SUBMIT TO ME (Lydia’s Dinners)

Lydia Lunch came

through town promoting

a cookbook, of all things.

Best if

cannibal cuisine,

but no:
no humans died for these recipes.

In Richard Kern’s

sick eye, breasts

sprouted all over

her full body;

the lens spied her

through the vamp

hex of her own

self-voyeurism.

But now she’s

thirty years older, the final

realization. A

pin-up with porn

brains hooked up

to an electric

threat of

cackle. The Lower

East Side died and

left us this
New York–

both arms and

fresh in black, both

legs, which bore

many men between

them. An interview

has her speak on pleasure,

but she speaks of

time alone, intro-

version,

the most contemporary

perversion. Her exes

she says will last

at most

two years. I always tell them so,

she says, then

smiles like

somebody’s

broken religion. The

word slut is a

strange one. Means

what? I’m plural?

I want to be as

many people as I

can touch?

Seriously, what kind

of a toxic deal is

that? A lady lives many

lives, so we

shame her? Her

cooking, though,

how many could it

possibly feed? A

recipe, after all,

is only

a suggestion.