2008’s final Boy of the Week is David, from Brooklyn - but don’t worry, we’ll have plenty more boys in 2009. Photographed exclusively for EVB by Richard Welch

I know I know, you have all been wondering with bated breath about where I’ve been for the last few months. Well, to Ben from London, no, I wasn’t lost in a never-ending K-hole. Actually, I’ve been on a retreat, moving slowly backwards across the embers of my youth. OK, maybe there was some K in there somewhere.

Anyhow, it’s the holidays, and as you know I love holidays. We’ve already had snowflakes the size of cheap Kmart doilies fluttering down outside the EVB office. A sure sign that a white Christmas (replace with whatever excuse you need to poison yourself) beckons. As you all know following a white and liquid holiday comes the obligatory period of reflection, vomiting and paranoia, so to soothe your loins and sedate your cortex I have crafted the EVB Hung-over holiday mix. I hope it helps.

Wishing all you boys a wonderful party season and a relatively healthy 2009. Retreat… never!

‘EVB Hung-over mix’ - Dick William

The Cows at Jodrell Bank - World of Apples / The Time Has Come Again - The Last Shadow Puppets / Brokeback Mountain Score 3 - Gustavo Santaolalla / Just a Little Lovin’ - Dusty Springfield / Goon Gumpas - Aphex Twin / 1981 - The Tough Alliance / Indo (Extended Version) - A Studio / Like a Prayer - Lavender Diamond / Feel Flows - The Beach Boys / Dust - Gang Gang Dance / You Can’t Hide Love - Creative Source / Suð Í Eyrum - Sigur Rós / Nobody Does It Better - Carly Simon / Bruises - Chairlift / 24k - The Whitest Boy Alive / Fairytale of New York - Kirsty MacColl Featuring The Pogues / Last Christmas (Pudding Mix) - Wham
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When I was younger, I, like so many other boys were repeatedly asked what I would like to be when I was grown up. After about five years of being asked this question, I had fine-tuned my list to fireman, astronaut, high school wrestler, Parisian seamstress or truck driver. I always ended with truck driver as it would bring relief to the concerned stares that my parents and their friends would exchange while thinking of me toiling away in some Parisian studio, humming Broadway show tunes.

Why they were never concerned about me writhing around on a mat in a latex singlet with another boy always made me chuckle… but I digress…

Driving a truck, a tractor, a rig, (all terms I have now learned), is no easy job, and how do I know? Well, I packed my rucksack, got out of the city, and like the ‘Littlest Lost Hobo/Homo’, I headed down the road to find myself a gay trucker - and a gay trucker I did find, heading south on route I-95. Kenny Browne. Kenny the gay trucker. Here is his story.

Richard Welch: Tell us a little about life on the road.

Kenny Browne: For the most part you just get in a routine. Kinda like being in jail sometimes. Going to new places doesn’t impress the hell out of me anymore. I’ve been to every state in the country a shitload of times. The places you want to check out on the way, you usually can’t get a big truck into. So, if you can’t bobtail (disconnecting from the trailer and just running the tractor) you pretty much ain’t gonna see them.

The food at truckstops can be pretty hit-and-miss. I usually just cook in my truck. That way I don’t have to worry about getting some gross disease from some pig that doesn’t wash his hands after a crap, and then starts handling food at the buffet.

I wake up around 10 AM, and usually drive around 500-600 miles if my company can line up the freight. I shut down wherever I’m at, between midnight and 2 AM, then fuck around online, and head to bed.

I often end up sleeping on a highway on-ramp. The cops occasionally hassle you and tell you to move. Then you find a parking lot, and hope you can get a few hours sleep before someone is pounding on the sleeper telling you to move.

Parking, especially on the east coast, is a real pain the ass. The truckstops fill up quick, then you’re on your own as to where your gonna park.

RW: What are your three favorite driving songs?

KB: Oh shit, I don’t know. I guess I’d go with the standard ‘I’ve been everywhere’ by Johhny Cash , ‘Blue Sky’ by Allman Brothers Band, and anything by James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards.

