By Jeff Walsh
With his acoustic album "Motorcycle Childhood," Tyson Meade uses spare arrangement and raw vocals to share details of his life. It's very different from his other role as the openly gay lead singer of the Chainsaw Kittens, where he used to take to the stage in lipstick, tights and mini-skirts.
By Janis Ian
In a small town somewhere at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains, teachers prepare for the coming semester. Professors grimly consult lesson plans, breaking in new Dockers ("I still wear the same size I wore when I graduated," they brag, bellies hanging over their straining waistlines like blubber off Ahab's whaler). Dormitories are surrounded by troops of exterminators bent on eradicating last year's mess before the health department shows up for a final check. The grounds are infested with newly arrived victims, ready to give the university their all and terrified that anything beyond the boundaries of the parents' homes will eat them alive. If they only knew.
By Janis Ian
I am standing with my tit caught in a wringer while a mall-haired technician tells me to relax. I am thinking that if men had to put their testicles in a vise as part of a yearly physical, we would have a cure for the common cold by now. I am very frightened.
The pink slip came as we were leaving on vacation: "We have found what appears to be a routine abnormality..." What's routine about an abnormality? I decide to put on a brave front and joke that in all my life no one has ever called me routine; then I burst into tears. Later on I do the grown-up thing and panic, furtively examining my breasts in the mirror for changes. I'm afraid that if I touch them to check for lumps, I will set something off. I wish they were smaller. I wish they were removable. I wish they were on anyone but me.
I think there should be a student discount for vibrators and other sex toys.
In third grade I dissected owl pellets. Despite my usual enthusiasm for science, (I won the state science fair that year experimenting with the feeding habits of Lumbricus Terrestris (known to laymen as "earthworms")), I was deeply troubled- not so much by the pellet itself, after all, I handled the worms without so much as a murmur- but, as I now believe, by the concept of regurgitation. As my schooling progressed I was introduced to a more sophisticated form of pre-digestion: the textbook.
I'm on Oasis! I'm so excited. It finally worked.
So I guess this is where I just start to spill everything - who I am, what I'm all about, where I'm from...
Well, Sat. night I found out that I suck at flirting. I went to this big pompous formal event with tuxedos and evening gowns and everything. I was at a table with this guy I hadn't seen in months. (Let's just call him Andrew). I knew he was gay when I saw him last September, at a friend's party, playing truth or dare in the hottub. Wow.
here is a list of painful memories:
watching my parents shoot up
listening to my parents fight
watching my arents fight
talking to the cops about my parents fight
going to a jail, and seeing my daddy through a glass window, holding back the tears so i could talk to him over the little phone
waiting for hours to see my mom on my birthday, when she promised she would come, but then didn't show
um...here it goes...just a little background:
when i was born my parents were both drug addicts, i was born addicted to heroin and coke. when i was four things at home started to get out of hand, and my grand parents got custody of me. I guess i have always known that im not completly straight...in preeschool i had a "friend"...Chealsea...she and i used to kiss and shit...all the stuff we thought only boys and girls could do. Now dont get me wrong, i have been raise in a very liberal, accepting house...i mean, for god's sake...i live in San Francisco, and my grandma teaches human sexuality at SF state university! we always had gay family friends over, i i was told it was perfectly normal...that it was better than normal, that it was beautiful. However, that is not what our storybooks said, and that is not what the tv said...the media had a major impact on my beliefs and values during the very early years of my life...anyway, chealsea and i would kiss and stuff, but i always, to some extent, thought what we were doing was wrong...but at the same time, i thougt it was normal, that every other four year old was experimenting in this fashion...
Am happy, like the bi-polar mania kind of happy! LOL! I'm pretty sure its not a chemical imbalance induced happy, but I imagine this is what it would feel like to be on the manic end of the bi-polar episode.
Anyway, I painted tonight. It was fantastic. When I stop and then go back, I always wonder why I don't just do it all the time. Oh wait, starving artist is not my style.
