Pain Baby Podcast: Hunter Hodkinson

an interview with Dead End Zine founder, editor, and press director

Dead End Zine launched issue 4: Capacity on Saturday, featuring Maha Haswhi, C. (Constantine Jones), Karl Michael Iglesias, Harper Galvin, Zora Satchell, Elizabeth Moyland, Riley Mac, and Ingrid Jacobsen, and introduced me as Dead End’s new co-editor with Hunter Hodkinson!

I am very proud to co-edit this little juggernaut zine, and share with you the inspiring conversation I had with Hunter about how they started the zine, the press, and consequently built a strong, tight community of poets around them from almost nothing. Listen or read to learn more about Hunter, Dead End Zine, and their incredible chapbook, Mean Gays.

I also love having fun, unusual conversations with people I admire, and I’m grateful to have Pain Baby Podcast to share them! I am yet to expand beyond the basics, so this episode cannot be found on Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere but on this post.

Producing these posts and projects like the Pain Baby podcast are labors of love. My disabilities keep me from working traditional jobs and having access to benefits crucial to my well-being. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the arts and queer and disabled artists of color at a time of our widespread silencing and disempowerment.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Hunter Hodkinson, a white nonbinary person, stands against a white wall with their arms up and their chapbook, Mean Gays, hanging on a take measure from its binder rings. They have dark shoulder-length hair and wear circular glasses.

Transcription:

Ashna:
I'm here with Hunter Hodkinson, my dear friend in poetry and queer survival in Brooklyn, kicking off my first foray into Substack podcasting. I chose to begin with Hunter because of their sustained commitment to community building and poetry outside of traditional institutional routes and their extraordinary ability to magic substantive connections around poetry and manifest their visions seemingly from nothing. This is a quality that I feel the Substack community is uniquely primed to appreciate as much as I do in the privilege that I have to know, be friends with, and work with Hunter, and I believe that their work deserves intimate showcasing.

Hunter Hodkinson is a non-binary Ohio-born poet, teacher, and editor. They have worked with the Adroit Journal, Brooklyn Poets, and are the founder of Dead End Zine, a quarterly publication showcasing art, poetry, and interviews. Their work appears in Diode, December, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dream Boy Book Club, Splashland Magazine, Poetry as a Team Sport, Abobo Zine, and elsewhere.

Their debut chapbook, Mean Gays, is out from Tiny Cutlery, a small press specializing in bespoke artist books. Hunter, thank you so much for being here.

Hunter:
Oh my god, thank you so much for having me. That was probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me, hearing that. I'm just like, oh gee, I'm so, I just feel so happy and so privileged to know you.

I'm really honored to be here.

Ashna:
Oh, you make it so easy.

Hunter:
No, it's like, I'm definitely the kind of person, wherever I hear like a, I guess like a good thing about myself, I'm like, eee, and I'm like, I feel like I've been in the process of just unlearning the cat claws, letting them settle back in.

Ashna:
It's really hard.

Hunter:
It is.

Ashna:
It's really hard, and I think it's particularly interesting that those of us who try to start things from nothing and are self-starters in all of these ways are also really shy, a lot of the time. So what I want to ask you about, first and foremost, is how you started Dead End Zine. What is that story?

What made you do that? How did it grow? Where's it going?

Hunter:
Yeah, yeah. So I started Dead End Zine actually a year ago. Last November 11th was the official launch, and I can't remember where the act, like where the original need for like having my own like little side project came from.

I just knew that I was in community, and I was in community for just over a year at that point, and I knew that I wanted something to, I guess, contribute beyond just my own presence, which is totally enough, but like beyond just my physical presence, there was something that I was, I felt like I needed to maybe contribute, I guess, and also I sort of saw a bit of like a hole in the sense that in the publishing world, I should say, I saw a hole there, and that was I really didn't have the opportunity to see all of my friends in one place, under one roof, under in one contained booklet.

I mean, of course, I've been like a part of a few friend zines, but they're always just like these one-offs, and we were like, oh that was cute, and you know, we like forgot about it, but I really wanted, at least with the first issue and a little bit of the second issue, I really just wanted to get, you know, these shorter poems from my direct friends and get everyone in a room together and just see what happens, and the first one was at this really small artist space–shout out to 938 Collective–they're in Gowanus. It's just this one like little like artist studio that we had no business cramming 30 to 40 people into, especially with that second one, you know, we had no fucking business doing that, but with the first one, I would say maybe like 20, 25 people came, and it was just all beloveds, and we just like shared space, and I think it was in that moment where I think I got a little bit hooked on community in a way that I hadn't been before, because now, you know, whereas before I would just like show up to things, and I was just my person, and I represented myself, and suddenly on this night, November 11th, 2023, I suddenly represented something else, and I could have just in that moment, you know, stepped away, and and I could have just been super, you know, not complacent, but super happy with just the one-off, and you know, walked away, but I decided to sort of challenge myself, because I've definitely tried to do like publications previously.