James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards, ‘We Can’t Make It Here’

RW: How do you get over boredom or loneliness?

KB: I listen to lots of books on CD, I have satellite radio, listen to talk radio - it’s like having someone in the truck. The shows become like TV shows that you like to watch. I like Mike Malloy, Lynn Samuels, Dave Marsh. Plus, I have a boy-crazy 13-year-old niece that can jabber on the phone from Florida to the GWB.

RW: What is it like being a gay trucker? Are there a lot of you?

KB: Not enough! There’s other gay drivers out here. Not counting my old boyfriend Jeremiah, I’ve been laid two times in almost ten years with other gay drivers. I only see a driver I’d do about once in every sixth trip across the country. Then he gets my coveted “damn it boy!”

Most drivers, though, are rednecks. Rednecks really don’t do nothing for me. To hear them on the CB, they seem to think that every gay guy in the world is interested in getting in their pants. Not my mamma’s little boy.

RW: Are you open about your sexuality? Is there much homophobia in the trucking business?

KB: I’m open about it when it comes up. I occasionally get hassled on the CB. I don’t give a shit what some guy in a “git ‘er done” shirt thinks about who I’m fucking. I see what they’re fucking too, and I wouldn’t do these pigs with a stolen dick. Even if I was straight.

RW: Do you pick up hitchhikers, if so have you ever picked up any ‘interesting’ people? Any Scary Marys?

KB: I occasionally pick up a hitchhiker. If they look cool, clean (no scabies please), don’t have dogs, then sure, why not?

I just picked up a guy on I-75 in Florida, and it turns out we went to the same middle school. I didn’t know who the hell he was, but it turns out he was suspended by the same Dean that suspended me a few times.

I never picked up anyone that freaked me out, but I did pick up this guy in New Mexico one time. The guy was a fucking freak. He managed to insert ”the Lord” into just about every sentence. It got old real quick. By the time I got up to St. George, Utah for a drop, I was backing into a real difficult spot, and this asshole kept blocking my mirrors and I couldn’t see. After telling him all day to quit blocking my mirrors, here I am at 3 AM tryin’ to back into this hole, and numbnuts is over there twirling his hair in my mirror. I almost blew an artery. I chilled for a second, then pulled out and drove ten miles to the Flying J truckstop. I told him he had go. My brother Rob has a saying, “We should part ways before I part your skull.” It seemed to fit.

One thing I check for is that they have bags. If they don’t, then I won’t pick them up. They might be trouble. Maybe killed someone and need a quick getaway.RW: How big is your rig?

KB: Hooked up to the trailer it’s 72 feet long. About 19 feet unhooked.

RW: Does your rig have a name?

KB: Nah, not really. I sometimes call it my cage.

RW: What is the biggest rig you’ve handled?

KB: Kenworth W900L. Styling truck! A pleasure to drive, but it coulda used a little more room inside the sleeper berth. Lots of chrome, huge hood, great ride - a truckers truck! That hood is no fun in the city though - you can’t see people walking in front of you at red lights.

RW: What’s the weirdest load you’ve pulled?

KB: Frozen beef lungs, destined for a Purina dog food plant in Denver, Colorado.

RW: Do you usually have big loads?

KB: Sure do. Been looking for someone to help me with that.

RW: What do you have in the back of your rig? Bed… cooker… hot tub?

KB: I have a 15-inch flat-screen TV, microwave, fridge, laptop, a George Foreman Grill, two bunks, books, DVDs and CDs.

RW: Are you a regular on the CB?

KB: No, I occasionaly run into someone that’s cool, and we take it to another channel to get away from the rednecks who are busy telling each other to “shut-up stupid”. Most times, I just have it on low enough to hear where the cops are, and what’s going on ahead of me - wrecks, construction, etc.

RW: Are there any gay CB terms or phrases we should know about?

KB: Gay guys are called “good buddies” on the radio. Not like on TV or the movies where drivers good naturedly refer to each other as “good buddy”.

