 Our show tonight is awesome. Thank you for coming to it. I'm just gonna start bringing up geniuses here to dabble you. The first person is Wonder Dave, a writer and performer from Minneapolis, Minnesota who's now living here. He's toured the country performing at poetry venues, schools, cabarets, science fiction conventions, jealous, burlesque shows and bowling alleys. You can find him online on YouTube and at wonderdave.com. And right here, right now, here's Wonder Dave. Do you guys wanna hear a poem about being a bouncer at a strip club or a poem? Yes, okay. Let's not continue. I like the definitive yes. I was enthusiastic. God is the bouncer at this strip joint where I tend bar. Everyone calls him tiny. He is not big on formality. The ladies here giggle with me, but when trouble comes, they stand just behind God's left shoulder. About half the dancers in this dive are fine. The ones that aren't break God's heart every time. I tell him he is a fool, trying to comfort stray cats. He snorts at the cat joke, then cracks his fat knuckles. The manager, the girls and myself are a party of misogynists and man haters sitting down to our last supper. Our tattooed bouncer rests calmly in the center. The traveling men here walk past him, their sweatpants ready to become stained cotton alters. The ladies call them perverts in the back room. Sweat mixes with knockoff perfume. A table in sniffer's row is sticky with ginger ale and rum. We close up, wipe down. God locks the front door and waits. After hours, me and the dancers sneak shots of rail liquor. The burning sparks laughter in our hollow throats and no one notices how fast the cheap stuff gets low. God never joins us. He just walks out with the broken girl of that evening, her mascara threatening to crack her painted doll face. I wonder if they offer him blowjobs and I wonder if God takes them. I think though that God is a better man, driving them home while they're too drunk as they quietly cry whiskey in his car. His round belly pressed against the steering wheel, empty soda cans litter his floor and make the air too sweet. The ladies ogle at God's tattooed sleeves. There is a galaxy on his left arm. A tiger fighting a gorilla on his right. A wooden Christian cross on his left shoulder blade. A jungle full of flowers from calf to ankle. He's never explained any of them. None of us want to be in this bar. We stare at the galaxy on God's arm and wish on stars that we don't have to raise our heads to see. Our next performer up here is Rotimi Agbabiaka and he's an actor slash singer slash dancer slash writer with a bunch of other things. His solo play homeless won best solo performance at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Please welcome Rotimi. Sometimes I walk into a gay bar and it's like an Abba song. Take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance, take a chance on me. Look at me, God damn it. Look at me like you would look at someone you might want to get to know a little better, huh? In that future boyfriend kind of way. Because I came in here tonight with a dream. There's a somebody I'm longing to see. I hope that he turns out to be someone to walk. I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood. I know I could oh, be so good to one who walk. I have such dreams, such magnificent dreams. Dreams that quicken the pounding of my swelling heart. These dreams are of you. You who will envelop me with understanding, recognition, appreciation, desire, love. But why do I get the feeling that I'm not in your dreams? That no one who looks like me is in your dreams. This is why I can't get laid. To be young, furry and white. Oh, that's not it. That's not how that song goes. That is definitely not how that song goes. But sometimes when I look at what my gay boy world tells me is attractive, I can't help but wonder if perhaps the rest of the world is singing that version of the song. Someday he'll come along. The man I love and he'll be big and strong. The man I love and when he comes my way I'll do my best to make him stay. He'll look at me and smile I'll understand. In a little while he'll take my hand and though it seems absurd I know we both won't say a word. How is attraction formed? Where do we get ideas of what is desirable? You know what makes someone a viable partner? I think to consider someone a potential mate. You have to imagine that they have an inner life that is as complete and as complex as yours. And complimentary to yours. What kind of fag am I? Am I a twink or bear? A jock and otter or the boy next door won't someone tell this queer? Why boys get to be twinks, bears, cubs, otters, squirrels? And yes, you know, queers of color can identify with these groups. But girl, when was the last time you saw a picture of some bear or a cub somewhere on a poster