Klypi is no stranger to indie bops: though seemingly new by name, the hyper-active artist has a handful of sparkly songs tucked under their space belt. Returning with their second video, “Get Over You” is a gracious cinematic representation of their late 2019 debut, just a taste of pop to come. Simmering in subtle sadness with perfected electronic precision, Klypi waves amongst a wash of sighs and blocks of brilliantine colors, filmed in an ethereal gauze amid an art exhibit environment of wonder. Their strong visuals are no stranger to our screens: the otherworldly singer/songwriter has a habit for traveling through fragments of oneself in various projects. Though the current synthpop station may be slightly new terrain, their impressive background of emotive expression and technical can-do have been progressively forming over years to become the reincarnated androgynous alterego of Klypi.
Like a VHS glitch of a pastel Hindu God/dess crossed with a 5th Element pixie prince/ss, Klypi arrives afresh in a newly arisen sound amped by an angle of collaboration. “I have completed a full-length that I worked on with Precious Child, after trashing a previous one, that I feel really strongly about. It's pop: a direction I've wanted to go in since I started writing music but didn't feel that I was allowed,” the Athens-based artist explains. “I don't understand the psychology behind that still… why did I think I couldn't write a pop song but I could in some other genre? ‘Get Over You’ was the first track Precious and I worked on and it was kind of a test to see how we could work together.”
Obviously, the queer duo have a charismatic creative chemistry. This partnership was to be bolstered by a Spring 2020 tour; sadly, show dates are cancelled until further notice as a result of COVID-19. “Going on a tour is an essential part of being a musical performer, so not having that outlet of physicality has made me really sad. I miss seeing and performing for people!”, Klypi explains. “Virtual live performances are filling a current need, but I don't think it could replace the live experience in total. I think this moment is letting us reconsider live performance and what it means to be entertained.” A powerhouse in all they do, quarantine has proved difficult for the social and cheerfully hands-on mover-and-shaker who tends to somehow mass produce sets, costumes and all realm of designs digitally and manually for their projects’ visuals.
Klypi formerly performed as Λ°C (Lambda Celsius), profiled in our Vol. 6 Music feature and previously premiering “Beauty of Indifference” with us in 2019. Humorously, they sent themself a Cease & Desist demanding a name change, a crafty kick that mirrored their genuine attempt to separate a strong music and fashion design practice that had become a conflict of personal interest. The multidisciplinary artist as they are known academically and communally, AC Carter, also organizes the amazing (and highly queer friendly) Adverse Fest. Klypi’s first video “I’m Fine” from February 2020 showcased Lambda’s designs on many Athens, GA personalities. Consistent collaborators Lindy Erkes, Kira Hynes and Sa Bo returned to assist on the intimate brood of “Get Over You” with LA-based Precious Child remaining not only a musical collaborator and song producer, but also Director of Photography.
The coronavirus outbreak has kept us in our homes and--at the very least--6 feet away from each other. This new normal of self-isolation, social distancing, and staying indoors has all but decimated queer nightlife culture. We are no longer able to enjoy overpriced tequila sours amidst crowds of sweaty strangers who just can’t seem to say, “excuse me.” We are no longer able to enjoy a shared cig with friends at the end of a great night. And perhaps the most devastating thing about all of this is that we are no longer able to enjoy local drag shows-- in person, at least.
Anybody else miss the club? Seriously, I want nothing more than to put on a dress that cuts off three inches below the roundest part of my butt and go shake it on a dance floor somewhere!
It seems that while the suit-and-tie wearers of corporate America have cozy-fied their at-home work attire, drag performers across the world are doing the same. With the advent of social media technology, it has been made easier for drag performers to bring sickening shows to their viewer’s laptop and phone screens. Digital drag is the newest fad to emerge out of this whole quarantine fiasco. Now more than ever, we are seeing how the club can be enjoyed from the comfort of a couch. No slippery, liquor-covered dancefloors included.
Performers are able to digitally stream their shows in order to connect with their audience, make tips, and continue doing what they love. Instagram Live and Twitch have been getting all of the action as of late, allowing performers and show-goers alike to chat with each other while enjoying the show. We love a digital kiki!
Some of our faves are making waves in the digital drag department by keeping their shows interesting, fresh, and consistent. Here’s a list of some must-see streams:
Big Ass Telethon to End Metronormativity by WUSSY Mag, Southern Fried Queer Pride and Queer Appalachia- Saturday, April 25th
Coming to a screen near you, the “Big Ass Telethon to End Metronormativity” is a virtual live-stream celebration of rural art, community, music, and culture. This event will be used to raise money for the newly formed Appalachian/Southern Queer Artist Fund, an emergency fund set up to support featured artists. Features special performances and appearances by Orville Peck, Whitney Cummings, Shamir, Bob the Drag Queen, Lance Bass, Seth Bogart, Christeene, Jacob Tobia, and more!
Be sure to tune in here on Saturday, April 25th at 9PM EST via Twitch.
ANTI: The Visual Experience by The Unfriendly Black Hotties
Drag performers doing Rihanna should be classified as some sort of religion...because she *is* God, y’know? This is the visual album experience you never knew you needed! Watch as this all-black cast brings the masterpiece that is Rihanna’s ANTI to life. Curated by the Unfriendly Black Hotties of Chicago, one entertainer will one a song off the album and put their own interpretive twist on it. Features Bambi Banks-Couleé, Lucy Stoole, Miss Toto, and more!
Don’t miss the Twitch stream on Thursday, April 30th at 9PM CST! More info here.
Digital Drag Show by Biqtch Puddin’ - Every Friday
Biqtch Puddin has upped the ante with her weekly drag marathons. Every Friday at 7PM PST/10PM EST, you can catch Biqtch, and a gaggle of talented artists from around the country, turning it out on Twitch. Get into it!
Black Girl Magicby The Vixen-Every third Wednesday of the month
RPDR Season 10 star, The Vixen, brings you a digified version of her notorious show: Black Girl Magic. Featuring local Chicago talent, as well as performers from different regions, this show is bound to lift your spirits and ease your mind. You might even be able to see performances from other Drag Race alum like Shea Couleé, Monique Heart, Aja, Vinegar Strokes, and more! Watch on Twitch!
T. Rex
Drag Mati-Netby T Rex (Chi) - Every Saturday
T Rex subbed her weekly show “Drag Matinee” with “Drag Mati-Net.” This hilarious hour-or-so of impressions, slapstick comedy and clever humor is sure to leave a smile on your face. With special guests from all over the world, this star-studded show gives new meaning to the term “digital drag.” Follow @trexinchicago for more updates or hit the Twitch link.
Notta Contact Sport by Mini Pearl Necklace - Every Saturday
The bearded beauty of Nashville, Tennessee streams her Twitch show every Saturday at 6PM CST/7PM EST. Featuring some of your favorite Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago queens, this show will have you on the edge of your seat and on the brink of tears. Happy tears, of course. Tune in to catch all of the hilarious tomfoolery this queen has to offer!
Tossed Saladby Brigitte Bidet - Every Sunday
Atlanta’s sweetheart, Brigitte Bidet, brings it to you every ball with her hilarity and beauty. Do you miss seeing this blonde bombshell trot around town? Never fear, Tossed Salad: Live is here! Tune in every Sunday to @brigittebidet on Instagram at 8pm EST to see an amazing show featuring local Atlanta talent.
The tenacity of drag performers is unmatched. These shows, all featuring talent from various locales, help to fuel the fire of creativity and keep drag performance art alive. They provide a sense of community to those that miss going out and being with friends. They provide a reprieve from the craziness of the world right now. Now is the perfect time to cozy up and see some drag on any night of the weekend.
There’s something about watching a performer hit a split in their own well-lit apartment that just hits differently, you know?
True, it is tricky to embrace this new reality of tipping through the phone and not being able to “yaaasss” our faves in real time, but we are able to show love by supporting these artists just the same. Be sure to follow the aforementioned performers so that you don’t miss out on their next digital gig!
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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
I miss the intimacy and the comfort of physical touch, and frankly I miss the occasional distraction from the dire state of the world. But the good news for me and every other horny gay out there: we can still enjoy sex with our partners while adhering to public health recommendations of social distancing. No, I’m not suggesting a dildo attached to the end of a 6-foot pole. I’m talking about digital sex.
Digital sex covers a wide range of activities including sending nudes on Snapchat, erotic writing shared between partners (sexting), and video chats of mutual masturbation. While some people now report being more comfortable with digital encounters over physical ones, many of us start by having to fight off a strong cringe reflex at the prospect of typing the word “cock” or performing on camera. The happy news is that no one is inherently a lost cause at digital sex; if you want to make it a part of your life, you’ve come to the right place.
For the one who doesn’t know where to begin.
