Circle o' Jerks - “I Was a Zap SuperModel”
Underground Comix Memories of Spain, Wilson, Robert, Vincent, Mavrides . . . and Dear Friends We Miss Too Much
Spain Rodriguez came to my Xmas party in 2005, before all hell broke loose. He said he had a special treat to show me.
I started pawing at the rolled-up poster paper in his hands, but he held it back a bit.
“You can’t keep this; I have to send it to a collector tomorrow, it’s the original.”
“What do you mean, I can’t— Hey, is it a new Jam?”
That’s exactly what it was.
Every so often, the surviving Zap! underground comix artists (Moscoso, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, and S. Clay Wilson ) would gather around a giant piece of paper with pen and ink and draw together.
The resulting panel cartoon was a Zap Jam, which would be reproduced into limited edition posters and published in an upcoming book.
I wrested open the giant pages Spain held in his arms. At the top of the the first page was the title of the strip, “Circle O’Jerks” accompanied by hallucinatory self-portraits of all the artists.
One of Gilbert Shelton's little freak gnomes had a bug-eyed question bubble, “Who the hell is Susy Bright?”
A panel later, Wilson had one of his deranged voracious bulldaggers lying spread-eagled in the center of the action, with a note below that says “Not Susie Bright.”
Further on the story, yet another wench appeared, drawn by Spain, bent over in platform shoes— “Still Not Suzie Bright.”
It was a running gag about me, the mystery model, and a stream of psychedelia about the U.S. Patriot Act and the much-loathed “War on Terror” Bush regime. Everyone drew on top of everyone else.
WHY Susie Bright? appears again, second page.
Sugarplums of immortality danced in my head. I looked at Spain like he should admit something.
“I had NOTHING to do with it!” He waved his hands in front of his face.
I knew enough about Zap jams; his claim must be true— if any one of them came into the room with an agenda, they’d be told to fuck all the way off.
Spain and I were decades-old neighborhood friends, connected through ex-lovers and political enthusiasms. His wife, Susan Stern and I, became buddies during the 1986 Meese Report shenanigans, and we both had daughters within a year of each other.
Spain is the reason I moved to rural France in 1990, when my daughter was just a few months old. I was coming out of a laundromat on Valencia Street one day, rather blue because I’d broken up with my partners at On Our Backs. I was out of work. Spain passed me by on the street, and said, “Hey, do you know anyone who wants to go live in the south of France for a couple months?”
“Yeah, me.”
I went from sarcasm to a one-way ticket within 24 hours. I swapped houses with one of Spain’s old friends who was part of a group of American expatriates in rural Languedoc. They were connected through underground comix, and the origins of the prostitutes’ rights movement: C.O.Y.O.T.E.
My only American neighbors within miles were Margo St. James, Gail Petersen, (“A Vindication of the Rights of Whores”) — plus a couple other COYOTE folks, and the Crumbs, Robert and Aline.
Life is different in the villages. Margo was working construction under the table, and could have passed for a male laborer if you passed her in the street. “Construction” in this part of the world meant remodeling medieval wrecks. She had one boyfriend who looked like Rasputin and apparently was the living inspiration for the whole concept of Grand Theft Auto. The only remnants of “California Margo” were her big pot of lentil stew on the stove, and a beautiful library dedicated to the history of sex work.
The Crumbs lived in a nearby village, in a maison overlooking a riverbank which was infamously purchased for two of Robert's sketchbooks. Aline was keyed expertly into their small community; everything French was explained and finessed by her flawless interpretation. She was a role model of how to transform your life in one giant WHOOSH.
Robert, at the time, could barely say “Bonjour!” I don’t think that’s changed. He had a studio with beautiful light to work in, and to listen to his old 78s. His collections in all manner of things, are astounding.
At the time I moved to France, I was publishing my first anthology, the Herotica series. They were the first volumes of women-authored erotica— hard to believe now! The first afternoon I visited the Crumbs, Robert had read Herotica 2, and was incensed, over one sentence in the book.
"What is all this OBSESSION with muscular thighs?” he demanded. We were dawdling along the riverbank one day while Aline ran by us like a triathlon pro.
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