DigBoston 10.19.17

DIGBOSTON.COM 10.19.17 - 10.26.17

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Dear Reader, In Massachusetts, you’re not allowed to tape people in private conversations without their consent. Which is too bad, because I sat next to some seriously bigoted imbeciles at an exclusive bar last week, and my God I could have used that audio to shame some of the idiots beside me into oblivion.

First there was the guy on a first date with a seemingly intelligent young woman.

He wasn’t doing much to prove that he was any better than his shitty preppy gear would lead one to believe; at one point, he actually said to his date, “I’m not usually that into older chicks, but I can see this working out for sure.” To which the woman, who is definitely under 30, replied, “Uh, what did you just say?” An awkward moment followed. Sex probably didn’t.

I won’t waste too much time whining about the two apparently wealthy white women expressing mutual outrage about kneeling NFL players, or about the handsy, sweaty, and disgusting businessman who casually groped every one of the poor bastards who came to meet him, the men included. The latter was an entitled ballbag with one of those circular Ronald McDonald guts, and you already know he should be shamed and burned, perhaps run off the side of a road someplace.

What’s more important than any specific characters, I think, is that I tend to witness such rampant despicable regressive behavior, as well as downright racism, almost every time I step into an establishment that is out of my price range.

And it makes me feel like, while a lot of everyday working-class people are finally coming to understand the basic principles of justice and respect and equality that activists and people on the political fringe have been demanding for years, the upper crust is only getting crustier, nastier, more spiteful. Which is frightening, since they control the systems, wield the power.

Am I talking about Harvey Weinstein, the sexual predator who has terrorized women in Hollywood for decades? Sure, of course I am. But I’m also talking about a whole lot of other folks in his tax bracket as well. Until they feel the revolution, smell and taste it, very few of them will really be on board, here in purportedly progressive Boston or anyplace else.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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NEWS+OPINION INSANE CLOWN POLI NEWS+OPINION

The last thing traumatized communities need is a mock City Council candidate

BY JAMARHL CRAWFORD @JAMARHLAKAUNO

Send in the clowns.

Now may I direct your attention to the center ring and present to you for your political entertainment Pat Payaso, the clown who would be king.

In case you weren’t totally convinced that local politics has become a complete circus, this one should remove all doubt. Payaso, which means clown in Spanish, actually isn’t the clown at-large Boston City Council candidate’s original name, but rather an outward display of an undying commitment to shtick.

Born Kevin McCrea, prior to this current run, Payaso was apparently a wealthy white real estate developer full of good old American white male privilege. McCrea has emerged as a candidate before, mounting failed campaigns for office in 2005 and 2007, for a City Council seat, and 2009, when he ran for mayor as an independent against the longtime incumbent Tom Menino. Although he had some interesting ideas, they never seemed to take hold. People didn’t seem to listen. And then came the clownsformation.

McCrea legally changed his name to Payaso because, well, as a white guy with disposable income, he was able to. After reinventing his political self, he entered the Council race and even put $1 million of his own money into his campaign account. Must be nice.

McCrea, er, Payaso is exercising the most sacred of American rights—the right of absolute absurdity. He is part of a tradition of “prank” candidates, looking to cement his place among the likes of Vermin Supreme, porn star Mary Carey, and Deez Nuts, who made a major stink running for president of the United States in 2016.

In this case, however, the clown’s problem comes not because he is making a fool of himself, but from a lack of sensitivity in his making a mockery of the pain of traumatized communities.

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When Payaso shows up to forums in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan in particular, how can he properly address a mother who has lost her son to gun violence? Or at the hands of the police? Can he hold a serious conversation in clown gear? Would Payaso show up to a funeral dressed as a clown? Would he sit in City Council sessions, or meet with the police commissioner and district attorney while advocating for people, dressed in face paint? The very prospect is problematic, not to mention disrespectful to the very people he is trying to get votes from. Love them or hate them, it’s also unfair to the elected officials, many of whom take their jobs seriously and handle themselves with professional decorum.

The logic here is the old “I’ll show you”: Payaso thinks politics is a circus, and to prove his point, he took it all the way there and went full-blown Bozo. It’s like if he thought that all politicians are babies, and ran for office in a diaper with a rattle.

Meanwhile, in addition to being a serious distraction, Payaso has landed himself in some trouble while clowning around. In late September, along with his wife and while dressed in full circus regalia, the candidate showed up at the Nathan Hale Elementary School with a photographer in tow. According to reports, the pair entered school property unannounced and uninvited, and began waving around balloon animals and taking pictures that had children in them. The school’s principal and staff intervened, demanding that the photos be deleted. Police were called, and BPD later told the pair to stay away from the school. Days later, when I spoke to the principal, she said that several children and parents and staff members were still shaken up from the incident.

Prior to that, on primary day, Payaso showed up at the Roxbury Community College polling location,

where his strange appearance made students and staff nervous enough to call the police. When cops arrived, they determined that he wasn’t actually a threat, as Payaso indicated he was there to vote. All of which is interesting, since despite having filled out candidate papers claiming that he lives in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, Payaso has always been a businessman residing in the South End. It’s all rather confusing, since according to public records, he currently owns multiple properties in Boston, none of which are at the location where Payaso is registered.

In any case, Payaso has so far somewhat successfully employed these antics to garner himself attention.

Though he probably didn’t calculate the repercussions of his tactics; in one case, after the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, Payaso showed up to a forum in Roslindale with mock clown tears drawn in his makeup. In my community, so plagued by violence and other serious issues, his costume has been seen as dismissive and insensitive.

For those who don’t know, clown getups can evoke a tainted history of clowns as racist caricatures and as part of the origins of minstrel shows. We should also consider the common fear of clowns, known as coulrophobia, which has been exploited and ingrained into pop culture with examples ranging from the hit movie It and characters like the the Joker to the Insane Clown Posse. In more serious matters, John Wayne Gacy comes to mind, while Bostonians may remember the legend of a creepy clown driving an ice cream truck.

The former McCrea made a bad decision in recreating himself as Payaso. He does not seem to have advanced his agenda, while his political points have resonated no more with the public now than they did before. From what I can tell, the only questions that he’s raising are related to the candidate’s own mental stability. I hope that Payaso abandons his antics, apologizes, and sends a hefty donation to the Hale School. At the least, he should steer clear of the city’s traumatized communities while dressed as a fool. He isn’t welcome here. The Black community only likes one clown, Homey, and everybody knows that “Homey don’t play that.”

Jamarhl Crawford is a community activist based in Roxbury.

Ed. note: I have known McCrea/Payaso, the subject of this article, for several years, and even edited and published an editorial of his in DigBoston. Months ago, he informed us that he’d be providing the public service of interviewing multiple Boston City Council and mayoral candidates about education, and the Dig agreed to help disseminate those critical videos. Since our name was involved, we were disappointed to later learn that McCrea was actually running for the Council himself as Payaso, a fact he deliberately hid from us. We believe that the interview videos are still valuable for voters, and stand behind them, but regret having been part of any deceit, and apologize to any candidates who were offended by our apparent collusion with the Payaso campaign. We assure you there was none. As a community newspaper that takes pride in giving a voice to those who are outside of the traditional media establishment, we are nonetheless still committed to sharing our platform, as we have with this piece by Jamarhl, and pledge to be more careful in doing so in the future. -CF

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NEWS

CROCK SPOTTER

Surveillance without oversight in Cambridge

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The Cambridge Police Department (CPD) requested and received $50,000 in its FY2018 budget for what it then called an expansion of ShotSpotter, its microphone-based gunshot surveillance system—without performing a promised evaluation of its pilot installation. The only mention of this $50,000 request is in an “E-Government” capital funds request, with no part of it explained or justified in the police budget. When ShotSpotter was installed with much fanfare in 2014, CPD was careful to explain that no Cambridge money was involved, with financial support coming from a federal Homeland Security grant. The $50,000 request received no notice or scrutiny from the City Council during its hearings on the FY2018 budget. In response to questions posed in preparation for this article, CPD now says that these funds were a “contingency” in case federal grant funds were no longer available to pay for ShotSpotter.

Cambridge’s experience is similar to that of many ShotSpotter installations and follows the company’s early business plans. ShotSpotter lobbied Congress for grant funding for the technology, schooled police departments in how to apply for the grants, and offered to introduce applicants to those who would decide on fund allocations. Cambridge’s installation was part of a larger regional grant, providing ShotSpotter to Chelsea, Everett, Revere, and Somerville, and increasing Boston’s use. By making initial installations “free” to cities, ShotSpotter avoided local procurement processes and examination of the cost/benefits to the system. Once installed, ShotSpotter relentlessly publicized each installation, hoping to create a bandwagon effect on other cities. This approach has been rewarding to early investors, as ShotSpotter had a successful initial public offering of its stock earlier this year.

Cambridge is an odd place to find ShotSpotter. In its SEC filings, ShotSpotter describes its solutions as “deployed in urban, high-crime areas to help deter gun violence.” Cambridge is certainly not a high-crime area, nor a center of gun violence.

