"Freaks"

"The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael. All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair [...] Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated–in the main, abominably–because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires."

- James Baldwin, from "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood" - Playboy, 1985

Love Is A Battlefield

Inside Room 186 of the Wagon Wheel Inn, Elise will be kneeling on the carpet, which is orange like a tangerine. Her hair is greasy and braided, and a name---tattooed in calligraphy on her neck---is visible. She keeps both hands on the shotgun---the muzzle pressed into Jamey's breast. 

He'll be sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, hands on thighs. 

"Don't you love me?" he'll ask, quiet and desperate. 

"Elise. Come on. Don't you love me?" 

We begin here at this intense scene, in June of 1987. How we get here is to go back to the year before, where a crass vagabond girl from a troubled lower-class home meets a yuppie pretty boy, and they both fall headfirst into a seedy spiral of lust, obsession, and love.

Of course this familiar set-up is a tale as old as time. Shakespeare has got to be pissed from the grave realizing that nobody has come up with a better story line for doomed lovers --- or he's smiling smug, realizing how much influence he continues to have after all these centuries. Either way, Jardine Libaire's White Fur is touted as a "modernized Romeo and Juliet", and it doesn't take much to figure out the destination of the star-crossed in these pages.