 Hi everyone. Thank you so much for being here, for coming on this Sunday afternoon. You know, I've been half of radar. I want to first of all thank the library for giving us this wonderful space in such a short notice. And thank everyone who's been helping collaborate in putting this event together to all the readers. To Michelle T. who's not here, who's been an integral part of putting this together. Justin was a huge part of radar. He read many, many, many times and was a pillar of a radar community and of a literary community in San Francisco. So that's pretty much what I want to say. Before I bring Beth and Kirk upstate, I just want to say that for the folks that are not here, we're live streaming this event. And we're also going to be live tweeting the event with the hashtag Justin Chin. So in case you want to like chime in and say something. But that's it without further ado, I just want to introduce Kirk and Beth. Hi everybody. Hi. We don't know what to say. We don't fully know what to say. I did the wake up this morning with a horrible stomach ache and diarrhea and then I got my period and I'm breaking out in a rash and I feel like it's very appropriate. So I just wanted to say that. That's the first thing that came to mind. I was like this makes total sense for this to happen to me. And I just had a flash of Justin standing in the back like with like some, a few paired pieces of like skateboard clothing, making some sardonic comment about live tweeting this event. Yeah, I mean, we have so many great, amazing friends and writers that are going to be reading Justin's work, reading their own work dedicated to Justin that Kirk and I kind of said, we don't really want to do that much talking while we're up here. I feel just nervous and weird right now. But I'm sure once it gets going and we start listening to his his work, it's going to be pretty moving and incredible. So should we do want to say anything else? I think part of one thing is that our writers world that Justin is part of is we're not well practiced in losing our members the way that a couple of preceding generations were and are. So this is another way that Justin is a pioneer in helping us learn how to do what's coming with for all of us. So with that. I mean, and I do I do feel also like when he one of the God, like one of the things like you see happening with Eileen Miles right now is people are finally realizing after how many fucking years that she's been writing poetry how amazing she is. And I just feel like Justin's work is is if he had lived that long. I believe that that same thing would be coming to him because of his, you know, his work and that we should all just share it with the people who don't know his work and and buy books. Manatee Press is in the back selling his books. So go back there and and pick something up for a friend or for yourself if you don't have something and we're all a little bit. I feel like without him physically on the earth. It just feels a little less less elegance to me to be a human like that's that's the kind of the feeling I was trying to get at when I was really why I was so one of the reasons I was so upset is I just felt like like having him walking among us made me feel better about being alive in a way. And so anyway, go. So let's bring up some readers who are mostly going to be reading from Justin's work at various points in his career. And, you know, most of these people had different kinds of relationships with Justin some toured with him some wrote with him some performed with him in different decades. So enjoy. First up is Linnie Breedlove. I think we all know the words do feelings. Whoa. Okay. I believe they're now called feels kids today shorten it. Okay, so I just like say about Justin is that I knew him because he would come and read an open mic we had called fetch is queer open mic and he's brought like a lot of irony to grief and a lot of humor to grief which is was it's a queer tradition. And it's really important to be able to laugh at yourself and at each other when everybody else is flipping off. And this book that it is about the irony of having to say goodbye to your parent at your aging parent he like they're getting sick and you're having to take care of them and they're dying and that you outlive them, even though you're the one that's positive. So just going to read a little piece from them. I was looking at other people's personal web pages. I was fascinated by their frequently asked questions page. It made me realize how different how set apart I have become the questions I am frequently asked are. Oh my God, what have you done? Who are you and what are you doing in my room? Why are you so selfish and wicked and hateful? How long do you think you can claim to your tissue of lies? Are you sure that isn't infected? Why can't you just accept the inevitable? Recently whilst cleaning out my desk drawers I found a copy of an online questionnaire I had filled out. One of the questions asked if you could pick one super human power such as comic book characters have what would you choose? I had answered the luxury of having someone else write the script of a two dimensional recyclable life. The ability to cope with the daily accumulation of pain and grief and helplessness and despair, or super blasting death rays either in honeydew or cherry red, but it would be most cool if there was some way you could adjust and customize the color to stay with a slider in the preferences panel that shoot out of my nostrils. Yes, people expected to come out of the eyes so they'll never expect the nostrils. Unfortunately, I will be useless or at the very least horribly messy during allergy season. I'm going to read a little section of a story that was banned by at least two publishers that I know of. If you have a gag reflex, I'm sorry, but I want all parts of this wonderful writer to be remembered. The dealer is still working the dildo, quirks growing it in. He takes a good swallow of air and is whole loosened so that the pain eases a little. The dealer is working the dildo in and out of its ass. He can feel even more shit coming out of the sides now. He knows he is shitting. He can plainly smell it, see the earthy streaks. The dealer doesn't seem to mind or care. Instead, he's working the dildo with even brutal strokes, pushing deeper and harder, jabbing and digging as if it were a clam hunt at Pismo Beach. His face is one of concentration single-mindedly focused on the task. The dealer lets him take another long, hard hit on the pipe. He is thankful it helps. Now he has stopped shitting. Instead, he's bleeding. He can see the smear of blood on the thin, poly-white cotton sheet. He knows it is bloody because its viscosity against his bare skin is so different. Unlike that of shit or piss or cum or sweat or spit or bile or mucus, he feels his blood flowing like his shit was flowing a moment ago. He's surprised by how unaffected he is by all the smells in the room and the viscosity pooled under him. This is what life smells like. Even before birth, you spend all these months in the womb shoved up against the bowels and then you're born mere inches away from the poop hole. And then when you die, your bowel is the last thing that releases its hold on your life. And in the middle, in the middle, he once with a few friends watched a video on the internet that was reputed to be so hideously gross that it spawned millions of reaction videos of people watching the clip. Two girls, one cup. Showed two young attractive women indulging in some scat play while watched by some men. At some point in the clip, the two women crap into a plastic cup and then proceed to eat and feed the contents of the cup to each other. His friends were howling and shrieking in disbelief. The man was even nauseated to the point of dry heaving. At that time, he was merely bemused by the action on screen and all he remembered thinking was, in our lives, who among us hasn't had to eat the shit out of someone else's cup? The dealer pulls the dildo out. He almost passes out from the pain when the head of the dildo pops out of his ass. How could relief feel so painful? He might wonder if he could even think. He is quivering, trying to quell the racking spasms. The dealer takes his forefinger and dips it into a baggie, coating his finger up to the first joint with the powder white crystals, crushed chunks and shards, stick to the finger like fake snow, frosting on a shopping mall Christmas tree, like coconut frosting, he thinks. The