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Dear Tea!

Oh yes! This is beautiful. All the collected fragments of our collective queer history! Do you remember Jerome’s show in the little gallery next door to the Bearded Lady —I think Kiki Gallery? All these tiny reliquary type paintings in nail polish, lots of fucked up clowns. I thin Jeffrey’s space was Museo Contempo—on South Van Ness? I remember going to a book launch or reading for you there—and it was the site of many weird and wonderful moments. I remember having a Taurus Party there with Heather H and maybe Sash too? And of course some beautiful sprite I was just acquainted with… was the name Jade? appeared in the backyard and did a fire dance as a birthday gift.

I love your recollections of the open-mic scene, I feel like I mostly knew that scene through you. Bucky I remember meeting in Muddy Waters on Valencia and that was the start of my lifelong bromance with him—he had long hillbilly hair back then and was like this gentle, loving bear. I have so many flashes of the open mic and slam scene and can recall at least two times where straight cis male peen made it out on stage during some angsty screed. But it didn’t feel the same as queer nakedness which, obvs was also a common thing—the world wanted us dead, our nakedness meant something different, aggrieved as though those dick-brandishing/twisting enraged straight boys might of been.

Most of all your post makes me miss that sense of spaciousness in life, time to scrawl out a poem and a place to go at night to publish it into the air and ears of your community (friends and enemies and just, well, indifferent strangers) and to be seen & heard, to listen & be listened to, to have the immediate feedback loop of shared existence, and to feel like in the moment making art was worth a damn.

I miss the raw scrappiness of those exchanges.

Thank you! I love you!

Coop

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This is awesome! Thank you for writing it. (I still have a copy of Danielle's book, who was my ex's ex's ex, and recited her poem Elegy for Andy Gibb in a college theater class circa 1992...)

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i love this. thank you, michelle!

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Ahhhh your subby is a hundred percent treasure!

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