sooo…for the last 3 years i’ve been working on a novel, starting right around the time saturn entered aquarius (and COVID hit) in march of 2020. i was living with my parents, collecting unemployment, and had been dragging around the initial scraps of this text for almost 10 years at that point and wondering if this was finally the time to return to writing and see what could come of it if i gave myself the space and time to actually do it. without putting too much pressure on myself i approached it as an experiment — write a little every day, see what comes of it, and, surprise surprise, i finished my first real draft within a couple of months. 300k words at first, which is longer than dune, i think, and drawn (at least mythopoetically) from my time living in san francisco (2008-2012).
i’ve been re-hashing it over and over since. i think this current draft is my 4th or 5th big, full edit, and the one i have resolved to be my last before i rip off the band-aid of submitting it to agents. so far only a few (divine) friends have read it and given me (incredibly helpful) feedback, but i really do feel good about it, and just sort of marvel at the mystery that is story and the way it takes shape from our lives and in turns shapes us in the process of bringing it to life. it’s been a wild, deeply challenging process, but the real reason i felt compelled to share is kind of silly and honestly bizarre but i feel like i need to at least go on the record about it.
most of the book is about drag queens living in a dystopian san francisco run by psychic wellness cops and a tangle of malicious tech conglomerates, the central of which runs a sprawling cyberspace network called accis, which basically turns content into currency in a world and time where people don’t really need food because they can digest plastic (lol i know right?!), the primary vector for accessing this network being a phone that is called in the story simply x. when i heard that musk was changing the name of twitter to X i just kind of shook my head. i don’t consider myself terribly original in some individualist sense, or visionary, beyond just being a practicing student of shamanism and a double aquarius, but i did listen to the land and spirit and the many divergent strains of possible futures as they were all tangled up in my personal and our cultural past as i was barfing out this manuscript and then gradually massaging it into something coherent, so i guess it all sort of makes sense. i also would likely be the writer i am today if i hadn’t had the outlet that twitter provided me during my peak drug/drag/disaster years living (and almost dying) in SF. tweet by tweet i gradually recognized that i had something to say that might be better served in other contexts, but without having been able to text tweets to my flip phone starting in 2009 i’m not sure i would ever have gotten to this point. so, the whole thing is kind of weird and perfect. oh, you strange, intelligent universe.
i’ve been reading count zero by william gibson for the first time (about 5 years after i first read neuromancer), which is exquisite. i read that he was writing his first book about the time the blade runner movie was first coming out, and worried people would think he’d ripped it off. i don’t really worry about that, just feel that art, writing, visioning, even just having thoughts are all in some way part of the larger collective human process as much as they are individual pursuits. it’s wild, and sort of an honor, to tap into some of the same veins as others in the culture (and really not always know it but just as wild to discover it after the fact). what a weird gift.
so anyway, wanted to share an excerpt below! this is from a scene where the accis ceo invites the very elaborate drag pageant haus system to their campus (for sort of mysterious / nefarious reasons, of course) and the protagonist (witness) is explaining to her psychic cop-trainer crush (who has been mostly living as a cognitive separatist monk) about phones and contemporary communications tech.
i do have some leads re: agents, but if you have any fiction agents in your networks you think would be jazzed on this, hmu!
#
the call goes out across every channel, network and app, to every patrona of every haus, then on to kings and queens, djs and dancers and go-gos and back-ups, fruits and flits and faggots, dykes and daggers and bricks, hetheys and theyshes, post-humans, pre-ops and genderless angelic mutates, asexual terrorists, hags and flies and goobers and blobs, chasers, eggs and closet-cases, furries and furies and demigods, trainers and pups, tree-huggers and bugs, healers, dealers, hustlers, hucksters and hangers-on, wannabes, weekend warriors and hosts and any and every other imaginable nightlife adjunct — from bayview to north beach, lowcity to crystal heights, after parties still raging in the castro and just beginning at the end-up, posh brunches up in bernal’s treed, winding peaks, polk street hooker hostels and tenderloin tenements, used-to-be-nice, victorian walkups on haight street, gritty industrial lofts from bayview to hunter’s point, in vans and cars and hovels and tiny homes and street encampments. feuding queens from casas misiòn y valencia call truce by air kiss. showgirls from russian hill don their most lavish carnival dress. grizzled sisters of perpetual indulgence don white face and nun’s habits. everyone readies for a gathering impossible to miss.
the text is simple, in nadir’s signature all-caps, from a phone number likely immediately discarded after it was sent:
- ALL HAUS MEETING. ACCIS CAMPUS. EVERYONE WELCOME. FREE DRINKS.
