Well, it’s kind of looking like it might be ONE OF THOSE summers. For starters, I am typing this on a keyboard that is burnt, spilled, and ashed upon, missing a W key, and an N, oh, and I just noticed a 3 as well. I also am about two-thirds down a nice Portuguese red and chain-smoking broken Belmonts between sentences. Ah, summer…
When Xavier Aaronson, the guy who asked museum guards their opinions on the art they stare at all day, asked me to spin together a blurb about his blog, Babes at the Museum, I had no idea what he was talking about. Even though we were chatting online, there’s this subtle European twang to the way he groups words together to form a sentence that makes it hard to believe he’s a real human being. He was like, “got a proposition for you, let me know if you’re keen or not.” And I was thinking he was going to invite me to travel with him back in time to be in the music video for “1979” by the Pumpkins or something. So when he had a legitimate solicitation it gave my brain that feeling you get when you go to pick up a can of soda thinking it’s full but it’s empty.
Two weeks after Sharon Needles took home the coveted title of America’s Next Drag Superstar on Rupaul’s Drag Race, she sits on the floor of her room at the Out Hotel—a “straight-friendly urban resort” in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen—across from a psychic named Jesse Bravo, which is at least partially my doing. I had been enraptured by this glam-goth/witch-house/art-sleaze drag queen ever since seeing her on television, and had to meet her. But what would compel a performer known for vomiting blood and accessorizing with Ouija boards to hang with me? What could I propose that would be campy, creepy, and absurd enough to work? One word: séance. And here we are, a tattooed Sharon in a nude-colored lace dress, a rhinestone collar, and cotton candy-like platinum hair piled high sitting among flickering candles, tumbler of scotch in hand, while the psychic tells her he sees stars—entire constellations—all around her.
