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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - KISSED OFF BY A ROSE (UPDATE!)

Last night I went to see Peter Sotos DJ at Heathers. Yes, some others were providing tunes (hi Philip Best, Adam Parfrey, Mark McCoy, and Brandon Stusoy), but to be honest I didn't care, even though Mark was the only one who had his shit together. There are some people I cannot handle myself around because I am too nerdily psyched/awe-struck and it makes me act like an over-compensating tequila-shooting asshole, and apparently Peter Sotos is one of them.

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I casually stalked him for a little while, waiting for the right moment to begin a conversation, conveniently joining my friends outside while they smoked. I shot secret jovial photos of him (on the right, in that scary-looking Australian outback duster) chatting under an oak tree.

 I got a shitty one of Philip Best too, just for good measure.

Back inside, a traveling night vendor tricked a shy ginger dude into buying me a dying rose. The polite thing to do under such awkward circumstance is to say thank you, so I did. He told me he couldn't believe he was in the same room as Peter Sotos. "That guy is the boogeyman," he said. "But I was raised a proper Catholic, so…". I cannot think of a better reason to immediately shut down a conversation.

Edging nearer to my goal, I struck up a conversation with Brandon (that's him on the left) just as he was starting to DJ, which is incredibly rude but fuck it, I was on a mission. He was promoting the night as a kind of kick-off to an art opening on Sunday at Dispatch, a three-part surrealist performative vision that revolves around gay German artist Kai Althoff desperately seeking homophobe Varg Vikernes's acceptance. This will involve Philip Best pissing on some candy and Kai eating it, as well as Brandon getting a massive back tattoo of the show's logo, which will happen live in front of an audience.

(PS: Apparently all of this except that there is a three-part movement at Dispatch that starts at 4 PM on Sunday and would be worth your time to go to is a complete falsehood I pulled out of my drunken and over-excited sewer of a mind. It would be pretty awesome if it were true though, no?)

That's Lionel Maunz facing us, and he has something to do with the art show as well. He has paint all over his hoodie as proof. In the background, Peter negotiated DJ duties with Brandon. He'd hand him a CD-R and say, "Please, whatever you do, don't play track eight." And then Brandon would play track eight, and it'd be the Vienna Boys Choir's cover of "Message in a Bottle." It was all a big joke. Hijinks!

But this is how I eventually got to talk Peter. He was quite nice, which is usually the case with geniuses who write dark and twisted fantasy plots that're so nihilistic they're basically slapstick comedy. But it is a mistake to tell someone you've been waiting, oh, 12 years just to be able to speak a sentence to him, because you will put him on edge and freak him out. Once I did that, he told me I really should meet Philip Best, yes, I really should. He marched me over to his compatriot, pawning me off with the following introduction: "You should meet her. She's friends with David Tibet."

As much as I wish it were, it isn't true. Best snub I've ever received, though!

TEEN LAQUEEFA