"I'm quirky like that" and Other Musings from a New Voice

A new friend joins Our Trust Fund

Mar 29, 2021

Good morning, friends! Shelby here, and I’m in a sunshiny kinda mood so bear with me as the smile never fades today. I can’t help it! Today, and the rest of the week, we are featuring solely new voices. It’s been a year and three days since OTF was born and I never want to stop growing. Thank you to my friends who (for some unknown reason) agreed to write for me and share their stories with you. Some of them will be more frequent writers, some might be here and there, but that’s the journey with writing. Please join me in welcoming these new amazing people to our team!

I’m Blaze, I’m a Virgo, I’m queer, and I live in San Francisco (obviously). I’m so excited to join Our Trust Fund and be another voice shouting into the void. I have a government-issued trust fund (unemployment) and I’m honored to be bringing my perspective to this wonderful newsletter.

The first lesson you learn when poor is that you’re never too good for any job. Since high school I have David Sedarised my way through life, enduring labor for a paycheck and experiences for writing fodder. I’ve been a florist, tennis coach, youth development specialist, store manager, server, communications associate, community organizer, but always an observer. To be fair, I got most of those jobs because I’m very beautiful (see photo above). Don’t worry, I was a chubby kid with a learning disability so I still had the privilege of developing a personality.

I write non-fiction, screenplays, and literary analysis. I write because I despise the male gaze—love the male gays though. I am constantly inspired by the sheer mediocrity of male writers and their unimaginative use of gendered stereotypes. It’s exhausting to consume media that uses femme characters and their bodies as plot points instead of individual identities. The Bechdel test should be the bare minimum, yet it’s rarely even passed. Feminism isn’t writing a female protagonist on a quest for male approval by exhibiting masculine traits while hating herself and other women. Looking at you, Q*****n T*******o. It’s daunting to chip away at the generations of hardened mud covering the beauty of what it means to be female, but let’s give it a try.

I hate action films and horror films. Yes, even that one you’re about to recommend. Also spaceships. Unless it’s The Jetsons or Barbarella, it’s gonna be a hard sell to get me to watch something with spaceships. I love the framing and dialogue of W***y A***n films but can’t bring myself to watch them anymore. I have this weird thing where I can’t separate the art from the artist. Something about fucking your children (allegedly) is really off-putting to me, I’m quirky like that.

I stan pop culture, queer gossip, and empty dance floors with bumping DJs.

I listen exclusively to Mozart, Megan Thee Stallion, and Oscar Peterson. I listen to Wolfgang when long-distance running, Meg when cleaning, and Oscar when making dinner. Sometimes I listen to Megan when I run and Wolfgang when I clean, but always Oscar in the kitchen. He’s the best person to talk to. Often I prefer silence when working, but sometimes The Strokes. Never E.D.M. Maybe a sad white boy song, but never a happy one.

I cherish taking care of my plants, my roommate’s dog, and people with avoidant attachment issues. None of my exes speak to me—their choice not mine. Some people I casually fucked still hit me up, but only for book recommendations and free advice about the people they’re currently fucking. I’ve thought about looking into this pattern but I’m two years into therapy and still just unpacking childhood trauma. We haven’t even gotten to the later years yet.

Look at all these paragraphs starting with “I”. It’s a miracle I graduated college or can hold a conversation that isn’t centered around myself. Read my new work here to find out if I ever learn how to spell.

Shit We’re Loving: READ

Blaze’s Pick: Porn Carnival by Rachel Rabbit White

“Porn Carousel” from Porn Carnival

with men

it’s always the same

like bitch…

I have arrived

and as it turns out

at the water’s edge

living has always been

my medium

how flourishing and gay we are

a carnival at its most August

scattering gold goblets on

lush carpets

I hope your ex

-boyfriend still follows you

Known I am a dolphin when we lay bb CC

to squirt

your aura an orchid

of trinkets sounding

around my hitachi

I curse the hum

of his illusory lawns

I curse the machinery

required in appearance

of security

it takes a while

to hate your ex

it took me nine months

like the doctor said

for my nose-job to settle

in the matriarchy

everyone gets as much pie

to do with, as they wish

and if I had any power

I’d make you a star

enter you in

the country fair to rub sticky huckleberry

without consequences

over our bodies

the prize is a glass dolphin

and an Anna Nicole Mirror

imagine: to commit marriage

and still fight

every day

for the “donation”

in fully automated luxury communism

everyone gets free plastic surgery

to do with, as they wish

but misted at intervals

a glass-house flower

you’re hydrated and

already perfect

---

each apartment I painted pink

decorated so as to suggest

the only true romance

is mother-daugther incest

I want to become

a horrifying women

a dust-ruffle

a decorative kleenex holder

I don’t want to forget anger

and hatred

we both know desire is a cluster

of promises in the distance

to try to unhorizon

but I can’t stop thinking

the visible clit

is only the tip

huge!

internal energy

----

I used to dream

of birthing kittens

I used to be pregnant

but it’s been years

get some imagination boys!

pull out and apologize

for being boring!

