ys The Wussy Boy Chronicles Caught somewhere between GUY and GAY Issue #1 oundgarden Hair • Rock Star Eyes • Wussy Bo oundgarden Hair • Rock Star Eyes Wussy God is a Mean Drunk • Kick-Ass S FEATURING: a personalzine by r. eirik ott The Wussy Boy Chronicles #1 by R. Eirik Ott © 1999 [email protected] http://www.brokenword.org http://poetryslam.livejournal.com The photos in the National Poetry Slam article were taken by David Huang and borrowed from www.poeticdream.com. Graphics for the “Is a Wussy Boy / Is Not a Wussy Boy” were borrowed from various places around the Internet. Everything else is the fault of R. Eirik Ott, unless otherwise indicated. INTRO So, hereʼs my new zine, The Wussy Boy Chronicles. Iʼm in Reno as I type this on my Macintosh Quadra 630, listening to Tuataraʼs first album and the sound of my kitties playing just outside my window. Itʼs early in the morning for me, like 10:14, and a nice breeze is floating around my room. My summer internship at the daily newspaper is almost over (thank god). I always wonder if anyone is going to give a shit about these zines, but Iʼm going to give it another try anyway. Iʼve been doing zines for quite a while now, since at least ʼ93 when I started Fencepost with some friends in Bakersfield. I went on to Thrust Magazine, then a series of one-shots called Rants, Screeds, Diatribes and Other Ephemera (fea- turing titles like Big Daddyʼs Makinʼ Biscuits and Tongue Ballet in my Bunghole). Then I did something called Eirik Goes to Jail, which was followed by a series of zines called Eirik Goes To Therapy. But, that was then, this is now. Iʼve abandoned the subject matter of the “Eirik” zines. Everything that could be said had been said, so it was time to move on to something different. Here it is, then, The Wussy Boy Chronicles: a personalzine that prowls around my thoughts via snippets of journal entries, letters to friends and e-mail. Itʼs more or less in chronological order, although sometimes itʼs more and sometimes itʼs less. It roughly covers the time between Halloween of ʻ98 to the end of summer of ʻ99. I plan on doing a letters section next issue, so please write in and share some thoughts about life and love and death and all the stuff in between. Oh, wait, before I go, hereʼs a little about how I ended up in Reno for the summer. Iʼm actually a journalism student in my last year at Chico State University (in northern California), but I landed this intern- ship at the daily Reno newspaper. Itʼs not really an internship, though, but whatever you call it, I got it through zines. My favorite zine in the world (after Cometbus) is Happy, Not Stu- pid. Itʼs this personalzine written by a journalist named John Johnson who works as the entertainment editor at the newspaper in Reno. We started corresponding because we liked each otherʼs zines, then, after about six months, I popped the question: “Dude, can you hook me up with an internship?” The answer, unfortunately, was “maybe,” which turned into “well, no, not really,” which then turned into a stint as a freelancer. Cool. Well, a year or so went by and this summer came and Johnʼs assistant got a summer position with USA Today (which is owned by the same company as the Reno Gazette-Journal.) The newspaper needed someone who could jump in and take over the position without a whole bunch of training, so John suggested they ask me since I had been working as both a graphic designer at a print shop and a freelance writer for several years. Boom, after a flurry of paperwork and hand- wringing with the head of the journalism department at Chico State, I moved to reno for the summer. Itʼs July 29, so Iʼm still here. I think they want to offer me a job. Iʼve been thinking a lot about it. It would mean the first real job Iʼve ever had, plus those things... what do you call those things... benefits? Lord, I could get my teeth fixed. Itʼs a hard decision, though. Iʼm not sure I want to give up my dreams of being a travelling performance poet, but some of my poet friends have been telling me that I can do both. Itʼs going to be a tough decision, because I want to go on a book tour, not be stuck in front of a computer all day. THE WUSSY BOY MANIFESTO my name is eirik ott and i am a wussy boy. itʼs taken me a long time to admit it... i remember shouting in high school, “no, dad, iʼm not gay! iʼm just... sensitive. i tried to like hot rods and jet planes and football and budweiser poster girls, but i never got the hang of it! i donʼt know whatʼs wrong with me...” then, i saw him, there on the silver screen, bigger than life and unafraid of earrings and hair dye and rejoicing in the music of the cure and morrissey and siouxsie and the banshees, talking loud and walking proud my wussy boy icon: duckie in “pretty in pink.” and i realized i wasnʼt alone. and i looked around and saw other wussy boys living large and proud of who they were: anthony michael hall, wussy boy; michael j. fox, wussy boy; and lord god king of the wussy boy movement, matthew broderick, unafraid to prove to the world that sensitive guys much kick ass. now i am no longer ashamed of my wussiness, no, iʼm empowered by it. when iʼm at a stoplight and some testosterone redneck methamphetamine jock fratboy asshole dumb fuck pulls up beside me blasting his trans amʼs stereo with power chord anthems to big tits and date rape, i no longer avoid his eyesight, hell no, i just crank all 12 watts of my car stereo and i rock out right into his face: (devil sign and morrisseyʼs voice) “i am human and i need to be loved just like everybody else does!” i am wussy boy, hear me roar (meow). bar fight? pshaw! you think you can take me, huh? just because i like poetry better than sports illustrated? well, allow me to caution you, iʼm not the average every day run-of-the-mill wussy boy you beat up in high school, punk, i am wuss core! (flash “wc” gang sign) donʼt make me get renaissance on your ass because i will write a poem about you, a poem that tears your psyche limb from limb, that exposes your selfish insecurities, that will wound you deeper and more severely than knives and chains and gats and baseball bats could ever hope to do.. you may see 65 inches of wussy boy standing in front of you, but my steel-toed soul is ten foot tall and bullet proof! bring the pain, punk, beat the shit out of me, show all the people in this bar what a real man can do to a shit-talking wussy boy like me but youʼd better remember my bruises will fade my cuts will heal, my scars will shrink and disappear, but my poem about the pitiful, small, helpless cock-man oppressor you really are will last forever. WHAT IS A WUSSY BOY? Iʼve thought long and hard on this question, because itʼs been kinda hard for me to define for so long. I went to this gender conference at Chico State University a few semesters back and was surprised to see that I was one of only four boys out of maybe 120 girls who attended. (But, then again, I wasnʼt all that surprised because Chico is filled with a bunch of shit-headed frat boy assholes who do fucked up things like mock the Take Back the Night March as they sit on their front porches with their equally shit-headed sorority girlfriends sucking lager from red plastic cups and pointing at the passing “lesbians and faggots” marching for a womanʼs right to walk the streets at night without fear.) One of the events was a presentation by Kate Bornstein, a gender warrior who began life as a heterosexual man, then became a gay man, then through the miracle of modern medicine became a trans-gendered heterosexual woman. Now she considers herself a trans-gendered lesbian woman. Anyway, so there was this question and answer session afterwards, and one of the young women in the audience asked what she could do to help women on campus. After she got her answer, I asked the same question, only for men who are down with feminism. This one young woman kinda got in my face and said that women didnʼt need my help, that they could do it for themselves, and wasnʼt it just a bit too conve- nient for me to fight someone elseʼs fight when I could drop it at any time and go right back to benefitting from the hetero-sexist patriarchal system we live in. I totally understood where she was coming from and agreed, to a point. I have the same feelings about men who say they are down with feminism... Iʼm always skeptical. But, then again, I was a bit shocked because she was saying this not about THEM, the enemy, the cock man oppressors who make all of our lives hell, no, she was talking about me. I told the audience that yes, I do have a penis, but I am certainly not a card-carrying member of the masculine club.