Getting married ruined Free Sex in Public for me. Let me explain. Back in the late ‘90’s, I was dating an asshole we’ll call George, since that was his name. George would do things like ask me to come over and help him pack for a trip and he’d leave condoms out on top of his suitcase for me to find. Now why, you might ask—and I most certainly asked —would he need condoms for a trip on which I was not joining him?

Well George was one of those guys who liked to give the speech that goes like this, “Babe, we’re above that monogamy crap. We’re beyond it. We’ve evolved.”

What he meant by that was that every time he went to Chicago, he would be banging his so-called ex but that if I so much as attempted to have a platonic lunch with a male friend he would threaten to break up with me and/or kill himself. Very evolved, George! Later, after we finally finally FINALLY—oh Thank you Baby Jesus!—really did breakup, two major things happened.

Thing one: One night my roommate forced me to watch Star Trek, a show I hadn’t seen before, but which George watched religiously. When I saw that episode, I discovered something—George wasn’t only cheating on me with his ex-girlfriend. He was also cheating with his dialogue. Every line he’d ever said to me was either a direct quote or paraphrase of a Star Trek character.

Thing two: As I recall, George and I broke up on February 16, 1999—not that I’m such a grudge holder that I memorize dates or anything. I’m thinking what he did was collect his Valentine’s Day booty from me and then he ended it. That’s the kind of guy he was.

George’s bad behavior, coming on the heels of a number of other bad relationships including a brief marriage to a sociopath who forgot to mention, pre-nup, that he was a republican and a Mormon, left me a little…uh… como se dice soured on relationships.

And so, not knowing at the outset how long it would last, I took a break from men. In the end, that break lasted seven years. That’s right, people. From the age of 35 to 42—libidinously peak years that I will NEVER get back— I did not go on a date, have sex, or even so much as make out with a man. That’s what George did to me, what with his bikini underpants and manipulative cheatin’ ways. He turned me off to all men.

Which left me with a lot of solo-flying Valentine’s Days to contemplate. Part of the reason I Am So Popular is that I got a lot of practice in high school when I was President of the Student Council of Gateway Regional High School. During high school, as during the aforementioned seven-year break, I did not have a date (not unless you count getting felt up in summers by drunken Irish carnies at the Jersey Shore, a tale of mine some of you already have heard). But I did know how to throw a party.

So I took those Julie McCoy skills of mine honed in high school, and applied them to my Adult Dateless Years and I seized Valentine’s Day by the balls and I made it my own. Fuck that stupid pre-req about having a date on Feb 14th. I would make it a day about me loving this entire city, or at least anyone that wanted to hang out with me.

So I started this annual soiree called Free Sex in Public, held up at BookPeople and I must say we built up quite a following over the years. 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005—for six SRO years it went off without a hitch. Well, okay, there was that one year that BookPeople invited another group to co-perform and they had some pieces about bu-fuing a tennis racket and using an old, rickety, vibrationy-when-on-spin washer for masturbatory purposes (these pieces read by a woman who appeared to be in eighth grade at most). But other than that, we just had some damn fine performances over the years by folks like Southpaw Jones, Genevieve van Cleve, Liz Belile, Diane Fleming, Adam Sultan, Mr. Smarty Pants, Kristine Kovach, and always, always, the in-house band, known as The Polished Skull of Jackie Collins, and headed up by the inimitable upright bass genius, Mr. Tom Benton.

spike’s name on the bookpeople marquee

Those were the days. We’d get up and have Free Sex in Public for hours on end. And BookPeople would even have my name and slogan on the marquee for all the parents of all the AISD kids I taught to drive by and see.

Then came 2006. End of the dry spell. I met a plumber. He unclogged my sink. We got married. Yes, some stuff happened between the unclogging and the wedding. But we don’t need to go into that. Let’s just say that, looking back, I can say with all honesty that we were both very much in love—with him. And when his kids decided they didn’t want me around, a decision they demonstrated by turning my life in “their” house into a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Children of the Corn, he showed me the door. (By the way, my sink is clogged again—does anyone know a good plumber who won’t try to marry me?)

I should say that, before that marriage turned totally to a mound of shit so big that it was utterly unflushable, there was the 2006 Free Sex in Public. It was the first year I brought a date. I read a piece. He read a piece. Our pieces played off of each other. The crowd went wild.

Then came Free Sex in Public 2007. We were separated at the time—his choice. I let him perform anyway. He got loaded, spent the whole night talking loudly while I tried to perform. He did not open his homemade gifts including a plunger spray painted gold that I toiled over just for him. He wound up going home to his place and I wound up giving the brother of his last (dead) wife a ride home before retiring to my own home. To quote the Magnetic Fields: How fucking romantic.

I should’ve never had Free Sex in Public with a married man, even if the person he was married to was me. It was stupid. It ruined the event for me. So I cancelled this year’s Free Sex.

I want to say I feel bad about it, but I don’t. Warren showed up in my life rather unexpectedly a couple of months after my divorce and he’s cured me of any residual misery on that front. I’ve had a great time putting together a Valentine’s Day package for him which includes three cubic yards of Double Thunder dirt from GeoGrowers, a mix CD with too many great songs to mention including Dieselhed’s Poodle’s Ear (does anyone else know that song?) and James Brown singing I Love You, Porgy. And there’s a blue lapis heart from, probably, Afghanistan, and a cool river stone from India.

Warren’s Valentine’s Day Dirt photo by: Ori Sofer

Warren and I are going to hit a burlesque show tonight, Burlesque Over Broadway, produced by our friend Audrey Maker of Burlesque for Peace, and hosted by my co-Dick-Monologist Rudy Ramirez, with all proceeds going to benefit Breast Cancer Services Coalition run by my friend Eugene. Warren and I are both going to wear cocktail dresses and sit at the VIP table. La-ti-da. And you can come rub elbows with us if you hurry because I think there might be a few tickets left.

illus courtesy of burlesque for peace

There’s also ANOTHER great burlesque show tonight at Stubb’s, featuring Kitty Kitty Bang Bang and if you haven’t seen them perform, you are an idiot. Okay okay, not an idiot. But you’ve been missing something. Today I ran over to KUT to record a Sonic ID—and everyone should do that because it’s really really fun—and I noticed that Michael Lee, who records the IDs, had glitter on his face, which is, he says, part of living life with a burlesque performer—his wife is in Kitty Kitty.

photo courtesy of kitty kitty bang bang web site

At Forbidden Fruit I had a chat with the owner, who has a hand in the Stubbs Burlesque show. I’m telling you, you can’t swing a feather boa in this town without hitting a g-string clad stripper or someone with a pastie connection.

And for those of you who absolutely INSIST on seeing Spike herself, in the flesh, being incredibly popular, well you can come have Not Exactly Free Sex in Public with Jesse Sublett and me at the Scoot Inn on Friday, Feb 15th, starting at 7. We’re doing Beat Love Poems, a tribute to beat poetry being put on by the Ransom Center (yes, the Ransom Center is paying me to host a party at a bar and I think I will wear those assless hose two nights in a row to celebrate this fact). This is all to celebrate the fact that the original scroll-style manuscript to On the Road is on tour right now, and will be in residence at HRC beginning March 7th. Come by and see me, Daddy-O, we’ll have a swinging, howl of a good time.

Spike Gillespie puts on The Dick Monologues and blogs for LaunchPad Coworking and for her own amusement at www.spikeg.com. She knows who you are.