office.mp3: Feeling Fem

When I think of Mel 4Ever spinning around I cannot help but think of those ad hoc yet kind of avant garde videos Britney Spears posts in her Hollywood hills house nearby. Both pop stars love to play around with a song, to twirl with it and twist it to their own liking. Strange sounds abound. There's the hallowed drumming bass's thunk-thunk-thunk and twink-twunk-dunk or a baby's crying and giggling. It's that carefully calibrated strangeness that really makes a work of art. For some, it might be too much but as the princess of pop admits in her tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me, “Artists are weird, you know?”

Mel4Ever— Hi. What's up? 

Johnny Belknap— Just ordered a bunch of giant-sized J Crew button downs. 

Gorgeous.

How are you?

I’m good, I’m good. 

You're in California now? 

Yes, I moved here three days ago. 

Okay, cool. How’s that going? 

It’s moving, I’ve been moving. You know how it goes. I've been in LA at least once a month over the past year. I'm working with producers and songwriters out here. It makes sense for me to be rooted. I'd rather be based in L.A. and come to New York all the time instead of the opposite way around. Not having a home in New York feels destabilizing, though. 

I imagine it's a bit disorganizing. It usually takes a month or two of nesting up for the guesting feeling to go away. Any initial impressions from your new nest?

I’m getting used to the 85-degree temperatures. It's sunny every day. Also, I’m not being yelled at anymore and there’s no street noise. I feel like I'm waiting for all this energy to suddenly be thrown at me. It just simply does not come. It's different. 

Sounds different. 

I was dying in New York. Things were intense. I was like I have to get out of here or I'm gonna not make it.

What was some of that intensity that you were experiencing? 

The public transportation as a tranny was, you know — I was getting harassed every day. I got spit on, I was yelled at, and it was unsafe for me to just be a woman. I didn't have the resources to put myself in a safer place. Plus, New York’s other social aspects were killing me. I was depressed. I wasn't going out anymore. I wanted peace and quiet. So, leaving came down to this huge lack of safety.

That’s real. The city’s public transportation is frustrating. It’s slow. It’s smelly. In some places it’s heavily policed and in other ways it's totally dangerous. It really pits people against one another.

Exactly.

A number of friends have cars or take cars all around the city. Whenever we can and as often we can, it’s just time to drive around town listening to stuff by Sophie or x3butterfly or Flirty800 or Memphy. Did you ever read A.J. Cook’s letter to Sophie?

It's a loving letter, both a eulogy and this sort of social history, in which he shares a lot about his friendship with her and says she: “loved to be on the move, ideally in a car with no particular destination. Even within a few months of knowing me, she would welcome any excuse to drive me around London, usually with the radio on. So many of my favorite memories have her at the wheel, one way or another.” It reminded me of riding beside girlfriends inside their cars. It's funny how a car can become a home, even if one of its uses is to technically transport you home — you might actually already be there as soon as you step inside it.

I haven't read that but I deeply relate to that. I've been called to cars, too, and need my physical space. It's like being a bubble boy. I didn't want a car in New York, though. Having a car in New York means it’ll get bumped into and scratched up and whatever. There’s a little more parking space in L.A. 

What kind of car do you have?

Well, I keep failing my driving test. 

Haha, totally. 

I didn't study too hard for L.A.’s version of the test. I've had a license before and I was like fuck it, I remember how to drive! But, the test used words I had never heard anyone say before. Do you know what a chevron line is?

A line at a gas station glory hole?

Girl …

I don’t know. What is it?

It's the repeating arrow lines that are bicycle lane buffers. 

Right.

Got me but I like learning. I’m studying a lot right now. I know I’ll get my license soon. [At time of publishing Mel has her license]

Is studying the reason you haven’t been going out? 

No, I just wasn't enjoying myself. Plus, I didn't think I had another New York winter in me, you know what I mean? There's only so much Wellbutrin and Lexapro I can do. The East Coast was beating me up. 

It's weathering, a good reason to incubate. Since you’re incubating, does that mean we can expect more music soon?

I'm working on a follow up to the EP I released this past September, She Culture.1, and a track with someone you may know. 

Ominous as fuck!

You’ll hear us soon.

Whatever. She Culture.1  been on repeat in my headphones since you dropped it. Your EP, plus Kim’s Promblematqiue — thank god she finally did that. And, Troye’s Something to Give Each Other. Living for her "One Of Your Girls" music video — thank god she finally did that, too. She’s getting back to her roots as an actor, and she’s good at it. I always gasp whenever I see her pop up on screen watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine. She played a baby Wolverine.

Oh my god.

Cub claws out. What’s your follow-up EP called?

