The Many Spellings of Suppositori
He really is a boy. He really is a mother. He really is a drag queen. He’s also hungover. It is approximately 1:30 in the afternoon on an exceptionally bright and sunny Saturday in the Castro. You know, one of those days that companies take pictures for postcards. Ironically this is appropriate considering I’m essentially taking my mother out to lunch at the institution that is Orphan Andy’s.
I’m hungover too. I guess it runs in the family. You see, Suppositori Spelling, or Spaz, or Jarred, is bizarrely my drag mother. I say bizarrely because as she would say, “My tubes have been tied.” Evidentially that doesn’t prevent her from birthing drag sons.
While waiting for a table, he tells me that “I didn’t even expect to get that far gone last night.” Another aspect of any drag queen that anyone who’s ever partied with a drag queen will tell you is that, more often than not, they do enough living for more than two people.
It often seems though that all of the personalities or roles that Jarred or Suppositori may fulfill are all hard living – in one way or another. As Jarred says his mother would say though, “That’s not necessarily real work.” But as anyone who’s seen Suppositori near the end of the night can say, she looks tired.
To this extent, Jarred goes on to say, “I’d rather survive happily than flourish miserably.” From what’s apparent, that seems to be exactly what he’s doing. He “doesn’t spend much” or “spend extravagantly.” For the most part, he seems to use his boundless love and his extensive work for currency.
And it works well. He claims he’s actually terrible with names, but certain evidence proves the contrary. For example, simply just walking with him down any street such as Castro or Folsom you can’t help like you’ve been caught in the booze-y flurry of introducing yourself to people at a bar. There’s also his family – his drag family – that, as mentioned earlier, is so large that exclusivity, by necessity, has been introduced.
The house of Spelling though is only one of many drag houses of San Francisco. What makes her house particularly interesting and “of note” is that it is, like the day of the interview, is that it often seems like it would be appropriate for some delightfully fucked-up, alternative postcard.
The family itself has all the archetypes – the squabbling siblings, the siblings that have shared sexual partners, the craving for attention, the volume control. Most of all, the strongest archetype present is that of the loving, nurturing, understanding, and maternal Suppositori Spelling.
In this way, the idea of a “drag family” feels appropriate. Jarred often advertises that “Suppositori has many personalities” and in this way, his life, with all of its lovely concurrent shades – sociable or quirky, manic or quite, drunk or hungover, Playgirl-worthy or postcard-worthy, in woman’s clothes or in men’s clothes – could fully represent what its lead the life of someone who’s (currently) a career drag queen.
Except we’re all like that. We all have many personalities living together – living cohesively. How we express each personality – whether through choice of style or through a drunken pose – is indicative of each kind of person we could be. Most people just choose one pose, or one color, and not the whole rainbow, so to speak, to live with, or to express themselves with. The shades and the other personalities are still though. A drag queen just chooses to summon one forth and create an art exhibit (or a career) out of one. And that’s really what a good mother, performer, and an artist does.
As for Spaz, as we receive both of our steaks, he explains as to why his personality can be so seemingly polarized: “I used to have to be the center of attention all the time; now I only have to be the center of the attention…some of the time.” With his family, and with his show and his work, it seems that this “anti-diva” has finally found a good piece of mind. Or at least a good medium.
Pride And Anarchy
Splatter Art by Holden Starstruck
Henry VIII would fucking love the world we live in today. You can parachute some heroin and fuck with the stars – and not even change your religion. True, you can’t exactly behead your former lovers but you can always block them on Facebook.
Princess Diana is one ex whose head I would happily sever. I compare him to Princess Diana because he’s sickeningly sweet in that superficial, to-your-face way, but in reality only wanted me for sex and was abusing drugs in a big time way. It was kind of fucked up.
But then again, how do you have any relationship with drugs without abusing them? So I guess in a way, Princess Diana used me as a drug too. Love and relationships, can be, to quote another ex-boyfriend, “just one giant grey, amoebic area.” I wanted him, he denied me, and now, eight months later he’s wondering why I don’t like responding to texts that say “I want u” at 5 in the morning after he saw me go home with someone else. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good guy and I’m sorry about being harsh, but really, desperation never bought anybody anything.
