Luis Drayton - Queen of All Pus

My New Website! Not Yours! Mine!

2012-01-08T18:32:00.002Z

Check it out! (New stuff added continuously...)

Luis Drayton - SD's Sonic Diary - 26-10-11

2011-12-04T01:25:00.004Z

"Pretty In Your Face" from my debut album "Pretty Sick" - introduced by Stephen Doyle during his show "SD's Sonic Diary" on Salford City Radio; 26/10/11. To download "Pretty Sick" (free!), click here...

Junk Pussy Sluts and Dickgirls

2011-10-28T21:13:00.002+01:00

Go take a look at my pal dou_ble_you's YouTube channel - he's got all sorts of cool stuff up there...

Armageddon Hungry - 17/10/11

2011-10-16T16:26:00.003+01:00

I'm on the radio (again)! Go to www.woodyradio.com tonight at 1am (GMT) to hear Guardian Demon playing stuff from "Pretty Sick" on his "Armageddon Hungry" show...

Stephen Doyle's Sonic Diary - 19/10/11

2011-10-15T23:24:00.003+01:00

Hey - at 9pm on Wednesday 19th October, make sure you're listening to Stephen Doyle's "Sonic Diary" on Salford Radio... Stephen's gonna be playing stuff from my debut album (plus stuff by my good pal Toska Wilde) - yay! :)

Luis Drayton on QMH - Transgender Music

2011-10-04T17:33:00.002+01:00

JD Doyle introducing my fail hoaxer cover of The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" on the QMH TG Music podcast for October 2011...

Transgender Music - Say What?

2011-10-01T02:53:00.005+01:00

Check it out, pus-lovers - I've been included on this month's edition of JD Doyle's "Transgender Music" podcast at "Queer Music Heritage"... Anyway, go and take a listen to the stream (mine's the penultimate song on Part Two) - it's an absolut laugh riot! :D

How To Kill A Radio Consultant (Part Two)

2011-09-13T18:43:00.004+01:00

resonance FM - "Pull The Plug" - 09/09/11. Video: Luis Drayton.
* * * *

* Hey sweethearts! I'm gonna be on the radio! (Again!) Johnny Seven's gonna be playing more stuff from my debut album, "Pretty Sick" on his show, "Pull the Plug", on resonance fm (104.4 FM - London area or you can listen online ... It's gonna be on at 4.00pm (GMT+1hour) on Thursday 15th September, and again at 7.30pm on Friday 16th - this time around, no profanity in my lyrics, so you shouldn't have too much trouble making sense of it...

Any Love Is Good Love

2011-09-13T18:32:00.004+01:00

Just to let you know, sweethearts - the new queercore compilation "Any Love Is Good Love" has just been released, and it features tracks by Toska Wilde, The Get, Ste McCabe, Ten Tigers, DragChrist and a whole other bunch... Of course, the best thing about it is the cover, which I designed! (I submitted a song for inclusion, but Emma felt it wouldn't fit in with the overall album concept, funnily enough...) Oh, and the proceeds are going to Lesbian and Gay Youth Manchester...

How To Kill a Radio Consultant

2011-09-05T15:40:00.004+01:00

Luis Drayton live @ Toska's Temptation 20/08/11 #3.
* * * *

* Hey sweethearts! I'm gonna be on the radio! (That's something tha Killaz never achieved now, IS IT?) Johnny Seven's gonna be playing tracks from my debut album, "Pretty Sick" on his show, "Pull the Plug", on resonance fm (104.4 FM - London area or you can listen online ... It's gonna be on at 4.00pm (GMT+1hour) on Thursday 8th September, and again at 7.30pm on Friday 9th - so tune in, and see if you can make sense of my sh*t despite the censoring (all swear words reversed by my own fair hands!)...

Nancy Spongecream

2011-09-02T12:57:00.003+01:00

"Nancy Spongecream" (2011). Video: Luis Drayton.
* * * *
From the debut album, "Pretty Sick".
Download it here - it's free!

Luis Drayton - Pretty Sick

2011-08-29T02:46:00.007+01:00

Download my new album here - it's free!

Luis Drayton - Pretty Sick @ 320 kbps

Luis Drayton - Pretty Sick @ 192 kbps

Luis Drayton - The Queen of All Pus!

2011-08-27T18:34:00.005+01:00

Luis Drayton live @ Toska's Temptation 20 Aug 2011.
* * * *

Debut gig went great, thanks for asking! Now - the moment my debut solo album "Pretty Sick" is online, I'll add a link... in the meantime, though, why not check out my myspace, where you can see more shots from my debut gig, and hear preview tracks ("Fanny Batter", "Nancy Spongecream" and "I Wanna Slit My Enemies' Throats")? Oh, and I'm currently trying to get some more gigs together - club, venue, garage, your bathroom - all offers considered!

Toska's Temptation - A Night of Killer Kamikaze Kamp!

2011-08-17T01:41:00.003+01:00

"Toska's Temptation" (2011). Cartoon: Luis Drayton.

* * * *
And I'm headlining!
Click here for details...

Streetwalker

2011-06-16T11:54:00.002+01:00

"Streetwalker" (2011). Montage: Luis Drayton.

The Mysteries of bunny M...

2011-05-20T16:19:00.002+01:00

"bunny M @ the BBC" (2009). Illustration: bunny M. Photo: Luis Drayton.
* * * *

"Little to nothing is known for certain about bunny M. Although there is some talk of bunny M's status as an oracle, prophet, or conversely as a vandal, or 'fortuneteller', the truth is no-one knows exactly who, or what, bunny M is. At this point there are no recorded accounts of encounters, exchanges, or even physical sightings anywhere in the world. Recently, however, there has been a growing influx of hints loosely suggesting bunny M's whereabouts; the mysterious public appearance of visual gifts signed by bunny M, in and around some of the major U.S. cities, lead many to believe bunny M is often among us - unwitnessed, yet present. It has been rumoured (albeit with some discrepancy regarding the details) that bunny M occasionally keeps company with a squirrel named decimal, who eats only potato chips."

* * * *

* Update: Since this communique was published, the cult of bunny M has spread beyond the U.S. and into Europe; for proof of which, the above photo, taken by the author of this blog in a phone box on Wood Lane, White City, (opposite BBC TV Centre). To experience for yourself the mysteries of the blessed bunny M, click here; here to see bunny M's flickrstream; and here to read The Book of Bunny M (bunny M's blog)...

AutoFag

2011-04-30T23:04:00.003+01:00

Scene: a studio - a Top Producer and a Mixer are listening to their latest "trangressive" electrofag dance track...
*The beauty of this princess, if only the mundanes knew...*
Mixer: So, what do you think?
Producer: I'm not sure... Why don't we turn up the AutoFag, and see how it sounds?
Mixer: You want me to increase the FagLyric too?
Producer: Check - and the FagLyric...
(Mixer turns up AutoFag and FagLyric)
(Higher, camper pitch) *I'm such a pretty T-Girl, I wanna suck your cock...*
Producer: Hmmm - still not faggy enough... *pause*... Okay - it's a crazy idea...but it just might work. I want you to turn the AutoFag and the FagLyric up as far as they'll go...
Mixer: Are you crazy? The general public - they're not ready for that level of faggotry!
Producer (looks up at Mixer): Just do it...
(Mixer shrugs and turns AutoFag and FagLyric all the way up...)
(Prissy falsetto) *I want my man-clit in a chathtity cage, I want you to (falsetto rises to a shriek) fuck me up the aaaaatttthhhhh...*
*POP!*
(Pause, as Mixer replaces the shattered studio lightbulb... Mixer returns to mixing desk and pauses. Stares at Producer...)
Mixer: My God, you're a genius.
Producer: Well, it was a crazy idea - but it works. Now - get onto Fag Idol, and tell 'em this year's single is ready!
Mixer (heading off): You want me to phone multimedia and tell 'em to start work on the video?
Producer: Right! Tell 'em to find a dozen well-hung bodybuilders within the next half hour - and a tube of KY!
(Producer turns to vocal booth...)
Producer: Drayton? Get yourself ready - we got a Number One video to shoot!
(Cut to vocal booth...)
Luis (bass-driven growl): Wicked, man! I'm gonna be a motherfuckin' POP STAR! (Starts furiously flipping wrist, working lower jaw up and down, and clenching and unclenching buttocks ...)

In Praise of Found Imagery

2011-04-11T17:17:00.003+01:00

Recently, I've been adding some new images to my flickrstream. I say images, 'cause ever since I started uploading to flickr, I've included a whole lot of stuff that, strictly speaking, doesn't fall into the category of "photography". I'm talking about the concept of "found imagery". Say what? "Found imagery" - English, motherfucker, do you speak it? Anyway..."found imagery" can mean many things; besides the obvious use of found images in my montages, I've also been distorting existing photos in a number of ways, and making scans of "found objects" (crap off the streets). Also, since buying a new camera, I’ve been taking my fetish in new directions; taking pictures of posters and graffiti, of found objects and images laid out in inarresting combinations; hell, I've even had a go at that old trick of photographing my TV screen!
Not that this "found imagery" concept is anything new to me; for years now, I've been screwing around with found footage - that is, reels of film rescued from trash barrels, which I then chop up into four-frame segments, and stick back together with sellotape, this time in a completely new order. (My fave practitioners in this area include Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner, and best of all, Luther Price, whose short film, "Sodom" I recommend to anyone interested in film editing as a technique.)
Why such a love of found objects/footage/imagery though, I hear you ask? (Alright, alright; hear myself ask.) Well, to begin with, I've always been inarrested in collage, montage, composite images - whatever you want to call it; and few things give me as much pleasure as coming across a new bit of imagery I can make use of. Secondly, I've always been extremely keen on what, for want of a better word, I might call the mechanics of imagery; the means by which imagery, photographic and non-photographic is produced, and the ways in which it is joined with other imagery to make a coherent (or in my case, incoherent) whole. This inarrest applies at least as much to film as it does to photography; hence, my cut-ups of found footage include foot after foot of leader, countdowns, captions and titles; not to mention footage that's been painted, engraved and otherwise mutilated; and every fragment of film I join together with a thick layer of sellotape, the edges of which flash across the screen as a precursor to every cut. Similarly, my photomontage and collage stuff includes cuts, ragged tears, and of course, the collage artist's best friend - sellotape - all this applied to a combination of newsprint, imagery and colour charts. Most of all, it's always given me the greatest pleasure to take material that's supposedly outlived its use, and turn it into something new and (to me, at least) worthwhile. This satisfaction is partly due to the knowledge that I'm making something out of nothing; and in this respect, I'm reminded of the words of Saint Francis; 'our aesthetic comes from Sister Poverty'. As well as this, there's the satisfaction of making something new out of stuff that would otherwise have just been thrown away. ('Waste not, want not' - I’m always good for a kidney stone of wisdom!) In fact, now I come to think of it, it seems as if I've created a superior form of recycling; recycling not just on a material level, but also an aesthetic one. After all, what better than to take a load of tacky, mass-produced bullshit, and transform it into a brilliant work of art? Yeah, right...

