WestEnder.com – By By Steven Schelling
For a brief period back in the day, I shared an illegal loft in an old Chinese noodle factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a struggling (biologically female) female impersonator/burlesque/performance artist who called herself “The World Famous HBOBH.” HBOBH presented all manner of wonderful, weird, and just plain jaw-dropping “pieces.” Occasionally obvious (duct-taping her genitals, nipples, eyes and mouth, and standing at attention during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest censorship in America’s patriarchal society), her work was, for the most part, intentionally inscrutable. I’ve yet to figure out how slathering her ample 42-F bosom with spray cheese and crumbled Ritz crackers made the case against child labour practices in the Third World. But, then again, she often accused me of an annoying streak of literalism.