An evening of cars and cocks

Rocking the Macho Cockless: Community Artists Respond to Radical Masculinities.
Curated by Raquelito Gutierrez

I feel like I've seen a lot of shows like this recently: a bunch of great performers doing their own things well, but not really coming together. It's the kind of show that gives me hope that there will be a truly great show in the future, but it's not quite there yet. The energy wasn't quite right, the performers weren't exactly working together, but the show was fun nonetheless.

NOTE: I will attempt to use the pronouns the artists used for themselves in their bios. When no pronouns are given, I've opted for the masculine in deference to the theme of the evening.

Quite a few of the individual artists in this performance were incredibly talented and there were some wonderful, extremely provokative moments, but the energy between pieces didn't flow right. My first complaint is the program. It had bios for all the artists, but they appear to be in no particular order. Certainly not order of appearance, nor alphabetical order. There's no list with the names of the pieces and the order anywhere, which I feel is a major part of the concept of a program.

Of course, when my major complaint is about the program, the performances themselves must have been pretty good. And honestly, they were. These are some charming, talented, intelligent butches, bois, guys, and men. But the show itself needed more practice, more bringing it together. Even a good MC announcing the people and the pieces would have solved a great deal of it's problems. It's too bad Raquelito didn't decide to do this, since we know from DITCH that he's perfectly capable and quite talented at getting a crowd on his side. Someone to bring up the energy, get the crowd cheering, helping the pieces flow together would have added a lot to the evening. Starting the night with Leo Garcia, Highways' Artistic Director, introducing the show and remiding the audience to patronize the arts is a real energy drain, and it went straight from that to a video piece, so the whole night got off to a slow start that made the audience rather passive. It was really quite unfortunate.

The first piece, a video by JJ Chinois, was about a demolition derby. It was strange and fascinating, begging the question "Where's Skowhegan? That's not a state." And also "What's the purpose of this? Does someone win?" Well, I have learned the answer to the first question: The Skowhegan State Fair claims to be the oldest agricultural fair in the country. It takes place in Maine, and began in 1818, before Maine was even a state! It happens to be going on right now, as a matter of fact. There was a Demolition Derby yesterday, actually! Now I know. I'm still a little cloudy on the details of a demolition derby, but it does seem that there are in fact winners. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines a demolition derby as "A contest in which skilled drivers ram old cars into one another until only one car remains running." This is a phenomenon with which I am so unfamiliar that the video seemed as much a sociological demonstration as an exploration of masculinity. The first section of the video was fascinating in that it seems to be an exploration of failure. There was all the setup, preparation for the derby, loving depictions of the car in all of its pink, 1970s retro glory complete with playboy bunny symbol on the hood, and then the car wouldn't start. They couldn't even get it to the track. It was rather tragic, really. But then the video went on, and basically showed a lot of cars smashing into each other, which was strange and fascinating and amusing. It created an interesing image of masculinity. The car may be just another prosthetic cock, but this one was pink and belonged to a small Asian boy with a fabulous gold helmet. Strange and highly amusing, but starting with a video, however fun and fabulous, sets the audience up to be passive voyeurs, which is not what is needed for this kind of show.

That left the job of warming up the crowd to rigamortis (Tre Vasquez), who apparently once performed with the Sex Worker's Art Show. He did an admirable job waking the crowd up and getting them to warm up to him. I got a little uncomfortable when he began talking about spirituality, but in general he was a wonderful performer blurring the boundaries between hip hop and spoken word with some good things to say about identity, decolonization, and mestizaje. The ideas reminded me a great deal of This Bridge Called My Back and other Latina/indigena art/theory. He also performed a piece in which he appeared without binding in a thin white tank top and looked at himself in a mirror, discussing those moments in which he's alone and content with himself and his body just the way he is and doesn't have to feel like either a boy or a girl. It's an important thing to say, I think.

The next piece was (I believe; I'm not sure about the order because it's not listed in the program and thus I'm relying on my memory) a video by Chris Vargas. Another piece about a car, this short video juxtaposed driving and sexual activities. The cutting and the imagery was quite clever and very pleasurable.

