gerryvisco.com

Q & A with GERRY VISCO

by Max

I first met Gerry Visco at QxBxRx, NYC’s infamous queer punk dance party, where she showed up with out mutual friend Joseph Keckler. Joseph told me that she was there to cover the evening for NY Press. I was go-go dancing that night, and was immediately charmed by the platinum blond bombshell that was scurrying around the dance floor, alternately shaking her booty and snapping photos. She definitely seemed to be on the wrong side of the camera. I was immediately charmed. Over the last few months, I’ve been lucky enough to catch some of Gerry’s performances, and have been keeping up with her written output. I am so thrilled that a real life Style Icon such as Gerry Visco sat down to answer some of my questions. Let’s get to it!

What are your current writing projects? I know you write for NY Press and doing radio shows up at Columbia, are you working on other (possibly secret) writing projects?

I live in perpetual guilt for the numerous over-due projects I have going on simultaneously, the typical lot of writers, who are tortured and miserable individuals. That’s one reason I took up photography — as a way to procrastinate and also to do something where I am not hunched over a computer screen by myself every night. I’m also ADHD and for some reason enjoy juggling a million things at a time, arriving late, and putting people on hold for as long as I can. I write and takes photographs for a weekly column for New York Press’s Bash Compactor, covering events and parties in New York City. I also write occasional arts features for them. The New York Press pieces are on a strict deadline, thank goodness. I’ve been writing some articles for writer, photographer, and rabble rouser Clayton Patterson’s Lower East Side anthologies. I’m writing a piece now for Shira Tarrant’s feminist sex anthology entitled “Pleasure and Peril: Questions of Sex From the Bed and Beyond.” I’m doing research for my ex, who’s a celebrity biographer working on a book about the romance between Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. What I’m procrastinating about most of all is my own book, the life and times of Gerry Visco, which definitely will not be one of those solipsistic memoirs since my experiences got me involved in some very provocative situations, with fantabulous personalities amid the grit and glam backdrop of New York City from the 1970s until the present. You won’t be bored. Since I don’t have a contract yet for the book, no one is yelling at me to finish it, other than a few friends. I tend get caught up in my New York Press column. The pieces are 400-500 words, which my editor, Adam Rathe, keeps short. Working in a shorter format has been a really good practice for me because I often overwrite, hammering the sentences out very quickly, which I then edit.  Writing one or two short pieces every week has taught me to finish the story on the second draft, which I revise quickly on the spot, rather than numerous rewrites. Normally, I write a draft out the night before, let it simmer, and then add in the sassy voice and humor the second time around. A longer piece requires more drafts. Covering the events requires more than writing, though. A lot of the time is spent attending the events, keeping tabs on what is happening that’s new and exciting, and then pitching the coverage to both the editor and the people holding the events, which range from porno bingo, chi chi bashes at art museums, all kinds of parties — gay, Goth, benefits, literary events, subway performance art, a high heel workshop at Miss Vera’s School for Boys Who Want to be Girls, the tattoo convention, and so on. I also write arts features, which range from book reviews, for example Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey Lee just wrote a memoir, or an interview with Hunter Thompson’s widow Anita, Lydia Lunch, or Buck Angel or a live review of Throbbing Gristle. Many of the people I’ve interviewed, I’ve had on my WKCR FM radio show. I began writing poetry and fiction in grade school. I always felt alienated from the other kids and retreated into a world of books. I majored in writing fiction at Columbia and then did the MFA in Fiction there. When I realized that it was almost impossible to make a living selling short stories or even publishing them, and also realized journalism as a style was better for me due to deadlines, I switched to non-fiction and attended Columbia’s School of Journalism, where I earned an MS in 2005. I actually produced a first chapter and book proposal in Sam Freedman’s workshop at the Journalism School.  It’s about my picaresque adventures in New York City, when I moved here in 1974 from Newton, Massachusetts.  New York City at the time was an exciting gritty dangerous town. Inspired by Andy Warhol, I came looking for superstardom, but it’s taken a bit longer than I expected — due to a lack of confidence in my early twenties and also a string of ill-fated time-wasting love affairs with dysfunctional men. As Edgar Allen Poe once said, “Nevermore!”

I’m really interested in your Gerrification Project, I’ve been lucky enough to participate. It’s a really interesting project, to share your persona.

