Our long awaited Big Day in NYC finally fell on Saturday. After the crazy buildup, it all came and went in sort of a wild, overhwelming blur. The bits and pieces I do remember, however, are all quite happy and even monumental.
Just the fact that after months of anticipation it finally actually happened and that we were all alive afterward was a huge relief in itself. Jonathan and I had just flown from different parts of the world to NY for this long anticipated Heartworm event. And by that point it was one of those things that had been talked and thought about so much that we really just wanted to do it already now — if for no other reason than that we might finally change the topic of conversation from how fucking awesome it was GOING to be to how awesome it actually WAS.
I woke up anxious and tired that afternoon, not unusual given my neurotic nature (thanks Mom!). I ran straight over to our informal NY headquarters at Billy’s Antiques and Props to pick up the suitcase of books I had stashed there a couple days earlier. Having been working pretty much non-stop since arriving in NY, I suddenly realized I was on the verge of some sort of total mental collapse. Whatever. The show must go on. Whether it would all lead to tears or sleepy euphoria or a brand new suicide attempt I wasn’t yet sure.
After realizing that I am NOT superwoman and that I could NOT haul that heavy suitcase of books for twenty plus blocks by foot, I eventually swallowed my pride and flagged down a cab. I made good time over to Santo’s Party House in Chinatown.
When I saw Wes and Max from Heartworm, my anxiety subsided a bit and my frantic orbit finally began to slow. They had already been there for a while, together with Boyd Rice and Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Hospital Productions) and were setting up a merch booth of Heartworm releases.
Sound check wasn’t for another couple hours still and none of the readers had wandered in yet either. As usual I was starving, so I did a triple assault on the vending machine. Why? Simple: because one bag of Combos is too many and a thousand is never enough. Duh.
Max and Dominick ran off abruptly to find a light bulb on Canal St (it’s more difficult than it sounds) while Jonathan mysteriously blasted through the door in his trademark voodoo beads and black fedora hat merely seconds after I had texted him “pizza’s here”. Hmm…
Max and Dom came back frazzled from battling the weekend Canal Street throngs with a thoughtful surprise donut for me. It was not a jelly donut, which I am known for inhaling in large quantities, but a fanciful Starbucks donut. I ate half of it and offered the rest to Pierre-Marc (Akitsa) who was sitting next to me on the stoop outside of Santo’s. He looked at me for a beat, but then declined in a French-Canadian accent.
“I do not eat happy foods.”
Apparently that was hilarious because everyone was laughing. Not much I could say to that one so I continued listening to Jonathan fine tune, edit and practice his reading material.
Finally Howie Pyro showed up, looking frazzled and fresh at the same time. Fresh from the gym. Frazzled from being Howie Pyro. Sound check began. I sat on the floor behind the DJ booth with Max, eating chicken skewers in the dark and listening to Genesis P-Orridge crack strange deadpan jokes about ghosts over the microphone.
When Prurient and Boyd Rice’s NON did their sound check rehersals I wandered outside again. Mostly because the whole club started shaking and pulsing with the ensuing distorted wall of sound and I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed again.
People were already lining up outside the ticket booth as I got caught in a rather awkward conversation with a neo-nazi wearing a Death in June shirt about White Castle and diarrhea. As this went on, my attention wandered elsewhere to Jonathan who was being asked by one of the club bouncers to please move his motorcycle, which was practically blocking the front door of the club. This request seemed to confuse him a little since — beside the fact that he lives in Rio de Janeiro, where there seem to be no rules, or bouncers — he was still sitting there buried in his Blackberry, slowly perfecting his story on said Blackberry, which naturally he would soon read from onstage before a packed house of drunken Neo-nazi wierdos. Wheeeeeee.
Finally after much explaining, sign-language, coddling and translating by me, he stood up and reluctantly pulled his dirty black eyesore across the street while a bum wearing a viking helmet holding a forty raised his fists and yelled “OUTLAWWWWWWWW!!!!!”
If he only knew. I had a brief vision of a story I’d heard from Gibby Haynes in which Jonathan pulled two pistols on a bum with a Swiss-Army knife, looked at the bum and said “You brought a fucking knife to a gun fight, motherfucker.” Classssic.
To be continued.
Actually, I think I was with Shawn from White Zombie, not Gibby, when that incident happened. And it wasn’t a Swiss Army knife, it was a big ass hunting knife. Either way, I guess it was kinda funny, looking back now from Sober-ville.
Dude we were sitting at Pinkberry when Gibby told me that story. I mean we were sitting somewhere not so faggy.
Well I’ll be dipped in shit! Guess it was Gibby.
teehee.