sweetheart redux

save me love me kill me swallow me

Tender Monster Destiny             Hope Street is a street just like any other in Los Angeles, except that its name makes it seem promising.  A useless person sitting in his or her car at a stop light and seeing that they are about to intersect Hope would probably think, Could this be a sign?             Are there plain white college boys hidden in apartments on this street, writing screenplays for a movie they’re going to make someday for Public Television about their L.A. experience?             The name makes this street sound full of action and import, a street with a secret, a street that lives out its charm with the clean bend of palm trees and Hopscotch formations drawn on its pavement.             It was on this street that Joe’s car pass...

Hello there, this here is issue #8 of my teenage dream fanzine, put out in December 1995.

Hello Friends, this here is a scan of my teenage dream fanzine, Sweetheart #7, put out in Summer 1995. Thanks for reading!  

27. Molly disliked most of the people she called “normal.”  So much indifference and stupidity, such unthinking conformity to norms, it disgusted and scared her.  That's how she was raised, by parents who felt the same way felt about normal people.  But, she also had problems with the people she nicknamed "artists," people like her who rejected religion and mass-produced ideals and traditional gender roles.  The problem she saw with most of these fellow artists was a lack of passion.  There was no fight in them, like how liberal politicians always let themselves be bullied by conservatives.  Molly responded to the world as though making bullies aware that she could not be taken advantage of, and commonplace unfairnesses were experienced as personal affronts not to be accepted.  It turned out that Vivienne and Tess were unfairness vigilantes too.  When one of the two EMT's who came to pick up Rosie's body was hoisting her up by the shoulders ...

26. Molly called the hotel room and reached George.  "Oh goodness, Molly, you sound so horrible, are you okay.  What happened?" Rosie happened into this world roughly five years later than Beth but looked much older than Beth, because of how much time she spent in the sun, and her bad genetic luck, her hair gone prematurely gray by her mid-thirties.  The one conversation she and Vivienne had was mostly about movies.  Rosie had been drunk.  "Whenever a normal person (she meant someone who wasn't homelessly like herself) tries making acquaintances with me, it always makes me think of watching Midnight Cowboy; you now that movie?”  "Mmm hmmm, it's a good one.  I used to go around telling people it was one of my favorites, actually, but really I love a happy ending.  Now that sadness is passé, I can be honest, I can say how much I like romantic comedies and children's films."  Vivienne took for granted that Rosie understood this type ...

photo by Nicolas Sage photography When I was in sixth grade (in the early nineties), me and my mom bought a book called Weetzie Bat about a teenaged punk girl growing up in L.A., and I read it straight through, crying when I finished it, from exhilaration and the relief at having found such a blueprint for the person I wanted to become.  It really did change my life, both by helping me define a sense of aesthetics (I LOVED the title character’s punk-whimsical fashion) and by giving me a more positive outlook and the idea that I could and would lead a charmed life.  I did end up leading a charmed life after reading that book, and a lot of it was thanks to the author Francesca Lia Block, who graced my fan letters with prompt and engaged responses, and who, when I ended up being friends with her through a mutual friend a couple years later, would invite me to the readings and events that would make my month, or sometimes my year.  Over the years we lost touch, as hap...