ESCAPE FROM EMPORIA

Hometown Girl

The YMCA

Peter Pan Park

Roberts-Blue-Barnett

Strong City

William Allen White Library

The Sunken Garden

South of the Tracks

Hometown Girl

“I think of you often”

—D. A. Powell

“Cherry Blossoms in Spring,”

Useless Landscape

One thing I learned from—

My mother’s divorce & 2 marriages

Was that sex was pretty much—

Highly overrated in our small town

Emporia was just a Peyton Place—

So what else was there to do?

But get drunk at the VFW—

Dance & smoke all weekend long?

Her second marriage to a young—

Stud from Olpe was a total wreck

If the Ship’s Lounge could only—

Talk about hanky-panky adultery

No wonder I shunned str8ts and—

Turned into an inveterate drag queen

Climbing that Stairway To Heaven—

All the way up, down on my knees!!!

The YMCA

“where many a shallow

boy got dumped”

—D. A. Powell

“Cherry Blossoms in Spring,”

Useless Landscape

All the way down along—

Shady Constitution Street

Past the Baptist Church—

Where Coach Smith grew up

His father in the old photos—

EHS basketball team 1937

Past EHS and Lowther—

That’s where the YMCA was

A chance to swim nude—

Erect in the turbulent pool

Where the wrestling team—

Turned me into an S & M queen

Pinned by Arnoldo Lopez—

I was his screamy Lupe Velez

Peter Pan Park

“in this indifferent orchard”

—D. A. Powell

“Cherry Blossoms in Spring,”

Useless Landscape

Past Sixth Avenue down—

All the way to the City Pool

Where George Wathen—

Lifeguard stud sneered at me

He had my number—

As I X-rayed his big crotch

I needed it really bad—

Lotsa artificial respiration

Peter Pan Park at night—

Cruising Monkey Island tricks

Getting picked up late—

There by the Tennis Courts

Roberts-Blue-Barnett

“there’s almost

nothing to go back to”

—D. A. Powell

“Cherry Blossoms in Spring,”

Useless Landscape

I’ve gone back and—

Pieced it all together again

The wide flat streets—

Full of cool elm afternoons

Down State Street—

Past the Hood Mansion

Where Miss Howard—

The Spanish teach lived

Down past Roberts-Blue—

Where cute Jimmy Barnett lived

Lotsa business, my dear—

For Peyton Place stiffs

Strong City

“wild forms are with us

always, though fleeting”

—D. A. Powell

“End of Days,”

Useless Landscape

He waited for me—

After school in his pick-up

His blue corduroy FFA jacket—

His shit-kickin cowboy boots

By the time we got to—

The Z Bar Ranch it was late

He was a young rancher’s son—

His father was filthy rich

After a six-pack of Coors—

He’d bang his head back hard

Against the Chevy’s gun-rack—

The country station on the radio

He taught me everything there was—

To know about animal husbandry

William Allen White Library

“It wasn’t only Amtrak

pulling trains at night”

—D. A. Powell

“Chicken,”

Useless Landscape

Before Amtrak showed up—

And Burlington-Northern

The Santa Fe Railroad—

Pretty much ran the town

That’s where you worked—

After graduating from EHS

I went to KSTC instead—

And became a prim Librarian

The stacks back then my home—

The William Allen White Library

Art deco Senate Apartments—

Kitty-corner across the street

Inheriting from my parents—

That place on Constitution St

Miss Havisham goth recluse—

Giving up on Great Expectations

The Sunken Garden

“I only give you back

what you imagine”

—D. A. Powell

“The Fluffer Talks of Eternity,”

Useless Landscape

Just call me poor Alma—

In that Tennessee Williams play

“Summer and Smoke” evenings—

There in the Sunken Garden

It was a lot more sunken—

Back then in the late Fifties

Lots of bushes and privacy—

For those in the know

That’s where I got to meet—

Grown-up guys from Kansas City

Like that handsome young salesman—

Alma met in the park that night

I got to meet some myself—

Lonely students far away from home

Ghostly gothic Norton Hall—

Looming down disapproving of me

South of the Tracks

“The state, begun as a series

of missions, used native men

& women as cheap labor”

