Recommended reading courtesy of @mpberdan (@uniform_nyc , Veins):
I went back and forth on this list for way longer than I’d care to admit. Unsure about loading it up with lonely boy favorites from adolescence or leaning on naval gazers that for the most part I’m only pretending to understand, I compulsively revised this for weeks before ripping it all up in a fit of frustration.
Here are ten somewhat arbitrarily selected titles that have moved me and/or informed my worldview, for better or worse:
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect - Roger Williams
Frisk - Dennis Cooper
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters - Ursula K. Le Guin
Dhalgren - Samuel Delaney
In A Lonely Place - Karl Edward Wagner
Notice - Heather Lewis
Axiomatic - Greg Egan
The Room - Hubert Selby, Jr.
Tales of Times Square - Josh Alan Friedman
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - Alice B. Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree, Jr.)
Surreal doesn’t begin to sum it up. Much love to Don, Josh, Jorge, Dave, and Geoff for having me up there. Much love to Sean for his whole life and his continuing ubiquitous presence throughout our collective lives.
I haven’t slept much since Friday. Words fail me. Nothing but love.
RIPSPM
Just a few short days until we’re back on the road with the best band in the world!
BORIS (Celebrating 20 years of Pink) + UNIFORM
11/04 New York @ Brooklyn Steel
11/O5 Boston @ Paradise Rock Club
11/06 Montreal @ Le National
11/07 Toronto @ Phoenix Concert Theater
Tickets are running super low, so grip them now or forever hold your peace…
As much as I love music, it’s an art form that I’m growing increasingly loathe to talk about. Therefore, I’m forever excited for the moments in an interview where things go off the rails and we can discuss practically anything else.
Eternally grateful to Jimmy Cajoles at the Southwest Review for the opportunity to drone on and on about my two favorite subjects: Books and theology.
You won’t hear about my favorite complex oscillator (Schlappei Three Body) or what it was like to see His Hero Is Gone (they were pretty great), but you will get a bit of insight into how my reading habits influence my work. Should you care about that stuff? Probably not, but it’s fun for me to talk about all the same.
Contemporary fiction legend / my dear pal BR Yeager put together the current issue, and I’m incredibly honored that he made space for me and my big, dumb opinions.
If you feel so inclined, check out the interview at the link in my bio.
Washington, DC: Punks for Palestine benefit weekend begins now. Uniform play tonight at 9:30pm alongside some great friends. Few tickets left. Please come out and help us raise lots and lots of cash.
Much love to Maha for allowing us to be involved. It means a lot.
“Do you do drugs… during the day?”
Those were the first words Wes Wood ever spoke to me. I had just bullshitted my way through a preliminary interview with the store manager, but the big boss would decide if I got the job.
“Not usually.”
He knew I was lying. He didn’t care. I had no idea how that brief exchange would shape my future.
No singular human being has had a bigger impact on my life than Wes Wood. He took me in when I was visibly broken and kept me gainfully employed through my darkest days. As one of the last true New York hustlers, Wes had seen worse. If I got the job done, he didn’t care.
We didn’t get along most of the time. Wes could be stubborn, demanding, and cruel. I could be lazy, overly opinionated, and pretentious. Still, it was his business and he had cause to fire me a hundred times over but never did.
Tattooing is an outlaw trade by nature, and there’s a beautiful irony at play in the fact that the man responsible for the legalization of body art in NYC would turn around and make affordably priced starter kits available to the general public. Orthodox tattooers resented him for flooding the market with under-qualified competition. His employees resented him for exposing us to a seemingly endless parade of unsavory characters. Most of us were middle-class white liberals who thought that we lived in a post-racist society. We were wrong.
While he will primarily be remembered for his legislative victories, Wes Wood’s greatest contribution was an establishment of equity. Traditional apprenticeships are great, but most people can’t afford to not get paid while they scrub tubes for several years. On top of that, few established tattooers would ever give a shot to a Black ex-con or a queer kid. Tattooing was an isolationist white boy’s club. Wes changed that.
Through the years, working for Wes taught me how to meet people where they are. It’s only because of my time at Unimax that I grew to appreciate those whose lives were vastly different from my own.
You are gonna hear lots of stories about Wes in the coming days. Most of them are true. God broke the mold after making him.
Rest easy, old friend. You earned it.
I became aware of Andy in the late 1990s via punk message boards. She owned the best records. She watched the best movies. She read the best books. She had the best style. Oh yeah… and she happened to be drop dead gorgeous (based on pictures, of course). Enamored as I was, Andy was the most intimidating person that I’d ever encountered in the digital sphere. I kept my mouth shut and rarely engaged with her.
A poster on the board used to periodically resurrect a thread asking others to direct message them the identities of their crushes. Every time the thread got topped, I’d send along a dm: andytai.
We had become online acquaintances by the early aughts. When one of my close friends moved to SF, I took it as an excuse to visit the city that Andy just so happened to call home. We made tentative plans to meet at a bar she was DJing. I asked her if I could bring her anything from New York. She said black & white cookies. I spent the next two weeks researching where to get the best fucking black & white cookies in the city. In a time before Reddit and Google Reviews, this was very serious business.
I gave her the cookies. We hung out all weekend. Platonic as it was, I’m sure that I fell in love.
Years would pass before we got to the heart of the matter. I had no idea that she had feelings for me, too. We’ve been together for well over a decade and I still can’t believe it.
I am more in love with Andy now than ever. She still ticks all of those superficial boxes that my 19 year old self was hung up on, but those hardly matter anymore. What gets me today is her sense of compassion and her limitless desire to understand others. Being with her makes me consider my words and actions and inspires me to reconsider my positions when I’m wrong.
Today is Andy’s birthday. She’s going to Casa Bonita in Denver. I’m stuck in NY for work, so I’m posting this pic from our first trip together to Colorado. Hopefully we move there someday.
I love you forever and ever, poster andytai ♥️
Special thanks to janet from bco for allowing me to practice magical realism by outing my crush.
