more comedic style. It’s in the comedic style that I originally started doing with burlesque in Chicago. 

I had started doing neo-burlesque. Every time I read a piece of burlesque history, I’m like, “Oh! I wanna take that and run with it!” I want to delve back into my comedic, in-your-face, I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. I feel really fulfilled by it. It’s the times I feel the least amount of pressure for my body. The entire act is saying, “Go fuck yourself.” It’s an act that represents how I feel about being pigeon-holed into anything. It’s all the things I love that I learned from burlesque. It has tassel-twirling - I love that! I fucking love it - and people love it, too! 

I have been dying to have a full-on show that is highly curated which is variety that has burlesque undertones throughout the entire piece. I want to incorporate live music, spoken word, drag, burlesque, all the things. Instead of having a set that’s like, emcee, act, emcee, act, I want to give a program. I want to empower femininity in all of its forms, have group routines, have rehearsals together and bond. I want to pay everyone a fuckton of money. I have very specifically envisioned this, and how I want it to look: the lighting, the stage, the audience, their reaction. I want to contribute socioeconomically. how can people create? For the time being, I’m thinking of the things I can do, that I have the time for, that I have the money for.

In 10 years, I would like to travel more. I would like to travel out of the country doing burlesque. I would love to be a part of the burlesque Miss Exotic World Weekender. Everyone in burlesque does this big competition. I would love to be a part of that in any capacity. 

I definitely want to have my own space or have a space that is catered to burlesque productions, catered to putting up queer performance art on a nightly basis, and continuing to create space and have a safe space. The cool thing about burlesque is you don’t age out of it.

Plug time! What shows do you have coming up that we can catch you in?

Up next, I’m doing the WUSSY show, Saturday at the Park and Vavianna Vardot’s Halloween Sex Party with Dad’s Garage. 

I teach Burlesque 101 at the Atlanta School of Burlesque on Thursdays. It’s more sensual, involves floor work, chair work, but it’s also a workout. It focuses on the basics of burlesque. I always try and make it as accessible as I can. I want to make everyone feel safe in that space.

On Sunday’s at 10:30am for the next five weeks, I’m doing an Ecstatic Movement class. This is a guided free movement meditation - and very helpful for the artist. It’s pay-what-you-can at the studio. It’s focused on five rhythms, or the Movement Method invented by Gabrielle Roth. Your birth is flowing, staccato is your childhood, chaos being your midlife/teenage adolescence. Lyrical is maturity, and stillness is death. That’s in my creation process. Birth of an idea, chaos of idea, adolescence of idea, chaos, and completion. 

—

Wanna see Royal Tee for yourself? Catch the Royal Tease Experience this Thursday, October 10th at Buckhead Theatre for Playhouse with Alyssa Edwards! Tickets are available here. Royal Tee will also be at Piedmont Park’s Nissan Stage on Saturday at 5:15pm with the Candybox Review.

Anna Jones is a writer and producer currently based in Atlanta. She is the proud owner of digital copywriting agency Girl.Copy and independent film production company Tiny Park Productions. She loves a lot of stuff, but mainly: her husband, kid, and cat, writing and filmmaking, coffee and Diet Coke, millennial pink, sushi, gay stuff, and horror films.

Ryan Murphy is the modern Midas of über producers and showrunners. Not only that, Murphy has managed to capture and elevate the varying queer experiences in most, if not all, of the shows he’s produced to date. After the revolutionary first two seasons of Pose, which made history a few weeks ago when Billy Porter became the first openly gay black actor to win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, it didn’t go unnoticed when Porter listed whom he’d like to thank for helping him get there, pausing in the speech to use some very important repetition: “Ryan Murphy, Ryan Murphy, Ryan Murphy.” 

With Murphy released from his super production deal with Fox, he’s now got full creative control in a new production deal with Netflix. And girl, this is what we need right now. Fans have been eagerly awaiting the premiere of Murphy’s latest, The Politician. Oof, and did he deliver. We’ve already seen think pieces on what this show is reflecting as far as the current political climate, the Paltrow stans who just refuse to go away, what the show has done for LGBTQ+ representation, specifically in the careful nonchalance we should be giving all of us who identity as queer, queer, queer. But I’m here to talk about the power suits, ok? 

For anyone who had to wear a uniform while they were in their formative years: I truly mourn for you. Because what is so enthralling and even endearing about fashion in these years is that it stems from pure creativity and experimentation. And the costume designers on The Politician set knew exactly how to get it right. 

The characters in The Politician are mostly rich, white, and blonde, (this seems like a strategic move on Murphy’s part i.e. politics in general) which means the only characters effectively looking like shit are Infinity Jackson and her Adam Driver-looking boyfriend Ricardo. Besides these two, these Santa Barbara-ites are pulling out all the wealthy AF stops in their wardrobes. But what is particularly interesting about their fashion choices is that they reflect the individual fluidity in their sexual and gender identities, and many of them morph as their preferences and desires are illuminated. 

By character, here’s who has us particularly shook by their garb. 

Payton Hobart, played by Ben Platt 

Payton’s wardrobe is at first quite preppy, implementing pastels, polos, and sweater vests as he tries to hide his relationship with crush-of-the-century, River Barkley. Even Payton’s car is somewhat a part of his style, a classic and no doubt wildly expensive european convertible, often fitted with only one red leather seat (a metaphor for his internal loneliness). However, there are some turns taken in his wardrobe at especially telling plot points. He’s a consummate turtleneck enthusiast, switching effortlessly from mock to full (really, a masterclass) especially post-breakup with the self-proclaimed ice cold bitch, Alice. His clothes in the season finale reflect his new New York persona as an alcoholic piano player and very single bisexual person--dark clothes that don’t see him as meticulously put together because what would be the point?

Hobart Highlight: My favorite Hobart fashion choice in all of season one is his tailored-to-perfection red suit on the day of the presidential election. No one wears a suit like that unless they’ve already planned an acceptance speech. 

Georgina Hobart, played by Gwyneth Paltrow 

First of all, ugh, Paltrow is ageless and this is perhaps the perfect choice of actor for a WASP with a heart of gold and a longing for a simpler life with her androgynous horse trainer. Georgina has some of the most show-stopping fashion of all the characters, (Paltrow’s husband is Brad Falchuk, hello?) and this shows through in her grappling with the ultimate question: to be or not to be rich and depressed? Georgina’s hyper-straight looks are opulent. It’s clear she owns everything. In fact, in most scenes, Georgina is wearing a ring on every finger but her thumbs. Her look at the charity gala, at which she starts her affair with Brigitte, is out of a period piece. In fact, she wears many a gown when she’s in the presence of her very straight and very short husband. When she’s dressing for herself we see her more casual, albeit still looking just as expensive (that yellow kaftan in the first episode?). She commands a room -- after all, it is her riding pants that convince the apathetic voter to even try to get to the polls. 

Hobart Highlight: Georgina trims roses in the Hobart’s lush garden while wearing a full-length sleeved ball gown in power red complete with a wide-brimmed hat to protect the goods. Honestly, I saw this look and thought I should just see myself out. 

McAfee Westbrook, played by Laura Dreyfuss 

McAfee’s outfits are literally why I’m writing this. I needed to tell someone about the range of feelings I have about her suits. McAfee seems nondescript when she’s surrounded by much louder characters--with races to win and people to fuck over and pay off (although Dreyfuss did have the honor of getting paid to be yelled at by Bette Midler). As low key as she may seem, her outfits are anything but. Not only is she rocking the suit better than anyone on screen, (sorry to the Hobarts) but this is couture, honey. We don’t learn that McAfee is secretly hooking up with Payton’s vice presidential opponent, Skye, the nonbinary and honestly pretty sociopathic achiever that will stop at nothing, until close to the climax of the season, but even before that we knew she wasn’t straight. Those suits are for the fluid only. Bright, subdued, patterned, belted, short, or billowing, McAfee always arrives looking like the imaginary girlfriend I want to share a closet with. She’s also the only one bringing in especially bright and transparent sunglasses to tie everything together like we’re not already here for it. Whether she completes the look with platforms or sneakers, McAfee has my vote and she’s not even running. 

McAfee Highlight: I’m still very fucked up by the double-breasted pastel pink suit with wide pant legs worn in episode six, though it can be argued that I still haven’t gotten over the patterned suits with shorts, either with a light blue mock turtleneck underneath, or a t-shirt that says “Give a Damn.” I give a lot of damns. 