that wasn't white? And then I understand that these categories are reductive and very problematic in their own ways. But I think they give a sense that certain people have all these opportunities for self-expression. They give a sense of that you can feel connected to someone because you share common proclivities or interests. But when you look at me and the first and perhaps only label that pops in your head is black, I think you limit my humanity to your idea of blackness. An idea that is no doubt influenced by our historically Eurocentric American narrative. A narrative that very often has defined me as the other. I think you fall in love with a person. Can you really truly love an idea? And what does it mean to be black in America? What do they call me? My skin is black, my arms are long, my hair is woolly, my back is strong, strong enough to take the pain, inflicted again and again, what do they call me? My name is Ansara, my skin is tan, my hair is fine, my hips entice you, my mouth like wine, whose little girl am I? Anyone who has money to buy, what do they call me? My name is Sweet Thing, my skin is brown, my manner is tough, I'll kill the first mother I see, my life has been rough, I'm awfully bitter these days, because my parents were slaves, what do they call me? My name is Rotimi, it's Rotimi. I mean it's actually ideally pronounced Rotimi, but that's difficult for American tongues to pronounce. So Rotimi is fine. It's a Yoruba name. It means stay with me. I would love for you to get to know me. Thank you. Advice for when you open your queer boy mouth. Open wide, your mouth should sparkle, your mouth makes glitter, open, glitter, open, vomit, star shine, spray, twinkle, be the exorcist meets Priscilla, queen of the desert, open, swish, make your tongue shuffle ball change. Suck it up, you are a type to be cast, scale but not too high, don't be the best, play the best friend, play the other, play the victim, don't bark, just bite your tongue until your mouth glistens like blood on pavement, be a star under the loneliest streetlight purr, be catty, be sexy, and neutered at the same time. It won't drive you crazy. Hush, lisp, pour, pour, pour glitter down their throats, let flashy erupt like a sequined volcano. At first it will look like Judy Garland's shoes crawling onto their feet, then cement blocks of moondust, then a Hudson River of disco ball. Open your mouth, erupt, drown them in drag, and name yourself Pompey. Our next performer is Aya De Leon. She's a writer, performer working in poetry fiction and hip-hop theater. She's currently working on a sexy feminist heist novel and The Puffy Hair Project, a children's book for people whose hair defies gravity. Aya is awesome. Aya is the director of June Jordan's Poetry for the People program teaching poetry spoken word and hip-hop at UC Berkeley. She's a guest blogger for Bitch Magazine, Mother Magazine, My Brown Baby, Movement Strategy Center, and Mothership Hacker Moms. Please welcome Aya De Leon. Thank you. So you get a little sense of the craziness of the mom artist like sex worker heist novel, Puffy Hairbook. Right. That's my life. Okay. I want to start out reading a little bit of the sort of the description, what I call my community description of the sex worker heist novel that I'm working on. Okay. What happens to a financial genius who's born brown and female, who grows up poor but voluptuous, who at 17 has to put her brilliance to work, saving her ass from homelessness and puts her ass to work because orphan 17-year-old Puerto Rican girls with kids' sisters to support got to use what they got. But 10 years and a few lucky breaks later, she might find herself with an online degree in bookkeeping and an entry-level job at a women's health clinic for sex workers. But what happens to a financial genius nearly a decade later when she's running the health clinic and the economy tanks? She might start an escort service on the side to make ends meet. And what if one of the girls starts escorting a client to houses of rich corporate CEOs involved in a sex trafficking scandal? What if those CEOs have wall safes? A financial genius might use the escorts to case the apartments to do a little safe-cracking because sometimes the best donor to a nonprofit is the unintentional donor. And financial genius Marisol Rivera will do whatever it takes to keep the clinic doors open, including attempting a daring heist of a high-profile billionaire with her badass call girl team. If they succeed, the team and the clinic could be set for life, but there are so many ways her plan could go wrong. Still, Marisol has got to try it because the society keeps churning out brown girls with more curves than cash and more prospects for pimps and sugar daddies than college professors. Somebody's got to level the