#
so, i have like five phones, like most people, usually at least two in my purse at any given moment, each largely incompatible with the next, only operable on specific networks that don’t necessarily intersect, running at different levels of functionality or distress — one for posting snapshots, poetry and scraps or rants of text on the local net; one for the transregional inter-arco feeds accessible only via satellite (when the solar weather permits), where i attempt to curate a marginally more polished and professional presence in the vain hope of receiving some work or notice anywhere else; one that synchs only with my clunky old laptop, for keeping track of gigs and night work; a burner that only gets calls and texts, a true relic, which i keep in a drawer at the apartment for sex clients or trade from the apps; and then there’s the x, my most expensive and up-to-date extravagance, the only way to access the proprietary accis aix.
everyone who’s anyone is on accis, has an x chip and account, has to, pretty much, for the only standardized and guarantor-backed credit whose value and existence stays relatively solvent, consistent and accessible week to week. (it’s so cute and weird that you don’t really know any of this…) the only people using cash, coins or off-brand credits are hookers and dealers, the ideologically or physically resistant, the very poor, who have no choice, or the super rich, who can do whatever the fuck they want. the rest of us it’s pretty much starve (aka live off of goop) or get chipped.
it’s a damnably easy to use interface, i’ll give it that, or at least they have us duped to think so, in the absence of any viable alternatives. the aix is nominally open-source, though it’s all encoded in nano-crystalline matrixes you have to be an expert, empathic adept to hack. the network’s alive, apparently, or at least intelligent. (surely you’ve heard about this?) they call her a goddess, their aix, which is a pretty watered-down appellate at this point, goddess. their designers and engineers have all the cachet of a class of priests and all the collective style and charm of a room full of clapboard standing desks, though i guess that jake guy is pretty hot, or at least nice, but sure, she’s a fucking goddess, ya’ll are fucking priests, go off, be my fucking guest. my x can sort of do anything, phone-wise, as long i know how to ask for it, but always for a price — heat credits and data can get you far, but the most premium currency is content, pretty much whatever you’ll give, they’ll take, and pay for, and market, which, for someone like me, is pretty fucking dangerous. it’s probably safe to say i post too much. i dunno! it gives me an outlet, right?!
most of the first cycle was mercifully silent, relative to what came before and since, all the old networks slagged and taken from us by matis — no tv, radio, cell service, internet, cars, trains, electricity or heat — painful, for most, wrenching withdrawals from drugs and food and memes and screen-tech, way beyond the scope of matis to sedate or regulate. everybody was pretty fucking psychotic, right — packs of feral men warring openly in the streets when they weren’t staging elaborate, pseudo-primativist contests of strength and endurance, testing the limits of matis to heal and regenerate mortified flesh, while the same old freaks stand on street corners shouting themselves hoarse, urging us to repent. way too much public drum-circling, beat-boxing and consensus processing for my taste, but it was also sort of nice?! like, i’d never heard quiet like some of those nights. had no idea how loud the birds and bugs could be without having to compete with us, how bright the moon and stars shine in true darkness, when the sky wasn’t burning with unmoored satellites careening into each other, of course, gradually circling the planet with rings of flaming space trash, but even that was beautiful, sort of poignant? i dunno, i’m basic, but it was a nice apocalypse. i could maybe have gotten used to it. spent most of those years willfully ignorant of current events, caught up in the pursuit of decent food, drugs, makeup, music and sex, sick, too, not as bad for me as it was for others, mild resistance, they’d probably call it, yeah, i told you i never really asked a doctor about it and won’t. i don’t know what’d be worse: to be told it’s all in my head, psychosomatic, the natural side effects of being an unskilled latent, that i could be fine if i just learned to chill the fuck out and hone my ‘gifts’ in ‘service’ to ‘society’ like all the other healthy post-resistant psychics, or if i was finally seen and validated as one of the actually, authentically sick, chronically ill, a true resistant, beyond repair and reproach, pinned beneath my diagnosis for life. ‘medicine’ was the first industry to really right itself, right? of course! cuz people fucking love having someone to pity and ‘help,’ and fix! no shortage of patients for their dispassionate experiments, hospitals inextricable from the drug markets, which were alive and thriving within weeks. then came radio, then the new internet, patched together by nerds and pirates, great, evil leaps forward when someone figured out that matis conducts energy, actually thrives on information and heat, was basically an intelligent power grid waiting to be juiced and tapped, all the while the people that had always had the most power roping circles around the have-nots, consolidating their influence into syndicates, lassoing us into agreements, installing the fok as the keepers of ‘the peace.’ i guess you can’t blame ‘em, really, anyone who saw a vacuum and rushed to fill it, saw we’d been left in hell (or paradise…) and that they were the only ones fit, low and vile enough to rule it. i don’t really go in for politics, but what they call progress i call trash — empty calories, tacky, unoriginal content, cheap, clammy highs, comedowns even worse — but i swipe and shop and post and lap at their troughs just like everybody else. i guess what galls and infuriates me the most, about all of it, is that the worst of them claim to be helping us. in my most sincere (and embarrassing) moments, i fear for all of us—
- um, thank you for sharing that—
- —ohmyfuckinggoddess you have to stop saying that!