dealer puts his finger right into the open hole. He feels his whole clothes on that finger like a Venus fly trap. The finger feels strangely cold. Everything else feels magnificently hot. Soon, very soon, everything will burn. Thanks. And next up, I want to welcome Danny Levesque. I'm nervous. Walking over from Bart, I realized I'm really nervous and then I realized this is how Justin made me feel in every conversation and our small conversations that I was lucky to have with him. And so I feel really blessed to have that feeling. And before I read a piece of Justin's, I have a message from Jen Joseph of Manikdi. And she wanted to say from Jen Joseph Manikdi, publisher who is traveling right now and wishes she could be here. Justin Chen was my friend for 22 years, as well as a Manikdi author. He knew his time on the planet was limited and made the most of it. Honor his memory, not just today. Do this. Read his writing. Share his writing. Teach his writing. Discuss his writing. Learn the meaning of grace from Justin Chen. His suffering has ended. His work lives on. That's from Jen. And this is a piece from Gutted. I was reading a lot of different stuff and this kept coming up. I would not mind getting the cancer that Ali McGraw gets in Love Story. The cancer where as you lay dying, you become more beautiful and more moisturized. The classic death would be Garbo's cameo, but all that coughing and flopping around on the bed is just so undignified. I realize she had consumption, but at least Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Still managed to karaoke with her consumption. I certainly wouldn't want the cancer Deborah Winger gets in terms of endearment. Come to laugh. Come to cry. Come to care. Come to terms. Oh, just go away already. The death I would most like is Bette Middler's in the Rose, where up on stage in front of a packed house, I tell the story of the first time I heard the blues. And as the story winds down, my speech all slurry and raised to an odd minor chord. I'll wonder why is it so dark? Who turned off all the lights? Where has everybody gone? Then I will collapse and die. While the strains of the rose play in the background. I want the version that is a duet with Bette Middler and Wynona Judd. That is the gayest rendition ever. Before you even get to the second verse, before you find out that the one who won't be taken cannot seem to give, or that love is only for the lucky and the strong, you just want to be fucked up the ass. My one request from my funeral is that at no point should I believe I can fly, be sung, played, hummed, mumbled, muttered, mentioned, or thought of. This is how Poltergeist activity gets started. But I know, I know my death will not kill me. Rather, it is the death of others that will kill me. Hi, Danny Lovak everybody. Oh, thank you. I feel so much better. I was just remembering the time that Justin and I went on tour through the south. Is Lisa Martinovic here by chance? We went and we were touring through the southern United States, and we got to the Ozarks, and the poet there that we met up with, Lisa Martinovic, she said, come to my boyfriend's place. We get on these horses, and we're riding horses, and I'm like, have you ever ridden a horse before? And Justin's like, no. And he's like, have you ever? And I'm like, no. And we're just on these horses going up this mountain, and then we get to the top of the mountain, and there's just this array of semi-automatic weapons. And we're going to do some target practice. And so Justin and I strap on fucking AK-47s and start shooting at paper plates. And we're not bad. Like, he was a really good shot, and he just looks at me and he goes, Beth, I can't believe we know how to ride horses and shoot guns just from watching TV. So perfect. We're so perfect. Oh, God. All right, our next reader is Mason Jay. I've got this little bizarre googly eye that Justin gave me that for a while was kind of a homing beacon for me, so I'm just going to light it here. It's sitting in a shot glass with Prince William and Prince Harry on it, because I figured he would appreciate that. I'll be reading from Harmless Medicine, and the first piece I'm going to be reading is called Final. When I die, I want to be cremated and buried in the Cemetery des Champs on the outskirts of Paris. On my grave, I want a statue of a dog viciously digging into the mound and pulling a stone hand out with its mouth. A plump cat will be balanced like a Bulgarian acrobat on the dog's back. On the cat's head, a mouse, though a hamster or a chinchilla is acceptable too, will be holding on to the cat's ears as if it were riding the rodeo for the fifth year. The rodent will have a top hat and tails on, resting on the top hat, a butterfly, and on the tip of the butterfly's left wing, two ladybugs dancing the foxtrot. The inscription on the tombstone will read, despair not, no strange fate befalls, on fearful night and heart, no heroes raised, no monsters vexed, no affliction reached, in dreams of outlaws' tears, this blessed rest. And then I'm going to be reading, sleepless, see what goes on at night, animals with flashing eyes, walk on stilts carrying broken beer bottles, trees grow ears and lips and vulvas and sneak into your bed, slide under your covers, cockroaches and slugs metamorphosize into fat-free, low-custural pound cakes. People who can't sleep don't have eyelids or can't close them like fish and birds. People who can't sleep are destined to die with their eyes open. They know this, and they obsessively watch TV shows where the actors sleep and dream and wake, and at every commercial break, they use the full force of their palms, sweaty from being clenched so long and tight, to push their elastic eyelids down, but the lid just won't close. It's as if they were rusty, exposed to sea air for too long, defective. In real life, people who die with their eyes open can watch their funeral, their cremation. They will witness their bodies burning and their unclosed eyes popping in the hellish heat of the crematorium oven like chestnuts on hot coals. If they up for the old-fashioned, they will watch their bodies slowly rotting in varnished sandalwood coffins until the muscle and tissue holding their uncovered eyes are devoured by mites and ants and their ever-bugged eyes fall with a dull clank into hollow skulls like marbles hitting the bottom of an empty fishbowl. People who can't sleep do not have nightmares of violence. No dreams of hoofed or horned animals or root vegetables scheming to slice open their fat blue veins with the kitchen knife the moment they fall asleep. They never sleep. They never sleep. Afraid of other people who can't sleep will hurt them when they sleep. And when they wake from sleeplessness, the new day drags like old paint over their ever-more cruel and pitiful skin, as if their aching flesh were merely a sad dream. Remember the utmost clarity from an innocent childhood. Thanks. Thanks, Mason. So the family wanted us to let you know that Justin's ashes were scattered at a pier near Fort Point. And Justin's initial desire was to be scattered exactly where Kim Novak walked into... in Vertigo. And because there's now fencing and rocks that have been put there, that wasn't possible, so they moved a bit. But the ashes were scattered at a place where there was a really great view of the bay and the bridge and the city. So... Justin. He used to say to me, because sometimes when you are out doing readings, every now and then you just don't feel like it, you know? And he would say to me that he had an advantage, because if he didn't want to do a reading, he could call the person up and say, my AIDS hurts. He said he actually did that and it worked. Please welcome Lauren Wheeler. It's nice to see so many faces and something about that feels right, but a lot of these faces I'm seeing in this room today. This is Justin's poem, Grave, from Harmless Medicine. In the harsh glare of an easily reprehensible life, the channel changer is lost in the crack of an infinite sofa. Everything falls apart. Everything breaks down, torn into a million fragments, Jericho every day. I want to be the blameless victim in this canceled puppet show. The marionette every mother loves, the ones souvenirs are modeled from. In that lifetime, Elton John will write mushy ballots just for me. Michael Jackson will want to be my best friend. He'd take me to Neverland Ranch and buy the llama-feeding trough. He'd say something like, you're a great guy. Don't give up. Stay