NARCISA is now available at Book Soup in West Hollywood and STories in Echo Park!

Upcoming Jonathan Shaw Readings in Los Angeles

October 6th with Lydia Lunch @ Stories

October 8th with Max G. Morton @ Book Soup

Stay tuned for NYC reading dates

I went backstage before Boyd was done and started collecting my belongings, including the few extra copies of Narcisa that I hadn’t brought down to the merch booth. When Boyd came in, I thanked him for the wonderful performance, commenting that it’s always interesting to see someone play guitar with an electric drill for a guitar pick.

Genesis, Boyd and Howie

“My pleasure!” He replied ever so graciously. I just laughed.

Pretty soon we were all outside again and I was informed that I was to be the designated driver back to Philly with all the equipment, Wes, Max and Boyd in the front next to me.

Jonathan was out front taking photographs with Joe Coleman and about fifty Eastern European bridesmaids (Don’t ask!!!) who had just gotten out of a stretch limo while I ran around handing out cash and prizes to everyone who’d performed.

We went to find Boyd. He’d disappeared  downstairs with Howie who was djing the after-party in the basement. There were many people surrounding him but I somehow managed to hand him his envelope of cash without getting hit.

Then I stood with Howie for a minute, as he looked down at his watch, saw that it was midnight and became the first person to wish me a happy 21. Just then some skinhead in patent leather boots tapped me on the shoulder.

“Are you the DJ?” he asked me.

“No he is.” I pointed to Howie.

“Can I make a request?”

“What is this look like a fucking Bar Mitzvah?!?!!?!” I yelled at him.

He looked at me funny. I’m guessing he never went to a Bar Mitzvah. But one never knows, do they?

Meanwhile I was having no luck collecting Boyd from his minions so I went back up to talk to JS who was standing outside the club talking with Kid Congo now. They were also surrounded by people telling them how great the show had been.

“Happy Birthday!!!!” Jonathan yelled. “Did you open my present yet?”

I pulled the little box out of my purse and opened it to find two ivory dice, and a sterling silver collar pin of brass knuckles, a straight razor and a blackjack with a banner that read “LOVE THY NEIGHBOR”. I thanked him for the thoughtful gift, just as they finished loading up the car.

Max shot me a look, “Happy birthday,” he said. ” Talk to you when you’re 23.” Then he handed me his lucky wolf claw.

I said goodbye to Jonathan one last time, got in the car and drove off. It was officially my 21st birthday, and there I was, sober as a judge, driving the whole crew down to Philly. I never thought I’d even have a driver’s license, nor did I dream I’d have lasted this long.

So glad I did though, and I understand why now. My time here is not over, nor was it ever meant to be. Its really just starting. Something I can’t quite explain happened inside me on this night that has changed me for good. Thank you Jonathan for keeping me alive. Salve Ogum!

Alessandra De Benedetti, 2009

Outside on the street, Jonathan was standing there chain smoking like a condemned man when I found him.

“Jesus!” He exhaled in a cloud of smoke. “Did I suck? What the fuck? That shit was totally fucking TERRIFYING, man! I am never gonna get on a stage again! Fuck! Just shoot me! Half way through I felt like I’d been standing up   there for hours! PANIC! All kinds of weird shit started going through my head, like, ‘what the fuck am I doing up here?’ I really thought I was gonna puke and shit my pants at the same time. Fuck…”

Just then Wes, Max and several others surrounded him with all around hugs, backslaps and congratulations.

“That was fucking amazing, dude! You totally stole the show!” Somebody exclamed. Much to Jonathan’s amazement, apparently.

“What? Wow! Really?” He said. “Ya really thought it was alright?”

After being assured by a number of folks, including Joe Coleman, Wes, Max and several other artists he respects, that it was way more than just “alright,” Jonathan seemed to breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Then he turned strangely contemplative.