*Please respect my privacy at this time, I’ll be grieving these lewks until season two. 

—

Dakota is a poet, journalist, and right in the damn center of the Kinsey scale. Follow her on Twitter: @Likethestates.

WUSSY is proud to present new work by Kansas City poet, Ada Ardére. If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.

Call me by my name

You use it for dogs, you use it for cars,
you use it for ships, and boats, cannons
and the space shuttles that pierce heaven.
You use it for churches, you use it for temples,
you use it for jewels, and crowns, tomes
and the endlessly manufactured machines of war.
And yet you refuse.

Would it really be a lie, and if it were,
would it be such a crime, to denote
incorrectly, to point out wrongly?
Words were never like that anyway,
never pointed down to the helix
fixated on the chromosomes and their
enticing shapeliness.

It was never like that and never will be,
did the Romans sans the neuter compile
their glass lenses to declare XY
in their mountains of documents on the hill
or did Wittgenstein declare the pronoun game
assertoric eo ipso in his aphorisms
and investigations?

Was it Kaplan or Kripke who hammered
rules in Church doors, contingently necessary
that demonstrating is an act of deception
if and only if the grunt is improper
the ejaculation of spittle and sound
what really matters deep inside
mythic syntax eluding functionality?

You’ve changed it so very many times,
when your wife or daughter ceased
her maidenhood with an official licence
and in every instance of a nickname,
pet-name, surname used in casual
reference, changing your call with 
the times. But not with me.

Would that you ignored your squinting
searches scanning over certificates
appealing to the authority of my parents
who themselves have long since ceased
the use of that word that lays in
a grave deeply buried and as dead as
the me that first owned it.

If only you could see the being that names 
are baptised in the name of in
the fires of their first utterance,
that horrendous chimera of good and evil,
habits and failings of character,
loves, and stories of anxious history,
as I am now and never have been.

I am made of all my parts and past
who form the greater thing that
in defining self-defines and in denying
is denied. I have never sought your harm,
nor could I merely in that I am, so
would it cause you so much pain
to simply call me by name?

Ada Ardére is a Puerto Rican poet from New Orleans, but lives in Kansas City. She studied philosophy of art and Plato, and loves beat poetry.

Chris Walsh the Star and Mackenzie Van Dyke are ringing in Halloween with “Back from the Dead”, a Bride of Frankenstein themed smash keenly positioned somewhere between the Monster Mash and Monster High. Chris’ songwriting has always leaned towards the otherworldly and attaching visual cues has been fundamental to the BFFs’ playful photos and nightlife lewks. This self-produced queer pop duo immediately clicked during their freshman college orientation and, delighted by their passion for personas, were soon brewing ideas galore. “It is very exciting when you meet people who not only become really great friends but also help you grow as a person and an artist. We are both driven and hold one another to high standards which leads to a lot of work together that I am always proud of,” Mackenzie gushes. “When it comes to taking whatever insane idea we have for a shoot or video and actually executing it, we had to learn how to be innovative with the space and materials available, which is very little. If we don’t have something, the only option is to make it ourselves, even if that ‘something’ is an entire castle to shoot in.”

In 2017, they joked about making a Halloween ditty and wallah!, they now have two under their corset belts. Why Halloween? “It’s an entire season dedicated to dressing up being whatever you want to be and seeing everyone participate in something that queer people appreciate year round is really amazing,” Chris explains. “Halloween is intrinsically gay in my opinion, atleast a lot of the modern rituals surrounding Halloween,” Mackenzie adds. “I think a lot of queer people are attracted to Halloween, and horror in general, because we see ourselves reflected in the deviation from ‘normalcy’ built in the fantasies of the genre. Although the horror genre historically villainized its LGBT+ characters, it also was some of the only films to depict queer people in positions of power, so we adopt the aesthetics of horror and Halloween as our own.”

In detailed set dressing, this crafty crew are likened to Goth Martha Stewarts. Having developed from mere makeup to cool costuming and finally music video creations, the beauty injection galavant of “Back from the Dead” is a perfect follow-up from the duo’s previous forage into spooky singles. Chris’ living room houses the meticulous process, sharing, “We strategically turned my furniture into props for the video like covering my desk in foam board and sculpting it to look like a crypt. For the beach scene we actually covered my entire floor in sheets and dumped over 100 pounds of play sand on the ground to transform the space. Some of the props from the video were actually pulled from the alley behind my apartment and cleaned up and painted.” A year ago, their Bathory boudoir “Love At First Bite” (below) solidified their sacrifice to glam and gore. Though in rhinestones and baths of blood, the Dracula-esqe Satanic spa matched perfectly to their honest pop prowess, possession and obsession aligning with early Gaga rhymes and rhythm, infectious and irresistible.   

The horror genre has always been excessive, much to the delight of Chris, who says, “Unlike traditional film, the audience suspends their disbelief and it’s acceptable to have more open ended plots, outrageous costumes, disjointed editing and unrealistic storylines. The idea that characters can have 7 costume changes in the span of a day doesn’t really make sense but the audience accepts extremes like those in music videos.” The Atomic Age saw early depictions of the campy and creepy in TV and movies from the 1950’s and forward and with this, ghoulish glam has had a lengthy appeal:  Morticia, Bride of Frankenstein, Vampira. Elvira’s 1988 camp comedy Mistress of the Dark, however, has influenced Chris and Mackenzie most. 

From their Instagram accounts, you’d think these drag enthusiasts reside in NYC, but their base is Richmond, VA. Mackenzie’s exploration of drag digs deeper with the amazing Absolutely Podcast. “Around three years ago, my co-host and I were traveling to see drag frequently. We started with just photographing shows and eventually leaned into documenting through video and finally the podcast. It was a way to continue to do what we enjoyed while also feeling like we were producing something we could share with other people,” Mackenzie says of her immersion in queer communities beyond. “I especially enjoy doing the interviews because for many drag artists they only share their art on a stage for a couple of minutes, but it’s always interesting to be able to learn more about their specific artistic process. It gives us an opportunity to highlight the talent of performers who have yet to have the platform that televised drag shows have given other artists.”  

Follow these glorious glam things on IG for more news and juicy content @chriswalshthestar and @kenziejaynev. Halloween music is few and far between, though dark themes have always been present in goth and industrial. For WUSSY’s take on spooky songs, check out our Shalloween Screams playlist. 

Early in Rukus, the directorial debut from filmmaker Brett Hanover, a friend he is interviewing asks him a question and the shot switches to show the director. It’s at this moment that we realize this film isn’t the documentary that it opens as, but it’s also not quite a narrative drama. Are we watching something real, or something invented? This conflict is at the heart of the film, a mostly successful piece of mixed media cinema that explore notions of who we are and how we create the ways that people see us.

At first glance, Rukus is a film about furries, but if you’re looking for a more sensational tale of America’s most misunderstood fetish subculture, this isn’t it. Rather, the community becomes the backdrop of a story about a loose-knit group of friends brought together by this common thread. This is a coming-of-age story that could be set amongst many other alienated groups and many queer people would feel at home in this film. Characters struggle with mental illness; explore BDSM, asexuality, and queerness; and go to house shows in punk houses so cluttered and messy that I started having flashbacks to my college years. 

The success of the film lies in the ways that Hanover weaves together various media to tell the story, framed around the life and death of his friend and collaborator Rukus. A fixture in the furry scene of the early aughts, Rukus claims to be a god of the fandom. Hanover employs every medium available to him to make Rukus feel like a mysterious force of nature. The film features excerpts from plays, dramatic reenactments, readings of AIM messages and forum posts, and animated sequences mixed in with sit-down interviews with people who actually knew Rukus as well as home video footage shot by Rukus himself. 

The film constantly breaks the fourth, fifth, and even the sixth wall, blending fictional elements with real life footage. Soon, it becomes difficult to tell reality from fiction. This confusion hearkens back to the difficulty many of us face when discovering who we are. Many queer people either have to or get to create their own persona. Even though Hanover and Rukus only meet in person a handful of times, they become confidants. From across the country, Rukus opens up to Hanover about his creative struggles working on a furry manga inspired by his own personal struggles, they talk about relationship and sexuality issues, they talk about the furry fandom. 