According to the CPD, Cambridge had exactly two gunfire incidents in the year before ShotSpotter’s installation. In its exhaustively detailed 2016 81-page annual crime report, CPD documents three gunfire victims and two other gun violations.

Despite an initial promise that ShotSpotter would “allow the police to proactively develop effective problem-oriented, data-driven policing strategies,” there’s no evidence in the annual crime report that ShotSpotter is even a part of Cambridge’s strategic decision making. Gun crime is not analyzed as its own category, and ShotSpotter information is not even included.

Yet, in its five-year strategic plan, the CPD includes ShotSpotter as one of its initiatives in its objective to “prevent and reduce crime through early identification and intervention.”

The plan uses “# of shots spotted” as a metric of success, which, if taken at face value, means that an increase of gun fire would mark a success.

Over ShotSpotter’s 20-year history, there has been no independent analysis of its effectiveness. ShotSpotter relies on anecdotes and the bandwagon effect to fuel sales, as well as the seeming commonsense notion that a set of microphones and algorithms would speed police to a crime scene. In practice, a Forbes review of data from seven cities shows that 30-70 percent of ShotSpotter activations find no evidence of shots being fired.

CPD declined to make ShotSpotter activation data available for this article, citing active investigations. Forbes notes that ShotSpotter considers this information proprietary, and urges cities to deny all public records requests.

Rather than performing its own evaluation, perhaps using its highly regarded Crime Analysis Unit, Cambridge Police met with the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative, the granting agency, and ShotSpotter to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ShotSpotter.

In response to questions, CPD was unable to provide any example of ShotSpotter aiding the resolution of any case, noting only that it provides better forensic information with respect to the time and location of gunshots.

The City Council’s Public Safety Committee will be holding a hearing on Oct 18 at 6:30 pm to discuss a proposed surveillance technology oversight ordinance that, in its draft form, would require Council approval of any surveillance technology as well as analyses of its impact and effectiveness.

The plan uses “# of shots spotted” as a metric of success, which, if taken at face value, means that an increase of gun fire would mark a success.

Saul Tannenbaum is a Cambridge-based activist and blogger, writing on the intersections of technology, politics, and social justice.

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

How the far right acts as a “bridge phenomenon” for white supremacists

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS In his tax speech in Pennsylvania last week, President Trump gave a shout out to “The great Jeffrey Lord.”

He went on to explain that Lord “was on fake news CNN for a long time. He was one of my few sources of truth.”

CNN severed ties with Lord after he tweeted “sieg heil,” a Nazi salutation.

Trump’s flirtation with racism is nothing new—it extends back through the campaign and into many facets of the presidency. He called the white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people” and has repeatedly refused to condemn hate groups. But the precise mechanisms by which the administration and ally media outlets like Breitbart act as bridges to normalize hate groups is becoming increasingly clear.

Last week, Buzzfeed’s massive story on the rightwing provocateur showed that Milo Yiannopoulos sent at least one major Breitbart story to a number of white supremacists to vet and line-edit. In a video embedded in the story, Richard Spencer and others gave a Nazi salute as Yiannopoulos sang “America the Beautiful” at karaoke. Milo even spiked a story at the suggestion of white nationalist Devin Saucier, a friend of Spencer’s.

Yiannopoulos was forced out of Breitbart after an old tape in which he appears to condone pedophila came out, but he has remained in contact with the major funders to the site, the billionaire Mercer family, which supported and funded Milo Inc. Bannon, who had declared the Mercer-funded Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right,” left the site to run Trump’s campaign and work as a senior advisor to the White House, and returned to the site when he was ousted shortly after the white nationalist terror attack in Charlottesville.

“Dude---we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!!” he wrote to Milo. “U should be OWNING this conversation because u r everything they hate!!! Drop your toys, pick up your tools and go help save western civilization.”

“Western civilization” is often code for whiteness. But it is less offensive, and less likely to scare away potential converts.

In his New York Times Magazine story on the Breitbart, Wil S. Hylton (full disclosure, a friend) talked to Yochai Benkler, a professor who had been studying the site’s rise.

Breitbart, it turned out in Benkler’s study, was three times more influential than its closest rival, Fox News, during the 2016 election. In this way, it has, according to Benkler, served as a sort of filter that helps legitimize racist ideas. Benkler told Hylton that “Breitbart is not talking about these issues in the same way you would find on the extreme right … They don’t use the same language you find on sites like VDARE and The Daily Stormer” — two sites connected to the white nationalist alt-right movement.

But they are talking about those same issues, and it turns out that the fact that they don’t use the same language as Daily Stormer is what makes Breitbart effective as a “bridge” that, in Hylton’s words, “functioned as a legitimizing tether for the most abhorrent currents of the right wing.”

Now that we know that Yiannopoulos actually sent “his” Breitbart stories (which were actually often not written by him) to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, who works at the Daily Stormer, the bridge phenomenon comes off a bit differently.

“What we saw in our larger scale analysis was that Breitbart was offering a bridge, a translation platform from the white nationalists to the rest, but that the language and framing was sufficiently different to not be read directly as white nationalist,” Benkler responded in an email when I asked about the Milo story. “To the extent that the BuzzFeed news story is correct in its details, it describes in great detail the level process by which the ideas were transferred, but then still partly sanitized for consumption by people who would be receptive to the ideas, but not the messenger (e.g. Daily Stormer) or the very specific explicitly white nationalist language.”

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Trump himself has often acted as a similar kind of bridge. Although he first endorsed Luther Strange to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat in an Alabama special election, Trump has now come around to fully supporting Roy Moore, the theocratic former Alabama judge twice removed from office for failing to recognize the rulings of a higher court.

But Moore is himself acting as a bridge for even more extreme figures.

As Talking Points Memo reported last week, Moore’s top supporter is Michael Peroutka, who the site described as a “hardline Confederate sympathizer with longtime ties to a secessionist group” who has “expressed beliefs that make even Moore’s arguably theocratic anti-gay and anti-Muslim views look mainstream by comparison.”

Peroutka, a secessionist and debt-collection attorney, ran for president in 2004 for the Constitution Party. A decade later, in 2014, he ran for the county council in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was supported by Moore— Peroutka has honored the Alabamian by naming a field on his farm for Moore. In 2012, Peroutka asked attendees of a League of the South conference to “stand for the national anthem” and proceeded to play “Dixie.”

So as the president and his administration continue to throw fits about athletes “disrespecting the flag” by taking a knee during the national anthem, they are actively supporting or receiving support from racist extremists who support either the Nazis or the Confederacy. Nevertheless, in the same way that Breitbart launders the extremist views of the Daily Stormer, making them more palatable, the administration is acting as a bridge to legitimize those elements on the right that are even more extreme than Trump is.

Baynard Woods is a reporter at the Real News Network.

Email: baynard@democracyincrisis.com.

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PROBLEM EQUIPMENT GUEST OP-ED

Will legislators stand up to the militarized police state?

I’m the chair of Digital Fourth / Restore The 4th-Boston, a local volunteer civil liberties group focusing on surveillance and Fourth Amendment issues. Last Tuesday morning, I and five others went to testify at the Massachusetts State House on a bill that would limit police militarization. H. 2503, proposed by Rep. Denise Provost, would require a public hearing and a vote by elected officials before some kinds of military equipment and surveillance technologies are deployed in a town. The list includes armored vehicles, drones, machine guns, sound cannons and stingrays. (Rep. Keefe and Sen. Barrett testified in favor of a similar ACLU bill (H. 1276 / S. 1277).)

A police union representative was the only person to testify against the measure, saying that they were “adamantly” opposed to it, because it would slow down such deployments and threaten public safety. Our perspective is that the public have a right to have a say as to what kind of surveillance they’re subjected to, and that it shouldn’t be just up to the police chief. It’s ridiculous that even bucolic rural communities like Palmer and Rehoboth get this kind of stuff landed on them without the approval, or sometimes even the knowledge, of their elected officials. Recent research suggests that militarizing a town’s police force increases civilian deaths and assaults on police officers.

The following is an excerpt from the written testimony I submitted, going into more detail on the equipment and the research. If you’d like to take action, please call your state rep or state senator and urge them to recommend a favorable vote in the Joint Committee on Public Safety on these bills.

SUPPORT H. 2503, “An Act assuring municipal control of military equipment procurement by local law enforcement.” This is a one-paragraph bill, without significant cost implications, that aims to deal with a serious problem in the Commonwealth.

Over $12 million in military surplus equipment has made its way from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan back to the streets of Massachusetts alone. Some of this equipment is, in our view, innocuous: It can be a good way for police departments to equip themselves with rifles, helmets, handcuffs and other material no longer 8

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needed for military use. However, around one-sixth of the overall equipment value constitutes acquisition that are problematic, including mine-resistant military assault vehicles in Haverhill, New Bedford, and tiny Rehoboth, and an aerial reconnaissance camera system designed for detecting subsurface minefields in Palmer.