Riku Matsuda presented an adorable piece about Bathroom Justice, although it had the tone of social action community education, which did feel a bit like preaching to the converted in a crowd where I suspect the vast majority of the audience has either been challenged when using the restroom or has dated someone who has. It was framed as a meeting organizing a Pee-In to address the issue of bathroom justice and included a personal story complete with hilarious visuals of Riku's restroom difficulties. He's got a great presence and energy and seemed to be having a lot of fun, and he did his best to get the audience riled up; he even lead us in a protest chant at the end of his performance.

Chris Diaz and Vivian Babuts contributed an amazing and intense video piece that seems to be called "pro-bo," though I'm not sure what this means. It was rather strange and confusing in its organization, but had brilliant and heart-wrenching moments. It was about, as far as I can tell, sex and hair. There were moments that seemed a rather saccharine glorification of a relationship, but overall it was fascinating. It began with a series of vignettes in which Diaz and Babuts performed a series of characters, each a exploration of masculinity and femininity and attraction. Their performances were fabulous and quite entertaining; when a few of the same looks came back in a more serious context at the end, the transformation from playful to tragic was striking and extremely well-done. I feel like the piece should have ended there, without the sickly tribute to their relationship. It was a fascinating video, but it could have used more focus, clarity, theme, an organizing principle. Babuts also contributed 4 life-size self portraits (naked) in the lobby, which were stunning.

Ricky "El Cholo" Garcia led a pro-sex, safe-sex, kinky dildo demonstration. The audience participation of this particular performance was quite wild and entertaining. I was totally asking myself "Was that planned?" "Does he know these people?" The bit that worked best was with someone he clearly did know; said person, a spunky little redhead, performed quite well and seemed to be having fun. Garcia's piece was hilarious, and definitely had the audience laughing out loud.

"Skip" by Felix Chang K. and Marnee Meyer was a short video piece in which well-dressed non-white transmen jumproped to demonstrate "a 21st century notion of queer beauty based on rhythm, agility, and liminality."

D'Lo, Chris Elardo, and La shawn Logan performed a scene from Ballin' with my Bois, a play by D'Lo that received a staged reading in LA, a run at the WOW Cafe in New York, and will be produced in LA in 2006. The scene was fun and funny and generally well-done. It bodes well for the play. The scene featured 3 butch/boi/ftm identified folks in a car chatting and joking around. It set the scene and established the characters for a monologue by D'Lo about the importance of communities and relationships between bois and transmen.

The Butchlalis de Panochtitlan performed the final piece in the evening, which combined video and live performance. It was entitled Cockfight! Pelea de Gallos! and featured the 4 BdPs wearing all black and half of each of their faces was painted in black and white to resemble a skull, very Día de los Muertos. They stood in a very static arrangement for the majority of the piece and each member spoke in turn, while the others turned their heads and struck various poses. The effect of this was eerie and quite impressive. All four of them spoke this time, which is, I believe, and improvement, and they had interesting things to say, even if they were sometimes rather vague and the point occasionally got lost beneath the words. They talked about friendships between butches and bois, community, desire (for femmes?)

So the sheer number of pieces that related to cars, and related cars to sex or masculinity rather disturbed me. But the other recurring ideas between pieces were fascinating. Several performers, especially rigamortis and D'Lo, brought up the concept that they weren't just masculine or feminine, that there was still aspects of both genders in them even if they feel and choose to present to the public as masculine and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Relationships between butches, bois, and transmen, both sexual (Vargas) and friendship (butchlalis, D'Lo) were important, and sometimes difficult.

Overall, it was a wonderful night with some great performances. It needed better energy and pace; it wanted to a raucous, provokative evening full of stimulation both mental and physical and it was almost, but not quite, up there. Let me say, I did not in any way leave dissappointed, and each and every one of these guys is a fabulous performer worth going out and seeing and supporting. I can't wait for the next one!