Things change 🙂 the morning starts out a little overcast, the sidewalks are clear then an hour later one is caught in a winter wonderland of slush. Hot Damn!’s workshop facilitator and feature gets bogged down by the slush of chronic illness & things change. I end up facilitating the workshop: Vulnerability/Strength. It was productive enough, for me, at any rate. Too bad I wasn’t prepared to do more than to listen & write a little.
Charlie Petch was scrambling for a new feature while getting set for an interview before the show itself. Over supper I went though my note books to see if I had suitable pieces besides the two I had uploaded to my Kindle. It had a few things to present. I forgot what I had jotted down to work on later – some going back a few years.
Vanessa McGowan stepped up to feature, so all I had to worry about was being all judgemental for the slam. Even with slushy snow falling there was a decent house for the show at 8. Lots of great open stagers and some dynamic slammers made for a rewarding & cozy night. Plus good conversation with fellow judge Teddy Syrette.
The participants were the epitome of diversity with indigenous, trans, queers across the gender spectrum, coming from as far away as Ecuador (Hola) to share honest, emotionally raw and sometimes very funny material. This is the real power of Hot Damn!’s vision to create a safe space for queers to perform, mostly without judgement. I say mostly because part of a slam is being judged 🙂
Random lines from the open-stagers & slammers: ‘don’t tell your mother’ ‘children need parents who want to be parents’ ‘I practice reparation by topping settlers’ ‘he was masc looking but not masc looking for masc’ ‘my spirit name is isolate for safety’ ‘I want you all over mt skin’ ‘seeking wisdom in dreams’ ‘I am six minutes behind the world’ ‘nothing scares me – not even clowns’ ‘sometimes bullies look just like body guards’ ‘let me tell you where I left these bones’ ‘the attack from within is worse that the wound from without’ ‘I say to them it’s not your table’ ‘the blood I shed won’t tell me what I missed’
Vanessa’s set was emotionally charged, frank, sometime a little ironic humour slipped in – her social commentary is from within situations not from the p.o.v. of an observer. ‘we met beneath the water line’ ‘I still cannot say your name – my mouth is full of water’ ‘removing the knife of shame from throat so you can remove it from yours’ ‘covering up for poverty is exhausting’ ‘they praise me for being highly functioning’
Winner were declared, prizes were awarded (for those names: Hot Damn!) Next Hot Damn! is in St. Catherines in December. It returns to Buddies in Bad Time January 10, 2019.
On the open stage I read Cold Spot https://wp.me/p1RtxU-3ci & this old piece – if one considers September 2017 old – I dug out.
My Own Devices
when I came out
to my friends
I did it by stages
like – I’m no queer
but if ‘hot movie star’
wanted to have sex with me
I’d be willing to explore
but truth to be told
I jerked off
to a bathing suit picture
of that hot movie star
who
decades later came out
when I came out to my friends
as fully queer
some were
‘You know I’m not that way’
or
some never spoke to me again
or
got drunk with me & explored
When I came out to my mother
she said
‘don’t tell your father’
when I came out to my father
he said
‘don’t tell your mother’
when I came out
no one said
‘how do you feel’
‘what does it mean to you’
no one said
‘congratulations’
or
‘it’s about fucking time’
no one
at any point
engaged me in conversation
no one ever asked
‘are you seeing someone’
no one said
‘I work with a gay guy
maybe you’d like to meet him’
no one said
‘you must feel incredibly alienated
in this small-town hard-drinking
cis-hetero-red-neck culture’
maybe I was too stoic
not wanting to let anyone in
being queer was enough
without presenting
as weepy drama queen
I had to be man enough
masculine enough
to keep up appearances
so no one would suspect
the emotional uncertainty
I was drowning in
I was told
that so & so
who was gay
had hung himself
or
had stepped in front of semi
on a dark highway
told that by friends
who never said
‘I hope you don’t do that’
who never said
‘if you feel like that
talk to us’
when I came out
I was left to my own devices
and survived
and sometimes
I jerk off
to the memory
of that bathing suit picture
of the hot movie star
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy ice-cream in Washington at 2018’s capfireslam.org – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
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