No More Street Team?

There's a new post over on Big Island Rachel's Books. I review Monique Truong's "Bitter in the Mouth" and break down the meaning and correct usage of a plot twist.

I haven't been having as many adventures as I usually do these past couple of weeks. My October adventures really wiped me out, and since I started the new job, I haven't gotten any assignments from the Village Voice, which is how I usually go on adventures. I don't know if the Voice has fired me or if they just don't have the funds to send out the Street Team, but I haven't heard from them in over a month, and I'm strangely okay with that. I had a good time with the Voice the last two years and saw parts of the city I'd never think of going on my own. I got to see mermaids, jazz, skateboarders, crazy people, and that guy from Depeche Mode, and I got a lot of street cred by telling people that I worked for the Village Voice. But I won't miss schlepping those heavy bags of swag around Williamsburg in the middle of the night when it's 13 degrees out and sleeting, I can tell you that much.

So, not a lot of adventuring lately, just some quiet, quirky observations about being an employed and fully functioning member of society.

Huh. I got nothing. Go read my book review. I think books are the only interesting thing I'm going to be talking about for a while.

Gay Pride wrap up

Okay, I promise that this is my last post about Sunday's Gay Pride Parade, mostly because I'm leaving on a road trip to New England tomorrow and will have all new things to write about after the big Independence Day weekend. You can read Part I and Part II of Pride Day if you missed them.

Here are a few random bits of fun and sexytime I experienced after the parade ended.

Brian and I would have liked to go home after gold-starring it down Fifth Avenue (players of NC-64 Mario Kart know what I'm talking about), but instead, we had to work the Voice booths at the Pride Festival on Hudson Street until 7 that evening. Just us. Everyone else, including the Teamsters who didn't march in the parade, got to go home.

I went braless for the rest of the day because my boob sweat was out of control and I figured that Pride Day was the one day of the year where I could hang around without a bra and not be the most inappropriately dressed person on the street.

Brian just hung around shirtless all day, which made him a popular little cookie. I mentioned the cop that hit on him, but neglected to tell the world about the young man who actually came into Brian's tent to hug him and tweak his nipples for a while. Brian was too shocked to do or say anything, which I can understand; that's pretty much how I feel when a stranger gets lewd with me on the street or the subway. When the young man finally left, I went to Brian's booth and said, "You know he already signed up for the newsletter at my booth, right? You didn't have to let him touch you. Just say no!"

Straight men. Their mothers don't teach them anything.

My two main regrets of the day: I didn't get the opportunity to visit the tent that was showing 3-D pornography, nor did I get my hands on a dick-shaped thermos.

My two best lesbian moments: the woman wearing an "I [heart] female orgasms" tshirt and the woman wearing an "I [heart] my vagina pin." Bonus on that second one, I said that I loved mine, too, and she gushed, "I love vaginas!" Yes, madam, I'm sure you do.

My best couple moment: at the end of the day, when I was packing up the booth and about to leave, two leather daddies in their 50s (if you don't know what a leather daddy is, DON'T Google it, trust me) asked if they could use my table to spread their map. Not a euphemism.

"Where are you trying to go?" I asked.

"Port Authority?"

"Walk up Hudson"--I waved my hands like an air traffic controller, boobs swinging every whichway--"until you get to 14th Street. Take a right on 14th and go to 8th Avenue, then take the A or the C, that's the blue line, uptown to 42nd Street."

One leather daddy looked at the other and said, "Aren't you gonna right that down?"

"I got it!" the other replied bitchily. "Hudson to 14th, right to 8th Avenue, blue line uptown to 42nd, geez!"

Long term monogamy. Gotta love it. I regret I didn't ask them if they were going to change first or if they planned to ride the bus in their kilts and harnesses.

And finally, my best celebrity moment: meeting Lieutenant Daniel Choi. For those who don't know, Lieutenant Choi is an Iraq War veteran, a West Point graduate, and an Arabic linguist who came out as gay on the Rachel Maddow show about a year ago to protest Don't Ask Don't Tell. He hasn't yet been discharged from the military, despite his public role as a gay rights activist.