positive. And I'd say, Michael, you fucking idiot. I am positive. And he'd say, oh, you're so funny. Would you like to touch bubbles? And I would. In the crux of my hollow, innocent youth, I believed that my tutty bears had feelings. To cure me of this, my guardians made me give them to the church missionaries' children. Scrub-clean, rosy-cheeked, blonde kids who smelled of sweat and talc, who were in constant, wide, blue-eyed bewilderment as to why they were profusely perspiring in the tropics instead of living out some winter wonderland Bobsy Twins fantasy, who were oblivious to their parents' desperate efforts to save the dusky masses, ignorant enough to believe in the secret lives of stuffed animals. I could not eat animal crackers because I did not want to hurt the poor things. But braise the right way I could eat any part of a pig, starting with the head, working on the soft flesh around the eyes, savoring its raspy tongue with a dipping sauce of gender, chilies, and lime. Oh, blameless, innocent victim. What measures a lifetime? I used to have this theory about how much life a human body could hold. It all had to do with a number of heartbeats. Each human assigned a number determined by an unknown power cascading over the dark waters of the unformed earth. For some, it was a magnificently high number, seen only in rich-y-rich comics, and for others, it was frightfully low, like 26. No bargaining, no coupons, no white flower day sale, no specials. Once you hit your number, you croak. I imagine the angels in heaven and the demons in hell gathering to watch the counters turn, like how I enjoyed watching the speedometer line up to a row of similar numbers, and especially when the row of nines turned into the row of zeros. Oh, blameless, innocent victim. What measures eternity? An eternal damnation, an everlasting love. I could not imagine the night sky stretched out forever, so I decided that it came to an end at some point by a velvet rope it ended, and beyond that rope were row after row of cushion seats, a majestic cosmic theater, playing every movie I can remember. I want to be able to evoke those blameless and innocent days to revel in their ignorance and goodness as if they have the power to protect and to heal and to strengthen and to bring me to safety long after all other resources were exhausted. But I emerge anew in the wreckage, blinking in the sunlight, the residue of saltwater in my belly. You know what they say. God never closes a door before making sure that the windows are barricaded and the fire escape is inaccessible. I used to know how to stop the revolution of planets. I used to know how to save the world. Now I don't know anything anymore. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren Wheeler. Next up we have Baruch Porras Hernandez. Hi, guys. I first saw this book. I was in a play and there was this straight actor I really wanted to sleep with and he was reading this and I was like, what are you reading? And he was like, oh, he would like it. Guy's a gay and an immigrant. Just like you. And I was like, can we have sex? I was like, you like poetry? I like poetry. Let's make out. It didn't work. We made it a little bit. We didn't have sex. But I stole the book from him. And I remember the first poem I read in the book is called X Boyfriend's Name, Michael. And up to that point, I was all about like, the sad gay poets. I didn't know that queer poets could be so funny and I feel like Justin is one of those people that you read and that helps you become who you are. And I met him several times. We did some readings together. And I was always like, he was so shy. And I was always like, I'm going to just hug him and tell him how important he is. And I'm like, I'm loud, but inside I'm also shy. So I just was like, I'll do that someday. And then this happened. So don't wait. Hug people. Tell them they're important. Anyway, and yeah, I still want to make out with that actor. But okay. X Boyfriend's Name, Michael. My mother is concerned that I haven't met a nice boy to settle down with. She keeps asking me if I've met the right guy yet. Well, mom, there's been some nice guys who just didn't work out. Some guys have broken my heart. And there's been X Boyfriend's Name, Michael. X Boyfriend's Name, Michael Number One was a sheer mistake, but we make such delightful mistakes when we are young. You're supposed to learn from your mistakes. But heck. X Boyfriend's Name, Michael Number Two, I've washed him right out of my colon. Just for once, I'd like to date a man and not his therapist. X Boyfriend's Name, Michael Number Three said I had communication problems. And I said, oh, go fuck yourself, asshole. What I should have said was, honey, I'm trying to understand your feelings of frustration at our seemingly inept articulations of our emotions. But I do have some unresolved feelings of anger towards you. Please, go fuck yourself, asshole. But maybe there's the off chance he's right. I have never been that great at communicating. X Boyfriend's Name, Michael Number Four, I should have known better the first time we met and we went back to his apartment to fuck. His idea of fuck music was Dan Fogelberg's greatest hits. I asked him to change the CD and he changed it to the only thing that could have been worse. Neil Diamond, live at Madison Square Garden. Coming to America, indeed. But I stuck with him and every fuck at his place was sheer hell. I tried telling him that his taste in music sucked and that I could seriously help him but somehow I lacked the communication skills to do just that. But then I thought I loved him and then I was young enough and foolish enough to believe that love can overcome Linda Ronstand. It cannot. But love did not stop me from throwing his Yanni CDs behind the bookcase. Nor did it stop me from torching his ballads of Madison County CD on the gas stove. Oh, what a beautiful blaze it was. He swore the CD was a gift but like all X Boyfriend's Name, Michael, he was a lying dog. Now I'm getting ahead of myself here. That's about creatively destroying X Boyfriend's property, not about X Boyfriend's name, Michael. X Boyfriend named Michael Number Five was suffering from a severe case of yellow fever and dumped me for some little Taiwanese guy fresh off the fucking boat two weeks in the U.S. and the little piss and faggot manages to find his way to cafe hairdo ready to be picked up by his American dream of homosexual romance. I can just see him sitting there, crossed working his non-threatening little third world chime offering to share his table and newspaper. I can just see them now sharing hair care products making mutual consensual decisions about dinner, movie, sex, and their emotional well-being. I can see them sitting on the sofa with the dictionary in their laps trying to figure out the difficult words in Barbera de Angeles's Making Love Work video seminar and thinking about adopting a fuck's terrier named Honey. I can see them having deep, deep discussions about which one of them has the better butt. You do. No, you do. No, you do. Stop it. You do. Yours is tight and tan, but yours is pardon angry. What a pair of goddamn fucking freaks. I would just like to see them in a big car accident crashing into an ongoing truck carrying a shipment of Ginzoo kitchen knives. But hey, I'm not bitter. I'm descriptive. I'm not jaded. I just have too many fucking boyfriends named Michael. Ex-boyfriends named Michael. Just once I'd like to see everything of my life with ex-boyfriends named Michael laid out on a fat barge sent off into the landfill of affection. I watched the barge ferry its way through the flotsam of therapy and crabs, dish soap and bat sex, shared shits and worry, devotion and drugs, pissed off nights and legless drunken revelry. I'll wave goodbye and I'll be fine. Thank you guys. The land fill of affection. Really. Next up, please welcome Philip Huang. I spent the whole week practicing my Justin Chin aggression, but Kirk Reid beat me to it. Goddamn you, Kirk Reid. I'm going to read a piece that by David Wanorovich that Justin had posted on his website. He had this weird little website for the Cree Arts Cultural Center with only four things on it and one was a recipe for like banana, cream pie and the other was this piece and for those of us who got to see him during his final week this seemed really prescient. 