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who gets drama? i do i do
Jun. 11th, 2005 08:53 amwow so last night was one of the more intense open mics i have hosted. gotta get it off my chest and...
and i wish i meant intense like wow poems. but i will start with the end. officer rick had to escort someone out of the open mic under the threat of arrest. you read clearly, a cop (a gay cop, but we'll get to that later) had to escort someone out. sigh. for the record, it wasn't my choice, but given the escalating nature of the situation, it was probably the right one. dont knkow. it couldn've gone differently i think but it didn't.
so the details. i have an old friend that i worked with when i first came to the city in 1998. we are really more of the hey how you doing set now, but always say hi and have some good feeling toward each other. we'll call her L. for a while now she has been dating this trannygirl, R, who i know is a writer. they are both pretty intense people, goth, performative fashion, etc. so i saw L at the center, she said they were going up to transforming communities (Trans Spoken Word Event - why the caps on that? i don't know) and was i going? i told her how i was running the open mic so i cou;dn't, but i knew that R did writing so, if they wanted to split their time, or have R get on the list early so they could then go upstairs that'd be cool. i said hi to R, said 'i hope you read, glad to have you here' and then we all went and did our own thing. had a brief pop culture exchange with R when pre show, the johnny cash song that was playing in the cafe had a long beep in it (from the man named sue) and she got all upset and yelled 'censorship, they censored johnny cash' and i told her that johnny cash put the beep there, even has it there live. we talked abotut it for a minute, laughed and about 10 minutes later i started the open mic.
all this to say, there was friendly there.
so R was the second reader. i had explained the whole 5 minute rule at the beginning. she started with the mic but didn't like the effect and so set it on the music stand we use for people to set their pages to read off of. then she leaned on the stand during her piece and the mic fell off. Red Jordan went over to pick it up and R screamed at him to not touch it. seemed like a joke. Red didn't seem happy about it (who is when screamed at?) butjust said quietly, 'don't break the equipment'
R continued her piece. minute 5. minute 6. then she paused, seemed like "that moment" and I said time. sorry that's time. she then said to me "i am not stopping, you have to come and slap the shit out of me if you want me to stop" ok friend or not, that doesn't fly. so i stood up and said "no really, it's time". can i do an aside here to say that if the response had been, i'll wrap it up everything to follow would've been different? Ok so then she jumps up onto the arm of the velvet couch at the cafe and starts yelling her piece. i put my hand on her arm and said"R you need to get down" and she violently shrugged me off in a flailing manner. kinda hit me,but it was just my arm. no bruises. whatever. then the cafe worker yelled - you have to get off the couch. then the cafe owner really yelled get off the couch. then he went and got officer rick. (the center has members of the pride alliance of the sfpd do security at the center since for a while staff at the fronto desk kept getting threatened and having projectiles thrown at them by some of the substance abusing folks in the area) officer rick asked R to leave. said i am asking you to leave. was probably as nice as you CAN be when having o be very coplike and kick someone out. then officer rock called R a sir. L then starts yelling and said, don't call her a he, that's a hate crime.
They went outside, talked with officer rick and left. giving me dirty looks through the window as they walked away. R had some choice words wo yell while leaving that amounted to bomb the lgbt center, you only want well adjusted queers here, and accusing me of hypocrisy because i said i wanted to make a welcoming environment and she was being escorted out.
so, yea, intense. i know R was way out of line. the thing i felt bad about was the way it seemed it couldn've gone differently. once R's behaviour was escalalting, the decision was out of my hands. the cafe owner has to put up with a lot of shit, and people have attacked him and his staff before. stolen furniture from them. vandalized it. etc. his tolerance for bulshit in his cafe is gone at this point.
talked to officer rick later. who, was mortified that he got R's gender pronoun wrong. he did start using m'am and she as soon as L corrected him, but he got all red faced and upset talking to me, his guilt was intense. he just kept saying, she didn't present that way, i didn't know, she didn't present.
so, that was my open mic. borrgrrl read after all that and was really good. other folks read and i convinced this very fashionable goth boy Johnnie to play a couple of Marilyn Manson covers. later borgrrl and i went to badgag with some of the transforming communities folks, and later grabbed some people and met up with the flameline crew at hotpants.dancy dancy. had coffee, wine and whiskey for dinner, got home around 3am and talked to the sexy beast about all the drama.