playing field a little. This novel takes the racist, sexist cliché of the Puerto Rican hooker and turns it on its head. Then shakes all the money out of its pockets and gives it to la gente. Look, miss, the man said, I just tell who they say. You need to tell your boss that we're taking the van. I am the boss, Marisol said, and if you wrongfully remove this vehicle, I'll sue your company in a heartbeat. This van is part of a city public health effort. I got the mayor's office on speed dial. That's right, yelled the girl with the nails. Defiende la tuya. The guy shut everything off and the van stopped moving. Muttering to himself, he stalked around the cab and pulled out a cell phone. Marisol stayed close to the van, which had been hoisted most of the way onto the tow truck bed. The baby squirmed and fussed in the carrier, and he reached up and played with the locket around her neck. Yeah, puppy. She said, opening the locket to reveal a girl with two puffy blonde pigtails and a missing front tooth. You see that girl? That's Cristina, my little sister. Cristina had been more like a daughter in many ways. Marisol enjoyed holding babies because their warmth and softness and sweet smell reminded her of holding Cristina. From the beginning, Marisol had often watched the baby while their mother worked, and when their mother died, Marisol fell solidly into the role. After Cristina had left for college, the sisters had managed to see each other at least once a year. Since beginning med school, Marisol had always flown her sister to New York for winter break until this year, when Marisol couldn't afford it. Feeling the soft skin of the baby in her arms, Marisol had a sudden bitter ache in her chest. Cristina was her only family, the only person who really mattered in the entire world. Suddenly, the engine started with a rumble. Marisol cursed and recalled herself, these motherfuckers were not going to take her van over some stupid bureaucratic misunderstanding. She handed the child toward the tall girl from the outreach team, holed him. The stunned girl took the baby, and he began to wail. Marisol kicked off her heels and handed them to the redhead. She was not about to lose her invincibility shoes, either. Marisol scrambled onto the back of the tow truck and opened the van door. Give me the baby! She yelled down to the tall girl. You want me to... Now! Marisol yelled, stretching both hands out. The startled girl handed back the screaming baby. Marisol slid into the van's passenger seat and locked the door behind her, just as the tow guy came around from the cab of the truck. He was carrying brake lights to stick on the van. What the fuck are you doing? The tow guy yelled over the noise of the engine and the child. Marisol rolled the window down a crack. Watch your language in front of the baby, she said, as if she hadn't just been cursing. You need to get down from there. He said, it's not safe. I'll tell you what's not safe, Marisol said, jiggling the boy on her knees. Women working on the street with no healthcare, which is why we have a city contract to provide a van with all these services for girls who can't make it to the clinic. I'm calling the police. He said, fine. She said, I'm calling the leasing company. She pulled out her phone and dialed, may I please speak with Nelly? I'm sorry, forget it. She said, just give me the manager on duty. As she waited on hold, she walked to the back of the van carrying the baby. Are you teething, Papi? She got him a tongue depressor and he began to chew on it. The manager came on the line. Marisol Rivera, executive director of the Maria de la Vega clinic on the Lower East Side, there's been a mistake with the van. We're leasing, they're trying to repossess the vehicle. No mistake, he said, you're late on your payments. You've been late every month since June of last year. No, Marisol said evenly. Nelly and I have an arrangement. I spoke with her just last week and confirmed that I would have the payment tomorrow. We have no record of that. He said, put Nelly on the phone, Marisol said. She no longer works here. Well, she was working for you last week and I entered into a verbal contract with her as a rep of your company. I have her cell number and I'm sure she'd be willing to testify to that in court. Why are you making such a big deal, he said? You can get it back tomorrow once you pay along with a late payment fee and a repo processing fee. We've got tens of thousands of dollars of medical equipment in here. You repossess the van and I'll sue you for at least 50,000. Besides, your driver can't take the van away anyway since I'm sitting in it. The van is on the tow truck, the guy scoffed, with me sitting in it. You're what? With a baby on my lap, Marisol said, looking down at the child who was happily chewing the