Oxymorons

2011-03-31T15:39:00.002+01:00

1. Friendly fire
2. Fresh frozen
3. Clear spot
(the name of a Captain Beefheart album, by the way...)
4. Organized chaos
5. Noble Savage
6. Real imitation
(Throughout her career as a clothes designer/manufacturer, Pauline said she was forever coming across this declaration in fabric shops etc.)

7. Alone together
8. Found missing
9. Constructive criticism
10. Living dead
11. Deafening silence
12. Ill health
13. Bittersweet
14. Same difference
15. Microsoft Works
16. Recorded live
And last, but by no means least, my personal favourite:
17. Creative editor
* * * *

New additions to the list are of course welcome; however, the editor (my beautiful self, sweethearts, my beautiful self) reserves the right to reject (in the most arbitrary manner) all submissions that ain't up to scratch, regardless as to whether they're true oxymora, joke oxymora (#15, but who cares), perceived oxymora, or whatever...

Census Form

2011-03-19T08:56:00.003Z

"Census Form" (2011). Montage: Luis Drayton.
* * * *

Bitch-Spungen

2011-03-08T23:58:00.005Z

Bitch-Spungen (2006). Montage: Luis Drayton.

* * * *

Here's something I put together while I was creating the imagery for my website, "Luis Drayton's PrettySick", but couldn't find a place for... But thinking about it, fuck Nancy Spungen; how about putting a muzzle onto the face of Chloe Webb, who played Spungen in Alex Cox's film, Sid and Nancy? I can see it now... "on your knees, bitch!" Now that'd be a wank fantasy come true! Then again, why stop there? After all, I've lots more fave celebrities, and each and every one of them could be a potential candidate for my brand new concept in celebrity-canine discipline! Here then, for your own personal pleasure, is the Luis Drayton shortlist of superstars who'd look really rather fetching in a muzzle! (Further suggestions most welcome; prizes to be awarded at a special ceremony in Los Angeles...)

* * * *

Marilyn Monroe
Candy Darling
Jean Harlow
Keira Knightley
Nadja
Holly Cock
And last, but by no means least, yours truly...

* * * *

* In case you can't read it, the text accompanying the above montage reads as follows:
"By 1978, Sid Vicious' partner, Nancy Spungen, had become so uncontrollably violent that she had begun to attack people on the street at random, biting off their noses and then chewing on them with a shit-eating grin, like a dog rolling in carrion. At first, Sid found this useful, as it afforded him protection from the same sort of people who walked up to Robert Mitchum in bars in the nineteen-fifties and tried it on. But it wasn't long before Nancy began behaving in a threatening manner towards Sid as well, crouching on the floor of their room in the Chelsea hotel and snarling, her teeth bared, strings of saliva dripping from her fangs. So for his own protection, as well as the general public's, Sid took to chloroforming Nancy before they went out together, and when she came to, she would find herself securely muzzled. Here she is at (some dreadful shitty) punk club in September 1978."

Drayton-Chroma #2 - Grey

2011-02-26T16:44:00.003Z

* * * *

Sorry to say, but this edition of Drayton-Chroma is going to be shorter than the previous one - but before you all start pointing fingers, let me clearly state that this time round, it's the colour's fault, not mine! I mean, for G*d's sake, how much innaresting stuff is there that also happens to be grey? Still, for what it's worth, here's what I've managed to come up with - as always, ideas and suggestions are extremely welcome...

* * * *

Grey matter, Grey ceiling, Grey aliens, Grey's Anatomy...

* * * *

Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for nine days, then had her head hacked off when Princess Mary had a hissy fit...

* * * *

Grey Partridge, Grey Squirrel, The Old Grey Mare...

* * * *

And before I forget, the old Leadbelly tune, "Grey Goose"...

* * * *

Grey Noise, Grey Peas, Grey Area, Grey Goo...

* * * *

The Grey Lady - Nickname of The New York Times...

* * * *

Earl Grey, Dapple Grey, African Grey...

* * * *

Break In Through Grey Room - Title of a fab William S. Burroughs album...

* * * *

Payne's grey (dark-blue grey), Davy's Grey (greenish-grey)...

* * * *

And last but not least, The Picture of Dorian Grey...

The Eye of Horus

2011-02-15T17:56:00.004Z

The Eye of Horus #2; 2010. Montage: Luis Drayton/Jason Novak.

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Click here to see my new series of collaborations with Jason Novak (Die Brucke 2009) and dou_ble_you...

Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Pauline D's Story - Part Three

2011-02-03T19:34:00.003Z

Presenting the final part of my death-defying struggle with a dose of sinusitis, as told by my wife Pauline... Brain surgery, strokes, abscesses, HIV, redundant limbs...surely it can't get any worse? Like hell it can't... (Oh yeah - you'll find Part One here, and Part Two here...)

* * * *

If I say only one thing about Luis' time in both Hammersmith and Charing Cross Hospital, it's that he was very well cared for. They could not have looked after him better, nor could they have done more for him. Luis remained paralysed for a week or so, and during this time he experienced almost continual hallucinations due to the seven different antibiotics he was receiving intraveinously. He became convinced that he had seen William Burroughs and Alexander Trocchi looking at him thru the small glass window in the door to his room. He told me that they were smiling at him and that Burroughs had waved at him. There was a third person, I think it was Albert Camus.
After a week, Luis' left side began to come back to him. It was also after a week that the results of his tests came back. He wasn't HIV positive, thank God. We were all right on that score. He would, however, need up to three months of antibiotics. After a couple of weeks, Luis was moved back to Hammersmith Hospital. He was in a general ward for a couple of days, then they moved him into a room of his own as he was just too ill. He had managed to catch a stomach bug which was holding back his recovery. During their many investigations the doctors had also discovered that Luis could not absorb any nutrients from the food he ate. This was why he was and is so thin. He had a dietician to advise him and to keep track of what and how much he was eating; he could never seem to eat enough.
Luis had been in Hammersmith hospital for about a week when the time came for him to have the metal sutures (all 150 of them) taken out of his head. I will never forget that day if I live to be a thousand years old. It was only three weeks after the operation, his head was all matted with blood and bits of hair. They had only shaved half or three quarters of his head, so it was a hard, dried mess. I knew that it was going to hurt. When I got home that afternoon I sat down in the armchair, put my head in my hands and sobbed. I cried for the pain I thought Luis was going to suffer. Hadn't he suffered enough? I cried and cried, the weeks of coping with all of this, all on my own, the stress of it all pouring out of me and not wanting to stop. However, it wasn't all bad. The nurses were so gentle. The first staple nearly killed him, so another nurse put something on Luis' head to make it numb. Gently bathed his head in order to soften the dried blood, and then removed the staples with no problems at all. Luis never felt a thing. I was so relieved.
I spent all the time I had with Luis. Every day I was at that hospital by his side. I usually stayed with him until around 10.30pm, then I went home to feed the cat. It was during one of these visits, just before I went home, that he dropped the bomb shell. 'Oh, by the way, the intraveinous antibiotics aren't working. I have to have the operation all over again.' He had to have the operation all over again! I couldn't believe it. I walked home that night in a daze. 'Oh God, please don't do this to him again.' A few nights later, Luis was taken down for his second operation. The surgeons drilled into nine different points around his head. The first time they had opened his head up completely; he has pieces missing from his skull to this day. I am forever fearful when he is out that someone will hit him on his head. I hate him going out alone. Anyway, Luis was operated on in the early hours of the morning. I received a phone call at about 6am to tell me that all was well. I couldn't get to the hospital quick enough the next day to see him. After that, Luis ever so slowly began to put on a bit of weight. Before we knew it, it was Christmas Day. Of course I spent it at the hospital with Luis, just like every other day since November 12th. It seemed like years ago, so much had happened.
That Christmas, while I was sitting at Luis' bedside, a doctor came and told us that Luis could come home for a few hours the following day. I hadn't bothered with Christmas at all, but that night I put up some decorations and some fairy lights. When I came to get him the next day, Luis was sitting waiting, like a little child. I brought him home in a taxi. He was so happy, he said that the place looked like a fairy grotto. We got into bed together and watched The Wizard Of Oz. It was the best day ever. As the days passed Luis was allowed home more often, almost every day for a few hours. I will never forget the day I was getting ready to go and visit him when the door buzzer sounded. Thru the intercom Luis said that he had been allowed to come home. I was so happy, but when I opened the door to let him in he was standing there in his dressing gown. 'Where are your clothes,' I asked; 'did you forget them?' Luis asked me what I meant. I explained that if he had been discharged, surely he would have brought his things. But it was all a misunderstanding. Luis merely meant that the doctors had let him come home on his own, without my having to collect him. He had just jumped into a taxi, without bothering to get dressed. He wasn't home for good, he was just home for a few hours. I was so disappointed.
Luis was finally allowed home for good on the 7th of January 2004. He had been in hospital eight weeks in total. He continued taking antibiotics for another three months, as well as an anti-fitting drug, which he took for roughly a year or so. After much deep thought, Luis decided that he no longer wanted to take this drug as the side effects were hellish. His hands would shake terribly and he couldn't concentrate on anything, he couldn't watch a movie or read a book. He had no short term memory whatsoever. Without the drug he is in danger of something called Sudden Death Syndrome. This basically means that he could drop dead at any given moment, and there will be absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. I'm not sure that I can ever get my head around his not taking his anti-fitting drugs, but while he was taking them he just wasn't Luis. He was more like a zombie. At the end of the day it is his decision and I suppose quality of life is more important. I just want him to be happy. So we go on as usual and at the end of every day, I thank God for letting me have another day with him. Well that is just about all there is to tell about this little episode in our lives. I would however, like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who came to visit Luis while he was in hospital; Mona, who came to visit twice, and who I managed to miss on both occassions, even though I was there nearly all day every day myself. Thanks also to Nick, Brendan & Frankie, and of course Bruce. However, I will always owe my greatest debt of gratitude to the doctors and nurses of Hammersmith and Charing Cross Hospitals; for there is no doubt at all, they saved Luis' life.

Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Pauline D's Story - Part Two

2011-01-25T21:45:00.004Z

Continuing from the first part in Pauline's thrilling tale of my battle with a life-threatening dose of sinusitis (that's a brainful of abscesses submerged in pus to you); you join us as Pauline (my wife) returns to Hammersmith Hospital to find me on a life-support, with tubes protruding out of every available orifice...

* * * *

Looking down on Luis as he lay there in intensive care with tubes coming out of him and from everywhere, I suddenly realised how small and helpless he looked. But what really shocked me was just how thin he had become. Now it is true that we had both been really ill for the past three weeks, but I surely couldn't have been that blind, could I? Guilt washed over me, I couldn't believe how thin he was. How was he ever going to fight this illness, if he had no strength? I stood by his bed with his Mother and together we prayed.
On doctors' orders, I went home to prepare for the following day. It really was a waste of time. I didn't even get into bed, let alone sleep. The next morning at 10am I was there by Luis' bed again. Although he was in a coma I sat there next to him and talked to him. His great aunt had died a few weeks previously and the inheritance cheque had cleared that morning. I told him this bit of news. I sat there babbling like an idiot telling him that he had to get better, that he couldn't leave me, I loved him too much. Thru a haze of tears he looked angelic. His mother arrived at around 3.30pm and promptly sent me home to get some sleep. At 4.30 that afternoon the doctors moved Luis to Charing Cross Hospital to be operated on. I had planned to go there at about 7pm and spend the evening with him. However, at 6.30 the doctor phoned and told me that I had to get there NOW if I wanted to say goodbye to him, as the chances were not good. I stumbled and ran to the tube station praying and crying all the way. It didn't seem strange that people were nudging each other and looking at me. I didn't care.
I'm not going to describe saying goodbye to Luis, because I didn't. I told him that he had better come back or I was coming after him, and I meant it. I kissed him and told him once again that I loved him. At 7.30pm the nurses came to take Luis down to theatre. They told me that the operation would take two to three hours. I sat in the waiting room and waited. 10.30pm came and went. They had taken Luis down from the critical care ward, which was on the twelfth floor. Every time that bloody lift door opened I jumped up, thinking it was him. It was the longest three and a half hours I've ever had to sit thru. So many things ran thru my mind. What the hell had caused this? No one seemed to know, the doctors were baffled. They had decided that Luis must be HIV positive. This idea they came up with while we were still in the emergency room. Luis and I had both agreed that if we were positive, we were not going to waste time pointing fingers at each other. We were going to stick together and make the best of what was left. Then there was the other problem; while Luis had been fitting he had suffered several strokes. This had left him paralysed completely down his left side, from head to foot.The doctors said that this could be permanent. They also told me that if Luis managed to survive he could be brain damaged. I just wanted him back. I would look after him no matter what. Finally the lift doors opened and it was him; he had made it thru the operation, but all was not yet well.The following morning I was informed that there are seven types of brain infection that a human can get; toxoplasmosis being the most well-known. All of them can and usually do prove fatal. The doctors had no idea as to which one Luis had, and until the results came back from the lab (in about a week's time) they were going to have to give him intravenous antibiotics for all seven types.
Luis remained on life support for the next few days. It was around midnight on Friday night when he finally came round. Unfortunately, I had just left him, having been continually by his side since he came back up from theatre. When I came to see him the following day, though, I was more pleased than I had ever been, just to see his lop-sided smile. His left side was completely paralysed. Only one side of his face moved when he smiled or spoke. He was in the critical care ward, which was made up of twelve small rooms. Each one had its own life support machine and round the clock one-on-one nursing care. That evening, I stayed with Luis until well after midnight. I had a feeling of optimism as I waited in reception for my taxi home; maybe, just maybe, things were going to be all right. Maybe!

* * * *

Click here to read Part Three...

Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Pauline D's Story - Part One

2011-01-15T21:14:00.005Z

If you've read my posts, "Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Parts One and Two", you'll know all about how at the end of 2003, I underwent a life-threatening battle with sinusitis. However, in these posts I had to leave a great deal out, seeing as I spent three days unconscious (from the point when I began suffering from fits, to when I woke up in a hospital bed with my left side completely paralysed and two hundred staples holding my head together)... Here then, is the same story, this time told from my wife Pauline's point of view. Are you all sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin...

* * * *

Pauline: I've always believed that Luis and I have someone watching over us, taking care of us. A guardian angel if you like. My reasoning for this is that we have been in some sticky situations and somehow we always seem to come out on top. I am basically a Christian with a little bit of Hinduism and a big bit of Buddhism thrown in. I have always had my faith. It is a great comfort to me at times, but I can remember only one time in my life when that faith was shaken. What follows is the story of that time.
Luis is thirty now (aren't I lucky), we have been together for eight years. When we met he was the bassist in rock band Six Inch Killaz. Nothing big, but they had their own following. I loved going to gigs with Luis. I used to feel so proud, thinking to myself that we were going home together.
When Luis was twenty-eight we both caught the flu, and we just couldn't get rid of it. We had it for three weeks, and dear reader, it just got worse. Luis got to the point where he couldn't even eat, as every time he did he was sick. Then one morning he started to have a fit. I had never seen someone have a fit before, and I couldn't believe it, it was like something out of the Exorcist. He was jerking about so badly that he was actually rising off the bed. I called an ambulance, but they wouldn't come as there had been a really bad pile up somewhere near to us and they had none going spare. In the end, though (two hours and four fits later), I got them to come.
Luis arrived at Hammersmith Hospital at 10am on Tuesday the 12th of November 2003. By now the fits were coming every forty-five seconds, and each time lasting almost a minute. The doctors admitted Luis straight away, did various tests and things. Then came the really bad news; Luis had Subdural Epidema. Basically he had got sinusitis and the infection had gone from his sinuses up behind his eyes and into his brain. He now had three or four deep seated pockets of infection. The doctors told me that he was dying, and that they would operate on his brain the very next day; if they left it any longer he wouldn't be here anymore. Even then they could give no guarantees and in the doctor's words, 'the situation was very grave.' I then spent three hours listening to the doctor on the phone, pleading with the other hospitals in the London area, trying to get one with neuro-surgery facilities to take him. It seemed, however, that there was no room anywhere. 'If he isn't operated on to by tomorrow night he will probably die.' I sat beside Luis' bed listening in disbelief to all of this going on around me. Luis at this point was still conscious, although he was delirious and still fitting constantly. He was breaking my heart, as all he seemed to say was, "honey, take me home, please, honey take me home. I love you, honey, please take me home." Over and over he just kept pleading different versions of the same request. He seemed unable to understand the severity of the situation, or the fact that it was out of my hands.
At last Luis fell asleep. By this time it was past midnight and we had been at the hospital all day, for the past fourteen hours to be exact. I decided to go home for half an hour, get a quick shower and change of clothes. Also pick up some things that Luis might need over the next few days, as he was obviously going nowhere, at least not home. We lived a short walk from the hospital, about ten minutes or so. I told the doctor my plan; he told me how to get back into the hospital as it was now late and all the doors would be locked. I kissed Luis gently, being careful not to wake him. I whispered "I love you, baby," and then I left.
I had been home less than five minutes when the phone rang. It was the doctor saying I had to come back immediately. In my absence Luis had woken up and was fitting worse than ever. The doctor decided that the only thing to do was to put him under general anaesthetic. So I had to rush back to the hospital. It couldn't have taken me more than ten or twelve minutes and I was back on the ward, but they couldn't wait. They had taken him down to theatre to put him under. I waited over two hours for them to bring Luis back up to the ward. The waiting room was so quiet. After about an hour his Mother arrived as they had phoned her too, as had I.
The next time I saw Luis was Wednesday 2.15am. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. He was no longer on the ward, he was now in intensive care. He was totally unconscious, he had tubes coming out of everywhere. Also he was on a life support machine; my baby was so weak, he couldn't even breathe for himself. I couldn't believe it. I have never felt so helpless or lost or alone in my entire life; and believe me, I have been on this earth for a good few years. I had to leave him there and go home. The doctors told me that I should try to get some sleep as tomorrow was a very big day for him. I went home, but there was no sleep. No sleep for a good few nights to come.

* * * *

Click here to read Part Two...

Cinematic Quotations #1

2011-01-07T19:15:00.003Z

Cinematic Quotations #1 (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.

