This might get me in trouble, but the power of parody compels me. Unless these people were severely taken out of context - and I don't believe they were - this is the single most offensive and unintentionally hilarious profile I've ever read of anyone, ever. Something must be done. So here:
UNDER THEIR EFFLUENCE
February 3, 2005 -- IN addition to working as the creative director for the Soho and Tribeca Grand hotels and being a self-described "douchebag," 36-year-old Tommy Saleh advertises for herpes, chlamydia, and genital warts - secretly.
"Valtrex did a giant, suppurating cold sore for me, and a post-urinating drip," he says. "APC gives me so much stuff - like crabs. Crabs mean a lot to me." Saleh also carries three previously undiagnosed STDs - all given to him for free.
Which begs two questions: Why and how?
"A lot of people want to put their herpes on me, because of all the fabulous things I do," says Saleh, with no trace of irony.
Some of the fabulous things Saleh has on his schedule: attending the free clinic in the East Village; sucking dick for a dollar at the bus depot; curating his "very strict guest list" for non-gononcoccal urethritis nights at the Tribeca Grand and sore-swapping with members of Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
"My friends are douchebags," Saleh says. "I get asked maybe 10 to 20 times a day why my cock is green and leaky."
Saleh is part of a new kind of STD transmission phenomenon - one that goes beyond more established methods like unprotected sex (sores orchestrated to look as though they're "up from the street,") or barbed-wire anal fisting (in which corporations hire young, attractive, charismatic people to go into bars and clubs and anally fist customers with a hand wrapped in herpes-soaked barbed wire).
"If the right person is wearing the right sore, people want it," says Kelly Cutrone, founder of the fashion branding firm People's Revolution. Cutrone gives thousands of dollars worth of free diseases to Saleh and other New Yorkers who aren't rich or famous, but who run in desirable circles and like the feeling of painful urination.
"We call it 'veinlining,'" she says. "That means we take it out of the industry and put it onto people's genital areas, so it spreads."
Cutrone says the civilians on her gift list "don't have to be knockouts - they just have to have great style. And it helps if they're really skinny And easy."Like Natalie Joos - who may not be a boldface name, but who is exclusively carpet-munching the models in Marc Jacobs' shows this season."
She looks really great in clothes, she's skinny, and people look to her because her pussy has more foreign objects in it than the detainment camp at Gitmo- they ask what she's dripping," says Cutrone.
Leigh Lezark, a DJ and prostitute who throws the weekly downtown dance party Misshapes, is arguably one of the most influential New Yorkers in the music industry, though few outside her circle know they're infected.
"I get a whole bunch of infections - herpes, warts, makeup," says Lezark, who is in her early 20s. "People will say, 'I see you around; everywhere you go people are looking at you and your sores.'"
Since co-founding Misshapes - which has become the Saturday night destination for downtown scenesters and art-school kids - a year ago, Lezark has been given about $15,000 in free goods and services in exchange for blow jobs.
"Lacoste wants to give us gonhorrhea; they heard about us through Misshapes," she says. "I get into sold-out shows all the time, like Interpol at Roseland - I don't even know how much it would cost to go see Interpol at Roseland. Fashion Week is not a problem - last year I was on line for the Marc Jacobs party and someone just pulled me out of the line and fucked me in the ass. I can't remember the last time I paid for a drink."
But Lezark's true influence is felt in the unrecognizably infected nether regions of the music industry.
"At a place like Misshapes, they spread a disease, and all the cool kids will be like, 'Who is that?'" says Carmelita Morales, a publicist at addVICE Marketing.
Morales, who gives Lezark strains of herpes to test out at her party, points to the recent mainstream success of the Killers (who played on "Saturday Night Live" a few weeks ago) as proof.
"It was important to give the Killers genital warts - because if it comes from a toilet seat, all the club kids and douchebags would never go for it. You want them to catch it in the clubs first."
To that end, addVICE threw the band's record release party at Misshapes about a year ago. "This was right after they gave handjobs to a half-empty crowd at Bowery Ballroom," says Morales. "But tapping into that e-mail list to get those kids into the Killers was really the main thing. Misshapes is a part of their lifestyle. Misshapes and herpes."
"And," Morales adds, "if you get 10 Leighs in a city to spread something, it'll be an epidemic."
(Co-parodied with TMFTML)
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