One Day This Kid… was made in 1990 and, twenty years on, I can’t help but think that Wojnarowicz, in a single print, has eclipsed the totality of the It Gets Better campaign. For one thing, each of the horrors that Wojnarowicz enumerates are still true, twenty years on (as I read through it, I can easily think of news items from the past year that bear these phrases out). Given his art-world fame, one might be tempted to infer that It Got Better for Wojnarowicz. But that’s not the point, and he knew it. (And, eighteen years after his death, conservatives are still attacking his work.)

I think that David was pretty agonized a lot of the time, to be honest with you. He just didn’t understand why someone who wants to actualize their life, their consciousness, in the broadest and richest possible way, why they’d become targets for people who want to shut that down. There was an essential confusion with him, he’d ask it over and over again: What is the source of homophobia in our society, and why do we not look at homophobia as a disease the same way we understand racism and sexism are bad and negative, and that they harm and even kill people? We’ve never had that national conversation, and David insisted that it be in the forefront of discussion of his work.

face book folks can "like" - support hide/seek - to follow related news and the mobilised response. like, the guy ousted and banned from the smithsonian w/ hide/seek playing on an ipad hanging around his neck and various galleries and institutions screening the vid in solidarity with DW's spirit. great post sally lorna.
- bill 12-08-2010 1:55 pm

I'm not Sally, my name is Lorna
Sally left you years ago

- L.M. 12-08-2010 2:38 pm

its not freaky friday?
- bill 12-08-2010 2:44 pm

I know. You saw all the texty stuff and not a damn sparkle in sight. (and the lack of a unicorn animation barfing up a rainbow can also lead to confusion over who's posting)
- L.M. 12-08-2010 2:48 pm

In regards to your first comment, I love the guy with the iPad. (finally a use for that stupid thing)
- L.M. 12-08-2010 3:45 pm

Sholem's essay is really great, as is David Wojnarowicz. I am currently reading about perceived homophobia in the punk scene in New York in the 70s in the book "Please Kill Me" (thanks to Scott Carruthers). The book, a series of first-hand quotes & memories with no editorial contextualizing, paints a picture of a scene where people who were restless outcasts made their way to NYC to bond around music and dope and shared experience of abject, in the gutter, do-what-you-gotta-do, getting by. But that sense of comradery that rises off the pages get's blown apart by homophobia. You can hear people's pain in these stories. And imagine what it must have been like for Wojnarowicz as a punk-ish kid turning tricks to survive in Manhattan at that time. Jayne Country: When Handsome Dick Manitoba came down to CBGB's that night, it didn't click in my head that he was the singer of the band the Dictators. I'd seen them at the Coventry and I liked them. But I didn't put two and two together, particularly onstage with the lights and the band and the music and the four black beauties. All I kept hearing was, "Queer!" That was the one word that used to get me going bad. He had to pick the one word that would get me all riled up. "Queer!" Yeah, he knew how to do it. I mean, I was from Atlanta and was used to being chased down the streets and people shooting at me and stuff. So my first reaction to something like that is, you know, look for the nearest thing to hit them with. Scott Kempner: He broke his collarbone with the base of a microphone stand. If he'd hit him in the head, he would be dead, and there isn't that much distance when you're swinging something that's this long. To me, Wayne never had to pay for that. I mean, Richard's still got an outstanding debt. We went to get Wayne Country, and his manager and anyone else that decided to stand up for him, and couldn't find them. He was hiding, like a little fucking pussy. Then reality set in and we were talked out of beating up Wayne Country. Legs McNeil: Gay liberation had really exploded. Homosexual culture had really taken over — Donna Summer, disco, it was so boring. Suddenly in New York, it was cool to be gay, but it just seemed to be about suburbanites who sucked cock and went to discos. I mean, come on, "Disco, Disco Duck?" I don't think so. So we said, "No, being gay doesn't make you cool. Being cool makes you cool, whether you're gay or straight." People didn't like that too much. So they called us homophobic. And of course, being the obnoxious people we were, we said, "Fuck you, you faggots." [...] But as far as being homophobic, that was ludicrious, because everyone we hung out with was gay. No one had a problem with that, you know, fine, fuck whoever you want. I mean Arturo would regale me with these great sex stories. I'd be going, "Wow, what happened then?" What was great about the scene was that people's curiosity seemed stronger than their fear. The time was rife with genuine exploration, but not in a trendy mass-movement way. And I was always fascinated by how anyone made it through the day, what they really did when the lights were out, to keep their sanity, or lose it. John Holstrom: ...a story started going around the entire New York underground that we were gonna run this article exposing the gay mafia. So everybody started telling us, "You better not do that if you know what's good for you!" Then Lester [Bangs] chickened out because he didn't want to screw up his reputation — but it was just a rambling, stupid, harmless little thing, you know? Everybody read more into it than there was. We would have been better off printing it just so people would have left us alone. That was one of the things that really helped put us out of business. A lot of places would not touch us after that. Nobody wanted to talk to us, nobody wanted anything to do with us. "Punk magazine is gonna expose the gay mafia," that's what Lester was telling people. And the scene was so small, everybody heard about it. Everybody was scared. I guess people were more in the closet back then. I didn't even know what the gay mafia was supposed to be. It was like a joke somebody made up. The gay mafia? There was no gay mafia! It was Lester's idea. And Punk magazine took the rap for it.

