TropicAna

I had typed this whole blog on Ana Mendieta, and a book for $20 on sale at the Whitney and how I needed to go and check out the Kara Walker exhibit and pick up the book at the same time and when I went to post it, it was rejected and than the screen was blank. I guess Ana didnt like what I had to say. Sorry Ana. There are artists in our lifetimes that touch us, make us feel alive and never alone. Their work speaks to us and to the temporality associated with the lives we are currently living in ways that extend beyond the academic discourse that permeates the walls of institutions of higher learning and even higher spending-- and you thought the Yankees had a high payroll LOL.. more on that later. Such was the case with Ana Mendieta, her work touched and continues to touch me. I find a kinship in her deterriotorialization, her distinctly Cuban condition of temporal homeland mixed in with the stability of a place you would love to to reject but that is also very much a part of you. I never immigrated to the United States. For better or worse, I was born here and studied here. My travels seem to take me to places I enjoy visiting but can't see myself living in. How does one make home out of strangeness? How does art reflect the very basic need for belonging when one is never going to belong? were Ana have created home-- permanent home, not the transient/temporal one she seeked to carve out of her rock, earth patch or running river-- her work would have changed, her meaning lost. TropicAna was the name she left on her answering machine as she danced around before going out to job around Washington Square Park. The offices I worked in as a graduate assistant faced the building she lived in. I wish I had something mor einteresting to say, I feel like ass- head and chest congestion...more tomorrow

Poppin' My Cherry

or something like that...i was gonna call this blog California Dreamin' (hey, who doesn't love the Mamas and the Papas even if Mama Cass died while eating a ham sandwich, I guess it could've been the coke (the white horse, cocaine) but I digress-- and YES, I KNOW THAT'S JUST A RUMOR but it makes for good copy. I am a PhD. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU and I work as a bouncer at gay bar downtown, I used to work for a lesbian bar and now I am temping...I like to keep things interesting. I'm a spoken word artist, and a lover of ladies as well as a bon-vivant ;) I saw an old lady once with her underwaera down to her ankles lying sideways in the handicapped bathroom at the lesbian spot I used to work at. I helped her up and fixed her wire-rim glasses- Lennon would have been so proud to see his influence extended to drunken lesbianas in downtown NYC- IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE....anywho, back to my story. She kept asking me to put her back in her bed, that she was comfortable sleeping. "what are you doing in my room? Who let you in?" huh? and then she started getting angry and slightly belligerent in her drunken stupor. She turned and asked my manager-" who is this man?" "why is he here helping me?" I realized that she was talking about me. That I was THAT man and that once again I was being shunned by someone in the lesbian community. That the only butches they wanted to see and accept were the ones on the L Word that either wore make-up or were delivering UPS packages with their futchy ponytails. That no matter how well I had taken care of this older Latina womyn who looked like she could have been my aunt, she only saw the masculinity that womyn shunned in the '70's. I did not fit the profile for the '70s man-hating lesbian. I cut my hair short, and wore men's underwear, and shaved my legs, and had nicer eyebrows than most femme's...but I don't hate men, and the last tree I hugged was rolled nicely into a phatty. So, put down your hairy-arm pitted fists my '70s predecessors and hug me, but not too close unless the deoderant includes some anti-perspirant. I am just trying to earn a living by checking ID's and if I have to help some old senora up from the bathroom floor when she's had one too many, than so be it, but if you are going to sit there with a look of distaste and give me 'tude, than I will do what I did to her- Hail you a cab, shove yor stumbling ass in a cab and wish you the best of luck explaining to the cabby where I live! At least I put you in a cab, who says chivalry is dead?!