If you ask my situationship, he'll tell you all about this project called Cacophony, which is just literally just the more dramatic version of Dead End, I think. There are still maybe a few copies floating around, possibly even at Quimby's, I don't know if they ever sold. But I had been wanting to do like my own little publication for a while, and I think having the reassurance from the community that if you do put something out, people will show up for you. And having that exchange with people, it felt more than just like, oh, I'm throwing something, can you come?

It was definitely a magical night, a magical exchange of energy and people, and it definitely got me hooked. So started that last year in November, and you know, took a little bit of time off over the winter, but as of last, I believe it was last, when did we do issue two?

I think it was February. I have no sense of time.

Ashna:
Oh shit, me neither. I haven't known what time is since 2020, my apologies.

Hunter:
It was definitely probably February. So February of this current year, we did issue two, and I think from that moment on, I realized, well not only did we have a second one, which meant that we were like a thing, just seeing the, you know, the overall turnout, and just like the love from that one, like that, like I've done, you know, multiple events at this point, but I always go back to that second one, and just like how everyone was just so excited, and just that one also just got me further down the rabbit hole of just being hooked on all of you. I love you all, and ever since that second one, I realized like this is something I want to actually pursue, and truly just try to form, and it's, I feel like it's been growing with me, you know. I feel like when we started, it was just me.

I was in my own echo chamber, and that was super fun, but I think as I've explained to you when it came to with our collaboration, that it just wasn't it for me anymore, and the best thing for myself, as well as Dead End, was opening up the doors to collaboration, and that's what I'm really excited about right now.

Ashna:
I have so many questions.

Hunter:
Yeah, I'm sorry.

Ashna:
No, no, please don't apologize. It's amazing. I kind of, one of the things I'm really interested in doing all the time really is try to demystify how things like this happen. Because I feel like a lot of poets who are more emerging than we are, I suppose, ask like, well, how do you build community, and how does this happen, and how do you start a zine, and what are all of the practical secrets underneath?

What does it look like? How, and I also know, so this is sort of like the part two of the question, that one of the ways you've talked about Dead End is to try to revive a kind of material and physical zine culture away from the hyper-onlineification of everything, but one of the reasons we move so many things online when we have small projects, including, you know, my Substack efforts, is because material production requires overhead. So how did you, with, last I checked, no budget, no like sponsorship or whatever, so what does it look like, right? Like how do these objects come to be?

Hunter:
I love this question. I've actually never really been asked this. This whole process of making these objects come into being has been just, I would say, like two years of just teaching myself and just practice, I guess.

I do everything, this is going to be a little trade secret, I do everything, literally everything, all the design, I lay out everything on Canva, and Canva is the mother of Dead End. She is the bread and butter, she is the gears, everything that I've ever done with Dead End, anything that Dead End is in its current form has went through Canva, and that's incredible, and she's a fucking blessing, and I guess that's maybe like the first like partial answer to your question is that I really am with Dead End just exhausting every low, like I mean every like affordable option that there is and exhausting it to its limit. It's like, oh, like I know for a fact, like there are, I know for a fact there are certain things in Canva I will never be able to do, I will never be able to get that letter exactly like three inches, 3.8 inches in length, but I can, you know, at least change the font and I can do like, you know, consistency and just building like the slightest ever little bit of like a brand, you know.

I was really, I was really dedicated, especially in the beginning when it was just the main issues before we started doing Dead End Editions, which are the side projects, I was really dedicated to making every single Instagram post look like identical, or if it wasn't identical, it would be like the same font, like there has to be like a constant sort of through line to give people this sort of familiarity and I guess that's another good opportunity or something to bring up, which is Instagram. The two things that are responsible for Dead End are Canva and Instagram.

Using Instagram as a way to just promote has been so just, I guess, life-saving and so influential to just people knowing about it and I mean, as you know, like we're all poets in the community here if we're like listening, it's so essential and I feel like just like getting good or just like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm like, I would say I'm like good at making a Canva flyer, but I just know like how to get the information on there and just keeping it simple.