When he first came up to my booth, wearing camouflage and a beret, I thought that it was someone dressed in a Lieutenant Choi costume. He picked up one of the cardboard mustaches we give out at events and it suddenly hit me that this dude was actually Lieutenant Choi.

"Oh my gosh, you're Lieutenant Choi!" I squealed.

"No I'm not!" he said, holding the mustache up to his face. "I'm in disguise! Shh! Don't tell!"

I couldn't help myself. I gushed, I'm not ashamed to admit it. "It's such an honor to meet you, you've done so much for the movement, it's so great to see you out here," things to that effect.

He shook my hand. "Thank you, what's your name?"

"Rachel."

He mock-grimaced, "Oh, I don't like people named Rachel, they blow my cover!"

My first thought after the encounter, and I mean this with all due respect for a war veteran and a civil rights activist, but how could anyone NOT know that this guy was gay? And my second thought was, If that's what he's like on Pride Day, when he's in his community and has nothing to fear, how difficult is his day-to-day life? Does he have to act differently, act straight as it were? Does he always feel like he's playing a role, that he can never just be himself? That's got to suck on so many levels. It actually hurts me a little bit when I think about it.

It's a bit of a downer to end the post on that note, I know. But full civil rights are still denied the LGBT community in this country, and that's just plain wrong. It's an election year. Research your representatives and ballot initiatives. Cast your vote for justice and dignity. This has been a public service announcement from BigIslandRachel.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Surreality Star

I'm no square. I'm pretty hip to what the kids like these days, even if my interests do tend to skew toward the more nerdly aspects of popular culture. So it was a humbling, surreal experience to march in the Gay Pride Parade alongside a celebrity I'd never heard of and listen to the frantic screams of her many fans.

The Voice sometimes partners up with other companies and sponsors for big events like parades and ritual bull slaughters. Our partner this time was Bethenny Frankel, who through a failed experiment with gamma radiation morphed into a creature who is both a woman and a brand. As far as I can tell, she uses her powers to sell low-calorie Skinny Girl Margaritas and garner ratings on her many Bravo reality shows, though whether that makes her a hero or a villain is anyone's guess. All I know is that while the Street Team was roasting on 38th Street for three hours, waiting for our turn to enter the parade, SHE was sitting in a nice, air-conditioned restaurant. Out of a mixture of jealousy and overheating, I decided to cultivate a simmering loathing for her. As a reality TV star, I expect she's used to it.

Seriously though, for someone I've never heard of, this chick was really, REALLY popular, to the point that people on the parade sidelines were screaming at me to get out of the way so they could take her picture. They wanted her picture more than they wanted her brand-sponsored free beach balls and frisbees. Even the cops, that's the NYP-freaking-D, were almost inappropriately happy to see her in the parade.

And the weirdness doesn't stop there. Frankel's fans knew stuff about her. Like, intimate stuff that I suppose you have to broadcast when you're a hybrid human-commercial property, but still: they knew she was getting married, that she'd just had a baby, the names of her friends and family--you wonder how the real stalkers distinguish themselves from the regular fans at this point. Well, maybe YOU don't wonder that, but I do, because I'm sick and twisted on the inside like a knot hidden deep in a bundle of yarn that you don't find until you're halfway done knitting your sweater and it pops out at you like the second little mouth inside the big mouth of the creature from "Alien."

What was I going on about now?

You know what, I don't even care. Screw reality TV stars. I'd actively hate them if I hadn't been to a reality show taping at the Knitting Factory a few weeks back and seen for myself how sad and miserable their lives are. Man, talk about twisted knots of humanity.

Oh, and speaking of the NYPD, a cop stopped by our booth after the parade and was hitting on Brian. It was awesome.

Gays on Parade

I'm charging down Fifth Avenue in the 90 degree heat, a sack of Village Voice condoms banging against my hip, trying to keep up with a skinny Japanee guy helpfully wearing a Skinny Guy t-shirt. He's holding an enormous box of Skinny Girl Margarita frisbees above his head, and despite my best efforts to disprove gender stereotypes, is still running faster than me. The asphalt is a blur of shining confetti, free condoms, and red stickers proudly proclaiming "God made me QUEER!" and "God made me PERFECT!" I stop long enough to pick up a PERFECT sticker and slap it on my left tit, but I'm so drenched in sweat it peels right back off.

