Viagra Falls

Introduction for Bruce LaBruce's Skin Flick at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
New York, May Day 2015

 

Production still from Skin Flick by Bruce LaBruce, London, 1998

 

It is a great honor to introduce the national Canadian treasure and my favorite ginger in the world, the one and only Mr. Bruce LaBruce.

LaBruce, also known to his friends as BLaB or Red Beaver Mama, is a man of many talents and facets, a self-proclaimed reluctant pornographer, agent provocateur, devil's advocate, bon vivant, vagabond, insurgent sissy, incendiary fairy, militant mary, contrarian, international thing, arriviste, good times charlie, gourmand, slut and size queen.

BLaB is one of the most inspiring artists I’ve ever worked with. He’s a walking encyclopedia of film and filth, a relentless champion of all things kinky, gory, decadent and politically incorrect. He’s an ultimate party monster who can out-party and drink under the table all the other party monsters combined. He’s someone who brings out the best and the worst in people and someone we all love to hate.

They say everything happens for a reason. Back in the early 90s, as a homeless poet in Moscow, I watched a bad second or third generation bootleg VHS copy of No Skin Off My Ass, and that blow-minding undeground cult classic rocked my teenage imagination and, to a certain point, shaped my sexual and artistic identity.

A few years later, after I was booted out of my country for my gay writings and activism, I landed in NY as a political refugee and was fortunate to meet Mr. LaBruce in person. At the time I was a skinhead, trying to find my niche in the alien country and culture and writing explicit sadomasochistic poetry, descibed by my own Dad as “anal filth.” Bruce and I became friends and he attended my first downtown readings at Jacky 60s, as part of Verbal Abuse series, curated by Bobby Miller.

Bruce was developing a script about a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads with a working title Gang of 4 Skins, and he asked me to play one of the lead carachters, a grim monosyllabic bisexual Reinhold, who’s "more homo than erectus." It was my first acting experience and my first porn, and I can only describe it as Viagra Falls.

My struggles with mainaining erection are well-documented in LaBruce’s Director’s Diary, which he wrote during the filming of Skin Flick in London and which is about to be published in a book called Porno Diaries. I was a reluctant porn star, just as much as Bruce was a reluctant pornographer.

As you can tell, my English was very rusty at the time, so Bruce suggested that I switch to Russian profanities in a couple of scenes. For those of you who won’t be able to understand my heavy Russian accent, you can find the poems I’m reciting in my first book of writings in English, Food Chain, recently published by Brooklyn’s own ITNA Press.

In conclusion, I’d like to read a poem entitled Dreams Come True: Porn, which summorizes the bitter-sweet memories of my failed porn career:

 

As I witnessed myself getting double-fucked on screen

I realized that I’ll never again be happy or satisfied

ashamed or embarrassed

I won't blush and cover my face with my hands

I'll never again mourn a lost love or rejoice when I win it back

I'll never again be sincere because I simply don't know what that means

This is how dreams come true

From now on I’m going to look at life through the dim prism of this experience

Wherever I go everyone will turn to look at me

whisper and point fingers trying to tame me

offer food drugs or sex—the three things of which my uncomplicated life consists

three whales on which my suddenly empty universe rests lonesomely

Yes it's true that whenever I'm in America they expect me in Europe

and the other way around

all the time someone breathes heavily into the receiver masturbating at the other end of the line

(if there is in fact an end or a line)

but what does it matter to me

what do I care about the geography of someone's passions when my soul is like a burned-down vacant lot or a noxious waste dump covered in snow

my phone book is filled with names of those who'd be happy to use me from behind

from below or from above

I have nothing to retort with my mouth and ears are cluttered with some sort of impenetrable crooked-mouthed cotton-wool

I'm trying to say something but instead only a handful of senseless interjections squeezes out of me

all that I know and remember are my poses

my poses

my poses

the automatic mechanical quality of those poses

the shaved head

the glassy stare

the broken lines of my body and the sinister german speech on the set like an announcement of a verdict every word can carry fatal consequences

it’s hard to tell whether I’m laughing or crying

squirming from pain or bliss

I have no escape from the curve of my neck the grimace of my twisted arms

This is the vision that will be pursuing me for the rest of my life

blinding floodlights

cameras penetrating my throat and guts

I had an epiphany at that moment

I truly lost my memory

I was in some kind of nirvana while they almost tore my ass

The producer is calling trying to get me to do additional scenes

I was again seen on German TV

as always I was naked

NEVER AGAIN—I promise myself trying to appeal to my willpower but all the same with my heart stopping I lift the receiver to dial his number

This must be fate

 

Publicity still for Skin Flick by Bruce LaBruce, London, 1998