Max, you were a good sport to don the wig and glasses that are components of the Gerrification Project and to read my bad 10th grade poetry — you did a great job. I’ve had you and a few others get up and pretend to be me at events, where I then come onto the stage and excoriate the faux-me for being an utter fraud.  Some people are fooled initially.  Although I’ve been a fashionista since infancy, like Madonna, I’m chameleon-like and my phases have had dramatic changes. I started wearing cat-eye glasses combined with a bleached dumb blonde style and fabulous outfits a few years ago. As part of my friend Joseph Keckler’s art and performance series, Inner Beauty Parlor, I developed the Gerrification Project which is where I bring happiness and joy to America by having people dress like me. I then take photos of them alone or with me. I look good, I feel good, and I’m having fun and if you don my cat-eye glasses, throw on a blonde wig and some outrageous clothes, I guarantee you will feel so much better! I’m hoping to do a mirror-image performance in the near future and also stage a piece where anywhere from 5 to a roomful of people are dressed as me. My motto is “Gerrification not Gentrification! Down with yuppies, up with Gerrys!” Another trope is, “Gerrification Prevents Ugliness!” Let’s face it, most people need a make-over anyway. Looking like me is relaxing.  For example, at the Envoy Gallery where we stage Inner Beauty Parlor, Nathan, a gallery employee, was in a bad mood and resistant to being Gerrified.  He gave in and now certifies that it changed his day, his mood, perhaps his life.

In one of your readings you compared writing to sex, the idea of bringing the reader or participant to climax. That is such a sexy idea! Please elaborate on the correlation between writing and sex.

A story and sex are structured identically — narrative development has the same shape as having sex, with the same result –  an orgasm, or climax. Beginning with Aristotle in his “Poetics,” mythos or plot is designed with a story arc that begins with exposition, conflict, rising action and climax, followed by a falling action and resolution. In sex, you start with foreplay, action, rising action, and climax, followed by resolution: i.e. afterglow, talking, smoking a cigarette, snoozing, snuggling, or getting the hell out of there.

Sex is based upon fantasy, usually about something forbidden. Given that sex and story are so closely linked, you can also liken the reader’s devouring of words and plot-line as a substitute for sex or is it vice versa?  Story-telling and history, whether it’s done in words or pictures, is pre-historic and is a primal human activity. Simulating our own activities and behavior is pleasurable and if a writer is able to go beyond the intellectual and affect the body, emotions, the gut, then they have achieved something. At times, I’ve written material I found sexually stimulating. I’m getting turned on even thinking about it! The best sex is when you are able to act out a fantasy or create one as you go. The process of writing can be extremely erotic and this charges the material and makes it more exciting to read.

One of the things I really like about your work is that you aren’t just out to chronicle some freaky party downtown– you really participate in it. It’s a really cool kind of reportage. Do you ever feel conflicted about covering something that you’re also part of? What is your journalistic credo, if you had to sum it up?

I went to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism from 2002-2005 and while I really loved studying with the professors there — far more than at the MFA program at Columbia where everyone was wealthy, white, whiny, and competitive (this was in 1988-1990). However, journalism has undergone some major changes since 2005 with the advent of blogging, Twitter, and the dying out of print media.  I was forced to take an ethics class with a broadcast journalist whose own ethics I question. There, we were told that so-called objectivity was everything and the personal voice had no place in journalism, other than essay writing and other first person media. Even then, I knew this was bullshit. Europeans have always had a more mature view of objectivity in journalism.  Every writer has prejudices, opinions, and a voice — it’s a question of how direct they are. I do agree that many bloggers, Twitterers, YouTube videographers, can be peddlers of utter mediocrity. A true journalist spends years honing their skills in writing, reporting, and editing. By the time something gets into print, it’s been researched and edited. Getting our news from the Internet has the advantage of immediacy and cuts out the elitism and bias of the established media, but often the quality can be lackluster.  Which is why I’ve continued to publish with New York Press as my mode of expression, though I plan on developing my blog.  My flickr.com profile has more than a million views and serves as a blog, too. But for me, even at Journalism School, I believe in participatory and immersion journalism. I used my persona as a method to interview people and document them, and the fact that I may be like the people I’m interviewing, it develops trust.  As a quirky middle-aged woman, I am able to infiltrate parties and events and disarm people who usually are happy to let me penetrate their souls. My specialty is the close-up photograph. Perhaps they know my objective isn’t to exploit them but to cover them as individuals in our society.

I’ve been writing since grade school, where I had a few poems published in the 5th and 6th grade. I kept at it with short stories and got a few of them published as well.  But after years and years of saying I was a writer and suffering horrendous shame at not publishing anything, when I hit middle age, I suddenly realized that I needed to start writing immediately no matter what it took.  I enrolled in the Journalism School and when I finished, began publishing right away.  The motto at the School was “you can sleep when you’re dead,” and that’s my philosophy also.  If I have to do without sleep to write, I will and since then, I’ve worked despite sleep-deprivation. That’s been my strategy.