Shouts follow us down the street.

"Hey, skinny boy, what's in the box? Give us some!"

A brief stop at 12th Street to hand out frisbees and condoms ends with some guy's fingernails in my face as the crowd tries to drag the box away from us. We retreat to the middle of the street, falling in behind a leather troupe.

"That was a bad idea." I grab a cup of water off a tray held by a man in a leather kilt and white gimp mask and dump it over Brian's head.

"But the box is lighter now," he gasps, hoisting it into the air again. "Think we're getting close?"

We're a disembodied pair in the Gay Pride Parade, two electrons knocked loose from our nucleus of Street Team members, shirtless man-meat, and a SmartCar carrying a reality TV celebrity. Brian and I were just supposed to rendezvous with a Voice messenger on the sidelines and take the box back to the group after we ran out of gear to hand out, but the messenger missed the drop point and now our group is so far ahead, there's a chance they'll exit the parade before we even get back to them. If this wasn't Brian's first week of work with the Street Team--if he was a one-year veteran like me--we'd have just said Fuck it and ducked into the nearest air-conditioned bar to watch the Mexico v. Argentina World Cup match. But precious little youngling that he is, Brian wants to finish the job we started on 17th Street, so up goes the box and down we go on Fifth Avenue, passing drag queens and drag kings and lesbians and cheerleaders and marching bands, desperately seeking our center.

I wasn't even supposed to be a marcher. Street Team responsibilities are handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis--or, on Pride Day, first-served, first-come--and I'd staked out my claim in the Voice's nice, shady tent at the Pride Festival four minutes after the boss sent out the email calling for Pride Day workers. I was supposed to sit in the booth all day signing people up for the Village Voice's gay newsletter. I had it all planned out: I'd exchange witty banter with old queens, get winked at by impossibly hot young men flaunting ass-cleavage, and reassure trannies that the Voice fully supported the T in LGBT.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

Some people on the Street Team--not all, but enough to make it a regular irritation--don't take their duties very seriously. They show up late, or not at all, canceling the morning of the event or even AFTER the event has already started (happened to me twice in two weeks, at the Mermaid Parade and on Pride Day), which leaves the responsible Teamsters, the ones who respond early to get the cushy positions, stuck running down Fifth Avenue in the midsummer heat. If you think being a Teamster is a bullshit job and resent the low pay and the indignities involved, that's your kuleana, but dragging the rest of us down with you is just going to make it worse the next time we're paired together. Brian and I weren't exactly thrilled to experience the Pride Parade on the fast-forward setting, but now every time we're partnered, it's going to be awesome because we'll remember how we went the distance and didn't give up. That makes friends for life and is really the only thing that makes this job fulfilling.

So, me and Hot Brian, hot in every sense of the word, round the corner at 9th Street and charge into the West Village. At least there are some trees along Christopher Street. We stop in a puddle of shade and I rain down condoms on outstretched hands like they're mana from heaven. I feel like I should warn people that the condoms have been broiling in the hot sun since the Empire State Building, but there's no time as Brian lifts the lightened box and we run off again, trailed by cat-calls of "Skinny Boy, watchoo got in the box? Bring it over here, Skinny Boy!"

"Nobody--thinks--I'M pretty! They all want you!" I gasp as we trot along.

"I--I know! Some guy grabbed--my shorts!" Funny the things you think of when you're half-delirious and half-blinded with the sunscreen melting into your eyes, but the sweat dripping off his spiky hair reminds me of lunch recess at Naalehu Elementary, when I'd tear around playing Power Rangers with Laser and Jeremy until someone either threw up or got a bloody nose from the heat. Good times.
"I hear the Big Apple Corp! Weren't we right in front of them?"

