Hi! I’m alive! I’m still doing this thing, I guess!

I had to take a couple of weeks off because my already low productivity has become exponentially more balls lately, because everything, and I couldn’t afford to spend a day on this newsletter (and it does take me a full damned day, sadly) when I needed that time to laboriously produce somewhere between 150 and 300 words of stuff for the ridiculous book proposal I still haven’t mentioned to my agent. But I finished my first sample essay for it earlier this week, so I thought I’d take a break and try to do this before diving into the next one. 

I sent the essay to my mom, by the way, and received this incredible response:

“When you first said you were going to write ‘stories about things you shouldn’t fuck’ I wasn’t sure what it was going to look like. I knew it would be good because your stuff is (even though you say I have to say that) but this is so much more than I wondered it would be.”

Which made me think about the time in the third grade when we had to do personal research projects on an invention and I decided, on a whim, that I wanted to do one on the toilet. I picked it because it was funny. I dug my heels in because multiple teachers strongly suggested that I should pick another topic and that the topic was somehow beneath me as The Smart Girl. My parents, being them, were like “Off to the library we go! You’re gonna learn about toilets now, kid.” And so I got very into toilets and plumbing for a brief but magical time. I ended up producing an extremely earnest and impassioned take on how toilets had changed our lives and got praise for both my work and my ability to challenge expectations. 

I’ve written for a lot of reasons and a lot of intended audiences in my life. And I’ve spent a lot of time — and a lot of pain — trying to be a voice that I imagined autistic people needed. Maybe that was necessary. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I succeeded. Maybe I didn’t. Whatever the case, though, I think it’s important for both the quality of my work and my health that I try something different. And I think I want to try to be the writer that version of me was trying to be, and the one she deserved. I’m writing for toilet girl now. 

Now here’s some cool shit that’s been on my mind and in my heart recently:

Match of the Week: Akito vs Asuka, IPPON Fluorescent Light Tube Death Match, DDT Wrestle Peter Pan 2019, July 15, 2019

I think about this match pretty regularly because it’s a goddamned masterwork, but I’m think about it today because Asuka, aka Veny, is making her American promotion debut as part of AEW’s forthcoming Women's World Championship eliminator tournament and, in addition to being a goddamned masterwork, it’s a delightful and accessible introduction to her work. 

The premise is simple but clever. The person who breaks the single light tube loses the match. The execution is brilliant. The light tube gets its own entrance. The future ace of DDT’s variety squad, Keigo Nakamura, gets to show off his physical comedy chops in the demonstration before the match. Akito and Asuka devise all sorts of dastardly ways to try to throw each other into the path of singular light tube, and evade it in increasingly high pressure and ingenious ways. It’s the perfect marriage of the mental and physical creativity that good professional wrestling can produce. And Asuka’s talent and charisma shine as they always do. 

I started following Asuka when she was 19. (You want to know how highly I think of her? I first saw her in an angle with Daisuke Sasaki where the punchline was that she was way too good for him, and I was just like… yeah. Checks out, queen.) She was 20 when this match was filmed. It’s been both thrilling and maybe a little alarming, in a good way, to see how much she’s grown in those few years and what kind of career could be ahead of her. I’m so excited to see a talent I care so much about be given an opportunity like this. I trust her to run with it.

Song of the Week: “Misogyny” - rusty

In my recently completed corpse-fucking sample essay, I bring up my theory that a lack of mainstream domestic attention created a weird bubble in which pre-extremely online Canadian artists could do some really weird and cool shit without anyone who might care to Think About The Children or otherwise clutch some pearls noticing. One of my favourite examples of this bittersweet phenomenon was the video for the third single from rusty’s 1995 debut album, Fluke. 

I was already a devoted rusty fan by the time “Misogyny” went into rotation on MuchMusic. I’d seen them in concert twice and got the t-shirt. Their lyrics were scribbled over multiple pieces of my stationary. But my love for that video quickly eclipsed my love for the band. Because it was gay.

How gay? Well, it was directed by gay porn art film bad boy Bruce LaBruce. And it featured extensive footage from his most recent gay porn art film, Hustler White. The clips weren’t explicit, but they were very clearly gay. And while it escaped the notice of anyone who might complain or get it yanked off the air, queer Gen X kids and elder millennials and their weird allies sure picked up on it. And we loved it. 

I started reading Bruce LaBruce’s column in the back of Exclaim magazine when I noticed that he was writing about the production of the rusty video. I kept reading it because he was a fantastically engaging writer and I wanted to devour everything he had to say about anything. I started following his Eye column soon after. I bought his book, The Reluctant Pornographer, when it came out. 

(I had to wait until I was of age to watch his films, because they’re hardcore porn and mom said I had to wait until I was old enough to rent them myself. Occasionally I stumble upon memories that I think might help to explain my whole deal to other people. “I begged my mom to rent art house gay porn for me for four straight years when I was a teenager” is one of those things.)

Over a quarter of a century later, LaBruce remains one of my favourite artists. (I caught his latest feature, Saint-Narcisse, at a virtual festival last year and it’s wonderful. In lieu of a synopsis, I’ll simply tell you that its working title was Twincest.) He’s profane and provocative, but also incredibly smart, thoughtful, and empathetic. His films and his writing make me laugh, think, and rethink. There are few artists who have been more influential on my aesthetics and my politics over the course of my life. He’s helped to shape how I approach everything from representation to poverty to the original Lost In Space. And, uh, how I look at Wonder Bread bags. He’s also the reason I’ve been calling Dostoevsky “Dusty” for over twenty years.

I love “Misogyny” for introducing him to me. And also because the song is a fucking banger. That whole album has held up really well. 

Anyway, I have “Misogyny” on my mind because this beautiful shirt from BLaB’s new collection arrived today and it is perfect.