Eric Bogosian
Newt Gingrich/Body Piercing
September 29, 1995.
Just got back from San Francisco where I ("Wake Up and Smell the Coffee") rocked the Solo Mio festival. Standing O's every night. Stuff's good. Blow me.
While in S.F. I got to check out the Folsom Street Fair which is the premiere B&D event of the city (I guess). Lots of black leather, guys wearing leather strap halters, people drinking beer trying to look tough, trying to look like they're cruising, but they're not. I knew "the Anvil" and this is not "the Anvil." I probably missed a back room.
But I did see something that I can't get out of my mind. (Maybe somebody out there can ask around.) A circle of people holding hands, mainly women, in the middle of the street. This group was not a bunch of poseurs. Uh-uh. Strictly shaved heads, bruises and teeth marks for this gang. Bones through the nose, that kind of thing. One young woman was nude except for the straps around her body. Her labia was pierced, she has razor marks on her legs, big bruises and was wearing this thing on her head like something you put on a pit bull.
The reality of this young woman, in her slavery, was jarring next to all the happy moustachioed and enleathered queens wandering around. She was doing something definitive. But it made me feel bad inside, like she was carrying this great sadness and had to be hurt physically so she could forget it. To quote Lou "Sometimes I just don't know".
Nonetheless, the little hole in my earlobe that has been there since 1975 started to twitch and I went out and bought a little hoop of metal with which to fill it.
Generally, my friends hate this earring. I know it's retro. I know it's square and I look like a geek. Shit, Michael Bolton probably wears an earring. But I'm wearing it to remind myself of the principles long hair, earrings and general shagginess stood for back when I was a young punk.
Because Newt Gingrich is young Hitler. This bastard is actually blaming the poor of this country for the problems we have. FUCK!!! This is the richest country in the world and we can't feed poor babies. Oh, no, can't do that.
No, we can keep a BILLION AND A HALF DOLLAR slush fund in the CIA just in case they need it. We can spend A BILLION a pop for B-1 fighters. And they don't work. They don't "stealth" worth squat.
I'm wearing my earring to remind myself that I'm not a shithead like Newt Gingrich. (More on Newt and freedom in the next meditation.)
