“Eyeth—get it? In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because it’s a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on Earth.”

That’s the opener to “Ear vs. Eye: Deaf Mythology,” one of the many brief lessons sprinkled between the chapters of Sara Nović’s realistic fiction novel True Biz, released March 29 by Random House.

Charlie Serrano is a Deaf high school student in Ohio. Her cochlear implant has created language deprivation and family strife rather than improved hearing, but after her parents’ divorce, Charlie gets the opportunity to enroll in the fictional River Valley School for the Deaf, experiencing Deaf culture for the first time over the course of the book. Unfortunately, River Valley is at risk of losing its funding and shuttering. 

The point of view switches in third person between Charlie and other main characters with each chapter, denoted by the ASL symbol for the first letter of their name, but even when readers can’t focus exclusively on her point of view, chapter-break lessons allow us to look over Charlie’s shoulder at her coursework or research.

“Eyeth may be a pun, but it’s not a joke—it’s a myth.”

This particular lesson—meant to reinforce that Deaf culture is a culture, as well as to provoke questions about accessibility and designing a Deaf world—is one of many in Nović’s new book. They never feel dry or preachy, but I suppose I was primed to be interested from the get-go. 

I’m hearing, but learning the basics of American Sign Language (ASL) was an early quarantine hobby for me, and around the same time, my TikTok algorithm steered me deep into DeafTok. My “For You” page was full of Deaf creators, a wonderful mix of mini ASL lessons, stories, skits and jokes, and more. As immersive as TikTok, YouTube, and other resources can feel, I knew my experience of Deaf culture was still very limited and very online.

True Biz by Sara Nović
Random House, hardcover, 388 pp., $28, penguinrandomhouse.com

When I read the synopsis of True Biz—which is an expression in ASL that means “real talk” or “seriously”—I snatched the book up, and I was delighted to see the illustrations and bite-size lessons as I flipped through the pages.

Since Nović herself is Deaf, it initially feels like these teachings, like the Deaf mythology page, come directly from her to the reader. But the further you get into True Biz, the more you can tell that the lessons are for Charlie, from the other characters that Nović brings to life. 

We learn lessons like “Spelling Doesn’t Count,” on the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet, and “Deaf President Now,” a history lesson about a student protest at Gallaudet University, from the syllabus of Dr. February Waters, a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) and the headmistress at River Valley. We learn “Body Language,” a page full of illustrated instructions for signs like “naked,” “flirt,” and a range of other (dirtier) sexual words and actions, perhaps from Austin Workman-Bayard, Charlie’s mentor at school, whose family have been Deaf for generations. We also learn from Charlie herself, who encounters new concepts in the Deaf world and subsequently looks up Wikipedia pages such as “Black American Sign Language (BASL).” My personal favorites are her awestruck observations of her Deaf friends: Charlie marvels at their ability to ride the bus while signing with both hands, highly adept at balancing without holding on.

As Charlie gets more acclimated to River Valley, so too do we get acquainted with Charlie, her peers and family, and Deaf culture.

Nović’s writing is smooth and easy, even while jumping between perspectives. She balances dialogue in ASL, spoken English, and over text, with italics and alignment indicating who’s communicating. It’s interesting to read Deaf characters written by a Deaf author, as the use of sound as a key sense and descriptor is altered, but it’s no disadvantage. A key theme is language/sound access, and in many cases, Nović only lets us know what Charlie knows, creating vulnerability and slowing the pace of many conversations. A frequent refrain is Charlie seeing or hearing only a long blank space, signing or saying, “What?”, and someone having to repeat themself or fingerspell. 

Both in the chapter-break lessons and in the narrative sections, Nović manages to cover many intense topics without it feeling too jarring: bodily autonomy, Deaf “cures” and medical trauma, eugenics, anarchism, marital and family struggles, the cochlear implant debate, and more. In fact, Nović’s writing feels so steady that she never gives a true sense of urgency to even the most high-stakes parts of the plot, and the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped. Still, True Biz is a page-turner, an intriguing character exploration, and an honest survey of the basics of Deafness.

It might be imperfect, but I finished the book ready to recommend it and full of renewed excitement for learning ASL, eager to consider how I too might work toward the ideals of Eyeth in my own everyday life.