I understand that you’ve been in a Woody Allen movie. Why aren’t you a movie star? You have more charisma than probably anyone I know. Do you not like to be filmed?

I started acting since grade school (like the writing) and went to drama school where we put on plays. My parents thought I was shy — things have changed, luckily!  When I arrived in New York City, I studied at H.B. Studio and hoped to work in the theater, but by chance I was cast in Woody Allen’s film, “Stardust Memories,” one of his black-and-white movies photographed by the great Gordon Willis.  It happens to be one of Allen’s own favorites. It was a fall project, shot on location at Oyster Bay, Long Island. I went from being an extra to landing a line but because the film negative was scratched at the lab, we were called back in the spring to reshoot and my second time around, only got a long close-up. I worked on the film for about 6 weeks altogether, and met lots of interesting people, including Klaus Nomi, Charlotte Rampling, Laraine Newman of SNL, Marie-Christine Barrault, and of course, Woody Allen. It was Sharon Stone’s first real role, and I guess she was more ruthless than I because she became a star, years later. As a goof, I took a small role in a porno film, and this was when they were actually films, and continued to do some extra work, but ultimately, I couldn’t hack going on auditions and working with actors, many of whom are shallow, vain, narcissistic,unashamed to throw themselves at directors, and just plain dumb.  I actually found film actors to be more intelligent than most theatre actors, many of whom feel aggrandized because they read plays. It’s a tough world.  I’m returning to performing now because at my age, I am not afraid of anyone and I could care less what they think. I get out there and I do it. I was in a short film directed by Tommy Smith and created my own one-woman show for the Hot! Festival at Dixon Place.  I’m looking for more acting roles on film and stage. Someone out there, hire me!  Although I seem like a diva and probably am, I can roll up my sleeves and play anyone or anything and am totally happy to take direction. In many ways, that’s easier than creating your own show.

Vintage Glambob Gerry, photo by Bobby Busnach

Your performance this summer at Dixon Place’s Hot! Festival was really inspiring. You did a slide presentation as a sort of documentary of your life. It was really striking. Do you have plans to expand that piece or do more theater-y performance in the future?

Yes, I do plan on revising the performance and slide show based upon my life during the 1970s. I will be performing at the Sex Worker Literati series at Happy Ending on March 4th in the show entitled, Show-and-Tell: My Favorite Outfit. I also would like to develop this material into a one-act multi-media play. I’ll continue with the Gerrification project and am looking to find roles in other productions.

What is the absolute best and the absolute worst parties you’ve ever been to in NYC?

Well, I can have a good time anywhere but I love it when there are good-looking people, with costumes, club kids, trannies, and drag queens. I also prefer a mixed crowd of young, rich, downtown, funky, artist, gay, straight and in-between.  The best parties I’ve been to this year would be at Vandam, the F Word, Dr!p, some at Glasslands. I like Goth parties, even if the people are trashy. Gregory Dinwoodie and Rachel Landry put on great parties. Dinwoodie worked the door at James Coppolas’ parties, then went on to blackFUN at Baddies and the Gates, and now he and Rachel are doing their own parties at Juliet and Baddies.  There’s lots of vodka, dancing, and pretty young things with some older more established types. My best parties are those where I don’t injure myself, get black-and-blue marks, lose credit cards, money, and cameras, and don’t get involved in a verbal altercation, but it’s pretty rare for none of those to happen at a given party.

I had a great time at the SculptureCenter benefit recently in LIC with Japanther because the band played outside in freezing temperatures and the moshers were having so much fun.  I often like fancy gala events with an open bar with a few celebs thrown in — I adore photo ops.

As for worst parties, I dunno.  The bad ones I leave quickly.  I do not like those circuit parties full of shirtless men.  No place for a woman to be, for one thing, and it’s just SO boring.  I went to a terrible party at Webster Hall this summer called “Circus.” I couldn’t bear to stay.  Some house parties can be terrible.  I went to one, and it seemed like everyone was on drugs and dealers were in the background and some horrible greasy bearded guy was trying to pick me up. I got out of there. Boring straight parties full of typical yuppies turn me off totally, as well.  The Danger Parties and Rubulad used to be better but have become too mainstream.

One of my favorite parties was at Starr Space in Bushwick — OTK (Over the Knee) Discipline with Gio Black Peter.  He was doing handstands, some girls were topless, some kids were doing yoga outside, and it was a very friendly scene. I had a great time and my favorite part was taking photos of Gio. I immediately sensed he liked to roughhouse, so there’s a picture of me taking by Brian Kenny with me sticking the heel of my boot into Gio’s chest with him standing over me with his boxer shorts down.  That’s called investigative journalism!