RW: Are there any secret signals, like hankie codes, for gay truckers on the road?

KB: You got me. I don’t know if there are. Both times I got laid with another driver it was by eye contact and good conversation. Not really into deciphering codes.

RW: There is a gay truckers organization - are you involved with them? Have you been to one of their jamborees?

KB: I drank with one of the guys who runs the Gay Truckers Association one night in Nashville. Cool guy. I called a bar and asked for directions, he was there and he went out to his truck and gave me turn by turn directions to the bar. The organization seems like a front for a fuck buddy network.

RW: You often hear about hookers at truck stops, but are there also rent boys operating there too? Any good stories?

KB: Yeah, there are hookers all over the place. Some places are not as bad as others, but the lot lizards can be very aggressive. They beat on your sleeper at 4 AM like they are serving a warrant.

Aside from not being into nasty truckstop whores, I wouldn’t trust them. They are usually crackheads and often set you up for a robbery or want to use your radio to line-up another trick. Who needs the hassle? I’ve never seen the male equivalent of a lot lizard out here. I don’t think they’d do to good out here, and one of the hyper-masculine rednecks would probably hurt him.

RW: When you come back to the city how do you relax?

KB: Ahh, now your talking. I like to kick-back the first few days, catch a buzz, catch up on shit at the house. On the weekends I like to hit the city. I like Eastern Bloc, The Phoenix, maybe hit some Irish dive. Occasionally I might end up at the Eagle.

I have a friend/fuck buddy on Avenue A in the East Village. Sometimes we’ll grab some food, hit the bars, and go back to his place.

RW: Crystal seems to be a prevalent drug in the truck business? Have you witnessed other truckers high on meth. How does it manifest itself?

KB: It’s out there. I don’t fuck around with dope of any kind anymore. On the CB radio it’s called “high speed chicken feed” or “Lucille” It’s not as prevalent as it used to be back in the day. You get popped on a dirty UA and you ain’t getting a job driving an ice cream truck. Mostly owner operators and newbies that don’t know how to run are the ones using it.

RW: What advice would you give to an aspiring gay trucker?

KB: RUUUUUNNNNNN! It’s kinda of a shit-gig industry. Or at least it has been for me. The only way I would recommend getting involved with trucking is if you own your own truck. That said, people that want to drive a truck are mutants who don’t listen to reason, so he’d just ignore me and climb in a truck anyways. That’s what I did.

RW: What advice would you give to to someone who wants to pick up a trucker?

KB: Well boyfriends of truckers should be patient ’cause you ain’t gonna see him much. People that want to pick up a trucker should be good looking, funny, and like to spring for steak dinners and good whiskey.

RW: Have you ever had sex in your rig?

KB: Yeah, I ran with my old boyfriend for a few years. He’d put out occasionally [laughs]. He used to like to blow me when I was driving. Worked for me. Talk about miles of smiles.

RW: What lube do you like to use?

KB: I like “Gun Oil”. You can get a Cadillac in a dog house with that stuff!
All photography shot for EVB by Shelby Gates
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This week’s East Village Boy of the Week is Yusef, from Philadelphia
Photographed exclusively for EVB by McKenzie Adkins

It’s been 13 years since G.B. Jones began her film The Lollipop Generation, but in celebration of it’s long-awaited completion and first New York City screening, East Village Boys took the opportunity to talk with the legendary matriarch of queercore.

G.B.’s life-as-bricolage legend began in the early ’80s with the band Bunny and the Lakers, and the seminal (no pun intended) all-girl experimental post-punk (there are a lot of labels, but I like that one) band Fifth Column. She co-founded the groundbreaking zine J.D.s (Juvenile Delinquents) with fellow troublemaker Bruce LaBruce, filmed a series of influential underground films with her queercore comrades in Toronto, appeared in a few others, appropriated and then one-upped an icon of homoerotic art, and shook-up and pissed-off more people with her zine Double Bill. She’s been wreaking general havoc, disrupting the would-be assimilators of queer culture, and assaulting the values that have been defining the gay mainstream for years. Decades even.