tongue depressor so the van isn't going anywhere. You're just wasting everybody's time, he said. We'll send someone for the van later tonight and don't try to hide it because they all have GPS locators. Fine, Marisol laughed. It'll be driving all over Manhattan for the rest of the night. This van serves thousands of clients every week. You want your repo guy to watch Urban Health Care in action? Be my guest. But I told Nelly I'd have the money for you tomorrow morning and I will. I'll even bring it in cash so there's no question and I'm not paying any late fees. Let's be clear. The guy said Nelly doesn't work here anymore. You have a history of late payments and from now on you need to pay on time. Fine, she said and please confirm that for this month I can pay tomorrow. No late fees as Nelly agreed. This month only, he said. Great, Marisol said. Now you and I have a verbal contract which I recorded on my phone. Is 9 a.m. good for you? All right, so. Chapter one. We have one more performer and I'm so psyched to be here. It's Cheeming Bowie. He's an animator, artist, author and Ted award recipient who's best known for his Sharpie drawings on foam coffee cups. For many years he's entertained a loyal throng of readers through his diary blog, I Am Bowie. His best-selling graphic novel, When I Was a Kid, is a hilarious and poignant memoir about growing up in Malaysia, a sort of prequel to his current daily blog. This is very modest bio. He's like such a giant superstar in Asia. It's very exciting to be here tonight. Please welcome Cheeming Bowie. If you are terrible at math in Malaysia, you will automatically go into art, you know. So that kind of worked out for me because that was what I've always wanted to do. So I came to study animation in the States. I got lucky, I guess, and I landed my job at a game company. And I have decided to take a break from it and see the world. I am going to take Route 66 to Chicago. I do not have a backup plan. I don't know what is in store. I don't know. There will be nothing familiar to me except my cups and the car. Just go along with whatever comes my way. And this one's called Failing Math, which is, by the way, if you are Asian and you fail math, it's a terrible thing. The whole neighborhood knows about it. And for me, it was a village. When I was a kid, I hated math. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to a Chinese kid. We were supposed to be good at math. Well, not me. I sucked at it. I was okay at geometry, but only because he had drawings and shapes. I hated math questions with stories, like John bought some rulers from a bookstore. He gave Mary three. What is the length of Mary's hair? Anyway, I was always nervous during math exams. I knew I was either going to fail or just barely pass. Usually after the exam, I would hear students talk about answers for the questions. I wrote 16.27. Me too. I was usually wrong. The papers took a week to be graded. When I knew that we would be getting it back, I usually couldn't sleep the night before because I was so scared. Once I got 46 out of 100, I desperately checked the papers for errors on the teacher's part. I found one, stood and passed. And at the time I got 51 and I thought I passed, but it was out of 110. Bastards! The bus ride home that day was extremely long. I thought about the hell I would be going through. It also didn't help that my sis was actually really good at math. My dad often gave me silent treatments after seeing my score that would last for about two weeks. I was really good at art, but no one appreciated that. When I was a kid, I remember the first time my mum told me that she was taking me to the hospital to get a shot. It's not painful, she said. Funny thing was, I never asked. I also buy you a toy after, she added. My mum would sell them this generous, but I was too young to read into her schemes. I just thought that it was my lucky day. Then it became clear that shit hurts. And when you're that young, an injection is like getting stabbed with a knife. I remember feeling very betrayed. How could you, man? I'm your son. Then I got my toy and it was all okay. The stories are as random as this. When I was a kid, I would watch TV and sometimes I would see ads for Disneyland. It would show some dad telling his kids that they were going to Disneyland and then they would be so happy and they would jump up and down their beds in slow-mo, of course. I would then go to my room and try to jump on my bed. But I never got very high because the bed was just awful. It was actually just a big sheet of dishwashing sponge. It's true. We don't have fancy mattress that you guys have in the States. However, my parents' bed worked great. I found out later that it was because it was a spring mattress. But my mum would sense that I was having fun and she