In a particularly striking scene, Rukus relays the trauma from his past to Hanover. This scene struck a chord for me. With the advent of forums and the internet, many of us are able to experiment with identity in low-risk ways and open ourselves up to people who don’t know us very well, but also aren’t geographically close enough to really affect our lives in serious ways. That Hanover is able to so accurately portray these things is a result of his ability to switch between narrative formats. This storytelling technique is the high point of the film.

If the film suffers, it is only in minor ways. The performances can be a little stiff, but Hanover has cast real people from his life, so this is only to be expected. The film does become unfocused as it weaves between telling Hanover’s personal journey and recounting the life of Rukus. And, as to be expected with any low budget film, there are certain elements, especially in the costumed dreamlike sequences exploring Rukus’s childhood state of mind, that just don’t quite hit the mark. However, in the dreamlike metanarrative that Hanover tells, it’s hard to be overly critical about these things. Reality is supposed to feel surreal, and in that way, these things succeed.

What starts as a film about remembering a lost friend and the furry fandom turns out to be a work of art about the ways that we create art and ourselves. The film explores a world that has been treated unkindly in most portrayals and lays it bare and honest. In clumsier hands, the shifts between format could be jarring, but Hanover manages to create a lo-fi, punk-rock ode to his own coming-of-age, and in so doing, creates a fitting tribute to a friend whose own reality was tenuous at best. 

Rukus will be streaming in its entirety beginning on October 10th, 2019. You can watch the film at rukusmovie.com.

—

Julian Modugno is a writer and humorist based out of Chicago, IL. He hates everything you love and won't be happy until it's destroyed and you're left with nothing. You can follow him on instagram @historysgreatestmonster.

It’s easy to place people on pedestals. We idolize others, their charisma, divine wisdom and cunning, their bodies, god-like physique, and Adonis sex appeal.  Tomer Heymann shows us, however, that no man is a god, but something far more complex, and infinitely more beautiful—human. Tomer’s documentary Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life follows Yonatan Langer, also known as the internationally-recognized porn star Jonathan Agassi, and his larger-than-life persona navigating the sex industry. His life is filled with beautiful men, hot sex and adoring fans, as well as darkness, pain, loneliness and self-destruction.  

Jonathan’s fame comes from a taboo line of work, but he has seen success unlike many other in his field. Filmed between Berlin and Israel, the film looks at porn and escorting on an intimate level, as well as the star’s close relationship with his mother and family, challenging traditional notions of family and unconditional love. 

The film peels back the ugly parts of his carefully-curated image. We see Jonathan at his most fragile, a man who wants to be loved. We witness his battles with the demons of hopelessness and addiction in a visceral and unflinching way. Despite the dangers and heartbreaking moments Jonathan faces, Tomer’s portrayal of him feels humanizing and rich, imperfect and whole. Through Jonathan’s flaws, we are invited to confront ourselves more honestly, and inspect our own lives with an equal level of sensitivity, forgiveness, and compassion. 

We asked Tomer Heymann about his experience on the project as well as his approach to documentary filmmaking.

What brought you to Jonathan Agassi as the subject for this documentary?

I met Jonathan Agassi on the streets of Tel Aviv and I immediately felt envious of his freedom, of his wild choices. I insisted on continuing seeing him. When I approached him because something about him intrigued me, he smiled with his charming, crafty smile and said, “Pleased to meet you, my name is Yonatan Langer”.

From the little information I had about him, I knew that he was an internationally successful porn star, that he had millions of fans all over the world, and that the porn films he starred in were sold and watched by millions of people. When he finally agreed to meet me, he adamantly refused to be the hero of the film, and said that his mother would never agree to be exposed in a film that exposed his bizarre life. 

When I saw him again on one of his visits to Israel, as his career in Berlin was skyrocketing, and asked to meet his mother, he said, “If you can convince my mother to be in the film, I’m in too”. He added, “My name is not Yonatan anymore. My name is Jonathan Agassi, and you should know that this persona – Jonathan Agassi – saved my life”.

You’ve covered a wide range of subjects through filmmaking. What is something unique to this mode of storytelling that keeps you coming back to the documentary format?

For me it is very elemental and it comes from me. I truly have to be interested and excited about a person and a story and feel the need, a drive to capture it. I don’t choose a subject, it comes to me. The same happened with Jonathan; I met him randomly and I was immediately captivated by him. I suppose I feel like something more interesting than my own life is happening at that time, at that moment. In a certain sense I use people, their lives, their pains, their joys… I guess at those moments there is something more interesting than my own life there which I have to explore.

There's something about the act of documentary filming which is the exact opposite of naive. It involves a lot of vested interests and exploitation – on the part of both the director and the protagonists – when I was younger, there was also a naiveté, an innocence and excitement of not knowing what I was going for with my filming. It's like kissing someone you don't know. You don't know what the kiss will lead to. This thrill was driving me to film my family and my own life but with time I became more aware that I wanted to create something. I discovered my own documentary language that manages to faithfully express what I want to convey and the story that is created in the editing room. I realized immediately that in documentary cinema the person who directs the film initially is the cameraman. The role of the camera is absolutely crucial, which is why I fought and refused to give it up. I am present in many of my films and I always make sure I re-tell the emotions and experiences I myself have. I realized I wanted to share this with the audience and have the audience go through the process with me. Over the years I've come to understand more clearly that this shared process makes the films more alive and more interesting, it intensifies the experience.

While filming this intensely personal and emotionally brutal piece, what role did objectivity play for you as an artist and director during this project?

From the beginning, I told Anna and Jonathan that they will decide the limits of this movie, they will decide how far we go. When he came to the editing room he really pushed me to include hard things in the movie. When I first witnessed the drug issues, the emotional mess, I was really shocked; but honestly, after time I realised it was just part of the movie. I was filming someone who has these problems and addictions. Not sharing that with the audience would have been hypocritical. It really shook me, but you come to realise this is an important aspect of Jonathan’s life, he is someone who has this self-destructive impulse. I was worried for him and wanted to protect him. But at the same time, I didn’t want to make a fake movie about a successful porn star. I tried to balance my commitments to Jonathan and to the film.

I went through so many feelings, I got so involved, financially, emotionally, in so many crises. I can’t separate Anna and Jonathan from myself, they’re really deep in my heart. It wasn’t just a case of making a movie over a couple of years and then everyone goes their own way. We went through very intense highs and lows together. Depression, happiness, fears, worries, and through it all, love. Even though the movie is quite dark, I hope it conveys the love I have for Jonathan and Anna, and the love they have for one another.

The film contains a lot of nudity and is heavy with adult content. Before the film’s premiere in America, you were concerned about how the film would be received; perhaps concerned it may be taken as lewd or pornographic. Can you talk about your decision to keep the film uncensored and unedited?

This film is very specifically about Jonathan. It is about a hole in his soul that he filled with sex and drugs. It’s not about porn stars and the industry in general. I think this movie kills the joy of porn. This wasn’t the purpose: my camera found this angle and I didn’t want to be dishonest about that. Jonathan opens one door to the backstage of this controversial “taboo”. I myself have had a diverse life – I discovered I’m gay, I’ve been to parties, I’ve been to saunas, I’ve had relationships, I’m not someone who came from the moon yesterday, I am aware of all this hiding behind the door. But still, honestly, I never thought that people would go as far as injecting their penises [with drugs to last longer]. But it is something common. The illusion of this sustained erection, where you can fuck for so long? It’s fake. Chemical. 

The film is uncensored because I chose to show Jonathan and how he lives and works which meant revealing a lot that would often make you look away. I believe it is important to be honest and transparent as this is part of Jonathan’s story, it is what makes him who he is. Jonathan is a radical guy which is why this film looks radical, it is not a light movie, because he’s not an easy, light character.

A major arc of the film with Jonathan Agassi is his drug use, which we see get more intense and pervasive throughout the run of the film. Did you witness any indication that substance abuse was more normalized in the gay porn culture, or the gay culture at large?