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Click here to see the reply...

Festive Hair Pie...

2010-12-29T16:59:00.005Z

It's now over five weeks since my wife Pauline and I came off the junk - and now that the physical effects of withdrawal have receded, both Pauline and I are delighted to announce that our intelligence, personalities etc. have come back full-blast! And you know something? We'd both quite forgotten what a couple of total f*cking punks we are!
The first glimpse I got of my own returning personality was a couple of weeks back, when my agent emailed me with my first commission as a professional designer... My mission? To design T-Shirts celebrating a long discredited UFO sighting - previous themes included the slogan "We Cannot Lose Los Angeles", as well as the whimsical concept of "Space Apes"... (Space Apes. No, really. Gimme a f*cking break...) Anyway, I sent back some delightful designs informing my "target audience" (in full-blown rants and large-print messages) that they were a bunch of deluded, paranoid nerds! (And that was the most polite phrase I used!) One phrase, cut from the end of my first draft, ran: "Actually, let's hope there are aliens and that you get to meet 'em - and that they split you in two with a giant probe and burn your stupid, gormless, gullible face off!" The result? Turns out my agent loves the designs, but that his client has had to "go check brand direction with his boss"! And there I was, signing my name at the bottom, with a paid-for Skype phone number underneath to record the hate calls - *sigh*... Akshully, to make my client feel a little more comfortable, I think maybe I shall go with this "Space Apes" concept after all - print out one of the original designs, and in black marker, scrawl the words: "Space Apes - 'Cause In Space, No-One Can Hear You Drink From a Teapot, Ride A Tricycle And Fling Your Own Shit While Swinging From A F*cking Chandelier!" (Signed: Luis Drayton (T-Shirt Designer) ((insert Skype phone number)) (You C*nts!) )
Pauline, meanwhile, is beginning to exceed me in outrageousness - I'm proud to say! The other night, we had some comparatively straight (or so we thought) friends coming round for drinks and civilised conversation... I thought I was going to have to spend the evening on middle-class auto-pilot ("How lovely to see you! How delightful to see you!"), and so I was a little concerned when Pauline, who had spent the day suffering badly from her broken back and smashed feet, said she was thinking of shaving her head, stripping off and running downstairs to greet our guests with a jet of p*ss and a hail of abuse! To which I replied: "Great! We'll have a live tribute act as entertainment! What shall I put on the stereo to cue you in - "Bite It You Scum" or "Die When You Die"? Turned out, though, our guests were in fact as wild as us! Maybe other people aren't as straight as I thought...
Oh yeah - one last insult to commercial culture... Last night, Pauline and I were watching television, and I got up to go to the loo - returning just in time for that poxy, stupid, cynical McDonald's Christmas advert, I found myself shouting at the screen: "F*cking hell - did IQs just drop while I was outta the room? Are the fumes from my sh*t really that toxic? Chocolate Orange McFlurry and a Festive Pie... F*cking advertising executives - I gotta Chocolate Orange McFlurry up my *ss for YOU!" Pauline: "Yeah, and when you've eaten that, why not suck on my Festive Hair Pie!" Oh, how we laughed...

Prometheus Unbound

2010-12-23T20:52:00.005Z

Just replied to an email from a friend (re: the direction of "True Blood" - the new band currently being formed by my lovely wife Pauline and myself... In it, he says: "Our insistence on originality and the resultant obscurity of our intractability saves us from the temptation of filthy lucre."
To which I replied, "Akshully, I think I can be original and make a nice big pile of "filthy lucre" at the same time! How do I hope to achieve this? Through the use of archetypes. Yeah, you heard! Allow me to elucidate..."
Archetypes are eternal. They apply to all ages, and are forever relevant. All an artist need do is choose the archetype/s closest to his heart and then embroider them with his own personality - all that matters most to him as an individual. Example: Sex Pistols, Ramones, Electric Eels, Stooges, Nirvana - it was several years before it dawned on me that they were all playing the same old 12-bar rock 'n' roll (patent: Chuck Berry)! How did I fail to notice this? (And believe me, it wasn't musical ignorance on my part - growing up, I learnt to play the guitar, the bass and the cornet!) The answer, of course, is that all the above groups had successfully applied their own personalities to the same basic archetype and made it their own! And on discovering them, I was so overwhelmed by them and so captivated by the emotional truths they expressed, that my critical faculties (such as they are!) were completely short-circuited!
However, this theory can be applied not only to music, but also to lyrics and outlook - one of my fave archetypes is Prometheus... I'm not talking about the original Hesiodic myth, in which Prometheus is portrayed as a mischievous human who brought about the downfall of mankind - I'm talking about the version portrayed by Aeschylus in "Prometheus Unbound"! (Actually, it looks as though it was in fact Aeschylus' son who wrote it, but what the fuck...) An archetype inspired by the concepts of progress and Rationalism - it goes a little something like this: "Man is Prometheus. He has stolen the fire and been horribly punished for it, but in the end, he will succeed in kicking the G*ds out of heaven, and the age of reason will begin." (end Orwell)
Nice allegory, huh? And get this - it doesn't just apply to myself as a member of Mankind, but to myself as an individual as well! See, all I have to do is replace the words "fire", "G*ds" and "heaven" with "junk" "bullshit" and the phrase "my own mind", and I find I have a perfect allegory for my own situation! (I just hope that this really is the beginning of my own "age of reason", and that it ain't a false dawn!) See what I mean by the power of archetypes and the possibilities of applying them to our own individual situations?

Pandemonia - The Ultimate Celebrity

2010-12-11T01:30:00.003Z

"Pandemonia" (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.

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I was going to write a puff-piece for this beautiful glamourpussy, but the truth is, there's nothing for me to say! Pandemonia's appearance tells you all you need to know about her - in her own words, "I could be anyone". Anyway, to find out more about the first true celebrity of the 21st century, click here...

Sid and Nancy Series - En Route Final Enigma #2

2010-12-09T16:52:00.005Z

"Sid and Nancy Series - En Route Final Enigma #2" (2010).
Montage: Jason Novak/Luis Drayton.

Luis Drayton - 22/11/10

2010-11-30T11:48:00.006Z

Photo: Luis Drayton; 22/11/10.
* * * *

Now I'm off (and with every intention of staying off), here I go public...

On the 20th November, my wife Pauline and I came off heroin after a 13 year addiction - thankfully, we've got a private income, so we've never suffered, but we've had such a bad drought in London recently, that we had no choice but to stop (a turn of events I'm now extremely grateful for...) Anyway, fearing a five-day cold turkey of unimaginable proportions, I bought two large bottles of Benylin (cough mixture with powerful knock-out properties)... Pauline followed the instructions and drank the reccommended dose - 2 teaspoonfuls and went to bed where she endured a mild (but still nasty) withdrawal that took her a full week to get over... I, however, drank my entire bottle of Benylin (definitely NOT recommended by the makers), followed it up with a litre of Irish Cream (vol 18.5%) and a bunch of valiums - and the following twelve hours remain a blur... Apparently, I went to bed, but five minutes later I felt the need to get up for a piss - a procedure which involved banging both my knees against the bedposts (and everything else in the vicinity), walking straight into the closed door of my bedroom, somehow opening it, walking straight into the doorframe - then, once I was out in the hallway, walking right past the bathroom and into the living room, colliding with and knocking over everything in sight and frequently falling flat on my face (loud yells of pain)... This plus the fact I was stark naked... This little routine was repeated about three or four times - and even when I had finally returned to bed, I succeeded in falling out at regular intervals! Eventually, I must've decided I didn't wanna risk another death-defying excursion to the bathroom, so I tried pissing in a bottle - but the pressure created by my attempts to piss meant I unleashed a hideously large splat of diarrhea onto the rug! Cleaned it up as best I could, and resolved to use the bathroom in future, come what may - but then the very same thing happened twice more due to a coupla inadvertent farts (unfortunate rug the recipient on each occasion)... :D Amazingly, though, I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely fine except for the fact I'd succeeded in breaking my face.... :D I can only guess that the gear must've been getting so weak over the past month, that my tolerance was by that point extremely low, plus it seems I succeeded in literally KOing the withdrawal symptoms outta my body! Anyway, above is my broken face (a small price to pay for complete avoidance of heroin withdrawal)...
Note: it's now 30/11/10, and though she's feeling much better, Pauline's still having tremendous difficulty getting her sleep pattern back! :p The beat goes on... Oh, and it's only just occurred to me that in mixing a sh*tload of vallies and a sh*tload of alcohol, I was setting myself up for respiratory arrest! :p Always remember, kids, be careful when mixing pills and alcohol...