It’ll be She Culture.II.

Tell me more about the EPs.

The first EP I dropped was about processing all of these external forces coming at me. A lot of it is about my trans womanhood. Some of it is through my experiences from other people's perceptions of me, especially during my first year of transitioning. The only thing I was hyper-focused on was how people perceived me, often all of the toxic ways that you can experience transness.

What were some of those first-year things?

A lot of questions, like: What rights don't I have? How is my life going to be harder? How am I going to survive? So, I wrote all these songs and suddenly I had an EP. Through all that writing I had somehow fully processed a lot of these questions. I didn’t necessarily have answers but I had art.

That’s really brave.

I have less questions now. Instead I’m thinking about what makes me valid. 

Which is?

I don't really give much of a fuck about how anybody perceives me. I’m writing about what makes me excited to be alive. I keep imagining myself naked, throwing my hands in the air, spinning around.

Queue Natalie Wood lip-syncing to Marni Nixon: Feeling pretty, oh so pretty! 

More like I’m in a garden than I’m in a bridal shop. But, yes pretty and witty and bright. The next era of songs will be more pop-inspired and dance music rather than raging punk stuff.

That’s exciting. Who are you working with for the next EP?

I'm working with some songwriters who are the new generation of L.A.’s cool girls. There’s Ava, there’s Alex, and Mothica. I'm working with a producer, Dave Burris, who worked with Slayyyter. Also, I’m working with Ayo Beatz. He produced Slayyyter’s song, “Daddy AF”, which has been my number one most-played song on Spotify for two years in a row. 

Some of your collaborators on SheCulture.I are the coolest cool girls, too. 

Linux and BABYNYMPH.

What was working with them like?

It was so fucking cool. I am a big fan of BABYNYMPH.

Me too. I met her in Athens last year. I went to see Grace Sands play a party that one of BUTT Magazine’s editors, Andrew Pasquier, was throwing. BABYNYMPH was there and I swear she was hovering the entire night. Maybe it was the platform boots or her luminous energy. She knows her music shit. 

Yeah, I love her. She was close to Sophie. I decided to find the most psychotic trannies I could get to collaborate with and we sang about biting dicks off and chewing them for this song called "Big League Chew".

Bubble Boy meets Little Miss Bubble Gum Girl, the Big League Chew.

I sent a demo to BABYNYMPH, and she shot back: let me fuck with this. She really chopped it up Athens-style. You know that thunder sound. Afterwards, I sent it to Linux and she worked her lyrical magic. She’s planning on her music-making comeback.

Wait, amazing. 

It sparked something really cool for all three of us. Linux and I performed the song a bunch, and it's so fucking funny to get her on stage.

Now I’m thinking of chopping and screwing, chomping down and screwing. Sometimes I give teeth to end a hookup that’s not going well. Have you ever done that?

I once had this really bad hookup and did that. He was smiling but then I realized something else was desperately wrong. His teeth were falling out. 

Panic attack.

Exactly. I said I was having a panic attack. I left. 

What’s love life been like recently? Any crushes or flirtations or loves? My sense is that something is in the air. Maybe, I’m projecting a bit. 

Well, I had a boyfriend a while ago. We broke up two weeks before I started hormones because he was like, You're trans? I hate that he made that into a question.

His loss. 

I've been a revolving door-type bitch since I’ve transitioned. Have you seen that show Veneno?

Yes! I watched the whole series with a bunch of friends a few years back. It was all about women coming in strong through sheer will to power and mutual myth-making. Each character was so hot and profane and totally unafraid of whatever glamor wounds and beauty marks they accrued along their way. 

Exactly. You know when Veneno gets the advice that if you want to have sex, go have sex with whoever, and do whatever you want to do? Then there's a montage of her just fucking everyone.

Right, right, right.

That was the last two years of my life I was going the fuck off. I would replay that Veneno scene and assure myself that I'm in my power.

Hari Nef wrote something about that series that’s stuck with me. She writes that the series tells, “Veneno’s story through the cracked lens of talk shows and memoirs: media in which realness — fact — is an expectation, defied here by a woman who finds virtue in fantasy, in her ‘perfect illusion’ of beauty and ferocity.” To speak earlier about some themes from your EP as well as that revolving door idea, there’s something about the manifestation of realness that’s like shaping, or figuring, fiction into fact.

In fact, one of those boys actually stuck around.

See! Fortune favors the brave.

We’re in love now.

Period.

We broke up three days ago because I was moving to LA.

Oh no.

I thought that it wouldn't work. But, I called him this morning and I was like, wait, nevermind.

No way. 

He was excited.

I bet. 

He said that I had changed my mind a lot quicker than he expected. He thought it would be a week, not two and a half days.