—D. A. Powell

“Seven Sketches for a

Landscape, Unfinished”

Useless Landscape

The Santa Fe Railroad—

Employed 200 Mexican-Americans

With documentation dating—

Back to 1907 from Old Mexico

They worked the yards and tracks—

In return, living in little brick houses

"Las Casitas" known as “La Colonia”—

Owned by the Santa Fe railroad

South of the tracks on the north—

Side of South Avenue at Arundel Street

I remember feeling sorry for—

John Rangel and the other Hispanics

When Wood Bloxom would get into—

His racist rants about minorities

They didn’t have a chance—

The old grizzled Gargoyle would opine

The same with women who dared—

To show their intelligence over men

He hated Merit Scholarship winners—

Especially the young girls in class

He’d been teaching since the ‘30s—

The same old Euclidian stuff forever

The football players yawned while—

His sage Voice droning on and on…

Surrealist Shanghai Gesture (cont)

United Artists Theater Detroit

“It smells so incredibly evil.

I didn’t think such a place

existed except in my own

imagination. It has a ghastly

familiarity like a half-remembered

dream. Anything could happen 

here…” —Gene Tierney, 

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)

Surrealist Shanghai Gesture

Luis Buñuel (LB)

Joseph Cornell (JC)

Jack Smith (JS)

John Waters (JW)

Ed Wood Jr. (EW)

Data Towards the Irrational

Enlargement of “The Shanghai Gesture”

Whose dream does Maria Ouspenskaya belong to, and what is this dream?

"People never know why they do what they do. But they have to have explanations for themselves and for others.” (LB)

"So von Sternberg's movies had to have plots even though they already had them inherent in the images. What he did was make movies naturally - he lived in a visual world. The explanation plots he made up out of some logic having nothing to do with the visuals of his films. The explanations were his bragging, his genius pose - the bad stories of his movies. Having nothing to do with what he did (and did well), the visuals of his films.” (JC)

"I don't think V. S. knew that words were in his way, but he felt it - neglected them, let them be corny and ridiculous, let them run to travesty - and he invested his images with all the care he rightfully denied the words. And he achieved the richest, most alive, most right images of the world's cinema - in company with men like von Stroheim, the genius of Zero de Conduite, early Lang, & that limited company like Ron Rice.” (JS)

“If his hero is a phony for the purposes of the story, V. S. casts an actory actor in the part & leads him into hammy performance. Which comes to acting in V. S. films. He got his effects directly through the eye.” (JW)

“To close the ears would have thrown the viewer into an undersea, under-conscious world where the realities were very different from what the script purported. He needn't have worried . As it was, no one had that ability to see.” (EW)

Surrealist Shanghai Gesture

Fabian Theater Detroit

Surrealist Shanghai Gesture

Luis Buñuel (LB)

Joseph Cornell (JC)

Jack Smith (JS)

John Waters (JW)

Ed Wood Jr. (EW)

Data Towards the Irrational

Enlargement of “The Shanghai Gesture”

In this Jack Smith experimental film treatment of von Sternberg’s classic, the fairly straight hetero Surrealist Group is replaced by other surrealists—and the irrational enlargement shifts to a more perverse, decadent derisory impudent concrete criticism with totally automatic responses, of course, that being the sole criterion for this study.

What is Poppy’s perversion?