#
everything glows, at accis, like we’ve passed through a veil into an enchanted forest, the gritty, dust bowl realism of the outer sunset giving way to a lush cartoon oasis — joshua trees spiked in vivid chartreuse, weeping cherry blossoms a little too pink, low plain of swishing ornamental grasses in every shade of sherbet, air and land spritely and teeming with birds and lizards and countless drone motes, everything a seamless, sanguine blending of matis, latis, vegetable, mineral and flesh. soft, upbeat techno hisses from clumps of metallic violets. a wide, black dais rests under a terraced cluster of greenish pyramids, all of it surrounded by a hexagonal moat filled with something liquid and dark. i feel like an automaton, an npc dropped into the wrong app, hungover and stoned and anxious, taken in by this beauty and shamed by it. maybe it’s all real and maybe i’m the one who’s fake. maybe they all belong here, the mirage and miracle of, like, everyone from the nightlife gathered in the same place, by daylight, no less, well, technically early evening, which is morning for most of us, and maybe i’m the only one who stands out, maybe i’m tripping, maybe i just need a drink.
- you ready to fucking spiral, bitch?
kitty slides into a seat next to us, pulls out a flask to spike our cups. whispering attendants weave through the terrace in ethereal green shifts, gliding from table to table with trays of miniature cocktails done up like a traditional tea service and treats that may be nothing more than highly convincing latis.
- these bitches will go anywhere for free shit…
there’s doña bolsa, entitled and ancient, absolute empress of casa imperiales, with her throng of cloying pageant monarchs; quanyita, haus toomuch, wry, buxom, bougie and sweet, with her little clutch of tastefully eccentric club folk; loquise, haus tea, the city’s supreme vogueing talent, miss tohni, their patroness, lithe and dark and stunning with her signature white-blasted cheek highlight; ruby is there, predictable in scarlet, plus her gaggle of over-accessorized misfits. saph sits at her side, sheepish and wet in sunglasses, ripped jeans and a t-shirt. i pretend not to look. slide my own sunglasses out of my purse, powder my nose, touch up my lips.
- this is how it fucking starts, mijas…
rusia, young and bronze and statuesque, casa chupaflores, the youngest patroness, having ousted her predecessor carlotta in a coup last cycle that was appropriately glam and dramatic, though they both still guest at rick’s on the weekends, on different nights, of course.
- they gonna take our pictures and plaster us all over their fucking heterosexual website — no, bitch, ain’t nobody selling my fucking face for apps on the side of a bus for a few drinks! i’m gonna need some new fucking tits for that, pues!
- oh no, bitch, lalalalala—
jah-hova, empress of faery god-haus, big and bald and black with a glistening beat, fanning herself in a crotchless bodysuit of purple velvet, dick hanging out like an idle threat.
- —my invoice start the minute i get the text, bitch! ain’t nona’ this shit free, ho, ha! lalalala! trust!
the moat gives no reflection, seems to pull light into itself. i realize with a shudder that the ground beneath us is semi-translucent, a pale skin over a great body of liquid, dark waters extending underneath us in a tank the size of a lake. i keep my sunglasses on, sip my drink, try not to yawn or puke. hushed whispers and gasps flutter up. you’d think by this point we’d have all been gagless but gag is, apparently, infinite, the ultimate resource, claims each of us like a virus as a knot of dark figures glides through the grass.
the man in the front of the group is oddly familiar, cosplaying like some kind of samurai goth — shirtless, barefoot, weirdly buff, half of his body inked in a grinning serpent. next to him is buzz fucking aldrin himself, skipping along in his usual turtleneck, eyes jumping out of his head at so many girls in one place. walking slowly behind them, on the arm of a tall, vacant blonde riven with scars in a tartan skirt, a woman known only as legend to most of us — polaroids stuck into the mirror backstage at the stud, graffiti in the bathrooms at caliberiès, grainy video on the internet from long before the shift—
- who the fuck is that?!
wild mane of oily midnight, silver-furred cleavage bulging from a black velvet corset bound impossibly tight around her waist, leonine smirk, perfectly-executed beat, smokey eyes, prowling and bright, lighting hungrily on each of us as they approach, smoldering cigarette dangling between her lips.
- grimoire.
they stop before us, nadir stands, haggard and resplendent in a cream-leather bodysuit inset with shimmering plastic feathers in mosaic, a cyborg, albino peacock. they stare into each others’ eyes, unblinking, size each other up for a long, poignant moment as the rest of the crowd drops to hushed silence. grimoire speaks first.
- i can’t believe you still have that, you old bitch!
- i have every piece you ever made me, you older bitch. and many more that i prised from an enemy’s corpse. so the twelfth house finally returns to claim its seat?
- if we must! if we must…
their laughter is like continents shearing apart. we all start to cheer, ‘yas!’ and ‘work!’ as they embrace, more tits between them than anything else. they triple air kiss and part, glasses clinking, joints being lit. grimoire takes the table next to ours and sits, hands clasped over a burnished wooden staff. behind her, like a ghost or an afterthought, a tall, thin figure, robed and veiled in black. she moves to kneel silently at grimoire’s feet, pulls back her veil to reveal paloma’s avian face.
xx
That's a great story line...