Simple but like a little, you know, dynamic and I don't know, just I feel like to answer the question, I'm kind of rambling at this point, that is exhaust all of the affordable options that you have and in terms of having a budget to print. I don't–I literally cannot tell you how those first two issues even came into existence. I had not a penny, not a fucking penny. I remember I had to literally like borrow money from a friend, I think, for issue two and it was so like fucking hilarious because there was like a very glaring typo that I realized 30 minutes after we went to print.

Ashna: Oh yeah, I remember this.

Hunter: 30 fucking, oh yes, you were there and I was like, Ashna, do I just change like the one word? Ashna, they very smartly was just like, “just change the whole page.”

I'm like, that's so much better. 30 fucking, like literally I was like basking in the joy of them. I'm like, oh I have no money for food but here's my zine and glaring fucking typo, spelled someone's name wrong.

That's another thing, y'all. Just fucking proofread everything and you're going to fuck it up and it's going to feel like shit and that feeling of shittiness is going to make you not fuck up again. I mean, okay, so the reason I have you double-check everything.

Ashna:
The reason I love these conversations–it's Shira Erlichman who recently said to me that I have a habit of, you know, wanting to pick up the logs and show the worms underneath, and I think that's really important because I spent so many years being like, but how? Like, how does that all work? And these nitty-gritty aspects of it, especially when you don't have an MFA or you're not, you know, or a college degree or come from familial, like generational wealth or have institutional support and still want to create things and create community and have those things constantly be in conversation.

How do you in fact do it? Because I think a lot of us, myself included, decide that like, oh well, that's too much. I can't. There's a lot of limiting belief involved, and you just don't have that. You don't have that. If you want to do something, you just do it, and I love and respect that so much, and it's been a real personal inspiration to me.

Hunter: Thank you.

Ashna:
Which is also why I want to hear about how the zine expanded into a press.

Hunter:
Oh yes, yes.

Ashna:
How are we doing that? How do we grow into a press when we're at a point where we're borrowing money for issue two?

Hunter:
Um, so after issue two, it became more, I guess, apparent that like something was going on here so I made just a few life decisions even to save a little bit of money, I guess, with each paycheck as much as I can. Um, sometimes it's literally like two dollars, um, which is like hilarious, but I have like a little thing and I just like save as much money as I can for whatever funds, like we have like a, like a small pool of like less than a hundred dollars right now since we just did our other, um, project which I'll mention. But, you know, it's just, it's really just making these life changes and like having Dead End as, I guess, a monument within my life and realizing that it's just omnipresent at this point.

Like at this point, I would feel like I would be doing not only Dead End an injustice, but myself an injustice, so just abandon it, you know. So I've just made these, um, you know, smaller, um, life decisions and that sort of took me into issue three which was, uh, actually the last official issue that has been released because we expanded into these side projects over the summer. Um, and, and yeah, issue three was super lovely and it launched at Powerhouse Arena and that was really interesting to sort of be like in a new, like, I guess, I don't want to say like more official space, quote unquote, but, you know, it was just like, it was a bookstore. It was bookstore vibes.

Ashna:
Yeah, yeah.

Hunter:
We love it. Um, but yeah, over the summer I decided to make the leap and, I guess, unchain myself from just doing the traditional issues because I realized that there were some things or some topics that I felt like couldn't, I guess, couldn't get their justice within the traditional issue format. Um, so that, uh, that started with, uh, an interview issue.

Um, it was, uh, Kamelya Omayma Youssef in conversation with me and, um, we sold those as a fundraiser. At the time it was for a water truck in Gaza and since then I've had to change the page, I believe, twice because, you know, as these things develop, the links die or, you know, certain places are no longer accepting. So I think we're on our third donation now, um, and everyone who, uh, gets a copy just has to show proof that, uh, at this point that they've donated to Hanan's family.

Um, and I feel like that was, that was, I feel like that was just a super, like, pure and just lovely way, I guess, to not only start this new, like, side endeavor, which are called dead-end additions, I guess, um, well not I guess, that's what they're called, um, Dead End Editions, as well as, like, giving back in a really real way and I would love to, like, continue to do that. The intention was to definitely do more interview fundraisers because, um, I'm sorry, I keep, like, getting off track, but, uh, that whole idea was spawned because usually within the, uh, actual issues, there's an interview. Um, so for the first one, I interviewed Anthony Thomas Lombardi.

Issue two, I, uh, interviewed Lara Atallah and for issue three, it was going to be Kamelya, um, but the issue itself just got so big that I decided to just, uh, like, divorce them from each other and then have this as, like, a separate thing. So that actually did launch with issue three on the side as a fundraiser. Um, then that sort of brought us into, um, our second Dead End Edition, which is called We Need AC, Please, which are all erasure poems taken from my Instagram story.