12. There were so many days of waiting for him to die at the third and final time that we've been talking to him daily because they say hearing is the last thing to go and sometimes alone with him the nurse outside the room I take his hand and bend over whispering in his ears hey I don't know if you're hearing or seeing any of this but if there's a light move toward it and if there's warmth move toward it and if you see nothing then try to imagine that one period of calm in the midst of that sky just where it reaches the ocean that one place I've always seen as a point of time and space where everything is possible where I could dream myself anywhere in any position and I said move into that become that, merge with the death I don't necessarily believe that it's part of some cycle that repeats in other lifetimes and what difference does it make anyway are you supposed to save all of your living for the next life I just tend to see it as some final moment where all the energy of my body will disperse so now it's day three or four or five I can't remember and his parents and two sisters are visiting the Empire State Building and one of his other sisters are standing in the room and the doctor comes in and removes him from the pumps and hisses of hoses and he leaves the room immediately after and there's this cloudy kind of sunlight moving around the room and the guy on the bed takes two breaths and arches his back almost imperceptibly his lips slightly parted I have hold of one of his legs and his sister one hand and Peter another hand or part of his arm and we're sobbing and I'm totally amazed at how quietly he dies how beautifully everything is with as holding him down on the floor 14 stories above the earth and the light wind scattering outside the windows and his folks at this moment standing somewhere on the observation deck of the Empire State Building hundreds of stories up in the clouds and light and how perfect that is to me how the whole world is still running and somewhere it's raining and somewhere it's snowing and somewhere forest fires rage and somewhere something moves beneath dark waters and somewhere blood appears in the hallway of the home of some old couple who aren't bleeding and somewhere someone else spontaneously and somehow all the mysteries of this world as I know it offer me comfort and I don't know beans about heaven and hell and somehow all that stuff is no longer an issue at the moment I'm a 16 foot tall 548 pound man inside this six foot body and all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure and the need for release thank you Phillip um um the first time that I saw Justin Reed was at Slim's um there was an audition to go on the Lollapalooza tour and Michelle T was there that's the first time I met Michelle T too and the first time that I met Justin and he read this piece Justin was one of the very first queer slam poets in the United States which seems unfathomable now but it's really crazy to think that we went to Ann Arbor Michigan and he would get up there and be Justin and people were blown people did not I mean everybody was scared of him and loved him and everybody wanted Justin to love them and we are our team when they have this tradition where you have to do a team piece to introduce yourselves and we were like I'm so stupid I can't believe we have to do it a team poem what are we going to do and we got I had a copy of Suzanne Somers poetry book and and so we each took a turn reading a stanza from a beautiful Suzanne Somers poem so this is the first poem that I ever heard Justin read it's called Chinese Restaurant I thought you'd like to know what really goes on in the kitchen of Chinese restaurants well when they say no MSG they're lying when they say tell us how hot and spicy they don't really give a flying lizard fuck what you tell them there's only one recipe and you are going to eat it and yes they spit into the food of the idiot you know the one everybody in the restaurant can hear how hot and spicy is that is it hot hot or spicy hot or chili hot or garlic hot it's not peppers is it because if it's too hot I get a burning in my asshole what a shit order the fucking steamed vegetables buddy and yes they do laugh quite unmercifully at the fool who actually tries to follow the pictorial instructions on how to use chopsticks that's printed on the back of the chopstick wrapper and just what the hell is Kung Pao anyway in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant they don't wash their hands much but you already knew that didn't you in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant someone is working way too hard for minimum wage but hey it's a family thing so it's okay and hey it's America you make it work if you work 12 hours a day 12 hours a day 7 days a week so you can dream that American dream you know the one where Diane Parkinson of The Price is Right or Bob Barker of The Price is Right spread it just for you which one depends on your sexual orientation no substitutions please unless of course you're bi then it's your lucky day come on down in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant the waiter lives in fear of deportation the dishwasher lives in fear of being bashed for stealing some stinky job nobody wants scared to death of participating in the democratic political process and the chef knows someone who has AIDS at home or abroad from the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant I look for some semblance of the familiar I look for home in every bite in the dead spit of mourning after equal hours of silence equals death act up fight back what do we want a cure when do we want it now I want some friendly solace and all I find is the lousy jerk-off interrupted interrupted only by the 300 pound clerk who sticks his head through the door every 10 minutes to yell buy your tokens get into a booth or get out of here I find no simple gesture can erase it all I find a border that I cross each day for a decent wage of self-deception call it optimism call it punch fuck fist fucking the ass of the quality of life and it's a tight one too baby I find a pissant pleasure a memoir of failure cancer for brains and I want to go gotta go gotta find this thing called home in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant I am queer for queer and I refuse to pass my ugliness for roses I refuse to trade my queer for your queer at this point you're probably thinking wait a minute all of this wasn't in the Joy Luck Club all of this wasn't in the PBS special presentation a thousand pieces of gold and all of this probably isn't in that stage projection of the woman warrior either but I just thought you should know what goes on in the kitchen of Chinese restaurants now go eat are there I'm just wondering if anybody in this room knows of many recorded pieces by Justin I know there was one that was a compilation from the brainwash cafe but that might be a good some information to put up because it's just here just I can't read his stuff without hearing that incredible voice oh that's right the Gary Glaser tape Gary um okay next up we have Danny go ahead Danny do you guys mind if I take a photo of you guys because Beth Pickens is in LA she asked us to take lots of photos of this event anybody object thank you great so I'm gonna do like a medley of a few of his stuff from four different books and on the fifteenth day God invented phone sex once just once I was sick of being 5 foot 10 185 pounds muscular works alblond hair blue eye 8 and a half inches six around cut with low hanging hairy balls ready to pound your ass and fuck your face once just once I was 5 foot 5 120 pounds skinny shaped head tattoos, piercings, regular masters in johnson 6 depending on where you start measuring from and the accent is because I'm a god damn faggot chink ready to sniff your pits and wrestle you for what you want and the fucker hung up on me I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best phone sex fuck something about the left brain thing had this guy on the phone and once and had this guy on the phone once and the scene was he said he had a plastic bag over his head and wanted me to get him off before he choked to death and I said wait a minute how the hell can you talk on the phone if you have a plastic bag over your head wouldn't it get in the way of the receiver and the fucker hung up on me I want to be a buffed fag when I walk down the street I want folks to do a double take gawk and disbelief mouths agape and say oh my god that faggot is so buffed I'll spend 6 hours in the gym every day blasting my quads doing leg lift squats presses and curls so I'll be the