Seven Perverted Questions with Kay Gabriel
As a norm-defying and pleasure-pushing force in New York’s underground nightlife scene, poet and organizer Kay Gabriel knows a thing or two about perverts. In fact, she just wrote a whole book about the subject framed as “an epic poem stitched together from the dreams of friends or strangers”. To celebrate the launch of ‘Perverts’ — out now on Nightboat Books — we asked Kay seven perverted questions.
In BUTT35 you wrote about the joys of fucking at the club. When and where did you last have sex in public?
Oh, BUTT, you make me sound like a show-off. But the answer is: with my husband, at a festival in the gay woods, at one of the stages after it closed. Early morning light was coming up and I was blowdrying my hair using the outlets around the stage. We finished and my hair dried and then two gay guys came into view and we were like, “It’s a married thing, you wouldn’t understand”.
You run a party called ‘FAGGOTS ARE WOMEN’. But if you had to choose, would you rather throw a party with all faggots or all women?
As a woman who’s a dyed-in-the-womb faggot, I wouldn’t be allowed in either. I’d be the one-doll protest group outside.
If ‘Perverts’ is a constellation of your community’s wisdom and dreaming, what are they most ahead of the curve on?
Queer people are devilishly funny. Our humor is both life-affirming and slammed with insight, especially at this stage of actually-existing Hell. We teach each other how to understand better what’s going on and what we do about it, by framing its maddening absurdity in the terms it deserves and in ways that make it easier to keep making the next right decision.
What are queer people most deluded about?
I think queer people, especially in New York, are maybe more likely either to suffer from main character syndrome or be drawn to people who are. But I love that delusion, especially when it’s not damaging to a bigger goal. Some people ought to think of themselves as the star of their own movie. They’d be doing us a disservice if they didn’t. In that spirit, I’d say: don’t knock delusion, Mary, we depend on her, too.
What’s the most perverted thing that will happen in Zohran’s New York if he becomes mayor?
IF we stick the landing on achieving his agenda, a life worth living for the working class New Yorkers who make this city possible. What, you thought I was gonna say “estrogens in the water supply”?
If you could outlaw one sex act, what would it be?
‘Muffing’, which, as neither penetration nor masochism, falls between two chairs in the most joyless and uncomfortable way. Maybe if it was illegal it would be more fun.
Finally, what’s the most perverted moment in ‘Perverts’? And what does it say about the project?
I should say that ‘Perverts’ isn’t, or isn’t just, a litany of polymorphous sucking and scissoring. It’s a book that sequences my dreams and others’ dreams, some of which are absurd or everyday or terrifying or about changing sex in the middle of a party in Detroit or the murder of a cartoonishly ugly Frank O’Hara.
But of course there are the PERVERTS of ‘Perverts’. In one favorite sequence, a sister of mine dreams about a bi boy passing up a gay encounter at a urinal to make out with her while he’s still mid-piss. Next, a friend reports a dream where his boyfriend pulled him aside for an emotionally sensitive conversation about splitting costs and pooling money and he woke up from the dream extremely erect. And that all prompts me to say:
“I sympathize. I’m the one
who calls you perverts.
I’m the high bitch and I push
the button…
…We’re bouncing
a cock in common
space. I’m my daddy’s
bony dream. Oh,
this is why I turned my back
on society. That’s it. That is it”
Cause, look, I’m interested in the libidinal charge of calling somebody a pervert. Of course all desire is technically in excess of its object, which makes everyone technically a pervert — but sometimes life really does surprise you, and thank God it does. And then you realize you were the piss queen this whole time, and that crease in daily life became the crevice you were already fucking, and that person you once overlooked turned out to be a life-changing schtup. It makes me feel like: desire is so dynamic, it’s not rigid at all, people can learn to do all kinds of things, and I think the curious and excited attitude that that elicits is a big part of the convivial stance the book takes towards the world and people changing it and themselves and each other.