Beyond this, police departments in communities across Massachusetts are seeing a constant flow of new technologies of surveillance and crowd control deployed on their streets. To take Boston alone, in the last two years they have been found to have a stingray, have tried to deploy intrusive and expensive social media surveillance technologies, and are testing out drones. None of this has happened with the explicit consent of local elected officials, and much has happened without even their knowledge.

It is through small decisions like this, town by town, that our police departments are slowly changing to look less like the people they serve, and more like occupying armies. This builds a charged atmosphere of hostility and confrontation, contributing to our having a rate of killings by police sixteen times that of Germany’s (the risk officers face, in terms of death in the line of duty, being much the same). And in fact, the latest research out of Harvard and Stanford backs up the idea that militarizing your police officers leads to more officer-involved shootings.

When police departments were first created, they were intended to express the principle that “the police are the public, and the public are the police.” The Founders were so concerned about the use of military forces for domestic repression that they refused to set up a peacetime standing army. After Reconstruction, the Posse Comitatus Act forbade the military from exercising police powers.

Except in times of extraordinary local lawlessness, such as the resistance to desegregation in the South in the 1960s, the National Guard is generally not a daily presence in our streets, and everyday policing is meant to be left to municipal, lightly armed officers. In the 1980s, however, this began to change, in response to a massive increase in crime. SWAT teams spread across the country, initially presented as being useful for hostage situations and gang warfare. But in today’s low-crime environment, with crime

levels not seen since the early 1960s, SWAT teams are mostly used instead to execute drug warrants. However, the equipment and tactics intended to deal with that 1980s crime wave remain in place.

In the 2000s, there was a flood of funding for training in response to terrorist attacks. In “Urban Shield” trainings, police act essentially as a military, treating the public as potential threats rather than as fellow Americans and Commonwealth residents fully entitled to the protections of the Constitution. If the training you receive is for an extraordinary breakdown in civil order, ordinary policing tactics get lost; if you think of members of the public as a threat, then their Fourth Amendment protections are much less likely to be consistently respected. We saw where these trends were leading in Watertown in 2013, where 9,000 officers and National Guardsmen turned out with military assault vehicles, to participate in an unsuccessful lockdown and house-to-house search for a single fugitive teenager. Now, the Trump administration is calling even for the minor limitations placed on deploying military equipment in our towns and cities by the Obama administration to be lifted.

In Ferguson, Missouri, the situation only calmed when the local, militarized police force was sidelined and the much more lightly armed state police came in and walked with the protesters. We believe that if such equipment is to be part of local police forces, it should only be with the explicit, recorded consent of the elected officials, after a properly noticed public hearing, so as to provide oversight and accountability.

Our bill explicitly tries to set the same systems in place for new technologies of surveillance and control.

It’s not just about the armored vehicles. It’s also about controversial technologies such as stingrays, drones, and ultrasound crowd control devices. Much inappropriate secrecy surrounds the deployment of such systems, and we believe that it is appropriate for the public to know whether they are being deployed by their police departments; the best way to achieve this is, again, by having the elected officials explicitly, as a matter of public record, vote on whether they should be used.

PHOTO BY DAN MCCARTHY

BY ALEX MARTHEWS @REBELCINDER

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AN EMERGING CANON LGBTQ HISTORY MONTH

Ever since Stonewall, LGBTQ history has been whitewashing itself.

It’s time we challenged that.

BY IRENE MONROE @REVIMONROE

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Winston Churchill once said that “History is written by the victors.”

When the Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969, the history of more than a centurylong oppressed people finally got national attention. And, since that historical moment, the suppressed and closeted oral histories of our fierce and courageous LGBTQ brothers and sisters began to be documented— openly and uncensored.

Less than half a century after Stonewall, a new field of inquiry called queer studies began to tell our stories. As a young discipline, it’s still on a fact-gathering mission.

LGBTQ History Month is young, too.

It’s a public month-long celebration and acknowledgment of our contribution to American History. Just 23 years old, it was first celebrated in 1994, as an outgrowth from National Coming out Day (October 11) founded in 1988.

As a community that can now openly gather, preserve, and archive our history, LGBTQ History Month affords us the opportunity to celebrate new voices and individuals to this newly emerging canon. The more diversified the LGBTQ historical canon becomes, a more robust and accurate picture emerges of the shakers and movers of a century-long civil rights movement predating Stonewall.

However, the whitewashing that’s showcased during this month with the usual renown figures like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin thrown in as tokens of inclusion does a tremendous disservice—not only to the intention of the month-long celebration, but also to the importance of the historical record attempting to climb out of a queer closet now open.

Both Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March similarly omit from their month-long celebrations trailblazers whose lives should be acknowledged. Queer studies addressed the once deliberated and hidden omission of Rustin from the historical annals of the 1960s Black Civil Rights Movement, and put the legendary nonviolence advocate in his rightful place as a key figure. Usually mentioned as merely a footnote, we can no longer accurately talk about the historic 1963 March on Washington without mentioning Bayard Rustin. He was the strategist and chief organizer of the March that catapulted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. onto a world stage. Sadly, he’s still largely an unknown due to the heterosexism that canonized the history.

Queer histories, however, are not without their blind spots, too.

For example, African American LGBTQ communities have existed in Harlem since this former Dutch enclave became America’s Black Mecca in the 1920s. The visibility of Harlem’s LGBTQ communities, for the most part, was forced to be on the “down low.” But gay Harlem, nonetheless, showcased its inimitable style with rent parties, speakeasies, sex circuses, and buffet flats as places to engage in protected same-gender milieux.

And let’s not forget Harlem’s notorious gay balls. During the 1920s in Harlem, the renowned Savoy Ballroom and the Rockland Palace hosted drag ball extravaganzas with prizes awarded for the best costumes. Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes depicted the balls as “spectacles of color,” while African American ministers railed against these communities as they continue to do today.

While we have come to know of gay and bisexual male literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance like Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, and Richard Bruce Nugent, to name a few, we know too little of the LBT and queerfriendly feminist women writers. Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Nella Larsen, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and other African American feminist writers of the era used issues of sexuality and gender nonconforming identities as artistic influences in their literary works.

The invisibility of LGBTQ and women of color is not because there is a paucity of us that exist or made history; our invisibility is evidence of how race, gender, and sexual politics of the dominant heterosexual cultures—black or white—are reinforced in white queer, too.

It leads you to believe that the only shakers and movers in the history of people of African descent in the US were and still are heterosexuals, or white. And because of these biases, the sheroes and heroes of LGBTQ people of African descent—like Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Bayard Rustin—are mostly known and lauded within a subculture of black life.

Deceased African-American poet and activist Pat Parker, in her book Movement in Black, talked about how society did not embrace her multiple identities. “If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome, because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay, but not Black.’ Or I’m going to a Black poetry reading, and half of the poets are antihomosexual, or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me. The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution.”

The Stonewall Riots was a revolution. And, it wasn’t just white! The historical facts are not all gathered. For example, the 2015 film Stonewall is the most disturbing of accounts of the rebellion because of its apparent whitewashing of a moment that turned into a movement. When I look back at the Stonewall Inn riots, as a young teen in the riots, I could have never imagined its future importance.

On the first night of the Stonewall Inn riots, African-Americans and Latinos were the largest percentages of the protes­ters, because we heavily frequented the Stonewall Inn. For black and Latino homeless youth and young adults who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the bar was their stable domicile. The Stonewall Inn being raided was nothing new—gay bars in the Village were routinely raided in the 1960s—but many believe the decision to raid Stonewall that fateful night happened because the police were increasingly incensed by how many LGBT people of color hung out there.

That June in 1969, those riots in Greenwich Village started on the backs of working-class African-American and Latino queers who patronized that bar. Those brown and black LGBTQ people are not only absent from the photos of that night, but have been bleached from its written history. Many LGBTQ blacks and Latinos argue that one of the reasons for the gulf between whites and themselves is about how the dominant queer community rewrote and continues to control the narrative of Stonewall.

LGBTQ History Month can be a public acknowledgment of correcting the record.

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Reverend Irene Monroe is a speaker, theologian, and syndicated columnist. Read more at irenemonroe.com

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REPLICAS OF THE BORDEN SKULLS AT THE LIZZIE BORDEN B&B | PHOTO BY FRANK C. GRACE

ROOM WITH A BOO FEATURE

New England’s hotels where guests check in… but don’t check out?

BY SAM BALTRUSIS @SAMBALTRUSIS Want to see if a “room with a boo” is truly haunted? Work the graveyard shift at an allegedly haunted hotel.

For a few months in 2017, I signed on as a night auditor at two boo-tique inns, including the Hotel 140 in the Back Bay. Right above the front desk is the Lyric Stage Company theater.

Multiple times in the wee hours of the night, I encountered a female spirit who’d mysteriously try to lead me upstairs. I’m not sure what her deal was, but she was desperately trying to communicate with me.

One Monday night in May 2017 when I was working the overnight shift at Hotel 140, I met Lyric Stage Company’s associate production manager, Stephanie Hettrick. We started chatting, and within the first few minutes, she revealed to me that my hunch was

“She doesn’t like me, but she likes my boss. He was away for a week and caused all sorts of problems. Things would mysteriously move. Lights would turn on and off. We blamed it on Alice.”