Ashna:
Oh, god, this is amazing. Please tell this story from the top because it is such an incredible... angry thoughts and screenshots of emails and then doing one erasure and then all of a sudden it became this online community project where everyone is doing erasures of your work emails.

Hunter:
It was, it was definitely a crazy week that I would say, like, I really made that, like, whole concept just to make my day at work go faster and I just love that in that moment that my community showed the fuck up for me and entertained the fuck out of me. So basically, uh, the story from the top is I, um, was working at... I'm not even...

I don't even... Can I name drop? Does it...

Ashna:
I don't... It's up to you.

Hunter:
Honestly, fuck them. Colson Patisserie in Industry City.

Ashna:
Okay, so we don't like them. We don't give them money.

Hunter:
But we adore... Je adore our co-workers. Okay.

Shout out Asia. Shout out Jules. I love you forever.

My true besties. But, um, I started working there and I was there for about, I would say, eight months and everything was fine until the summer hit. Summer hits, we get simultaneously a roach infestation that's still never addressed.

Ashna:
Oh god.

Hunter:
Which, by the way, y'all, they do most of the pastries in the coffee shops all across Brooklyn. So if you see one that's from Colson Patisserie, watch out for, like, little legs or something.

Ashna:

Oh my god.

Hunter:
Because they were in the kitchen. Okay. So there's that. There's that info. And, simultaneously, the AC broke. And it was the middle of fucking summer.

And if you've been to Industry City, you know that they're just these huge fucking buildings that get super hot inside. And, yeah, I've started off, you know, emailing HR very kindly. I would say I was, you know, pretty tolerant at the beginning.

You know, I understand that things break. But when it became clear that our needs would never be really addressed, especially when the owner, like, literally flies back and forth from fucking San Diego because he lives out there but, like, comes to, like, check in on us, like, once a month. Like, how he has the money for that but we didn't have the money to just be comfortable really, you know, fucked me up.

So there was this one day where I sent a relatively angry email to HR and got, like, retaliated against from my actual employer. I wasn't fired at that point quite yet. But I was retaliated.

So I was like, fuck you. I posted my HR emails on my Instagram story. I asked you, beloved poets, to make erasure poems out of it.

And every single erasure poem that was made from those HR emails, I think I did it twice. I think I did it, like, on a Tuesday and then, like, Thursday was pissing me off. So I did it again.

Posted them. And all of those erasure emails ended up into the Dead End Edition called We Need AC Please.

Ashna:
Oh my god.

Hunter:
And that one was- I love it. That one was probably my favorite zine ever to put together because it came together literally in a day. Like, I screenshotted every single person's erasure, put them all, and I created the zine and went to print the next day. I was just- These are screenshots formatted into a Canva zine.

Ashna:
Yes. And became, honestly, one of the most, like, inventive and hilarious resistance projects against labor abuse that I've seen in a long time.

Amazing.

Hunter:

Thank you.

Ashna:
So that was Dead End Editions, the interview with Kamelya as fundraiser, and then the erasures. But now we have a press.

Hunter:
We have a press. And as of October 26^th [2024], we are a press because we launched my-

Ashna:

Congratulations.

Hunter:
Thank you so much.

It was- It's still surreal to think about. But on October 26th, Dead End hosted a reading at a party called Macabre. And it was- Yes, it's Macabre and Brat mixed together.

I love it. And we had six beloved readers read. And along- You know, it was originally just supposed to be the party because we wanted to do something and throw something for, like, the Halloween season.

But I had the idea to- Because Kitty- Oh, well, let me rewind. The chapbook is called Pet Names by Kitty Gomez. And I met Kitty and, like, very quickly we just, like, clicked.

And, you know, we came up with this party idea. And then she had mentioned that she had, like, a bit of a manuscript just, like, floating. And, like, super highly unedited.

And I just, for some reason, for some godforsaken reason, decided in my super busy schedule to just dive headfirst into this super unedited chapbook manuscript and have it be our first chapbook. And I do not regret it at all. It was so fun to just be able to interact with work in a brand new way.

And I would say as an editor, it was just amazing to, you know, get personally involved in, you know, a higher quantity of someone's work. As you know, you know, we've read, like, for magazines, like, it's usually just, like, you know, one or two, like, you know, couple of ones. And then you, you know, you get, like, a taste of, like, a person's style.

