Tonight at Brown:

Have you heard of Project Weber yet? They’re an amazing group in Providence, RI doing direct service and outreach to male sexworkers in our state.

Come find out more as Richard Holcomb, co-founder of Project Weber, gives us an in-depth look into the world of male prostitution on the streets of U.S. cities and abroad. Through lecture, documentary clips, and a panel, this presentation will cover data, personal and professional experiences with this population, and the barriers and challenges in providing male sex-workers with appropriate services and support. The panel will include Richard Holcomb, one of Project Weber’s fantastic outreach workers, and documentary filmaker Dio Traverso, with SNEAK PEEK CLIPS from the documentary “Invisible”.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

Smith-Buonnano 106 [95 Cushing Street between Brown and Thayer*]

[Disclaimer: I haven't actually heard of Project Weber before and they don't seem to have a website, just a Facebook page with no real info on it; here's a profile of the founder, though. AIDS Care Ocean State sponsored a screening of this a few weeks ago, though, one I had to miss because I was hosting an event somewhere else. I'm hoping to go tonight and have a report tomorrow since this is, you know, a subject I'm very interested in...]

*It’s easiest to find it if you enter from Brown Street. If you’re coming from Thayer take the alley behind Blue State that doesn’t actually look like a street…]

[photo: Philip Lorca DiCorcia, from the series Hustlers, which has nothing at all to do with Providence or with this movie]

It’s happening a week from Saturday (the 10th) and we’re expecting it to be really fun. Really, really fun. Come!, if you’re in the area.

Headmaster no. 3 is out now! Featuring projects by Peter Cochrane, Alan Cumming, Chris Ironside, Matthew Lawrence [that's me!], Ivan Lozano, Gabriel Martinez, Walker Mettling, Matias Uris, Jim Verburg, and Michael Wynne. Pre-orders and subscriptions went out this week, and we’ve started shipping to all of our stores as well. We’re throwing a party in Providence on March 10th; if you’re in the area we’re expecting it to be AWESOME.

Also, now that this issue is out expect me to be blogging a little bit more. Over on the dirty Tumblr I’m roughly 3/4 of the way through counting down the 100 Hottest Men That Ever Lived, and there’s some exciting guest posts coming up in the next couple of days before I announce number one on Wednesday.

A last-minute-ish heads up: I’ve just been added to the panel Blogging Queer Culture at Brown this Friday, which also features Krista Burton of Effing Dykes and Sarah Dopp of Genderfork.  Both of them are infinitely more popular than I am so this is sort of an honor.

It’s part of IvyQ, a conference now in its third year which aims to “create a pan-Ivy community of LGBTQ students and allies equipped with the skills to examine their identities, value those of others, and understand intersectionality.” There are events going on all weekend, including a keynote address by Kate Bornstein, so if you’re in the area you may want to check it out. It’s geared towards students, obviously, but I’m fairly certain that anyone who wants to can attend.

I realized, at about 11:15 tonight, that I hadn’t really spoken today. Through an odd combination of events–my boyfriend being out of town, my work consisting of walking dogs and editing photos, my familial Christmas obligations being over for now–I just didn’t have anybody to talk to today, excepting the one girl I ordered a coffee from this afternoon.

I had no intentions of going to a bar tonight, but realizing that I hadn’t spoken yet made me worry slightly for my sanity. So I went to the E&O, just to say something to somebody.

The E&O is a divey bar, three blocks from my new apartment, that is simultaneously small and yet oddly cavernous. It’s located on a side street, which by Providence law means that it’s forced to close at midnight. And it is, for lack of a more meaningful term, our hipster bar. There are a lot of beards and a lot of plaid and a lot of people getting shots with PBRs. Which isn’t a value judgment; I’m pro-beard and pro-plaid and, if forced to choose, would take a PBR over a Narragansett any day. But you know what I mean. I played the game I usually play when I’m lonely at a bar–How Many People Here Would I Consider Doing It With Based On Sight Alone?–and there were nine, which is a lot.

While it’s generally a rock bar, Tuesdays at the E&O have become kind of a thing. A DJ plays a lot of poppy stuff from the late seventies through the early nineties, with the videos for each song projected onto the giant screen that occasionally dominates the space. His song choices are novel the first time you see him and slightly less so once you know his schtick. But that’s fine, whatever. Tonight I heard/saw “Love Come Down,” “Best Of My Love,” not one but two Billy Ocean songs, and “Head To Toe,” Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s number one single from the summer of 1987.

