STOLEN KISSES

03/14/23

I spoke too soon about Daylight Savings. It’s 4:23 and I’ve been up for forty minutes. To those who asked, no I’m not quitting coffee… I’m just trying to quit ordering one each morning via delivery. You gave some great options but what I really want is a compact bean-to-cup machine that doesn’t take up much room. Like the big Miele ones, but smaller.

It was good to hear about your weekends too. And that so many of you can relate to that post from yesterday. Of course you can. I received and read letters of your similar friends and circumstances and I’m so sorry that is something we’ve seen and lived through. Sometimes it’s helpful to simplify things... carrying on is all we can do.

But today is March 14th, 2023. A beautiful day of memorial, not sadness. Three years ago today the great Genesis P-Orridge passed and I want to write about them here, in celebration and still in love.

My introduction to Gen was seeing the Target Video of Throbbing Gristle performing the song “Discipline” in 1981 in San Francisco. I was young and into punk & hardcore and thought this was the most hardcore thing ever. It didn’t seem too different than Minor Threat live at Buff Hall video from 1982. But hardcore’s stripped down immediacy was still based in rock ‘n’ roll while TG were exploring the heavier transgressive themes of sex and war and the mind control behind it all. They were performance artists and they were like no other band. They didn’t fit in and that was something I related to then as I do now. Actual punks. “Move a fin and the world turns” - and it did.

A decent portion of my twenties were spent taking home TG and Psychic TV records from bins. Genesis was a direct link and in an undeniable lineage of forward thinking crucial poets, having befriended William Burroughs in the early 70’s via mail. A magazine named File had an image bank request in the back where people looking for correspondence, or anything really, would submit entries. Burroughs’ had one that just said “William S. Burroughs wants camouflage for 1984.”… Gen responded and it was on.

I do think it’s important to put yourself out there if you’re living on the fringes and at total odds with the rest of the world. And I think connection is pertinent for writers and musicians and even Allen Ginsburg slept with someone just because they had slept with someone who slept with someone who slept with Walt Whitman. You don’t need to go that far but I do understand how that could be of relevance.

I met Gen in 2008 shortly before the Throbbing Gristle reunion shows. They were instantly supportive of me and Heartworm Press. We talked on the phone and they wanted to do a book so I drove from Philly to NYC to have dinner with Gen and Ryan Martin. Two strange related memories to this are..

1. Prior to this meeting I was on the phone with Ryan and Gen called him at the same time. While I was on hold, Ryan was randomly attacked from behind and cut with a knife on the side of his face near his apartment in Brooklyn.

2. We were in the village eating Indian food and my phone rang during it with the news that my father had just had a stroke. I left dinner and drove straight to D.C. to be there.

In 2009 I spent a few weeks in Gen’s basement scanning their poetry for a collection that is only now about to see the light of day after a series of their broken and lost hard drives, Coumplete Poems. These were magical days for me. I’d work, Gen would come down and check-in and fill me in on what was what. There were treasures everywhere as they’d somehow saved so much from their life. When it got dark we would walk to the corner store and then back to the apartment for drinks, standing in the kitchen or lying on the bed. Gen’s partner, Lady Jaye, had passed recently and there was a lot to say.

Over the years we stayed in touch and talked often, playing and collaborating seemingly once a year... The book offer was always open with no deadline and Gen would update it periodically. I would make it a point to visit Gen each time I was back in NY. Especially since 2017 when Gen told us they were sick. Leukemia.

Switching the timeline up now as the memories arrive..

1. In February of 2020, American Nightmare played Brooklyn Steel on my birthday, February 15th. Amy, Rainer and I spent the day visiting Gen at their apartment on the Lower East Side.

2. A few months before that 2020 visit, I interviewed Gen live via satellite two days in a row about their art show at Tom Of Finland and Lethal Amounts galleries. Gen was meant to travel to Los Angeles but was unable to due to their health. During the interview though, they were on and the crowd reveled in their stories, sending love for a recovery.