“Clasping an octopus tightly to her distraught pussy with her kimono pulled up & thighs smeared with lots of greasy K-Y.” (LB)

“Stretched out spread-eagled on the green felt of a backroom pool table, as Victor Mature detaches pearl after pearl from Poppy’s damp pouty convulsing pussy.” (JW)

“Poppy has no sexual perversion other than the intense sensuality she gets on a poker table surrounded by cynical Shanghai gangster-type card players & a cocaine-intoxicated handsome young sailor on a doomed lucky streak.” (JL)

“As Poppy permits a Peking pinhead to slowly stick his tiny sleek dwarf shiny shaved head up her tight moaning & groaning pussy there is a hushed silence in Mother Gin-Sling’s personal private parlor.” (JS)

“Fellatio of a self-confessed, intensely masochistic nature beneath a bronze Shiva in the bathroom making the whole gambling joint tremor, premature ejaculations swallowed by greedy goldfish in the nearby toilet bowl, as an octopus winds its tentacles around her legs, while men in the casino suddenly get a whiff of a strange odor of distraught dampness emanating from beneath all the gaming tables with Poppy down there on he knees with her lips between the legs of the croupier’s trembling legs. (EW)

“Purposeful masturbation with a peacock feather—that once belonged to Rudolf Valentino and was used by an arrogant smirking slave boy who tortured the Sheik mercilessly in his tent late into the intense desert hashish night there in his secret tent of horrible decadent jaded male desire in the studio parking lot.” (LB)

“In a Japanese sushi-bar aquarium fathoms down there at the bottom of the sea where sunken Spanish galleons & old Greek temples lollygag in the silent Atlantis seabed abyss of Laundromat dirty gossip, scuttling crabs and the Forty Thieves’ den of inequity where Poppy is ravished day & night by hoodlum LA gangs & pimply-faced runaways from the filthy LA ghettos.” (JS)

Betrayed by Rita Hayworth

Betrayed by Rita Hayworth

—Back again, honey? Couldn’t get enough?
—My dear, I’m exhausted. I simply couldn’t sleep.
—Ho-hum. You’ve got the Disease. Juan’s Jizz-Fever.

—It’s not that. Surely not that. It can’t be just that.
—Hush, Miss Thing. You’ll wake him up.
—Of course not, dear. We wouldn’t want that.

—Really, Mary? What a skanky old slut you are.
—Juan, that poor child. He must be just drained dry.
—You should know, Miss Dickface. After last night.

—I had no idea, my dear. Such a seminal Valentino!
—Yes, honey—Copious as Copacabana, isn’t he?
—I had no idea Creole Romance could be so…

—So worthy of shameless Betrayal?
—Yes, done in by Rita Hayworth!!! Betrayed!!!
—And yet such a young sweet innocent…

—Please, honey. Your panties are in a twist.

—How could anything so unabashedly unpretentious.
—Please, you slut. You love it, every inch of it.

—I feel so ashamed. I feel completely, totally…
—Betrayed? Of course you do, it’s quite natural…
—Do all young Creoles hide such Blatino Big Ones?

—The better to Betray you with, my dear.
—I feel totally Betrayed, such a whore I’ve become!
—What’s new? You’re about as Innocent as a…

—An old used Rubber? A used Trojan in the gutter?
—Try Semen in the Sewer, Miss Rotor-Rooter.
—So Whitey upstairs, Mandingo in the basement.

—Fix me another martini, won’t you my dear?
—Skip the olive, I wanna do him again.
—Oh dear, look there. we’ve added some hickies.

—Plus a swollen testicle or two, you whore.
—Oh please forgive me, I couldn’t help myself.
—You helped yourself plenty, last night, honey.

—You’re so right about his green cheesy smegma.
—Ho-hum, told you so. It’s my favorite fondue.
—Is that why you keep him kept Captive?

—What do you think, Mary? I’m no dummy.
—All spread-eagled in bed, so very helpless.
—Handcuffs around his wrists & ankles tight…

—Yes, jars of K-Y & Vaseline strewn on the floor.
—He does look a bit like cute Terrence Stamp…
—Yes, like Billy Budd or The Collector…

—Yes, except I’m the Collector this time...
—Yes, of course, my dear, you dreadful Claggart.
—I admit it, I confess it, I live it, I suck it…

—It does wonders for your complexion, Lueez…
—And the wrinkles under my eyes, they’re gone too.
—All those young male hormones, Juan’s so sexy.

