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DO YOU HAVE A GOOD TRUE STORY ABOUT SEX WITH A MILITARY "BAD BOY"? OR: ARE YOU YOURSELF A MILITARY "BAD BOY" WITH AN ORIGINAL STORY TO TELL? IF SO, CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO BARRACKS BAD BOYS: AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS OF SEX IN THE ARMED FORCES, VOL. II __________________
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"DIRK YATES MEETS EARLY ANDY WARHOL"?!
AVAILABLE NOW:
A VIDEO STARRING THREE MEN NO LONGER ON ACTIVE DUTY
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→last postcard: november 2001
POSTCARD FROM ZEELAND, JANUARY 2002
"I'D
LIKE TO DROP MY TROUSERS TO THE QUEEN/ EVERY SENSIBLE CHILD WILL
KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS..." (Morrissey) I haven't read it. Not out of any embarrassment over certain unsanitized details of my lewd vagrancy. (On the contrary; my life is an open book ... literally.) I just selfishly prefer my limited-edition-of-one set of Mark's personal letters to me v. the konsumprodukt available in the US from amazon.com. But I do like looking at THE QUEEN IS DEAD. For me it has something of the exotic gloss of a record album in the import bin: I'm also impressed with (and grateful for) the acuity of our reviewers' critical comments. Honestly, I never really expected to see THE QUEEN IS DEAD published at all -- much less widely reviewed, slated for translation into Portuguese, and at Christmas listed by THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY as one of their
Especially interesting (and, for me as a first-time author in the UK, instructive) have been the assessments of British journalists published in mainstream newspapers. Thank you. And, "right on" : E-MAIL SHOULD BE RESTRICTED BY LAW NOT TO EXCEED THE WORD LENGTH OF TELEGRAMS IMHO. STOP.
'I'M DISPUTING THE BILL/ I WILL SLEEP IN MY CLOTHES..." But you know, I wasn't always a writer whose slim claim to global sub-cult fame rests on the odd offhand mention of his name in The Manila Times; on page 197 of a novel by James McCourt; in a newsgroup list of "all-time favorite characters in Momus songs" (#10, "Steven Zeeland," #9, a monkey that "drinks heavily/ and plays with itself from dusk to dawn/ as wicked as the day is long"); . . . I wasn't always a marginal author. I have had other brushes with fame.
I was once a marginal musician. A decade before I had my first book published I spent a year holed up in the staunchly religious-conservative hometown of Gerald R. Ford and AMWAY -- my hometown -- singing and playing dirge in the Midwest's preeminent proto-industrial noise band. The only bands within a thousand or so mile radius we owed any debt to musically were Pere Ubu and Devo. We were as quirky; blessed with a not unrelated rustbelt-specific sense of humor; and at least as alienated. But they were conventional rock bands with guitar, bass and drums. We were 3 guys + 3 synthesizers -- droning on about youth taking poison to escape a poisoned world . . . To an audience not quite prepared for us. A "SYNTHESIZED SOUND SO EXPERIMENTAL THAT MANY PEOPLE FIND IT DIFFICULT TO CALL MUCH OF IT 'MUSIC'" declared our hometown daily, the GRAND RAPIDS PRESS. "THE SOUND, WHILE ORIGINAL, LACKS DEPTH AS THOUGH IT WERE STANDING STILL. . . . MAYBE I'M WAY OUT IN LEFT FIELD ON THIS ONE, MAYBE YOUR INTENTION FROM THE START WAS THE STATIC APPROACH. HELL, WHAT DO I KNOW," shrugged the punk zine TOUCH AND GO in a review of our only vinyl release, a single pressed in mono. But a fledgling zine/record label based in Olympia, WA accepted one of our songs for inclusion on a cassette compilation of American underground bands. When the compilation arrived we were surprised to discover that actually only half of our song had been included -- midway through the track abruptly faded out! I winced; the other guys barked their indignation. A minute later we were on the floor laughing. . . . By that point we were almost qualifed to make a career out of confusing people. A show we did in Detroit went over well. Our next gig was supposed to be in Chicago -- as the warm-up act for JAPAN. But just when all our hard work showed some sign of paying off, I took off to chase a soldier. A week after the compilation came out I was in Germany. And so I missed out on the brief flurry of attention accorded my band-mates in the wake of our first and last national exposure: our song -- the "edited version" -- on SUB POP 7. Six years later I was still living in Frankfurt and had shifted my focus to writing books. Sub Pop had moved its base of operations from Olympia to Seattle. They still championed music made by disaffected youth from backwater America. One track on the 1988 compilation was by an act from Aberdeen, WA (a Pacific Northwest town as broken-spirited as the one I live in today). The catalog number of Nirvana's first single: SUB POP 23. Sub Pop became famous, made Kurt Cobain famous, made Seattle world famous for grunge, and godfathered the music industry category "alternative."
