Because I can't think of another title that fits this conceit

The focus of my last two posts have been mostly about things that I did during Firefly, which is an occasional pitfall of how I tend to write about these sort of things, but seems out of keeping with the spirit of the event. There were over thirty theme camps at Firefly, and most of them had at least one thing about them that was positively stunning. Camp Totenkitten featured a torch standing possibly 40 feet tall which delivered a burst of flame from one or more of 9 nozzles facing in different directions when you pressed the arcade buttons on the control panel, and a cuddle-pit filled with pillows featuring a projector and screen which showed prior footage from a webcam pointed at the selfsame pit. Camp Retarded Lions had hammocks hanging one over the other, and a gigantic net suspended up above that people could hang out in. Bring a Cup was a theme camp devoted to delicious homebrew beer.

I spent quite a bit of time at Bring a Cup.

Many of the camps had outdoor nightclub-ish setups (including ours, though the extent to which we were outclassed in that regard is part of the reason I didn't serve many drinks). Some featured space for object manipulators and firespinners to perform. One camp had a suspension rig set up between two trees.

A lot of people experienced things for the first time there, both because there was quite a lot to experience and because we were in a safe space surrounded by people who genuinely wanted every single person they encountered to have a good time. Some of those things were chemicals. You would be surprised by the relative lack of people freaking the fuck out because of this. And the extent to which people were ready to care for the few marginal cases.

In addition to group projects, there was quite a bit of individual art that kicked ass. To be quite honest, cataloging any significant portion of it would be beyond the reaches of my memory, but I will share with you my favorite bit of performance art of the week, courtesy of a new friend I made at the Bad Faerie camp.

In the wake of the Republican Speaker of Michigan's lower house denying speaking privileges to State Representative Lisa Brown-- a Democrat who took to the floor and give a speech that ended with "I'm very flattered to see how interested you all are in my vagina, but no means no," in response to the latest local skirmish in the Republican War on Women-- this self-described Sparkle Warhorse (a reclamation of "Sparkle Pony," which refers to someone who shows up under-prepared for survival and over-prepared for general fabulousity) decided that this could not be allowed to stand. So she suited up to proselytize about the beauty and wonder of the vagina.

After explaining to people what she was on abut, she proceeded to knight those supportive to the cause who swore an oath to uphold and defend the rights and awesomeness of vaginae everywhere. She then bestowed upon them a vaginal name. I was the first person to be so dubbed. I am now Sir Spam Purse of Camberville.

There's a reason why I've seen fit to fill three posts about this event. For four days in the woods, I was able to experience what it's like to exist in a space where there are no constraints on expressing oneself except that I not ruin the space or hamper anyone else's self-expression. Does that mean that the person who people met at Firefly, who was often wearing nothing other than underwear, a hat, a pair of black faeire wings, shoes, and stockings is the real me, and way I present myself in public is just a costume? No. Well, not exactly. We take greater advantage of freedoms we don't always have when we have them, which is why at the moment I'm typing this I'm not wearing anything at all.

Also, it's not like the limits placed on my behavior and my self-expression here in Somerville, MA are exactly smothering.

This is uh, how I dress about 80% of the time that there's a party to go to.

When I go out for a walk dressed like that in Cambridge or Somerville, most people I see on the street don't bat an eyelash, and when they do say anything about my attire the positive comments vastly outnumber the negative. Which isn't actually surprising, when you consider that if you divide the population of Somerville by profession, artists make up a plurality. Of course, it's a relatively small bubble. In Boston proper an old man once did a double-take as I walked past and exclaimed, "Holy Toledo! A he-she!"

I can't tell you how much I love the fact that I was there when an actual person actually said that..

I've been extremely happy with the place I live now, and the people around me, but spending time in an autonomous zone beyond the grasp-- if not the reach-- of the law and of societal convention threw the compromises I make every day in order to participate in civilization into sharp relief. Of course, my access to white hetero cisgendered male privilege means that I get off relatively light in this regard, but that doesn't make it appreciably less frustrating. Four days in the woods once a year isn't enough. I want real life to be this beautiful.

