In the eight years I’ve been living in uptown Kingston (I moved here from Belgium in 2007), I’ve watched it grow from a place where I could make tumbleweed jokes to a thriving community where nobody gets my tumbleweed jokes anymore.
Kevin Paulsen, one of our elder statesmen of the arts and letters, recently told me he thinks there’s too much pedestrian traffic on the streets now. That tells me there’s just the right amount. It’s true that there are lots of hipsters hanging out, all of whom are terrified to go off-script even for a second. But it’s still fun to engage them in conversations and watch them squirm when you ask a deep and intimate question like, “So how’s your day going?”
I can see that look flash across the person’s face—”What’s the right answer to that question?”
As for uptown Kingston, I’ve been watching the changes, tracking them one by one. Several factors have made the difference: the O+ Festival each October counts—for a brief glimmer, uptown feels like Portland (Maine or Oregon; have your pick). O+ is an annual swap meet of music and art for healthcare, with the resulting public benefit being about 40 concerts in one weekend, given by rockers with newly cleaned teeth.
BSP Lounge on Wall Street being taken over by a bunch of music management grads from SUNY Oneonta is another example of progress. BSP is the hottest little club in the area, bringing through a wide diversity of talent and serving many communities and constituencies. I used to leave a bucket of free earplugs on the merch counter featuring a Planet Waves sticker, so people would know how much I cared about their hearing. I still care—now I am planning to open a hearing aid shop next door.
Back in 2011 some red goat street art caused a huge fuss and felony prosecution, which served as a homeopathic remedy for the neighborhood. Even the New York Times stepped in and said it was the coolest thing going that week. Now everywhere you look, you see a red goat sandwich, sticker or tattoo. According to one dependable source on the topic (of homeopathy that is, commenting on a preparation made from goat’s milk), “The he-goat [buck] is the epitome of masculine virility and creative energy, while the female [doe] typifies the feminine generative power and abundance.”
This is why just about everyone panicked and a “Dragnet”-style investigation ensued when the cute little red icons appeared.
Amidst many other developments over the past few years, Outdated Café has emerged as an inadvertent community center. This is the freaky little place where everything but the espresso machine is for sale, where you can get antique office supplies or your choice of moose trophies or ancient laboratory bottles at bargain prices.
The place also hosts various writing workshops and other events during off-hours.
One Friday night in September, Outdated hosted a stand-up comedy night. There was a buzz gathering around the place, so after a walk around the block I took my dogs home, got a camera and came down to see what was up. I had only modest expectations. Comedy is one of the most challenging genres to work in; not everyone thinks that much is that funny. Not many people are so funny. But some are.
Since I was not on the guest list, I paid my five dollars and was in for a pleasant shock. The evening’s presentations skated along the sexual tension of contemporary society with charming chutzpah.
Andrew Steiner began the evening with a series of confessions from his childhood. “I almost lost my virginity when I was 11 years old, to a cougar,” he said. “It was my neighbor. She was also 11, but girls matured faster then.”
He claimed to have had access to the best porn in the neighborhood. “The kind where you can see the ingrown hairs. And by the way, my mom bought me my porn. Don’t judge my mom,” he said. “Because parents these days, they buy their kids smart phones. And that’s like begging your kid to watch that video, ‘Guy Fucked to Death By Horse.’ So don’t judge my mom.”
Aside: a few months ago, I was doing some research into the astrology of the millennial generation. Everyone is desperate for information about these people, born from 1981 through 2001. According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, this is the generation that will save the world.
My own investigation into Millennials included some interviews, just to get a feeling for what is going on among today’s younger folks. I had a married couple in their twenties explain how by the time they were teenagers they knew everything about sex (as presented in educational Internet videos, i.e., porno). For them nothing was shocking and they were totally jaded. They made specific reference to a video involving a horse.
“By the time my father sat me down to have the sex talk, I knew more than he did,” one of them said.
The larger reference here is that in an era where abstinence-only indoctrination is still funded by the federal government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, most young people get their sex “education” from porn websites. In my reading, called Understanding Millennials, I wrote a section called “Porn is Not Sex and Sex is Not Porn,” to clear up any confusion that might exist about that.
In his stand-up routine, Steiner was not confused. He did something extremely bold—he treaded onto the ultra taboo territory of sexual awareness in the yoga studio. That’s the place where everyone is super duper sexy, firmly in their body, well hydrated, looking fine and spraying hormones into the room—and nobody is supposed to be turned on. You must be absolutely focused on your practice.
“For those of you who don’t know yoga, it’s ancient Sanskrit for union—between yoga pants and camel toe.” Ah, what incredible relief—someone was actually admitting to noticing this; in public, no less.