There is a "History" page at subpop.com as well as a discography. But you won't find the name of my first band there. There are cover art scans of their first two compilations, but no track lists. I'm not complaining. But I have taken stock of the pre-history Sub Pop relics in my collection: subpop 5 cass / subpop 6 zine / subpop 7 cass; and a 20-year-old envelope from Olympia, WA inscribed "THANX FOR YOUR CASSETTE --WE'LL PROBABLY RELEASE 'GARY, IN'."
After I find the right night to put everything else aside and give the tapes a proper final listen, I am going to auction these collectibles. Why? Because authoring alternative books costs money. "AND THEN I SHOT MYSELF . . . " Andrew DeSilva, as I knew him, was a rival, not a friend. Not hardly. I paid as little attention to him as possible. But the more I ignored him the closer he got. After Andrew made the FBI's "most wanted" list, I accepted an invitation from the literary editor of Seattle's alternative weekly THE STRANGER to write an essay on the overlap between Andrew's social world and mine. After Versace's murder I turned down invitations from tabloids and tabloid TV. Instead, I shared what material I had to offer with TIME, the WASHINGTON POST, a writer for VANITY FAIR. . . . When the results appeared in print I winced but could not laugh. Pretty much the only words attributed to me by respected US journalists were the isolated tidbits in my story most milkable for shock value. So I ended up getting a taste of "gutter press" exploitation, without the remuneration. But of course, even in conjunction with an erroneous definition of "glory hole," it was valuable national exposure, right? Buchman and I did accept a four figure sum from a photo agency for usage of a snapshot taken of him with Cunanan by the "gay spree killer"'s first victim -- the very first picture taken on the Polaroid Captiva "party camera" Cunanan had presented Buchman. I'd let THE STRANGER use the image as an exclusive, and only belatedly thought to exploit it for cash. "You could have gotten twice as much had you called me a week ago!" bellowed the photo agency head. (Four and a half years later, I'm still waiting for a check from the agency's Paris bureau.)
Buchman heeded my admonition and applied most of the ill-gotten gain toward his college tuition that semester, and had just enough left over to pay for a week in Rome. For a long time I planned on giving the Cunanan camera to John Waters for his serial killer memorabilia collection. I tried writing him once but the package was returned.
Now, next on my list of memorabilia for sale is that camera; a reproduction of the photo (Buchman is keeping the original); and maybe an audio CD-R disc containing two phone messages I didn't realize I had until one day last year when I popped in an old microcassette to be sure there was nothing on it I couldn't tape over and was startled to hear Andrew's voice inviting Buchman to dinner. "And don't worry, I know you haven't got a lot of money right now--" "THESE ARE THE RICHES OF THE POOR..."
Probably it's a good thing I've never aspired to lead "a glittering lifestyle," and that I actually prefer residing in downscale Bremerton to the uptown district in Seattle from which my last words in THE QUEEN IS DEAD were dispatched.
Three years ago this month I had $4,000 to my name and no job. I wrote a check to "alternative" recording artist MOMUS for a thousand dollars -- as a patron for his "Stars Forever" album. I didn't just do it for the publicity. His label was facing bankrupcy, I'm a big fan of his music, and the person suing him was the artist who recorded the first album my mom used to play on our living room console stereo.
This year I could use a little patronage myself. Buchman has already offered his help; he's given me permission to auction off one pair each of his USMC "tighty-whities" (briefs) and olive drab green socks, both stencilled with his name. They're genuine. But I fear I've diminished their potential four figure market value. They're clean. --Steve
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