Fag Rag NYC | Summer 2023

FAG RAG NYC

Fag Rag Magazine wants to give a very special thank you to those who supported our efforts to bring this magazine to life. This is what supporting the arts in your community looks like.

Platinum

Gold

Raymond Updike

Silver

Noah Love, Adrien Allred, Donnie Roberts, Mike

Borowski, Matthew Lehosit

Bronze

Orie Givens IV, Stephan Idowu-Bello

Editor-In-Chief

Tomik Dash Writers

Jesse Cameron Alick

Delilah Friedler

DavidXDaisy

Artists Gio Black Peter Photographers

Eli Schmidt

Cover art by Gio Black Peter

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I’ve had a long-term, complicated relationship with the word “artist.” I don’t paint. I don’t draw. I can’t sing or act. I can take a decent picture, but I know very little about the art of photography. Whenever I move to a new city or even just visit one, the artist community is always the first to embrace me. And when people meet me for the first time, I often get asked, “So, are you an artist?” It’s a question that makes me freeze up.

I spent fifteen years of my life as a hair colorist. Anyone who has ever had their hair colored improperly or chemically damaged will tell you with certainty that hair color is an art and a science. But it took me a while to own the artistic side of my craft.

“Are you an artist?” someone would ask me.

“In a sense,” I would reply. “I’m a hair colorist.”

In hindsight, it seems ridiculous for me to have had trepidations about using the word artist when I would show up to work five days a week, put on an apron, pull out a paintbrush and use a full array of colors to paint people’s hair! I literally did it for a living, which not many artists can say. About halfway into my career, I remember deciding to take charge of my narrative by changing the title on my business card (remember those?) to “Hair Color Artisan.” It was very affirming. It relayed the fun side of my occupation to the public. It felt more like who I was rather than what I was doing.

So much of the weight I’ve placed on what defines an artist is based on how everyone else defines it. Yet, I’ve found myself leaving many an art exhibition after seeing what I perceive as a bunch of bullshit and thinking, “Well, I guess I’m a fuckin’ artist too, then!” Because what is art if not subjective?

I often find myself drawn to mixed media art, which is artwork

Letter From The Editor

composed of different forms of media or materials. Pulling things together from various places and repackaging them to create something new has always interested me. A parallel can be drawn between that and what I do with this magazine. I pull in work from writers, photographers, and artists and package it together in a way that I find compelling. I then put it into the world and let people formulate their opinions.

Despite that, I’ve yet again found myself freezing up at the question, “Are you an artist?” My happy middle ground has been to respond to people with, “Well, I like to identify more as a creative.” The term “creative” paints a much broader stroke. On paper, I am a publisher and an editor. But as soon as I say that out loud, it takes away all of the magic of what I actually do.

This magazine is a work of art that I produce as a publisher and editor. The content is cunt. I had the pleasure of sourcing it from some of NYC’s finest queer artists and creatives. The graphic design is cunt. I had the pleasure of providing the inspiration and setting the direction for the designer. Even on a tactile level, the magazine feels nice. I examined dozens of forms of paper stock, from light to heavy, glossy to matte, and from paper stock to card stock, before deciding what I wanted the magazine to feel like in your hands. I researched how colors appear on different paper types so that the end result looked the way I wanted it to: CUNT!

So guess what? I am a mutha-fuckin’ artist! Even if I just talked myself into it while writing this letter. I will no longer be diminished or held captive by others’ definitions of the word. I hope this letter inspires a few more people to do the same.

My biggest hope for Fag Rag NYC is that it is thoughtprovoking. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to like it, because again, art is subjective. My hope is that it’s more than just something you flip through and throw away. I hope there is something in here that you want to keep, an artist you want to follow, a writer who challenges the way you think about something. There is so much queer beauty and talent in this city. I want each issue of this magazine to offer a glimpse into that, especially from people within communities that are historically excluded. So take a look. Follow us on socials at @fagragmag. Share us with your friends. We’re the new girl in town.

Welcome to my exhibition.