The Lady

2010-11-20T10:39:00.002Z

Yesterday, as I was standing in one of the queues for the till at my local supermarket, I noticed standing a few feet behind me, a groovy-looking young woman - one with something of a fifties fetish. Yeah, I know, I know; there must be G*d knows how many fifties styles to copy! So let me spell it out a little clearer for you - this girl was straight-up rockabilly. Tight demin trousers, high-heeled sandals, a black cropped top with I forget what design on it (though it was very much in the style of those old "Vive Le Rock" T-Shirts that Malcolm McLaren used to sell); and oh yeah - she had bright red lipstick, just a touch of black eyeliner and mascara - and most fetching of all, she'd teased her short, dyed copper-red hair into a serious fucking quiff! As I paid the cashier, and then made my way out of the supermarket with my bags, I couldn't help stealing myself a last glance over my shoulder at the groovy rockabilly chick as she waited patiently in line. Man, was she cool... All this is really besides the point, however. See, it was the sight of the rockabilly chick that suddenly reminded me, as I set off down the Uxbridge Road towards Wood Lane, of what I really want to tell you about... (Are you sittting comfortably?)
The story I'm about to tell isn't really so much a story; more just a series of sightings, nothing more - but let me tell you, they were the kind of sights that once you've seen 'em, stick with you for the rest of your life! All these sightings (and there were three of them in all, spread over a period of about four years) were of a young woman - and believe me when I say she was one of the coolest women I have ever seen in my life! I never talked to her, I don't think she was ever even aware of my existence; and so in my memories, I've always had to settle for calling her, quite simply, "The Lady" - 'cause hand on heart, that is what she was...
The first time I caught sight of The Lady was in early 1993, and it was as I stood in a crowded lift, myself and all the other passengers waiting to be taken up from the tube platform to the ticket hall of Russell Square tube station. The very moment she entered, I became aware of The Lady's presence; although, truth to tell, it was hard not to be aware of her, since everyone else in the lift immediately became aware of her too! The Lady (and it's a vivid picture of her which I carry in my head to this day) was from head to toe, a complete glamourpuss. She was wearing a bright purple jacket and skirt; a frilly lavender-coloured blouse, the flounces of which stuck out of her sleeves and from behind her lapels; fishnet stockings; and a delightful little purple pillbox hat that matched her jacket and skirt - with a purple fishnet veil drawn down across the top half of her face! As for her face, it had been painted immaculately. Powdered china doll complexion, completely unblemished; bright red lips; a light dusting of blusher; and carefully painted-on eyeliner - with thick black false eyelashes (and they were so thick, they were quite clearly false) to boot! As we went up in the lift, everyone was whispering to one another and casting astonished glances at The Lady - who throughout all this, I might add, behaved impeccably - she just turned up her pretty ski-slope nose (and it really was a nose that had been made for sticking in the air!) and ignored 'em all... And at that moment, I felt as if I had fallen in love! The beauty and glamour of The Lady, the way she just turned her nose up and acted as if all this...trash...did not exist, was enough to awaken in me the most profound mixture of respect and sexual excitement. (Sacher-Masoch, anyone?) Of course, I would have loved to have gone up to her and said hello, how great I thought she looked etc. But did I? Of course not. At that time, I was a little 16-year-old runt; absolutely terrified of women, and struggling with my own emerging transvestism to boot! Suggest to me then that I went up and said hi, and I would have refused, out of a very real fear that The Lady would look haughtily down her ski-slope nose at me, then crush me like a worm under one of her perfectly stitched heels! (And I'm sure they were perfectly stitched, though I never got a chance to see in that crowded lift...) Anyway, we finally arrived at the ground floor; the doors opened; and that crowded lift parted like a fucking purple-and-orange-spotted sea so The Lady could make her way out into the ticket hall, and then out of sight...
So much for my first sighting of The Lady. My second sighting was on the platform of Holborn tube; and since I was living in Holborn in the summer of 1996, I think it must have been then that I saw her for the second time. (Holborn tube station, by the way, is only one stop from Russell Square; so I'm guessing that it was somewhere round here that The Lady lived.) On this occasion, it was just the two of us on a deserted platform; me passing her as I got off the tube, and then walked along the platform toward the stairs. As a result, this time round I got a chance to get a much better look at The Lady - yet I'm terribly sorry to report that I can't really remember what the hell it was she was wearing! Not that she was any less impeccably (or outrageously) dressed than before - on this occasion, as far as I can remember, she was wearing a cream-coloured suit, with the same lavender-coloured blouse as last time. What I do remember is her footwear - and fuck, they were worth the price of admission alone! Laced-up white high-heeled shoes; and what really delighted me was the fact that The Lady had laced them with purple silk ribbons! Yet if I can't remember the rest of The Lady's attire, it was all down to one small, yet totally fantastic detail; one which suddenly granted The Lady a history and background all her own (in my imagination, at least)... As she made her way down the tube platform, The Lady was pushing a small trolley; the kind used for the carrying of boxes or suitcases. Sitting on the trolley, and piled on top of one another, were half-a-dozen or so boxes, each of which bore the brand name, "Gordon's Gin". As if by magic, my imagination was instantaneously filled with a vision of The Lady carting that week's gin supply home to her mother, who was of course as outrageously glamourous as her! That's why I have trouble remembering what The Lady was wearing that time round; but dammit, it was well worth it, since that one small detail (and the vision which it inspired in me) did as much as anything to lodge The Lady firmly in my memory!
And the last time I saw her? That was less than a year later, and I was walking through Soho; down one of the two small side-streets that lead from Old Compton Street to the Charing Cross Road. I had just entered the side-street, when who should I see, walking down Charing Cross Road, but The Lady. This time, she was wearing her most extreme outfit of all - a full-on white ballgown with purple trim (seems she had a thing about purple, doesn't it?) and fuck knows how many petticoats underneath, so that she fairly bustled along; white satin gloves, the works... And as she walked past the entrance to Old Compton Street (so that I saw her for only a few short seconds), she seemed to me like a vision in a dream; one that appears, then disappears, just as abruptly. And looking back on it now, it seems fitting that my final encounter with The Lady should have been in such a manner; for although I had never known her, had never even looked her in the eyes, I was losing her; and though I didn't know it then, that was to be the last time I ever saw her...
Well, that's my story of "The Lady", as I knew her; and though I've since encountered many other glamourgirls, each of whom have passed through my consciousness and my life, none have made such an impression as the very first... Indeed, I wonder if you can imagine the effect The Lady had on me, a troubled, emerging teenage tranny; and one who'd never had so much as a sniff of glamour, whether on screen or in real life? Not that it was just her looks that affected me so profoundly; it was the way she walked, the way she carried herself, the way she held her head up high and refused to be intimidated by the stares of the general public that was such an inspiration to me; an inspiration and an influence too... Hell, I'll say it straight - if you'd been anything like the tranny I was at 16, and you'd encountered someone as glamourous, as outrageous and as dignified, I'm sure they would've had the same effect on you! So let me finish in best storytelling manner; by asking you all, trannies wherever and whoever you may be - from beer-swigging web-designing rock 'n' rollers, to wine-slurping, art-lecturing bloggers, to Coke-in-a-dented-Fanta-bottle swilling little assholes like me - I ask you now to join me in raising a glass, and drinking a silent toast to that feminine noblesse - inspiration to aspiring trannies everywhere...The Lady!

Raquel Welch

2010-11-12T15:04:00.004Z

"Raquel Welch" (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.

Drayton-Chroma #1 - Black

2010-11-04T20:24:00.007Z

I've always been a fan of Derek Jarman, his writings in particular (his Super 8 stuff too - but then that's another story); and if you haven't read 'em, I recommend his diary volume, "Modern Nature", which amongst other things, includes a fascinating account of the filming of Jarman's feature film, "The Garden", shot entirely on Super 8 in the garden of his fisherman's cottage on Dungeness beach. Of all Jarman's books, however, my own personal fave has to be "Chroma". Like myself, Jarman was a colour junky; and this short book, written on his deathbed, covers the entire spectrum - with gold, silver, and "translucency" as bonuses. Sensibly, Jarman chooses to take his colours one by one; and in each section, he lists his fave stuff (objects, concepts, turns of phrase - anything is fair game) associated with the colour in question. Sadly, as he progressed with the book, Jarman's health began to deteriorate rapidly - so much so, that he feared he would not live to finish it. He did manage to get it finished, but the book provides a record of his decline; so while the first colours are dealt with in an extravagant, poetic manner, by the end we are reduced to colour-coded lists of Jarman's favourite things - Blackpool, Black Arts, Black Forest etc. In the end, however, none of this really matters; it's still a fabulous book. So fabulous, in fact, that I feel inspired to have a crack at creating my very own Drayton-Chroma - my own personal list of favourite things, which (just like Jarman) I shall present to you colour by fucking-wonderful colour! I'll be adding a new colour every so often (i.e. when I feel like it), and I'm treating it as a work-in-progress, which means I'll be adding new stuff to different colours as and when I see fit! By the way, if anyone out there has anything they feel would be worth adding, leave your ideas in the comments section under the relevant colour, and the most poetic/amusing/disgusting will be included! Anyway, that's the introductory grind over and done with; now let the fun begin!

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Black Hole, Black Widow, Black Death (if you wanna read a really good flesh-crawler about the Black Death, I recommend Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, an account of the final major outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Europe, c. 1665-66)...

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Black Christmas (lousy horror flick, I just included it 'cause I dig the title), Black Caesar, Black Narcissus (all those camped-up nuns in a ferment of lesbian lust - wicked!)...

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Black Bitch (a card game, also known as "Hearts" and "Hunt the Cunt"), Black Cat, Black Panthers...

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Black Sunday (Cypress Hill's best album, by far), Back to Black (I don't give a shit about the music, I just think Amy Winehouse is a total glamourpussy, that's all), Fear of a Black Planet (greatest album by the greatest hip-hop group of all time)...

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Black Box, Black Rose, Black Knight ("I'll bite your legs off!")...

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Black Spring (by Henry Miller - I personally liked it better than "Tropic of Cancer"), The Black Prince, The Black Swan (a brilliant book which explains the tremendous role of the unpredictable in history)...

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Black Sheep, Black Humour, Black Dog Depression (man, I used to totally suffer from them)...

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Paint It Black (I don't care for the Stones' original, but punk group the Avengers recorded a firing cover), Black Leather Rock (faux-rocker tune composed by James Berman for Joseph Losey's 1963 film The Damned; later covered by the Electric Eels), and of course The Black Angel's Death Song (The Velvet Underground at their very finest!)...

Sexy Ness, Kinky Ness, Tranny Ness...