“Well thank God it’s over!” He said. “I’m just glad I got the fuck outta there alive! Cuz that shit coulda really gone wrong fast with a fucking big ol’ freaky crowd like that! I was really sweating my balls off up there, man, thinking they were gonna fucking kill me or something. I was just waiting to get bopped in the head with a beer bottle or whatever any moment. Fuck! It’s amazing all the shit that runs through your head…”

Then it was time for Dominick Fernow’s PRURIENT performance. After giving Jonathan one last reassuring hug, I hustled my way back inside to watch.  Jonathan stayed outside to sign some books for his fans. Then, after watching PRURIENT, I returned to the merch booth, selling more copies of Narcisa and collecting more money.

Genesis P-Orridge went on next.  That’s when I had to leave the building again for a minute, as he/she always has the effect of making me cry like a baby whenever I see Psychick TV perform. This time, without Jackie in the band it was just weird and heavy. And I was already feeling pretty crazed.

I think the combination of Gen’s words, the overwhelming sense of satisfaction and ease for being in the right place at the right time, and the fact that my 21st birthday- which I had always sworn I would never ever see- was closing in fast, was all falling especially heavy on me by the time Gen started kissing the tattoo she’d gotten on her arm of his/ her dead twin flame. My own flame was burning bright and alive and suddenly I was feeling hugely grateful.

After Gen finished, we all went back up to the side of stage to catch the inimitable Boyd Rice. I watched in awe as every fucking person in the crowd threw a fist or two. Then the pushing and shoving started and grew to a frenzy as soon as the words TOTAL WAR came out of his mouth, through the microphone and into the airwaves.

Howie took pictures while me and Jonathan laughed that his ass was hanging out of his pants. I gave Jonathan a hug. He’d really fucking nailed it tonight, perfectly setting the tone of the rest of the show after his strategically situated half-way on point performance. Amazingly, there were no more slurs, stutters, stammers or the least bit of wavering in his voice the whole time he read this time. L.A. had been a good warmup for him. It was solid now. One hundred percent! I was so happy for him and for me. We were really doing something that affected people and that is the most gratifying feeling in the world.

Time ticked by. I was still hungry and tripped up with strange unidentifiable emtions, so I went inside and scavenged what was left of the pizza backstage. By the time I came back out from the little dressing room area, Santo’s was pretty much filled to capacity. I ran over to the merch booth to at least try and help Wes, Caralee and Tony manage the ensuing clusterfuck, while Max wrangled all the other readers. Jonathan, of course, was still outside, fucking around on his Blackberry and talking to Aaron the director who had just arrived on the scene.

The music stopped and Howie walked out onto the stage and introduced Chris Leo, who got a few laughs from the hard-faced crowd of NON followers. Kid read a story about shoplifting a leg of lamb and Eric Paul read about getting peed on before Wes’s latest band, Cold Cave started playing.

Cold Cave totally killed, ripping the airwaves to shreads with Max reading feircly in the middle of the set over pounding music to a heavy reverb that he ended by wailing, “DOOR NUMBER 23″ before abruptly storming off the stage, through the crowd and out of the club.

I snuck outside to make sure he didn’t walk into traffic. Jonathan was standing out there too, talking with Kembra Pfahler (The Voluptious Horror of Karen Black), Billy LeRoy (Billy’s Antiques and Props), Joe Coleman, Whitney Ward and a few other friends and family, while Aaron the director hovered around them all filming the proceedings.

I interrupted and told Jonathan to come inside now because it was almost time for him to go on. Jonathan complimented Max on his earthshaking performence, wistfully expressing envy for the awesome musical accompanyment. Then me, Jonathan and Max made our way in and over to the side of the stage to watch Jamie Stewart read while Jonathan chain-smoked with pre performance anxiety.

After a warm and familiar introduction from MC Howie Pyro, Jonathan barelled his way up to the front of the stage and stepped on his cigarette with a big boot. He grabbed the microphone, thanked me and everyone else for being there, then got the crowd a little more riled up with some random comments. Then the lights went low and he began reading from his magic Blackberry.

The 500 deep rowdy crowd suddenly and immediately fell oddly silent now, watching intently as  Jonathan wove an intricately psychedelic picture of his wierd adolescent adventures with the Manson family.