Learn from the pros! If you’re trying to be a sexy writer, start by being a sexy reader. The worlds of fanfiction & reddit erotica exist alongside the more retro paperback romances & pulp sci fi to help anyone find their thing. There are no wrong places to look for what turns you on -- well, except 50 Shades. If you’re trying to figure out your angles for a sexy photo shoot or video call, check out some feminist and queer professional pornography. And remember to pay your instructors! Many sex workers list their payment methods on their social media.
For the one who’s afraid to sound silly.
Remember your first kiss? You had no idea where to put your hands or if closing your eyes too soon would be a mistake. Or maybe you have a memory of starting your period at the worst possible moment in bed. Sexuality can be awkward, there’s no way around that. But you survived each of those moments and became a more skilled sexual being afterwards. Digital sex is going to be the same. Experts recommend things like asking questions, describing the details, and building a fantasy together. Autostraddle breaks down successful sexts even further (“Compliment + Action”) and suggests prep and aftercare with your partner to ease into the activity. My number one piece of advice to you is to accept in advance you’ll have some embarrassing moments and practice, practice, practice anyway.
For the one who’s worried about digital security.
The bad news -- there is no such thing as a 100% secure way to send sensitive content digitally. Be realistic with yourself when considering the fallout if your content were to leak or be shared with unwanted parties. That said, digital sex is an increasingly common aspect of modern dating and choosing to partake in it does not in any way justify abuse or manipulation after the fact.
The good news -- there are ways to better understand the types of risks we face online and make informed choices. For example, are you more concerned about revenge porn, or the uncertainty of Google and Facebook having your nudes? If you want to be more confident that your Grindr match isn’t screenshotting your nudes, send them on Snapchat. But be aware that Snapchat has a history of insecurity for content sent with their service. On the other hand, you may trust your partner not to screenshot without consent, and decide to opt for sending sexts over an end-to-end encrypted chat app like Signal with a 30-minute disappearing message timer. If you want to go the extra mile to protect your images, consider watermarking your photos and blurring any identifying features & tattoos. Learn more about protecting yourself while sexting.
For the ones who want to feel something other than their own hands.
I’ve joked (or not joked) that I’m going to become an amateur sex toy reviewer by the end of my quarantine. And I’m not the only one -- sex toy sales are booming! Consider adding long-distance partner toys to your nights or try something totally new and different. I’ve personally joined the cult of the clit-sucking Womanizer and set new goals with my anal trainers, both of which have seriously improved my quarantine. New toys can give you something new to describe or show off to your partner and you’ll learn so much about your own body along the way!
For the kinky (or curious!) one.
Discussing boundaries in advance is an important part of any sexual experience involving more than one person. Quarantine presents us with a unique time to explore our imagination’s boundaries without any pressure to act on it. In fact, many people watch and read porn that has nothing to do with their real sex lives. All this is to say that it’s totally ok to ask a partner to describe choking you even if you’re not totally sure you’re ready for that interaction in person. And that it’s equally important to make sure you’re on the same page with your partners in terms of what is a fantasy and what is permissible post-quarantine. Now is a great time to be curious about what stimulates your mind! Looking for kinky inspiration? Check out these creative tips for long distance playtime.
For the one seeking new partners.
The quest does not have to take a hiatus while we socially distance! Check out these apps that have added built-in video chats and speed dating options. Or ask your matches if they’d be open to a Netflix Party date night for your Netflix & chill plans. Your hot date night can still include movies, takeout, and multiple orgasms! All while building tension for your eventual meetup (if you want one).
While sex is undoubtedly different in the era of social distancing, this can also be an opportunity to strengthen new sexual muscles. Learn more about your body and mind, become a pro at dirty talk, build your confidence! You’ll be glad you made the investment.
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Raksha is a queer desi from the South currently residing in NYC. Her podcast on queer dating app culture (Tindergarten) is as much a part of her activism as her fight for digital privacy and democratized technology. Find her on Twitter at @raxsha.
Sydney-based singer/songwriter Brendan Maclean was called “a king of pop in the making” by the Guardian UK and “a modern day Mick Jagger” by Baz Luhrmann, who cast him in The Great Gatsby. His music sounds like the best parts of Jake Shears, Robyn, and Rufus Wainwright with a hint of LCD Soundsystem. So why are Americans just waking up to this Australian talent?
Two words: Independent and queer. WUSSY accompanied Brendan on his first U.S. headlining tour and here’s what we learned.
Brendan Maclean picks up a black shoelace and wraps it around his leg to create an impromptu fashion accessory for the photo shoot. It shouldn’t work. But somehow it does, the crisscrossed lines around his calf echoing his oversized jacket’s dark fringe. Later, he grabs a discarded bandana, deftly folding it upon itself to obscure the corporate logo then posing in the mirror until he finds the right way to wear it.
This knack for transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary serves the 31-year-old Australian even better as a songwriter. He builds songs with pieces of life, astute snippets of conversation, and words he collects like a “little crow making a nest.” They’re scribbled on scraps of paper, left on voicemail, and saved on his camera roll until they find life in song.
The seed for Brendan’s 2014 single “Stupid,” for example, was planted during a conversation about an ex boyfriend. The song gained ground after it was featured on Buzzfeed and the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, but it is the honesty and relatability of the lyrics (“If you weren’t so stupid, I could have loved you”) that keep it going five years later as a favorite for TikTok users.
Everything in Brendan’s world is about evolution though — “you can’t go backwards” he says more than once — so even that light-hearted ukulele bop, beloved by Spotify streamers and teenage TikTok lip-syncers, has matured into an earnest, sincere version of itself at recent U.S. shows.
And the Boyfriends
Nowhere is Brendan’s evolution more evident than on his new album, And the Boyfriends, which debuted at #2 on the Australian iTunes charts in March. Rather than recording an expected album of danceable, electro-pop singles, he released a cohesive collection of emotional, deeply personal tracks that showcase new heights of songwriting, confidence, and maturity.
His 2016 breakthrough record and fourth EP, funbang1, gave him some of his most popular singles (“Hugs Not Drugs (or Both),” “Tectonic,” “Free to Love,”) but Brendan wanted more for And the Boyfriends.
“funbang1 admittedly had a Muscle Mary audience where I could go do one song at the local gay bar every weekend if I wanted to and live off of that,” he says. “It was fine, but I don’t think that’s why I started writing music. I felt so alone when I was singing the queer pub stuff in my home country and it not really seeming to resonate with people around me. Sometimes I need to sit and remember that I’m a singer/songwriter, not just a singer. With the new album, there was an immediate shift in the audience. The music has made the audience more diverse, and that’s refreshing.”
Brendan describes the songwriting on the album as “probably the best I’ve ever done,” but it didn’t come easily. After some time away from the pen, he felt stuck. “I had to put the training wheels back on. Go back to step one,” he recalls. “I hadn’t done the basics. I hadn’t even asked myself if I had anything to say, and that was the worst thing as a songwriter.”
Fortunately, his close friend, collaborator, and album producer Sarah Belkner had some training wheels handy. She pushed him to start with just five minutes of writing. “Do you remember that you used to love songwriting?” she asked. He did. Soon, the five-minute bursts turned into two-hour sessions at Belkner’s electric piano, and after three months, an album began to emerge.
“We are two artists who love albums,” says Brendan. “I’ve always had the desire to make an album because away from the gay man’s music that I’ve tweeted out a lot — the Carly Rae and Beyonce and Charli XCX songs or whatever it is that day — my youth was more built on this hidden love of Pearl Jam or PJ Harvey albums. I loved albums and the stories that they told. It’s all I wanted to do, and when we noticed that we had four songs that were connected, we were like, ‘Oh, I see what’s happening here.’”
Triple Fool
What was happening was the start of something big. Just five months after the album dropped, he stands in front of a sold-out crowd of former and current lovers and friends, fans, and members of the media at Club Cumming — Alan Cumming’s buzzy hotspot in NYC’s East Village.
Wearing his go-to harness, underwear, a turbulent web of eyeliner around his left eye, and a brimmed hat tipped at an angle reminiscent of “Mountains”-era Prince, Brendan appears at ease with his newfound American success. (This sold-out show is only his second U.S. headlining slot.)
He sits at the piano for a dazzling rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel,” charms the crowd with charismatic banter, and pauses for two songs by his friend Rod Thomas (aka Bright Light Bright Light). But when Brendan is performing his own original material — with lyrics tied so closely and literally to his personal experiences that they feel autobiographical — it’s easy to wonder how hard it is to relive those moments again and again.
“When the person that a song is about is in the audience, it’s difficult,” he says. “There’s a poem, John Donne’s “Triple Fool,” that I think is cool. It’s basically, I’m a fool once for it happening, I’m a fool twice for writing it down, and I’m a fool three times for performing it and re-living the sadness. I’m a triple fool. That’s what those songs can feel like. But they’re empowering as well. Really empowering to sing.”
When It’s Real
Music has always been a source of empowerment for Brendan, who grew up in a conservative Sydney suburb where he was constantly bullied and beaten for being gay. He hid away with the piano to escape his tormentors.