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true: the former YWCA turned hotel is in fact haunted. “We call her Alice,” Hettrick said, speaking quietly so her friend couldn’t hear her talking about the building’s resident ghost. “She doesn’t like me, but she likes my boss. He was away for a week and caused all sorts of problems. Things would mysteriously move. Lights would turn on and off. We blamed it on Alice.”

When asked if she had any idea about Alice’s backstory, Hettrick said she strongly believed the female spirit was in her early to late twenties. When asked how she knew so many details about the resident spirit, the production manager smiled. “Because I’ve seen her,” she said, pointing to the second-floor mezzanine level of the hotel and the side-stairs area Alice is known to frequent. “She’s wearing white, and sometimes when I’m here late at night in the theater, I will see her out of the corner of my eye.”

Hettrick’s friend, who was in the ladies’ room behind Hotel 140’s front desk, ran out in a tizzy. “Are you talking about ghosts? If you are then I’m going to leave now.” Her friend was joking, but you could see she was obviously creeped out by the hotel’s resident spirit.

Of course, Hotel 140 isn’t the only overnight haunt in the Boston area that’s reported to have supernatural activity. Several of the Hub’s haunted dormitories, including Boston University’s Kilachand Hall (formerly Shelton Hall and my sophomore-year college dorm) and Berklee College of Music’s 150 Mass Ave, had former lives as hotels. The Charlesgate, Emerson College’s “devilish

dormitory,” which has been converted into upscale condominiums, was built in 1891 as a fin de siècle hotel and boasted upscale accommodations for Boston’s elite and then deteriorated during the Depression before housing college students.

When it comes to haunted dorms, school spirits reflect school spirit. Based on my experience as a paranormal researcher and as the author of eight historical-based ghost books, I’ve unwittingly become a voice for New England’s spirit squad. We got spirits, yes we do. *** While writing 13 Most Haunted Hotels & Inns of New England, I’ve been featured on two national paranormal TV shows, including Destination America’s Haunted Towns, which focused on Salem. I also made a cameo on the Travel Channel recounting my face-to-face encounter with a lady in white in the Witch City’s Old Burying Point on Charter Street. In 2012, I was featured as Boston’s paranormal expert on the Biography Channel’s Haunted Encounters.

How can one person have so many experiences of New England’s ghosts? I’m mysteriously called to these haunted locations. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

Some of my paranormal friends are “ghost magnets.”

I don’t necessarily attract or repel things that go bump in the night. My gift is that I intuitively know where the spirits are, and I inexplicably find myself in those places. Usually

I end up in locations that aren’t necessarily known to be haunted but turn out to be extremely active from a paranormal perspective.

I guess I have built-in “ghostdar.”

In addition to my part-time gig at Hotel 140, my built-in ghost GPS led me to a hotel that’s close to one of my favorite local haunts, the USS Constitution in the Boston Navy Yard. A stone’s throw from the extremely active “Old Ironsides,” the Constitution Inn had an under-the-radar paranormal reputation of sorts thanks to its close proximity to US Navy’s crown jewel, Charlestown’s iconic wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate.

When I first applied to be the hotel’s part-time night auditor, my future boss nodded when I asked if the Constitution Inn had any resident ghosts. “Talk to the ladies in housekeeping,” my manager said with a sheepish smile. “They swear they’ve seen something downstairs.”

After several overnights working at the Constitution Inn, I invited friends to investigate with me at the hotel, which included a visit to the supposedly haunted laundry room. It was a spirited evening to say the least.

One of the guests, Cynthia Olson Mattison, had a weird communication during the investigation led by the S.P.I.R.I.T.S. of New England team at the Constitution Inn. Someone or something typed “hi” on her phone when she left it on the table. It was very strange and the beginning of communications with two possible spirits at the inn.

“We know for a fact there are other buildings within the Navy Yard that have activity,” explained Jack Kenna, investigator with S.P.I.R.I.T.S. of New England. “Back in July of 2010 when we investigated the Constitution, some of the ship’s officers told us about several other locations in the shipyard they had experiences in and believed were haunted,” Kenna continued. “There’s a lot of history in Charlestown and, of course, the entire Boston area. Some of that history goes all the way back to the 1600s. I do believe that this part of Boston could very well hold some of the most interesting and intense paranormal activity in the Boston area.”

Kenna and Ellen MacNeil gave a spine-tingling lecture about their investigation on board the USS Constitution.

During their discussion at the Constitution Inn, the door leading into the conference room mysteriously swung open and then closed.

Was it a spirit? Perhaps. I do know that somewhere deep in our subconscious, ghost stories satiate a primitive desire to know that life exists after death. Based on my experience working overnights at two potentially haunted hotels, I do believe that inns have a proclivity for hauntings based purely on the numbers of people who pass through them. Extreme emotions leave a psychic imprint. An intense moment–like a murder, suicide or even a wedding–could leave an indelible mark.

When I visited Fall River’s iconic murder house, the Lizzie Borden B&B, I was expecting to be underwhelmed. I wasn’t.

As far as my personal experiences writing 13 Most Haunted Hotels and Inns of New England, my abilities as an empath gradually heightened over the two-year period I spent visiting these extremely haunted hotels. When I first started, I felt like John Cusack’s character Mike Enslin in the movie 1408. I was still somewhat of a skeptic. However, I had several life-changing experiences with the paranormal along the way. ***

said, “Oh, that’s just Liam,” and I mused that Liam needed to learn a thing or two about boundaries.

I immediately felt connected with him as he led me to an open field behind the historic structure. During my trek out to the cemetery hidden behind the inn, I touched a tree, and it felt as if I was being transported back in time. Based on my vision, Liam loved to fish, and he was attacked by the locals for being different. He desperately wanted to tell me his story. I was standing in the middle of the field, shivering in the beauty and the madness of the moment.

After connecting with Liam, I headed inside and immediately passed out. It was a deep sleep in which I experienced full-blown spirit communication with the inn’s resident ghosts. In the dream, I was hanging out with Liam, and he was wearing an outfit that appeared to be from the 18th century.

The following morning during breakfast, Carol asked me if I was out fishing in the brook behind the cemetery. I was shocked.

Fishing?

“Yes, we thought we saw you out there with a fishing pole.”

I’m not into fishing, but Liam definitely was. I held my breath.

When I visited Fall River’s iconic murder house, the Lizzie Borden B&B, I was expecting to be underwhelmed. I wasn’t. In fact, within the first few minutes, I spotted a shadow figure dart by, and I connected deeply with Lizzie Borden’s stepmother, Abby, in the John Morse room. I was in tears Sam Baltrusis, author of 13 Most Haunted Hotels & when I walked over to the scene of Inns of New England, was featured on Destination the crime.

America’s Haunted Towns and the Travel Channel. Visit Sue Vickery, a tour guide 13MostHaunted.com for more information. at the Lizzie Borden B&B, said my sensitivities were spot on. “Yes, it’s a very common experience,” she told me. “I’ve also been overcome with sadness on occasion in that room. I’ve had guests walk through that doorway and break out in tears.”

Vickery, who was recently featured on TLC’s Kindred Spirits with Amy Bruni and Adam Berry, said the hauntings at the Lizzie Borden B&B live up to the building’s national reputation.

“The Bordens are very much still a presence here,” she said. “I’ve spoken with Andrew, Abby, Lizzie and occasionally Emma through the spirit box.

I’ve witnessed black mist and white mist. I’ve had voices speak when no one is in the house.

Footsteps are common.

Doors open and close.

I’ve been touched on numerous occasions as well.”

In addition to my visit to the Lizzie Borden B&B, my most profound personal experience was during an overnight stay at Captain Grant’s Inn in Preston, Connecticut.

I somehow channeled the spirit of the inn’s resident gay ghost, Liam. I first connected with him during an impromptu interview with the innkeeper, Carol Matsumoto, in the kitchen. During our chat, it felt as if someone THE LIZZIE BORDEN B&B | PHOTO BY FRANK C. GRACE hugged me from behind.

Matsumoto jokingly

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A PUBLIC HOUSE WITH SOME PRIVACY DRINKS

| RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |

Here comes Democracy Brewing in Downtown Crossing

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Upcoming SHOWS

11.10-12 MARIZA

11.13 DAVID CROSBY

11.14 PAUL THORN

11.15 LLOYD COLE

11.16-17

11.19 WILLIE NILE

MARC BROUSSARD

11.26

11.24

KINDRED THE FAMILY SOUL

AZTEC TWO-STEP

11.27

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III

11.28 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

and Much More!

city winery Presents

10.20 rusted root at Thunder Road

In a strong democracy, independent news outlets will be able to follow up on the beer articles they produce, not just investigative features. And so in the name of keeping you posted about Democracy Brewing, which has yet to set an official opening date but has finally been granted a certificate of occupancy, we have some excerpts from an interview that we conducted with James Razsa, a former labor and community activist who is one of the founders. But first, some background from our recent feature by Dig staff writer Haley Hamilton: Democracy Brewing will be a 100-percent worker-owned establishment, a business model that will take all decision-making and problem-solving power out of the traditional corporate hierarchy—where employees typically must seek permission to make changes from bosses who are blind to the need for change—and put it in the hands of workers on the ground level… [The founders] aim to make their project not only a place that makes and serves great beer, but a pillar of the Boston worker’s community and a space to foster conversation, education, and empowerment.