3. A half year before that, Psychic TV was supposed to play with Cold Cave, also at Brooklyn Steel, but had to pull out of the show the day of due to their health and difficulty breathing. A few days before Gen was still looking forward to it, saying they hoped there would be a quiet room backstage at the venue. I visited Gen in the hospital (horse-pistol as Gen called it) and brought a purple orchid. We talked about the afterlife, John Lennon, Ian Curtis and Brian Jones. When I first walked in to the room there, a man had just walked out after having a faith and last rites conversation. A nurse walked in and asked if they needed anything to which Gen replied, “Ketamine.” Mark Lanegan loved this story so much that he wrote a song about it for his epic album Straight Songs Of Sorrow, called “Ketamine”, and asked me to sing on it.

4. A year before that cancelled Brooklyn show, Gen performed with Cold Cave at the Greenpoint venue Warsaw. I sent a car as they wanted to be there for soundcheck, and we asked if they wanted anything backstage, to which they replied, “a nice cheese sandwich.” We always loved that. They were slightly weak, but mobile, spirited, certainly determined, and enigmatic as always… playing with Rainer backstage, wheeling a small oxygen tank with her and using it periodically, not frequent though.

5. In 2017, Gen and I perfomed a collaboration record we made called Rebellion Is Over at the Dais Records ten year anniversary show in Los Angeles. We had fairly loose ideas of what we were going to perform. We spent the night upstairs talking and waiting, sipping on vodkas and soda water with a splash of cranberry. Near set time, we stood at the bottom of the steps that led to the stage. One of the singers from another band performing was there too, doing stretches and push ups. Gen and I looked at each other and laughed. A moment later they turned to me and said, “Nervous?” I said, “Maybe.” Gen said, “Don’t be, we do this all the time.” Which I took as insurance in constitution… that even if you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do once you’re up there, just making it to the strange place of walking on to a stage without a set agenda offers credence enough to go find out.

But it was now 2020 and we were in the apartment with Gen who was in good spirits but attached to oxygen the entire time… about to go through five more days of chemo. We sat on the floor while Gen showed us what they had been working on, rolling the wheeled tank behind from the kitchen to the desk and around the living room. I loved watching Rainer explore Gen’s apartment, a sanctuary of keepsakes and little portals to other worlds, all of which they’d been. Gen had been sending me chapters from the autobiography over the year and was excited how it was coming along. We talked poetry, looked at photos, and listened to our song “Comprehension” and it sounded like a song I had nothing to do with, even though I’d made the music and cut and pasted Gen’s vocals over it. The visit lasted a couple of hours and we said our goodbyes with hugs and kisses. Gen always kissed Amy on the lips and I was always ok with that. We walked outside, passing the stone synagogue. Amy had a saddened look on her face. She knew that it was the last time we’d see our friend. I didn’t want to believe that.

After that visit we exchanged a few emails and texts. They needed a poem they couldn’t find for part of the autobiography, Nonbinary, and knew that I had it. Only problem was, I was on tour on the East Coast and the poem was on a hard drive at home in Los Angeles. There was clear urgency in the request so I decided that instead of killing some days off on the road driving to the next town, that I’d fly home to see my family, find the poem, and fly in to Cleveland to rejoin the tour. The tricky part was the poems didn’t have titles and Gen was trying to locate them by a couple lines. It was from 1969 and Gen had won an award for it from Philip Larkin. I knew the exact poem and was able to send the scan to her.

March 14th 2020. American Nightmare had almost completed a tour as the world came crashing down. We were meant to play the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles just down the street from our house as the last show of the tour but alas, was canceled. It was a day spent confused and speculating on the future. I then read a message that Genesis had passed. My heart sank. Amy had been right. I stepped outside of our home and cried in the garden. Our statue of Mary... the lion’s mouth fountain running…Christmas lights flickering.

It’s so hard to lose when you only have a few.

And now it’s been three years. And 23 was their magic number. I loved Gen and their commitment to love… and that the search was never over… living several lives all to their fullest. And it’s beautiful when people spend their short time here breaking new ground… and it’s beautiful when people who’ve inspired you let you in… I’m so thankful for that.

So there will always be more… it’s 6:28 now. I’m going to try to sleep a little more. For those saints who subscribed as a Founding Member, you’ll be receiving a limited transcript chapbook of my gallery talk with Genesis in the mail in the future. I’ll reach out to you when they’re ready.

Here is a poem I wrote for Gen in Plague Poems.