That childhood trauma seeped into his lyrics. “I think I bought into the idea that I wasn’t going to do well in Australia,” he says. “Years of people going, ‘You’re a fucking faggot. You suck. You’re gonna fail at this.’ I got really spooked and definitely focused on the negative. Everything I did was sort of embedded with it. If my songs are about me, it’s shit-kicking on me, which is a very Australian thing, I guess, but also something you do to yourself when a part of you has been convinced that you suck. A very literal lyric of that is from the song ‘Winner’: ‘I’ll never make it.’ There’s a little bit of me that’s like, that’s not a joke.”
Even now, instruments and music serve as a talisman for him. On the morning of his Atlanta show, his first and largest U.S. headlining show, Brendan pads into the kitchen in mismatched socks, ukulele in hand. “Sometimes, just holding an instrument makes me feel better,” he says before shuffling back into the music room where you can actually hear the nerves melting away at the piano.
When showtime finally comes in Atlanta, a packed room of people 9,300 miles from Australia sing along to nearly every song. “That was special. That was shocking,” he says. “It’s been so much more — so many more people, so much queerer — than I expected. It was real. It felt like the very best shows I do at home. When it’s real, the queer community, it’s a party for me too.”
After the show, the joy radiating from every meet-and-greet shot causes one Twitter follower to quip, “You actually look happy. Have you even seen a meet and greet before?”
So if meeting 200 U.S. fans is good, would meeting thousands be better? Would he get to Taylor Swift–level fame if he could? “I really, really thought I wanted that,” he says. “Then I got a little taste of it through some side hustle gigs, commercial gigs. Just a little taste of that big audience world thing, and every show I did just proved that that’s not something that satisfies me. Besides, I don’t think I can. I don’t believe it’s possible because of actions I’ve taken in my career.” Actions? “House of Air.”
Forever in the House of Air
As Brendan enters the “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, he stops in his tracks in front of an image from Hal Fischer’s iconic photographic study of gay semiotics.
Fischer’s 1977 work, Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men, was the inspiration for the provocative, critically acclaimed video for “House of Air,” and seeing it in the museum has made the musician squeal with delight. The NSFW film directed by Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston garnered more than 700,000 views during the 10 days before YouTube banned it and currently has 5.4 million Vimeo views.
Russia, in particular, has embraced “House of Air” as a form of protest against homophobia and a celebration of queerness. When asked if that reaction makes him feel pressure to engage in more activism, Brendan says, “I think what I already did is that. I made that product and that’s what it became to them — because of them, not because of me — so I just celebrate that as best I can. Otherwise, it’s far too much of a burden. To get messages from people in the Middle East who talk about my music and then they say, ‘I’ve been sent a letter because I was listening to your music.’ That’s really upsetting. You know, maybe the username goes missing and you just wonder...”
He trails off, tears in his eyes, then continues: “Because if I had so much pride that I took credit for everything that the videos and songs mean, I’d also have to take on that, and I wouldn’t be able to do that. So the product is what I do. That’s what it is.”
“In my early 20s, I was definitely like, ‘Oh, you use your queerness to be on a talk show or write an article or lead a march.’ Those were things that I felt really ineffective in, and it didn’t feel like I was reaching anyone that way, but the songs always have. That’s where the activism is. [My gay uncle] Paul Mac always says, ‘Brendan, stop fucking tweeting and write. You help more people that way.’ And yeah, I do.”
“I do think there is value in brattishness sometimes and rebelliousness and continuing to not be too concerned about respectability politics and earnestness in queer culture because we do censor ourselves for the broader heterosexual community.”
Removing Barriers
But it’s unlikely that Brendan will stop tweeting. Though he refers to it as one of his three worst habits (along with smoking and “eating shitty food”), he says social media has “made his career.” It has connected him with countless career opportunities, provided him with a place to share humor (“I love jokes. A lot of my songs have jokes in them, even if you can’t tell. There are jokes in the new album as well; they just became a little more secret and metaphorical.”), and given him a platform for his views.
“I seem to switch between these two personalities of ‘Fuck you. Here’s porn!’ and ‘I hate this’ to a very mature adult man all the time. It’s just the two sides of my coin,” he says. “I do think there is value in brattishness sometimes and rebelliousness and continuing to not be too concerned about respectability politics and earnestness in queer culture because we do censor ourselves for the broader heterosexual community. We do put a cap on ourselves at the point of being respectable so we can be the doctor or lawyer.”
As someone who has taken much advice and inspiration from his “gay uncles,” Jonny Seymour and Paul Mac, Brendan also uses social media to mentor other young queer artists.
“The second I had a bit of success, I was able to pass that forward,” he says. “I think that’s a really common thing in the queer community. We know we suffered, so the quicker you can help someone else, the better. Just be like, ‘Do you need any help? Is something crazy happening in your life right now that you think no one else has ever gone through? It’s just this.’ We’re just offering in a kind way. That can be everything for someone. When you’re queer, there are extra barriers, so whatever you can do, you do.”
Ultimately, what Brendan Maclean does is make songs though. Asked what’s next, he says, “You should always have songs. I’m not going to go ‘Look out for the next single!’ but I’ll make more music. That’s it. That’s it.”
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Check out Brendan’s latest single, Easy Love, available for streaming now!
This interview originally appeared in WUSSY Volume 7, which can be ordered here.
Southern Vanity explores the intersectionality of black, southern, and non-binary identities through the lens of Atlanta drag artist, Miss He. By creating this gender blending aesthetic, Miss He continues to turn heads, wow audiences, and reinvigorate the meaning of drag.
They contribute a thriving energy to the Atlanta queer community while embodying the utmost authenticity and confidence; paving the way for the next generation of artists and blurring the lines of gender identity.
Tell us how you got your start performing! What is Miss He's origin story?
Miss He actually got her start under the stage name ‘Effie MiPoussey’ in Athens, Ga. It was a mouthful of a name, but so was I. I changed it to Miss He once I started performing with a mustache and wanted something that represented the gender fuck drag that I wanted to do. Also I share a birthday with Missy Elliot (July 1st) so it just seemed right.
How are you getting along during quarantine?
Drag truly has been my only source of income. My former job, the clothing warehouse, fired me because I didn’t feel comfortable coming in to work while also having a compromised immune system. I’ve ran back to my stomping ground, Athens and have been quarantining up here for the majority of this pandemic experience. It’s been rough but most of my closest friends live here which makes it a little easier!
You are known for your fashion genderfuckery, unconventional silhouettes, and sometimes sporting a mustache and sometimes not. What inspires your aesthetic?
My closet is inspired by 80s Anime aesthetics, 90s runway, and an overall gender bending lens. With makeup I try to push myself into trying new techniques. I don’t feel as though I have a go-to face which is why the mustache has become a staple for most of my drag. It’s my common identifier from mug to mug.
What do you think separates southern drag performers from other parts of the world?
To quote Andre 3000, “The South got something to say!” In my opinion, queers from the south are the leaders of the queer movement because we choose to live our truths outwardly despite the conservative/anti-LGBTQIA+ zeitgeist most southerners have. There is so much power in saying “Fuck it! Ima do me” and southern drag performers, no matter how seasoned, carry that mentality with them.
Any advice for the baby drags trying to break out into the scene?
It’s the same advice every working drag performer suggests to a newcomer: go out in drag to drag shows, talk to show runners, be respectful of the way each one runs their shows. Remember no one gets into this art form being the perfect performer they idealize. Be patient with yourself and practice! It’ll get you far!
What are you listening to?
Sibling Rivalry and The Read are podcasts that have been accompanying me on my walks when I need to get out of the house. if your not familiar with either, support queer black artists and check them out ASAP!
Who are some artists and performers we should we be following?
Follow the local queens in your area. Those are the performers who grow into the stars you stan on TV. We have all taken a huge hit during this pandemic and local drag performers are trying to get by without those weekly/monthly bookings.
Queer creators in the digital age are finding new ways to keep their art alive. Digital drag has taken the internet by storm, giving queens a new way to connect with their fans from a safe, social distance. Magazine shoots are being done via FaceTime, giving new meaning to the art form of virtual photography. Although the creative industry has been stricken with uncertainty, artists have been able to find the inspiration, and tenacity, to keep creating. In coping with our new reality, many photographers, performers, and producers have taken to their digital platforms to showcase their work, and liven up the screens of their audiences at home.
The emergence of these alternatives beg the question, “how are our faves queering quarantine?”
Meet Savana Ogburn (she/they): photographer, collage artist, and set designer to the stars! Ogburn, known for her kooky, campy, yet streamlined art style, has released some projects over the past few weeks that are sure to put a smile on your face. Amidst photoshop collaborations, paper marbling tutorials, and whimsically eerie lumen prints, Ogburn has been able to take time with her work, whilst still giving the girls want they want. You have probably seen her work in WUSSY volume 4-8!