2010-10-27T16:22:00.005+01:00

"Kinky Ness" (2007). Altered Image: Luis Drayton.
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Recently I've been making a few promises to myself regarding stuff I want to write about. Included in my list of potential topics are the old Scala Cinema in King's Cross; Sun Ra; and cartoon characters and their ability to sexually arouse. Well, I think I'm gonna leave the Scala cinema for another time; and to be honest, there's so little I want to say regarding Sun Ra (none of it bad) that I might as well include it in this post... So I guess that leaves me free to deal with my chosen subject of - you guessed it - cartoon characters, and their power to give us, their viewers, the horn.
Cartoon characters and their ability to arouse isn't a new concept - hell, the inherent sexiness of Betty Boop, Jessica Rabbit et al has been described so many times by so many culture-geeks that I just want to round 'em up and fuck 'em all up the ass with a big strap-on! Not that I haven't felt the sexual allure of certain female cartoon characters; it's simply that they're not the ones you'd normally expect. Remember the exchange of dialogue in the film "Wayne's World"?

Garth: "Wayne, did you ever feel sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny?"
Wayne: "Nope."
Garth: "Not even when he dressed up as a girl bunny?"

Let me tell you something - I know exactly what Garth is talking about. But then my taste in women runs naturally towards the overtly-feminine, glamourpuss (read drag queen) type; so really, it's not that surprising. And though my taste in glamourpussies means I'm able to appreciate the sexiness of Boop, Rabbit and the rest of 'em, a lot of it is also down to the fact that Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit have plump, voluptuous figures with lots of curves. In his essay, "The Art of Donald McGill", George Orwell states that "(in cartoons) the Hottentot figures of the women are caricatures of the Englishman's secret ideal, not portraits of it". Well sure, they may be caricatures, but they're still close enough to my ideal for me to get excited about 'em! Hell, I've always had a liking for the exaggerated, and 'cause of that, I'd be much more likely to choose the caricature over the portrait! Every motherfucking time...
All this rumination on the portrayal of the female body in cartoons becomes pretty much irrelevant, however, when you consider my all-time fave cartoon starlet, the very pinnacle of animated sexiness - Lovely Ness. For those of you who don't remember, Lovely Ness was the sole (natch) female member of the Family Ness; a family of Loch Ness monsters, each of whom had an obvious and easily-definable trait (and the name to go with it). Of course, Lovely Ness' status as "the girl" meant that, in true chauvinist manner, she had to spend all her time pouting, fluttering her eyelashes, running her hands through her hair and gazing into a mirror. (Just like a real tranny, then... Hey! This is beginning to make a lot more sense!) If I remember rightly, Lovely Ness also posessed a soft, feminine voice and was a tremendously kind and sweet-natured soul; always ready, at any rate, to help out those two Scottish brats - the ones who provided the catalyst for each and every story (as well as a human link between us, the viewers, and something as difficult to identify with as a Loch Ness monster - I suppose that was the thinking, anyhow). At the age of eight, I remember getting very excited over Lovely Ness - couldn't work out whether I wanted to fuck her or be her! (Listen; when you're eight years old, living in the suburbs, and you're an emerging tranny to boot, you take your pleasures wherever you can find 'em.) The only difficulty, I remember thinking to myself, was that Lovely was a monster, and a giant too! It would, I surmised, be extremely difficult to fuck her, even supposing I did work out where the snatch was. Somewhere at the back I guess, which means I'd have to do her from behind! Very Sadean, fucking a woman up the ass... One thing bugs me, though; and as far as I can see, it's an insurmountable obstacle. If Lovely Ness is a giant, she surely posesses a giant snatch (a snatch to match), far too big for the average human penis - so what's the point of screwing her at all? Probably wouldn't even touch the sides... Still, I could always hope that Lovely has a human-sized snatch; this being the case, none of the other Nessies would be capable of shagging her, in which case she'd be absolutely gagging for it! Anyway, if I could choose, this is the order in which I'd do Lovely Ness: snatch (ass and snatch, for these purposes, being the same thing); mouth; then, if I had any left, I'd take her up the snatch once more. Chr*st, I'm so exhausted from typing all this out that I'll have to leave Sun Ra for my next post! Whew... Wonder if, when he created the Family Ness, Peter Maddocks envisaged his characters being used as the basis for sexual fantasies?

Transmission

2010-10-21T09:23:00.005+01:00

"Transmission" (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.

An Open Letter to SlapstickStuff.com

2010-10-14T17:55:00.002+01:00

Dear SlapstickStuff,

First of all, please allow me to thank you from the bottom of my nut sac for your fabulous creations. To a tranny wammer such as myself, who loves seeing girls being hit in the face with cream pies, your wonderful videos are like a gift from the gods. Your "targets" are delightfully sexy and pretty; your pies (foil pie dishes with a deep filling of Cool Whip on something you Americans call "a Graham cracker base") expertly created and delivered; and your skits silly enough to appeal to someone with a sense of humour as ludicrous as mine. (I was especially impressed by your recent deconstruction of the routine in which two people sit in conversation, and one is repeatedly pied while the other keeps on talking.) Without doubt, you have succeeded in turning slapstick WAM into a art form; and I am certain that in a hundred years time, your brilliant videos will be treated with the same reverence as the works of Bunuel, Pasolini, Visconti, and made the subject of serious dissertations and treatises. My only criticism (a purely subjective one, I hasten to add, based on nothing more than personal taste) is as follows: when one of your "targets" is hit in the face with a pie, and once the foil dish has fallen from their face, no attempt is made to pick the cream from their eyelids, nostrils or lips. This may seem a small, almost insignificant consideration; but as I am sure you are aware, in the aesthetics of fetishism, detail is everything. At present, in your videos, no effort is made to distinguish between the "target's" features and the cream covering their face; consequently, the aesthetic effect is no different from that created by flinging a handful of plaster at a wall. If the above suggestion were implemented, however, I am certain the results would prove to be nothing less than stunning.

Thanking you once more for your sterling work in the field of wet-and-messy video art;

Luis Drayton

* * * *

Discover the wonderful world of slapstick WAM for yourself at: www.slapstickstuff.com

It's Great To Be a Cow...

2010-10-07T00:39:00.006+01:00

"All I Want is a Place to Graze..." (1996). Sketch: Luis Drayton.
* * * *

In 1996, while at art college, I came up with the idea of a musical based on the story of a group of starstruck cows who escape from the slaughterhouse and go off in search of fame as bovine superstars in their own right. The musical was, unsurprisingly, called "Cows", and the title song went as follows...

* * * *

The sun comes up - oh not again
We come out with stars in our eyes
We roll off down the road to town
And who knows what stage we shall find?

Oh it's great to be a cow
We dream and dance and live in hopes of fame
Oh it's great to be a cow
Although a nail in the hoof makes us lame

And through the burning day we work - we sing - of lives - that bring
A meat pie to the open door of fate
In leaden midday sun we raise - our eyes - to star - lit skies
And hope that we won't end up on a plate

Oh it's great to be a cow
We work and play to see our names in lights
Oh it's so great to be a cow
And lose our brains and lives in copyright

For as we twist and turn our ears - all burn - a sing - ing fern
Of who will lose and who will get their chance
And then we feel our horns lock in - the churn - the key - will turn
A murdered love a sweetbread's innocence

Slow "finale":
Oh it's great to be a cow
The bloody rosebud's hope the part will fit
Oh it's so great to be a cow
The same sword's applause when our throats are slit

Oh it's so great to be a cow
And as we roll off in the setting sun
We'll have our gen-it-als and brains - burnt - one - by - one!
* * * *
You can see the rest of the designs over at my flickrstream...

Marilyn Monroe/Rembrandt/Robert Fry

2010-09-28T20:44:00.006+01:00

"Marilyn Monroe/Rembrandt/Robert Fry" (2010).
Montage: Luis Drayton.

Pop Songs and TV Theme Tunes - A Scat Fetishist's Interpretation

2010-09-22T12:15:00.001+01:00

In his wartime diaries, George Orwell describes how "during the bad period of the bombing, when everyone was semi-insane, not so much from the bombing itself as from broken sleep, interrupted phone calls, the difficulty of communications, etc. etc. I found that scraps of nonsense poetry were constantly coming into my mind. They never got beyond a line or two and the tendency stopped when the bombing slacked off, but examples were:

An old Rumanian peasant
Who lived at Mornington Crescent

and

And the key doesn't fit and the bell doesn't ring
But we all stand up for God Save the King

and

When the Borough Surveyor has gone to roost
On his rod, his pole or his perch."

Talk about great minds thinking alike! About a year ago, and for a short period, Pauline and I looked after a young English Bull Terrier which had been badly abused. I say a short period, but it was long enough to drive both Pauline and myself completely round the bend. Because of the abuse which it had received, the dog was horribly insecure; and as if that wasn't enough, Pauline and I suspected that was in fact inbred, and as a result, extremely retarded. Certainly it never took any notice of anything Pauline or I said; nor did it seem to have the slightest inkling of that which we were trying to communicate. As I ordered it for the thousandth time to get down off the bed, I remember looking into its eyes; twinkling black eyes that saw everything yet understood nothing. During its time with us, the animal succeeded in chewing up the phone cable, rendering the phone useless; chewing up Pauline's coat, the only one she had, so that she had to spend the entire winter with nothing but a skimpy jacket to keep her warm; and perhaps most aggravating of all, spending each and every night jumping up and down off the bed; a form of meaningless hyperactivity, yet one which prevented Pauline and myself from getting any sleep whatsoever. After three months of this, the strain was beginning to show in a number of ways. It was only when my left eyelid began twitching uncontrollably, however, that I realised I was suffering from stress. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that stress was also the reason for my imagination presenting me (when I was not thinking of anything in particular) with fragments of nonsense rhyme. Some of them were nothing more than rhyming gibberish; others were fragments of pop songs and TV theme tunes with the lyrics rewritten. What was most curious, however, was the fact that the lyrics my imagination came up with always seemed to have rimming as their subject matter. For example (to the tune of Supertramp's "Dreamer"):

"Bumhole, you got a slimy bumhole
And it makes me come as I rim it out;
Yeah, bumhole; to me it's one big yumhole-"

This was as far as I ever got with this particular set of lyrics; however, I remember being really quite pleased with myself for coining the word "yumhole"; and my rhyming of this neologism with "bumhole" struck me as particularly clever. Another scat-based fragment that came to me around this time was set to the chorus of the theme tune from kids' TV cartoon "Trolls". If I remember rightly, it went:

"It's a scat thing, it's a cak thing,
Rim it out until you yak thing, baby,
Welcome to the bumhole..."