The last dash up the parade route through the yelling crowds is like a video game. We dodge the Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell boys in their camouflage Speedos and rainbow combat boots--run through a group of leather boys with black umbrellas and red suspenders, looking like extras from the all-gay version of "A Clockwork Orange"--keep pace with the Marriage Equality float until a gap between two baby strollers allows us to tear past a pedicab carrying two men and a "32 Years Together" sign--and now we're at the back of the Big Apple Corp Gay and Lesbian Marching Band, who were our immediate neighbors when we started out with our group all the way back at 38th Street.

"We're almost there!" Brian shouts.

Except the band is in a tight regiment that takes up the width of slender Christopher Street, leaving almost no room for us to squeak by. I'm so tired my vision is starting to tunnel and I've got sidepain like I haven't had since small-kid time on the playground, but once again, Brian pulls me through. He cuts through the percussion section, earning a "Watch it, honey!" from a lesbian with a trumpet, and I follow, holding my condom sack in front of me so it doesn't hit any of the musicians. We're passed the flute players now, almost to the front of the regiment, and I can hear the "1 up!" Mario Bros. ding in my head as I dodge the rainbow flags without breaking stride or fucking up the flag corps' routine. I can see the baton twirler at the head of the band. We're so close!

I slam into Brian from behind. He's standing perfectly still in the middle of the street with the band coming up behind us, staring forlornly off into the distance.

"They're still so far ahead."

"Only like, three blocks!" I grab us each a cup of ice water from a parade volunteer and dump mine on my face. Time to rally for the final push. Brian got me this far; I'm not going to let him down now. "Come on!"

Suddenly we both start to giggle and are soon laughing out loud, big belly laughs from deep inside our sweaty, shaking bodies as we jog down the street toward our people. We've breached the wall and I can't remember the last time I felt this good. Everyone around us is so happy and sexy and full of love and, yes, pride--thrilled to be alive and out in New York City amongst the beautiful boys and girls sweating in the sun--and here's our group, thrilled to see us after marching for 15 blocks with nothing to hand out to the crowd, even though Brian and I bring nothing but condoms and about five frisbees, having handed out the rest along the way to lighten the load. It's okay. That's the theme of today, that despite everything, the heat and the mob and the weight of the load we carry, despite the feeling that we'll never catch up no matter how fast we run, everything is going to be okay.

"Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

We jazz, right?

Jazz at Lincoln Center last night, a very late-night gig that takes place at Dizzy's Club in the Time Warner Center. I really like this gig because I get partnered with a representative of J@LC and she does most of the talking. I just sit around and hot up the place.

I also like this gig because I get to hear free jazz. This time I even called the BF up after my Voice duties ended and we had a midnight jazz rendezvous. I think Matt Dillon might have been there at the club, too. New York City is fun.

The BF tells a great jazz story and I'm kicking myself for not remembering the details, like names and dates, but I'll do my best: the BF's father's friend was working for a record label and was interested in signing a band on the rise. He asks the bandleader, "Now, do you folks play jazz?"

I imagine the band leader swelling up like an angry cat at this point. He says, "How dare you?! How dare you try to belittle our proud African-American heritage with your white boy, bullshit labels?!"

The record guy stammers, "I'm, I'm very sorry, I meant no disrespect, it's just that the label pays triple royalties if you play jazz."

The bandleader looks at his fellow band members and says, "We jazz, right?"

Yeah. We jazz.

Mermaids on Parade

Remember aaaaalllll the way back in 2009 when I wrote about Coney Island mermaids sloshing through a mid-June rainstorm and made a promise to never neglect my poor blog again?

