Family and Band
Posts tagged navel gazing
I sometimes have waking and sleeping nightmares about myself.
Jan 21st
I am not sure if half of my life actually happened, or if my memory is playing tricks on me. I dreamt that somebody my mother chained against a wall. My father called her a traitor to the Motherland. I heard her tortured every single night at midnight. When I would come to her aid, father would strangle me. Eventually, I stopped getting out of bed. I would choke anyway, as if a demon were strangling me on my father’s behalf. Sometimes, this still happens to me, when I stay up too late and I’m by myself. Zoya called this the midnight sickness.
When I turned thirteen, father beat me savagely for asking him about my mother. He gave me an axe and told me to put my mother out of her misery. Everything is a blur after that moment. Father punished me for “killing” her and told me that I was an going to hell.
Sasha says that I would have never done that, and that my father was a sadistic monster trying to brainwash me into believing that I was a murderer in order to cover up his own sick misdeeds. I know that my father was a prone to fabricating sick tales for his own pleasure, and a psychopath to boot. For most of my life, I actually believed that I was actually an upir that he adopted and that I killed my “real mother” by ripping my way out of her womb. When that story crumbled to pieces, he came out with even more outlandish tales. Sometimes, I don’t know what to believe, even though my rational brain tells me that this man was an insane degenerate. He was my father, and every boy wants to believe his daddy.
My mind plays tricks on me when my medications aren’t working right. It’s time to get my pills adjusted, I think.
Pride Memories
Jun 27th
Today is Pride Day in Minneapolis, so I suppose this would be a good time to share a “queerstory.”
When I was 10-years-old, Sasha and I had been in a cute puppy love relationship for about eight months. We mostly goofed around and did normal kid things. What made this a “romance” was my insistence that I would marry Sasha and the occasional kiss on the hand. I didn’t really understand the concept of marriage, but I knew that I wanted to be with my best friend more than anyone else. I knew Sasha was completely smitten with me because he’d let me pull his hair and taunt him with silly insults. I did not realize that Sasha was a boy until the day when I played keep-away with a paper airplane after school.
At first, I was very confused as to why Sasha would dress up like a girl if he was a boy. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe my feeling, but I realized that Sasha’s gender matter to me when it came to love.
I’m looking forward to Pride. Sasha will probably bitch about the parade being an embarrassment to “normal” queers. He will bitch about how the only appropriate place to wear obscene clothing is Burning Man. The ball and chain will complain incessantly about all the show tunes, disco and techno that will undoubtedly invade our ears during the celebrations. Fortunately, Laisa and a few of her gothy friends are planning a special party to counteract the perky music. I wonder how Sasha will react when he realize that we will be the main act?
While I still remember, I better make sure everything is still good to go for Burning Man.
Lolita the Musical
Jun 18th
In the early days of Upir’s Mark, we developed many tasteless collaborative shows involving other local underground bands. We often competed to see which band could create the least morally acceptable show in all of Siberia. We won a few times.
One of the more tasteless presentations was our unauthorized Russian-language remake of “Lolita, My Love” with some other devil-obsessed punk group of the day. Sasha powdered his hair and played Humbert. Ace played Delores (Lolita.) The judges complained that Ace was too old for the part of Lolita at age 14, but she could sing angrily and play the guitar like a beast, so they were a bit lenient with their reviews. The best part was the fact that the most salacious scenes were acted out by well-endowed ventriloquist dummies; stunt puppets, if you will. There was no way in hell Sasha was going to have simulated sex with a teenage girl in front of a live audience. Sasha would have had real sex in front of a live audience with just about anything else, including puppets, but he had some morals. Not very many, but he did. I wish he had less now, but being a prude is what happens when we get old.
We did not win the grand prize during that competition. We only made it to second place. The most indecent play award was given to another band team, Shit Rain of Darkness and Stalinist Holocaust. They did a killer rendition of Dante’s Inferno. On-stage defecation, gang-banging and horse slaughter always gets a better reception than revival musicals about old perverts with a bad case of hebephilia. Nonetheless, Sasha received a prize for goriest death scene and most original puppet show.
Here’s the show poster I made. It’s not one of my best, but it got the point across. Now the gods punish Sasha and I by giving us a daughter that dresses like a Lolita-wannabe. Depressing, but it serves us right.