But when you're, like, in their chapbook and you're, like, rearranging the furniture within the chapbook, it's like- And then you're like, OMG, are they going to like it? And just, like, hoping that, like, they trust you. And luckily Kitty just trusted the fuck out of me.

And basically, I would say something and she'd be like, you just get me. And then we would chain-smoke five cigarettes.

And I'd be like, yes, I get you.

Ashna:
I love this. So that's Kitty's chapbook. Let's talk about yours.

Hunter:
Yes, oh my goodness.

Ashna:
So this is where I'm about to get- Mean Gays, which is by itself already such a great title. I find Mean Gays particularly extraordinary because it is this small collection of short prose poems punctuated by forward slashes that appear inside, like, chat boxes. The art object of it looks like a phone and a purse and a burn book and can be hung and has all of these colors.

So I want you to talk both about the design of it through Tiny Cutlery and what it means to create an art book. But also, why Mean Gays? Like, what is the story of how these poems came to be?

Hunter:
Yes. Oh my god, I feel like it's so much harder for me to, like, talk about my own projects. Like, the way I'm about to just be like, oh, I'm doing this and it's like, with Dead End, it's almost like a prism and I'm like, phew, you know?

But with my own projects, I'm like, I have to- oh my god, the spotlight's on me. Haha.

Ashna:
So- First, let's talk about the poems themselves. When did you start writing them? How did they sort of flower into this series of critique?

I mean, this is one of the more honest and, like, earnest but also, like, petty and enraged series of poems I've read in a while. So I want to know how they came to be.

Hunter:
Yeah, so Mean Gays originally started as a different chapbook. Like, it had a different title, still sort of the same concept, and that was called Gay Modernity. And Gay Modernity came from one poem that I wrote when I was 18, when I believe I had lived here for maybe two or three weeks or something.

And, you know, coming from a small town in Ohio, of course the first thing I did when I moved here was download Grindr. And I was living my best fucking life. I was 18. Everyone wanted a little piece, you know? Honestly, it's disgusting. Like, they see the one and the eight and they just, like, fly like vultures.

Ashna:
It's gross. It's actually disgusting. Yeah. But at the time… our obsession with youth is really concerning. It's disgusting.

Hunter:
But I was living it. And there was this one night, and at the time, I obviously didn't realize this at the time because I was literally a child. Well, basically.

And that was, I was hinging my entire sort of, like, self-confidence and just every, like, self-worth I had on if I could, like, hook up with someone that night. And that's how I was, you know, living my life when I first moved here. And there was one night where this, like, either this guy canceled or it just, like, wasn't fun.

I forget, honestly. I can still remember him, though, because he was, like, actually, like, evil. I still remember his face.

But I remember coming back to my apartment in Harlem at the time and was, like, in my bath, like, in my bathroom or something. I just sat on the bathtub, like, keeled over, and I wrote this poem, Gay Modernity, which ended up not making it into the final one. But that title, Gay Modernity, is what I held on to from 2019 all the way to this year.

And Gay Modernity originally just became this, like, very, very small, like, chap that I ended up just, like, binding with, like, through, like, a print-on-demand service. And this was at the time, like, 2021. I still had not yet been introduced to the poetry community until late 2022.

So in 2021, I just had, like, a couple copies of this chap called Gay Modernity. And it's really interesting to see which poems from that, like, Gay Modernity manuscript kind of, like, made their way into Mean Gays, which there are a few. And would love to mention those later.

But yeah, I had Gay Modernity printed. And I believe I had it at Blue Stockings Cooperative for, like, a season. And then I think the person who did the zine department, like, quit.

So it was just like, okay, that's done. And I sort of just, like, I guess I did shelve the project, I would say, for about, like, a year, year and a half. Because I just was, I felt myself outgrowing the poems.

And, you know, in that original Gay Modernity chap, the poems were definitely, like, more woe is me, less angry, more like, you're also not 18 anymore. Yeah.

Ashna:
And it's like, what do you mean I'm not young and beautiful anymore?

Hunter:
Like, it was you are plenty young and beautiful. Thank you very much. I was super woe is me.

And the chap had just kind of turned into something that I wasn't vibing with. So I really did shelve her. And I really, you know, I moved on to other things.

And I, you know, got introduced to community. And I, my writing just exploded. Since being introduced to community, I will say it's the single, I don't know how Emily Dickinson fucking did it in her fucking room, because community was the gasoline I needed.

Ashna:
Same.

Hunter:
It was it just, I write 20,000 times better than I ever did before community. And I, you know, had forgotten about Gay Modernity.