If they pull it off, Democracy Brewing will be one of the most innovative businesses in the city. An illustrious spot with an honorable mission: to recreate the public house culture that Boston’s forefathers drank and debated in, a scene where problems are solved, ideas are generated, and people fight for, well, democracy. The business “will operate as a worker-owned cooperative, which grants employees equity shares in the business after one year of employment. In addition, all workers will begin at $15/hour, plus tips.

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As for that update on the Temple Place location…

THE SPACE “This place was turned over a couple of times. All this construction was not us—we inherited all of this. It was supposed to be a Mexican restaurant. They opened four places at once, ran out of money, and had to sell the building… We have inherited everything from the tap lines to the plumbing.

“This is going to be big, a German beer hall-style place with tables all down the middle. There will also be intimate banquettes to have a drink in as well. Our bar will have about 18 seats, and we’ll have eight to ten beers of our very own on tap at all times.”

THE SNUG “There will be a small room called a snug with banquettes that will fit six to eight people snugly, hence the name. It’s completely sealed up if you want to have a conversation and be away from the noise. If you don’t want to leave, if you want to keep the conversation going, you flick a little light, the light goes on, and the bartender will actually come to the end of the bar, open the window for you, and pour your drinks right there. You never have to leave. There’s no bathroom, but…”

THE PLAN “In our event space, there will be a folding door. On a Thursday or Friday, when we’re packed, it will be open for folks to have a good time. But on a Monday or a Tuesday when we’re slower, we can close it to have private events for folks.

“It comes out of the idea that we want to be a public house. Like back in the day, when you had your church, and your home, [and your bar], this is going to be the other place where you can come and get to know folks and hopefully build some community.”

BEER + BOOKS

YOU ARE WHAT YOU DRINK

And if you’re drinking hops, you should be reading this

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 For nearly 20 years, since around the time that I began enjoying beer, I have been repeating the same couple of factoids about the stuff. One is that because of a limited amount of surface area exposure, beer in a much bigger container will hold, even taste, better than the same beer in a smaller bottle. It wasn’t much, but that tidbit made it somewhat less embarrassing that my father kept several forties in the refrigerator at all times; he always claimed that the preferred size bottle of my favorite rappers was more flavorful, and to my amazement, he was correct.

I learned that truth about container size, as well as other slices of knowledge I use to enlighten and annoy people at parties, from a book that a friend of my family bought me in high school. Since then I have imbibed innumerable pops, and I probably know more than most people about the topic due to editing this newspaper—an early booster of superior beers, I will proudly note—but I still don’t know nearly enough.

And so it was a blessing to discover this new ode to suds by accomplished beer writer Pete Brown: Miracle Brew: Hops, Barley, Water, Yeast and the Nature of Beer.

There’s an amazingly vast history bubbling; Brown’s tagline is broad: “Beer is the third most popular drink on the planet, yet few people know the full story behind its four ingredients.” But the beautiful and dirty details, as well as deeply researched history, comes woven throughout every chapter as the author travels from past centuries on into various nooks of the modern brew world, the whole time drinking it all in. For all the universally fascinating scenes, like Brown getting the full pedagogical treatment about water from a host of experts arranged by Guinness in Dublin, there are also moments that will prove definitely tedious for relative pedestrians. Nevertheless, while Brown holds readers’ hands through a few biochemistry classes, Miracle Brew isn’t presented any more scientifically, or textbook, than it has to.

In explaining the brilliance and background of barley, yeast, water, and hops— on their own as well as in sweet tandem—the author shows that he can craft a hoppy sentence to accompany the stimulated mouthful of ingredients in play: “Yeast needs sugar to produce alcohol. In grapes and other fruit, this sugar is relatively accessible from a microscopic predator’s point of view, and their orgy of consumption and reproduction gives us wine, or cider.” Such smooth delivery and memorable lines make for a must-read in this microgenre about micro brews, at least according to the bartenders and snobs whom I have shown it to over the past month while perusing it.

Wondering where Brown’s new contribution to the canon will connect with your knowledge?

There’s a section early on in Miracle Brew that serves as a litmus test; if you’re something like the author’s increasingly beercurious friends, then you’ll want to grab a copy plus catch the author on his brewery tour through the region.

“Beer is the third most popular drink on the planet, yet few people know the full story behind its four ingredients.”

There’s been a change in my non-beery friends… Every year, we have a summer barbecue and a Christmas party where we ask people to bring anything they want except beer, and we try to clear my cellar. Ten years ago I would have to grudgingly go out and buy some mainstream lager because most people wouldn’t touch the range of golden ales, best bitters, pale ales, porters and stouts I put out. Seven years ago, they were happily drinking those beers, even asking questions about them. For the past five years, those same drinkers have looked at the range of beers I’ve been sent, sniffed, and said, ‘Haven’t you got anything with Citra hops? Or Nelson Sauvin?’ >> THE PETE BROWN “MIRACLE BREW” BOOK TOUR. WED 10.18 AT AERONAUT BREWING COMPANY, SOMERVILLE. MON 10.23 AT HARPOON BREWERY, BOSTON.

BUY-Sell-TRADE

COSTUMES! ALLSTON: 180 Harvard Ave. (Green Line @ Harvard) SOMERVILLE: 238 Elm St. (Red Line @ Davis Square) BUFFALOEXCHANGE.COM •

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BENJAMIN BOOKER MUSIC

The blues rock revivalist talks hot air balloons, Larry David, and his first job

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN There’s a lot to tackle when you record an album. First and foremost, there’s the music, a side of creative work that you want to sound as perfect and succinct as the songs do in your head. Then come the lyrics, which should not only be phrased as succinctly as possible, but deliver so that the listener can interpret them as you please. For artists like Benjamin Booker, the New Orleans-based musician who’s been carving his name in the blues rock scene since 2012, it takes time.

After finishing his self-titled debut LP in 2014, Booker took a brief break to focus on writing new material.

Usually, he tries to jot it all down with an acoustic guitar in hand. This time around, he could tweak the lyrics, rewrite sections, and deepen the economic process of writing a record by trying new moves in the studio. Then he brought on Shawn Everett, the Grammy-winning music engineer known for his work with everyone from Alabama Shakes to Perfume Genius, to handle mixing. Booker’s follow-up record, this year’s Witness, finds his modern take on vintage blues rock reflecting on a not so vintage reality of life: racism in America. Everett’s mixing manages to bring that darkness to a new level.

“I’m proud that it’s a cohesive album. It really is. We went in with the idea of telling a story with the album.

That’s why at the beginning you have songs working into other songs. Even lyrically, it’s set up in a linear fashion,” Booker says of Witness. “On top of that, [Everett] is a whiz kid. Really, he makes everything sound cool, but I had to work with a sound guy to figure out how to do that live.

I didn’t know how to translate that live. It’s been a lot of taking songs apart and figuring out the best way to replicate it live.”

To dig deeper into the album’s themes before Booker unveils them in their live formation at the Sinclair, we interviewed him for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask bands questions inspired by their song titles.

Of course, he was just as chill as the casually cool ’tude his music gives off.

1. “Right On You” What’s the best description of you a friend has ever summed you up with?

Oh, people call me a young black Larry David. I think I can be a grumpy man. That’s the one that I get the most, because I get ostentatious. I’m a bit too Curb Your Enthusiasm. I watched it before, and I’m really excited it’s back.

2. “Motivation” When you’re feeling particularly down or exhausted, what do you do to cheer yourself up?

Occasionally I’ll smoke weed. I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to figure that out. I like to read or just go out into nature. Me and my girlfriend have been taking more trips.

We went to Yosemite and got a cabin there. I’m living in a bigger city now—Los Angeles, you know—so it’s nice to get out to the quiet and go on hikes. Nothing too crazy.

3. “Witness” Have you ever witnessed a miracle, however you want to define that?

I don’t know if I have. I’ve seen a lot of probably fake miracles growing up in the church. There’s a lot of people laying hands on other people and them automatically feeling better. Southern evangelical vibe. It’s strange—I took part in it then—but it’s weird to look back on now because I don’t believe in that much. It seems like nonsense. I definitely believe that the world is probably more than we think it is. But yeah, I believe in things hidden behind the scenes.

4. “The Slow Drag Under” Do you have trouble falling asleep?

I do have insomnia problems. That’s how I also got my medical marijuana card in California. That has its perks.

I usually stay up pretty late, though, but it’s nice because it’s the best time for me to work. I don’t mind it too much. Luckily if you’re a musician, then you’re free to do that thing late at night. I’m usually in my head a lot and anxious, so it’s hard for me to get out. I’m thinking about meditating actually.