Now, and for a limited time only, Savana is selling collage prints in collaboration with different organizations in order to raise money and spread some cheer! We got the chance to speak with Ogburn about her creative process, the prints in question, and how quarantine has been for her overall.
How are you? How has quarantine been treating you?
Hi Iv! I’m holding up- I’m lucky to be quarantined with my family and my art supplies, so I’m certainly not lonely or bored. Which is nice. But I’m definitely feeling that constant anxiety about everything that’s going on.
Has your creative process changed at all?
Yes! I’ve slowed down a good bit (obviously) and am trying to take time to think through projects pretty deeply before trying to move forward with them. Just being a little bit more intentional and taking time to experiment.
You’re selling some super cute mini prints right now! How is that going?
Thank you! It’s going really well. I feel really powerless right now and have been itching to do something, so it made sense to me to use some of my extra time to 1. Raise some money for organizations doing important work and 2. Figure out a way to get my work into people’s hands/homes in an accessible way. I’m happy to be able to combine the two. I’m not raising a ton of money, but it’s more than nothing which is what matters, I think.
Tell us a little bit about the organizations you’re partnering with.
I tried to choose 4 different organizations that were important to me and that all do vastly different work, especially those that are helping in some way with the Coronavirus response. I also wanted to pick organizations that might not have the visibility that some of the major ones out there do so that the money we raise will feel maybe a bit more impactful. The first organization was National Bail Out, the second is NDLON’s Immigrant Worker Safety Net Fund, and the next two will be Decolonizing Wealth’s Native American Community Response Fund and then Southern Equality to coincide with Pride.
Will supporters be able to purchase more of your work? When/where?
Yes! Every so often I’ll list somethinggoofy in my shop, but I’m planning on having an ongoing print shop where people can buy fine art prints of some of my photos, and mini prints/postcards of my collages. This sale is a nice way for me to test the waters and figure out how to do it! But I’m always open to selling fine art prints via email :)
Any other projects you want to plug?
My friend Valheria Rocha and I just filmed a cute joint Q&A on IGTV answering a lot of questions about photography/art careers, inspiration, et cetera that should be going up in the next week or so. Hopefully it will be helpful and not fully off the rails. Exciting stuff!
“The New Now” unfurls into echo-ed corridors, stalked by fervor and laced with the signature operatics of underground artist Abyss X, a taste of what’s to come. The upcoming album, INNUENDO, is a 10-track opus, wrapping listeners with tenderest tendrils, then pulling along a turbulent path that revels and releases in its raw candor of trip-hop and ambient atmosphere. A snake-like seduction of the soul, her debut LP is a primo soundtrack to accompany the bold tone of Abyss X’s visual work. What begins as a seedling, sparked by an aesthetic or aural ghost, propels towards attempts, in which Abyss X brings brutality and beauty to the altar.
“Love Altercation”, the first single and video from INNUENDO, exemplifies this actualization. Directed and edited by the artist herself, Abyss X showcases her esoteric talent for cinematographic caress, video production long under her belt before making music professionally. The measured movement, as if a study of sex magick and sacred poetic text, gives power to each photographic frame. This is the Abyss X way.
Hailing from Crete, a strong theme of Goddess energy has consciously affected the artist. Emotionally-charged connection to the embodiment of environment mirrors a similarity of the means in which dance + music travels through the home of a body. “I experienced the island life for most of my upbringing. There's something about living by the sea that affects you as a person, the smell of salt in the air overtakes the sense of pollution and triggers a longing feeling with wild intentions to travel far”, Abyss X explains. “I move quite a lot geographically and each place I've ever stayed in has left a little ‘dent’ in my psyche and inevitably in my work.”
Each piece of music finds itself attributed to a different location, each experience informing the sonic-frames of each song. “The New Now” is just one of many experimental forages into Abyss X’s pin of feeling to sound, an exploratory trajectory as acid-laced as it is occult-immersed, within the tomes of INNUENDO. “My visual work formulates around the concept of the gaze towards the female body and the variety within people's perception of body language and facial expression,” Abyss X comments. “The cathartic nature of emotional discharge is something I often try to explore musically and visually, always under a veil of curiosity and sometimes for my personal mental relief. Emotional discharge is a way to seek one's identity and place in the world but I guess there's also a fair amount of ego running through an artist's practice. The entity of the fierce woman somehow lurks in my mind throughout my audiovisual approach.”
The influence of the mythological, mystical, classical are of particular interest, too, her relationship with the Earth, nature and reality perhaps the strongest hold on Abyss X’s playful and curious heart/mind connection: “Mythology is an uncensored depiction of the world as it would exist without all social restrictions. I'm fascinated by the ancient as I feel like the earlier you travel in human history, the more raw and true the human perception of the world had been. They knew how to make meaning of the world around them. Now, we are constantly struggling to deviate from internal and external chaos.” In the modern world, where communication is cruxed by a lack of charm, Abyss X creates with mystique in mind. To Abyss X, there is a future in reclaiming and reinventing the power of the femme and ancient.
Previous works have been building annually with precision, each full of complexities and courage: “Priers and Liars” (2019), the Pleasures of the Bull EP (2018), “Gangsters Were Weeping” (2017), beginning at her Mouthed EP (2016). Though in lack at the moment, Abyss X’s live performances have been key to her keep with the community. Releases on Rabit's Halcyon Veil and Aisha Devi’s Danse Noire, friendship and collaboration with Juliana Huxtable, Dis Fig, Rui Ho and more, Abyss X organized the intimate Nature Loves Courage Festival in a very remote location on her home island of Crete.
Salivating with juxtaposition, from frantic fury to the sensual and sacred, her upcoming full length will be available June 26. Later in 2020, remixes by DJ Rosa Pistola, Rui Ho, House of Kenzo, SOPHIE and Gabber Eleganza + others will be available.
On March 20th, the US-Mexican border, the most heavily trafficked land port of entry, was closed for “non-essential” workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to quarantine in the same household, families, friends, and lovers have since been separated until further notice.
May 13th, 2020
Neville,
I no longer know how to translate this pain. It’s been nearly fifty-four days since we shared the same bed, since we held each other in a warm embrace and whispered eternal love, a declaration only audible to the texture and folds of our skin. The last time we showered together, there was music playing in the background and warm water pouring down my back and shoulders. I couldn’t hear the music nor feel the water, but I could wrap my arms around your lower waist to bring you closer to me. To touch you, to taste you, to bathe you in salt, that was called living. You see, what the way your body moves and talks and questions mine has taught me is that there is so much beauty to be found in the mundane. Maybe it’s silly to say it out loud. Maybe a declaration of love so pure might seem obsessive, overdone at times, empty and lacking given how many other lovers have said the same words before in vain. But it doesn’t matter, because this letter is for you, just for you.
We have nothing left but the heavy drag of the light shifting across the room in sharp angles, bringing with it occasional warmth. Somedays, it doesn’t even show up, it sits behind a bed of clouds, and so we shut the blinds, maybe light a candle. We pretend it’s the sun or we sit in the dark and feel our limbs as they harden with time. Legs, shoulders, neck, spine. I stretch in bed whenever I remember to. I pick up a pen, press it across tomorrow and the day after, I stop at the 30th, and jot down a question mark. I scribble over it and remind myself that hoping for the best has done nothing but prove to be the quickest route to disappointment. The line between optimism and foolishness shaves itself thinner every day I don’t leave the house.
When I was younger, I used to run from my parent’s house all the way to the beach, all the way to the tall, brown fence that rose from the sand to mark the limits of my country, a border that, to this day, keeps growing taller. Some people say it grows to make space for more names to be written on it. The names of the lost, the names of the dead, the names of the mothers and fathers and children and lovers, lovers just like us, separated by the doings of those whose understanding of the world does not fit compassion. So, I do what I do best and cry. I cry for you, and I cry for everybody else because that’s the only thing I can do. I cry for myself last, and then I keep the tears in a jar to remind myself that sometimes sorrow deserves to be held as tenderly as we hold joy.
It is on this beach that I sit to write this letter. My bed is the sand, and the sheets are the waves that leave on me the scent of the bodies they shower. This kind of loneliness feels so familiar. The turning of the handle, the piling of cups and glasses and wraps, the not-looking-forward-to-anything that comes like clockwork when I stare at accumulated toilet paper used to wipe the cum off my belly, reminiscent of sweaty armpits and long-overdue showers, and that heaviness and that knot on the side of the neck that, like a night bird, keeps me turning and twisting down and to the right, forward and to the left, up and down and then a momentary sense of relief before the handle turns again.
I don’t know how to drive, but last night I dreamt I knew how to just to go see you, and when I drove across the border the CBPs had no questions, the freeway lay empty, and you were waiting for me at 12 & Imperial just like the first time we met, with your shorts on and your hair in twists, waiving and calling my name, smiling the way we both smile with wrinkles around our eyes, and we took the trolley up to Seaport Village, and we talked about making chicken stew for dinner, and we bought a small bag of cuties, and we ate them all in one sitting.
