User Profile

I've been a punk rocker, a published author, a DJ, a dishwasher, a zinester, a librarian, a skinhead girl, a clown. I've turned tricks, gone to art school, been a junkie, had straight-edge friends. I've hopped trains, written sonnets, lived in a Tom Waits song. I've eaten at greasy spoons and four-star restaurants, slept in filthy roadside motels and ritzy downtown hotels. I've been abused and loved, broke as shit and rolling in dough. I've had a mohawk, been a kleptomaniac, been homeless, danced on roofs, spent too much money on hats n' shoes. I've been vegan; I've eaten cheeseburgers. I've been a boygirl, and a femme fatale; I've loved girls, boys, trannies, angels, tramps and traingels. I've had a southern drawl, a northern twang, cooked elaborate meals from dumpstered food. I've been an intellectual, a drunk, a newspaper columnist. I've worked in a flowershop, worn strands of (fake) pearls. I've run away with the circus, I've had two abortions. I've gotten drunk in London, fallen in love in Montreal, been arrested in Chicago, gotten lost in Jersey City, taken shrooms in Denver, waltzed in NYC. I've camped in the Mojave Desert, read poetry in New Orleans, gotten bruised up in the pit in Philly, been high as a kite in Kenosha, cried my eyes out in Milwaukee, slept under a bridge in Minneapolis. I've driven through dry, dusty valleys, rode 'cross the lonesome old plains. I've played bass in a rocksteady band and accordion for a carnival.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. –Walt Whitman

I'm Waltzing Matilda, aka Matilda Whiskey (or just plain Whiskey), aka Mathilde, aka Jack, aka Jess...I have many names. First and foremost, I am a storyteller. Cuttin' up jackpots, spinning yarns, that's what I do. It's just that the stories tell themselves in different ways, depending on how they feel best. Sometimes, I sing the stories, and accompany them with music - guitar, accordion, piano, banjo, concertina, washboard, bells - I perform solo under the moniker One Beer Prophet, and I'm also in the Oakland Wine Drinkers Union (Local 88). Sometimes, the stories want to be told in prose, or prosepoetry, and they wind up as novels, or in my zines (which I've been publishing for nearly sixteen years, now), or somewhere online. And other times? Hell, lots of times they're just told aloud, in up-all-night drinktalk marathons with pals, or to some stranger at a railroad station bar. But they always find a way out. I tell stories because I am a story, and don't you forget it.

I bathe in smoke & dust & hobo spit. I'm trashy & classy, glamour & grime. I sometimes live inside a Tom Waits song. I am obsessed with Jack Kerouac. I most often wear a skeleton key around my neck, for good luck. Sometimes I like to wear cheap fake pearls. I enjoy writing sonnets. I like to climb trees and explore abandoned places; play my accordion on traintracks and sleep on riverbanks. I hate wearing shoes. I'm not a cat person, but right now I live with four cats and I love them all dearly. I drink a lot. Not as much as I used to, but still, a lot. I like the way drinking opens up my skull and lets the beauty in and the truth out. Sobriety is overrated. I'm a heavy drinker with a big heart. Or is that a big drinker with a heavy heart? I smoke a lot, too. I prefer handrolled cigarettes to premade, filtered ones, but every once in a while I get lazy and buy a pack. If I were immortal, I would light my cigarettes off the moon. I get annoyed with gravity. I'm synesthetic. Today, the air feels amber, and the cigarettes I'm smoking taste like seven years ago. I have hypergraphia – which is, in a nutshell, the intense compulsion to write. I write constantly, but always feel like I should be writing more. I don't believe in linear time, but I often dwell in the past. I have a haunted head and a ghost heart.

I was once a punk rocker, and that culture and music still speak to me in a lot of ways, but I don't identify as such anymore, because it became much too narrow a definition to fit. (For those wondering: I am still disobedient, thankyouverymuch.) I'm the former Safety Pin Girl, now more of an Accordion and Railroad Girl. I often feel like I was born in the wrong era. I should have been a blues singer, a flapper, a beatnik, an old-school punk, anything but a girl who came of age during the mid-nineties. I am a girl-of-all-trades; and I am very good at a great many things which have little to no marketable value. See, along with the aforementioned storyteller/writer/zinester/musician things I do, I also am a clown and sideshow performer, human pincushion & glasswalking being my sideshow trades; and I'm working on a knife-throwing act with a buddy o' mine, and I want to learn how to breathe/eat fire. I am an occasional DJ and burlesque dancer. I'm a ruckus raiser. I can make the best mix tape or CD you've ever heard. I like to paint and draw and take photographs, and I don't think I'm all that good at any of those things, but I do it anyway, because I believe in self-expression and art for art's sake. I am an aspiring filmmaker and composer. Some things I want to do with my life include – sing in a jazz band, play piano in a jazz ensemble, compose a film score, make a noir film, write a play & have it performed, teach a class about zines as literature, travel the world, own a bar, be a body piercer, and become a legend. Yes, I am a dreamer, and proud of it. I mean that in the sense of shooting for the stars with what I aim to do in life, but I also mean that in the nighttime-visions sense – I believe dreams are just as real and important as waking life. I'm addicted to bad ideas, and all the beauty in this world.