With love and intention,

Tomik Dash

Mixed Media Artist

@tomik2point0

Whenyou walk into a room that Cobra is working in, you can feel the magic in the air. It’s in the stillness, the silence, the audience members staring unblinking, especially the nervous white people scratching their chins. Something is happening here at her new exhibit, “White Meat.” It’s the soil from the grave of the truly evil “doctor” who murdered Black women for the sake of “scientific research,” sewn delicately into the silicon formed to look like the flesh of the bastard,

our enemy is not of the flesh

powerful totems. The dreadlocks, which remind you of every self-righteous hippie thinking they knew more about your culture than you, are now made to look scalped off the skulls of those appropriators, arranged delicately in a large oval creating a hairy portal on the wall. And where will it lead? What will it transform us into? Transmutation is occurring in this room–history transforming as it moves into the present. When you experience this magic, you will be stopped. It makes you take a step forward and then a step back. You want to lean in and look closer, turn away, and lean in again.

By Jesse Cameron Alick @jessecameron

Recently diagnosed as neurodivergent, Cobra experiences the world differently.

“A lot of what’s gotten me here,” the artist said, “is overanalyzing people’s behavior, body language, textures, materials, and the way these things make me feel. That’s driven me crazy for a long time, and it’s naturally worked its way into the way I’ve made sculptures.”

The detail is astounding. Using silicone, Cobra recreates white flesh. Then, using a tattoo gun, delicately colors and adds pigment to the skin to make it look even more realistic. The work looks so real, it is often jarring. Seen in the shape of a smallpox sore, the tint of a tumor, the subtle pigments of red, pink, and orange that tinge a sliver of flesh placed in a deli

slicer, the carefully inlaid rubies making up the heart of a wound, the intricate contents of a shark’s belly, decorated with shells, pearls, and a Black person’s foot.

“It’s to attract people to the work,” she says. “People really love shiny things. Even thinking about the gowns for the Met Gala, whatever bullshit thing is going on, all the beading and the sequins. I’m approaching my work with the same obsessiveness of making it look like it’s glittering. I usually end up incorporating that because diseases are disgusting. If you see raw images of syphilis, you’re not really going to spend a lot of time there, but if some of those open sores are glass beads, it makes it a little bit easier for people to want to stick around it. You can’t do too much because then you’re

overworking it. It’s the thought process of a painter applied to the physical process of making a sculpture.”

The detail never ceases to amaze. You can imagine Cobra’s hand carefully taking human hair, silicone, and fabric and weaving it together with a felting tool. Her art features disease, rotting flesh, cutting, pain, the suggestion of violence, and often the suggestion of revenge. Have I mentioned that the work is funny as hell too? There’s a deep trickster spirit enmeshed in the sculptures, giggling as it pokes at your sensitivities, winking as it pushes your boundaries. All a reflection of the artist’s sense of humor.

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to switch it up!” Cobra declares, smiling at me as we walk around her exhibit–the picture of warmth and humility, even as we stand in front of her completely grand and dramatic sculptures, a gaping mouth with barbed wire teeth, a full-sized shark created from white flesh, harkening back to the slave ships which brought our ancestors across the Atlantic.

“A lot of my work in the past was just about trauma that Black people have experienced through the medical industry. Now it’s more so focused on the hands that created the trauma, and whiteness and the disease. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the assimilation tactics that people who are not white are supposed to aspire to–a lot of myths that clash against each other, whiteness is projected to the public as being a symbol of purity. But, you know, when you’re thinking about colonization and the transatlantic slave trade, all the diseases that were brought over to Africa and to America were spread from Europeans. And a lot of those different scenarios that are, you know, pretty absurd. So I’m trying to present them in a way that still sticks to my

material language, but is a little bit less about the history lesson of trauma. I think about different movies that I’ve seen, a lot of the silly serial killer movies. Deranged murders. But in a joker way!” Clown faces hang above cream pies but there’s glass hidden in those pies, a reflection of the intensity in her jokes. “There was one moment where I was really trying to harness some villain energy. I’m letting that go right now. I’m in my soft boy era.”

Though it may seem like a contradiction to say, Cobra’s enemy is not of the flesh. Though flesh is her medium, there are nonphysical entities she is fighting and others she is collaborating with. Her work speaks to ancestral magic, historical slave revolts, people rising up and finding the way to liberation–but also to the people who never had the chance to rise up in the first place. So many of our

Black, brown, and queer ancestors were not able to break free from the oppression of their time. This is where Cobra comes in. Reaching back through history, she does a service for the dead and lets them speak through her, remembering those Black artists who were not able to be artists in their own time.