Of everything I saw in my forty-five minutes there, “Head To Toe” was the one song that really got heads bopping. Yeah, the one girl in the cheetah-print minidress was already singing meaningfully into her straw when “Get Outta My Dreams Get Into My Car” started. But “Head To Toe” really hit big with the crowd as a whole, most of whom were my age (I’m guessing) and most of whom (unlike me) probably hadn’t heard the song in quite a while.

The first single from Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s Spanish Fly album, “Head To Toe” hit number one right after my sixth birthday, which is more or less exactly the point when I clearly remember knowing all the songs, and the videos, that appeared on MTV and on our Top 40 station, 92 PRO-FM. (Honestly, though, I preferred “Lost In Emotion,” Spanish Fly‘s second single, the video for which is notable for featuring the single most hilarious condiment-specific product placement in music video history. Sorry, Gaga.)

This year I actually saw Lisa Lisa in concert, at the nostalgia-heavy Freestyle Rush, a package tour of artists (Stevie B! Expose! Brenda K Starr!) who could only really afford to make two stops: Springfield, Massachusetts, the city where freestyle never died; and Providence, where the mayor himself came out before the show to thank the audience for keeping the spirit of freestyle alive. He seemed genuinely tickled that Lisa Lisa was actually gracing our little burg, and that made me love him even more than I already do. (Our mayor is Dominican-American and forty, meaning that he was a teenaged boy when Ms. Velez hit it big, so it’s probably not that surprising that he was a fan.  But still.) The Freestyle Rush ended up being my favorite concert of the year, despite Stevie B’s child support arrest-related absence, although honestly that probably says less about the show and more about the bleak state of my concert-affording finances and the even bleaker state of live music in Providence.

But I digress. “Head To Toe” is a good song. A great song, probably. I was done with my drink and I stayed to hear the rest of it. But of course after a few minutes it ended and then the lights came up and then I wanted another drink. (Note to people with taste buds: the Sam Adams Saison is bad. Even if it’s only $3, don’t bother.)

The West Side of Providence being what it is, the clock striking twelve leaves two options on a Tuesday: a possibly quiet bar playing an iPod stocked with songs I’d know, or Metal Night.

Metal Night is loud, and the metal is not any kind of metal that I know or can speak about.* It could be from 1976 or it could have come out last week, and it could be by guys from down the street or it could be by the blackest, most famous band in the history of Scandinavia. I just don’t know. I hear no songs that I know and don’t know that I hear any songs that I actually want to know. And I kind of like it that way.

But that got me thinking about what it is about bars that I actually like. Because I went and had one beer and a fine time. But because of how bars on the West Side of Providence work, most of the people that were rocking out to Lisa Lisa showed up at Metal Night at the same time I did, and I wondered what their thoughts were.

I know people go to bars because people are social and they like drinking and sonic ambience is not necessarily at the top of their agenda. (See also: people that go to karaoke bars but who aren’t there to sing.) But for me, an occasionally lonely snob, I feel like there’s a different answer. For me the songs are important, which is why my go-to bars are the ones where you can hear Leonard Cohen and Boards of Canada and not, say, the gay bars, where there are just so many songs from the Glee cast that one can hear before one considers enrolling oneself in a hetero conversion camp.

But why do I go? The bar is open, which I guess it not a minor point. And also I was a little bit deprived socially. I could have just gone home and cracked a beer or made a cocktail and put on my own freestyle records. I mean I was doing that this afternoon, anyway. But I guess I like knowing that there’s a DJ in the room who is making conscious decisions about what’s getting played, and who knows things that I don’t know. Anyone with internet access at this point can thoughtlessly cobble together really awesome playlists, which is why I’m often overjoyed with things I hear at Whole Foods. But knowing that someone cares, and that it’s someone’s job to specifically make you care about what you’re hearing? That’s a really valuable thing, even if ultimately you don’t even really know what you heard.

[*As an aside, I just Googled the DJ's name, because I don't know him and don't want to be the one that's all like "DUDE what is this song?", and apparently we went to the same high school.  He was two years ahead of me.]

This Tuesday we’re having a holiday party for Headmaster in Providence at The Avery.  7-10pm.

We’re also throwing a two-and-a-third-days-only-more-or-less sale at the new Headmaster Online Shoppe.  Order now and save on magazines, prints, or our new series of black-on-black tool shed notebooks.  The magazines also make delightful presents, I should note.

So, close readers of this blog will know that for a couple of years now I’ve had a giant mental and physical boner for porn star writer Conner Habib.  So I’m super-excited to announce that this Thursday he’ll be in Providence and we’ll be reading some non-fiction together.