Jonathan is like the white rabbit in Wonderland who runs into the hole and we jump with him as he takes us behind the scenes of the porn world. But this hole also takes us to his downfall into drug addiction which was not an easy thing to observe. The movie shows what a change drugs can enforce on a human being. A lot of movies talk about what drugs, porn and prostitution do to people, how they disrupt lives but we wanted to show it, not only talk about it and we had a hero who agreed to go all the way. In this light, “Jonathan Agassi saved my life” is not only a movie that goes to the end but it is also the hero that goes to the end. In many scenes Jonathan makes drugs seem “cool” or even “ordinary” and this is where we come in to show the viewers the ugly side of the drugs, the scary side of the drugs which was not material for entertainment, but a call for warning. By the end of the movie we witness how this vice takes over him. 

Anna, Jonathna’s mother after the first screening of the film told the editor she was happy that the shocking drug scenes were included because Jonathan must see himself in these moments and reflect on them.

What would you like people to take away most from Jonathan Agassi’s story?

The quality of the movie is related to Jonathan's essence, to his human essence, part of which is his total dedication and this film is also an example of the dedication and collaboration of both of us. This movie is about an intimate look into a unique person with a unique life, it is about the relationship between mother and son who courageously redefine family concepts. It is about a lonely person who seeks love and meaning but is drawn into a destructive lifestyle that reveals the dark reality of his extreme fantasies. It is real and it is about life and the many layers it has.

Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life is screening in New York at NewFest, New York’s LGBT Film Festival, on October 24th. The film is the winner of the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival Documentary Feature Special Jury Award and the 2019 Reeling Film Festival Award for Best Documentary Feature.

—

Nicholas Goodly is the writing editor of Wussy Magazine.

via Facebook

Brittany Howard has stopped sharing the spotlight - although she never really did. Even when she fronted the blues rock outfit Alabama Shakes, the large Black queer woman who growled, billowed, crooned her band’s way into four Grammy Awards and international recognition was always the focal point. The Gwen of their No Doubt, but while Stefani made her best work with her bandmates, Howard’s solo debut suggests the best is yet to come.  

As a Southern expat who had just moved to New York City, I fell in love with the Shakes. Helpless against their muddy guitar sound and a lead singer who’d barks lines like “Pass me whatever there’s drank left in / Well, I don’t care if it’s seven in the morning / For all I care it could be the second coming.” My dormmates from all corners of the country couldn’t deny their (read: her) power, either. It’s the kind of music that fills the room until it subsumes it, and before you sense it - you’re bouncing. Kids from Ohio and the Bronx would ask, “Who is this?” 

The group’s first two albums explored blue-color themes, particularly the toll of working and the subsequent emotional clarity (or absolutism, depending on who you ask) overexertion provides. “There ain’t no money left / Why can’t I catch my breath? / I’m gonna work myself to death,” Howard sings in “Don’t Wanna Fight”, adding too damn tired to the laundry list of reasons why a couple should quit bickering. It’s the kind of deeply adult record pop should but will never be filled with. 

Since putting the Shakes on hold, Howard has tried other sounds: a rock album under the moniker of Thunderbitch and a folk singing trio. Strong efforts, but both lacked the symbiosis of her former band. 

Jaime, the first solo album under her name, picks up where the Shakes left off, but is an intimate and notably softer invitation into Brittany Howard’s life. She has always sung about love, but this record clues you into more of the who and how. “Short And Sweet” features her quietest vocal delivery to date, a delicate track about how time can kill a fling. 

On “Georgia” she embraces her gay identity with a newfound boldness, at least from what an audience has been privy to. Singing from the perspective of her younger self, an uncharacteristically subdued Howard mumbles, “Afraid to tell you how I really feel or show you what I really mean when I say hello,” to an older girl. Capturing that gay adolescent stomach flip you had when looking at that person in a way you’ve been taught you shouldn’t. “Georgia - is it unnatural?” Your first crush, the confusion and fear; a synth organ surges and she howls her name. It’s a new kind of religion. 

Howard has always tackled the concept of faith in her work. After all, the Alabama Shakes’ breakout single was called “Hold On.” In more ways than one, Howard is a survivor. She grew up in a trailer park, the gay daughter of a white woman and a Black man. When she was eight, she beat a rare form of eye cancer that claimed the life of her sister (the album’s namesake) and part of her vision. When she sung that iconic 2012 chorus of “Bless my heart, bless my soul / I didn’t think I’d make it to 22-years-old” she meant it. This record lends more context to these assertions with tracks like “Goat Head” - a startling reflection on the complexities of her mixed race identity, named for the severed animal head her dad found in the back of his car one morning, his tires slashed. “When I first got made / Guess I made these folks mad,” she states matter-of-factly. 

At a Shakes concert in Brooklyn in 2015, I met a fan from Alabama in the audience. “I think she knows how lucky she is to have gotten out of Alabama, to be a Black girl who’s gotten out,” she told me before the set began. 

Today, Brittany Howard is 31 and still singing about faith, whether literally in funk spiritual “He Loves Me” or more conceptually in talk-track “13th Century Metal” where she vows to “oppose those whose will is to divide us.” Similarly charged but subtly delivered sentiments can be found throughout Jaime. They’re not presented as deliberately political, but coming from a Black queer woman, they inherently are. Howard is aware of this, showing her hand in the music video for the lead single “Stay High.”

It’s a breezy, seemingly innocuous tune about getting stoned and unwinding. The video chronicles a laborer’s drive home (played by Terry Crews) through a small town, where he’s greeted with cheery images of the Southern working class reality: checking out at the grocery store, families sitting on porches, friends meeting at a drive-in. At one point, the camera cuts to a police office enjoying ice cream with some locals. A brief but telling inclusion. It ends with the laborer arriving at home, where he’s greeted by his white wife and multi-racial daughter. Familiar? You’re listening to it on Jaime. 

“I think it’s an important time right now to make people feel good,” she said recently on an episode of SongExploder, “it’s crazy out there, man.” 

Howard doesn’t seem someone keen to dwell on her troubles. Or at least she’s very Southern about them. Work hard, push through, the sun will rise. But she does find time to take pause. “‘Cause what’s this world without you in it?” she asks on “Presence.” Although she’s gone on record saying the question is addressed to her current partner, on some level, it’s probably also for her lost sister, the one who first taught her how to make music. 

Brittany Howard doesn’t have an answer for the present, but the album serves as one for Jaime. 

Hey hey! How are the dolls?

It’s been a few weeks since I published my last article A Trans’ Girl’s Guide Medically Transitioning and since then, I’ve added a few more tips and tricks to my list. 

Whether you have yet to begin your journey or are years into your transition, I hope these words of advice turn out to be useful for you.

Name Changes

Getting my name changed was one of the most daunting and confusing parts of my transition. I was in perpetual distress over trying to navigate the American legal system, because I was sure that I would experience some form of transphobia. And also like...how the heck was I going to change my full legal name, you know?

However, actually going through with the thing isn’t as hard as it seems! 

I started by going to my county’s local Superior Court to file a Petition for a Name Change. This is a packet of about 10 pages of questions inquiring about some legal information and reason for wanting to change your name. The price to file this petition varies from state to state, so be sure to call the County Clerk before going in. 

Next, I had to post a notice in the local newspaper stating my intent to change my name. The newspaper’s main office should be in the same building, so you won’t have to go far. In the notice you must include your current name, your desired name, the court you've filed the petition with, the date you filed the petition on, and a statement admitting the right of anyone interested to object to your name change. The notice then runs in the paper once a week for four weeks.

If no one voices any objections to your name change, you are in the clear to schedule a final hearing with the judge. My final hearing took all of an hour and ended up being a lot more pleasant than I had expected. The most worrisome part of the entire ordeal was trying to muster up the costs for the petitions. 

Stop twiddling your thumbs and get that name changed today!

Paying for Hormones

It’s no secret that medically transitioning is an expensive process. Longevity and consistency are important when it comes to taking hormones, but they can be hard to acquire without the necessary funds.

Allow me to introduce you to GoodRx.com! 

This website was a lifesaver when I first started and had very little money to my name. It was especially helpful because it allowed me to compare prices at different retailers in my area, so that I could get the best deal. A lot of medical companies will match the price shown on the website, so check out this website even if you’re already insured.

Another great tool that helped me with paying for hormones was starting a GoFundMe. 

People online are a lot more willing to contribute to a good cause than you would think. Raising money for hormones is one of those things that many folks can get behind, so don’t be afraid to reach out for help.

I’m sure I’ll continually add to this list, so keep checking back! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any tips of your own, too. This sea of legalities is hard enough to navigate as it is.

