Happy Pride, From Girldick and The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
We’re all heart eyes for Girl Dick. Blair Broll looked like Envy Adams if she were gayer, which is pretty hard to do. We start off with some party ethnography: “Where my bisexuals at?” An earth-shattering cheer. “Where my gay men at?” A loud and surprisingly low ‘woo.’ “So there are some tops in the crowd,” observes Broll. “Where?” asks a guest. I hope they found the top(s) they were looking for. “I want everyone licking nipples and getting sexy tonight,” orders Broll. By the first song, the keys player has their ass entirely out and is thrusting while playing. A fan has already made mouth contact with Broll’s boobs. Nice.
After their set someone asks for my number. It’s funny how different people hit on me — girls have their friends compliment me. Boys yell at me across the street and laugh about it with their friends. I guess queerness is about multiplicity. I end up leaving the queer art museum performance to go play beer pong (and win). Multiplicity.
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black rolls up in latex, pink suits, gingham, and their signature massive wigs. Painted red and green with black teeth, Kembra Pfahler flings pairs of underwear into an eager crowd with arms outstretched, seeking salvation in flying pantyhose. Voluptuous Horror’s fans sing along reflexively. At the end of their set, Pfahler sprinkles an unspecified white powder on us. Conveniently, inside the exhibition, the Bronx Móvil harm reduction table has Pride-themed “safer sniff kits,” complete with condoms, rainbow straws, a plastic cutting board, and fentanyl test strips.
Harm reduction is an inherently queer political action — not queer in the sense of sexuality, but queer in the sense that it functions outside of mainstream institutions. When cops and politicians refuse to take care of us, we take care of ourselves. In Gary Indiana’s Horse Crazy, a character speaks of AIDS and claims that the only safe sex “is if one person jerks off at one end of the room and someone else jerks off at the other, both trying to hit the same spot in the middle of the floor.” In a queer aesthetics class, we learned that there’s no such thing as safe sex, only safer sex. The same can be said about drugs. Public health rhetoric that criminalizes drug usage as a crisis that needs to be solved fatally overlooks the reality of drug use. The “stop using drugs” argument is eerily reminiscent of the “stop having sex” argument. There’s no contact without risk.
Something Blair said at the end of Girl Dick’s set stuck with me — while many of us can celebrate Pride by getting drunk and making out with strangers, we must remember that Pride is political. We must continue to organize, in joy and rage, for and around those in Palestine, many of whom may not have the capacity to celebrate Pride during genocide. The argument isn't that we must be constantly solemn, or that we must forego celebrations, but that we must also channel constructive energy to ensure Pride becomes a lived reality for everyone. It’s a catchy phrase — “Pride was a riot.” Perhaps it’s time we live it.