—Who needs a Facelift—with Cream like that?
—Those big puffy pouty Botux lips of his…
—Hush, he’s waking up again. Time for his bath.

—He does like the Jacuzzi doesn’t he?
—I’m simply going broke with the coke bill, dear.
—I know, here’s a couple of C-notes for you.

—After last night’s orgy, he is kinda gimpy.
—Gawd, I hope it wasn’t my fault in any way.
—Well, he limps to the bathroom, it hurts him so.

—The left nut or the right nut, we both had one?
—I love it when he faints, it’s so excruciating.
—The look on his twisted face, pure Betrayal.

—That’s what Tyrone said, after Rita blew him.
—I can imagine—“Betrayed by Rita Hayworth!”
—You should know, honey. You shameless whore.

—And I thought Miami Beach boyz looked betrayed…
—So many Creoles in New Orleans—so little time.
—It’s why they call it the “Big Easy”…dontchaknow.

—Yes, my dear, “Big” as in “Big Daddy.”
—Yes, “Big Easy” honey…but not easy all the time.
—It don’t come Easy…No “Big Easy” all the time.

—Oh dear me, I know just what you mean…
—Last night that Third Time wasn’t Easy at all.
—That’s when he sprained his Nut, honey.

—Oh my goodness, I’m glad it wasn’t my Lips.
—Sometimes the Look on his face makes me cry…
—Yes, there’s something about a Bad Boy Betrayed…

—That “hurt” look of being Used and Abused…
—Aint it Awful, what Kept Boyz gotta do?
—That Lost Innocence—so Betrayed & Shocked!!!

—That Look on his Face—Down to the Last Drop!
—That betrayed Last Squirt—and Dick Wiggle…
—It’s lucky he’s got such a Fine Big Daddy…

—Such a Fine Sugar Mama like you & me…
—Hush, he’s waking up. He’ll want it again!!!
—So what, honey? I'm simply starved, my dear.

Desperate Drag Queens

“Chewing gum helps me think.”

“Sweetie, you’re wasting your gum.”

—The Birdcage (2009)

“Closets, however, are preferable,

it would seem, to chat groups.”

—Daniel Harris, Diary of a Drag Queen

____________________

Surely there must be a middle-ground between such a choice—drag queenery vs. the closet?

I can sympathize with the Heteronormatives and conservative Queer Theorists who think that Queenery as we know it today is a tres recent development a la Miss Foucault.

As if we’ve just been invented by Straights since records of illegality have been noted on the books. But even that concept seems rather dated—when one considers that Queenery has been around long before Miss Jurisprudence. Not only in Europe but also in the New World Indian-Mayan-Toltec-Inca societies as well. And other historical hotspots.

The new Wilde Boys poetry salon in New York City is an interesting example—in the sense that this whole profusion of jealous bitch queens started yammering away trashy comments online, dishing the Wilde Boys for daring to be ardent elitist worshippers of Youthful Male Beauty. As if that’s any different than Miss Wilde doing it herself—along with Bosie and the whole decadent Yellow Book coterie back then.

And so it really doesn’t impress me, for example, that John Harris’ 2005 book “Diary of a Drag Queen” is basically a rather long dreary expose of chat-room chicanery and bitch fests galore. Almost as if the diary anecdotes were nothing but a bitchy rehearsal for “The Birdcage” or “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” all over again. Been there, done that.

My own so-so transversive thoughts about drag queens, transvestite musicals, gay cabaret, face lifts—seem to me to be not very unlike the Wilde Boys literary critics. I’m just a jealous, bitchy, clueless, empty-headed old bitch queen like anybody else. 

Actually, writing online for me seems to be very much like “The Birdcage” line—that chewing gum seems to help me think better.

But, of course, my dear, it’s just a waste of gum.

