STORMY FOSTER RETURNS: Chapter Ten
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CHAPTER TEN: “(BABY) YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME!” TIME + PLACE: THE YEAR 1992 @ THE OFFICE OF ANSONIA RECORDS, FAIRFIELD, NEW JERSEY.
All through the 1960s, the San Remo Music Festival was the shit! Stars like Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Stevie Wonder and Sonny and Cher flocked to Italy and competed, and many of the song entries went on to score huge international hits. By the Eighties, San Remo was a shadow of what it had been, outclassed by bigger festivals like Eurovision; but in 1990, it came roaring back and Hip-Hop was the reason! That was the first year that Italian rappers were featured, and naturally I was there.
Cunt Fingers Luigi, Charlemagne l'Ultimo, Gina Nicolasa, Black Thunder - the talent on display was unbelievable, the flow was mad lit, and the rhymes were jumping off for real. All of us threw down hella fierce, but only one song could come out on top. Thunder's entry "Quella Figa Mi Fa Pazza" took the grand prize, but me and my team partners Froggy Doggy shocked everybody by landing our asses in second place! We did it with a slammin' song my bandleader Julie B wrote called "Non Devi Dirlo (You Don't Have To Tell Me)." A month later, my recording of it topped the Pan-European charts - that was one hella dope consolation prize!
I was a Rap star for about two years and change. Fame for me was "here today, gone tomorrow," and bouncing through time was the perfect training for it: I didn't end up broke, played out and freaked out like so many others do. Still, it was a tornado of constant activity - everything happened so fast! Rehearsals, recording sessions, concerts, interviews, photo and video shoots, record dates, groupies (always girls! That meant my road crew got laid 'way more than I did), product endorsements, movies and television shows - my memory of it all is mostly a blur. Certain events like San Remo do stand out, though.
PROMO FOR THE SINGLE VERSION OF STORMY FOSTER’S SAN REMO MUSIC FESTIVAL ENTRY.
And then there was shit that happened offstage. Out of the blue, my manager Albert Fox got a message from his most famous former client: Josie James! She'd left the music industry to work for The Diamond Trust; and since becoming a follower of Alexandra Diamond, she didn't even identify as a woman anymore. She signed her message "Jody" James.
From photographs, I knew what a brick house babe Josie was, and it cracked me up to think she was passing herself off as "non-binary." However, it was no laughing matter to Foxie, and not to her son Greg James, either. Gregory had been my music director for two years; I knew how heartsick he was over losing his mom to a cult!
Greg hoped her message was an attempt to mend fences, but she didn't want to meet with him. She didn't want to talk to her ex-manager, either. She wanted Foxie to set up a meeting with me - Stormy Foster.
Her note said she was "concerned" about "transphobic hate speech" that I was spreading with my Rap songs. That accusation reflected the views of most gender cultists, who hated my caffè marocchino ass like poison! But Josie didn't sound hateful; on the contrary, she said she recognized and appreciated my talent. She thought I was just "very misguided" and that she could make me listen to reason." She wanted to try.
Capeesh . . . If it had been anybody but her, I'd have responded to that message with one of my most "transphobic" lyrics! But I was more than ready to have a serious debate about sex and gender issues. I was already having those conversations with other rappers - you wouldn’t believe how many of them believed in that “wrong body” bullshit. Here was a chance to lock horns with a straight-up gender radical, and I was totally down for it! It was the next best thing to meeting with Alexandra Diamond aka Cheryl Blossom, and I fucking really wanted to meet Josie, too.
I gave Foxie the go-ahead to book a time and place where we could meet. We got together in a private booth at Joia, a benissimo new vegetarian restaurant in Milano. Her former band The Pussy Cats were now my backing band, and my San Remo songwriter Julie B had replaced Josie on guitar. Jewels wanted to meet her predecessor real bad; but this wasn't gonna be just a casual get-together, so I had to disappoint her and say no.
THE STORMY FOSTER SUMMER COLLECTION BY HENRIETTA la del BARRIO.
I fell up in the place looking fighissimo as usual, in a western vest embossed with psychedelic designs - no shirt underneath - and custom cowboy boots. I wore my tightest pair of "Daisy Duke" booty huggers, too. Not that I thought I could compete with Josie James in the style department: Babe had excellent fashion sense and could out-dress the fiercest drag diva! She had a bitchin' body to boot, but you wouldn’t have known it that day. I barely recognized Josie when I saw her!
She was trying her damndest to hide anything about herself that was feminine. "Jody" sat there in some hella baggy overalls, with her trademark red hair nearly all shaved off. She'd grown a five o'clock shadow, obviously with the help of hormones; and underneath that oversized tank top she wore, it was obvious that her much-admired tette grandi had been tightly strapped down.
