Sunday Reading, August 6 2023
I Could Not Believe It (2023) Before Sean DeLear was an icon of the “Silver Lake scene”—one of the few Black musicians in a predominantly…

I Could Not Believe It (2023) Before Sean DeLear was an icon of the “Silver Lake scene”—one of the few Black musicians in a predominantly white punk world, lead singer in Glue, one of Vaginal Davis’s frequent collaborators—they were Tony, a horny fifteen-year-old growing up in predominantly white Simi Valley, who thought glory holes, Donna Summer and roller skates were “bitchen.” Water beds were also bitchen. So were cocks. As for school… “Oh well.” While queer coming of age stories often mean overcoming internalized shame, Sean is––impressively, delectably—shameless. This is, in part, because I Could Not Believe Itis a diary, published posthumously after DeLear’s unexpected 2017 death by Semiotext(e). But this attitude is of its era, too. In 1979, pre-AIDS, gay sex is abundant, even in buttoned-up Simi: the bowling alley is a cruising ground, and so is the roller… Read More...