buffed fag of your dreams I'll pose and flex my muscles while having sex because that's what turns the boys on I will have them worship my muscles and tell me how good I look as they chow down on my glutes I'll bench press until I look like the Tasmanian devil as I walk down the street and all my big chest skinny waist top heavy neanderthal arm drag squagger thinking I'm the hottest shit in the universe and I am you know you want to be a buffed fag you can't help it as you watch them waddle down the street sure that folks will get out of their way down either protein shakes boogie on down to our little techno trans dance clubs our breeding group display cases for buffed fag bodies so come on what's stopping you decency pride intelligence let's all be buffed fags and the whole damn scrawny world will belong to us I've had incredibly bad luck with demonic looking men sure I find them vastly attractive but somehow they seem to be attracted to other demonic looking men I try looking demonic but it really doesn't work with me the best I can do is look like the boy next door's younger brother who lives besides the most gorgeous demonic looking bloke in my search for a demonic looking lover I try placing a classified ad in the local news weekly but due to a typo I was surprised to discover there are actually quite a sizable number of actual Satanist in San Francisco I'm trying to remember my first kiss but I can't Anna May Wong and May West were the only two Hollywood leading ladies that never got to kiss their leading men the studio brass thought there was too much smoldering sexuality already without the smack of lip contact I'm trying to remember my first good kiss but I can't then there was this other guy every time he got a rouse his salivary glands kicked in and he would salivate like mad this man he always had a spit he kept a little spittoon it was a cheap waist basket really with tissues wadded on the bottom besides his bed for this purpose you would think this was quite gross but actually he was a damn good kisser acupuncturists believe that you can tell what ails the body by looking at the tongue the coating of the tongue how the tissue looks how it hangs in your mouth the cracks the shape how wet it is everything about the tongue points to something in your body every part of your body has a casual connection with your tongue it's late and I can't sleep it's been raining like mad and the roof is leaking everywhere drops of water sneak down the fireplace and drop like flies in the dead ashes I'm still trying to remember the first good kiss and the last good kiss and what happened in between while Ella scouts something fierce while my heart breaks again Anna Mae Wong and Mae West are off somewhere holding each other's faces in their hands teaching each other how to kiss why he had to go is a mystery some say it was because of UFOs the gravitational pull of mercury and retrograde or those incurable boils on his dick it could be because his mother said so his wife said so his other lover said so the voices told him so because all good things come to an end and we're at Dumbo yellow section of the parking lot waving farewell to the magic kingdom the happiest place on earth maybe it was because I wanted to fuck with those Mickey Mouse ears on maybe I shouldn't have told him I wanted to do those four things I haven't in five positions he had to go and now he's gone and friends say you're better off without him it's his loss if you love somebody let him go there are other fish on the bus but all I want to do but all I want to do is lie in the dark with my Roberta flak records just me Roberta a grand piano and her giant afro plotting how to destroy his property rip his piercings out and give him herpes all because he had to go and I wanted to go first thanks Danny speaking of Justin Chen Impressions his brother I met in the hospital and he turned to me and he was like he just did his eyebrows the exact way that Justin did and he did an impression of him and it just floored me it was incredible and you could just see like growing up that had been the fuel of torture probably I'm projecting next up please welcome Bucky Sinister hey everybody the only thing I'm going to say before this is that it references a reading series I ran where I kind of like I think a lot of us writers at the time kind of knew each other mostly from going to readings and a lot of us maybe didn't even hang out like outside the readings but we're at those things all the time so we kind of saw a lot of each other and yeah I met just at that same reading Beth was talking about kind of an odd thing a lot of people kind of came into my life that one weird reading this is called Six Secrets you look so much bigger on stage oh Justin I'm the only person crying in the big short I left work early kind of concentrate and pick this movie I'm getting all the text about you Beth texted that you were taken off the ventilator and I just lost it someone here thinks I am this moved by the work of Ryan Gosling now that you're gone I can share some secrets with you secret one my memory corrupts from reality to a Roger Rabbit theme past a certain number of years I remember everyone is cute animals anthropomorphic cars or Simpsons characters secret two we were in a heated competition since we met Justin we weren't aware of it but I thought of it often the way San Francisco competes with LA and LA doesn't know your books sold better we both went to SF State but the faculty liked you you got better write ups in the local weeklies even now while you were dying I contracted an unspecified Arito-Sychlitus my iris is inflamed and you are dead no one gives a fuck about my eye Justin because you fucking died you one-upping son of a bitch secret three I have to tell you about Bob White I have to explain why I can't show videos of you from my reading series I should tell everyone under 40 that no one carried video cameras around back then no one except for Bob White Bob showed up week after week hundreds of times letting the camera roll while and all our friends read poetry and heckled each other I figured Bob will be the one person to document this and one day Bob was gone no one knew why he left no one knew where he was and as I asked around no one really knew him no one had a phone number and knew where he lived so years later Stolmar and I are drinking in the Uptown as we were wanting to do we're talking about poetry readings a little too loud and this guy comes up to us and says hey are you guys poets we get ready to fight and he says maybe you know my dad Bob White holy shit I said I haven't seen him in years and his kid said dad killed himself on Christmas a long time ago we swap some awkward stories and drink the ill-reputed well bourbon and then I said hey you don't happen to have a bunch of videotapes lying around do you stacks of drunks in a bar yelling at each other they may look dumb to you but they would mean a lot to me and Bob's kid just looked at me befuddledly you don't know do you he said no he said I have no idea his kid laughed there was no tape in that camera ever my dad carried a video camera around and pretend to film things so people wouldn't talk to him it's the perfect metaphor for that precious time of our lives a video camera with no tape all the backflips the nudity the heckling are gone the chaos of nerds swelling with pride poetry the amphetamines are gone the bucket we dumped the unfinished beers and two and sold back to the yuppies we didn't like is gone that's what we called the house beer I guess that secret number four and all the wine and all the bottles were really from one of two boxes that we had to refill with before the start of each shift secret five and all that world is gone and the only thing that are lingering in the all that world is gone and the only things left are lingering memories and stories like farts and an empty elevator of life oh Justin, I miss you I miss the way you read that very first time I saw you on stage at Slim's you read your Chinese restaurant poem and I derisively said to the lovely Carmen Guilla I was dating at the time this guy just won the way you giggled with your hand over your mouth while looking away the catty whispering snare talking about authors and books you didn't like the way you hugged me goodbye that last time I saw you I don't remember where it was but it was the first time I noticed how small you were fuck you poetry slams for making poetry a thing that is one of the lost fuck you drugs