“I think about all the artists that weren’t able to produce work because they were enslaved,” she said. “I like the idea that when I’m doing my meditations, that it provides an opportunity for those people to be able to work through me, kind of brainstorm ideas through me, through meditation and science and prayer. The way that art is experienced now is totally different than it was before. So I like the

idea that they have a larger audience for the sculptures that they want to collaborate with me on.”

Giving the dead avenues to create connects deeply to Cobra’s larger mission. In her burgeoning work with Black healing communities, and her widely recognized tattoo artistry, Cobra is a creature of care. Part of that growth and healing is reckoning with the past and asking the question of how American traditions of oppression affect us today. Talking about this pain and trauma, past and present, can be a revolutionary act for a Black artist. At a moment when so many of her contemporaries are interested in and encouraged to make work about Black joy, Cobra’s work strikes a different chord.

“I do feel like it is difficult because a lot of us are so used to keeping our trauma secret, in fear of exposing the vulnerability of ourselves or the people that have harmed us, still wanting to protect them subconsciously. We can also be fearful of what people that don’t look like you do with your experiences of trauma. So in that regard, there’s definitely a lot of suspicion that is valid. But at the same time, if you never address it or if you continue to try to bury it, it doesn’t really help to change anything.”

There is something about the word “change” that resonates strongly in Cobra’s work. She enters her cave to commune and create, then re-emerges with gifts for the communities she exists in, changing all who come into contact with them. A week

after seeing her exhibit I give my friend Hue (one of her tribe and close collaborators) a hug and look at his large chest piece, tattooed by Cobra over the last year. A few days later my friend Charles pulls his shorts up his thigh in a club and shows me a piece that covers his leg from hip to kneecap, another of the artist’s works connected to me through friendship. Cobra is a connector of community, and though she may have exited her sculpting seclusion, she continues to care for the flesh of her people. Flesh transformed by her–and more than flesh as well.

1o Commandments of the Eagle NYC Bathrooms

By DavidXDaisy | @davidxdaisy

My hat is off to the fine folks at The Eagle NYC for cultivating a renaissance in the historic space while staying true to its grit and aesthetic. In a time when a bastion of NYC queer nightlife could have fallen, the owners doubled down and expanded the space to introduce the large dancefloor our dear Eagle has always deserved. With this expansion came two large new restrooms, an even more necessary addition.

Any Eagle regular has known all too well the clusterfuck traffic jam that was the second-floor situation. Those confined bathroom spaces have personally caused me much dismay over the years, often sending me fleeing down to the less frequented powder room by the entrance. With ample space to attend to one’s needs, these new bathrooms have been a relief for those needing to relieve themselves. However, they still share some of the same user errors of any queer bar lavatory. The following etiquette should be seen as helpful suggestions in navigating these shared spaces. They are by no means rules or intended to kink-shame. You can have a good time and still remember basic considerations.

1 Rules of consent do not end at the bathroom threshold. Yes means yes and no means no. Just because someone’s dick is out does not necessarily mean it is an invitation for anyone to grab it when passing by as if shaking their hand.

2

3

4

If you are standing in the doorframe of the bathroom, you are in the way. A multitude of other people need to use this door as an entry and exit.

6

7

If you are waiting for a stall and have no need for a urinal, let the folks behind you know and let them pass to use one.

If someone in a stall can see your eye color through the gap, you are being a creeper.

Please do not leave your various paraphernalia on the ledge or on the floor.

8

The stall is not an office meant to be used for soirees of six of your closet casual acquaintances. Accomplish your stall goals and save the chit-chat for later.

5

Muscling aggressively past others is not a good look.

9 Please wash your hands and use trash receptacles.

If you are getting fucked in the stall, please arrive pre-paired and pre-lubed, placing at least one hand on the top of the stall wall to let others know it will not be available for the time being.

10

And as always, as much as you may love watersports, DO NOT LIE IN THE TROUGH!

