Will Work for Drugs (11 page)

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Authors: Lydia Lunch

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AFTERWORD

SICK WITH DESIRE

I
've always had an overwhelming compulsion to confess, to reveal the most revolting details of my existence to others. I possess a criminal predilection which bears no guilt yet admits to not only my own crimes of passion, but also my complicity in aggravating others to commit crimes both for and against me.

I play judge, jury, convict, and victim. A schizophrenic passion play that feeds on the intoxicating repercussions of the repetitive cycle of abuse. An unending theme in my body of work.

From my earliest lyrics, spoken word performances, and films, I have sung vicious incantations bemoaning the cruel fate of the human condition, where each of us bears some mark of battery.

We have all been victimized at some point because of our gender, race, age, socioeconomic status, religion, or lack of. Our first cry is slapped out of us as we are violently wrenched from the relative safety of the crimson universe deep within our mothers' bodies. Born in blood and battered into breathing, life begins with brutality and baptizes with violence.

And violence is an addictive electrical current which burns at both ends. Cruel lessons taught within the torture chamber of the nuclear family replayed with systematic repetition over and over again in our adult relationships until we are able to recognize the patterning of ritualized abuse and readdress our participation in its ongoing cycle.

I have always felt the need to strike back, not only at the closed fist of my father, our fathers, the fathers of our country and God—the father, that motherfucker—but at times, in a perverse reversal of roles, at parts of myself.

To attack my own body. To use my body as whipping post and sacrifice in submission to my own inherent sadomasochism. To that redneck faggot truck driver who overrides so many of the other sexual schizophrenics who cohabitate in this insane asylum, my body. Which is forever riddled by an agitation, an irritation, an insatiability. A need to be challenged, threatened, throttled, pushed to the brink—because anyone who has been traumatized by life realizes that to fully appreciate every breath, nothing short of fearing YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO TAKE ANOTHER ONE will renew your vigor for every moment that still remains.

My goal has always been to if not step off the wheel, away from the scaffold, and out from under the guillotine of genetically preprogrammed trauma bonds, to at least recognize that I am not the only one living under a life sentence of victimhood, willing or not. I am not the only one SICK WITH DESIRE.

I create as a form of public psychotherapy speaking to and for a minority of passionate extremists who feel either betrayed or never fully defined by gender.

I have always felt I was cross-dressing in my own flesh—a hotel for so many, many monsters.

And I admit it:

The American Way of Life has turned me into

A death-defying murder junkie

Drunk on disasters, calamities, casualties, bombs bursting in air, bullets ricocheting off the bellies of pregnant women, the bombing of abortion clinics, crippled children poisoned on a school bus, shopping-mall murders, crumbling cities polluted beyond repair, craters of despair in the eyes of men, women, and children, their brains rotted by the cathode glare of the television, the Internet, video games—

