Valentine’s Day 2024, Cathode hosted a show featuring this wild compilation and a crystal clear copy of Singapore Sling at the beautiful Roxy Cinema NYC. For those who don’t know, Roxy is a plush, red velvet and brass motion picture palace and features an Art Deco-inspired design downstairs in a fancy hotel that shows cult classics. I love posh, it’s so posh. When you’re drunk at a movie theater, it feels like a fever dream, like you’re in the third act of a black-and-white breakdown.
And I was drinking heavily at the time! Ha! I’d slipped into this style of living where I thought I could make deals with the spirits around me. They call that, “losing your shit.” Before leaving for the show from Philly to NYC, I stood in front of my Black Madonna statue and swore I’d only have four classic margaritas. I was wearing swaths of lace piled on top of my torso with a gorgeous Dior bustier peeking out from underneath.
Twelve margaritas later, I was in the Roxy’s Photo Booth with my top off. I conveniently forgot to put it back on before stepping out. Roses in one hand, margaritas in the other, black lace trailing behind me like the veil of a damned bride, boobs fully exposed, scream-laughing in the middle of the lobby. Dior laying on the floor, as it should be.I walked back into the theater and sobbed quietly at the mommy-baby pleasure games noir, threw a can of beer at the screen with deep reverence, and then heard Jonnie Prey’s little voice next to me, “Am I going to have to kick you out of our own show?”
Everything after that is a wonky memory. I remember sobbing in the back of a yellow cab about ISIS bombing Palmyra, which is very me. Pictures on my phone confirmed that I ate a pile of chicken wings. I don’t eat chicken. Then I woke up drenched in my own pee pee! Shadow people haunted me for days after. One night, I felt a cold hand close around my neck in my sleep. A lie to the spirits doesn’t go unnoticed, and we often have to pay the toll in our own blood.
That was the last time I drank.
When I tell people this story, they like to reassure me that it’s legal to be topless in NYC. Yes, I was technically within the full legal limits of disorderly behavior. We have full legal rights to be blackout drunk and half-naked, sobbing about the erasure of ancient history Valentine’s Day. But the shadow people don’t care about legal precedent, I guess.
Anyway, Happy Valentine’s Day every day to Cathode, to my Black Madonna, to everyone who’s ever come undone and lived to tell it. I’m California sober now. I still walk around with my boobs out.
Featuring Richard Bey, Monte Cazazza, women adorned in latex and lot of heels and hearts.
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