The reading takes place at 7pm at the AS220 Project Space–that’s the one on Mathewson St., next to the Stable.  The reading starts at 7pm and I can genuinely say that you should totally try to be there.  Conner is a very smart and interesting guy, and hopefully when we finally meet face-to-face I’ll be able to, you know, function and not just start slobbering.  Although COME ON would you blame me.  Especially now that I just saw stills from Joe Gage’s upcoming Dad Goes To College.  Holy Lord does that look like my new favorite movie ever.

I’ve been avoiding most of the talk surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement, mostly for the completely selfish reason that I’ve been seriously job-hunting for months now and have no leads whatsoever and I don’t know if I can mentally handle the knowledge that there are thousands and thousands of other people out there who are in exactly the same position, if not worse, and that basically we’re all trying to get the same ten or twenty jobs.  It’s… daunting.  And sad, but mostly daunting.

The Occupy Providence movement, which officially kicked off nearly a week ago, was largely organized by queers, from what I can tell.  I haven’t visited the encampment, although it’s smack in the middle of downtown (across from the city’s only bus terminal), but that’s the impression that I get, anyway.

There’s a local LGBT news listserv I subscribe to, where occasionally someone will say something that’s only partially related to the gays and then the moderator will immediately step in and tell people that one can not promote one’s event on the LGBT listserv unless it’s about AIDS or unless a drag queen is hosting.  (Literally, she has said that.)  It’s a good policy during election season and kind of a frustrating policy when it’s not election season.

But anyway, this one person’s e-mail slipped through the other day, and it’s so completely misguided and weird that I thought I would share it with you:

I am conducting a survey of the GLBT community related to the recent Occupy X going on around the country, most recently Occupy Providence.

The gist of the message that this movement promotes seems to be thatthey are victims.  They are not given the things they should be givenand they can do nothing to help themselves.  For example, they shouldhave a job but they don’t and so they are a victim, apparently of those who have money.

My thesis is that there are two types of people, or rather two mental perspectives and these are victims are owners.  A victim is someone who sees themselves as completely subject to the whims of the environment they are in.  They can do nothing to change their situation and others are to blame.  An owner sees themselves as responsible for their own life, and while effected by their environment, not at the mercy of it.  They do not look to others to blame but look to what they can do to improve their own situation. This concept of Owners and Victims was first proposed by Steve Chandler, a renowned self help author and consultant.  In different terms, it can also be found in books like The Secret or in the application of The Law of Attraction.

To help me with this survey, please email to the address below with a subject line of Victim if that is how you see yourself or Owner is that is how you see yourself.  If you have the time, I would also like it if you could state briefly in the email how this self identification has helped you in your life.

With these reference points, do you think that anyone is actually going to put the word Victim in the subject line of their e-mail?  That the Occupiers, people who are in a very literal way trying to change their situation, would be framed as people who are not given the things they should be given?  This line of thinking is so foreign to me that I needed a day or two to digest it, to make sure that I wasn’t misinterpreting it or reading wrong.  But, um, no.  No, I’m not.  I can’t say that I’m familiar with the work of this one renowned self help author and consultant, but if books like The Secret are seriously being used as reference points, then this e-mail may be the most completely depressing thing I’ve read all last month.

(image via WBUR)

Celebrate the Providence launch of Headmaster No. 2 one week from tonight at the Salon, from 6-10pm.  HARSHBOYS will be DJing and a bunch of Headmaster contributors and models will be there.  There will also be drink specials and snacks and the editors (including me!) and stuff.

Also, can we just glance for the moment at the amazingness of Heyd Fontenot’s drawing of Beyonce Knowles?

This Friday I’m DJ-ing the Queer Animal Futures party in Providence with Meg Powers and Eli Manhunt.  It starts at 10 and goes until I have no idea.

Here’s their description from the official Facebook invite description:

“it’s not a dance party if people aren’t dressed up…”

unrecognizable faces, wild eyes, bodies that language can’t describe. your queerest dreams of high technology, self modification, hybrid magic, science fiction creatures, embodied transformation, post-apocalyptic beasts, fierce babes…

dressed up = $1-$2 donation….
not dressed up = $6.

money helps support B16 and future queer dance parties. but we would rather you get fancy than give us more dollars….

so… get fancy.

[n.b. queerness not required, by any means. however, an ability to look squinty-eyed at straight privilege & cis-gendered privilege is highly recommended! :) ]