With regard to the above fragment, I considered my rhyming of the words "cak" and "yak" to be extremely innovative. As for the line "rim it out until you yak thing, baby"; this was inspired by the line "lick, lick, lick, slurp, slurp, slurp; suck it till your jaw begins to hurt" from the Pansy Division song "Cocksucker Club"; a reference I felt indicated an admirable knowledge of both pop and queercore culture.
Impressive as these fragments were, the price of their inspiration was too much to bear. Shayla the bull terrier was more than Pauline and I could cope with, and we both breathed a sigh of relief as her new owner took her back with him to Newcastle. Since then, no other examples of rimming-based pop poetry have come to me, which is a shame. However, I am left with one nagging question which refuses to go away: why, I ask myself, was my subconscious creating lyrics on the subject of rimming, a fetish I have no interest in whatsoever? Why the hell didn't my subconscious create lyrics about dressing as a girl and being hit in the face with shaving cream pies? Now that would have been a lot more to my taste!

The Life and Loves of a Sid Vicious T-Shirt...

2010-09-16T13:06:00.004+01:00

"Luis Outside the BBC". Photo: Stephanie; 26/04/08.

* * * *

Take a look at the above photo - see the somewhat faded, but undeniably cool Sid Vicious T-Shirt I'm wearing? Well, what if I told you that T-Shirt has played a defining role in the path my life has so far taken? Shut up. I'm serious - and to prove it, let me tell you exactly how it all happened... (Cue shimmery dissolve and harp music - just to set the mood, you dig...)
If you've read my article Six inch Killaz: The Beginning, then you'll already know that it was thanks to the above T-Shirt that I got into punk rock - seeing an especially glamorous drag queen wearing it one night at the WayOut club, I was so impressed by the image on the T-Shirt - that of a hardcore punk rocker showing total disrespect to the camera, a slogan beneath to the effect that said punk rocker had not lived past the age of 21 - that the following day, I went out and bought myself a second-hand copy of the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind the Bollocks" and a Pistols T-Shirt of my own - passport to my new life as a sneering, rebellious punk rocker in my own right... Before long, I had formed my very own tranny punk rock group - myself on bass guitar (following in Sid's footsteps, as if you need telling) and the drag queen who had inspired me, and who I had ever since been admiring from afar - Holly Cock, no less - on lead vocals... All this as a result of a Sid Vicious T-Shirt - not bad going, huh?
Fast forward three and a half years - Six Inch Killaz are still going strong, with a long line of performances, recordings, videos and TV appearances behind us, and even greater successes to come... It was a summer afternoon, and I had arranged to spend the day hanging out with Holly and Jasmine (tha Killaz' other lead vocalist) at their Islington pad. On arrival, I was surprised to see Pauline, an old friend of Holly and Jasmine, sitting on the living room floor, smoking a cigarette and talking to Pearl, Holly's closest friend and earth mother to tha Killaz. I had met Pauline on a few previous occasions, and we were on friendly terms; however, it was a while since I had last seen her. Turned out she had just left her abusive partner, and was taking full advantage of her new-found freedom to hook up with some old friends. Before long, we were deep in conversation, and by the following morning, it seemed as if we had known each other our entire lives. So much so, that Pauline invited me back to the hotel where she was staying - and since that day, twelve years ago, Pauline and I have stayed together, sharing the good times and supporting each other throughout the bad. It was Pauline who in November 2003, as my supposed dose of flu degenerated into vomiting, a hideous migraine, the loss of the left side of my body - and finally, uncontrollable convulsions - phoned for an ambulance - and in doing so, saved my life. And a few years later, when Pauline fell from our first-floor balcony and succeeded in smashing both her feet and breaking her back, it was I who phoned for an ambulance before hurrying downstairs to comfort her; and ever since, I have provided round-the-clock care, unable as Pauline now is to walk or even stand properly. Total mutual devotion, or what?
All very well, you may say; but how did a faded Sid Vicious T-Shirt come to play such a pivotal role in the above events? Well, get this - that same T-Shirt which introduced me to punk rock and led to the forming of a group which to this day, continues to bring me and the rest of the Killaz new fans (long after the group's demise, I might add) - that T-Shirt was lent to Holly by none other than Pauline herself. See, Pauline was more than a run-of-the-mill Pistols fan - she had grown up in Hackney, North London, in the early 1970s, and had the good fortune to be friends with assorted members of the original UK punk scene. This included future members of the Sex Pistols - Glen Matlock, Wally Nightingale, and most remarkable of all, one John Beverley, who Pauline had formed a close friendship with as far back as 1972 - a friendship which was only to fade as John Beverley became Sid Vicious and began a mercurial rise to fame, followed by descent into heroin addiction and death - a path which nevertheless ensured his lasting status as one of the 20th century's defining cultural icons. (You can read Pauline's account of her friendship with John Beverley/Sid Vicious here...) So not only was Pauline instrumental in my cultural and artistic evolution, a path which would eventually lead to my founding Six Inch Killaz; she also ensured my friendship with Holly Cock, a friendship which would one day lead to our meeting one another, and on discovering how much we admired, respected and cared for one another, to a loving partnership - a partnership which continues to this day... G*ddammit, stop snivelling, you sappy asshole! *Sigh*... Such a sentimental fool am I...

Accident

2010-09-10T10:48:00.007+01:00

"Accident" (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.
(Incorporating imagery by Stefan Krikl.)

Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Part Two

2010-09-04T18:23:00.004+01:00

What follows in this sick and sordid tale (if you haven't read Part One, you'd better do so first, 'cause I can't be bothered to recap...) comes to me from Pauline, seeing as I spent the next three and a half days unconscious. When the ambulance arrived at Hammersmith hospital, they sedated me to stop the fits, then gave me a head scan. Turns out several large abscesses had settled right in the middle of my brain, and my skull had filled up with pus to the extent that it was now pressing against both my brain and the walls of my skull. And oh yeah, I'd had at least a couple of strokes (everything in excess, to quote de Sade...) Seems they were going to wait a couple of days before performing surgery; they had, after all, put me into a coma and wired me up to a life support system, so that my body couldn't sabotage me any more than it already had... That night, however, I had another stroke, far worse than the first two, and they had to rush me to Charing Cross hospital for immediate surgery. So it would appear that Pauline, by threatening the emergency service operators with a slow and painful death if they didn't send an ambulance round straight away, saved my life... During my time on the chopping board, Pauline was having kittens. Apparently, they'd told her that my chances of surviving surgery were next to nothing, and there were several reasons why I probably wouldn't make it; to take just one example, the surgeons had to drill four holes in my skull (one of 'em through my left orbit - that's right, my fucking eye socket!) in order to drain the pus. Every time they drilled a hole, there was an 80% chance of my suffering a brain hemorrhage, in which case there would have been nothing the surgeons could have done - other than watch me bleed to death... The doctors had told Pauline I'd be in theatre about four hours; after five and a half had passed, she was waiting for them to bring up a body bag. But of course, they didn't; they brought me back up and told Pauline that if I made it through the night, my chances would be a lot better... Five and a half hours, though; I wonder what the hell happened down there? What I do remember are the dreams; I was crawling through a low, narrow passage into a big empty room with walls of red and blue neon; but shining through the walls, I saw what lay behind: an unending black abyss, a void, that threatened me with total oblivion...as I crawled across the room, I could hear a thousand clocks ticking, and I turned to see a long line of figures, shapes of men crawling alongside me. But they were all made of stars... I asked the one at the front, who was right next to me, who they were. He replied, 'we're your dream figures, and we've been sent to accompany you through your subconscious.' They showed me many different things; a cage with a miniature circus parade inside going round and round without stopping; a miniature marching band who performed while balancing on some bass strings that were attached to a piece of varnished wood, the kind you see on the walls of tacky pubs and lower-class homes... At one point I found myself lying on a stretcher with a load of tubes coming out of me; each of them ran into one of a long line of tents, inside each of which there was an Indian squaw watching TV. I knew this 'cause I could see the blue light of the TV from within each tent and the silhouette it cast of the squaw sitting cross-legged on the ground...then after that, nothing. Next thing I knew, I was lying on a bed in a ward, feeling like shit, tubes running out of every vein and orifice and with my entire left side paralysed and two hundred metal staples holding my head together. Of course I was raving, since they had me on morphine, painkillers, Valium and seven different anti-pus drugs (they didn't know which kind of pus it was, I guess...) I spent the next three days in a continuous cold sweat writhing around on my bed, trying to escape...but of course, I couldn't. I kept yelling at them to remove the force-field which they were using to hold me down and to let me go. As if that weren't enough, I was tormented by continual waking nightmares in which my surroundings twisted themselves into images of grinning faces that mocked and sneered at me; faces of skulls with pinpoints of light shining out from their empty eye-sockets, faces of slutty, heavily-made-up prostitutes who wished to first suck me off before biting my dick off... In the end, however, I came to my senses. Pleased though, to find I'd given 'em all a good fright, since they were all waiting to see just how much of a vegetable I was when I woke up... And after that? Eight weeks of hellish pain, a new torture every day. Spent weeks slowly learning to walk again and get my left side back, as well as get my weight back up from five stone; was transferred to Hammersmith, where I spent three weeks in quarantine as they thought I had MRSA; by this time, the doctors knew I'd copped a dose of sinusitis; then, just as it began to look like I was going to make it, the headaches came back; they discovered that my head had filled up again and had to take me back to Charing Cross for another sodding operation... this, plus all the injections, sinus washes, tubes stuck up my arse and staples yanked out of my head I could possibly wish for...
In the end, they set me free. I went home and spent over a year on anti-epileptics which made my entire body shake uncontrollably, wiped what little was left of my short-term memory and kept me, sixteen hours out of every twenty-four, in a state of drugged slumber (just like Genet on Nembutal!) Believe me, sitting propped up in bed, drooling at the television is no way to spend your days... So in the end, I took the option of coming off the fucking anti-epileptics, and though it means I live under the threat of dropping dead from a brain seizure at any moment, it's well worth it if it means I don't have to live life as a fucking zombie...
There's one last thing, however, which I've just got to tell you about: after I'd woken up in hospital, Pauline told me an amazing thing. She said that in the three days I was unconscious after I came up from surgery, there were times I seemed to be awake, though I never said a word. Except for one time when Pauline was sitting by my bed talking to me, and I suddenly lifted my head up and exclaimed, 'Pauline, you'll never guess who's on the other side of the doors!' Pauline turned to look, but couldn't see anyone looking through the windows of the doors to my room in intensive care. 'Who is it?' she said, turning back to face me. 'Can't you see?' I said excitedly; 'it's William S. Burroughs, and he's got Alex Trocchi and Albert Camus with him too!' And do you know, I really think they did come to visit...