And I had met Emily. Well, actually, let me let me just like stay on the topic of the poems, I guess right now. And it wasn't until I met Emily, and like, we had started discussing doing this project together again.

Or I think it wasn't until I met Emily, and I we were working on this project that I was like, Oh, like, I actually like need to finish it. And I actually need to add like this new fresh perspective. Because you know, at 23, 23 and like 18-19 are so fucking vastly different.

Ashna:
Oh, yeah.

Hunter:
And I was just, you know, obviously, when I read the Gay Modernity original chap, I was just like, it'll cringe, like, but I was like, there is still some like relevant hurt here. So I feel like I just like took that same like, woe is me ish feeling, flipped it on his head. And I'm like, No, bitch, I'm gonna be angry.

I'm going to be petty. I'm going to just call out everything that doesn't even feel right to me. I'm going to call out something that maybe isn't even that big of a deal.

But it's, it's fucking making me angry. So I'm calling it out. And yeah, I feel like that first poem is so fucking petty.

Ashna:
I think it's a great moment to ask you to choose like maybe three poems that you love to read from the chap, just so people can get a taste of it. Also, I love them. And I love listening to you read.

So let's, let's get a taste of the, the petty, the petty woe-is-me rage revisions.

Hunter:
Awesome. But yeah, I guess to just end that question is Gay Modernity became Mean Gays, because it was another title I was shopping around. And that was Emily who was like, maybe do mean gays.

And I was like, I think you're right. I think Gay Modernity, the title itself, I was happy to honor in its own separate poem in this chap, Gay Modernity itself was the title was what was holding me back. So if you don't ever feel held back, it might just be like that thing that you held onto since the beginning.

Sometimes it's so fun to let that shit go. So yes, I'll start with maybe my favorite poem to read.

Ashna:
Yes.

Hunter:
This is over it. Because we're over it.

Over It

The unobtainable body phenomena / sniffing, “nail polish re-

mover” to cum / maybe I really do need love? / piss porn is like

watching surfing videos from my midwest home / slowly tortur-

ing myself / out of touch intimacy / I have the feeling whatever

is killing me cannot be pounded out by some ungodly organ /

trump's bloody ear in between fisting videos on Twitter is such a turnoff, but I

persevere / can we talk about how lonely it is to be queer? / we

continue to punish ourselves / after our familial escapes / to nyc

/ etc. / maybe it’s not the murders and beatings my parents were

afraid of when they pictured my flamboyant future in the big city

/ but the cunty twink that makes me wish I would have stayed in

the closet in the first place.

If you're a cunty twink listening to this, change. Change those behaviors, girl.

Ashna:
Or just be aware that you're gonna end up in the poem.

Hunter:
Period. No, exactly. You really can't be mean to a poet.

Ashna:

No. It will come back to bite you in print.

Hunter:
I'll read this one next because this is the first time that I ever used the term ‘mean gays’ in a poem, period. And it's called “The Difference Between Me and the Mean Gays”.

The Difference Between Me and the Mean Gays

In this sea of bodies I witness the beauty standard get hit on.

/ where do I belong amongst all of this music? / burp with my

mouth closed and the heat comes from my nose like a dragon / I

close my eyes and try to allure the space I take up / space that is /

on occasion / safe to claim / arms flailing and my body bouncing

like everyone else's / I open my eyes and no one is staring back

at me / men want something with bite and I fall right off the bone /

I don't want anyone to break a tooth on my body.

Ashna:
I love that poem.

Hunter:
Thank you. That one was my- that one's also a favorite. Honestly, now that I'm reading them, I'm like, why do I kind of love these poems?

Ashna:
You have to! You gotta love your babies.

Hunter:
No, I do love them. Should I do like maybe two more? One more?

Ashna:
Yeah, do two more and then let's talk about the object of it.

Hunter:
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, this one's called “Patrick”. This one I think was definitely the poem that inspired me to continue doing the mean gays slash gay modernity poems because I hadn't been writing about the gay- the gays had- were safe for about two years before I came back with a vengeance because of this man who I did not change his name because fuck it.

Never change the name.

Ashna:
The queer enbies are here to get you, bitches.

Hunter:
Better watch out. Um, Patrick. Oh, Patrick.

Patrick

It's nice to have someone to rub organs against / on the dance

floor with a bunch of Botox queens who refuse to move a mus-

cle / I could get used to being desired / it's been forever / I walk

home to the park with new vigor / all we really need is the

reminder that we are lovable / maybe even fuckable / I wipe his

skin cells off of my glasses / do a shitty job / but that's okay /

even at this size he is beautiful / he said he'd love to tie me up

one day = he wants to see me again / and I just so happen to

love being restrained / too tender to be left rampant in this world

/ crave order over my body of which I have none / I feel him

through our cock block denim / it's shocking how much a dick

that is happy to see me can mend / quite literally / every single

one of my problems / if only for a little while.