- Lorna Lisa
- sally mckay 12-08-2010 4:12 pm

related: let's not forget the stupid punk Nazis. ("wha? you find my swastika tattoo offensive, but it's about the music!")
- L.M. 12-08-2010 5:09 pm

notes on the late 60's, 70's-early 80's nyc youth scene: survival in nyc for hustling runaways and otherwise youthful new arrivals (frequently junkies but sometimes just hungry) in nyc is tellingly depicted in the film Flesh (1968) staring joe dallesandro. in patti smith's new auto-bio Just Kids, patti works at scribners book store and robert hustles in time square to pay rent, eat and occasionally have enough cash left over to purchase a drink to nurse for hours at maxes. dee dee wrote 53rd and 3rd which is a somewhat autobiographical account of the crew he ran with to hustle male tricks for dope money at said intersection. this all on the heals of the AW factory scene, midnight cowboy, lou-david-iggy, ny dolls (the dolls i think were all straight guys?). handsome dick now has a small cash cow of a bar on ave A, but in the day he was quite (rightly) vilified over the bashing incident and the whole town turned out for the WC benefit.
- bill 12-08-2010 5:13 pm

the curator a few years ago who put Jack Peirson's Kurt Cobain piece , next to David Wojoanwicz's This Boy piece and thinking profoundly, how important David W was, because both peices here both about language, desire, hiding, suicide and ambiguity the connections as present and tenuous as spider silk. Those two peices broke my heart, and it was the single most emotionally intense peice of art making i have ever seen. Sholem;s brilliant essay and Hide/Seek both reminded me that although I spend much of my time thinking about the formal implications of work--of colour, line, and the like, the social and political implications of the work are even more impt. I find him holy, one of the great gay martyrs of the 80s.

Ryan Conrad's updating of the piece for the 90s and 00s, first put in Hartford, a working class town down on its luck, and not New York, was one of the great responses, and suggests that David W's work has become liturgical, it is something that has entered our experience in such an important way, that it will be repeated, responded to, and it has become dangerous. http://faggotz.org/images/projects/wallpiece2_web.jpg

Lastly, I got into an argument with David from the conserative Anglican blog Anglican SAzmidat, who argued that blasphemy was enough for the peice to be removed. But like Piss Christ, I find the peice so achingly holy, so much about the implications of Christanity, and the body, and sexual desire, and anger, and isolation that it cannot be anything but an act of extreme devotion. I wrote this one the blog: Screen captures and clips of the work show it to be a short, relatively tame scene. Dark, splotchy insects crawl over a plastic figurine, profane in the way that any physically disturbing painting of Jesus is profane. Wojnarowicz doesn’t blaspheme; his commentary is on loss of faith and doubt, a despairing image rather than one meant to shock.

Blake Gopnik, Washington Post.

The body of Christ depicted as returning to the earth, in the eternal good friday that marks the corporeal suffering of us all, is holy. Has your body never failed you, David? Have you never felt lonely, ever had a loss of faith or doubt? How would you depict the holiness of that desert moment?

- anthony (guest) 12-08-2010 5:26 pm

Nazi-punk fashion is just out-n-out boneheaded.

And speaking of boneheaded, according to "Please Kill Me," the NY Dolls were indeed straight guys. Jerry Nolan: "Musicians always get chicks, but not like the Dolls. The Dolls took all the chicks from any other musician, from any other band. Anybody! If the Dolls were in town, we owned it. I mean we owned it." (yeesh)

- sally mckay 12-08-2010 5:54 pm

Anthony! woot. Great comment.
- sally mckay 12-08-2010 6:02 pm

the curator was one in seattle, sorry. thanks sally
- anthony (guest) 12-08-2010 6:32 pm

Thanks for posting this. Really important.
- Leah Sandals (guest) 12-09-2010 2:35 am

I should mention that the late Will Munroe put together a really good show on 70s punk & queer culture at Art Metropole in 2006.
- sally mckay 12-09-2010 4:05 am

i decided to investigate where that "gay mafia" quote from holstrom came from and found this. [!!!]
- bill 12-10-2010 6:33 pm

Bill that's awesome! And yay to John Holstrom for posting it. I was very curious to read this so-called "rambling, stupid, harmless little thing." Now I'm gonna go do just that.
- sally mckay 12-10-2010 9:39 pm

I can understand why Bangs decided to pull that piece (entertaining as it is). Basically all he's saying is that people in the NY music scene sleep with other people which sometimes leads to gigs and record deals and a lot of those people are gay. He's trying to somehow make that into a story hook, which it just isn't, even when he names names. The only potential story hook is about him, paranoid straight music critic moving to NYC, and, yeah, it makes him look bad and he was smart enough to realise it. It was nice of PUNK mag not to publish it at the time. They could've had a field day with it.
- sally mckay 12-10-2010 11:02 pm