An incredible fifteen minutes of total radio silence went by while Jonathan read vivid accounts of the Spahn Movie Ranch and the Vietnam War era from his memoir-in-progress, Scabvender.

You could’ve heard a swastika lapel-pin drop in the huge venue during his reading. The crowd seemed to be holding its collective breath as cameras flashed and film crews rolled, and the whole vibe of the place subtly morphed into something even darker and more sinister than it had been before.

Then abruptly, he stopped. The  enthusiastic black-clad crowd freaked out completely, howling shouts of approval.. Everyone had been surprisingly dazzled by the rude historical stories they’d just heard. The air seemed to get even more electric as Jonathan walked off the stage, shoving his way quickly through the crowd toward the exit.

Jonathan’s surprisingly well-recieved choice of reading matter was not entirely unintentional either, apparently, given the fact that the Saturday event fell on the 40th anniversary of the Tate- La Bianca murders…

(photo: gerry visco)

An even more signifigant event, however, my birthday was only a few hours away.

Our long awaited Big Day in NYC finally fell on Saturday. After the crazy buildup, it all came and went in sort of a wild, overhwelming blur. The bits and pieces I do remember, however, are all quite happy and even monumental.

Just the fact that after months of anticipation it finally actually happened and that we were all alive afterward was a huge relief in itself. Jonathan and I had just flown from different parts of the world to NY for this long anticipated Heartworm event. And by that point it was one of those things that had been talked and thought about so much that we really just wanted to do it already now — if for no other reason than that we might finally change the topic of conversation from how fucking awesome it was GOING to be to how awesome it actually WAS.

I woke up anxious and tired that afternoon, not unusual given my neurotic nature (thanks Mom!). I ran straight over to our informal NY headquarters at  Billy’s Antiques and Props to pick up the suitcase of books I had stashed there a couple days earlier. Having been working pretty much non-stop since arriving in NY, I suddenly realized I was on the verge of some sort of total mental collapse. Whatever. The show must go on. Whether it would all lead to tears or sleepy euphoria or a brand new suicide attempt I wasn’t yet sure.

After realizing that I am NOT superwoman and that I could NOT haul that heavy suitcase of books for twenty plus blocks by foot, I eventually swallowed my pride and flagged down a cab. I made good time over to Santo’s Party House in Chinatown.

When I saw Wes and Max from Heartworm, my anxiety subsided a bit and my frantic orbit finally began to slow. They had already been there for a while, together with Boyd Rice and Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Hospital Productions) and were setting up a merch booth of Heartworm releases.

Sound check wasn’t for another couple hours still and none of the readers had wandered in yet either. As usual I was starving, so I did a triple assault on the vending machine. Why? Simple: because one bag of Combos is too many and a thousand is never enough. Duh.

Max and Dominick ran off abruptly to find a light bulb on Canal St (it’s more difficult than it sounds) while Jonathan mysteriously blasted through the door in his trademark voodoo beads and black fedora hat merely seconds after I had texted him “pizza’s here”. Hmm…

Max and Dom came back frazzled from battling the weekend Canal Street throngs with a thoughtful surprise donut for me. It was not a jelly donut, which I am known for inhaling in large quantities, but a fanciful Starbucks donut. I ate half of it and offered the rest to Pierre-Marc (Akitsa) who was sitting next to me on the stoop outside of Santo’s. He looked at me for a beat, but then declined in a French-Canadian accent.

“I do not eat happy foods.”

Apparently that was hilarious because everyone was laughing. Not much I could say to that one so I continued listening to Jonathan fine tune, edit and practice his reading material.

Finally Howie Pyro showed up, looking frazzled and fresh at the same time. Fresh from the gym. Frazzled from being Howie Pyro. Sound check began. I sat on the floor behind the DJ booth with Max, eating chicken skewers in the dark and listening to Genesis P-Orridge crack strange deadpan jokes about ghosts over the microphone.

