BITE ME

Watching a drag queen eat my internal organs was, well, an experience.

This little moment of cannibalism occurred late last Wednesday night on stage at Holocene. Actually, it happened not to me but to a character who just so happened to have my name, my job and my mannerisms, in a play created by Sissyboy, that local group of self-described gender terrorists who love to dress up and act out.

I admit I was freaked out by their act until I interviewed two members about their politicized brand of queer theater. I even gushed all over them in a column that started with the sentence "Sissyboy scares me" (WW, July 20, 2005) and ended with my realizing they were, entertainment-wise, practically unstoppable. And I thought they liked me, too. Why else would the group have asked me to make a cameo appearance in Sissyboy Goes to Jail, the conclusion to its summer trilogy?

Despite my eagerness to step on a Sissyboy stage, when I didn't hear from them, I just figured these gender-fucks forgot they had extended the invitation in the first place-until the day of the show, when I heard a rumor that the group was going to go all Hannibal Lecter on my liver, à la Silence of the Lambs, and I regretted ever having talked to the ingrates, wondering what the hell I had done to deserve this kind of treatment.

I guess the reason they didn't need my services was that this "Byron" wasn't going to just represent the flaws of a particular WW queer columnist but rather, all "queer media" due to our "fluffy outlook on gay culture."

Well, then, go ahead and call me "Fluffie." At the moment when I found myself watching the dude who was supposed to be me finally make his way onstage, I could've cared less about Sissyboy. I was just glad this "Byron" wasn't old, fat or ugly.

I'll admit that staring at myself on stage was weird. And what my character had to say? Well, it wasn't Shakespeare. In response to "Linah Cocaine's" attack on my shopping forays on Northwest 23rd Avenue, the only comeback that "Byron" could muster was: "You know us fags, consume, consume, consume!" That was right before Ms. Cocaine grabbed my character by the neck, pulled me through the bars, and commenced consuming my liver.

As might be expected with any bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you cannibalistic experience, this whole performance left me confused. One part of me is flattered, while another part wonders what they'll do with my character now that I'm dead.

While I'm not quite ready to see my corpse being abused anytime soon, I'll admit I wasn't really surprised to be attacked, because even if being eaten alive was a new experience, in a way it's an old one, too. When you express your opinion regularly, whether it's printed in a newspaper column or posted on a blog, every reader has a right to comment on your work. And more than once I have had to eat my words, if not my liver.

So go ahead: Eat me. I'm just glad that there seems to be an insatiable appetite in this town for the multicourse feast that is queer culture.

For more on Sissyboy, see sissyboy.tribe.net .

WWeek 2015