Gerry Visco w/ Gio Black Peter @ OTK Discipline!

What kind of guys do you like? Do you have a type, specifically? You gave me sex advice once when we were chatting online and it was right on the nose. I think you have a good understanding of the feeling of Lust. Do you agree?

I generally fall in love with men who are unavailable. My long-term relationships have been disasters. I am very good at analyzing other people’s situations but in my own case, I have to learn to listen to my gut feelings and run away the minute those warning bells go off.  My heart starts to warm up for men with problems. I’ve learned not to go out with someone because you feel sorry for them. If they don’t turn you on right away, then don’t even bother. Chemistry is important, I don’t care what anyone tells you. Of course, sometimes attraction develops by proximity and you fall in love with someone you work with and that might work.   I like good-looking men but NOT bears. I only date men over 5′10″ now because my ex-husband was my height — 5′7″. I like smart men, but they don’t have to be intellectuals.  I like funny men. I like a sexy voice. I like it when a man dresses well, but I’ve dated men who wear rags. Like most people, I’m looking for someone who appreciates me, who can accept my quirks, and be my advocate and I’ll reciprocate. Who doesn’t want a soul mate? At the moment, I’m being very careful and not dating, but if the right person comes along, I may take a chance. Women can be very appealing, but I have fewer female friends lately. They can be over-sensitive and worry about relationships too much for my taste. I’m trying to change that about myself, although I don’t know if I’ve succeeded. Being with men, gay and straight, has been a learning process. I often think to myself, what would a slacker dude do in this situation and it’s always been a help. Over-sensitivity is a major obstacle to achieving goals. I’ve been called a twink magnet and I won’t deny my attraction to pretty twenty-something boys — I just like being with them.  I feel like I AM a twenty-something boy. I became younger after I dumped my last boyfriend and now literally feel the same way I did when i was in my early twenties. I only realized that I’m a diva recently, and that’s helped. If I do meet someone, they will have to accept me and my lifestyle and if they don’t, “Next!”

Not to be shallow, but your style is of course one of your hallmarks. How would you describe your style? Where do you get your clothes?

I love being shallow. As I said at the Inner Beauty Parlor, I believe in outer beauty far more than inner beauty.  We are what we eat and our outer selves are shaped by our inner selves. People’s faces and bodies become distorted from the mind, which is where phrenology and physiognomy enter the picture, and the Chinese art of face-reading.  The way people look reflects who they have become. As infants, we are all more alike.

In any case, fashion and makeup are one of my primary joys in life, as is keeping in shape with swimming and yoga.  I have hundreds of outfits and try not to repeat a look more than a few times in a year.  I’m actually a hoarder and my apartment is cluttered with clothes and accessories. Since I’m a girl on a budget, I buy all my clothing at Goodwill, which is primarily not vintage. Most of the clothes are donated by high end garment industry firms and there’s a lot of European imports as well. I can walk into a filthy grungy Goodwill and snap up a fabulous outfit in seconds. I also believe that recycling clothing is far more interesting than buying expensive new clothing, although if I had more funds, I’d probably do both. But there’s nothing better than finding a bargain or a find. The Upper East Side has the best thrift shops in NYC.  I’d say NYC is not great for vintage shops and I’ve found far better vintage fashions in Minneapolis, for example, where I visit my family. I started cutting my own hair a few years ago and it looks better than ever.  I turn it into my own personal power session because hair gives you strength. I wish I had more money to buy beauty products. I’m a big believer in plastic surgery, not in the Michael Jackson sense, but a bit of work here and there doesn’t hurt.  In New York City, people seem to accept unattractiveness and even celebrate it so I guess my aesthetic is closer to what they do in Los Angeles.  I seriously believe that many people need to learn how to enjoy themselves more, look better, and feel better and spread more love in this world. Not caring about your appearance means you don’t care about yourself.  I can only cite as an example my mother, who had a Parkinson’s disease and died in a nursing home last Christmas. Every time I went to visit her, she looked great.  She always had her hair done, her nails done, and a fresh pretty outfit on. She’d be sitting in the wheelchair and was ready for company. As a child, I recall her spending hours getting ready putting her makeup on in the morning, picking out a get-up,  setting, teasing, and hairspraying her bleached blonde hair.  Was she narcissistic?  I don’t know, but in her eulogy at the nursing home, I mentioned how my mother always looked fabulous, even at the end.  Everyone agreed — she was beloved by the staff there. She never complained. Darling, take it from me: looking good is your best revenge.

For more information, check out Gerry’s website here: www.gerryvisco.com