I’m Not Leaving!
A Review by Carl Watson
Have you ever been asked or forced to leave? I’ve been evicted a couple times. Once a friend of mine broke my door down trying to get in because he wanted to have a ménage a trois; him, his sister and me. I don’t know what part he thought he would play in the ménage since some years earlier he had shot a bullet into his penis in an act of existential despair. Anyway, my Croatian landlord didn’t like the broken down door scene, so he told me to move out. There was another eviction in New Orleans involving a teenage stripper a poodle and a motorcycle chain, but I won’t go into that.
Some people relish such au dehors status as fuel for their identity, their politics, or their creativity. For other’s it’s an insult, a position forced upon them against their will. I bring this up because eviction is one of the many forms of being 86ed, which is the subject of Jennifer Blowdryer’s new (but long in the works) book, Kicked Out: The 86’d Project, in which she presents a number of highly entertaining interviews with people who have either been thrown out or who do the throwing out.
One could call it a sociological study of sorts, albeit without academic commentary, on the causes and effects of exclusion, a look at how divisiveness, intolerance, indignation and belligerence play out in the everyday lives of certain social niches.
Kicked Out can be divided into two sections, that of the 86ed and that of the 86ers. The 86ed are performers, show-boaters, drinkers, druggers, plain old pissed off folks and “petty criminal” types such as muggers or shoplifters who might be addicts who need money, or not even addicts but need money anyway, or if not money they need the stuff they’re stealing, or if not that, they might be boosting for the sake of it, or causing trouble for the sake of it, because they’re high, or just because they are right and the other guy/gal is wrong, or, as many interviewees claim, they may be doing nothing at all to deserve their fate—they are simply victims of an unjust state of affairs.
And then there are the 86ers—bouncers, doormen, bartenders, cabdrivers, librarians, shopkeepers and landlords (the latter two do not have voices here). The 86ers may have money backing them, not big money, just job money, because 86ing is their job, they’re getting paid to do it. Maybe they like it and maybe not so much. Sometimes the 86ers have been 86ed themselves and vice versa. The line between them is similar to that between cops and criminals, sinners and saints.
The book is a grand feat of transcription. Ms Blowdryer has managed to get on paper a variety of unique voices within the scope of her social milieu, which is probably further limited by the willingness of subjects to respond to the question, but then this is the issue with all surveys—you have to agree to be surveyed and that skews the survey. So it’s not really a survey in that sense, but as a social document, it sheds light into lifestyles and personalities the reader might not be familiar with.
Another thing one might notice is that the interviewees do tend to ramble and veer off topic, pulling in unrelated facts, stories and pronouncements so that sometimes Ms. Blowdryer has to gently steer them back on course by saying such things as “So we need to get back to the story.” But this veering off is entertaining for the reader. For the most part, Blowdryer is a low-key interviewer, commenting along the way and sometimes sharing an insight or similar experience.
Let’s take a look at a few of the players on these teams:
The 86ed
Bambi Lake is a large personality and provocateur who, according to JB, “has been kicked out of more places than any of us will ever know,” and who is apparently famous for the signature line “I’m going to jail tonight” before she throws a punch at some asshole. If you said Ms. Lake looks for trouble, you might be right. Trouble seems to be her M.O.
One of my favorite storytellers is Name Redacted, a make-out artist, substance abuser and sometime mugger, who delivers a dizzying series of tales including one in which he maybe picked up Cher at Studio 54 and maybe went home with her and maybe fucked her, or maybe didn’t. He is never quite sure if it is her and he vacillates between suspicion and fantasy. He does get thrown out of the apartment of whoever it is but at least he ends up with a great tale of celebrity proximity, which is a valid form of currency these days.
Many of the 86ed are poets of a sort. Take Desiree, for instance, who is kicked out of the VIP Room at Miami’s Crobar for literally stinking up the place (personal hygiene issues). Outside on the street, she has a reflective moment: “Like a stood-up prom date watching reruns of Frasier. I cried and cried, little black tears from my little black heart. Tears that wept from blistering sunspots of shame, and made me feel like a big, annoying, noticeable pile of nothing.”
Performance artists are a group that may be 86ed from the very venue they are playing, especially if they are criticizing that venue. Rev Jen is just such an artist and her stages, usually public places of business, are often hostile to her work. For one performance, she created a giant costume for a character named Doo Doo, the Fifth Teletubby, “who’s like a hip brown Teletubby with a Cockney accent, rotten teeth, a perpetually bloody nose and bloodshot eyes; who smoked and drank and got thrown out of Telletubby Land when the TV on his stomach started showing only scrambled porn.” She wears the costume into toy stores like FAO Swartz or the Disney Store in Midtown where she dances on top of store pianos, signs autographs, etc., and yes, she gets thrown out, but she often goes back and gets re-thrown out. She’s persistent that way.