Oof. Patrick, if you're out there. I miss you. I miss you, baby.

Okay, I'm going to end with my favorite poem to read. And I think it's actually, it's definitely the most cruelest. It's definitely the most cruelest poem. And I think this poem really highlights just how I feel in most, uh, AMAB queer spaces. Um, and it's called “Hydra, We”.

Hydra, We

No one gives a backhanded compliment like a twink / so

creatively evil / like a prince who has never known anything

other than body wealth and boredom / “yessssss, body positivity” a

scarecrow comments on a photo of me fully clothed, just stand-

ing there / sorry I don't have Chalamet skin or an overachieving

metabolism / I do a pretty good job staying away from queer spaces

but every once in a while a Mean Gay finds me.

and I just have to accept the fact that this is how

the rest of the world expects us to treat each other / well-meaning

friend says “sounds like a lot of my friends” shows me a

photo of them. would you believe it? / they all look identical / not a single

serving of fat / not a drop of color / 9 slightly different speedos /

9 indistinguishable bodies / unchecked eating disorder / for

a weekend at The Pines / for the obligatory group photo that

screams / We're richer and hotter than you, you stupid fat fuck.

whiter than white veneers / 9 heads of the same hydra.

Ashna:
I love that poem.

Hunter:
Thank you.

Ashna:
Talk to me about this beautiful art object that Mean Gays is.

Hunter:
Yes. The idea of doing the binding with the pink rings was, I feel like that was my idea from the beginning because I felt like in both changing the title, I felt like we just needed to spice it up as well, just to get me re-inspired by the project. And I'm very visually motivated.

So I had the original idea to actually not even have this background and just have it be text bubbles. And then we realized it would be so fucking hard to individually cut out all of these little text bubbles. So originally the clips were in the text bubble and it was just like a text bubble that you would flip.

But the idea of the flip, and I can actually maybe give you like a photo so people can see what we're actually talking about.

Ashna:
That'd be great.

Hunter:
It's kind of hard to describe. But the idea of the flip came just from like, I guess, grinder culture as a whole and how you're just endlessly messaging. And I also wanted this to almost be like an object that's like, oh, let's bring Mean Gays to the picnic and make some people chuckle.

And especially, I am waiting for the day that I get invited to a fucking gay picnic and I can bring Mean Gays and just read everyone to filth without reading anyone to filth.

Ashna:
You hear that, folks? Invite Huntie to a gay picnic! So Tiny Cutlery and you collaborated on creating this as an art object.

How did that happen?

Hunter:
So I met Emily, who is the founder of Tiny Cutlery, just randomly at KGB. It was just like one of those encounters that you have at a poetry reading where you just click and sometimes it does go beyond, oh, let's follow each other on Instagram and you never see them again. I just met her at KGB and we just sort of kept in contact through Instagram and we would see each other's at readings every once in a while.

And I remember, I believe it was at Darius's “Embracing Every Hue.”

Ashna:
Yes, Darius Phelps', I believe, miniseries. I don't think that it is continuing.

Hunter:
Oh, I don't think it is. It might continue somewhere else, I hope. It's a beautiful series.

It's so good. But it was there and I saw Emily and Emily was just like, hey, I have this thing called Tiny Cutlery, let me know if you ever want to do something. Just very casual and then sent me the deets on Instagram.

And it took me definitely three months to actually have the courage to come to her with this. And at the time, I was actually shopping around my other shop that's still available, y'all, in the world. It's called Don't Remind Us It's Beautiful Outside.

And that has also just changed so much so quickly. But I was shopping that around and I knew that I maybe wanted to possibly pursue traditional publishing for that project. And I still had Emily in the back of my mind.

I was like, do I have anything on the shelf that I would love to see in the world still? And Gay Modernity said hello. And I was like, you, come hither.

So I brought the bones of Gay Modernity out. And I also just think bringing those bones off the shelf made me really inspired to finish it. So that's, I would say the majority of the poems in Mean Gays were written in a one month right after confirming the project, because I just wanted it, I knew if this was going to be like my debut, I wanted it to be exactly.

And as it was, it was so fucking whiny. And I was like, let's, let's, let's get to the anger. Let's like anger is so much.

Let's go. Let's go. It's so much more useful anger.

