locked him in. I would take photos of him in front of famous statues and landmarks across the country and publish them in a zine about the sad state of anarchist labor unions today. I would steal the unionâs membership roster and do a daily raffle in which some lucky worker won a pinch of Joe. I loved imagining the gritty bone and ash between my fingers as I dropped a pile of the man into an envelope and set him free. The best idea I never acted on.
Iris chose a really cool font for her anticapitalist tirade. It looked very handsome folded into the book and was my favorite page. Bobby wrote a funny bitch about the O.J. Simpson thing, Laurel wrote a love manifesto for a girl she had a crush on, George xeroxed his tongue and wrote about stealing from his job, and Suzanne wrote about waiting in line for food stamps. It was a great zine and it took us âtil six in the morning to finish it. I was just so blasted, moving around the office filled with cigarette smoke, collating the pages, and then boom the xerox machine ran out of ink and I went into some kind of mania, determined to finish producing this zine that we had put so much earnest love and creativity into. There didnât seem to be any more ink cartridges. A bunch was actually on the shelf right above my head but I never looked up. Instead I found a plastic jug filled with the leftover toner of other dead ink cartridges, a fine black powder, some inches of it. I removed thespent cartridge from the humming machine, and I stabbed a good-sized hole into the plastic. I made a crappy funnel, and I poured in the recycled toner. I did this in the back room that served as a storage area for volumes and volumes of historical writings on socialist and anarchist labor politics, and also cardboard boxes full of t-shirts, which my friends stole. They were pretty cool shirts, they had black cats on the front and said An Injury to One Is an Injury to All. I was so bitter and disillusioned with the union I didnât much care about the theft, and I took one as well. But in this back room was a little porcelain saucer of a sink, above which I transferred the toner, creating small but potent clouds of toxic black dust that settled in thick clumps to be washed into the bay. A bunch got on me, too, on the red calico dress I loved even though people said I looked like a Deadhead in it. I had chopped the dress up here and there to give it an edge, but it still looked kind of crunchy. I patched up the gash in the toner cartridge with masking tape, plugged it back into the machine and finished all the zines. The head of the union called me for weeks afterward, needing to âtalk to me about something.â I never called him back. Ultimately he changed the locks and that was the end of the zine parties.
I thought maybe I would fall in love with Iris. She was new to San Francisco. Of course. Everyone was. She came from a little part of Georgia where sheâd been constantly fighting the way you constantlyhave to fight when youâre queer in a small place, starting direct action groups, getting up in the middle of the night to vandalize the town, things like that. Iris had some good stories, but most important she was revved up for love. That Pride Weekend we went to a party up on someoneâs roof. It was small, a group of girls sitting around on the pebbly tar paper drinking their small bottles and chatting. I had my big bottle and Iris close enough to give me shivers, and I was much too manic for such calmness. Nearby, thousands of dykes were convening to march through the city. It was exciting. The beer made me glow so I felt like a god, that powerful, up high on a roof with the city stretched out beneath me. We were cuddly, holding hands or walking with arms slung around each other like we were girlfriends already. We left the roof party and met up with a gang of girls in front of the gay cafe on 16th Street that wouldnât let us use the bathroom. A big problem.
Iris chose a really cool font for her anticapitalist tirade. It looked very handsome folded into the book and was my favorite page. Bobby wrote a funny bitch about the O.J. Simpson thing, Laurel wrote a love manifesto for a girl she had a crush on, George xeroxed his tongue and wrote about stealing from his job, and Suzanne wrote about waiting in line for food stamps. It was a great zine and it took us âtil six in the morning to finish it. I was just so blasted, moving around the office filled with cigarette smoke, collating the pages, and then boom the xerox machine ran out of ink and I went into some kind of mania, determined to finish producing this zine that we had put so much earnest love and creativity into. There didnât seem to be any more ink cartridges. A bunch was actually on the shelf right above my head but I never looked up. Instead I found a plastic jug filled with the leftover toner of other dead ink cartridges, a fine black powder, some inches of it. I removed thespent cartridge from the humming machine, and I stabbed a good-sized hole into the plastic. I made a crappy funnel, and I poured in the recycled toner. I did this in the back room that served as a storage area for volumes and volumes of historical writings on socialist and anarchist labor politics, and also cardboard boxes full of t-shirts, which my friends stole. They were pretty cool shirts, they had black cats on the front and said An Injury to One Is an Injury to All. I was so bitter and disillusioned with the union I didnât much care about the theft, and I took one as well. But in this back room was a little porcelain saucer of a sink, above which I transferred the toner, creating small but potent clouds of toxic black dust that settled in thick clumps to be washed into the bay. A bunch got on me, too, on the red calico dress I loved even though people said I looked like a Deadhead in it. I had chopped the dress up here and there to give it an edge, but it still looked kind of crunchy. I patched up the gash in the toner cartridge with masking tape, plugged it back into the machine and finished all the zines. The head of the union called me for weeks afterward, needing to âtalk to me about something.â I never called him back. Ultimately he changed the locks and that was the end of the zine parties.
I thought maybe I would fall in love with Iris. She was new to San Francisco. Of course. Everyone was. She came from a little part of Georgia where sheâd been constantly fighting the way you constantlyhave to fight when youâre queer in a small place, starting direct action groups, getting up in the middle of the night to vandalize the town, things like that. Iris had some good stories, but most important she was revved up for love. That Pride Weekend we went to a party up on someoneâs roof. It was small, a group of girls sitting around on the pebbly tar paper drinking their small bottles and chatting. I had my big bottle and Iris close enough to give me shivers, and I was much too manic for such calmness. Nearby, thousands of dykes were convening to march through the city. It was exciting. The beer made me glow so I felt like a god, that powerful, up high on a roof with the city stretched out beneath me. We were cuddly, holding hands or walking with arms slung around each other like we were girlfriends already. We left the roof party and met up with a gang of girls in front of the gay cafe on 16th Street that wouldnât let us use the bathroom. A big problem.
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