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Queercore: The distinct identities of subculture
College Literature, Feb 1997 by Michael du Plessis, Kathleen Chapman
Vaginal Davis (aka Vaginal Creme Davis), self-styled blacktress and African American punk writer, musician and performance artist, engages in an equally elaborate bricolage to the ends of another fantastic autobiography/ autoethnography. Her writing is a dense mixture of Black English, sexual slang, queer gossip, homo-folklore, neologistic wordplay, ribald narrative, and revenge fantasy which recalls the specifically African American traditions of boasting and signifying.4 For example, Davis signifies on the highly influential but very white and masculinist hardcore band Black Flag in the name of one of her side projects, Black Fag (Rogers 93). Words are decomposed: "penis-cilin" ("MonStar" 2), "homey-sexual" (Fertile, Paris 5), or "Hell He Lou Ya!" ("MonStar" 4). Portmanteau words abound, such as "beefthrob" ("heartthrob" + "beefcake") ("MonStar" 1), "fourgy" ("four" + "orgy") ("MonStar" 1), "beatmanifesto" (for "masturbate": "beat your meat" + a reference to the industrial band Meat Beat Manifesto) ("MonStar" 4), or "condomint" and "condominium" ("condom") ("MonStar" 2 and "Myself" 109), alongside wild and willful malapropisms, such as "pis de resonance ala eleganza" ("MonStar" 1), "coital simultaneouptus" (for "coming together") ("MonStar" 4), and "hypo glysteria" (for "hysteria," the effect of sex with Davis, according to her text) ("MonStar" 2). There are poetic flights of metaphor and alliteration: "donkey-donged dorks" ("MonStar" 2), "passion's hissy fit" ("MonStar" 4), or "milky magnesia mouth" (a condensation of "mealy-mouthed" and "milk of magnesia" perhaps) ("Myself" 107). Odd rhymes show up out of nowhere: "sex in a tree, throw down the key, i'se got to pee" (Fertile, Visual 4). Often, Davis's language is held out for emulation as catch-phrases or taglines: "What Fertile Sez People Copy," the `zine tells its readers, and obligingly supplies more of the Fertile/Vaginal lexicon (Paris 5). All of this is carefully crafted to make an argot that will be impenetrable to the outsider, whose incomprehension is once again imagined even as it is dismissed: "For your part all you have to do is accept FERTILE into your life and body. Worship her for the goddess that she is, recognize that your life is a desperate sham without her" (Visual 6). Mainstream gays may nonetheless be reluctant to follow Davis's lead: when she was approached by The Advocate to write for a "Gay Voices, Black America" issue, timed for Black History Month, her idiosyncratic prose was edited without her approval; quotation marks were even put around her self-description, blacktress (discussed in Noxzema, Jones, von Brucker 248-49). Davis frequently uses the phrase "Stonewall or Stonehinge" to indicate that even the post-Stonewall generation is out of date (for example, Visual 22, or "Myself" 107).
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In her several projects, her bands, the Afro Sisters, Cholita, and the "retro positive punk speed metal band" (Davis, "To Live" n.p.), Pedro, Muriel and Esther, her frequent readings, and `zines, Davis has undertaken an amazing archival project that, through its wayward style, carefully makes an inventory of each shift in Los Angeles's underground clubs and events. Her songs likewise constitute a kind of historical reservoir of the queer scene and the transformative presence of people of color. For example, "Anna-Ee," performed by Pedro, Muriel and Esther, about a pre-operative Latina transsexual, actually records the experiences of the real Anna-Ee, a transsexual performer at one of the club nights in Los Angeles. "anna you anna me anna-ee!," runs the chorus, "he's a him, you're a you, i'm a she!/she's a real fine chick!/she's got tits, and a dick!" (in Visual 5).