no alcohol for blurring and warping my memories fuck time and fuck money I've never had both of you simultaneously fuck death fuck disease and fuck Brad Pitt who is more self-righteous than a white Jesus painting secret number six this is the last one this is the first poem I've written in four years since my friend Alex's heart blew out thanks for giving thanks for giving this back to me like some kind of morbid gift bag you lawn sprinkler of sass you giggler covered mantis I promise to always remember you the size of Voltron thank you thank you Bucky next up our hamster I knew Bucky was going to wreck me I just fucking knew it man I fell in love with Justin the moment I saw him read it was it Mark Chester's sex art salons and you were supposed to read sexy material because it was a sex art salon and he wrote he read something totally romantic that had like three words about sex it was called this sea of decaying kisses and he never said that he fell in love with me at the same time but he did say that he wanted to bone me instantly in spite of my poetry and in in spite of my performance and when I asked him what he liked about me the first time he saw me was that I look so demonic and by the way while we're all sharing secrets that probably we shouldn't and I should probably not say this at all but I am the fucking guy that had ex-boyfriends named Michael I had two of them and one of the ex-boyfriends named Michael is me in there the one that said we were always having trouble with communicating all we did I mean we hurt each other so badly I've never ever treated a boyfriend as badly as I treated Justin I really don't have any any right to read his stuff but I'm going to do it anyway and I just now realize I need my glasses let's see if I can do it who the fuck am I you know oh god this is from I know it was his first solo show in San Francisco and he was still behind the curtain and he read this so it was the first piece of the show and the audience was very uncomfortable because we were looking at nothing but the curtain waiting for something to happen and instead we're hearing all this stuff that made everybody even more uncomfortable well you're about to hear who the fuck am I and I can't read it like Justin I wish I could I mean he floated those words out in a way that was just absolutely I mean everybody fell in love with him all the time even if they wanted to beat him up they fell in love with him I am Chinese I am part of the Chinese diaspora I am gay at any point in my life I always seem to be in love with a man and said I didn't understand a word you said but your reading was very powerful I have an accent I shave my head I have tattoos I am damaged I am a Joni Mitchell fan I hate my body I love my feet I am a cat owner I have allergies I am from what is known as the third world I feel invisible I feel powerless I feel unattractive I am bitter I feel normal I belong to what they call Generation X I feel alienated I feel like Asian America's bastard retard child I am in pain I have more closets than I care to imagine I have bad closed sense I like fucking I like being fucked I like sucking dick I like swallowing cum I like red meat I am nearsighted I am uncircumcised I am vaccinated I don't know my HIV status anymore I hate a lot of people I hate fruit desserts I like rough sex I have insomnia sometimes I think I might fall in love with Linda Ronstadt I want to know for sure I want to be loved I hate anyone who loves me I am drowning I am the day of openness I am a plague of locusts I am crucified I am bones and paper I am nothing but dust I am a work in progress I am abandoned I am fucked up I am totally fucked up I am a freak I am in between worlds I am drawing a line in my skull I am sick I am recovering I am in recovery I am a fucking shit I am a fucking shit out of someone's asshole I am grim I am brain dead I am a chink I am a fag I am ticklish I am violent when provoked I am sauce spoken I am nervous I am a butterfly I am a whore I am a virgin I am nothing I am mad I am a dog I am repentant I am baptized I am saved I am going straight to hell I am going to visit heaven just to say hello I am need of something good I am the premature ejaculate of a cheap trick I am short I should know better I am a rat I smell bad I am not who I want to be I am regret I am remorse I am happy I am delirious I am cruel I am fate I am poison I need poison I need oxygen I need to be abused I want to scream I want to cry I am floating I am a boring fuck I am a vegetable I am a child I am curious yellow I am a burden I am repulsive I am this splendid parsnips I am the form of a mouth I am a dinner of lilies I am subterranean I lie like mad I am in agony I am spiteful I am baited with ambition I am baited with lust I am naked I am a black sleeve I am a cut sleeve I am the secret life I am the lines of pleasure I am mud and honey I am choking on honey I am drooling I am noise I am not a pipe I am the last one to be picked I am broken I am shame I am a blade I am sad I am empowered I am not angry anymore I am numb I am everything I shouldn't be I am everything I want to be the peace of the world the chaos I have I will go to church I have no other choice I am just a unt跟我 I'm just a unt sure because I'm not just a awkward child because I don't want you to have attached to that your argument you hate us like yes yes, I like it I like it yeah, It's funny I think and it was too, and Justin helped me and I, Horhound helped me, there were a number of people who would read these poems and it was just like, they were so funny and they would stick a needle in that fucking cyst and, you know, it's perfect for justice, the poet of bodily fluids that would walk out of his reading with an invisible pus coming out of my head, but it was good for me, you know? So anyhow, this is called Elegy for a One Man Endangered Species. When I needed a good old American dream weenie roast, I could always rely on Justin. He might call it hard dicks and dollars, Disneyland or the price is right, but who else would do it while talking affectionate smack about Chinese restaurants? Who else rated airlines according to which were the best at pandering to uptight white assholes? Who else would estimate how many billion babies, 580, had died in his mouth? Or detail the post-cancelation fates of the love boat cast as revenge for all the kisses they had mangled? If you can nuke bullshit and insist on good kisses, you have my attention. I need people who can get politically pissed without preaching at me and Justin was so fun when he stomped on lies. I listened to him like some people watch monster truck rallies. One time he came to dinner, I asked him, what you wanna eat? Justin said, I want an endangered species. So I grabbed a pen and my imaginary waitress pat and I asked, would you like the entire species? There's just some of its meat with that, sir. He said, I want lots and make it bloody. So for the man who'd already published a list of every meat he'd ever eaten, I ran over town looking for something precarious and weird. I forget what I made, but I remember I apologized and Justin, the intergalactic brat, said, West, I knew you were too PC to cook me something in danger, but I figured you'd go nuts trying to get the next best thing and I was just curious what that would be. It was only much later that I spotted in that the patented chin reversed thrust and remembered I'd been cooking for a one man endangered species. It was an easy thing to forget. He had so much juice, but death always sort of hovered around him like a mosquito. Last time I saw him, he said, he just got his EMS license. I said, wow, you're bleeding out in an ambulance and you get fucking Justin chin with electric paddles. The grim reaper with a comedy routine, that's cool. He said, West, we're supposed to bring him in alive, but when your time comes and that's how you want to roll, you call me, I'll see what I can do. When I heard about the stroke, I tried to picture a slow Justin, a Justin with aphasia whose tongue wasn't twice as fast as his feet, but I couldn't see it, I still can't. Well, sometimes I can still hear him. Turns out my copies of his books were Michelle, loaned or lost. So after he died, once again, fucking Justin chin had me running all over town, thinking once again about endangered species meat. And hearing him say in a spectral way, that's what you get for losing my books. And even as I speak, I can almost hear death saying in an irritated tone, young