Be sure to watch my new Trans Agenda video where I discuss this topic in more detail.

Byeee!

—
Ivana Fischer is the Culture Editor of WUSSY and a film and media enthusiast who specializes in cultural studies. You can find her across all socials @iv.fischer

The Ellen DeGeneres / George W. Bush controversy has been weighing heavily on my mind lately. A lot of digital ink has been spilled on the topic over the past week or so, but almost everything I've read has missed one important point.

Ellen DeGeneres is a hypocrite who lacks integrity.

Ellen says be kind to one another. She says be friends with people who disagree with you. And she is. So long as her friendly homophobes are rich, famous, and powerful. When dealing with anyone famous or alluring, Ellen will turn her back on the gay community faster than a speeding hashtag.

Even before the recent cowboy controversy, I have been questioning Ellen's status as a leader and role model for the LGBTQ community. In 2018, there was her outspoken and vehement defense of Kevin Hart, whose public comments on the horrors of the possibility of one of his children turning out to be gay, although years past, were almost as bad as Tracy Morgan's, minus a call for violence, and also, critically, minus any sincere attempt at apology.

After being uninvited to host the Oscars, Kevin Hart branded himself as a victim of political correctness and what we are now calling "cancel culture." Ellen DeGeneres not only defended Hart passionately,  but she also gave him a chance to talk about it on her show and once again paint himself as a victim of the culture and, as Ellen put it, "the haters."

She really said that.

As if that weren't bad enough,  we also get to add a triple decker super fudge sundae of irony to this gay wedding cake. The year before Mr. Hart went down, Ellen very publicly and ostentatiously banned and cancelled a scheduled guest from her show. The guest, Kim Burrell, went viral right before her scheduled appearance (as a backup singer for Pharrell Williams) because of a video of her outlandishly making anti-lgbt comments at her holy roller church. Ms. Burrell had been working with Pharrell for years, and she and Pharrell were going to go on the Ellen show to promote a movie and soundtrack they had been working on together.

But Ellen wasn't having none of this. Instead of letting a controversial non-celebrity sing backup with Pharrell in the studio, she had Pharrell do a different song, and then sat him down on the couch so they could diss Ms. Kim in her absence. They went on and on talking about how love is love and hate will not be tolerated.

As if.

Imagine if Ellen had had the courage or integrity to have this same hard conversation with Kevin Hart. Imagine if she had been so gracious and profoundly kind as to invite Kim Burrell onto her show to have a similar discussion. (Burrell doesn't consider herself homophobic or anti-gay. Quelle surprise!) Imagine if Ellen had pushed George W Bush, albeit gently, on the issue of his legacy on LGBT issues.

And speaking of the devil, George W was not kind when he stole the White House from Al Gore or when he stopped the vote recount in Florida. He was not kind when, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, used that tragedy as an excuse to lie to the American people and browbeat Congress into the unnecessary and calamitous Invasion of Iraq.

Most of all, George Bush was not kind when he, for over two years, went around this country and told the nation and the world that gay couples wanting to get married was going to destroy the fabric of the American family, culture, values and law and order. I am only barely paraphrasing.

So, not because of her friendships, but because of her hypocrisy and the lack of integrity in her responses to the controversies, Ellen DeGeneres is, in my opinion, no longer a role model or hero to the lgbtq community. She is a deeply compromised media mogul whose "be nice" milquetoast social philosophies have no substantive merit or applicability.

Ellen's heart used to be in the right place. Now it seems that her heart has no place at all except the stratosphere of celebrity.

We wish her well out there, but we will no longer look to her as a guiding star.

Ellen has, from the time she came out bravely and historically in 1997, been whining to anyone who will listen that she is not a leader of the LGBT community, nor does she want to be one.

Well, Ellen, I think it is finally time for us to take you at your word. You are not a leader and you are not a role model to our community. If you would like to Stockholm Syndrome yourself all the way into the Cowboys end zone for a social media touchdown, that is your business. I, for one, will not be tuning in.

—

Scott King is an Atlanta-based writer, analyst, and political consultant. He eats a carbon-based diet and does not care if you are masc. 

What happens when you mix a big scare, a sprinkle of glam and some DIY grooves in one? Gorgeous!! asks the important question, “Do Cowards Get Ahead?” in their debut video, and, as the second song for their upcoming EP, “Cowards” is pure sass. Available Halloween, the self-recorded 5-song EP was crafted in their San Fran practice space, “a make-shift studio out of all the wood and blankets lying around the room (so lesbian, we know)”, according to band member Ana Ayon. Mixed by past roommate, Ruben Tierie, and mastered by Grace Daisy Coleman, their first official release is fruity funkadelic secretary akimbo in glares, tempered with post-punk energy, an echo of no-wavers like Bush Tetras, UT and early queer pop giants, B-52’s. 

Gorgeous!! have been creating music for a year now, writing their maiden voyage ditty after their first hangout, blossoming of both lovey dovey and artistic visualization between band members, Lucy Bayne and Ana Ayon. While still in LA, Ana says this “tipsy jam-sesh over mimosas about my late cat, Furfur” was the start of it all. “Lucy and I were just dating at the time, not yet bandmates, and discovered that we had a real chemistry together musically. We were both in separate projects at the time and decided this direction would be a noble (and romantic) pursuit!” 

To say this couple is adorable is an understatement. Lucy skates, draws, plays piano; Ana, a practicing witch, is obsessed with baby animals. However, the level of quirk involved in the actual sound takes the listener to an alternate and rather eccentric planet altogether. In indie ethos, the video aligns with the song’s horror-rific fun and the couple’s attraction to narratives and personas with an itty bitty undercurrent of morale. “With the song being about cowards, we wanted the video to show that you should stick up for yourself and fight back against creepy slashers. Acting cowardly would only get you killed in the end!”, Lucy says, a classic plot to the VHS-frenzied fables of yore. “We watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and really wanted to channel the metaphorical type of storytelling the show frequently uses,” Ana replies. “We wanted to glamorize being brave!” 

Many have the idea that the West Coast is wondrously full of weirdos, and therefore supportive of everybody, but Gorgeous!! knows this depends on a specific scene’s willingness, who you are friends with, and classically the best foundation is within. Ana expands on this philosophy in universal terms, saying, “It really comes down to how hard you're willing to work for yourself. It’s precarious to depend on others, especially the marginalized, because most of us are all struggling in our own ways.” Lucy adds, “We'd like to change that.”

Gorgeous!! is currently making roots in their new town of Oakland and there is no doubt that they will be a warm presence in their community. “We just moved into a new space, where we are actively building a sort of dungeon of creativity for ourselves. We're working on turning a spare room we have into a studio,” Lucy says, excited for the future she is facilitating. Ana muses that even though the city is full of artists, she finds the most creative fire within the city itself:  “Oakland is a very politically charged city and always has been. To me, that's the kind of environment where I can feel comfortable, even compelled to make art that challenges a lot of societal norms and pressures we face on a daily basis.” 

Bathed in neon lights, Gorgeous!! is the antithesis of polished manufacturing. Baby queens in their own realm of awe and openness allows genuine experimentation that works well for the duo and their EP is the pudding proof. It is in avant garde approach that Gorgeous!! best thrives and we at WUSSY are excited to see how this genre-less duo grows even further in their pursuit of self-made magick and music that one can’t help but boogie to.   

Follow Gorgeous!! on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Instagram.

Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.

During Pride weekend, the bouncer at TEN Atlanta, apparently incapable of managing RuPaul’s Drag Race icon Tatianna, referred the belligerent Tatianna to their cop-for-hire, who arrested her.

So far, in queer media, this seems to merely be a tabloid headline. But I am bothered.

You might be wondering, why would I care about TEN Atlanta? It’s a bar I pass on the way to another bar. TEN Atlanta is another failed attempt at bringing back mid-century architectural brutalism, and Tatianna was probably booked into a more aesthetically pleasing venue, with better music and fewer cokeheads.

Certainly, it could be ignored as just another TMZ headline.

But I am bothered.

So I have to ask a question, a question I can’t get out of my head:

WHY THE FUCK DID A QUEER BAR CALL THE POLICE ON A DRAG QUEEN DURING PRIDE?