It’s strange to think of a time when I took your embrace for granted, your fingers braided with mine, our legs clasped together in bed, how I’d turn to let you hug me from behind in the middle of the night, putting your warm palms over my lower stomach, how you’d whisper “my baby, my baby, my baby, I love you, my baby.” It’s strange to think that we’d be set apart, not by our past or by mutual hurt, by a disconnect in our frequencies, but something greater and more threatening. It’s easier to fall apart when love turns sour on both ends, when missing comes with an underlying feeling that it was all for the best.
I sit to wait for the pears rot and turn sour. I sit to feel the tangerines and lemons in my garden run dry. I sit in the shower, and my tears blend in with the water. I remember bathing your body, adoring it, grasping your fullness in my palms, nurturing it, admiring the way the liquid would fall and change with your chest, change with your legs, change with the small of your back. I sit and cry for the way I’d take your face in my hands and kiss your eyelids, kiss your forehead, kiss your cheeks. It takes me back to epsom salt and white wine nights in the bathtub. My fingertips conjure back your presence, and I trace in the air your body, and, when consciousness falls back into this body, I pretend to hold you with eyes shut.
And while we wait to hold each other once again, the unkempt grass grows for nobody to see, it cuts the pavement in strings and you, you move like the wind shifts and chases, you shine hard and call and go through hair, through doors and tunnels and branches, you reach the depth of the water, the roots in the soil, the bottom of the glass. And it is then that I am reminded that things exist in a perpetual state of chaos, and life is only trying to figure out how to cope with the fact that there is no such thing as a consistent state of peace. Peace, like water, cannot be held or attained, and it only grows more unattainable there more we point out its lack in presence. And in this chaos, I write to tell you this: I’ve loved you, and I love you still, like I love the soft early-morning light.
Yours truly, Andrés
Andrés Hernández is a self-taught queer Mexican artist currently based in the border city of Tijuana, Baja California. Their work aims to document and explore personal experiences centered around intimacy and vulnerability. They have been featured in publications such asKaltblut,Pineapple, andInverosímil.
You know what this world needs? (More podcasts!!) No, more l-o-v-e!
Queer folks are extremely vulnerable right now, and although some of our bars and sanctuaries are starting to open back up, it is still unclear when we will fully return back to normalcy. During a time of extreme isolation, it is more important than ever to find ways to connect with your good Judy’s. Your favorite Atlanta drag queens decided it was time to do just that, calling in some of their favorite drag queens, kings, grass-roots activists and artists to talk about the latest news, pop culture, and juicy gossip.
Brigitte Bidet and Ella/Saurus/Rex are proud to announce the start of "Good Judy”, a queer podcast that’s not all about RuPaul's Drag Race. Tune in every Tuesday with Brigitte and Ella as they discuss the latest news, chat with very special guests, and crown a Good Judy and Bad Judy of the week.
The first full-length episode has premiered on all podcast streaming platforms, like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The episode features a conversation with Jesse Pratt López, who has recently raised over $2.5 million via GoFundMe for ATL Homeless Black Trans women.
Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe!
Good Judy is part of the WUSSY Podcast Network and produced by Jon Dean.
“Chloé, meet Antone,” we shake hands and his grip is warm, “This is my new friend Chloé.” I was pleased to meet the boy I’d been seeing around classes, talking to everyone and laughing a lot. I loved his dark hair and rounded, prominent nose that stuck out of his face in an elegant triangular slope. We spent the rest of the day as friends in between classes, and I learned that Antone Crowe came in a set of four brothers, The Crowe Brothers, a band of brothers inextricably legend to my home town, as musicians and artists.
courtesy of @tonecrowe on Instagram
At the end of the school day, a crisp and gentle September afternoon, I went home with my Nana, telling her of my ninth-grade adventures. When I mentioned the Crowe Brothers she seemed more interested, “Is he an Indian?” I didn’t know, or ever think to ask. I never met other Indians outside of my family.
I would come to find out that the Crowe Brothers were part of the Brothertown Indian Nation, a tribe composed of multiple resettled east coast Algonquin tribes, residing along Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. It would bubble up eventually, as my nana reminisced about her childhood, that Anna Crowe, a matriarch with a lyrical name, babysat my mother and uncle with her own brood. One of her sons, John, is Antone Crowe’s father. Pouring over an image of a group of black and white sullen Indians, telling stories of the people she knew and how they related to our family and the Crowes.
I listen when my Nana and her siblings talk about the old days, growing up Indian. I long for the pieces that I have been slowly arranging of myself and those before me. But often I fall victim, as many young natives of my generation, to feeling invisible. Racism by systematic erasure of Natives in education, pop culture and news has a negative influence on the societal view of Native rights, but on how Natives view themselves as well.
“Pressure to feel like you’re Native enough can be destructive and hinder people to move forward. Even when they have the agency to do so.”
A 2018 study by Reclaiming Native Truth, explored a host of institutional, social and historical influences on modern Native culture, representation and identity. Focused primarily on building new narratives for indigenous people, the research indicates glaring negative effects from this invisibility. Sample respondents who had little education and awareness of Native plights, were less willing to support the range of social justice issues from treaty rights to eradicating racist mascots. One participant articulated that, “I feel like Native Americans do not experience a great deal of discrimination mainly because I don’t hear about it in the news.” This lack of representation in media and culture reinforces the stigma that Native Americans are a “thing of the past.”
Ironically, my family’s tribe, The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, survived forced land removal, assimilation, brutalization, and attempted genocide, like most tribes, only to be portrayed as if they do not exist. In museums, Indigenous people are represented as they lived in centuries past, enforcing the erasure of our contemporary reality. Activist Somah Haaland, whose mother is congresswoman Deb Haaland, one of the first Native American women in congress, reports that, “In history books, at historical sites, and in museums, Native people are often framed as a people who participated in the making of America but who no longer exist in modern American society.” Since educational media is often aimed at children, this is generally dangerous — but especially when the child is Native. This presents Native identity as something that has come and gone. A retched pill I swallowed as a young girl.
Yet, I am kicking out against external and internal elimination. My friendship with Crowe, the death of my great Grandmother and fluent Potawatomi speaker Che-Quess, and the constant struggle for my identity inspire me to do more and to do it for everyone, not just myself. This sense of purpose and reclamation is surging in younger generations of Native Americans. Many are using art and technology to learn fading tribal languages, continue traditional media like story-telling and enforcing self-care.
D O I T by Eddie Perrote, from Crowd Paintings, 2014
My cousin Christine Trudeau rerouted her pursuit of the arts towards journalism when she became aware of the great disparity in Indigenous reporting. This “void of coverage” as she puts it, gave her the confidence to manage her learning disability, breakdown the limitations she had placed on herself and confront the privilege that kept her from feeling “native enough.”
“There needs to be someone in the room,” she tells me, as if she is speaking straight to my own insecurity, “Even if it is not someone who is ready.” Trudeau, who is on the Native American Journalist Association’s Board of Directors, uses her educational background to advocate and cover her community, whether she was raised on the reservation or not. “Pressure to feel like you’re Native enough can be destructive and hinder people to move forward,” she advises, “Even when they have the agency to do so.”
“This is somewhat of a cultural renaissance brewing in millennial Native Americans that passes through generations, evident through the arts and through changing social norms.”
As I look up to Trudeau as an elder cousin, I look up to another cousin, Eddie Perrote. Perrote is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. He believes, like Crowe and Trudeau, that today’s Native youth have a responsibility to “be safe, healthy, and not let trauma and racism continue to damage our communities.” This self-care is a direct reaction to the prevalent feelings of invisibility. Trudeau suggests “reviving yourself” through movement, the outdoors and holding yourself accountable. Crowe stressed taking care of nature as a means of this self-care.
As artists of story-telling, which is deeply rooted in Native culture, Crowe, Perrote and Trudeau are part of the younger Indian Country using relatively new-found accessibility to create and represent. A Choctaw artist, D.G. Smalling is using his voice in the same vein, drawing the parallels of growing inspiration, acknowledging that “Older people who had the misfortune of being conditioned not to celebrate or speak are returning to the culture.”
Smalling continues, “This is somewhat of a cultural renaissance brewing in millennial Native Americans that passes through generations, evident through the arts and through changing social norms.”
The self and societal expunging that goes along with lack of representation stands to battle the liberating and young Indian Country. Toeing the line between representing Native identity without defining oneself with it, we resilient and existent people are still here.
—
Chloé Allyn is a poet and visual artist living in Atlanta. She works in many disciplines but specializes in pleasure and words.
While there’s always been a great overwhelm of straight cis men holding helm in rap music, Ripparachie’s tireless love for revealing track after track in a massive continuation would seem to pay no mind to the historic wall of hetero. However, the past few years have not gone without some aim to challenge the status quo, even if just to express his truth: “Being out here on the scene and being one of the only gays in it, I have been pushing to end the shade between the straight scene and the gay scene.”
