My most recent invention is a dating service called Hater Mater, where people are paired based on the things they dislike rather than the things that they like.
This is the preliminary questionnaire I have written for people using the App:
1. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the sky?
2. Please choose the stupidest fucking sign in the zodiac.
3. Order these celebrities in the sequence in which you would most want to see them surreally injured in a crossbow incident:
Amy Schumer
The Ikea Monkey
Ethan Hawke
The entire cast from Orange is the New Black
Eric Trump
Adam Driver and Terry Richardson
4. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the ocean?
5. Which Margaret Atwood novel gives you the worst stabbing stomach pain?
6. What do you hate more, squirrels or birds? (Please elaborate)
7. Do your parents hate you more than you hate them, or do you hate them more than they hate you?
8. Is you best friend kind of an asshole?
9. Do you find chopsticks to be infuriating and stupid and pretentious?
10. Do you often find yourself fantasizing about making over-rated Canadian author Margaret Atwood cry?
11. Which part of this passage from a celebrated Margaret Atwood novel do you despise the most?
“Who are you? And I mean really. Who are you?”
My gut tells me that if I tell her right now, in this moment, it will not be well-received. “A friend,” I say, my gaze lowering to her lush mouth and lifting. “And the man who wants to kiss you. Really kiss you. Can I kiss you, Myla?”
“You’re asking?”
“Yes. I’m asking. After all you’ve been through-”
“He hasn’t destroyed me. He hasn’t beaten me and I don’t like that you think he has.”
“I don’t think he’s beaten you.”
“He hasn’t,” she insists. “I’m not giving him that power and damn it, you better not either by treating me like I’m broken and fragile. So kiss me if you’re going to kiss me or let me go, if you don’t want-”
I cup the back of her head, and slant my mouth over hers, my tongue sliding against hers, stroking, caressing, and the taste of her, one part hunger I welcome, but the other part, the torment, I intend to drive away. I deepen the kiss, my hand pressing beneath her tank top, finding warm, soft skin. My fingers splay over her rib cage, while my mind reminds me that no matter how big she talks, she wants this escape for a reason. She has been abused, used, hurt. “
12. “Everybody loves a parade,” true or false?
13. Is Real Estate for fools?
14. When you hear the word “Mindfulness” do you want to build an attack drone or buy a magic killing sword?
15. What do you hate more, having to use a sink or writing with a pen?
16. Which superhero would you most like to beat-up in a fight?
17. Do you hate it when people say, “Good Morning!”
18. Are relationships insanely unrealistic and entirely impossible?
19. On a scale of 1 to 100, how much do you hate non-Spanish speaking people who pronounce Nicaragua as ‘Knee-ah-rah-hah?”
20. If you heard that Margaret Atwood opened a restaurant and that all the sandwiches were named after her poems, would you immediately vomit?
]]>Sitting beside me were a couple of women who had driven five hours from Wheeling, Ohio to see the show. Holding a large, plastic cup of beer in her hand as if she was at a Tiger’s game, Terry said, “This will be the fourth time I’ve seen her. Five hours is nothing. I would have driven 15 hours—there’s nobody like k.d.” Her girlfriend leaned in over her shoulder and nodded her head at me, adding, “It’s true, it’s true. You’re going to love the show.”
They were right.
On stage Lang is simultaneously ironic and sincere, in possession of a fearlessness and confidence that she pours right in to her receptive audience. Her voice is a wonder, the sort of thing that gives one pause and forces consideration of divinity– as if for reasons unknown a presiding spirit touched her with a vocal genius that would ever elude the rest of us. Watching, she reminded me of an oracle, an entity that defied categories of gender and who by turn and flash of light, appeared masculine or luminously, mystically feminine. In another age she would have been burned or worshipped as a God.
In Detroit, she was simply adored.
The embodiment of a single-combat hero for a generation of women, the power and self-assurance of her persona– the complete absence of uncertainty– seemed to be helping the audience imagine better, idealized versions of themselves. A kind of alchemy was taking place, and for 90 minutes the crowd was celebrating in who they were and who they might yet become, free now from all the battles they might have confronted as young, gay women growing up in the States in the 1970s.
At one point in the show I looked behind us and saw two black women near 60, the only black people in the crowd, I think. Both of them– looking like they had dressed for church– had their hands pressed to their lips as if in wonder or prayer, and tears glistening in their eyes. It was a holy moment, I think. With Lang’s voice rising so clearly, it felt like we were all in a cathedral rather than a casino. Looking about, everybody seemed so lost to the voice that it was impossible to know to what point they might have been transported, or what healing they had been looking for in this pilgrimage to MotorCity in the first place.
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