Perhaps you think I’m asking how this happened. Perhaps you want to quibble about the minor details, like how they didn’t technically phone the police, but rather, a bouncer called over a police officer to handle it. That’s not what I’m asking. I’ll ask it again:

WHY THE FUCK DID A QUEER BAR CALL THE POLICE ON A DRAG QUEEN DURING PRIDE?

Am I instead asking what did Tatianna do to get arrested? Am I asking about the narrative of what led to this? The details? 

No. Because this question:

WHY THE FUCK DID A QUEER BAR CALL THE POLICE ON A DRAG QUEEN DURING PRIDE?

…is not actually a question at all. It’s a rhetorical question. It’s an argument. It’s a statement of outrage. Because, in our lost times of He Who Shall Not Be Named (Trump), and racist comments that cratered a queer bar not that long ago (Burkhart’s), our threshold for what is offensive and outrageous disappeared. Concentration camps are yesterday’s news thanks to today’s news of ethnic cleansing. How does one get upset about anything?

Except somehow, I’m angry. Because: I expect that through this waking nightmare, our queer venues will be the brief moment in which we’re awake, the night of the week and the weekend of the year in which we treat each other with empathy and respect our history, and that we do this through community.

So again, I ask:

WHY THE FUCK DID A QUEER BAR CALL THE POLICE ON A DRAG QUEEN DURING PRIDE?

Now, there are a series of answers to this question which I will state now that I am perfectly willing to accept. Because I am about forgiveness. If the answer is: 

“This was a moment of terrible judgment which we made because the hour was late and people were tired, and we’ll examine our policies to make sure this does not happen again,” then I will be the first to say: Good. Thank you. I appreciate the effort. 

Perhaps they might say:

“In a time of mass gun violence, we hired police to protect the event, but they clearly misinterpreted their role, massively overstepped, and terribly embarrassed us.” This would be acceptable.

But they’re not giving that response and no one has publicly confronted them with the question. It needs to be asked.

They don’t just owe Tatianna an apology. They owe the community an apology. Throwing a visibly queer person into a jail cell is innately dangerous for that visibly queer person. A drag queen is going to be booked into a sex segregated cell with men in a full drag look. They may have to spend the night. Or several days. They are exposed to a unique risk of harassment and sexual assault. This, and the prospect of this, is terrifying. The idea that a queer bar might do this to one of us for drunken misbehavior is terrifying.

They will spend the rest of their lives with an arrest record. They will be exposed to job discrimination permanently. They will have to describe the event in every background check forever. They may have to pay attorneys fees. They may have to take time off work, or get fired, to show up to court, because a bouncer brought in the police instead of pulling them from the club. So again, I ask:

WHY THE FUCK DID A QUEER BAR CALL THE POLICE ON A DRAG QUEEN DURING PRIDE?

“But Tatianna should have behaved herself.”

“But Tatianna broke the law.”

“I never would have done that.”

I know. 

You wouldn’t have thrown the first brick at Stonewall. You wouldn’t have formed a line of queers and forced the cops into a bar and set the bar on fire (history lesson: this happened). That was a lot of law breaking that I’m very much convinced you would not have participated in, and you wouldn’t have the opportunity to march in a sanitized corporate float in the parade that commemorates that whole multi-day riot-against-police thing.

And I know, Tatianna wasn’t fighting decades of police oppression by trying to get into the back room and yelling about it.

If I were cynical, I’d wonder if cashing in on zillion-dollar wristbands while farming your crowd management out to the police could be seen by some of us oversensitive snowflakes as a betrayal of what Pride is commemorating, which, I thought, is safety of vulnerable queers from the police state. But what do I know?

Enough about that.

I have other questions: 

• If a bouncer does not bounce, are they still a bouncer? 

• Is this bouncer subcontracting other bouncing duties, like checking ID’s, to a call center in Wisconsin? 

• Is there more to bouncing than bouncing? 

• When I see bouncers at the Drunken Unicorn carry a large belligerent man away, are they not bouncers? 

• Am I confused about what bouncing is? 

• When manager Becky at Starbucks calls the police on homeless people using the bathroom, is she not, as I heretofore thought, a barista, but rather a bouncer? 

• Is manager Becky a bouncer who also makes coffee and that’s why she doesn’t know how to use the espresso machine because making coffee is her second job? 

• Is bouncing just calling the police when patrons don’t follow your orders?

Surprise! Those aren’t really questions either! Gotcha again!

“What about the bouncer’s safety?”

Good question!

Just kidding, it’s not.

What do you think the cops do in this situation? Is it somehow different than what a bouncer does? Do they not also carry away the belligerent person who refuses to leave? Are we wary of putting our LGBT bouncers in danger from the claws of a wayward Tatianna, and it’s best to let the police shoulder the risk?

Transferring crowd management to the police just transfers the safety hazard to a different person, piles a much larger safety hazard on Tatianna, and terrorizes a community into thinking that they (or a drunken friend) could be thrown in jail in a dress and heels and makeup by a queer bar during Pride just for being rowdy. Transferring crowd management to the police transfers our safety into the hands of an entity we already know isn’t capable of preserving our safety. 

In these times, deserved shame feels irrelevant. Toxic, victim-blaming arguments play in a loop until they’re accepted as normal in the American psyche. Arresting a drag queen for being belligerent during Pride doesn’t trigger a wave of shock and articles with condemnations about Stonewall or how irony is dead. 

It is simply a cute article on TMZ.

It is in these times of unreality, when morality feels optional, that we must grip to the confidence of our own reality ever tighter. It is the only way that we stave off the unconscionable new reality that is being imposed upon us.

And in my reality, queer lives have value, queer lives deserve empathy, queer lives deserve grace, and queer bar patrons deserve venues that hire cops to protect queer lives, not endanger them. Also, my reality will probably include a ban from TEN. If that means I won’t be forced by friends to listen to bad Taylor Swift remixes while surrounded by the acoustic and aesthetic nightmare of mirrors and concrete and roid-heads on too much coke to stick it in me after escaping or being arrested, so be it.

ADDENDUM: TEN Atlanta owner James Nelson wrote, “We did not call the police, I had APD on staff the entire weekend and she was very confrontational with the officer and resisted his plea, it was his decision to arrest him not ours. And lastly, be very cautious what you defaming content you write, my attorney is a phone call away.”

The original article states, “Perhaps you want to quibble about the minor details, like how they didn’t technically phone the police, but rather, a bouncer called over a police officer to handle it.” The article also refers to a possible apology that would say, “we hired police to protect the event”, and the article refers to the dangers of “farming your crowd management out to the police”. The piece’s references to having hired cops is why the piece is in part a critique of having police on staff at a queer bar, and the statement about “quibbling details” is an argument that the distinction about whether they’re hired or called *is* a quibbling detail, because a bouncer getting the attention of your hired cop, and phoning the police, both lead to obviously similar results.

There is no better finale to this criticism than the owner’s response of bullying via financial power: “My attorney is a phone call away” to threaten action against a local queer rag using the incredible power of the judicial system proves that irony is in fact dead.

Mark Patton in Nightmare on Elm Street 2

Jesse says frantically “Something is trying to get inside my body!” Ron naturally replies, “Yeah, and she’s female and she’s waiting for you in the cabana - and you want to sleep with me.”

Jesse and Ron Grady from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

I showed up to the Out on Film festival in my plaid short shorts with matching suspenders, black boots, fluorescent yellow button up (¾’s unbuttoned), faux leather daddy cap, and my silver Freddy Krueger earrings.  All of this was important. I was pretty sure I was going to meet Mark Patton from A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 : Freddy’s Revenge, and I needed my look to give nods to the absolute queerness of it. The daddy cap is in reference to one of the films most notoriously gay scenes where the coach is picked up by Jesse (Patton) in a queer leather bar, then slayed in the high school showers, butt naked. 

I was there to see Scream, Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street.  Directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, it follows Mark Patton telling his experience of being the first final boy and scream “queen”. If you haven’t seen A Nightmare On Elm Street 2, here’s a few things you need to know.  Mark was 21, not a 100 percent out of the closet, and thrown into a spotlight that would shine more on his personal life than his acting.  He had mostly modeled and starred in commercials until Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean in 1982 with Cher, Karen Black, and Kathy Bates. It was 1985 when NOES2, came out and the AIDS epidemic was in full swing.  

