On things that have happened before right now and things that will happen later
Spring is here, and I personally think that is very cool! My 35th birthday is one month away, and it is officially the start of a full month of me not shutting up about my birthday being a month away.
I have started getting out again--into nature, into books (reading Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond rn and it is great, highly recommended, already pissed off a corporate gay by raving about it), and into the spotlight, honey (I am doing stuff in front of people and just generally existing in public).
Last night I had the really lovely honor of sharing a story for Dusty Shoulder's Campfire Queer Storytime with Erin Markey, Tristan Scott-Behrends, Matthew Bautisa and Áine Rose. It really felt good to do! Especially this close to my birthday (it's in a month).
I wanted to share the story I shared IRL with you, here, URL. And below share some things to check out xx
I’ve been thinking a lot about disappointment, and how often times it’s a really powerful reflective tool, showing us what we’re afraid of, what we don’t want, what isn’t real anymore. It sucks, but then it’s always fine.
I grew up in El Paso, Texas. I remember being fairly happy until I started going to pre-k at the local YWCA not far from my house. I really didn’t like the other kids. I hope they are well now, but from what I can remember there were some real fucking duds.
I didn’t know how to or why I really needed to, but even though they were terrible, I still felt a deep need to “fit in.” Despite teaching everyone how to dance with their hands on their crotch like Michael Jackson, I was just not doing it for them.
I must have been about 4 then. One day everyone started to lose it because an instructor shared news that Barney (of I love you, you love me fame) was going to be at our local chain grocery after “school.”
I didn’t like Barney but I knew he was significant to these people. I had to go. And so I convinced my dad to make a detour on the way home, and I went.
I know that when we got to the store, they had cleared out the shopping carts from one of the shopping cart corrals. And in that corral they placed a chair. And on that chair, in the middle of the corral was a stuffed Barney. Not an oversized stuffed Barney, not a man in a suit, not a real talking dinosaur, just a regular ass normal sized stuffed Barney. I remember distinctly telling my dad that we should go. And we did. And we just kind of didn’t talk about it.
I never thought twice about pretending to like that dinosaur again. And I began to learn that longing for what you don’t want will always lead to disappointment.
One time a lot later I told my Aunt Wiggy that I was a performance artist and she nearly spit out her Route 66 Dr. Pepper. Do you mean ACTING? I did not. I meant performance art. And she laughed. The woman who once legitimately considered collecting Beanie Babies a secure investment in her future laughed at me. And that’s when I learned that sometimes being a disappointment makes you cool.
Last fall I took a road trip to Massachusetts with my boyfriend. On the outskirts of Hudson, we had to pee. The moment we realized this, a Taste of New York on a narrow strip in the middle of the highway appeared, as if by fate. My boyfriend got out to go first while I managed to park on the precarious strip. This thing is literally in the middle of a highway and I cannot express how beautiful and terrible I find the concept. Cars, just whirring by a little strip. Anyway, I parked and I went to the bathroom.
After I had gone, my boyfriend came running up to me, changed somehow. You could see it in his eyes… he had seen something. "Shawn, you have to come inside… Shawn.. Marina Abramovic is inside.” Marina Abramovic? The performance artist? The legendary figure in the art world that I sometimes make memes about? (see above). I jazz walked inside the store nestled in the center of the strip. And there, gazing at frozen meat, was Marina Abramovic, in flowing black garb, ethereal. I tried not to stare, but I did. She eventually walked out anticlimactically. We got brownies and other little snacks. And we went back to the car.
I felt such regret for not speaking to her or asking for a photo. But as I was lamenting my lost opportunity, Marina crossed slowly before our rental car, gaze focused forward, and I knew I had to act. I got out of the car and called her name until she turned around (which was more than...3 times). “Marina, will you take a picture with me?” She stared at me and smiled, the way I imagine she smiles at quartz or the endless abyss. She smiled at me and she laughed. “No.” And she kept walking. I got back into the car, finished my brownie and we drove away.
It wasn’t more than 5 minutes of me driving the speed limit away from the strip that a black, ominously tinted Tesla sped by, leaving just enough visibility for the silhouettes of two figures to make themselves clear. “Shawn, that was her.” And it was her, speeding away. It was Marina Abramovic, eyes full of frozen meat speeding away in a Tesla after rejecting me from a photo that I probably would’ve put on the internet with some stupid caption for low engagement. It all felt right. I ended up photoshopping stock images of her into some of my best photos from the trip and posted them online for moderate to high engagement. And I learned that sometimes disappointment actually makes for the better story.
xx thanks for reading.
SOME STUFF HAPPENING:
+Next week, Wednesday, April 12: I'm joining my dear friends from Panoply Performance Lab for the launch of their new book Embarrassed of the (W)hole from Ugly Duckling Presse. I'll be performing something about gay holes, etc., just like the good old days.
"Embarrassed of the (W)Hole is an operating manual for an opera-of-operations. Oriented around formal and modal resistances to “wholism” as complex foil and the proposition to embarrass, the book includes scores-for-scores, theoretical frames, process notes, and a User Survey meant to be “operated” and “used” (specifically, rigorously) to stage and situate pertinent contexts, conditions, and embodiments of and for projected future operations."
+Check out the last week of performer super nova star Morgan Bassichis's A Crowded Field at Abrons Arts Center through 04/08
+Come hang out with on Tuesday, April 18 to support Queer Art Fest in raising $20k to sustain their really great programming for queer artists. If you're able to make it, you can snag tickets here. Use code MISSLADYSALAD for $20 tickies. If you can't make it, consider supporting their work here.
