Piss-Bombed

DM Moore hosted another fine Beautiful & Damned evening of strong open stagers, including the always commanding Philip Cairns, and dynamic features. Her great trivia questions kept the night moving and an unexpected experimental guitar solo, by Carolina Brown, sparked the open stage into a new direction.

First feature Gerald Hannon read sections of his memoir. I particularly related to his late 50‘s small-town life where and the slur ‘fruit’ but he didn’t really know what it meant. He escaped from that life into a city of 1000’s where he hoped to find one other male who felt like he did. I loved his story of college mates who piss-bombed queers in cars only to meet one of them years later as a hungry client when he (Gerald) was a sex-trade worker. I’m also happy to have him recording this gay history too much of which gets lost.

Second feature was Greg “Ritallin” Frankson – he dipped into his own slam history to present the first piece he slammed with and wrapped the set with a recent piece. His sense of social commentary and political activism is clear from the beginning but the focus has become sharper. Sardonic without being jaded or bitter his set was resonant and compelling – ‘the poor aren’t lazy, they’re exhausted – they’re exhausted because they are starving’ ‘minimum wage doesn’t cover minimum needs’

The final feature was Andraya Smith – fine dances whose Martha Graham training shines through even when coping with an injury. She performed seated on a stationary, red, office chair – even though she never left the chair she flew around the room with an evocative improvised performance. Yet another departure for a reading series – keeping BuDa close to is Cabaret longings.