Can you imagine hooking up with your ex?

a disaster, so embarrassing

like a dream where you realize

the person you’ve been fucking

all along by accident

is your dad

when I sleep

there’s never the act of sex

just a tension and release

tension and release

----

on the edge of girlhood

a putrid blossoming

overripe, buzzing

sticky in-between

like I love the feeling

of being crushed

into a carpet

face down

about to whisper

at the top of the

ferris wheel

just thinking about it ….

I have to eat a peach

and let it drip to the floor

------

Porn Carnival by Rachel Rabbit White is a debut anthology published in 2019 by Wonder Press. White’s public persona mirrors her poetry; it’s decadent, refreshing, and open. Her aesthetic lies somewhere between Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence period, 70’s porn, Marylin, and vintage Playboy glamour. Emerging onto the literati scene with new work and a growing social media presence of 13K Twitter followers and 15K Instagram followers as of March 2021, White is a former sex worker and self-described “poet & pious bride / formerly known as the ‘hooker laureate of the dirtbag left’.” The pious groom of this couple is Cherry novelist Nico Walker, who White claims to have married as “part of a bit.” The husband and wife duo recorded a conversation for Interview Magazine where they talk about writing, the public eye, and falling in love. During the interview White says “the bit got too real! I completely committed to the bit with the utmost sincerity of my life” in reference to their recent marriage (August 2020). Her social status and harkens back to the days of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, whose writing were thinly veiled reflections of their ostentatious lifestyle. While some critics are skeptical of the seriousness of her work, it’s important to recognize that she speaks to a new generation of voyeuristic readers who value image as well as craft.

White’s audience can peer into her personal life and see her everyday lustful aesthetic develop and grow with her brand. The author’s photos tend to display her slender body propped up around her pink lace bedroom, showing off the smooth skin under her lingerie, perpetually seducing the camera with a pouty red lip, gorgeous breasts, and long brunette locks. On the first page of “PORN CAROUSEL”, the almost-titular poem of the collection, White claims “living has always been / my medium”, alluding to the curated content on her social media as art, arguing that the art of being an influencer is synonymous with the art of writing. It’s unclear if critics offended by her status as a sex worker or that her content leans extremely feminine, but her statement that “desire is at the center of what it is to be alive and desire is the root of all suffering. Love and poetry and romance are, like, the only place of enjoyment for me” feels genuine and true. White’s intentional use of social media by embodying this baroque romantic lifestyle and putting it on display adds to the impact of her work. The projected intimacy of White’s online persona makes readers feel as though they know her and thus relate to her words easier than if they just stayed on the page and didn’t follow her out to real life.

The faux-demure eroticism bleeds onto every part of this project. The cover of Porn Carnival is a deep juicy red, the title, written in large cursive rhinestones, as if sprawled across the chest of a 2002 teen’s shirt, the ends of the words falling off the page implying that the contents of the book, and White herself, can not be contained. The back cover describes this work of poems as “bedevilments of a gay bitch on the pole”. The titles of her poems such as “TRASH DICK”, “MORE LANA THAN LANA”, and “ASS DEMON” are just a few of my favorites. Some of these illustrious names only lead to two lined pieces that I wish were expanded into longer essays, but I respect White’s ability to lure the reader in with high expectations just to give Snapple cap blurbs in return. One poem titled “KETAMINE POLICE” reads simply “stop! / brain wing under re-construction”. That’s the whole poem. The poem “PLUME DE SMOKE” is three lines: “it’s very relaxing / to let the poem do / what it wants”. The end.

Her smoke in mirrors poetry is indicative of sex work itself. Selling a fantasy that can be anything you want, when in reality sex is just sex, and the definition of fantasy means it isn’t real. Sex workers have to move a product and make you believe that they can give you something no one else can, but they can not solve your intimacy issues outside of a paywall. White says that “when feminists like Shulamith Firestone criticize romantic love, namely heterosexual coupling, as a site of oppression, I agree. Sometimes it also feels like romantic love is the only site of release, or even a site of resistance, under capitalism. Maybe I feel this especially as a sex worker, when you’re selling a sense of love or romance for work, the romance “off work” can feel like a space of reclaiming” (August 2020). The best sex worker in the world is still not going to fix your marriage or make you a more interesting person.

Reading Porn Carnival at least lets you say you bought some poetry, just as it lets White say she’s an author. White’s poetic abilities might seem fraudulent to some but I argue that her brevity adds to the mirage created by this fantasy land, which strengthens her brand. She teases us and we like it. Porn Carnival gives the audience some thought-provoking work but more importantly - an admission to adventure farther into White’s world where she explores the ins and outs of female objectification in the age of social media.

A few of White’s long-form poems do stand out in this collection, mainly “PORN CAROUSEL”. I love White’s use of punctuation, repetition, and unique twist on personification throughout the poem. Punctuation is rarely seen in any of her poems and the trend continues in “PORN CAROUSEL”. There are no periods throughout the entire piece, the only punctuation is two ellipsis, three exclamation marks, and one question mark. That’s all folks. The ellipsis are especially interesting because they are only found in the third line of the poem and the antepenultimate line. This creates a visual bookend for the poem as the author lifts us into a feminist daydream where she is free to speak her mind and then spits us back out into reality again at the end.