His latest EP hides no innuendo to the young rapper’s “lifestyle”. Initially called “Popstar Rachie”, in nod to the EP’s producer Popstar Benny, Rachie Pop became a ring that combined collaborative names as a cheeky concept genre. Afterall, the ATL-based artist has always had a specific brand of authenticity. “Rachie Pop is me popping my shit. It’s a vibe of being yourself and still being respected no matter what”, he explains. “I walk through some dangerous scenes in these booty shorts and still get through.”
With the Cakes Da Killa and Astrolith collab “You Could Neva” still fresh, Rachie Pop is an added testament to the queer rap experience. “The inspiration is proving an OPENLY gay rapper can also rap this trap shit and really be out here around it,” Rachie says. “Everyone knows the gay scene is full of drugs. I am not glorifying it but I am not shaming it neither. I know what’s going on and this is tea.”
Divoli S'vere and Ripparachie
The “Party Over Here” video with Losa is a taste of quarantine synergy (posing the question of how much weed have you bought in isolation and how many Neverending dishes do you do each week?). The EP has grit and humour, like the wild ride of “Hot Yoga” where Rachie runs into some unexpected money on the way to hot yoga class. Rattling off lyrics like “Step on that white girl like I was Bikram” and “come and give Star...bucks”, Rachie paints an image of Buddha and bud, harem pants in the trap house, laughing, “There aren't many trap cultured people that do hot yoga so I am flexing this life that some think only a suburban mom would be doing.” “Yea!” and “Butt, Fuck” cruise through in signature style, rounding out the Rachie Pop EP as a must listen for Summer 2020.
Regarding the imbalance in the rap scene, however, the artist has much to say. “I feel like a lot of people think being gay and doing trap music does not mix. I also notice there is not a lot of coverage of gay artists that rap about what’s going on, on the other side of the rainbow. It is dangerous being gay, Black, and out here in the field where most of the people on the scene are homophobic,” Rachie explains. “Not only will the cops try you but still will someone on this block just for being a little more feminine.People in this industry are scared to be on tracks with gay artists because of their fear of losing respect in the streets. I might see so-and-so and they be like ‘yo, you’re dope’ but they would never say that in public.”
It’s not simply an issue of social invisibility, the lack of outward support is a detrimental hindrance of a person’s creative livelihood and basic humanity. “When it comes to being a gay rapper who also likes to dabble with trap music, I find it hard to find the support on either side. The gay blogs aren’t really posting any trap artists,” Rachie explains. And yet non-Black artists have chased the rise of rap and R&B, especially as of late, no surprise as most queer terminology has been ripped from the queer and trans Black community, too. These copycats with cash flow can interject illusion of “hood” aesthetic into their self-bought musical careers and their glossed-over watered-down renditions will receive media attention, all while gay rap artists that actually live the life often remain underground.
“Most of the trap artists are openly homophobic so I understand why it’s not on their radar. Most come up in rap by being in the closet while they get on then they come out, or never come out. It’s still taboo for gay artist to be talking about the trap regardless of more gay artists popping right now.” Additionally, Rachie has a very clear view on why the BLM movement needs to be far more intersectional than it has been: “There is so much homophobia and transphobia in the Black community. I feel like it should be said. Black trans[people], Black gays, Black lesbians are also part of the Black lives that matter. There’s no Black lives without our lives being included.”
Environmental factors and attitude aside, Ripparachie continues to rise. He takes it in stride, yet doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind, continuing to carve space to express and enlighten, personal and political, a wellspring of radness regardless of the difficulties along the way.
WUSSY is proud to present poetry by Chicago writer, Warlock Fulltime. If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.
“When it dies, Love draws it upward into oneness. But when Strife tears the oneness apart again, then Fire Water Earth Air get separated and from their separation come monsters, animals, fish, bushes, girls, boys, and all the parts of the cosmos created from these. Also swans, of which the male is called a cob and the female a pen, according to Flannery O’Connor. Not a hen? No, a pen, she maintains. She kept swans.” -Anne Carson on Flannery O’Connor
When your lover wings a wine cup at your head, don’t think, “You monster,” instead notice the angle at which the crystal travels through the air. Your tongue may taste the space that it displaces. The cup does not move through distance, but merely executes a series of shifts of the possible location in which it exists, growing ever nearer to your temple, growing ever nearer to the wall it shatters against when it misses your face.
They always had terrible aim.
These days I do not trust my own language – borrowing the breaths of other lips. Breaths that have travelled the same trajectory as that wine cup – taking me back to your fingers which I kiss. Which I bite. Which I put inside my mouth that I might understand what you mean when you say “hand”. Your hand, like a female swan is a pen, hedging in the limits of infinity, holding back complete dissolution, for which there is no specific word in the Southern dialect – but we do have the practice of stirring sugar into tea before we divide it into four separate glasses, four separate words: mine, not mine, not mine, not mine – I find it easier to spell love with this alphabet. With this division of space. This exercise of limits, because where do we find desire if not in a span of distance?
***
To be correct has never been my drive. I have only ever sought that first world of undivided light which we taste parcel by piece by pressing this clumsy form up against the truth. It has taken many forms but once smelled like tar and took up the space of a body.
Destruction is love’s handmaid. She comes before her, baring teeth, clearing and sowing the ground with salt that one might set a table out and pour a pitcher of tea into two glasses, forming two words: this one and that one.
When a lover tosses a tea glass at your head, don’t think, “You monster.”
They have always had bad aim.
—
Warlock Fulltime is the son of a Baptist pastor and the brother of black magick. He lives in Chicago, Illinois right where the sky meets the lake and he's thinking of you while watching the sun rise over it. He hopes you're watching it too.
Sugar, coarse and crystalline, is transformed by fire. A rich dark syrup emerges from the flames, brilliant and sweet. This is what Cicely Belle Blaine bears witness to, the trials of the black experience, its transformative and circumstance-defying abilities.
Burning Sugar is the debut collection of Cicely Belle Blaine, new from Arsenal Pulp Press. This poetry collection is “a relevant and timely poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation by a Black, queer femme.” As activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Vancouver, Cicely’s poems advocate for black life. These poems come from a deep well of strength, wisdom and compassion. They perform hard and dutiful work with great sensitivity and care.
Burning Sugar is broken into three sections, and fluidly drifts between lyric essay and verse. The first section of the collection is called Place. These poems capture the feeling of being simultaneously displaced and at home, being both uprooted and among kin. “Toronto” stands out as an honest portrayal of the conflicting feelings of being black and queer. Cicely puts into words those identifiable moments perfectly, allowing the reader to find solace in the plight of these pages.
The same narrative always followed me and continued to tell me the same lie: Blackness and queerness are not compatible.
From “Toronto”
In the second section Art, Cicely looks to black artists and figures for solidarity, reconciliation, and answers. Cicely approaches each work of art with gratitude and patience yet speaks with fervor and conviction.
maybe, like me, your life’s work is searching for Black joy and drowning in Black pain
Yours always, CB From “Dear Kahlil”
Finally, Child investigates a personal history. The roots of trauma are brought to light, from their ancestors to elementary school memories and beyond, we mourn alongside Cicely, recollect anger, and try our best to name what is lost, to put a finger on what went wrong.
it’s okay if you spent your whole life shunning it all, only to now want it back
you are no less worthy it is no less home
Love always, CB
From “Dear Diaspora Child”
Cicely traces their history and community between the coasts. The pain and jubilance are enacted in the same scene. Several generations in one page, time overlaps. The land is littered with sweet mangoes and the blood of innocent black lives. The ocean, all the while, is right there, in all its promise and possibility.
I am incredibly grateful for these pages, the way they show black queer self-love as it truly is; the way it troubles the status quo, how it is an act of resistance. Poetry here is its own protest, it is the choice in the moment to both fight and take flight. I am bonded to these poems, and this poet, even across countries, in their mission to exist freely, proudly, and without fear.
Pre-order your copy here and make your bookshelves that much sweeter.
—
Nicholas Goodly is the writing editor of Wussy Magazine.
Pride month is over and it’s time to check in: where do things stand with the LGBTQ movement and the ongoing work of anti-racism and combating white supremacy?
We are a Black non-binary person and a white queer trans woman, respectively. We recently met in the national uprising against police violence. Our activism has unfolded in the small city of Roanoke, Virginia during the course of Pride month. This has led us to think about how our queer identities are always conditioned by race:
Samantha:
As a white queer trans woman, I am still learning just how much race shapes my queerness and my transness. Yet I live in a part of the country—in a small Southern city on the edge of Appalachia—where the benefits of claiming white womanhood are crystal clear.