5. “Truth Is Heavy” Name two truths about yourself that were, or still are, hard to accept.

Nelly just got accused of sexual assault. I was arguing with the band about it because I refuse to believe that’s true. I’m taking Nelly’s side on this one. I don’t know. He seems like a stand-up guy! But I’m waiting for all the evidence to come out because obviously that drastically changes things when there’s facts.

6. “Believe” Is there anything you believe in that most people don’t?

There’s things that make life easier but I don’t really believe in anything. So maybe that makes me different?

Last year, I really started getting into philosophy and literature. The more I think about it, the more I realize we have rules in life but that they’re all made up. People are just wandering around. I don’t really believe in anything.

It could be a bummer place to be at, thinking that way, but I find it to be freeing. You realize you don’t have to do anything. Getting great success? After a while you just realize why bother. Or maybe I’m just becoming an old man. This is the Larry David thing kicking in.

7. “Overtime” What was your first job?

My first job was at a science museum in Florida called the Museum of Science and Industry. I worked there for probably four years. I was not about it towards the end, but they refused to fire me. It was insane. They would call me three hours after I was supposed to show up. I remember once I finally just said, “Guys, just fire me.” The lady responded saying, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” They refused to get rid of me! I love that place, though. I think it was because we were all really close. Even if you’re in love with the museum, you’re dealing with 5-year-olds all day.

There’s no pressing issues to get to, so me being late didn’t matter.

8. “Off the Ground” Have you ever gone on a hot air balloon before?

I haven’t. I’m not very good with heights. Definitely not my thing. But I think I would try an air balloon maybe.

Sometime? Probably not. Nevermind, it’s too much. I had a problem with planes for a very, very long time. I think only this year have I gotten better at flying. Usually if I have one glass of wine, I’ll feel better, but now I stopped drinking.

You also can’t have wine every time you get on a plane. I had to deal with it and accept it’s going to happen. It just seems like the worst way you could possibly die. Maybe worse than in a hot air balloon because you fall quickly.

How long does it take a plane from 35,000 feet to hit the ground? Forever! That’s too long. I want to go quick, so that’s not for me.

9. “Carry” What’s the heaviest thing you’ve ever lifted?

My answer is so boring: a couch in college. Those couches are terrible. Really, the worst. But yeah, I hit the gym for a little bit and then stopped going. They have gyms at the hotel, but then you end up with a bunch of sweaty gym clothes and I don’t want to deal with that.

10. “All Was Well” What was your happiest moment of this year so far and when was it?

Earlier this year, I did a benefit show for the Dakota Access Pipeline in Los Angeles. Kyp Malone from TV On The Radio was hosting the benefit. That’s my favorite band! It was great. Stuff like that is cool because you get to meet your heroes, which is always nice. It was a very happy moment indeed.

>> BENJAMIN BOOKER, SHE KEEPS BEES. FRI 10.20. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/ALL AGES/$22. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 10.19

FRI 10.20

[Lilypad Inman, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$10. lilypadinman.com]

[Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St., Boston. 8pm/ all ages/$50. bochcenter. com]

GENTLE FOLK WITH BOLD VOICES DIANE CLUCK + SAM MOSS

16

10.19.17 - 10.26.17 |

THE BEGINNING OF EMO’S END BRAND NEW + NADA SURF

DIGBOSTON.COM

SAT 10.21

BASK IN THE GLOW OF MAZZY STAR’S SINGER HOPE SANDOVAL & THE WARM INVENTIONS + HOLY WAVE

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 6pm/18+/$30. royaleboston.com]

SAT 10.21

BROOKLYN’S ATMOSPHERIC BLACK METAL TOMBS + BEWITCHER + SEAX + SLOW DEATH

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$10. obrienspubboston.com]

SAT 10.21

INDIE ROCK FOR UPLIFTMENT RADIATOR HOSPITAL + OUTER SPACES + MELKBELLY + MORE

[Camb YMCA, 820 Mass Ave., 6pm/all ages/$12. brownpapertickets.com/ event/3102334]

MON 10.23

POST-DRAKE R&B MAJID JORDAN

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$33. sinclaircambridge.com]

MUSIC

MINI DRESSES

Five years to release an album. Why?

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN All three members of Mini Dresses are natural-born jugglers. The lo-fi indie rock trio overlaps side projects not only with ease but with a certain type of discreteness. Most fans in the Boston area don’t know that they can see members of Mini Dresses onstage with other acts. That discreteness suggests the band isn’t trying to flaunt its musical itches or ability to churn out songs on the regular. Instead, it allows Mini Dresses to sharpen its sound. Without that hustle, Mini Dresses may have never come out with its debut album—a record that’s been five years in the making, despite constant support from and packed shows within the scene.

The aptly titled Mini Dresses is a 10-song release that sees the band putting their growth on full display. In fairness, they’ve always been changing. In 2008, singer and bassist Lira Mondal and guitarist Caufield Schnug met at Hendrix College in Arkansas. They moved to Austin after graduating but changed locations to Boston shortly after that. In the early days of their friendship (and soon-to-be relationship), the two started a riot grrrl garage rock band called Silkies, but frustrations soon rose from running into a genre-ball with that band.

Seeking a quick break, they created Mini Dresses.

The way they saw it, it was an opportunity to draft a couple dream pop songs, get that out of their system, and then return to the garage rock sound. But as time passed, Mini Dresses became the main focus. Drummer Luke Reed joined the band when they brought it to Boston. Other side projects popped up—like Blau Blau, who we most recently spotlighted at Fuzzstival—and continue to, as alternative projects are an ongoing part of what gives the band space to develop free of constraints. Mini Dresses has been the longest-running band of their musical outlets, but it’s only now, over five years into its existence, that the band finally has a proper full-length album to show for its work.

Mini Dresses underwent a series of sea changes. Mondal and Schnug meet me in the restaurant portion of the Middle East, a venue they’ve played numerous times over the years, to explain how. There was a crucible of deferrals like philosophical struggles, financial bouts, and technical logistics. “There were physical logistics, too,” says Mondal, “like the act of carving out time to lay down the tracks, do the vocals, and juggle school or jobs.” Schnug is a doctoral student. Mondal is a pastry sous-chef. Reed is a bartender and was, at the time, building their studio. Yet somehow between their conflicting day lives, the three musicians managed to write five EPs, over a dozen singles, and the final version of Mini Dresses. That doesn’t even include the 100 songs left on the cutting room floor.

The biggest change was their shift in sound. Mini Dresses began as a pigeonholed dream pop band. The band tapped into the resurging popularity of the 4AD aesthetic, layered vocals, and the Cocteau Twins. As they grew as musicians, they aimed for general sophistication in their presentation and motivation. Mini Dresses became grounded.

“That genre was vogue in 2011. What do you do in your early 20s when you’re first starting to make music? You make music horizontally. You look over your shoulder to see what someone else is doing. It’s a genre appropriation of sorts, and I think we were a part of that, unfortunately,” says Schnug. “We try to adhere to the spirit of minimalist making, but we don’t identify as dream pop now. We just happened to make music that was dreaming.”

Over the course of our conversation, their personalities float to the front. They’re affable but talk with a driving urgency, often egged on by talk of art-house films— Schnug arrived straight from an early Harvard Film Archive screening of Stan Brakhage shorts—and overlooked bands—both stick around long after the recorder is off to talk about pre-Stereolab psych precursors and unchampioned local artists. On paper, it may sound like an eyeroll-worthy chat, but the musicians are so genuinely enthused about learning that they share these cultural facts, not boast them. It’s as if they’re unaware of how their interests and language make themselves interesting separate from the work.

When combined into band form, it bursts into an understated, intelligent, creatively sharp package.

At the end of the day, the most impressive part of Mini Dresses is their growth. It’s not just in an objective view, too, like from their first show as openers at now-defunct venue Church to their headlining record release show at Great Scott this Sunday. It’s a type of personal growth that makes the trio speak highly of one another, like proud parents.

“I’m not the best musician—like, I struggle to play on beat,” Schnug starts to say before Mondal cuts him off: “He says that, but he used to be the drummer in the band.”

He shrugs modestly in response and then points to, in his opinion, the unaddressed savior: Reed. “Luke helps us,” says Schnug. “He makes things so coherent and keeps us on track. Maybe that’s what I should have said instead.” They both laugh. It’s hard not to smile as they do, especially given that every downplayed skill couldn’t possibly come from a band of sharpened songwriting and courageous reinventing like them.

GOT AN EVENT? LIST IT. LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS 2017 “Intimate Live Music Venue of the Year” Nominee Vote for us at:

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digboston.com/listings We offer a free basic listing as well as enhanced and premium listings to really get you noticed.

Avi Jacobs, The Smallest Town Ensemble, Tad Overbaugh Americana Music 10/20

Janeane Garofalo (Two shows) First Show Sold Out 10/21

Kris Delmhorst & Jeffrey Foucault Country folk 10/23

Gravedancers, Trusty Sidekick Rock and roll in the Lounge 10/25

Dalek, Street Sects Experimental hip hop

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com   @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville

>> MINI DRESSES, LINA TULLGREN, BONG WISH. SUN 10.22. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 9PM/18+/$12. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

FAMILY PHOTOS FILM

An interview with Yance Ford

know how my parents came to New York, how they came to start their family, and what hopes they had for their family.