When Prurient and Boyd Rice’s NON did their sound check rehersals I wandered outside again. Mostly because the whole club started shaking and pulsing with the ensuing distorted wall of sound and I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed again.

People were already lining up outside the ticket booth as I got caught in a rather awkward conversation with a neo-nazi wearing a Death in June shirt about White Castle and diarrhea. As this went on, my attention wandered elsewhere to Jonathan who was being asked by one of the club bouncers to please move his motorcycle, which was practically blocking the front door of the club. This request seemed to confuse him a little since — beside the fact that he lives in Rio de Janeiro, where there seem to be no rules, or bouncers — he was still sitting there buried in his Blackberry, slowly perfecting his story on said Blackberry, which naturally he would soon read from onstage before a packed house of drunken Neo-nazi wierdos. Wheeeeeee.

Finally after much explaining, sign-language, coddling and translating by me, he stood up and reluctantly pulled his dirty black eyesore across the street while a bum wearing a viking helmet holding a forty raised his fists and yelled “OUTLAWWWWWWWW!!!!!”

If he only knew. I had a brief vision of a story I’d heard from Gibby Haynes in which Jonathan pulled two pistols on a bum with a Swiss-Army knife, looked at the bum and said “You brought a fucking knife to a gun fight, motherfucker.” Classssic.

To be continued.

After making his appearance, Jonathan curled up Rip Van Winkle style in the middle of the floor at The Strand and went to sleep. I was mortified and Max considered drawing a Hitler mustache on him. Go figure. We laughed for a few minutes and then I woke him to go look for some food. An argument ensued between Howie Pyro, Jonathan and Boyd Rice on the corner of 12th street and Broadway concerning the cleanliness and rat shit content of Greek diner food. Max interrupted the conversation by informing me very loudly in another attempt to embarass me how much he loved “The Big Apple”. I in turn answered just as loud that it would be better if only I had a map to lead me to the canal. Boyd ended the food conversation by deciding that not eating was better than a shit sandwich and we all disbanded. Howie and Sebastian went one way, Jonathan went back to Red Hook, Brooklyn and I took a car ride to Philly with Max, Wes and Uncle Boyd.

Friday morning I took the Chinatown bus back to NY. Jonathan and Aaron the director were doing marathon interviews around the Lower East Side on foot in the 95 degree humidity. I’m jealous I couldn’t be there to watch the fights that must have been percolating between the two of them all day, but I had my work cut out for me and an air conditioner.

I spent my day indoors, blasting out emails about the show that was about to happen the next night while Jonathan undoubtedly pushed Asian tourists in front of taxi cabs on St Mark’s Place.

At around 6:30 he informed me that we would be having dinner with Joe Coleman and his wife Whitney Ward in midtown so I walked uptown to meet them all at Kean’s Chophouse. Dinner was enjoyed by all. It was good to see JS and Joe Coleman in their element together as they fake stabbed each other’s eyeballs out before the flash of Whitney’s persistent paparazzi camera.

Joe gave Jonathan the book that went with his recent exhibit in Germany in which an entire 4 story museum was dedicated to his art. He then signed it, giving his own version of underground history, capturing the moment JS and I met through a cartoon on the title page. Meanwhile the dinner conversation raged on, gleefully touching on an array of topics that eventually drove everyone else around us out of the restaurant. The whole dinner was being dutifully recorded by Aaron the director, who had appeared like a ghost at the beginning and discreetly wired both Joe and Jonathan with sound for the historical occasion. Whitney and I played with pickles and lobsters while Joe and Jonathan reminisced about the past and shared good words for the future like real brothers.

After dinner, there was much haggling about the bill and finally all parties coughed up their money so we could leave. Aaron the director, his girlfriend, Eden, Joe and Whitney all got in a cab and me and Jonathan blasted off on the bike to meet Howie Pyro who was DJing at a little bar on Orchard.

The vibe soon started getting drunker there so, JS and I made a sneaky exit and ran over to Lit Lounge, a place of many of my worst imaginable memories and experiences so nightmarish that even I do not find them funny.

