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PREFACE to Good Advice...

I was tutoring Japanese students in midtown Manhattan, when Manabu showed up. He was an anomaly in the corporate school, which mostly consisted of executives and housewives. Round face, bad skin, plucked eyebrows. One day he came in wearing a skirt for men, and the owner just about had a heart attack, another day he claimed he cut his tongue, but of course he’d had it pierced and was lying, out of habit. Manabu was going to have a tough road ahead, and I found myself with an odd thought: Please don’t let me happen again.

I understood his dilemma right away, having taken plenty of blows for being ahead of trends, and I could see this happening to Manabu in the upper class Japan of the early ‘90s, which was socially more like America’s 1950s. He ended up taking Special K and walking in front of a bus, badly wounded in the most literal sense. I couldn’t help Manabu, the culture gap was too severe, but I began to mull over the idea of providing a guide book to help others like him, the fashion forward and culturally isolated. Manic D Press kindly agreed with my idea, and I got to work.

You see, I’d been the first punk in high school, an ardent fag hag when that was frowned upon, attended Columbia University while simultaneously appearing in skin mags, been campy and blithe in the era of sincere and detailed writing -- all kinds of things too early for my surrounding society, and taken the blows. Jazz philosopher Albert Murray, who spent his life in the air force in order to weather the storm of being an iconoclastic African-American critic, pointed out that Avant Garde is a military term, meaning the shock troops, the ones sent to the front of the battle, who end up dead or badly wounded.
Now at the age of 40, I comfortably inhabit the margins of society. I’ve got a smallish tenement, several talented friends, a hang out spot, and need never talk to a square again. My life is no longer a desperate affair of violence and starvation, I find myself in a position to help others.

In the first section of this book, I urge people not to make the same mistakes as me. For example, I once threw out a costume and regretted it terribly. I let the threat of eviction upset me unduly, instead of taking it in stride. I failed miserably as a dominatrix for a day, and shed tears over my mounting debt when the bastards from the collection agency threatened.

None of this need happen to you. Mykel Board’s chapter, The Joy of Debt, explains how to abuse credit cards successfully, Mistress Daria’s advice clues us in on the lucrative career of abusing the successful. James St James, author of Party Monster, one of the best books of the 20th Century, gives advice for the budding celebutante, while celebrity doorman Clint Catalyst explains how to behave properly while seeking admittance to that key purveyor of social change, the Nightclub.

Of course we all must develop our own styles from within, and I know that you can make your own decisions. My pundits sometimes contradict each other, and, much as I chose Quentin Crisp as my own philosopher, you’ll have your own affinity for, say, Reverend Jen when she advices you to Take Your Hair Seriously, or Bucky Sinister when he tells you to Fuck With Your Hair. Sherilyn Connelly is strongly against plastic surgery, while Jane King extolls the value of Botox. Regi Alsin, who’s been incarcerated for 20 years, has some valuable tips for coping behind bars, but he doesn’t mean to say that a prison stretch is essential in any way.

Even poverty is not required, as you will see in the Jobs You Can Have section, and there are surely some terrific rich people out there, but they seem to have their own literature and so are not included in this book. Nor is talent in any way essential, as Alvin Orloff explains in his valuable tips on being a Flunky. You might breed, as contributors Pamela Holm and Ariel Gore have done, or decide to modify your gender, in which case Lynee Breedlove and Sherilyn Connelly are here to help.

Putting an end to copious drug use can be just as interesting as the drug use itself. One of my favorite wags, Phillip R. Ford, shares his own rehab experience with you. Finally, being the Black Friend, as comedian Remy tells us, need never be dull again. I’m sure there’s some advice I’ve neglected to compile, and you, my trendy friend, may take this basic primer and run, run, run with it.
Jennifer Blowdryer, San Francisco, 2005 and forever.