Love is capitalistic and cutthroat like that. It can suck, but games really are a part of life, and everybody knows this but forgets it once they get hard about something. Sometimes you have to pose and paint yourself a Mona Lisa smile. Sometimes you have to walk tall, speak in tongues, spit fire, and bleed acid. And sometimes you have to be brash, bombastic, stupid and anarchic with your emotions. Everybody is posing shamelessly and dancing recklessly into the morning with their emotions. It’s an age of desperate celebration. Nobody’s buying anything and emotional currency is at an all time low. Oil, cynicism, and doubt fill the oceans.
Well fuck that. I refuse to be like Princess Diana – reluctantly hiding in one fairytale or another until the next tragedy happens. Screw the fairytale, I’d honestly rather just break myself than lie alone fighting my own delusion. And fuck abusing my own personal power beyond comprehension to the point of contempt like Henry VIII. I have no desire to assert control beyond my own place in the anarchic status flow.
It’s like with this guy that I’ve been seeing recently (hope you’re reading and you approve). I don’t know how I feel about him yet and I don’t know where he could possibly fit into my life. He’s definitely the good kind of different. I don’t have the need or the desire to assert any control over the situation (or any situation) – it’s all chaotic and casual enough anyway.
And that’s okay. Maybe energy really does flow according to the whims of the great magnet. Time rusts and replaces the weary and strong alike. There’s really no fighting the great design – there’s only fighting for pride, love, and some sort of fucked up sense of stability.
Maybe that’s the design of it all – maybe we’re all just lovesick, desperate and starved dogs pit against ourselves, and only ourselves. We’re all just looking for a bite while trying to feign otherwise. We all (essentially) fuck and fight the same way. We all love and lie the same way. In theory it should be a lot easier to understand each other than it is. So maybe earnest affection and honest love is like that – hungry bitch versus hungry bitch, your body versus their body, your mind versus your mind and you have no other choice than to sit back and enjoy the conflict.
Read More Splatter Art : I Will Never Go Hungry Again
I Will Never Go Hungry Again
Splatter Art by Holden Starstruck
The first and only thing you should know is that this life isn’t for everyone. This isn’t Carrie fucking Bradshaw pondering on the holy trinity of style, nightlife, and romance. This column is the Fight Club meets Disco Bloodbath of the online sphere.
The drugs, the alcohol, the sexual escapades, the drag, and the explicit life get to people after a while. Some people get tired, some people get apathetic, some people get psychotic. Other people say it’s sinful. My sentiment on that is irreversible evidence for an afterlife has yet to manifest. So for all that’s proven, this could be hell, and for a lot of people it is. Hell or heaven, the Odysseian path and Swiftian sensibilities I choose are those of the lover, the libertine, the scholar, the gypsy, and the party monster.
May I never stop wandering. This path, this life upon a moving hearth I’ve inherited, originated from the first time I ever read from a little book known as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, at the fresh age of fifteen.
For months all I wanted to experience was acid. I had never smoked a joint, taken a pill of Ecstasy, or even fucked another guy (that’s right, I’m a fairy). I eventually did locate Lucy after months of calling her number.
It was intense, to say the least. It seems as though that ever since my life has been nothing less than bohemian rhapsody. The following years of high school for me were full of stimulant binges, psychedelic experiences, poetic exploration, journalistic intrigue, and sexual deviancy.
I lost my virginity in a threesome in my senior year of high school. With a girl and a guy. They were a couple. My first near relationship was with a 29-year-old drag queen I met after drinking in a Castro alleyway at the age of seventeen. It lasted a good three or four months.
That brings me to my life now. I don’t live for “the scene.” I live for myself. You can choose to do so too, but I’m sure as fuck not going to tell you how to live your life.
I choose to live for myself because any other way of living leads to personal failure. No one is going to love you unless you love yourself. And in the end, taking care of yourself is the only way you can learn for all the hangovers, the vomit, the teeth chattering, the serotonin loss, the breakdowns, and the heartaches.
And I genuinely think a good majority of the populace don’t take care of themselves as much as they should. They should drink more water. They should sleep more. They should give less of a shit what others think and act through what they feel.
At such a young age, I’ve discovered that I’m not okay. I’ll never be. My emotions will always be a splatter painting from my personal experiences. Life is like that. And if I don’t cherish my emotional art, I’m ashamed, it’ll fucking mean nothing. And if it means nothing to me, then it’ll mean nothing to everyone else. I refuse to let the shame laid down by society prevent me from receiving the pleasure it has on hold.
So here I am. To experience all that the land, the waters, the offices, the bars, the papers, and the notes that life has to offer. And I refuse not to reciprocate with this life that I love.