Well, it's been a whole year and another 90 posts, which means it's time for more Coney Island mermaids!
This year the sun was shining oh so bright, but I didn't get sunburned because I stuck myself like a little lamprey to people with huge umbrellas, staying shady and protected from large predators. I actually hung around for the whole parade this time, even venturing up to the boardwalk to put up posters for the Village Voice's Siren Music Festival (July 17th, 10th annual, and boy was my mouth tired of saying that after a couple of hours). I ended up hopping the barricade because I got stuck in a tight crowd where I couldn't breathe, and some guy walked way too close to me wearing a huge, live snake, and some other guy spilled beer on me, and two OTHER guys started to fight, and I smelled vomit--anyway, I got all panicky and shoved my way into the parade. I figured that if any cops questioned me, I would tell them that I was with the Village Voice and I was taking picture, both true statements, albeit unrelated. That's how I got this killer shot of these topless women. I was wearing a skirt with reef fishes all over it, so at least I was in theme, and I've learned that if you just walk with confidence wherever you go, no one bothers you. And it's a good thing I jumped into the parade when I did, because just as I cleared the barricade, two cops ran passed me to break up the fight that was brewing where I'd just been trapped.

One more picture for today, and later I'll post a link to my Flickr account so you can see all of the pictures from Coney Island's 2010 Mermaid Parade.

Isn't that the guy from Depeche Mode?

There are generally two ways an evening of Voice Street Teamstering can go. The first is in the manner of the Knitting Factory gigs, where we show up just after the sound check and sit patiently in the corner for the entire performance, grabbing people between sets and forcibly extracting their personal information with our throbbing, gargantuan brain powers.

The second is less common. We brandish our clipboards while hanging upside down from the ceiling for a few hours before a show, and as soon as the music starts, bolt off into the night sky. I prefer the bolt to the extract--less strain on my brainness and my valuable sitting-around time.

Monday night was an extract. I worked the after party of the Off Broadway Awards--the Obies--hanging around the lobby of Webster Hall with struggling actors and musicians and former Voice employees who were very eager to tell me how glad they were to be on the other side of the swag table. While Antibalas played the main room upstairs, I got to witness the exodus of award winners (and losers, I assume, but it was harder to pick them out, maybe they slunk out through the staff exit) in their East Village formal wear, which is similar to Oscar fashion but more fabulous. I wish I had more to add, but what can I say? It was a party, and parties is parties is parties, in my experience. Just a lot of people getting together and going "peoplepeoplepeoplepeople." Sort of like an elephant migration on the savannah, except nobody's naked.

I didn't leave Webster Hall until after midnight, which meant the MTA was doing their late night subway repairs on the F line. Riding the subway at one in the morning on a weekday is a weird experience. There's about as many people and as much activity as you'll see at one in the afternoon, but everything moves at a much dreamier pace, like the entire subway system just took a massive hit off the bong. New York may never sleep, but that was definitely the calmest I've ever seen it. But I digress.

This week was a double-dip Teamster week for me. Last night, I went crosstown to the West Village--seen at night, in the rain, as usual--to take my turn at the Street Team's new regular, Le Poisson Rouge. I can't tell you how badly I wanted that to translate as "The Red Poison," but sadly, it means, "The Red Fish." Le sigh. Le Poisson Rouge is a nightclub. It took me about an hour and a half to figure that out. I thought it was a concert space and couldn't figure out what the hell was going on in that enormous underground room. "Are they all just going to stand there?" I wondered. "Is a band going to get up on that stage or what? Why isn't anything happening?!"

Once I figured out that yes, they were all just going to stand there and mill about, I started to play a little game called "Spot the Euro." I think Le Poisson Rouge must appear in guidebooks somewhere as a--let me see if I can get the tone right--"trendy West Village hang out, a place to see and be seen with New York's hippest night owls." Lots of tight black clothes and asymmetrical haircuts and flat-chested Nordic beauties who were strangely willing to sign up for Voice email alerts, which means there's either a large population of these freakishly good-looking Euros in New York City, or Europeans are a lot less discriminate than Americans about who they give their personal information to.

I hung out for about three hours, reassuring my breasts that even if they weren't as cherry as European breasts, they were still beautiful in their own way. Just as I was getting ready to bolt, my exit was blocked by the guy from Depeche Mode. You know the one. I don't know where he came from or what he was doing there, but my mind instantly went to The Venture Bros. "Sweetie, isn't that the guy from Depeche Mode?"

So I guess that sometimes a party isn't just a party. Sometimes it's a bizarre, real-lifey version of a subversive cartoon.

And in my opinion, that's just super.