An interview can’t really do this story justice - it really needs a book. Not that she doesn’t have one, it’s just that the Canadian authorities thought it best to seize and ban it. Anyway, we asked her about all of that, so read and watch on.

Weston Bingham: I really want to ask you about your film, The Lollipop Generation, but it wouldn’t be right to not dig into your history a bit. Your band Fifth Column was a pioneering queercore, riot grrrl, pick your label, band in the ’80s and ’90s. Why do you think girl bands like Fifth Column, The Slits, X-Ray Spex, The Runaways STILL get second billing to the boy bands?

G.B. Jones: That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. Why do you think that happens?
Fifth Column, ‘I LoveYou, But…’

Fifth Column, ‘All Women Are Bitches’

WB: Hmm, that IS interesting… In 1985 you guys released your first album, and you and Bruce LaBruce launched the first issue of J.D.s, arguably the single most important catalyst of queercore culture. What was your agenda with the zine?


GB: To disturb and disrupt. And it did. It woke people up and got them thinking and doing things. That was the idea.

WB: Your music, the magazine, the films, the performances and events, are all-media DIY collaborations. Even your “Tom Girls” drawings collaborated with an unwitting Tom of Finland - and Vivienne Westwood for that matter. Was there a tight-knit community? What was the scene like?

GB: Busy! I was always sitting behind my desk working all the time and just kind of watching all these people getting together with each other or fighting with each other, doing drugs and getting drunk, posing for pictures, going to jail and getting out of jail, playing in bands and working on zines. The thing is that a lot of it happened in my apartment, so I took photos of it and filmed it and put it in a zine. I just did things with people who weren’t scared to hang around with me. A lot of people were scared to be associated with me. Even now, some people still are! I don’t know why.

WB: Did the community emerge out of necessity or by design? Did it really exist pre-J.D.s or was it a self-fulfilling prophecy?

GB: Both. It existed in my apartment and then it spread from there. Really.

WB: What do you see as the state of queercore culture now, after more than 20 years?

GB: Well, I showed The Lollipop Generation in Montreal and they had a big party for the movie afterwards with three queercore bands playing, and it was totally packed, with all these kids dancing, and licking the free lollipops they gave out, and having fun. People show me all these bands on YouTube that say they’re queercore, and I get all these letters from people in Greece and Italy and South Africa and all over the world, so I guess it’s still going on. It’s great, cause they’re taking it over and making it their own.

WB: It seems like queercore culture is manifested primarily in music.

GB: At first it was really mainly zine-based, for at least five years in the late ’80s when it all started, before there were lots of bands. And within those zines there was a lot of writing of all different genres, like fiction, essays, diaristic, journalism and so on, and there was many different kinds of art-making as well, such as drawing, sequential art, collage, etc, and there was a lot of work that would be considered bricolage, which was particularly appropriate for us. There was photography as well, and from the very beginning we were making films. I think much of this practice continued on in the work of people who began by doing zines, so I don’t know if I agree that it’s a movement that manifests itself mostly in music.



It has manifested itself in so many different forms that, say, a lot of the queercore comic artists aren’t known by the musicians. And maybe vice versa. In turn, neither group may be aware of a writer like Steve Abbott (and other writers like him) who was part of the zine scene in the ’80s and wrote the book The Lizard Club, which could definitely be considered a queercore novel. And a lot of people have probably never seen any of my movies. But it’s not the type of movement that depends on a knowledge of all its various permutations to be able to be involved in it, and that’s why it’s still going on.

WB: What keeps it from becoming just another codified gay community?

GB: It’s not a movement that’s been directed by the marketplace, it hasn’t been concocted by marketing managers, sales reps, and advertisers, it’s something that people want to do themselves. That’s why there are so many different kinds of genres of music within queercore. It hasn’t been streamlined for mass consumption. It’s outside of the radar of the type of people who want to cash in on the latest craze, who are looking for the ‘next big thing’, because you know mainstream America is never going to like it. You can’t sell it to the mainstream. It’s always going to be very scary to the average mall-shopper. It’s always going to horrify all the religious people. It’s going to upset parents. And that’s what’s so good about it.