Their [placement in the film] happened naturally as the result of my looking at them in this new way for the first time.

You know, I’ve got knackered hands and wrinkled fingers; my hands are a lot like my dad’s. But there was a delicateness in handling them, and that became a part of my attraction to these photos. They’re how the story of my parents and my life are told. They became things that I cared about very deeply, and still care about deeply.

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

I found myself thinking about Strong Island itself as being a sort of family photograph—more specifically, as a record of your mother, and even more specifically, as a record of her voice and her diction.

Yance Ford is an American nonfiction filmmaker whose first feature-length film, Strong Island [2017], is currently available on Netflix. Strong Island records three generations of the Ford family, with the central focus being the 1992 killing of Yance’s brother, William Ford Jr., by a 19-yearold man who never faced charges for the crime (the Ford family is African-American, and the shooter is white). We spoke on the phone ahead of a screening of Strong Island at the Brattle Theatre, which was presented by the DocYard and occurred earlier this week.

We see your mother speaking throughout the film, and for the vast majority of the time she’s on screen, she’s placed in the center of her kitchen, and in the center of the frame. We gain an intimate awareness of that space, up to and including the pots on the stove. How did you decide that this was how you wanted to film your mother?

Having seen thousands of documentaries at this point in my life, one thing I know is that black characters are rarely in positions of authority on screen. Most AfricanAmerican filmmakers know that. I wanted to present my mother in her environment, as I saw her. The camera in this film is never a proxy for the audience. The camera in this film is reflective of the way that I see the world. And when I think of my mother, I think of her in the kitchen. And there’s no art direction, or production design—that was my mother’s kitchen. It was important for her and for everyone in this film to be in places that would be meaningful for them. So my sister was shot in one of the bedrooms in the home where she actually lives. And [William’s friend] Kevin was shot in the living room of the house where I grew up. And he’s in that black void [Ed. note: Some interviews are conducted in front of a completely black background]

because we are together in going back in time and memory. So we see each character in a particular place for a very specific reason.

The way that Strong Island utilizes family photographs—placed in the center of otherwise blank frames and given significant time to register with the viewer—reminded me of the way that some people, particularly matriarchs in the South, can lay out their entire family history using only language and keepsakes.

Was that a tradition you were consciously trying to represent within the movie?

I think that the ability of the characters in the film to tell their own stories is so rich because of that tradition.

But in the film itself, what I was trying to do was to stage the kind of testimony that did not occur in my brother’s case, because it did not proceed to trial. So each person is testifying in this way. And if I had to draw a connection for that, it would be to the testimony that happens in the black church: stand, and tell your truth. That’s what I was going for.

The photographs, for me, were the only real visual evidence that I had access to. We didn’t have access to anything that was part of the criminal investigation [of William’s death]. The coroner’s office refused to release my brother’s autopsy photos to me, even though they’re not protected by the grand jury records being sealed. So those photographs became something like a living memory.

At first, I was introducing them as evidence, as proof of life. But after my mother passed away, the number of photographs exploded … I was looking at images of my parents that I’d never seen before. These pictures began to tell stories. And the stories that they told helped me to

That was it. My mother’s diction is partly the result of being the child of a woman who received no education, who went to work at a young age—and despite the challenges that posed for their family, my mother and her sisters were all professional women, who went to college and had careers. And part of my mom’s diction is that it’s a blend of the South and New York. It’s the command of language that was necessary to fight back against the things that were so much a part of everyday life in the South when she was growing up. It was part of how you stood up to Jim Crow laws: by being able to speak the Queen’s English, or the King’s English, or whoever’s English, as well as if not better than the people who are trying to oppress you. That was a weapon for her. And as she got older and became a leader in the field of education, and correctional education, she was accustomed to people listening to her. So she spoke with an authority that would not be rushed. I think that there is so much in that experience of listening to her, and the patience that it demands … it’s one of the things that helps you realize that this is not the type of crime story that you might expect.

My mother spoke like that her entire life. She didn’t just start speaking like that for the movie. That was my mother.

It was one of the primary elements that contributed to my processing the movie as a family record more than as an investigation. Another element contributing to that was the fact that your film does not include either statistics or “expert testimony.”

The only statistics that are in the film are really subtle.

There are two maps shown of Long Island, and there are highlighted neighborhoods, which are reflective of the African-American population on Long Island as recorded by the 1970 census. So it reflects the pockets of black communities. But otherwise, you’re right. I was determined to establish that black people are experts on their own experience. Black people have the lived and empirical evidence of their being mistreated, historically and across generations, by institutions like the criminal justice system … The statistics are there, but the challenge that we face is that we find ourselves in a time when statistics and facts and data don’t matter, or aren’t trusted. It’s like, okay, great, we really have gone into The Twilight Zone.

>> STRONG ISLAND. NOT RATED. CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX.

FILM EVENTS SAT 10.21

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS A FILM BY DARIO ARGENTO DEEP RED [1975] [Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/NR/$12.25.

35mm. coolidge.org]

18

10.19.17 - 10.26.17 |

SUN 10.22

INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON’S 2017 FALL FOCUS BEGINS WITH GRETA GERWIG’S LADY BIRD [2017]

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 6:45pm/ NR/$13. brattlefilm.org for rest of Fall Focus schedule.]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SUN 10.22

MON 10.23

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5pm/NR/$7-9. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/PG/$7-9.

35mm. hcl.harvard.edu/ hfa]

LAST SCREENING OF THE HFA’S CHANTAL AKERMAN RETROSPECTIVE HOTEL MONTEREY [1972]

WARREN BEATTY’S REDS [1981]

TUE 10.24

FABIO FRIZZI CONDUCTS LIVE MUSIC FOR COMPOSER’S CUT OF LUCIO FULCI’S THE BEYOND [1981]

[Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

9pm/NR/$33. Preceded by a live performance by Dust Witch. coolidge.org]

WED 10.25

ROBERT WISE’S THE HAUNTING [1963] [Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville.

8pm/NR/$10. 35mm. somervilletheatre.com]

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

ELIOTT CARRIED BY CAST PHOTO BY NILE HAWVER/NILE SCOTT SHOTS

FROM ‘UNADAPTABLE’ TO SPECTACULAR ARTS

Eliott Purcell readies The Curious Incident for SpeakEasy Stage The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time isn’t just one of the biggest nonmusical Broadway hits in recent memory, but rather of the last decade. Running for almost 800 performances and winning five Tony Awards, The Curious Incident is the longest-running Broadway play since 2000’s Proof.

The novel by Mark Haddon was already a beloved mega-bestseller by the time that it was adapted for the stage by playwright Simon Stephens and premiered in 2012 at London’s Royal National Theatre. Unlike most page-to-stage adaptations, The Curious Incident was praised and embraced for not only the technical marvels that gave the play its shimmer, but also for the ways in which audiences were able to see the events of the play unfold as sensationally as its 15-year-old protagonist, Christopher. (It is notable that, prior to Stephen’s success with the play, The Curious Incident was dubbed “unadaptable.”)

Christopher Boone is a mathematical genius that becomes fixated on finding out who is responsible for the slaying of his neighbor’s dog, Wellington. What begins as simple sleuth work (interviewing neighbors and such) turns into a wide-ranging and deeply personal adventure story of one boy’s search for the truth. Although never explicitly diagnosed in the play, Christopher has some sort of autism spectrum disorder that not only adds a fascinating layer to the story but also puts one hell of a set of demands on the actor playing him.

Boston audiences got a taste of what made The Curious Incident the sensation of both New York and London when the national tour rolled through the Boston Opera House last spring, but the show is now being reimagined anew by SpeakEasy Stage Company in an intimate staging, nearly in the round, that will

run through Nov 25 at the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion. Paul Daigneault, who directed last season’s incredible production of The Scottsboro Boys, is at the helm.

And if the name Eliott Purcell is not yet familiar to the vast majority of Boston theatergoers, I suspect that’s about to change. Purcell plays Christopher in SpeakEasy’s production, and over the last several seasons he has emerged as one of the most promising young talents on Boston stages.

A 2014 graduate from Boston College, Purcell made his professional acting debut in the Huntington Theatre Company’s exceptional 2012 revival of Our Town. Purcell, now 25, had been interested in acting since the age of 14, but it wasn’t until his junior year at BC that he considered it a viable career choice.

“When I went to college there was sort of a mind of, oh, I should get a ‘real job,’” said Purcell. He spent two years at BC on the pre-law track before he fell in with the theater department and began to reevaluate his situation. “I was taking business law classes my sophomore year of college, and I remember so distinctly having 6 am to 2 am days. Once we hit 2 in the morning I would go to a quick rehearsal for the directing scene classes. I would have done 50 things that day already: written briefs, went to work, had class, done more writing, and then as soon as I got into that rehearsal my body would just wake up. I thought, ‘Okay, I guess I’m going to do this. It seems to be the only thing I want to do.’”