Robert Englund and Mark Patton on set of NOES2

David Chaskin, the writer, denied for years that he wrote the film to be so gay.  Up until the 2010 documentary Never Sleep Again, Chaskin blamed all of the films queerness on Mark Patton’s Jesse. I mean….his scream is powerful, flawless, and one that rivals some of the best...but the movie’s gay cup runneth over with or without Mark Patton.  It wasn’t until Never Sleep Again that he admitted to writing any “subtext” into the film. Then, in a 2010 interview, he was asked if he was aware of the films homoerotic undertones and if they were intended. He replied “Yes, there was certainly some intentional subtext but it was intended to play homophobic rather than homoerotic. I thought about the demographics for these types of films (young, heterosexual males) and tried to imagine what kinds of things would truly frighten them, to the core. And scary dreams that make them, even momentarily, question their own sexuality seemed like a slam dunk to me.” 

WTF?? So… Chaskin, a writer that I assume is heterosexual, wrote a screenplay for a sequel to a successful film that further demonized being gay and effeminate during the AIDS crisis. Mark’s innocence, sensitivity, and vulnerable queerness were completely exploited so people could make money while attempting to simultaneously fuel the unnecessary fears of straight people. This ended Mark’s career and took him into hiding for years.  And that is what takes us to the premise of Scream, Queen.  The documentary follows Patton as he travels to horror conventions across the U.S. Each city a piece in the journey to gaining peace confronting Freddy’s Revenge cast and crew for the first time, including co-stars Robert Rusler, Kim Myers and Clu Gulager, as well as Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund. This also includes Jack Sholder (director) and David Chaskin.

Director and cast of NOES2 reunited

I realized shortly after Scream, Queen started that this was gonna go deeper than I initially expected in an hour and 39 minutes. The filmmakers, Chimienti and Jensen, did a beautiful job of capturing just how vulnerable Mark still seems even at 50. You can see it in his eyes that he needs this closure with the cast and crew of NOES2. He needs to heal. The way his eyebrows shake during some of the moments of confrontation literally tore my damn heart out. The filmmakers also dive into the AIDS crisis and how that was affecting Mark personally.  In my opinion, It also seems that Freddy Krueger may have been written to be a metaphor for AIDS as well as being queer. Being that this is the only sequel where he literally comes out of the protagonist, he’s the “monster “ inside of Jesse killing those around him that he loves. Issues that definitely did not strike me watching this as a kid, but definitely hit home for me as I am now an adult queer living with HIV.  I now fully understand why I’ve always felt more connected to Freddys Revenge, more than I should. I cried 3 times watching this. The film devotes about 20 minutes to the history and affect of the AIDS crisis. It also continues to discuss Marks own HIV status. He’s been positive for 21 years and is an activist in making sure that people, especially our own community, stay educated and continues to help fight the stigma we still face on a day to day.

Cody and Mark at the Scream, Queen screening

Scream, Queen was thought provoking and skillfully successful at tugging at the heart strings. You can tell that the directors are compassionate, big time horror movie nerds and seem to really care about telling Mark’s side of the story. This is the story Mark has been waiting to tell. It is so much more than just a documentary about someone from a horror classic.  It’s about the journey someone takes to discover how to forgive someone. A new light is shone on one of the best horror movie villains of our time. Making Freddy Krueger the unofficial nightmarish poster boy for both AIDS and the coming of age queer experience could’ve been genius had the writer been more transparent with the cast, most importantly Patton.  

As the lights came on and I wiped the tears from my beard, the directors, Chimienti and Jensen, walked out for a Q & A with the queen himself, Mark Patton. I wanted to float over the theater seats like Alice in NOES4 and give him a huge squeeze.  But alas, I stayed in my seat . I listened to a sweet memory from a mother who had taken her son to a convention several years earlier to meet his self proclaimed “boyfriend”. He was there with her this night too, cringe laughing to her right. After a few more questions, we were headed to the lobby. Eek!  

I was next in line and had been locking eyes with an extremely realistic looking wolf baby that the person in front of me had propped up in their arms like they were about to burp it.  I would adopt it. Mark was gazing at it too, until he looked at me and said hi. Yay, it was my turn. After saying “Heeeey”, I told him that Jesse and Grady were one of my top 3 “almost queer” couples growing up and that he literally has one of the best shriek screams in the game.  I told him that I hoped he got the closure he was looking for. And most importantly, I told him thank you for his transparency with his HIV and that his visibility is important. I disclosed my status of being positive for about 20 years and we high fived. We’re so close to being litter mates.  How fucking cool is that??? 

Scream, Queen pushed all my buttons and is a perfect documentary just in time for Halloween.

Go see this film! 5/5

—

Cody Patterson is a barber and full time horror movie fan In ATL. Follow him @barberonabike on Instagram

Anarcho-artist: @blakengland

Good news, WUSSY readers! After years of publishing cultural critiques, putting out print magazines, and throwing the best damn parties this side of the Mason-Dixon line, we’ve finally earned enough money to move on to phase two of the Wussy plan! That’s right: we’ve completed the guillotine we’re going to use to execute our comments section!

It seems like just yesterday that we decided to start a fake publishing entity just so we could create a database of people who disagreed with us politically on Facebook but here we are! It’s such a relief to know that all these years of hard work are finally paying off.

Every drag brunch you’ve ever attended! Every piece of merch you’ve ever bought! All of that cash went straight into the guillotine fund. That’s right! Every dime you’ve ever given to WUSSY has been leading up to this moment: our full ascension to an authoritarian queer regime that silences our critics in an orgiastic cataclysm of cultural Marxism!

And we have no one to thank but you!

That’s right! We’re going full judge, jury, and sexecutioner… but also just regular executioner! Cancelled! Cancelled! You’re all cancelled... to death. The crime? Being too problematic to agree with our groupthink, you capitalist/pig/capitalist pig!

I know what you’re thinking: “I’m just an upper middle-class white realtor who thinks cops are good and gentrification is also good and gay marriage and rainbow crosswalks mean there’s no more discrimination and also trans people need to wait their turn for rights. What have I ever done wrong!?” Well, if reading five years of our poorly-informed Bolshevik critiques of literally everything you’ve ever enjoyed in your brief, shallow life hasn’t clued you in yet, it’s not worth trying to convince you now! We’re not interested in discourse. We’re interested in disgorg...ing the vital fluids from your body when we slice off your heads!

The guillotine is thirsty!

There’s a million guillotinable offenses and we’ve already judged you guilty of all of them! Ever been friends with someone who’s eaten at Chick-Fil-A? That’s a guillotining! Ever rooted for a white person to win Drag Race? That’s a guillotining! Ever tapped your toe to a Katy Perry song? Swish swish, bitch, here comes dat guillotine! 

Aw, I’m sorry, did you think that just because we threw fun parties with famous drag queens that we were just your standard neoliberal gay website? Surely you must, since you’ve been getting your Andrew Christians in a bunch over every single critical thing we post! Newsflash: we’re communists! The scary kind! Boo! Perhaps we should put on our little Rachel Maddow glasses and cry on TV while reporting the news? Maybe then you would take us seriously.

“We shouldn’t even be concerned about this when there are real crimes going on in Uganda!” you protest as you are dragged out to the public square while the crowd pelts you with empty poppers bottles. Not a strong argument to make, considering you’ve never done anything to help a person in Uganda and you only bring it up when you read something you don’t like online. Besides, once you’ve felt the guillotine’s icy sting, you won’t be concerned about Uganda or any of the other countries in Africa you can name, which is probably none of them! 

Now, now. There’s no reason to get mad at us for this. After all, if Ellen can make time in her busy schedule of being a piece of shit to every production assistant she’s ever had to make friends with cuddly war criminal George W. Bush, maybe you can try to see eye-to-eye with us… before your head tumbles into the guillotine basket that is. Heck, even if we only executed 5 dissidents a day for the next 100 years, we still wouldn’t be responsible for as many deaths as George W. Bush… and that’s just counting innocent civilians! So maybe take a page from Ellen’s playbook and try to be a little more open minded! It’s important to be friends with people you don’t agree with!

And in case you’re worried, we’re going to slap a coat of rainbow paint on the guillotine. Heck, we’ll even call it a gay-otine! That should be the base level of pandering you need to be okay with something! If you’re going to go out, go out with pride!