Ashna:
This is a very angry moment. And I think anger can be a helpful and motivating and animating emotion that helps us stand up for ourselves and figure out what's important to us and stop taking shit. So I think this is a really beautiful collection and object to put in the hands of those who could use some encouragement to not put up with shit from, you know, conventionally attractive, normie, mean people, which I hear about all the time and have experienced in my own contexts.

If you were to imagine an ideal reader in whose hands you would place this chap, who would it be?

Hunter:
I think it would, it would be, it would be a queer person who feels erased within their own community. And I don't think we talk about that enough. We really don't, you know, we, we just think, Oh, you know, once you get past the threshold of coming out, Oh, you're automatically in the community and we paint it as sunshine and rainbows and everyone's nice to each other. Hell no.

Ashna:
We're really not. And we can't talk about it because then it's bad for, you know, like our image and it's bad for our own morale.

Hunter:
Like we want to, you know, hope, you know, I feel like, and I still want this, which maybe it's a little naive. I want the queer youth, I want the queer community to be the utopia that I always imagined that it is, but it's simply not.

Ashna:
It's not.

Hunter:
The queer community is literally just like the rest of the world, except now you have like this added layer where you almost feel like you can't talk about anything. But I will say in the queer community, there are the most horrendous body standards, the most horrendous racism. Anything that is in the straight world is almost amplified in the queer community because you want it to be good.

And it's like not. And you're just like, Oh, okay. So I guess whoever's the hottest, whoever's the skinniest, whoever's the richest wins, question mark?

And what does that even mean to win? And why is there even this competition?

Ashna:
And how are we talking in these terms about something as human, as animal, as love and sex, like intimacy and connection should not be operating on capitalist terms.

Hunter:
And it so is in the queer community, especially so.

Ashna:
I think so. I think that's, I think that's very true.

Hunter:
Like the Fire Island gays, you know, they have their houses out there.

Ashna:
And femmes have their own versions of this, which are also, you know, especially complicated because you have patriarchal body standards and then you have, you know, how queer femmes treat each other and sort of rank one another and pigeonhole them into particular tribes and categories. And then eventually everybody is just this sort of porn trope instead of a person.

Hunter:
Right, it's like where's the humanity?

Ashna:
Right. So this is a chapbook that takes a stand for queer humanity.

Hunter:
Yeah. And how can we expect the rest of the world to treat us as human if we don't even treat each other as human?

Ashna:
And ourselves.

Hunter:
Absolutely.

Ashna:
We start with ourselves, and then each other.
What is your Instagram handle?

Hunter:
My Instagram handle is just my first and last name, @hunterhodkinson. I've also been wanting to throw in @dead.end.zine. And also, if you yourself would like to possibly collaborate with Tiny Cutlery, if you want a physical book object in the world, @tiny_cultery on Instagram.

Ashna:
And where do people get copies of Dead End Zine?

Hunter:
Dead End Zine, you can reach out to me individually either via my personal Instagram, although I would prefer you reached out on @dead.end.zine Instagram DM. Or you could email deadendbrooklyn@gmail.com. We currently do not have a storefront.

So it's just like you email me, I give you the Venmo, you Venmo, I send it out. It's like very old school that way. And I kind of like that it's like that.

Ashna:
And I love it.

Hunter:
It's just like word-of-mouth vibes. And yeah.

Ashna:
And what about Mean Gays?

Hunter:
Mean Gays, I am happy to report to everyone that we are possibly doing a second run. I would like to promote here that we are doing pre-orders for that. So if you're really interested in the project, or if you're really, you know, if you're, if you're feeling scorned by the gays, please, please, please DM me or tiny cutlery on Instagram, just showing that your interest and we will get you on the pre-order list.

I think we're going to do another, a second run. I think that's basically confirmed-ish.

Because we did sell out at the launch, which is insane.

Ashna:
I think it's highly predictable, actually.

Hunter:
Which you read at and you did. Yes. And you read my favorite poem.

Ashna:
I was very, very honored. Yeah, that is another gays being mean to each other poem, isn't it?

Hunter:
You knew what to bring. You understood the assignment.

Ashna:
We know, we know, we know where the rage lives. Huntie, thank you so much for being here and for having this conversation with me and for being the first person to collaborate with me on my own little expansion here on Substack.

Hunter:
I'm so honored. I'm so honored for just like all the things that we're like doing together. I'm so excited for our collab issue.

Ashna:
Yes, I will be co-editing the next issue of Dead End Zine. So please look out for all of the inevitable Substack promo for that. Thank you for being here.

Hunter:
Thank you so much.