187. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER JILLITHAN SWIFT, REPORTING LIVE FROM PLANET OUT

From the Archives

(January 2006) This whole JT Leroy/ James Frey debacle got me wondering about the legitimacy of other creative types’ stories, so I did a little digging and discovered that embellishment runs rampant among us creative types.

Why just yesterday I discovered that Adrienne Rich isn’t really Adrienne Rich at all but is instead the once-popular singer-songwriter Paul Williams, a small blond man who recorded “Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song” back when we were all still playing our music on turntables.

You remember this hit, right? Just an old-fashioned love song playing on the radio and wrapped around the music is the sound of someone promising they’ll never go. You’ll swear you’ve heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on and no need it bringing it back ’cause it’s never really gone....

So how’d I smoke Paul out? Well it occurred to me that Paul’s hair looks an awful lot like any number of haircuts at Michigan Women’s Music Festival or any pride event or, for that matter, in my local writing group, and then click! I realized that Adrienne has always sported that same bowly haircut too (only Paul cleverly dyed it brown).

Well, you better just go ahead and sob into your dog-eared copy of Diving into the Wreck now because, even though some people will insist that she couldn’t be Paul and that Adrienne is firmly ensconsed in some remote Old Dyke Winnebago community in the desert, the truth is that this Adrienne construct is living proof of what a little hair dye and a lot of feminist theory can do to a man.

I never suspected that a small-time rock star could evolve like that but, of course, Ladyslipper has been telling us for twenty-some-odd years now that Meg Christian abandoned wimmin’s music for higher enlightenment.

And, well, that explanation always seemed a tad too convenient to me.

Turns out Meg’s ashram is a bunch of dildoeedoo. You see, Ladyslipper didn’t want the bad publicity so, when Meg got busted for masterminding a highly illegal lipstick ring and wound up in Leavenworth, they made up a PC story, but fast.

Could it get any worse, you ask.

Well, I’m sad to report that Mab and Minnie Bruce aren’t even from Alabama and Dorothy Allison ain’t from South Cackylacky either and nary a one of them can say y’all properly (yawwwwl).

Nope. The three chicas merely drove through the Deep South on their way to a Janis Joplin concert, parked their Falcon in an obscure Bamberg SC parking lot and, while sharing some of the Colonel’s secret recipe, decided that what the movement really needed was three professional lesbo southerners because, let’s face it, we are few and far between.

And I am spinning yarns out of thin air just because it amuses me, y'awwwl.

READING:The Nation

LISTENING TO: Siouxie and the Banshee’s “Peek-a-Boo”

SANG IN SHOWER: Elton John’s “Levon”

BEST-OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: your academic credentials have expired (egads, man!)