I'm 27, older than I look but younger, by far, than I feel. Or something. I still act reckless & ridiculous like I did in my early twenties, and I feel sad & serious & experience-wise like I'm about sixty. But I refuse to grow up. Peter Pan is my hero. I carry a pouch with me at all times, full of tools for (danger)magic & mayhem; right now it contains a deck of tarot cards I bought at Coney Island, a bottle/can opener, my switchblade, a small flask of emergency whiskey, loose tobacco n' rolling papers, colored smoke balls, and an aquamarine stone for courage & mental clarity. All I really need in life is good music, good friends, a good pair of boots, a notebook, and the wind at my back – but I want, I want – books & hats & more tattoos, booze & pills & typewriters...and inner peace. I collect feathers, skeleton keys, souvenir pennies, and typewriters.

I don't want to give up. I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing. And until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all. –Jack Kerouac

I think about everyone I care for, all the time, but I'm not so good at keeping in touch. I'm always rushing around this world, and I'm notoriously hard to get ahold of, and prone to moods, and when you do get ahold of me I'm likely to borrow your money to buy booze and spend the whole time going on & on about obscure things that no one cares about but me. I'd sell yer heart to the junkman, baby, for a buck – but if you buy me a drink or make me a pallet on your floor, I'll likely be your best friend.

I have a very fluid identity. I reinvent myself all the time, and there is no such thing as either/or in my life, I am always both/and. Happysad, boygirl, etc., etc. To paraphrase Hettie Jones – I cry like a woman, but I drive like a man. I'm a scruffy boyish girl who loves dresses & make-up; a dissenter & anarchist who is obsessed with such intrinsically American things as cheap beer, baseball, trains, bluegrass music, and the open road. I've run away with the circus six or seven times – my mom was a mime, & there are several clowns in my family, so I guess I was born with that greasepaint and sawdust in my blood. Coyotes are my favorite animal - I relate to them, their wildness and skittishness; and I have a coyote tail that I've been known to pin to the back of my pants and skirts. I am no good at being ladylike - I inevitably rip my stockings immediately after putting them on. I have a sailor's mouth and wounded eyes, or so I've been told. Lately, I have been obsessed with stick and poke tattoos. I have started making grandiose statements like "I will never get another professional tattoo again," which I'm sure is not true, it's just that I can't foresee a time in the near future when I'll be able to afford a professional tattoo. I'm perpetually penniless, but I manage, create my own D.I.Y. brand of decadence. Hopping freights is one of my favorite things in the world, but I am just a first-of-May. I don't live the full-time hobo life, and I haven't caught out all that many times. Really, train hopping is just one of the ways in which I get lost. See, restlessness is one of my most constant emotions, and I have a bag packed at all times. If I'm not on a boxcar, you're bound to find me on a road trip, or flying somewhere, or just wandering aimlessly through my own town. (But no matter where I roam, Chicago will always be Home.) Happysadness is another of my most constant emotions. It is a term that pyralid invented. It is not quite like bittersweet, it is not like feeling a little bit happy and a little bit sad, and having those emotions mixed together. It is being totally happy and totally sad at the same time, and feeling both emotions completely and separately. And my other most constant emotion is saudade, which is a Portuguese word meaning "a longing for the way things were, or the way they might have been."

I romanticize everything. I am maybe somewhat over-emotional. Things that can make me cry include: an accordion played in a particular way, the sound of trains, late afternoon sunlight in autumn, road maps, old maps, and the smell of cloves. I have fallen in love with ghosts. I get the blues a lot, but I try real hard not to let them make me bad. I consider myself an anarchist at heart. I believe in resisting oppression, and also resisting anyone who tells you how you "should" live. I'm not a pacifist. I believe in fighting back. I believe in fighting, period. I consider myself a pagan, yes, a witch, but I've never subscribed to any particular set of rules for that. I believe it is important to know the rules – of everything – so I can break them more successfully. I believe that anything can be a good luck charm, that any word can be an incantation if you attach enough meaning & power to it. I believe in making my own magic. I pray to trickster gods and gods of wanderlust, and some Catholic saints as well. I believe in God and reincarnation, I appreciate the tenets of Buddhism, and I think Jesus was a pretty cool guy.

My favorite times of day are twilight, one a.m., and dawn. I find ampersands aesthetically pleasing. I overuse the phrase It is a sad & beautiful world. I have a big crush on Peter Lorre. I am in a monogamous relationship with the love of my life, who happens to be a bio-male, but I still consider myself queer. And I'll always have a slutty heart, that's just the way it goes. I wish my parents had warned me to stay away from jazz musicians. Music is a huge part of my life. I like 1920s/30s pop music, Delta blues, cabaret, folkpunk, gypsypunk, lonesome cowboy songs, murder ballads, sea shanties, mysterious Gypsy clarinet music, sad accordion songs, chanson, classic punk, pop punk, klezmer, manouche jazz, zydeco, rockabilly, torch songs, junk bands, weird stuff that defies classification, and a million other things. Most of my favorite music is a bit off-kilter - it includes odd instrumentation, or the singer has a ragged voice, or the recording is lo-fi and warm and crackly. You get the idea. As much as I may sometimes try to deny it, I am a goddamn bohemian – for instance, I've lived in cold water flats, I consider beans on toast & good strong tea basic dietary staples, and one year I spent a large chunk of birthday gift-money on a new (old) Underwood typewriter, two bottles of red wine, and a carton of fancy (French) cigarettes.

At the end of the day? I'm just a scruffy, haunted, lonesome, loved & loving, left & leaving, restless, happysad, storytelling, go-with-it girl.

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