man, are you trying to tell me I'm boring? Who do you think you are? Unfortunately, I can't hear what comes next because I think we all know what good work Justin would do with a question like that. Thank you, David. David West, it's so good to see you. It's been so long. Next up, Kevin Killian. Hello, everybody. What a splendid program you've put together. And you've raised the bar so high, well, I can't even try, but I will tell you that Justin was an enormous fan of Kylie Minogue. And I was a neophyte. Somehow we heard I was trying to get on the gravy train in the late 90s, I guess. And he helped me so much. He goes, well, you haven't heard this and you haven't heard this and you haven't done this. And it was the day when video transfers were more difficult than they are today. And I was dying to see this one show that they were showing in London all over the British Empire. An audience with Kylie Minogue. Maybe some of you have seen it. Well, I was like, how am I gonna see it? It's only shown in England. And they weren't having it on YouTube or anything. Well, he was like, leave this to me because he explained how Kylie was big in Malaysia and Singapore before she hit anywhere else. Even her native country, Australia. He sent me an envelope in the mail and it was a disc you could put in your computer and it would download this concert program of hers. And he included, because it was Valentine's Day, like those little Valentine candies that have little sayings on them. So I wrote this poem for him right away. It's called An Audience with Kylie Minogue for Justin Chin. She had a song called Fever and she acted it out on the stage during this broadcast. And in Fever, it's like, the singer is like so molten hot with lust for this guy that she's, and he's a doctor. Check me up, doctor. Shall I take off my clothes right now? And this all gets acted out in pantomime on the screen. So when we were at the hospital in Justin's last days, even those of you who don't like Kylie must have felt something of that very beautiful theater of being in that bed, holding his hands and though he was in a coma or whatever, talking, you could feel him squeezing your hand or you thought you could. The candy hearts, each one no bigger than a fingernail, spilled out on Formica. Love me, text me. I guess that'll date it, it was 2001. Text me, class act. Oh, here's one, email. Wow, they have changed since in the days when I loved you. Got love says this one, hot yellow dot on a table of faint gray. Here's Amore, something ethnic. As I swid myself up, heart in my throat, all itchy and fevered for my audience with Kylie Minogue, thinking quick, like two triggers on two guns of each finger of the hands of Kali, John Woo double bill baby. Thinking like history screwed in lightning. I grab a few hearts, be mine, and candy girl, and thrust them into my open palms like blinky stigmata's. Then I pat on my screen and the doctors pull back the linen curtain. My boo, first kiss, dear one, hello? I cry out. Is anybody there? My heart is beating faster and work is a disaster. Nothing changed since the day in which I turned against you and my little thing got hard and ran back at me shotgun. This is my picture that I took of Justin and I was so surprised to see it up on the screen here. Well, for me to you, thank you. We have two more readers and I just wanna invite everyone to buy Justin's books at the back and really support Manic Depress who's been just so supportive of Justin and many other queer writers in this room. So our next reader is Daphne Gottlieb. So the rumors that Link, Justin and I romantically are absolutely true. I started them. I should know. I'm going to read two things he wrote, one of them by force. In 2006, I put together an anthology and I hounded writers to write stories about having sex with me. Some of them were true, some of them were not and the first person obviously that I asked was Justin and he came back at me and said, I'm going to write it from the point of view of your cat. I was like, okay. And then he said, well, think about it. Your cat sees you at moments that no one else does. Your cat sees you first thing in the morning and last thing at night and knows parts of you no one else does. So this is excerpted from that. See that gangly one with the ropes of hair, the one who's all legs and arms and lips and smooches, all cunts and boobs and cackle, the one who's all emo and brain fart, all theory queen, all Tuesday refugee and Thursday child, all brain and ass and beef and moral morass, all shameless and pious and imperial kindness and hussy and metric, all drama and misdeeds, bull and bitter, all faithful and shredded, grace and charity and mercy, all ventival flames, fanned even while she blows forgiving air kisses. That's the one, that's my human, that's Ms. D. Ms. D is asleep. She's been sleeping fitfully for some weeks now and she's been dreaming badly. She's holding her losses and her disappointments too close to her heart and who can blame her? But blame doesn't burnish the bruising heart. And so this is where I come in, this is my specialty, this is where I work. When she dreams of all the terrible daggers of her waking life, I waggle my way into her dream and I make it just so. Then she dreams of spirals and swells of music instead. When she dreams of cobbled monsters wooing her or of a loping with carnival freaks, her welfare taunted and on auction and vultures straddling her corpse, I wipe it all away, flick it to the ether and let her dream of her first love or her great love weathered in all timelessness. When she dreams of wastelands ruined by war, post-apocalyptic island all filled to the brim with cancer, I make for her the dream of the living sea, the eternal garden, the healing stone. When she dreams of the city made of doors, a place perpetually in autumn, plagued such that all milk within its borders turns to clotted blood. I make her dream of city transformed in light and art by her very presence. There she is, her best, her happiest, her most loved. I put on a fabulous apartment, ample parking, good food, loyal friends, good times for her. When she dreams of suffering fools, I let her dream of mother. This is what we do, this is what cats do. For who are they but are so imperfect and damaged, so ripe with pride and decency, naive as lamb chops? And what more can we do but stubbornly protect them and simply love them in all their bullying, fragility? These nervous days, I want to kiss you. I want to just kiss you and hold you. I want to kiss you and hold you and hug you and love you and kill you. I want to kick my habit. I want to open a border and close a bank. I want to open a mind and close a heart. I want to open a shopping center and close a stadium. I want to have my own talk show, yeah. I want a low-fat, low-cholesterol, guilt-free snack because I've got a yummy, yummy, yummy in my tummy, tummy, tummy. I want a new gas mask. I want to be the other white meat. I want to deal a meal. I want better weapons than you. I want to kill more people than you. I want to fuck more people than you. I want to fuck over more people than you. I want better nipples. I want my say even if I've got nothing to say. I want your new age, virtualistic karma. Fuck me all. I want to kick your habit. I want to make you love me like you love your dog. I want to meet Tracy Lords and ask her, why? I want to meet Jeff Stryker and tell him to stop it. I want to be a buff fag. I want to discriminate against more people than you. I want to spread my brand of hate-filled ideology with more venom than you. I want to spread more love than your mama. I want to know who's on first and why the fuck is he on first and not me, damn it. I want to lick your butt, spread your ass cheeks and lick the dry shit out of your sweaty butt hole. I want to swallow. I want to be the last victim of cynicism crucified on the cross of fuck you. I want to be the first one to tell you and in these nervous days, I want you to give me your money, give me your spare change, give me five, give me a break, give me a better gig, give me a minute, give me a lifetime, give me your mantra, give me your American history, give me my American history, give me, give me, give me a man after midnight. Someone help me chase the shadows away, give me your first born, give me a hand, give me just a little more time. Give me God in a teacup, give me God in a toilet duck, give me your underpaid, under-employed job, give me this all ages show, give me a