Desperate Divas

It seems like—

I’ve always been a

Desperate Diva

Even now, my dear—

I’m nothing but a

Tired old Movie Queen

Lacking the class—

Of the Major Divas

Like Bette Davis

Or Joan Crawford—

I go more for the

Grade B Scream Queens

Sulking there in the—

Film noir darkness

Of my tacky Discontents

_______________

Jan Sterling

The way she—

Schleps & slouches

Down the Staircase

On the outside of—

The dumpy dingy

Desert gas station

Her has-been husband—

Trapped in some cave

Looking for lost treasure

As she hobbles down—

The rickety stairs trying

To get out of town fast

Escaping from the—

“Big Carnival” (1951)

Billy Wilder’s nightmare

_______________

Linda Darnell

The way she—

Schleps into the

Two-bit dingy diner

Owned by her—

Worrisome sugar daddy

Poor whiny Percy Kilbride

Slouches down—

Into a chair, slips off

Her high heels sighing

Plop the shoe goes—

Onto the diner floor

Her feet are killing her

“Fallen Angel” (1945)—

Another one-night stand

“So what?” she snaps

 ______________________

Peggy Cummins

Roles get reversed—

John Dall plays the

Nelly Gangster’s Moll

Butchy Peggy Cummins—

Plays the tough Carnival

Shoe-em-up Cowgirl

Sucks Dall into Crime—

Corruption, armed robbery

The usual film noir thing

They’re fast and smart—

Like Bonnie and Clyde

But not fast enough

Peggy Cummins—

“Gun Crazy” (1951)

Femme fatale lover

_____________________ 

Ann Savage

Ann Savage—

Sizes up Tom Neil pretty

Fast in “Detour” (1946)

The car is “hot”—

The owner dead back

Along the highway

A classic film noir flick—

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Dark and Streamline Slinky

Ann Savage is Tom Neil’s—

Tawdry Double, his tacky

Claustrophobic Other

The Detour is his own—

Tragic fate caused by his

Own flaky femme fatale

______________

Audrey Totter

Taking up from where—

Detour leaves off there’s

“The Set Up” (1949)

Lonely marquee lights—

Outside the hotel window

Another fixed fight

Robert Ryan as her—

Has-been aging boxer lover

On the sad downhill skid

She pauses on a bridge—

Looking down at all the

Busy traffic at night

Wanting to leave him—

Her boxer lover beat up

For not taking the fall

______________________ 

Gloria Talbott

Nobody believes her—

That her handsome young

Husband is an Alien

He’s cute on the outside—

But inside he’s an ugly

Pulsating slimy Creature!!!

Poor Gloria Talbott—

Ends up “Married to a Monster

from Outer Space” (1958)

The look on his face—

When she realizes the awful

Horrible ugly fucking Truth

It’s Tom Tryon’s turn—

To be the fatal Femme Fatale

Earthgirls are Easy!!!

_____________

Natascha McElhone

Most moviegoers are—

Familiar with a movie’s

Mise-en-scene layout

But not necessarily—

Andre Gide’s idea of

A film’s mise-en-abyme

His novel “The Counterfeiters”—

Portrays the idea instead of

The movie within a movie

Such a possible setup—

With “Matrix” and “Solaris”

Portrays synthetic quantum worlds

Most people have had such—

Dreams within dreams scenarios

Inside their own Bijou dreams

George Clooney experiences—

A cloned former lover who’s

Actually an Alien doppleganger

Such a mise-en-abyme plot—

Can be tres convoluted and

Very surrealistic to experience

Counterfeiting the supposed—

Real like a series of Russian dolls

One inside the other

Betrayed By Rita Hayworth

Betrayed by Rita Hayworth

—Back again, honey? Couldn’t get enough?
—My dear, I’m exhausted. I simply couldn’t sleep.
—Ho-hum. You’ve got the Disease. Juan’s Jizz-Fever.

—It’s not that. Surely not that. It can’t be just that.
—Hush, Miss Thing. You’ll wake him up.
—Of course not, dear. We wouldn’t want that.

—Really, Mary? What a skanky old slut you are.
—Juan, that poor child. He must be just drained dry.
—You should know, Miss Dickface. After last night.