WB: You and Bruce LaBruce co-authored a famous punk manifesto for Maximum Rock ‘n Roll zine in 1985 titled “Don’t Be Gay Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Fuck Punk Up The Ass,” you argued that gay and punk subcultures weren’t doing enough to extend the boundaries of gender and sexual politics. Any progress?

GB: Hmm, no.

WB: Is queer culture even more codified now?

GB: Hmm, yes.

WB: After J.D.s ran it’s course, you started making your own films, and acting in your friend’s films. How does the energy of your music and the spontaneity of your zines manifest itself in film?

GB: It’s all linked together, because my movies document everything that’s going on. They really are like my home movies, so they capture the scene around the band and the zines.

The Troublemakers starred Caroline Azar, Bruce LaBruce and Joe The Ho, and it captures the early years of J.D.s. and everyone else who was in the zine, like Stevie Sinatra, Dave-Id, Cizzy Che, Mean Jean and me. It was filmed in the condemned house were we all lived, and it was really all about our lives at the time, all the things we were doing: shoplifting, making out, piercing, getting arrested, doing our hair, getting out of jail. It was just our life.
Caroline Azar also starred in The Yo-Yo Gang with Leslie Mah, Donna Dresch, Beverly Breckenridge, Jena von Brücker, Tracie Thomas, Mark Freitas, Klaus von Brücker, Deke Nihilson, and many other stars, plus me and Bruce. It was the story of a two girl gangs who are at war. They’re at war with each other, with their gay roommates, and with the rest of the world. Most of the people in the The Yo-Yo Gang were also in J.D.s, but it’s got more to do with the Fifth Column scene and being in a girl band. A lot of the stars of the movie, like Caroline Azar, Beverly Breckenridge, Anita Smith and Donna Dresch, were in Fifth Column. Jena von Brücker took lots of photos of the band, did background vocals on a couple of our songs, and appeared on the cover of our CD, 36-C, which was a still shot taken from the movie. Bruce La Bruce was the band’s go-go boy for awhile, so I typecast him in the film as a go-go dancer, and Klaus von Brücker also danced with us, so he’s in the film too. And every girl in the movie has been in an all-girl band at some point. The Yo-Yo Gang is about girl-gangs, and being in an all-girl band is pretty much the same as being in a girl gang.
The Lollipop Generation documents the period of the zine Double Bill that I co-edited with Jena von Brücker, Caroline Azar, Johnny Noxzema and Rex from 1991 to 2001. Jena and Johnny star in the movie, and Mark Ewert, Jane Danger, Vaginal Davis, Torry Colichio, Scott Treleaven, Anonymous Boy, Gary Fembot and Stevec all contributed to the zine in some form, in one issue or another. The Lollipop Generation is all about the Double Bill years. Give or take a few extra years to finish it.
Really, it would be hard to separate the zine scene and the band scene and the movie scenes from one another. It’s all kind of interconnected, and the movies are the documents of those times. It’s the real scene, on film, on the screen right in front of you.

WB: Ok, on to your first “feature film”, The Lollipop Generation. What’s it about?

GB: It’s the story of Georgie, played by Jena von Brücker, who sadly says goodbye to her little puppy and runs away from a horrible home, only to end up in a strange world on the streets of a big city filled with perverts, pimps and smut peddlers. She soon makes three friends; Peanut (KC Klass), who has been kicked out of home and also forced to live on the street; Janie (Jane Danger), a streetwise girl who models for Lollipop magazine and does movies too; and Rufus (Mark Ewert), who is kidnapped and forced to be in an evil porn director’s (Johnny Noxzema) movie with a six-foot-something drag queen named Beulah Blacktress (Vaginal Davis), before Georgie rescues him. Together they have to try to find their way in the big, bad world.

WB: Why did it take 13 years?