The problem with this, of course, is that Firefly is made up of people who consented to spend four days without (many) rules or currency. As the right to smoke a plant that grows in the goddamn ground has only recently become a majoritarian proposition, women still can't take their tops off in places where men rarely keep them on, and the populace has quietly acquiesced to the notion that being photographed with a drink in your hand can disqualify you for a job, I doubt that the glorious revolution of self-dominion is just around the corner. And, I mean, even I don't want all of the conditions of Firefly to exist everywhere, at all times.

Still, I'm not going to give up on the idea of imbuing my new hometown-- if not the rest of the world-- with some measure of what I found out there in the woods with all of those wonderful naked people.

I'll let you know when I figure out how.

Because the Heavy Metal Strippers Will Keep the Bears Away

A SECRET, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN THE GREEN MOUNTAINS

And that's the last of it!

The heavyset man behind the camp stove bellowed to all that would hear. He emptied the final bag of uncooked bacon onto the oversized cast-iron pan he was laboring over. Over four days, fully 92 pounds of bacon had been prepared on that stove, in that camp. Cheers went up as people briefly turned away from the firebreather (who had until then been the center of attention) to sample the latest output. Teriyaki bacon, roasted garlic bacon, and Cajun bacon were laid out for any present to consume.

92 pounds? That's about what I weigh!


I looked down to see a pixielike woman standing dressed in tiny black shorts, a scarf, and some bellydancer jewelry.

She put her arm around my midsection. "I hope you don't think this is weird, but I just love tall people. I'm so jealous... do you think you could let me ride on your shoulders?"

Naturally, I obliged. We went back down to the performance pit, where a long-haired man in a black Utilikilt was swinging a flame axe to Aenima by Tool, flanked by a shirtless muscley dude and a tall, skinny woman in a bikini, each of them working a stripper pole. We joined crowd of onlookers gathered at a safe distance wearing varying amounts of clothing who were dancing as they watched the performance.

When the song was over I knelt to let her off of my shoulders. Her feet touched the ground and we were at eye level.

Now you know what the world looks like to me


Actually, I assume this position all the time

Really... do you do partner acrobatics?


Huh? no, I just have a lot of friends who I'm closer to eye level with when I kneel

Oh, because you look like you have the build for it. Put your hands right above my knees for a second


She proceeded to teach me a number of tricks that involved lifting her over my head as she balanced in a pose, and ended by doing a handstand on my shoulders.

You really haven't done this before?

Onlookers did not act as if anything was out of the ordinary, and it wasn't. Not at the Firefly Arts Festival, and certainly not at Camp Heavy Metal Bacon Strippers. Here, 3/4-naked people being casually awesome was expected in very much the same way that, on a normal day, one might expect to drink coffee in the morning. And this in no way detracts from the individual experience of doing awesome things.

The rules of the road of any given burn (the catch-all term for events like Firefly) are designed to create that kind of atmosphere Aside from the ten principles of Burning Man, there are three main rules that govern Firefly:

(1) Leave No Trace (admittedly, one of the ten principles)
(2) Have Fun
(3) Safety Third

This would explain why someone would trust their safety to a complete stranger whose sobriety was never explicitly confermed

When she was done teaching me things, we formally introduced ourselves and parted ways. There was much more adventure to be had, and only a day and a half left to have it.

More to come...

Fuck the Prudes

She approached the podium cautiously, not quite knowing yet how the audience would respond.

It isn't about seduction. It's about how much I need you to hurt me.

She preaches her porn with a reverence that one wouldn't ordinarily expect. But of course, this is no ordinary crowd.

The Body Heat Femme Porn Tour kicked off at a small performance space in Inman Square, where I'd gone previously to see Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer (and was greeted with cookies by the drummer for the Dresden Dolls, but I digress). It was one of the most amazing things I've witnessed. A bunch of avowed freaky femmes waxing poetically on their filthiest fantasies-- often in ways that were deliberately ambiguous as to the gender of the partners they were describing-- with such intensity and joy as to inspire awe. One spoke of a summer in San Jose working at strip clubs and making out in the nude with a friend in private audiences with self-styled Tantra gurus for five hundred dollars a performance. Another spoke of the difficulties faced by femmes who like to sleep with other femmes. Yet another reveled in an episode about annonymous sex, declaring "Thank God I shave my pussy."