—I had no idea, my dear. Such a seminal Valentino!
—Yes, honey—Copious as Copacabana, isn’t he?
—I had no idea Creole Romance could be so…

—So worthy of shameless Betrayal?
—Yes, done in by Rita Hayworth!!! Betrayed!!!
—And yet such a young sweet innocent…

—Please, honey. Your panties are in a twist.

—How could anything so unabashedly unpretentious.
—Please, you slut. You love it, every inch of it.

—I feel so ashamed. I feel completely, totally…
—Betrayed? Of course you do, it’s quite natural…
—Do all young Creoles hide such Blatino Big Ones?

—The better to Betray you with, my dear.
—I feel totally Betrayed, such a whore I’ve become!
—What’s new? You’re about as Innocent as a…

—An old used Rubber? A used Trojan in the gutter?
—Try Semen in the Sewer, Miss Rotor-Rooter.
—So Whitey upstairs, Mandingo in the basement.

—Fix me another martini, won’t you my dear?
—Skip the olive, I wanna do him again.
—Oh dear, look there. we’ve added some hickies.

—Plus a swollen testicle or two, you whore.
—Oh please forgive me, I couldn’t help myself.
—You helped yourself plenty, last night, honey.

—You’re so right about his green cheesy smegma.
—Ho-hum, told you so. It’s my favorite fondue.
—Is that why you keep him kept Captive?

—What do you think, Mary? I’m no dummy.
—All spread-eagled in bed, so very helpless.
—Handcuffs around his wrists & ankles tight…

—Yes, jars of K-Y & Vaseline strewn on the floor.
—He does look a bit like cute Terrence Stamp…
—Yes, like Billy Budd or The Collector…

—Yes, except I’m the Collector this time...
—Yes, of course, my dear, you dreadful Claggart.
—I admit it, I confess it, I live it, I suck it…

—It does wonders for your complexion, Lueez…
—And the wrinkles under my eyes, they’re gone too.
—All those young male hormones, Juan’s so sexy.

—Who needs a Facelift—with Cream like that?
—Those big puffy pouty Botux lips of his…
—Hush, he’s waking up again. Time for his bath.

—He does like the Jacuzzi doesn’t he?
—I’m simply going broke with the coke bill, dear.
—I know, here’s a couple of C-notes for you.

—After last night’s orgy, he is kinda gimpy.
—Gawd, I hope it wasn’t my fault in any way.
—Well, he limps to the bathroom, it hurts him so.

—The left nut or the right nut, we both had one?
—I love it when he faints, it’s so excruciating.
—The look on his twisted face, pure Betrayal.

—That’s what Tyrone said, after Rita blew him.
—I can imagine—“Betrayed by Rita Hayworth!”
—You should know, honey. You shameless whore.

—And I thought Miami Beach boyz looked betrayed…
—So many Creoles in New Orleans—so little time.
—It’s why they call it the “Big Easy”…dontchaknow.

—Yes, my dear, “Big” as in “Big Daddy.”
—Yes, “Big Easy” honey…but not easy all the time.
—It don’t come Easy…No “Big Easy” all the time.

—Oh dear me, I know just what you mean…
—Last night that Third Time wasn’t Easy at all.
—That’s when he sprained his Nut, honey.

—Oh my goodness, I’m glad it wasn’t my Lips.
—Sometimes the Look on his face makes me cry…
—Yes, there’s something about a Bad Boy Betrayed…

—That “hurt” look of being Used and Abused…
—Aint it Awful, what Kept Boyz gotta do?
—That Lost Innocence—so Betrayed & Shocked!!!

—That Look on his Face—Down to the Last Drop!
—That betrayed Last Squirt—and Dick Wiggle…
—It’s lucky he’s got such a Fine Big Daddy…

—Such a Fine Sugar Mama like you & me…
—Hush, he’s waking up. He’ll want it again!!!
—So what, honey? I'm simply starved, my dear.