stiff drink, give me a good beer, give me hope, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage, oh fuck that shit, give me shelter, give me another chance, this never happened before, I was just tired. Give me another chance, I'm sorry, I won't do that again. Give me some cheap sentiment, give me some sweet pain, give me some chicken tonight. Give me your tired, your weary, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, give me your cum, your piss, your spit, give me your infected blood, give me your disease general, give me your STDs, give me your best makeup tips. Give me your secrets to clear skin, beauty, success, and weight loss. Give me more power, Scotty. Give me some sense of empowerment, give me some sense of security, give me your best shot, give me your stinking crown, give me more, give me what I ask for, and you can take what you want from me. Definitely got, Leib. I don't, none of us picked, none of us wanted to read the same, he has so much incredible work that when we were figuring out what to read, everybody chose different things, and we could have everybody in this room read a piece from a different book. He has so much incredible work. Our final reader is Keith Hennessey. This is a bit nerve wracking. I actually picked about 14 different possibilities, because I thought for sure everyone would have picked the same things, and of course no one did. So with Michael Whitson and Jess Curtis, and sometimes other people, I ran a performance space that started in the early 90s called 848, and Justin would come there all the time to read, and often he knew that we were, he would be very sort of dry wit sarcastic about our kind of new age-tainted, overly self-conscious white politics, and he would, but he would still always show up. If we asked him to read, he said yes every time. He said yes when he knew that we were inviting him because we wanted more people of color in a program. He said yes when the overall concept, say, of the reading, he didn't give a shit about. So there was a really funny way that he would be a friend, be in community, and I don't know, there's something very kind of weirdly nostalgic about a certain kind of memorial that we had so frequently in the 80s and 90s that's happening here right now. And so I'm gonna read from Byrne, and it's a story that's in the book 98 Wounds from 2011, and where one might put a quote by someone else at the front of a book, he put just one sentence that helps frame what's going on. It says, apologies, repentance, failure, and defeat are always so much better when in the form of a story. On a two day high, the best time of the ride, we were driving in the truck. Look, car wash, he points to the parking lot of a small church. On the chain link fence, a taddy, poorly made banner announces youth challenge car wash, $5, in fluorescent primary colors. I pull into the lot and into the parking spot and 16-agers trot towards the truck with hoses, pails, and rags in tow. While they soap and hose the car down, we wait in the refreshment tent. Mild coffee, fruit punch, and cookies. The group leader comes over. How's the car wash been going, I ask. He says it's slow that they do this every week, that they're raising money to send the kids to Woodside for a real fun, in quotes, summer camp. The leader is a beefy suburban looking guy, might be of Mexican or Central American heritage, and he swagger's in the Big Brothers of America sort of way. The way mentors are supposed to swagger, that way that says, I've been there, bro, but I got it. I saw the light, I had, pick one, Jesus and God, the Blessed Virgin, Education, Scientology, Good Sense, Visions of Death, all of the above, yeah, I've been there. Gangs and drugs are a downhill slide, or an uphill battle. Apparently an uphill battle and a downhill slide, though both diametrically opposite, like parallel train tracks that we'll never cross, are really the same thing metaphorically. And an uphill slide is, well, technically impossible, except at the mystery spot in Santa Cruz. But they were saving the lives of youth at risk here, youth of color at risk, no less, no time for semantic squabbles. I'm getting antsy. The high is coursing through me, and I wanna be somewhere right now fucking. We both have our sunglasses on, even though it's a cloudy day. We were both twitchy and sweating. If Mr. Leader had done his time, he would know that we were high. We were high as Mr. and Mr. Kite. Even a blind social worker could see that from across two orphanages. It's a good thing, he says. Kids these days need so much help staying out of trouble. God knows if I had car washes and camp in my day, I would have turned out different. You did have car washes and camp, I say. We all had car washes and camp. Oh yeah, he says. I guess I should have gone to car washes and camp. And we giggle and guffaw like idiots. Mr. Leader looks at us in bewilderment. We hear the car horn beep and one of the kids is waving at us. All finished, he yells. The truck is shiny, spankingly clean. Good job I tell the kid and I hand him a 20. The spotty teenager grins and thanks us, and the other kids all chime in their thank yous, visions of birds and trees and camping gear dancing in their bright eyes. God bless you, we hear. Mr. Leader calls to us as we drive out of the lot. In the rear view window I can see, in the rear view mirror I can see kids swarm over another car like ants over a half chewed M&M. These kids will not be like us. They will be saved. They will have clear thoughts and proud parents and adoring siblings. They will be something. They may one day even meet the President of the United States. Heck, one of them might even be the President of the United States. And in his inauguration speech, he will retell of those weeks of car washes and summer camps. He will remember the car with the two guys who gave a 20 and it showed him how much the American people were good people who wanted to help the less fortunate. He pulls out the ashtray and starts laughing. I left a small bag of pot in here. Two good fat joints, it's gone. Maybe they vacuumed it up. There wasn't a vacuum. They didn't do the inside of the car. They only washed the outside. Well, maybe one of the kids found it and decided to turn it into their chief, do his good deed and turn his back on Satan. Or maybe some kids have found a way to get through washing cars all day. You didn't leave it there intentionally, did you? He smiles so sweetly and rummages in his shirt pocket. You want a hit? He holds his finger coated with speed up to my nose and I snort what I can, suck off what's left on his finger. Later he will coat his finger and stick it in my arse and the burn will last for hours as he fucks me. The last thing I'm gonna say is just that at 848 Justin didn't just show up and read. He several times did performance art pieces which is kind of what we were all doing and experimenting. And there's a story that I also thought for sure it's gonna happen by now because I know it was an important performance for Philip Wong who later saw it on video. But at one of the nights at 848 Justin did a performance where he drew blood from his arm and he shot it into a carton of milk. And then he drank the milk. And that was already sort of freaking people out just that combination of activities. And then only after he drank it did he tell us that he was lacto intolerant. Thank you. Well the city is alive and well, clearly. Thanks everybody so much for coming. Thanks to Michelle T. who really organized this from Los Angeles. So if you're watching, Michelle, thank you. Radar. And Radar, Juliana, and Bergy. Bergy, thank you so much. Well, all right, what do we do now? Yeah, we don't know what to say again. And then we said some things and then. Yeah, there's a bag of some things that were Justin's that was brought to us over there. So what should we do with that bag? I don't know. I didn't know, we both didn't know what to do with it. And this is classic Justin, right? Like somebody dies, okay. Somebody dies and someone has effects, right? Maybe it's a golf bracelet from their grandmother or something. Justin, it was like a Powerpuff Girls lunchbox. And the, will you hold up that mug? The, it's like a, is it? It's a Wiley Coyote mug. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. The very long snout. Yeah. What should we do? This is our friend. I'm sure there's a lot more of that. We'll discuss. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you everybody so much.