Can ball gags be wholesome? Can an object stuffed into your gaping mouth, eyes watering as you struggle to slurp back a swallow, be family-friendly? Can that same ball gag, yanked into place by a leather harness with straps cutting sharp diagonals across your face, be a suitable accessory for a lovely, casual dinner with … Continue reading
Two deer stare, stunned, their ears perked nervously straight up. Their sweet brown eyes have turned zombie white, caught in a camera flash rather than the headlights of a speeding Ford F-150 barreling down a dirty back road at night. One looks like she’s about to bolt, her body tensed in the tall grasses in … Continue reading
I’ve never been a rabid fan of Elton John. As a child, I wanted to hear Jeremy Irons’s queen Scar sing about revenge more than Elton caterwaul about feeling the lion love tonight. As an adult, I rolled my eyes in exhausted disappointment when I saw outlaw country mystery man Orville Peck collaborating with the … Continue reading
At some point in college—or maybe grad school, I sought out Peter Hujar’s only published photobook Portraits in Life and Death at New York University’s Bobst Library. I wanted to pour over black and white photographs of filth elders like a pensive portrait of Divine, sans wig and forehead-reaching liquid eyeliner, curled up in a … Continue reading
“Florida is beyond the earthly; it’s spiritual,” comedian Tim Dillon reflected in a recent Patreon episode. “You cannot get rid of the idea of Florida.” He’s right. Florida is a place, sure, but even more so, it’s an idea. Many ideas, really: alligators lounging on golf courses; palm trees swaying in the beach breezes; Tennessee … Continue reading
If Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez’s current exhibition Survey at David Peter Francis had a smell, other than that of East Broadway’s markets wafting through the third-floor windows, it would be that sweetly sour stench of unwashed, slept-in sheets and stale dry-mouthed morning breath. A man dozes, his face pushed hard into the white-sheeted bed while his … Continue reading
A monstrous gaudy powder-white Christmas wreath, adorned with silver balls and a gigantic red bow, towers over a full bar. The ginormous wreath is flanked by metallic cut-out stars, floating down from the heavens, caught by a single string pinned to the ceiling. Partially hidden behind the pine needles like an upstaged choir are the … Continue reading
Can you write an essay about porn theaters that doesn’t cite Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue? Similarly, can you look at photographs of queer spaces and not immediately start flipping through Jose Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia to find a relevant quote? These two texts have done a number on criticism and critical … Continue reading
Emily Colucci, Filthy Dreams. That’s how I signed the guestbook for Carrie Schneider’s exhibition I don’t know her at CHART. I don’t usually bother to write in exhibition guestbooks. The only major exception is the book for Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition in which a placard assured us fanatics that he would receive it. … Continue reading
“To be Gorgeous, strictly speaking, is something in itself. To be Gorgeous therefore is admirable, to be Absolutely Gorgeous most desired.” So begins an essay in one of the many zines in the Brooklyn Museum’s Jimmy DeSana: Submission exhibition, which is joined by the museum’s concurrent Thierry Mugler: Couturissime show in advocating for skin-deep/skin-tight beauty. … Continue reading