The first ellipsis shows up three lines in: “like bitch… / I have arrived”. The ellipsis softens the word “bitch” and gives pause between the expletive and the next line. It also adds intentional vagueness around who the recipient of “bitch” is, possibly referring to herself, the audience, or the world in general. The ellipsis acts as bated breath, a head turn, a hand gesture before launching into a diatribe of female issues from the sex worker perspective within the confines of the patriarchy. The word “arrived” alludes to herself as a performer entering the stage. This circles back to the idea of modern authors as performers putting on a show. Without the ellipsis following “bitch”, the line might have sunk into the poem unnoticed, but her use of punctuation on an otherwise sparse page draws the reader’s attention to it.

The creative punctuation points to her strength as a visual artist, as the ellipsis highlights exactly what she wants you to focus on and overshadows other unruly areas in true showmanship. The antepenultimate line that closes out this dream sequence is “just thinking about it…” which softens the ending and sets the more intense moments about incest, depression, and the safety of women as simply ideas she’s “thinking” about. This time the ellipsis stops the reader so they can digest everything that’s been said before the line fades out into the last stanza. What lies between these two ellipses is an exploration of her private fantasy, taking up space and then taking it back, bringing the reader in with dark details and then shutting them out by claiming it is all a dream - just something to imagine. This change in tone also makes the statement in the beginning of “bitch… / I have arrived” read like an alter ego by the time the audience gets to the end of the poem and sees her retract this overly confident tone. This calls out the traditionally female tendency of shrinking for the comfort of others, like when a woman brings a new idea to a meeting just to follow it up with “but I don’t know if that makes any sense” as to not seem too overbearing. This second set of ellipsis placates the pure confidence that the first ones bring to the table by letting the reader roll out of the fantasy back into the mundane reality of “I have to eat a peach / and let it drip to the floor.” This simple act of eating fruit and making a mess brings the audience out of the strong bitch fantasy back into a messy reality that is at once every day, yet overtly sexualized. By framing the whole arch of the poem as a “thought”, it further portrays the dance women do when overcome by the desire to be heard yet not confrontational. White walks this fine line between speaking up and preserving a demure identity by starting off with “bitch” and ending in “thought” both couched in ellipses.

The rest of White’s work in this collection is edgy, crude, and beautiful. While it could be easy to dismiss poems like “IN THE HEART-SHAPED JACUZZI OF MY SOUL” that opens “we went to the wrong orgy” and continues “don’t let your mouth make a check / your ass can’t cash” as whorish dribble, White has a magical ability to spin these ideas into creative masterpieces. One could read “PILLOW PIT” and think its only line of “I want to fuck but I need to get high” is trite but it’s probably the most honest thing anyone’s written yet. There is a sugar-coated pop album vibe to the overall tone of this collection, but pop songs can sometimes speak the truth. The classic anthem Wannabe from The Spice Girls comes to mind, where they sing “now don't go wasting my precious time / get your act together we could be just fine.” Not only is this the ultimate bop, but it hits home. Sure it’s sung to an upbeat melody by women in form-fitting fashion, but does that make it any less potent or true? If more people got their act together before being in a relationship, a lot fewer people would waste their time. Pop is popular for a reason because of its ability to take big feelings and make them digestible and relatable. “Porn Carnival” does the same by recording random femme thoughts and putting them between pieces of pink ombre paper but the brevity and simpleness of the packaging do make the content any less real. Write says that, “being a poet is inherently embarrassing, but writing love poems feels especially shameful! Even if we all are trained to want love, and we all do desperately want it, there is also popular ridicule of love and romance.” Her talent for taking the mundane and turning it into the romantic is remarkable and I can not wait to see where her vivacious writing goes from here. Get a copy of “Porn Carnival” for yourself and a loved one or at least follow her on Instagram because bitch… she is talented.

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Show Your Support: Planned Parenthood

It’s Women’s History Month so we had to go with the OG women’s rights organization: Planned Parenthood. We imagine some of you know how brilliant Planned Parenthood is, but here are some must-know facts for those less familiar. PP was founded on the revolutionary idea that women should have the information and care they need to live strong, healthy lives and fulfill their dreams. Revolutionary, indeed. Today, they are a trusted health care provider, an informed educator, a passionate advocate, and a global partner helping similar organizations around the world.

Planned Parenthood is America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care.

They are also so much more than abortions. The majority of their work is preventative care! These health centers provide a wide range of safe, reliable health care that includes preventing unintended pregnancies through contraception, testing for and treating sexually transmitted infections, and screening for cervical and other cancers.

Hey, PP? We love ya and we stand with you. We have donated $100 (including the items purchased for the giveaway) and encourage you to check out their site and what you can do to help spread sex awareness.

Donate to Planned Parenthood