I fucking love Cambridge

It was like a religious experience. I was surrounded by people who loudly refuse to buy in to societal prescriptions for their sexual behavior, which is far more rare a sight than I'd like to report. It left me feeling good for the rest of the weekend.

Then I read this.

Good lord, is it another woman being accused of demeaning women because of the way she decided to express her sexuality? The shock, I say!

I love Lady Gaga, and this is coming from someone who can't stand a great deal of her genre. Unlike just about anyone else in the game, she's pursuing her craft with a real desire to create interesting art. I can't freaking get enough of the Bad Romance video

I'm not as crazy about Telephone, but it's far more clever than those two fools at The Huffington Post are letting on. I'll let The Moderate Voice take the wheel on that analysis. The point is, when you openly dedicate your life's work to the freaks-- when someone calls you a hermaphrodite and you respond that you don't mind hearing them say it but your beautiful vagina is offended-- you've pretty much added my name to the list of people who will make enemies of your unprincipled detractors. And for good reason. Lady Gaga is on the right side of history.

I think that I'm being charitable when I say that the argument that because there's rough play in the Telephone video that it constitutes an affront to the right of a child to "reach adulthood without thinking that watching two women engaged in a jailhouse beating is prerequisite foreplay for a satisfying sexual encounter." is the product of complete fucking morons. What is it about these assholes that makes them assume that whenever they see people doing things with their bodies that they don't approve of that the freaks are going to come out in force and make it compulsory?

It's that sort of rhetoric that every December makes me fantasize about dressing as Santa Claus and breaking into houses and leaving dildos and fleshlights under the tree, just to show these fuckwits what the world they're imagining would actually resemble.

Mark Twain said it perfectly: "Censorship is like telling a grown man he can't have steak because a baby can't chew it.."

I'm sick of "The Children" being used as a cudgel by people who are deadset on stifling any sexual expression that doesn't fit into their own pathetically small world where one man dates one woman until they get married and THEN they have sex, but only to have a baby.

Do you remember the rallying cry for Proposition 8 in California and Proposition 1 in Maine?

"They'll be teaching our children how to have gay sex."

No, Jim. No, Debbie. I'm not just calling you uncool or prudish-- I'm not in the business of going to such lengths to state the obvious-- I'm calling you What's Wrong With America. If you have issues with the way the media influences your childrens' sexual development --and I'm sure that you're railing just as hard against the odious hetero-normative ownership paradigm that's being sold to us on almost every channel in almost every time slot, I'm just SURE of it-- If you're worried about how your kids' attitudes towards sex are being shaped by outside influence, try fucking talking to your kids about sex.

Even if you're right, and we're under constant assault by deviant sex freaks looking to poison your child? No matter how hard you shake your fist you will never stop the freaks from being freaky. From James Madison's lips to God's ears, in this country they're as protected when they dress skimpily and make out with each other as you are when you whine about it on the Internet. The only power you have-- or need-- as a parent is the power to be a parent.

I'm pretty goddamned sick of hearing people claim that women who choose to express their sexuality are destroying society. And it's always women who get targeted. Remember who took the brunt of the criticism when Justin Timberlake showed Janet Jackson's nipple to a soon-to-be-comically-outraged public? Do you think for a moment that all of this noise isn't gendered?

How about we have more respect for art and less slut-shaming?

How about we teach our children how to think for themselves instead of blaming the people who aren't afraid to say that it's ok to enjoy sex?

How about we remember that in this country we value freedom of expression instead of taking the easy way out and decrying anything that makes us uncomfortable?

The rallying cry of the people who want you to fit inside a box will always be "think of the children." It's time to stop taking that sentiment as anything other than an attack on our right to individuality.