Several months ago, I was stopped by a police officer on a rural highway. As he ran my license and registration, I thought of Sandra Bland, a Black woman pulled over by the police in 2015 for failure to use a turn signal. She later died under mysterious circumstances in a jail cell. I thought of Muhlaysia Booker, a Black trans woman, who ten months before my own encounter with the police was yanked from her car and viciously beaten by a transphobic mob in Dallas, Texas. Black motorists have long known the dangers of “driving while Black.” But for me, as long as I lean into my whiteness and my femininity (not too much, not campy, just demure and polite) I know that I will be safe from violence. This performance of white womanhood is a privilege that I routinely use as a white trans person to keep me safe. While I often hear white trans folks talk about “passing” privilege, i.e. passing as cis, it is even more important that we talk about our whiteness.
Tatiana:
I am a Virginian. I am Black with a white mother. I am non-binary with effeminate features. I am conscious of consistently being on the precipice of privilege. I could, as many mixed-race people choose to do, reject my Blackness. It is at times admittedly easier to allow people to label me as a woman rather than trans. My privilege is that my identity is conflated with whiteness and womanhood. My survival depends on this oversimplification and my ability to appeal to white supremacist, heteronormative, patriarchal structures that fester inside of me until I, like the rest of the world, might explode. This June, as Black people cried out for justice all over the world, it was more apparent to me than ever that Pride is not felt equally in the LGBTQ community.
Like many queer and trans Black people, I am unsure where I belong. I often feel I have to choose between my transness and my Blackness.
I use my privilege and my voice to empower those who suffer more than myself. I am consistently isolated by LGBTQ and feminist movements that disregard intersectionality with ideologies supposedly outside of race. When it comes to Black liberation I hesitate to broadcast my trans identity. Sometimes I fear that laying my work at the mercy of society’s transphobia and anti-Blackness will harm the progress I am working to achieve. It is in these moments, when my Black comrades are just as disempowered to take a stand as I am, that I genuinely wonder if white LGBTQ allies will show up in defense of me.
***
In the South, LGBTQ organizations and spaces historically emerged in the leftover spaces of Jim Crow-era segregation. Gay male narrators in a local oral history project remember Roanoke’s first gay bar as an all-white space in the 1960s. Roanoke’s historic gay neighborhood, Old Southwest, was nearly 99 percent white in the early 1970s. Decades of gay and lesbian newsletters published since the 1970s in Roanoke almost never discussed issues of race. We live with the legacies of this history—of movements and spaces made “gay” but never actually made for Black people.
Black Queer people, especially Black trans women, are disproportionately vulnerable to the violence wrought by systemic racism and overpolicing, and in most cases their white LGBTQ allies have done little to use their privileges to protect Black queer lives.
Over the past month many LGBTQ organizations have spoken up in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. But solidarity is the wrong framework. Solidarity assumes that LGBTQ people are allies to (and thus separate from) the Movement for Black Lives. The reality is that these movements are intimately intertwined. White LGBTQ people are complicit in the very systems of white supremacy that harm Black LGBTQ people. Solidarity assumes a mythical distance between queer liberation and Black liberation and erases the very existence of Black LGBTQ people within queer spaces. Rather than solidarity, LGBTQ groups must adopt an intersectional lens that acknowledges how white supremacy operates within our communities. We must affirm that systemic racism is an LGBTQ issue just as much as it is a Black issue.
Black queer women have been saying this for decades. The Combahee River Collective released a manifesto in the 1970s on how Black queer women experience the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. They laid out the political implications of this understanding for supporting and challenging Black, feminist, and gay movements. During the 1960s and ‘70s, scholar, activist, and lesbian Angela Davis transformed abolition to target the country’s punitive justice system as a continuation of slavery—a principle which the Black Lives Matter Movement holds at its core. Audre Lorde, in her essay “The Uses of Anger,” writes of how well meaning white women often become defensive when Black women suggest that their womanhood is always racialized. White LGBTQ people similarly get defensive when told that their queerness and transness is racialized. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, three Black queer women, founded the Black Lives Matter movement with an explicit call for supporting and uplifting Black queer and trans lives. White LGBTQ people who think that race is not an LGBTQ issue need to at least start by acknowledging and learning this history.
White queer people can also do so much more. White LGBTQ people need to hold other white queer folks accountable and discuss the racial privileges inherent in their identities. There are structured spaces for doing this work without burdening queer people of color: join a SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) chapter or get involved with SONG (Southerners on New Ground) whose “Race Traitors” workshop is particularly geared toward white queer people committed to anti-racism. White-majority LGBTQ organizations also need to make more explicit acknowledgement and analysis of their own racist pasts and the steps they will take to cut off the arteries of those legacies. White-majority LGBTQ organizations must redistribute resources into the hands of Black queer and trans people, and hire Black LGBTQ people to lead their organizations. Without doing this work, the LGBTQ community further cultivates the harm of white supremacy. Finally, anti-racism should be an integral component of the mission of all LGBTQ organizations. These are not new ideas, but they represent new work for many small and regional LGBTQ organizations across the South.
Just as the feminist movement is still reckoning with its ugly history of centering white womanhood as a universal womanhood, the LGBTQ movement must also acknowledge the ways in which it is has long articulated gender and sexuality-based oppression as universal while erasing distinctions of race and class. The mainstream LGBTQ community often defines identity within the same parameters as western, white supremacist society, neglecting how gender and sexuality manifest in unique ways in non-white communities and in pre- and post-colonial cultures. The language of LGBTQ people as a “minority” is extremely problematic without an intersectional approach to how white LGBTQ people experience marginalization in ways always mediated by their whiteness. Both oppression and privilege are nuanced. Just as Black LGBTQ people are more vulnerable to the harm inflicted by white supremacy, white LGBTQ people benefit from it. Solutions such as solidarity or diversity and inclusivity still center whiteness as the default, and for true healing and progress in the LGBTQ community to occur, the perspectives of Black queer people must be at the forefront when it comes to defining the future of LGBTQ communities.
Black LGBTQ people are leading the way. Yet the work of white queer folks confronting their own racism is still raw and nascent and fifty years too late. Now that Pride month is over, let us commit ourselves to doing this important work for the next eleven months and beyond.
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Tatiana Durant is the President of the budding abolition organization No Justice No Peace - Roanoke. Currently they attend Hollins University as a Theatre major, and previously graduated from Virginia Western Community College with an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts and a concentration in Literature.
Gregory Samantha Rosenthal is Assistant Professor of Public History at Roanoke College and co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project.
WUSSY is proud to present poetry by New York writer, Wo Chan. If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.
performing miss america at bushwig 2018, then chilling
breathe some reddish dolphins (these bare feet busted), tore through my capezios, unmoisturized, they join your pilgrim black boot—oh my mammal... the wide, weekend’s long disclosure of drugs drawn
precious, depressed, high function-high anxious: 2018 gifts us fed dociérs on our stupendous thumbs-down needs. you need therapy. i need money. we ditch our brains unable to shred the fog of futures where civics, passion,
paycheck, and pleasure meet. Two hours ago, we ran late through slashing rain on Smith, tumbling you, your sister, (family) in the Uber XL backseat, helped me paste a glittering red AMERICA on my toilet paper sash.
we made it. early at bushwig, barely attended, i exploded the bouquet, rolled nakedly on stage. i didn’t expect to make 14 dollars cash, crumpled. i took mushrooms as planned. time unclenched. i found you! sipping rosé
backbar, i was so happy. joy was flapping its wings in the dustbath! you said i didn’t seem different but by then i could no longer bear violence, however simulated. i wanted only to see soft things: your empath friend, Our Lady of Paradise, gives guided meditations, undoing some violence in synchrony, she sings under the megawatts of her holographic leotard: new songs about her gender dysphoria. my smile pancakes beyond the edges of my cuisinart face “she’s so greeeaaaat” i say stretching like an accordion.
but, how useful are words now? by then i had lost the white pearls glued on my décolleté—they dropped far like seeds from a seagulls asshole. thinking about a feeling is like photocopying a feeling. that scanning light is safe. i brag my brain is fearless, yet my terrific heart runs across my face. waiting for the all-gender bathrooms with you, i just wanted to sit and melt like kerrygold into your fur coat. you said it was real. i knew that. i felt it.
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Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are the winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and have been awarded fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, Kundiman, and the Asian American Writers Workshop. Wo’s poems appear in POETRY, Mass Review, No Tokens, and The Margins. As a standing member of the Brooklyn based drag/burlesque collective Switch N' Play, Wo has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts, and BAM Fisher. Wo was born in Macau, China, and currently lives in Brooklyn. Find them at @theillustriouspearl
The last year or so has seen many bleak changes at Atlanta Pride—the Southeast’s largest Pride festival. As Project Q has reported, many of the board members and staff have quit or resigned. In October, the committee hired a PR firm to help handle some of the criticisms they were facing from the community. On top of that, many people still have concerns over the the presence of police and large corporations at the annual festival.
Because of all this, a lot of people have questioned the leadership of Executive Director, Jamie Fergerson, who has led the organization since 2015. The queens at the “Good Judy” podcast decided it was time to address some of these critiques, and this week they went straight to the source.