So the next time you get pissy at something online, just remember: that organization is probably run by a shadow coalition of maniacs whose thirst for social justice can only be quenched by your fascist blood! Alright readers, we have a lot of work to do going through every comment ever posted on one of our articles and deciding which list you get put on. But be sure to buy tickets to our Shalloween party... or else! We look forward to reading your well-reasoned comments on Facebook! 

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Julian Modugno is a writer and humorist based out of Chicago, IL. He hates everything you love and won't be happy until it's destroyed and you're left with nothing. You can follow him on instagram @historysgreatestmonster and on Twitter at @juliocentric

It’s inevitable when discussing Boulet Brothers’ brainchild Dragula that comparisons to another reality show competition will come up. So let’s get that out of the way. RuPaul’s Drag Race has an unspoken rule that queens should fit the mold of RuPaul’s career and his approach to success. But since Drag Race has catapulted into a more public sphere, its obsession with the commercialization of drag has completely taken over.

The RuPaul Drag Hour has become an ouroboros as queens who apply are often created by or solely inspired by the show’s earlier seasons. Contestants now consistently enter the competition with merch strategies, album releases and potential bookings already in the works. It’s a smart approach, but it ultimately creates a major disconnect from the artistic nature of drag with its homogeneity.

Enter the Boulet Brothers.

“We are not here to judge your drag. Drag is art and art is subjective.”

While it seems simple, this simple idea is what truly distinguishes The Boulet Brother's’ Dragula from RuPaul’s Drag Race and most other reality competitions. The Boulets place significant value in the artistic merit and anti-establishment traditions of drag. They have directed their focus on drag artistry that is unpredictable, outlandish and disturbing rather than getting queens to conform to show business standards. The only molds contestants must fit into are challenge-based or the loose overarching tenets of Filth, Glamour and Horror. Even then, 2 out of 3 is usually good enough to get by.

It’s also telling that the Boulet Brothers haven’t exerted any strict gender guidelines for their applicants and never have - which has allowed for perspectives rarely, if ever, seen in popular media. Nonbinary and cis women drag performers are having discussions about their experiences and opinions, and it’s already prompted long overdue discussions about social dynamics and etiquette.

Everyone has their favorites from each season, but the true stars of the show are the Boulet Brothers themselves. The couple are consistently a visual treat, inducing squeals of glee across the globe with the reveal of every new costume. Their critiques can be idiosyncratic and confusing when it comes extermination time, but also - it’s their fucking show.

And they have no problems making that a known fact, basically highlighting it in the completely unnecessary vignettes that introduce each episode’s theme. Throughout the series you can often see Dracmorda and Swanthula’s love of drag, glamor, filth and horror. It comes across occasionally in their critiques, but those little intro scenes are a tribute to one of the horror genre’s greatest gifts: camp.

This pair loves audacity and foolishness all wrapped up in dark overtones. Season 1’s budget could have been a dealbreaker for the success of the series, but it wasn’t. The show seemed to thrive in the grit of its low budget, and that rawness created a B-movie aesthetic that lent authenticity to the proceedings. Some fans may not appreciate the Boulets’ intro scenes or have complaints about the first season’s sound quality, but that’s short-sighted on their part. Dragula is a show about art via horror and queer gender expression. You can get slick production value and presentation elsewhere. If you’re demanding perfection from art, you’re missing the point.

Instead of exploiting our queer foremothers to make a buck, the Boulet Brothers and Dragula are about continuing a queer legacy of embracing darkness and outcasts. Their mission isn’t to embrace capitalism, chase opulence and own everything. In the same spirit of filth pioneers Divine and John Waters, it’s to shock and awe and find the freedom in anarchy and the macabre. With a modern drag culture filled with conformity, Dragula is literally asking the question:

“Who wants to die for art?”

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Adam Zee explains it all, even when no one wants to listen. You can voice your complaints or see Adam working out her issues via cardboard and cheap paint at @cardboardrealness. Honestly, she could use the engagement.

PHOTO: Jiselle Kamppila

Previously known by the name “Celeste XXX”, any search bar is bound for a steep wormhole of porn, porn, porn. Inspired by derivative retrosexual fantasties, garnished in the negligee fashions of previous decades, synth vamp Celeste X is better found on Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud. On Google images, you can spot her placed amongst glorious smut stars of yore in similar suggestive poses but covered in blood, microphone in hand, a most distressed expression amongst all the standard imagery supposed to stoke certain desires. Celeste X, the artist, may be controversial to some but cloaked in the mystery of a bitch’s brew, she is at worship of the dark femme, hexed together with snarls, sorrows and ice cold electronics. 

From nearby Cerritos, Celeste moved to the City of Angels to carve her own nook, despite lack of experience, and discouragement from entering, an artistic field. To create amidst an extremely sheltered upbringing, protected by her financial-stability-obsessed Filipino mom from even visiting friends’ houses or going to the mall without an adult, the migration to LA represented a new liberation. “I felt like music, art and pop culture were all I had to create this reality in my head to cope,” Celeste reminiscences. “It's tough being an artist and a female one at that. This whole taboo about being a working artist and pursuing music just fueled me with so much angst and rage, it nearly felt impossible to control my creative impulses.” 

Frontwomen like Siouxsie Sioux, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Lydia Lunch fueled her as “a power force and major influence to who I am as a performer” and carving forth, Celeste X conjured her own resources with fury, explaining, “I know a lot of people make these excuses for not making music or pursuing their creative projects, ‘I'm not ___ enough’ or ‘I don't know how to play an instrument’. I didn't either! I think it's really important to just use what is available to you and exercise confidence to go against the grind”.

As a project, the songs are wielded with an intense fire, based on instinctive feeling, layered with synth pads, tones and melodies, assisted with drum machines and home recording devices. Spilling her vocals over fuller formations, lyrics of lust and violence develop a soundtrack of experimental insanity within a love affair of sound. Live, Celeste’s songs take on new form all together:  on-stage exorcisms, her voice often escalating into screams.

“Performing is when I let it all out and the songs often change structure. My voice is no longer tamed and I now belong to the energy of the people filling the room,” she declares. “They call me ‘Celeste the Mess’ because I become so nihilistically explosive on stage. Even though it may look like I am just flinging fluids and paints around, I really feel like it compliments the songs I write and the emotional chaos I am expressing.” 

The music itself is unsettling, enigmatic yet explicit, drawing harrowing aspects of the murderous male gaze women are historically cruxed with. It seems only appropriate that the lingerie-clad Celeste transforms to a demonic presence drenched in fake blood before her audience. Such expressive representations of violence are reminiscent of punk’s most raucous stage icons, yet emerge stronger in femme form. Though Celeste admires the flamboyance of Iggy Pop and Lux Interior of The Cramps, these ruffians did not don the vivacious ghost energy of an Anna Nicole ritualizing herself with the extreme Evil Dead energy. 

PHOTO: Jiselle Kamppila

“I believe this persona is a part of myself that I was always taught to ‘hide away’ growing up. I play with this idea of mixing gore with glam or disgusting with beautiful.” 

The divulge into the world of XXX is more than explicit content; the three simple letters can also stand for poison. Los Angeles’ landscape is undoubtedly an appropriate terrain for making art about the varying sides of performative personas as well as the depths of social stigma and the damage within the aftermath, broken psyches. “I feel like I always want to establish the desperation to be sexy in this society to the point where it gets disgusting and dysmorphic in my art,” Celeste explains. “Growing up, I truly thought that Playboy Bunnies were superheroes. I have always loved this highly sexualized image of women on XXX billboards - it's still so powerful to me! I definitely feel like LA's industry based on sex has definitely inspired me to go deep into the flaws of it and the result of sex workers being treated unfairly through it. I have always been fascinated with the rise and fall of the sex symbol in Hollywood.”

Ripping apart ideologies of guilt, self-worth and sexuality to the raw and exposed phrenic core of the objectified woman scratching towards death and then rebirth, the force of energy behind this project is beyond magnetic - it is transformative. Performing everywhere from house shows to dive bars, the old Wacky Wacko boutique to the famed “Queerspace” party, solo or collaborating with Neon Music for their electroclash project Princest, Celeste X is a gifted horror-monal princess on the rise in America’s darkwave synthpunk underground. 

Originally printed in Vol. 5 of WUSSY with Sasha Velour, follow Celeste X and her project Princest for more updates, including her future release in February 2020. 

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Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.