He then ended with a proposal for couples: “Eat some edible marijuana, take some coconut oil, and go to separate rooms. It’s way better than anything you could do to each other.” I think I was the only person who cheered. But then I knew what he was talking about.
Paul Butler then took the microphone, taking a more in-your-face approach. He described how in every bar in the United States, you meet the same exact characters. There’s always this awkward couple, about 21 years old, consisting of an ultra-femme young woman and an ultra-masculine young guy.
And there’s always this guy named Bill, who comes up to them and blurts out, “HEY, YOU GOT A CIGARETTE?”
“No sir, I actually don’t smoke.”
“THAT’S GOOD, IT’S A BAD HABIT,” he growls, a bit over-loud, probably spraying spittle.
“Okay, okay,” the young man says nervously.
“WHAT ARE YOU GUYS’ NAMES?”
“I’m Jonathan, and this is Rachel.”
“I USED TO BE A DITCHDIGGER WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE.”
“Then Bill has to give advice,” Butler continued. “Here it comes. I’m hoping everyone is going to recognize this.”
“YOU BETTER TREAT HER RIGHT!”
“As if there wasn’t him to say that, I’d never know. You’re absolutely right. I’ve been beating her mercilessly every single day for the past year. And now I’m going to start treating her right.”
“Bill wants to have sex with her, and expects her to reply, ‘Oh, Bill, he really doesn’t treat me right. It’s hurting me, Bill. You’re going to treat me right, Bill.”
Then came Kevin Smith. I’ve bumped into Kevin on the streets of various towns four or five times a week since around 1989. I had no idea he was a stand-up comic.
He told stories of surfing right-wing Facebook pages, some of which claim that humans and dinosaurs lived on Earth at the same time. But if that were true, “The story of Daniel surviving in the lion’s den wouldn’t seem so miraculous anymore. A lion’s den is a pretty friendly place with a T-Rex chasing after your ass.”
Sarah Venditti then took the microphone. Up till that point she had been the MC (and previously a mild-mannered coffee server at Outdated, often seen with her kids; she is the mom among her friends). It turned out she had some additional material. She began by saying she had spent her twenties in a serious relationship which had recently ended, and that it was weird to be dating again at 28 because so much had changed in the decade she was out of circulation.
When you were 18, she said, a good date involved making out, maybe someone getting their hand in someone’s pants, then going home and smoking a cigarette.
“Now there are all these dating sites, like Tinder and Grindr and Hinge and Zoosk and Netflix. So I signed up for a dating website. My friends were all like, get out of here! Then the first message that I got from a dating website—I got a message—was from Hypergy80. So I opened it and all it said is, ‘I want to put my mouth on your butt.’ No hi, hello, how are you, let’s go out for coffee. Just, ‘I want to put my mouth on your butt.’ Needless to say, we’ve been going out for a year.”
She then shared her thoughts on children. “Kids are really great,” she said. “If there are any couples who are on the fence about destroying your life and losing your freedom, you should definitely go for it. Even though your marriage is in a shambles, definitely have a baby.”
So, to sum up, comedy night at Outdated did exactly what comedy is supposed to do—say everything you cannot say anywhere else; say the things people think, but that they’re afraid to speak out loud; blow off some steam; and break the surface tension that makes it nearly impossible to go just a little deeper.
I left feeling like something real had happened, like I had witnessed an actual moment of change. Venditti said she planned to have this be a monthly event, and I plan to go back next time.
Mercury Retrograde in Libra
By the way, Mercury is retrograde in Libra. It will be through October 9 and then the retrograde will be working out for the rest of the month.
Libra is perhaps the most relational sign of the lot. Ruled by Venus, it’s all about relationships, and also aesthetics, and justice in the most personal sense of the concept.
Mercury retrograde in Libra is a glowing, glaring reminder to consider all that you’re not saying in your relationships. If you haven’t noticed, people face social execution for not adhering to the doctrine of monogamy.
If you question it openly you might not get a date for 10 years.
Yet it would seem that the monogamous-industrial complex is largely supported by this thing that psychologists call withholds. Withholds are the things you don’t say to your intimate partner; they are a form of unspoken lies. That’s the problem. Because they’re not active lies, one can claim not to have actually deceived anyone. Yet withholds are things not said that one does not feel good about. They are the things not said that might threaten the relationship structure, or that you think might make the person leave you.
And, heck, that might be true—in which case one might have to be on his or her own or find a more appropriate partner. Mercury retrograde in Libra is suggesting that we need to get beyond the equation, “If I’m really real, nobody will love me.”
I propose we shake things up by being real and see what happens. Everyone’s skin is so obviously crawling from all the varnish and gloss; it will feel fantastic to wash those toxins down the drain.
This article appears in October 2015.