This is a common theme among the 86ed, this going back in to get re-thrown out. For the radical artist it may be the path to success. For the bar brawler and shoplifter some other psychology is at play—maybe masochism or megalomania. Various theories could be brought to bear, here, and frankly, to all the stories in this book, which is another way to frame Kicked Out—as a series of case studies in resistance, antagonism, masochism, narcissism, intolerance and brain/body dysfunction. Blowdryer’s subjects, in general, do not go gently into that good night, but rage, rage against the great injustice of it all, as if righteous indignation were an engine of some self-validating Eternal Return.
Now that I’ve suggested a slightly metaphysical dimension, I will note that quite a few interviewees do seem to actually court the boot as some kind of psycho-religious experience. Tony Vaguely (that’s his name) labels the moment of transition as “the 86’d factor.” Here he describes his state of mind just before he’s thrown out of a Rite Aid store: “. . . all that Lithium churning my brain into brimstone just screaming to get out, until crash-bang-boom, I was there, the 86’d factor! (I.e. One not caring what they say or do and not giving a damn about the consequences.)” Bambi Lake has her own take: “you get to that point where you’re drunk and you feel like Iggy Pop . . . That’s the danger zone.”
It’s no secret that “the 86’d factor” is often fueled by substances, as opposed to any kind of moral conviction. My friend, the poet Tom DiVenti, used to call it getting “the Devil Head”—a transition that takes place during a night of drinking/drugging when something clicks in your brain, your face changes, and you’re just gonna go for it. Joe Donohoe, a cab driver who calls himself a Celtic Agnostic and who drinks excessively to get in touch with his roots, recalls a time when his own 86’d factor kicked in. He’s drunk in a bar and sees some women he dislikes, so he decides to do something about it: “being drunk and evil—and not doing what I would normally do, which is just be discreet—I said “You fucking whores!” I started talking shit to them, and I figured, hey, I’m just going to keep on drinking until this entire bar kicks my ass; so I of course pick a fight with the entire bar, which is of course completely stupid.”
The 86ers
The 86ers are the ones who have to deal with the issues of the 86ed. They are the ones called upon to maintain order. Some of us have assumed this position without asking for it. In fact, the book starts out with Blowdryer’s own story of throwing the Almost Pretty Argentinian Chick (APAC) out of her apartment during some kind of spontaneous make-out party, where some bad feelings were stirred up and trouble was brewed.
Jim Van Buskirk is a librarian and self-described “babysitter for the homeless.” He has many patrons who watch porn on the library computers and that’s ok. They can stay. But as we all know, porn leads to other problems like jerking off in the bathroom, which in turn makes “normal” library customers uncomfortable. Libraries attract their share of people who have nowhere to go and so they tend to take care of business there that others would take care of at home. “I mean you name it . . . people defecating, puking, every bodily fluid, every orifice. I can’t imagine that there could be behavior that we haven’t seen here at the library. So it feels like a day care center.”
Darren Dantzler, a Library Security Guard in SF often gets called to libraries to deal with problems the staff can’t handle such as violent confrontations: “One guy . . . I don’t know what kind of illegal drugs he was on. He was hitting a guy with a skateboard. The guy was just sitting there reading and the other one just walked up to him and started hitting him with a skateboard.”
Now librarians might rightly feel they didn’t sign up for such grim duty, but for a bouncer, 86ing is the job. Frankie Clinton is a bouncer who always tries de-escalation before physical confrontation. “Some bouncers are goons who escalate situations, whereas a person could be very easily placated and talked out of the club . . .What I try to do is show him I’m respecting him, as a man, and I give him the opportunity to maybe leave without making a scene.” This radical psychology of respect for one’s adversary may be common in sports but not so much in general society, at least not these days. Cops take note.
In our hyper-competitive and angry age where building walls is the subject of rally cries, where deportation becomes a platform, where we seem to be corralled into demographics, political, economic and otherwise, where we are pitted against each other for the profit and power of others, where compassion is more and more constrained by unexamined loyalties and distrust, in this age of Red vs. Blue, Deplorables vs. Elites, Boomers vs. Millenials, Antifa vs. Proud Boys, Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life (one could go on and on with this list, and indeed many of these fights are of worthwhile cultural and historical import), it is inevitable that such divisive spirit will filter down into less momentous quotidian life, as frustrated citizens pick fights that don’t need to be picked even if it is for the sake of story and self-image. It’s always good to remember that masochism can be met with compassion, respect can temper anger and tolerance can help alleviate alienation.
I can’t do justice to all the unique stories and personalities, so I will end by saying that one bonus of this book, besides getting a look into what might be unfamiliar lifestyles, is its stimulating effect on memory. As I was reading I had to pause often and fondly remember my own episodes of being kicked out, mostly from bars and sometimes apartments and, of course, it was never my fault. Alternatively, I had to reflect on what an uneventful life I’ve led. Both perspectives are valid. No one is either completely angel or devil. Everybody is on one side or the other at some time and often at the same time. One day we’re down at the Community Center baking cookies for a cancer benefit, and the next day we’re standing (see Timmy Spence, Chapter 7) butt naked in the alley, holding nothing but a CD player before an audience of laughing cab drivers. We can only hope that judgment will be kind.
Kicked Out: The 86’d Project
Jennifer Blowdryer
Paperback, 144 Pages
Pedestrian Press July, 2020
$15