whew. wonder what else the weekend will bring.
and i wish i meant intense like wow poems. but i will start with the end. officer rick had to escort someone out of the open mic under the threat of arrest. you read clearly, a cop (a gay cop, but we'll get to that later) had to escort someone out. sigh. for the record, it wasn't my choice, but given the escalating nature of the situation, it was probably the right one. dont knkow. it couldn've gone differently i think but it didn't.
so the details. i have an old friend that i worked with when i first came to the city in 1998. we are really more of the hey how you doing set now, but always say hi and have some good feeling toward each other. we'll call her L. for a while now she has been dating this trannygirl, R, who i know is a writer. they are both pretty intense people, goth, performative fashion, etc. so i saw L at the center, she said they were going up to transforming communities (Trans Spoken Word Event - why the caps on that? i don't know) and was i going? i told her how i was running the open mic so i cou;dn't, but i knew that R did writing so, if they wanted to split their time, or have R get on the list early so they could then go upstairs that'd be cool. i said hi to R, said 'i hope you read, glad to have you here' and then we all went and did our own thing. had a brief pop culture exchange with R when pre show, the johnny cash song that was playing in the cafe had a long beep in it (from the man named sue) and she got all upset and yelled 'censorship, they censored johnny cash' and i told her that johnny cash put the beep there, even has it there live. we talked abotut it for a minute, laughed and about 10 minutes later i started the open mic.
all this to say, there was friendly there.
so R was the second reader. i had explained the whole 5 minute rule at the beginning. she started with the mic but didn't like the effect and so set it on the music stand we use for people to set their pages to read off of. then she leaned on the stand during her piece and the mic fell off. Red Jordan went over to pick it up and R screamed at him to not touch it. seemed like a joke. Red didn't seem happy about it (who is when screamed at?) butjust said quietly, 'don't break the equipment'
R continued her piece. minute 5. minute 6. then she paused, seemed like "that moment" and I said time. sorry that's time. she then said to me "i am not stopping, you have to come and slap the shit out of me if you want me to stop" ok friend or not, that doesn't fly. so i stood up and said "no really, it's time". can i do an aside here to say that if the response had been, i'll wrap it up everything to follow would've been different? Ok so then she jumps up onto the arm of the velvet couch at the cafe and starts yelling her piece. i put my hand on her arm and said"R you need to get down" and she violently shrugged me off in a flailing manner. kinda hit me,but it was just my arm. no bruises. whatever. then the cafe worker yelled - you have to get off the couch. then the cafe owner really yelled get off the couch. then he went and got officer rick. (the center has members of the pride alliance of the sfpd do security at the center since for a while staff at the fronto desk kept getting threatened and having projectiles thrown at them by some of the substance abusing folks in the area) officer rick asked R to leave. said i am asking you to leave. was probably as nice as you CAN be when having o be very coplike and kick someone out. then officer rock called R a sir. L then starts yelling and said, don't call her a he, that's a hate crime.
They went outside, talked with officer rick and left. giving me dirty looks through the window as they walked away. R had some choice words wo yell while leaving that amounted to bomb the lgbt center, you only want well adjusted queers here, and accusing me of hypocrisy because i said i wanted to make a welcoming environment and she was being escorted out.
so, yea, intense. i know R was way out of line. the thing i felt bad about was the way it seemed it couldn've gone differently. once R's behaviour was escalalting, the decision was out of my hands. the cafe owner has to put up with a lot of shit, and people have attacked him and his staff before. stolen furniture from them. vandalized it. etc. his tolerance for bulshit in his cafe is gone at this point.
talked to officer rick later. who, was mortified that he got R's gender pronoun wrong. he did start using m'am and she as soon as L corrected him, but he got all red faced and upset talking to me, his guilt was intense. he just kept saying, she didn't present that way, i didn't know, she didn't present.
so, that was my open mic. borrgrrl read after all that and was really good. other folks read and i convinced this very fashionable goth boy Johnnie to play a couple of Marilyn Manson covers. later borgrrl and i went to badgag with some of the transforming communities folks, and later grabbed some people and met up with the flameline crew at hotpants.dancy dancy. had coffee, wine and whiskey for dinner, got home around 3am and talked to the sexy beast about all the drama.
whew. wonder what else the weekend will bring.