Luis Drayton and the Gods of Pus - Part One

2010-08-24T21:08:00.004+01:00

Skinny and anaemic little tranny that I am, I'd nevertheless always considered myself extremely fortunate, in that I had never been prone to any kind of disease or serious illness. So it came as something of a surprise, to say the least, when out of the blue I was struck down by some fucking illness - one I'd never even heard of - that almost killed me and laid me flat out on my back to boot! It's a long story, but worth telling, so here goes...
In October 2003, I began to feel ill. At first, I thought it was nothing more than a bad case of flu, and so I tried to continue with my business as if nothing was wrong. But two, three weeks passed, and it only seemed to get worse. I couldn't eat, I felt continually sick, had a fucker of a headache which I just couldn't seem to shake off. Worst of all was a nauseating smell of decay, of something rotting, which actually seemed to be coming from inside my head. Pauline (my wife...yeah, you heard right) was at first kind and patient, but when she saw me continually sticking my fingers down my throat in an attempt to make myself properly sick, she began to think I was trying to wind her up. She was very ill with flu herself, and so wasn't thinking properly. And neither was I, evidently; a month or two before, I had discovered, on weighing myself, that I had gone down from seven and a half to six and a half stone. Yet it never occurred to me to mention it to anyone; that or the fact that whenever I lay down, as soon as my head hit the pillow I was afflicted by horrific stabbing pains in my head which lasted several minutes. Then one day, Pauline came home to find the living room an absolute wreck. What had happened was, I had crawled off the bed to take a piss, then found I couldn't stand up. And though I was able to use my right arm and leg to crawl about the room, pulling things down, dragging the duvet off the bed in futile attempts to pull myself back up, my left side just wouldn't seem to work at all. I spent what seemed like hours lying on the floor, phone receiver a few feet from my head, desperately trying to dial Pauline's mobile number. Towering a thousand feet above, like some mocking G*d, was the television - on which I could just make out the image of Des O'Connor sharing a joke with special guest Richard Digance on some shitty daytime chat show. In the end, though, I somehow managed to get back into bed, and when Pauline returned and asked what the hell had happened, all I could think to say was that it was the work of the cat! Thank Christ for Pauline, though; finally she got so pissed off with my letting the food spill out of my mouth when she tried to feed me, and nonsensical replies to questions accompanied by idiotic half-smiles and a lot of staring off into space, that she gave me an angry push...and watched as I fell off the bed, spent a few seconds thrashing around on the floor, then just sat there (half-)smiling to myself and staring off into space. It was at this point that Pauline realised there was something seriously wrong, and it was only 'cause she kept on at the emergency services to send an ambulance that one arrived in time; there'd been a big pile-up on the motorway that day and they'd run out, apparently. (Send for an ambulance, or an accident investigator, he's breathing like a furnace, see ya later alligator...) But then Pauline was encouraged in her efforts by the fact that I'd started having almost continuous fits, 'like something out of The Exorcist'. Pauline later told me it was only in the ambulance that she noticed how thin I'd become, 'like something out of Belsen, the skull was showing through your fucking face!' The paramedics, meanwhile, thought I was suffering from AIDS. The ambulance is the last thing I remember. Next thing I knew, I woke up in a strange room. I walked out and down a corridor into a much larger room. Various people asked me how I was feeling. Then a doctor sits down next to me and tells me I have a new personality. Really, the stupid fucker should have said that I was a new personality, that would've made much more sense! Nah, seriously*...

Click here to read Part Two...

* You'll only get this joke if you've read Robert M. Pirsig's novel, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". If you haven't, I really can't be bothered to explain...

Slit Critic

2010-08-16T09:26:00.003+01:00

"Slit Critic" (2010). Montage: Luis Drayton.

The Day My Father Died

2010-08-09T23:42:00.002+01:00

Summer holiday, twelve years old, and opening my eyes, the world already seemed changed - a day totally different from those which had come before. Used to waking up alone, certainly - both my parents worked, in order to send me to a public school where I was bitterly unhappy and from which I would ultimately drop out - yet standing on the stairs, listening for voices, the silence that filled the house felt quite unlike anything I had previously experienced. A bright summer morning, light filtering through the net curtains - and not a soul in sight, not a sound to be heard. Silence? This was the silence of the void, of eternity itself.
Mid-morning, and I was sitting on the carpet of our comfortable, middle-class drawing room, watching a recording of "The Kenny Everett Television Show" from the night before - Everett at the arse-end of his career, not even featured in the "musical sketch" which I was watching over and over again... A thirty-second jingle performed by three big-titted glamourpussies who at one point made a reference to the "wibbly-wobbly jellies" - more like blancmanges - which, smiling sweetly, they held towards the camera - while I sat wishing they would just cut the crap and shove them into each others' faces... Watching for the tenth time, my thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the front door. Postman, perhaps? Turning off the television and walking out of the room and into the hallway, I was surprised to see through the ribbed glass that filled the front door, a tall, elderly figure - a man - dressed in black. Standing just behind, my mother; it was her presence which reassured me enough to step forward and open the door.
'John,' my mother said, as she and the man entered, 'this is Mr. X. He's a coroner.' I stared blankly at Mr. X, whose face was long, gaunt and deeply lined. Should the man's profession have provided me with any clue as to what was coming? Not really - what followed happened too fast for me to reflect. The three of us entered the drawing room and my mother sat me down on the flower-patterned couch. It was as she knelt before me on the flower-patterned rug, that I realised she was in a state of great distress. Mr. X stood a few feet behind my mother, his features cast in an expression of professional solemnity.
'It's your father,' my mother began. 'There's been an accident.' Holding my hands in hers, she went on, 'James was working outside that house this morning. He was ready to fit the panes of glass into the new window frames.'
I nodded. My father was a carpenter who specialised in making and fitting new windows. My mother stopped and took a deep breath, then continued. 'Well, he was offloading the new panes of glass from the back of the van when one of them slipped and fell to the ground. It shattered, and James was badly cut by the flying glass.'
It was at this point that realisation began to dawn - a feeling of frozen horror as the world suddenly began to retract, shrinking rapidly to a point where nothing existed except for my mother and the black-suited figure of death standing just a few feet behind.
'Is he...?' I managed to say... But I couldn't complete the sentence. There was no need. My mother, her voice cracking, exclaimed, 'yes!' - and it was then that we both broke down. My father, who I had loved more than anyone else in my life, and who had worshipped the ground I walked on. My mother, who had figured as a benign presence somewhere in the background of my childhood, and little more, reached forward to embrace me. And it was at that moment that everything - the course of my life, all possible futures - changed forever.

A Personal Message From the Queen of All Pus

2010-08-03T23:35:00.007+01:00

"Luis Drayton's PrettySick" (2009). Video: Luis Drayton.

* * * *

Testing, testing, one, two, three... Ready? Okay then - let's tear this shit up and get busy! Ladies, gentlemen and those who have had the operation - coming from the pretty, pretty lips, the horny, horny dick and the filthy fucking mind of Luis Drayton, it gives me the greatest pleasure to present my brand new blog - "The Queen of All Pus"! Where I'll be stretching my phenomenal talents to the utmost, so that you can enjoy the very best in essays, articles, artwork, cut-ups and a whole other crock of shit - all of it from the beautifully warped minds of not just myself, but the "PrettySick Posse", who I'll be introducing you to over the course of the coming months... Not only this, I'll be entertaining you with the re-hashed and re-heated best bits from my previous blog, "Luis Droppings", plus anything else I can think of to fill up space... (Yeah, yeah, I know I just said this blog is brand new. Shut up. It's not as if I have to spend my poxy introductory post blowing the Trade Descriptions Act, is it?) Before we get started, though, I guess I'd better introduce myself to those of you unfortunate enough not to be acquainted with my beautiful selfish... My name is Luis Drayton - the Queen of All Pus, the Sickest of the Ceiling, the Prettiest Punk Around! Artist, writer, filmmaker, musician, photomontage artist and much more besides - hell, I guess I'm just the greatest! (In case you hadn't already guessed...) Want proof of the above grandiose claims? Then I suggest you make your way on over to my website, Luis Drayton's PrettySick, where you'll find a mess of Pop Art, cut-ups, transvestite punk (courtesy of my group, Six Inch Killaz) and other all-purpose underground bullshit with which to satisfy your sickest desires... Hey, have I written enough? I'm itching to start jacking myself silly...I mean, expressing my own personal muse and applying my talents to the utmost...