Although the decision to change tracks came before Our Town, it was his experience on that show that fortified his theatrical convictions. Of his time with Our Town, Purcell says that he felt like the luckiest person in Boston. “It was just the luckiest thing ever for me, and

it made me love it even more,” he said. “And then the directors I’ve gotten to work with: David Gammons (on Hand to God), Bevin O’Gara (on appropriate), and now Paul Daigneault—you say ‘actor’s dream,’ I think I’m living it. It’s kind of unexpected.”

Purcell made a big impression in a small role in SpeakEasy’s 2015 production of appropriate, but it wasn’t until Hand to God earlier this year that he arrived as a leading man. (He earned an Elliot Norton Award nomination for his performance.) “Between that and Curious,” he said, “there’s this weird sense of almost being an imposter. Like, wait, am I really doing these things? All of it is filling me with life.”

The role of Christopher isn’t just one of daunting physicality (Broadway’s Alex Sharp sustained several injuries during his tenure with the show) but also one that requires a sensitive hand to ensure that there is nothing problematic about an actor essentially pretending to be on the spectrum. To that end, there are several consultants on board who can help navigate those waters.

“It’s been very research heavy, and I’ve been lucky to talk to people who have been helping to share their stories so that we can tell the story with a mark of sensitivity,” said Purcell. But it is the challenge, it turns out, that ignites him.

“There’s a lot of faith being put on my shoulders for this,” he said. “I’m really only interested in challenging, fun, demanding roles. If it’s not hard work it’s not as fun. I’m really lucky to have these couple pieces that are challenging what I can do as an actor. It’s going to be a wild ride and I really hope that we’re able to bring people along on it.”

>>THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. THROUGH 11.25 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE COMPANY, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM

ARTS EVENTS OPEN UNTIL 2AM! MFA LATE NITES

[Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston. 10.13. mfa.org]

20

10.19.17 - 10.26.17 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

FINAL WEEKEND! WARHOLCAPOTE

[American Repertory Theater, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge. Through 10.13. americanrepertorytheater. org]

FINAL WEEKEND! MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

[Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston. Through 10.15. huntingtontheatre.org]

RIVETING NEW DRAMA A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK

[Huntington Theatre Company, 527 Tremont St., Boston. Through 11.4. huntingtontheatre.org]

CLASSIC MAMET OLEANNA

[New Repertory Theatre, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown. Through 11.5. newrep.org]

PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUAS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

STANDUP STARTUP COMEDY

A NEW CONCERT SERIES

12 Years of funny for Anderson Comedy Presents

BY TOMMY O’DEED If one travels in reverse down the path of a successful standup comedy career, starting at the end, the path would lead right back to where it all starts for any comedian—the land of open mic nights, where comics young and old go to work on material.

Every Tuesday night for the past 12 years, Rob Crean, along with John Paul Rivera and others before Rivera and along the way, have been hosting the #MIDEASTCORN comedy open mic at the Middle East corner room in Central Square. I recently sat down with Rob and John, the latter of whom recently stepped down from the showcase to pursue other ventures, in hopes of giving readers an updated glimpse into the world of startup standup, including but also beyond the laugh-getting and blood-letting that comes with running a regular open mic.

How long ago was it that you two started doing standup?

JPR: I started doing standup September 9, 2009. So, 8 years.

RC: I have been doing this for over ten years.

How long have you guys been running the Middle East open mic?

RC: In October it’s 12 years. I started it with a sketch troupe called Anderson Comedy.

Eventually I met John, who was showing up week after week asking me if there was anything he could help with. Over time he became a permanent co-host.

You guys are fun hosts and do a great job of improvising jokes while bringing comedians on or off stage. Is that part of the enjoyment of hosting, and does it help to keep your timing fit?

RC: To me that’s the most fun part of the mic. When someone is onstage and they say something that catches my ear, I’ll lean in and talk about it with John and come up with something we can say when we get ahold of the mic again after their set. That’s definitely part of the fun, but I’m not so sure how helpful it is to staying fit as a comic.

JPR: I think it helps [with staying fit], if you’re able to come up a fun zing between comics, you can keep the energy up, and move things along.

How do you feel about Cambridge as proving ground for new material? Would you say Cambridge is different than other cities?

JPR: I don’t find it to be any different than any other city. I have seen so many great people go on to do great stuff from that mic. I like watching people do their material, seeing people find out they really like doing standup, and sometimes that they really don’t.

RC: I think there used to be more of a difference, or at least it was more talked about, but in general every room is a little different than another.

Over the course of time would you say you have seen more comics come and stay or more of them come and go?

RC: It’s a spectrum. There’s people that are out every night, there’s people that are out a few nights, then there are ones you see once a month. There’s always gonna be ones that quit.

Do you see a lot of oddball acts?

JPR: Yes! I think especially more at our mic than others. We always get odd ball acts because it’s a prime location where people can walk by, see people performing and say to themselves, “There’s a good place to act like a crazy person.”

There seems to more and more TV shows that are based on standup comics. Do you think this will cause an influx of new people to try standup?

JPR: Yes! And I hate it! I watched an episode of “I’m Dying Up Here.” I thought it was the most boring show I had ever seen. People watch stuff like that and go, “Oh, I wanna do that!”

Is there anything that comics do that gets on your nerves?

JPR: If the energy in the room is very low, instead of bring the energy up, they go up there thinking that their set is going to be bad, and instead of bringing the energy back up, they just shit on the room.

Over the years, have you witnessed comics turning on the crowd?

JPR: Oh yeah, but it’s understandable. You tell a joke, no one laughs, and you’re just like, “Fuck you.”

The Middle East can be a loud room and tough to do well in, so when you see someone have a killer set, would you say it’s more of a win compared to some of the easier mics?

RC: Yes. The room just feels amazing when it happens. It’s magic.

OCTOBER 19 - 8PM

ANCESTRAL MEMORIES

YOSVANY TERRY & BAPTISTE TROTIGNON ALL TICKETS $25

OCTOBER 22 - 7:30PM

LAURA CORTESE & THE DANCE CARDS SPECIAL GUESTS TBA TICKETS FROM $20

OCTOBER 25 - 8PM

SESSION AMERICANA TICKETS FROM $15 NOVEMBER 3 - 8PM

STL GLD ALL TICKETS $10

NOVEMBER 15 - 8PM

SESSION AMERICANA TICKETS FROM $15 DECEMBER 9 & 10 - 7PM

THE SWEETBACK SISTERS'

COUNTRY CHRISTMAS SINGALONG SPECTACULAR ALL TICKETS $25

TICKETS: 617.547.8300 2 ARROW ST. CAMBRIDGE

clubOBERON.com NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

PARENTAL CONTROLS

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

My father passed away suddenly. I had a very idyllic childhood and was close to my father and my mother (who is also deceased). Upon sorting through my father’s stuff after his death, I stumbled upon his erotica collection. If it were just a stack of Playboys, I would have thought nothing of it— that’s just men being men. However, his collection contained material that was quite disturbing to me, including photos depicting violent sexual acts and fictional erotica books and magazines with themes of incest. Additionally, there were letters from people with whom he was obviously having extramarital affairs, including during the time that I was a child and believed that we were a “normal” family. Since discovering this, it has been hard for me to come to terms with it and think of my father in the way that I used to. I can barely stand to look at a photograph of him. I consider myself to be a sex-positive person, and I realize that even parents are entitled to be kinky, but I simply can’t get over this. Any suggestions for how to deal with what I’m feeling and how to try to get past it?

Parent’s Arousal Really Ended Nice Thoughts Sex-positive, huh? Could’ve fooled me.

Your dad was a kinky motherfucker—you know that now—and if you’ve been reading Savage Love for a while, you’ll know that lots of people are kinky and, distressingly, lots of people out there “enjoy” incest porn. “Of the top hundred searches by men on Pornhub,” Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writes in his book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, “sixteen are looking for incest-themed videos.” And it’s not just men: “Nine of the top hundred searches on Pornhub by women are for incest-themed videos.”

That’s cold comfort, I realize, and it doesn’t make it any less squicky, but your dad’s tastes weren’t as freakish as you thought and/or hoped.

As for his affairs, your happy childhood, and your suddenly conflicted feelings…

Your mother isn’t with us, PARENT, so you can’t ask her what her arrangement was with your father.

But it’s unlikely you would have had such an idyllic childhood if your parents’ marriage was contentious and your mom was miserable about your dad’s cheating and his kinks. It seems likely that your mom didn’t have a problem with your dad’s sexual interests or she tolerated them or—and I hope you’re sitting down—she was an active and happy participant. (Kinky women weren’t invented in a lab in San Francisco in 2008.) If your mom didn’t have a problem with your dad’s kinks (which she had to have known about) or his affairs (which she might not have known about), I don’t see why they should be a problem for you.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with the creator of a naughty, naughty game: savagelovecast.com

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