Hosts Brigitte Bidet and Ella/Saurus/Rex spoke to Fergerson on the podcast and covered a range of criticisms that have been launched at her and the organization. Fergerson didn’t hold back in the interview, saying that although she will not engage in Facebook drama, her email inbox is always open.
When asked about larger corporations at Pride, she clarified: “A little over half of our budget comes from corporate sponsorship. We also turn down a lot of corporate money.”
In examining The 2017 LGBT Institute Southern Survey by the Center for Civic and Human Rights, The South has more LGBTQAI+ folks within their region than any other region in the United States. Despite this, Southern queers are the most attacked, receive the least amount of funding for research and advocacy, and are not having our stories told in broader liberation movements within the region.
Using viral fundraising and their community platforms locally, Taylor Alxndr, Jesse Pratt López , and Cortez Wright through a moderated panel with The Intersection, talk about what it looks like to begin to see long-term partners engaged in the liberation of their work for trans folks in Atlanta.
In Episode One of the "Southern Black Trans Lives Matter" video series, The Intersection collaborative member, Jeffrey Martín has a conversation with these three ATL activists about the importance of Black Trans partnership in the South and how the Black Cis-Het communities can be an ally to trans people in the South.
Check out Southern Fried Queer Pride’s fundraiser to create a local Black and Queer-led community space.
The Intersection (@intersectionatl) is a collective committed to bridging the gap between the Black queer, trans, and cis-het communities. It is imperative to center Black voices inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ experience; elevating the spectrum of Black voices and ensuring no one gets left behind. Through interactive and intentional programming, The Intersection facilitates essential conversations equipping the Black community with the tools needed to demand liberation and freedom for ALL.
About Jeffrey Martín
Jeffrey Martín (mar-TEEN), @jeffreydmartin_ (IG and Twitter) AKA @queerblackboy on IG, is a writer, producer, artist, and entrepreneur from Zone 6/ East Lake/ East Atlanta, GA. Noted in Forbes 30 Under 30, Wharton 40 Under 40, and the Echoing Green Social Impact Report for his work founding and scaling honorCode and winning the $1M Forbes Change the World Entrepreneurship Competition; Martín is currently a Vice President at BlackRock, Inc and a contributor for 032c Workshop in Berlin, Germany. Martín is a board member of Southern Fried Queer Pride (SFQP) here in Atlanta, GA. SFQP envisions a world where Black and QTPOC artists and leaders are employed and owners in the regional South.
About Toni Williams
Toni is a creative consultant that has a passion for bringing people together via visual arts, music, placemaking and placekeeping. As the founder of Cultivating Cultures, LLC. and TASTE, she has been able to serve as a consultant for various organizations and projects in the city of Atlanta, including Underground Atlanta, the Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, Fulton County Arts & Culture Dept., the A3C Festival and Conference, and many more. Her level of expertise includes project management, strategic planning, programming, and real estate. Furthermore, she is confident in her ability to utilize systematic thinking as fuel for her dynamic problem-solving and execution strategies. Toni holds a MPH in Informatics from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
About Victor Jackson
Born in Atlanta and raised in College Park, GA, Victor has worked with Kandi Burruss, Lil’ Wayne, Iggy Azalea, August Alsina, and Jennifer Hudson as a choreographer and creative director. He has appeared on "The Real Housewives of Atlanta", "Braxton Family Values", and in guest starring roles on BET’s "The Game" and “Step Up: Highwater” on YouTubeRed. Victor is also and R&B artist and his latest single, “Venom” is available now on all digital platforms
WUSSY is proud to present poetry by Ken Anderson. If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.
THE QUIET, SENSITIVE TYPE
You said you were looking for the quiet, sensitive type, then squandered months on me, who on a cup of joe could rap for days and who, cut off, could curse you with the savagery of love.
I, too, pursue him through the noisy crowd in a smoky bar— the ambiguous ideal, the pose.
Night after night, he mills among the men, his pensive silence matched only by the beauty of his face, the promise of his lips, the nimbus of his hair. And he carries his polished image like a bust.
In bed, he indulges his simple desires, yet proves receptive to a new suggestion, yielding without a word, watching without a smile, coming with a very candid groan.
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FRUIT
We eat to live and live to eat or both. A necessary luxury avenges the bland— to peel a big banana slowly, nibble foreskin, swallow whole, to bounce a pair of plump plums on your chin or tongue a glistening cherry till it begs. A just “dessert” requires some kumquat smeared on your lips.
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Ken Anderson’s novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. An operatic version premiered June 16, 2009, at the First Existentialist Congregation in Atlanta. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award.
Athletic ability meets comfortability in the newest queer-owned activewear brand, Amador Yoga. Founded by queer yoga and meditation teacher, Malik Khalid, this gender-neutral athleisure brand puts the “W” back in “wellness.” Despite the noticeable lack of diversity within the wellness space, Amador began with the denouncement of the perfect-bodies-only mentality that is so prevalent amongst traditional yogis. The company continues to win with its inclusive messaging, comfortable clothing, and overall positivity within the yoga-and-wellness sphere!
“[When I started teaching] there was a huge issue with black folks in the yoga and wellness space, especially with the images that we were seeing from the largest athleisure companies like Lululemon, Alo Yoga, or Manduka. I constantly thought to myself, “Why aren’t there more Black and Brown faces in these ads, or even in the practice? So, I became a yoga teacher because I wanted to bridge the gap when it came to Black male representation in yoga,” says Khalid.
And bridge the gap, he has!
Shedding the expectations of beauty and perfection, Amador inspires queer people of any shape, size, or color to feel and look their best. Inspired by his love affair with yoga and meditation, Amador translates to “lover,” representing Khalid’s love for the rich power of yoga and its Hindu origins.
“Our motto is ‘push past perfection,’ so this brand has been birthed from me as a queer yoga teacher ridding myself of the idea that I have to be perfect. I can still show up for myself and work on my internal connection with myself, and external connections with other people, simultaneously.”
Inspiring patrons to strive for greatness and revel in a sense of community, Amador places positive, inclusive images of people of color in the yoga space. Khalid understands that seeing is believing, which is why positioning underrepresented groups at the forefront of his brand was at the top of his list when drawing up marketing materials. The images speak for themselves!
Seeing a Black-owned athleisure brand compete with the top companies in a typically white-dominated field allows for more affordable alternatives and inspires people of all shades to engage in the practice. The inaugural collection includes t-shirts and sweatsuits, made from ring-spun cotton and fleece at a value that is twenty to forty percent less than major active and leisure brands in the marketplace. That’s microeconomics fancy-talk for: you get more bang for your buck! Read below to find out more about Amador Yoga’s origins and consider checking out their website today!
How did Amador come to be?
Amador was born in 2015 when I was overweight and dealing with hypertension. I was able to use yoga as a way to lose 50 pounds and to rid myself of these ailments. Now, Amador is launching its third collection-- the biggest collection to date!
In what ways do you want Amador to inspire people?
I want people to know that this brand is about internal connection with yourself. That’s why the mantra, “push past perfection” is always on the top of my mind whenever I’m having conversations about yoga and what Amador means to me. We aren’t able to see ourselves represented in the bigger brands so it’s important for me to push for that inclusion.
What can customers expect from the upcoming collection?
We’re working on our largest collection-- meaning that there are fifteen new designs coming from this launch! The theme of the collection is “matador,” so you’ll get to see the attitude and flare that’s indicative of a Spanish bullfight. This, coupled with my desire to tackle the fear that typically comes with living authentically, will make for a strong message about loving the skin, and the body, you’re in.
What’s the biggest takeaway you have for people of color interested in yoga and your brand?
I just want people to know that we are here. We are black-owned, queer-owned, and all of the clothes are made right here in Atlanta. We are a sustainable brand that is here to shake the table and offer better alternatives in the world of fitness.
For more information on Amador Yoga, visit www.amador-yoga.com or send an email to info@amador-yoga.com!
WUSSY is proud to present poetry by Decatur writer, Alan Sugar. If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.
Gay Pole Dancer -- the ascent
Without restraint, both unadorned and bare, I shed convention, posing unconcealed. Exposed and so disclosed, I am revealed. Unclothed, I grow much closer to the air.
I am released, unburdened by despair. I am a breeze that brushes through the field. The seed without its shell has much to yield. The naked stone needs nothing more to wear.
I dare and I defy. I climb and spin. I am the wings that rise above a tree. Some covet me, but none can touch my skin. Once bound for hell, it’s heaven that I see.
There is no ground. There is no gravity. The hands of God, those sure hands, carry me.
Alan Sugar shares his poetry in Decatur, Georgia where he currently resides. He is also a puppeteer, and he has worked as a special education teacher in the public schools of Atlanta. Currently, Alan works as a writing tutor at Georgia State University, Perimeter College (Clarkston Campus). His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Jewish Literary Journal, The Lyric, The Ekphrastic Review, The Awakenings Review, and RFD.