GB: Oh, that’s a long, long, long story. You wouldn’t have room to print all the different episodes of insanity that went into making this movie. So may things happened! There were lots of fights, and producers dropping out of the project, and some of the actors didn’t like their characters, and there were numerous rewrites of the story, and floods and nervous breakdowns and other natural disasters. I wish I had filmed everything to do with making the movie, but it would be all so unbelievable people would think I had made it all up.

WB: What about the aging of the teenage cast over that length of time?

GB: The stars of the movie were so relieved when I finally finished it. They felt a little bit trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence for the sake of the film. Once it was done, they felt like they could finally grow up.

WB: It doesn’t seem like a linear plan of any kind would work out. How do you maintain a sense of experimentation, spontaneity, urgency and story integrity over that long a period?

GB: If you find out at the last minute that someone is coming to town for a couple of days and you want to put them in your movie, you might only have one day to think of a role for them, rewrite the movie so they can be in it, and then get the cast together and film the scenes. It’s not linear, but it is really urgent and spontaneous and experimental!I think the way I make movies is probably similar to exploitation directors like Doris Wishman and Ray Dennis Steckler and Ed Wood Jr., in that you just have to use whatever you have, whatever you managed to get on film, to get the movie done. I mean, I totally relate to Ed Wood trying to finish Plan 9 after Bela Legosi died in the middle of filming, because one of the stars of my movie left the film when we were halfway finished filming and I had to try to work around that in the same way. The only difference is that those directors had a lot more money to make their films than I do. Their idea back then of what was low budget filmmaking is my idea of heaven.

WB: What sort of film would you make with a proper budget?

GB: I’d make more films, lots more films. I’d film everyday. And every one of the stars in my films would get their own movie to star in.

WB: Your favorite format, Super 8, has all but disappeared. Video has come and gone. DIY is now much more hi-tech, and every kid with a computer is making films and publishing blogs and photos. What do you think about this democratization?

GB: I think it’s good. I like all the YouTube stars. I like how they make their own little movies. I do like to use Super 8 though, and I like video a lot, now that I’ve tried it. I really love the discarded, thrown away technologies, all the junk store cameras and ways of making movies that most people don’t care about anymore. But I’m not against trying new technology. I’ll try anything once.

WB: Why exactly was your book G.B. Jones banned in Canada, and where can we get it?

GB: You can see on the Customs form that they’ve typed in “Bondage” as the reason they seized the books. There are only two drawings of people who are in bondage in the book; one is of a police officer, who gets tied up and spanked for giving two girls a ticket for parking their motorcycle in the wrong place, and the other is of a prison guard, who is trying to make it with one of the prisoners, but gets tricked and tied up instead. I wouldn’t want to speculate too much about their thinking at the border, but I suspect it may have something to do with the occupations of the women in bondage, more than the fact that these two women are bound. After all, lots of mainstream pornography gets into the country that’s a lot worse than my drawings.
The book was edited by Steve LaFreniere, and put out by Feature Inc. gallery in New York. I only ever had a few copies of it that Steve smuggled into the country for me, so I don’t have any left. But maybe if you go to the gallery they might still have copies which they would probably give you for free. Someone told me it was selling for $125 on the internet but believe me, I’m not getting the money for it.

WB: Who are you listening to now?

GB: I listen to Mariae Nascenti everyday.

WB: And finally, what does G.B. stand for?

GB: Wouldn’t you like to know? It doesn’t stand for anything, except me. It’s just my name, that’s all.

The Lollipop Generation will be presented by Light Industry, in Brooklyn
Tuesday, December 16, 8:00. $6 at the door - cheap! We’ll be there…

Portraits of G.B. Jones and Andrew Cecil shot for EVB by Mckenzie James

All artwork © G.B. Jones, and/or artist credited
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December 2008 is the last month that Polariod will be producing thier instant film. To commemorate the tragedy, this week’s East Village Boy of the Week, Patrick, from Brooklyn, was shot on Polariod by McKenzie Adkins