“men are afraid of powerful women that’s why i charge them by the hour”

— @jamilajacuzzi

normal girl

By Delilah Friedler @delilah.at.night

boys won’t stop blowing me up. a new one texts me like every single day. his name is Braden, or Bret with one “t,” he likes climbing, he’s a firefighter, he’s in an open relationship; he’s cute, but not too cute, goes to Burning Man with his girlfriend, but she doesn’t know he’s on this app; he’s twenty-six, thirty-one

just turned twenty-three. he looks just like this boy i knew in high school. (so i’m down.)

if he opens with “Hey,” he’s probably wasting my time if it’s “Hey there Delilah,” he for sure is.

but if he tells me i’m cute, or even asks me “what’s up,” then i give him a chance, hope he’s not gonna be like the last one see, the boy always seems more into me at first asks me questions, all excited uses the blushy face emoji, and the heart eyes says i’m a goddess, that he can’t wait to meet me and at some point i step back from the initial rush and think, this boy doesn’t know anything about me so i tell him.

i’m not like other girls. i have something different. i can give you pleasures about which you’ve only dreamed, and in fact, i want to give you these things, but you’ll have to learn to please me, boy, and i don’t think you’re there yet.

oh no, says Nic with just a ‘c’, not me, i’m different! all i want is to please you for you to put me in my place hold me down make me submit please, mistress, please—take my power away i’m begging you

i mean, it’s really hot—this texting fantasy i pop a boner in my pencil skirt at work when he says he wishes he was in the bathroom stall, on his knees, waiting for me to come in and use his throat and like, i totally would but he can’t back it up—it’s just a fantasy. a phantom. four times out of five, he ghosts before we meet or our text stream gradually trickles off into naught.

what am i to do with this, this happens every time and yet, all these cis girls on instagram way less pretty than me have super cute boyfriends, some of whom know how to put it down, some of whom want to put it down on me. why can’t i have a boy like that?

it’s cuz i’m trans, right? say it you want me cuz i’m trans, right? say it!

i’m the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen cuz I’m trans, huh, cuz i got a dick, right, cuz you want it, need it, need the dick, right? what’s that baby boy you need it tonight? i don’t use condoms baby boy is that alright? i’m gonna host baby boy, make it divine lap your crack in the morning, sunshine let your rose open up, you feel sublime let me in baby boy, already made you mine fuck, dude, how can i resist???

so i’m jerking off to this poem i wrote and the dick pics Braden sent me, or maybe it was Chris, when suddenly Kyle

he’s horny

he wants to come over and trying to fill a Nic-shaped hole in my heart, i let him he does get on his knees

tugs his foreskin while he blows me and in turn, i blow his mind he rides my face for four D’angelo songs then i flip him over to watch those green eyes as i ease the head in and finally we are not two disembodied strangers tapping out morse code desires on a screen finally i am snug inside him.

the problem is, there’s always something selfish in his “subservience.” it’s always give me your seed let me take it all for you, i need to submit, goddess make me your slut; and when he wants to talk it’s rapid fire all day, but when i need attention he’s totally offline for like 48 hours, doesn’t respond to two texts in a row so i can’t send a third, and i have to wonder if the first two went thru cuz he was talking up a storm 2 days ago and now he’s just vanished, until he randomly hits me up again three weeks later like nothing ever even happened! and i’m supposed to act like that’s normal?

when supposedly, i’m the one in charge? but if i try to gently call him out on it, he’ll probably pull the emergency hatch, and fall out of my life forever.

i’m his girlfriend—until he cums i’m his queen—until it’s time to bow down i’m a goddess—well Jayden, someone needs to teach you some fucking religion, cuz i ain’t seen an offering you didn’t make a single sacrifice and if there’s incense burning on my altar it’s because i’m the one who lit it i made it super fucking clear how to please me but you’re still hiding behind that “cute boy” smile and a screen when all i wanted to do was hold you, be patient, push those shaggy bangs back behind your ear and lick that wound between your eyes… i can be big spoon or you can be big spoon it does not matter tonight nothing matters but your body this good blunt, and not having overhead light nothing matters but your problems your fears and everything you’re scared of dropping give it to me, let me hold it inside you let me help you let it go surrender to the fire between us it doesn’t burn as long as you promise to never fucking ghost me, hold my hand and stare up at me with those peanut butter eyes and don’t call me mistress, call me mother, but call me by her name, DELILAH

that bitch from the Bible who took the king’s power and is still just trying to put it back

Photographed by Eldar Khamitov @eldalieee

fag rag is accepting pitches and submissions!

Writers (journalists/opinion/creative), fine art photographers, and visual artists with NYC-specific content OR… nonlocation-specific content from contributors who live in or frequent NYC.

Writing assignments are available as well. Please send writing samples to info@fagragmag.com

NYC 2023 Queer Liberation March

Photos by Brent T. Whiteside @ohhbrent