1972
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #178. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Kcab ti nur.
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Come one, come all, this month we’re cranking the machine back to 1972, taking on Pink Flamingos, Top of the Heap and the end of all things prim and proper.
Do you believe in God?
I am God!
You are God!
You are God.
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
One more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
I wrote a letter to the end of all things and I wonder how she received it. Maybe she chewed and spat, but I hope she set each letter aflame and blew inky dust into waiting lungs.
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
One more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
There was less of a sense of corporate-ness to pride this year and I wish I could say that was because we won, that the radical girlies burst the BAE balloons and shoplifted all the rainbow tat to feed the hungry and clothe the needy. And there absolutely have been principled and effective actions (especially around corporations with heavy involvement in Israel’s apartheid). However, I can’t help but think that the bigger narrative is that these companies could taste the blood in the water and didn’t fancy being around for when the real sharks arrived.
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
There’s a man on the moon and he’s holding a gun
There’s man on moon and he’s holding gun
Man on moon and holding gun
Man moon holding gun
Man moon gun
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
Dear Diary,
Caught a killer’s eye this week. I could feel those pupils move like scalpels! Oh, diary of mine they turned my corpse to perfect spectacle. There was cold calculation as she probed places for the finest cuts. I felt her find me at my most beautiful, but soon enough she dropped me, finding my perfections weren’t enough. Pathetic.
Yours forever,
Marion
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
I wonder if there’s anything more Waters and anything more that era of drag than to take Divinity itself and drag it through the muck. And yet it is so obviously relevant to our current context as well? The mere idea that fat queers, people of color and drag artists would replicate Leonardo da Vinci’s interpretation of the last supper of Jesus in the Olympics opening was so controversial as to provoke death threats (which is especially ludicrous when the performance’s influences are clearly more ancient Greek than Christian). How would they feel if they saw a proclaimer of Divinity itself eating feces off the street?
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
“What if I killed you where you stood?”
So said the hung’ring maw beneath the world
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
“Filth is my politics” isn’t just a catchy slogan. It’s a recognition that there is no version of us that will be accepted by a moralist fascist society. That there is no way we can be repackaged or dressed up or made pretty enough to be acceptable without losing ourselves entirely.
It’s all part of the plan,
One more test,
one more exam,
It’s all part of the plan.
The ending of Top of the Heap cements the failures of George Lattimer’s assimilationist crusade. For all his aspirations of heroism. For all his abandonment of friends and family and community, his journey ends like many of the poor/criminalized Black men he defines himself against – full of lead on a cold and lonely floor.
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Oluwatayo Adewole is a writer, critic and performer. You can find her Twitter ramblings @naijaprince21, his poetry @tayowrites on Instagram and their performances across London.