Speaking in a hormone-induced basso profundo voice that still sounded fake, "they" wasted no time getting to the point. "You've got it all wrong about what being 'Trans' is. No, Stormy, don't interrupt - hear me out! Your Rap songs are making it hard for a lot of people who don't want anything more than to be accepted in their true gender. I'm not accusing you of bigotry; just of not understanding us. I think you'll change your attitude after I tell you my personal story."
As that story unfolded, it was clear to me that "Jody" was all in with rigid gender role play - the kind that The Diamond Trust encouraged. First, she tried to justify adopting the "non-binary" label: "There was no firm gender category for me. I did all the girly stuff - Barbie dolls, make-up, skipping rope, trying on my mom's high heels; but I did lots of boy stuff, too. I loved playing with toy guns and trucks and boxing with gloves. When I hit puberty, I started playing "doctor" with girls; but me and the boys used to mess around, too."
I told "them" that many of my friends had the very same experiences, but they grew up to be Lesbians and Gay men. She came back at me with this: "Some femme boys and butch girls know right away that they're the opposite sex. Others take longer to accept the truth about themselves." Her "truth" was identifying as non-binary; but she also claimed gender could be "fluid" and that how a person identified might change over time.
Was she sharing insights from her personal experience? There was talk that "Jody" had begun referring to herself as a "Transboy." I asked her if she thought she'd ever go full-on Trans? Babe was non-committal about that.
We talked about hormone therapy, with me stressing the dangerous side-effects. "All of those claims are very speculative," she insisted, "but the benefits outweigh any risk. The drugs clear your brain of delusions and let you experience reality for the first time." Al contrario, paysan! I think it's actually the other way around: Hormones intensify deluded perceptions of gender, and I said so. Naturally, "they" didn't much like that!
In just a couple of hours, we covered a wide range of topics: Definitions of homophobia and transphobia (on which we disagreed), autogynephilia (sexual arousal triggered by thoughts of changing your sex) and gender procedures performed on children (another area of sharp disagreement). Our biggest clash was about whether biological sex should or shouldn't matter when defining gender. "Jody" was adamant that it shouldn't - and "they" shrugged off the problems that ignoring it created for medical treatment, sports competition and various other sex-based concerns.
"Transfolk can learn to follow the rules of gender conformity," she declared. "Diamond Trust protocols guarantee that they can pass as female-born or male-born, and they should be allowed to do so in any and every situation. Besides . . . except for certain physical deformities, they absolutely are the genders that they say they are! Transwomen are real women, and transmen are real men." To that totally pozzo notion, I had a rhymed response:
Biology talks, and gaslighting walks!
STORMY FOSTER’S RECORDING SESSION LOG FOR THE YEAR 1991.
I don't know what pissed girlfriend off more: My stubborn refusal to find gender affirmation credible, or my deliberate avoidance of pronoun usage. At times, "Jody" looked like "they" wanted to tear me limb from limb, slowly and painfully! I was pumped for a verbal throwdown, but that didn't happen. Our disagreements were heated but the conversation stayed civil; and at the end of it, we basically just agreed to disagree.
I felt pity for Josie, but I tried not to let it show. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make her feel demeaned! People make mistakes, especially when they're being misled, and Cheryl Blossom aka Alexandra Diamond was playing a pied piper melody to put the original tune to shame. Like I said before, a bunch of rappers that I knew were totally down with her homophobic rhetoric.
When we got up to leave, "Jody" reached out and gave me a big-ass hug, which was a thrill! I actually felt electricity pass between us. However she chooses to identify now, she’ll never stop being a Rock 'n' Roll legend and a feminist icon, too. Differences aside, I'll always treasure having met her in person.
But meeting Josie isn't what I remember most from that day. When I crashed for a short power nap, I had my last waking dream of Cheryl Blossom. It was different from the previous ones: It seemed somehow even more real, and this time she was mocking me. At first, she was laughing very softly, and then the laughter got loud and wild - just what you’d expect from the kind of raving maniac that she was!
Standing a short distance away, she moved back into the shadows, further and further, until I couldn't see her anymore. Yet that crazy-ass laughter kept echoing in my brain, and the air was heavy with that sandalwood odor I always smell when I have these dreams. I woke up shivering in a cold sweat, and I didn't sleep anymore that night.
STORMY FOSTER’S FINAL “VOODOO DREAM.”
"Jody" James damn sure didn't meet with me on her own behalf. Cheryl Blossom was using her as a tool, but for what purpose? What if her wanting to debate me was just a set-up? Did it have some sinister goal other than discussion? That strange sensation I got when she hugged me . . . santa merda! Did I get played for a fool?