Where all the Killers are heroes

All the Killers are heroes …

And I myself am filled with a MURDEROUS RAGE

Gang Warfare waged under my skin

A battle of bitches boxing their way out

I have become the RAPIST whose IMPOTENCE

At annihilating the REAL KILLERS is MANIFESTED

As violence against myself

And anyone else who gets in my fucking way

A PASSION KILLER riddled with CRIMINAL URGES

A SADIST incarcerated in her own TORTURE CHAMBER

One minute you're FLESH AND BLOOD

And the next you're FLESH AND BONES

PILES AND PILES OF FLESH AND BONES

MY WAR IS THE BATTLE OF SEX AS AN ANIMAL ACT

FOUGHT HAND TO GLAND

ONE WOMAN VERSUS EVERY MAN

I've gotten inside the enemy's head

I'm sleeping in his fucking bed

MY WOMB—A TOMB—A SACRIFICIAL CUNT

THE MORE THEY KILL THE MORE I FUCK

Welcome to MY church—

The Church of the Unholy Redeemer

Where the only commandment is

REBELLION from FALSE VIRTUE

REBELLION from FALSE VIRTUE

Pleasure is the only true rebellion

Pleasure at the Mouth of the Abyss

Pleasure at the Brink of the Apocalypse

Ecstasy at the Brink of the Disaster

In Times of War—it's not my War—it's not your War

We, especially as women, need to insist upon our Pleasure

Demand our Pleasure

Because it's the first fucking thing they stole from us

And we might not have much Time left …

Small Pox, Anthrax, Avian Bird Flu, Nuclear Warheads

Biochemical Retribution as Revenge for Spiritual Bankruptcy

WE MIGHT NOT HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT

So with whatever Passion and Cruel Lucidity I can bring to bear

I always wanted Life to be Naked

I always wanted Ecstasy and I finally found it

I must find Ecstasy in this Insanity

Freedom from their Slavery

The Truth in their Lies

Life in their Death

Beauty in their Homicidal Genocide

Peace in the War Whore's evil orgy of Death and Negation

Love amongst the Ruins

Pleasure in my own Pain

Also available from the Akashic Books

PARADOXIA: A PREDATOR'S DIARY

by Lydia Lunch

160 pages, trade paperback original, $13.95

“Hubert Selby, Jr. famously said that he grew up feeling like a scream without a mouth. Lydia Lunch, one of his most celebrated—and most uncompromising—literary progeny, delivered scream mouth, teeth, blood, hair, sperm, knife, and adrenaline …”

—Jerry Stahl, author of
Permanent Midnight

“Paradoxia
reveals that Lunch is at her best when she's at her worst … and gives voice to her sometimes scary, frequently funny, always canny, never sentimental siren song.”

—Barbara Kruger,
ArtForum

ISTANBUL NOIR

edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand new stories by:
Lydia Lunch, Feryal Tilmaç, Riza Kiraç, Hikmet Hükümenoğlu, Behçet Çelik, ¡smail Güzelsoy, Jessica Lutz, Yasemin Aydinoğlu, Tarkan Barlas, Bariş Müstecaplioğlu, and more.

“Istanbul straddles the divide of Europe and Asia, and its polyglot population of twelve million seethes with political, religious and sexual tensions, as shown in the sixteen stories in this strong entry in Akashic's noir anthology series. Most of the stories are fittingly dark, though a couple are lit by a macabre humor … [A] welcome complement to the mostly historical mysteries set in Istanbul.”

—Publishers Weekly

HIGH LIFE

by Matthew Stokoe

336 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

*A selection of Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series

“High Life
is perhaps the greatest neglected masterpiece of true noir. I've never read anything like this, nor do I expect to.”

—Ken Bruen, author of
The Guards

“Stokoe's in-your-face prose and raw, unnerving scenes give way to a skillfully plotted tale that will keep readers glued to the page.”

—Publishers Weekly

INFINITY BLUES

poems by Ryan Adams

288 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

“Ryan Adams, one of America's most consistently interesting singer/songwriters, has written a passionate, arresting, and entertaining book of verse. Fans are going to love it, and newcomers will be pleased and startled by his intensity and originality. The images are vivid and the voice is honest and powerful.”

—Stephen King, author of
Duma Key

GODLIKE

by Richard Hell

150 pages, trade paperback original, $13.95

Godlike,
Hell's second novel, is a stunning achievement, and quite likely his most important work in any medium to date. Combining the grit, wit, and invention of
Go Now
with the charged lyricism and emotional implosiveness of his groundbreaking music,
Godlike
is brilliant in form as well as dazzling in its heart-wrenching tale of one whose values in life are the values of poetry. Set largely in the early '70s, but structured as a middle-aged poet's 1997 notebooks and drafts for a memoir-novel, the book recounts the story of a young man's affair with a remarkable teenage poet.
Godlike
is a novel of compelling originality and transcendent beauty.

SILENT PICTURES

photos by Pat Graham

144 pages, oversized paperback original w/color & b&w photos, $22.95

Modest Mouse, Ted Leo, Bikini Kill, Fugazi, and The Shins are just some of the subjects in acclaimed photographer Pat Graham's debut collection of work. The moments, the music, and the message all come alive with vivid intensity and searing honesty, as Graham documents the evolution of independent music history from his vantage point at the heart of the Washington, DC scene over the last two decades.

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