Well, love is in the air after all.

I always thought having emotional support was a crutch or a weakness. I didn’t want to be tied down to somewhere else other than where I'm at presently. Then I remembered that I'm not 21 and dumb; I'm a full ass grown up. I'm creating my own destiny here. I can live in the sun place, make music, and have a boyfriend.

I'm so excited for you.

I’ve learned to not ruin love and support if it is beneficial. It’s so easy to misread a text, believe that someone’s distance is avoidance because of something you did, or spiral into a future trip. We can think like that. Or, we can continue to be in each other's lives and get over being dumb.

Being dumb is cute if it’s like watching Youtube videos all night or making out for hours on the front steps. What shows or music have you been watching or listening to recently?

I’ve been going through Max Martin's top hits discography. I want to be able to make music that’s so easily, distinctly recognizable as one of his songs. A Katy Perry smash hit or a Taylor Swift song. I’m listening to Ayesha Erotica’s old singles and albums. I’ve been watching Realhousewives of Salt Lake City because those are my girls, my women. And, randomly, I’ve been watching a lot of Julianne Moore films: Savage Grace, Children of Men, and May December. Her filmography is completely cunt and insane.

She’s swirling in her culture, she culture. For the music, what was your favorite song to make?

I think my favorite song to make was "Big League Chew". I needed the EP to be this deep, dark creative expression of my recent experiences and people’s perceptions. That was the goal, this was all about aural castration.

Deep, deep inside.

For "Big League Chew", the origin story for that song was that I was sitting in my living room and my balls were hanging out of my thong. My roommate looks at me and goes, “Oh my God, your ballsack looks like Big League Chew.” And I was mortified and said, “Oh my God, fuck you!”

That’s rough. 

I started writing it down immediately. I was pissed that she said that but it was so fucking funny. It’s what it looked like at the time: hairless and chewed up.

Gumpy, tongue-tied, and ready to blow.

I gave that prompt to BABYNYMPH and told her to go the fuck off. Then, I brought Linux into the studio and we set up a whole thing. She goes, I'm Nicki [Minaj].

Totally.

Even though the song is 2 1/2 minutes it feels like a time capsule of this frenzy of girls vibrating in Athens, in Brooklyn, and in L.A. We were going global in sisterhood, all centering on this one idea of getting our dicks chewed off.

Were there any songs you wrote that totally surprised you?

My favorite song to write was “So Cool." I wrote it after I had my first hookup as a woman. It was with my new face, I guess, just my factual face. I hadn’t had sex for a long time and then I decided I couldn’t keep hiding from guys. I went out. Someone brought me home after we had a cute night and he was she-ing me down, saying how beautiful I was, and affirming me. He was such a gentleman. 

Chivalry isn’t so dead after all. 

The whole time I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. But, simultaneously telling myself to be cool and to keep it together. After we hooked up, I went home and I wrote about that feeling. “So Cool.” I wrote it very quickly and there’s a cute pop bridge. It was the only song I wrote that doesn't use any cuss words. 

I wonder why?

I love cuss words. They just are so stark and so aggressive so maybe that’s why I didn’t use any for that song.

Cuss words also mean like 20 different things depending on how you use them. Which is what's so fun about them. I don't think using cuss words have much to do with having a low IQ unless IQ now stands for an imagination quotient. 

They can be negative. They can be positive. They can be affirming. They could be like a huge insult.

Have you played any of your songs during a hookup? Or, started singing during a hookup?

I have been in a hookup and a melody will come to me and I’ll stop what I’m doing to write the melody down on my phone.

Wait, you’re kidding.

No. I wrote something like that the other day. But then, I put my phone down and get back into it. Some guys think it’s cute. Other guys, though, have been weirded out. I started laughing a little.

What is your writing process like besides workshopping in the bedroom?

I lean towards a Buddhist mentality. I like being in the flow. Music comes when it’s present. Both feeling and thought. I try not to think too hard about it because Nicki Minaj once said, “don't ever edit what you write.” Just let it all go.

Wise words from a beloved postmodern priestess poet. You recently saw Miley Cyrus and Ryan Beatty together at what looked like a super intimate performance. How was that?

It was really cute. Crazy meeting Hannah in real life, I see so much of Hannah in my former self. Obviously massively inspiring. Leads back to my process which is very much that I'm on a city bike and going somewhere. Wait. I stop. I hit up my Voice Notes and give it a few lines.

That’s so good. You’ve found your magic. I remember when we first met and you wanted to be on stage, have some lights on you.

It was in 2018.

Long ago but also not so much.

I’ll be back in New York soon to play something.

Break a leg, baby.