would tell me to stop jumping because I would ruin her mattress. I remember one time my mum told me and my sis that my uncle would be visiting us from Thailand and he got a hotel room in Singapore and we were going to spend the night there. I remember jumping the shit out of that bed in the hotel. It was awesome. It was also the first time I opened the door in the room and I saw another door. It's open, but it's still closed. I was very confused. Years later, I watched The Matrix and I saw a scene where Morpheus opened a door and it was a brick wall and it reminded me of that hotel room. Thank you very much. If I were Harry Potter, I would wake up in the morning and think I must find the Horcruxes to fulfill the prophecy to defeat Lord Voldemort. Things are not so spelled out for this guy. If I were Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I would wake up in the morning and think what should I do today? I guess I'll go slay some vampires since it is in my official title and all. If I were the last airbender, I would wake up and think, why did they cast all white people in my movie? That's fucked up. And then, I'd go master the four elements and defeat the Fire Nation. If I were Sailor Moon, I'd wake up in the morning and try to stop Queen Barrel from... Whatever it is Sailor Moon villains are trying to accomplish. The show is very confusing. I'd also wonder why whenever I'm speaking English, the lesbian sailor couple refers to each other as cousins also messed up. If I were Frodo Baggins, I'd be like, are we there yet? But screw those heroic jerks because I am not them. I wake up in the morning and think, dear God, why am I risen before the sun? Or, dear God, why do I have to pay such expensive rent? It's because I live in San Francisco. Or, dear God, why do I wake up so early that my brain kind of forgets I'm an atheist? My point is, why must I... That was a really good joke, guys. Thank you for being there for me. Screw those heroic jerks because I am not them. I wake up in the morning... Stop and talk. I wake up in the morning... My point is, why must I wake up each morning not knowing my ultimate destiny? Why is each step I take a step towards my mundane restaurant job as opposed to a step on my path to defeating my nemesis in an act of dark vengeance for the good of all mankind? Instead, I've spent my life giving mankind food which is neutral good, I suppose. My point is, I don't know what I'm doing with my life and fiction has failed me and this is perhaps adulthood's first great disappointment. The second disappointment is that if you ever do something great the credits don't start rolling. You have to keep doing stuff afterwards. And at this point, I think that maybe I should have ended this poem on that line about disappointment. It could have been a really sick closer but also would have been kind of a downer and that's not really my scene. I then think that maybe I should turn this poem into an uplifting poem about personal growth but I'm a deeply cynical person. Then, I think maybe this meandering discussion of endings I have forced you, dear audience, into with me is perhaps the perfect metaphor for my current state of being. However, if that is the perfect metaphor the universe has deigned to give me I feel a bit ripped off and just when I think I won't be able to find an ending to this poem I find it in fiction because sometimes life is corny. I remember the immortal words of Stephanie Brown. She was the fourth Robin and the third Batgirl in case my previous references were far too accessible. In the final issue of her cancelled series she says, it's only over if you want it to be. Here we go. That's all the time we have for this program. It's all over now so everybody has a chance to go hit the back of the room where there are books for sale and t-shirts for sale. There's some radar stuff. There's stuff from our performers and there's also a sign up list so that you can get an email every month that tells you about what's happening at Radar. Next month we have Katelyn Donahue who's a writer for Rookie and one of the founders of AHDM for you, a new media site. Micah Sigourney who's a performer and a poet has some new poems. Dax Tran Caffee who is a performance artist and like a puppeteer who has his first graphic novel he's going to be showing and Shanti Sakaran, the author of The Prayer Room. And here's another thing. If you are a writer who has not ever read at Radar we're having a Radar slam at the Dolores Park Cafe on January 17th and the winner will get a slot in Radar. It's free. I think it'll be really fun. So you can find us on Facebook or if you sign up we'll send you an email about it. And thanks Library. And thanks to Amanda Verwey whose name is not Bubbles. She's Radar's managing director. She works her butt off.