When we got off the bike I panicked at the thought of going into that grotesque cocaine cabaret. Luckily the guy we were meeting, Carlo Mc Cormick was waiting for us outside to say hello. Even then, I said hello and goodbye in one nervous croak and headed back to 7th street. I still wasn’t done returning emails so it all worked out.

Goodnight my fellow vampires.

Alessandra

The next morning I crawled out of bed, grabbed my new favorite albatross- a suitcase full of Narcisa books to sell at Jonathan’s upcoming NY readings and book signings- and dragged it through the sweaty morning-after vomit-coated streets of the Lower East Side to Billy’s Antiques on Houston and Bowery- right around the corner from the now legendary original Fun City Tattoo, Jonathan’s first NYC studio.

Jonathan rolled up at the exact same time on the dusty, but miraculously still running Road Warrior motorcycle he’d left moldering in a backyard by the Hells Angels clubhouse on his last visit to New York years earlier.

It wasn’t long after our arrival that the notorious underground photo-journalist, Clayton Patterson came stumbling down the street and plopped his ass down in a too-small armchair on the blazing summer sidewalk in front of Billy’s tent.

Then Aaron the Director showed up with his girlfriend and his camera equipment. He immediately started filming one of Clayton’s rambling rants disguised as an oral history of Jonathan’s contributions to tattooing on the Lower East Side way back in the day (often and hilariously corrected by a constantly interrupting Jonathan).

I finally got a few Z’s in the tent while movie magic was made there out on the sidewalk. As soon as they finished their first official NY interview, JS gestured to me that it was time to go.

I jumped on his bike and we rode hell bent for leather straight over to Brooklyn Heights.

There we met up with Aaron just as he and his girl emerged with all their equipment from a cab in front of Joe Coleman’s place. Then we all piled into the elevator to check in with the great visionary painter at his infamous Brooklyn Odditorium.

Inside Joe’s infamous private Freak Show there was Junior, the baby in the bottle of formaldahyde sitting on a shelf looking across the Wierd Museum at his new companion, a cyclops baby. Another grown man’s pickled puss in a jar sat staring blankly from another shelf, all vying for space with Joe’s collection of looming wax figures depicting the likes of Richard Speck, Charlie Manson, Fidel Castro and all sorts of other unusual suspects.

After the introductory Sideshow, Joe ushered us all into his cramped little painting studio in the next room to show us his latest project: A huge new painting he’s been working on for the last several years now: His life story — in which Jonathan was ironically situated quite nicely between William Blake and Santa Claus. As we all gawked in awed admiration, time seemed to stand still there in Joe Coleman’s strange little netherworld.

Then I looked at my watch. Shit, I had to run out and go back to Manhattan to see Max G Morton and the mysterious Boyd Rice! They were doing a Heartworm Books reading at The Strand bookstore downtown.

Jonathan stayed behind in Brooklyn to be interviewed by Aaron again, this time together with his old friend, Joe for the feature length JS documentry that was suddenly in full production.

When I got to the big sprawling bookstore, I couldn’t find either Howie, Max or Wes in the crowd. Overwhelmed by the ensuing clusterfuck there, I planted myself in a corner and sent lewd and lascivious text messages to all the missing parties.

Finally Max appeared and I gave him a kick in the ass. He then got up and read a piece about Coney Island High from his latest book, “Looking For the Magic.” The story soon had some people throwing children’s books in the air and walking out — always a good sign.

Then Boyd did a record breaking 30 second reading from his new book, “NO,” in which he listed a smorgasbord of exotic ailments and conditions like AIDS, genocide, baby rape, etc. and then ended by saying, “Its all good”.

Just as Boyd finished his beer, Jonathan came storming in like the fucking Gestapo and asked if it had started.

“Uh, yeah, man. But it’s over now. You missed it,” I said.

“Fuck!” he growled.

“Relax, dude. Just tell them it was great.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

-Alessandra
**I will announce Jonathan’s reading date for The Strand soon.