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Since January 2020, vocalist Julian Otis and Elastic Arts executive director Adam Zanolini have programmed AfriClassical Futures, a series offering an antidote to the overwhelming whiteness and deadness of the classical canon. Each AfriClassical concert invites a Black artist working in or springboarding from the Western classical tradition for an intimate live performance and conversation, though the exact form is up to the artist. Cellist Olula (who formerly performed as Olivia Harris), who came aboard as a curator of the series in its second season, explained this approach to Adam Zanolini for Elastic’s newsletter: “Because this is a ‘Western classical music’ series, it’s very important that we don’t bring in those hierarchies, that we don’t prop up the structures that we’re trying to fight against. . . . I want to continue to see a more expansive approach to [the question], ‘What is classical music?’” Previous AfriClassical guests have included chamber collective D-Composed, Milwaukee-based violin-and-cello duo Sista Strings, pianist and polymath Charles Joseph Smith, prolific composer and string player Renée Baker, and singer and composer Ayanna Woods, who’s behind some of the most engrossing choral music being written in Chicago right now. (Musical talent may be a family trait; her sister is Jamila Woods.) Next up in the series is the Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker, a Florida-born multi-instrumentalist and electronics artist whose cerebral, slow-developing music constantly reinvents itself. When she premiered her work “Strange Loops” here in October, the performance managed to amuse several AACM musicians—no small feat—by employing overlapping scales in different keys and directing musicians to bounce Ping-Pong balls inside a piano and use the bodies of other instruments as resonators, either by singing or blowing their horns into them. Ever out of the box, Baker will use this solo set to spotlight a harmonics guitar (specially designed by experimental luthier John C.L. Jansen) and the 16-channel speaker system at Elastic Arts, which the Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre installed just before the pandemic shutdown.

Elizabeth A. Baker, Sat 5/21, 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15, all ages

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Q: I’m a straight guy, married to a straight woman for 15 years. Several years back, I opened up to my wife about my fantasies of her sleeping with other men. I was nervous about bringing it up. Her views on sex had always been traditional, and she had always expressed a very strict idea of monogamy and commitment. So, I was extremely relieved when her reaction was intrigue rather than disgust. She was curious about it and wondered if I really wanted it to happen or if it was just something I wanted to keep in our rotation of dirty talk. Fast-forward to this week, and my wife tells me she is interested in exploring this. (Note to other guys who want this from their wives: be respectful, don’t pressure, and give her time to think about it. Your patience might be rewarded!) Here is the problem: We both have careers that could be complicated or damaged by the stigma around “cheating.” I know about all the apps out there, but we live in a large city, and there is a nonzero chance that we might run into someone on the apps we are connected to professionally or socially. Are any of the apps out there geared toward folks who want to go about this carefully? Is it possible to minimize the risk of professional or social embarrassment here, or is this just something we must accept to pursue this lifestyle? —Hooking Up, Seeking Help

A: There are lots of dating apps for people and/or couples looking for casual sex and/or kinky sex (Feeld, 3Somer, #Open, et al.), and lots of people—single and partnered—looking for casual and/or kinky sex on regular dating apps (Tinder, OKCupid, Christian Mingle, et al.). But hookup/threesome/swinger apps, while perceived as sleazier, are a safer bet for a couple like you and your wife.

While there’s no way to eliminate your risk of being recognized on an app, HUSH, anyone who spots you on Feeld looking for extracurricular dick was on Feeld looking for and/or offering up a little extracurricular dick of their own. The threat of mutually assured destruction—if they gossip about you, you’ll gossip about them—is usually enough to restrain bad actors, as is the threat of the obvious follow-up question. (“Wait, why are you on Feeld?”) And most people on hookup apps aren’t bad actors, HUSH, but fundamentally decent people like you and your wife, i.e., singles and couples looking for a little fun, not for an opportunity to hurt anyone. A friend or a relative or a coworker who spots your wife in a bar with a strange man—or in the lobby of a hotel or on her way into your apartment—is likelier to cause you headaches than one of your fellow perverts online.

To minimize your risk of being spotted and outed on the apps, HUSH, don’t post face pics and only share them after you’ve established—to the best of your ability—the person you’re talking to isn’t a bot, a pic collector, or an extortionist. Again, there’s no way to fully eliminate the risk, but at a certain point you have to trust your gut and take a risk. You also have the option of creating a profile in a city you visit regularly but don’t live in, HUSH. After you’ve found and vetted a few good candidates, get yourself some airline tickets and a hotel room and have those drinks in a bar that a colleague, a fan, or your father-in-law is unlikely to walk into.

Q: There’s a story making the rounds on Reddit about people getting those metallic “bejeweled butt plugs” all the way into their asses and needing pretty intense intervention to get them out, ranging from partners pulling them out with their fingers (the unfun kind of double penetration) to actual surgery in a hospital (only fun for a very select few). The blame, apparently, is the fact that the base of these toys is rarely wider than the widest party of the head, which is pretty damning, and that lubed metal is slipperier than lubed silicone. So here are the operative questions: Are metallic bejeweled butt plugs safe or not so much? Are silicone bejeweled butt plugs any safer? Are there any safe bejeweled butt plug options out there? The world isn’t going to stop being obsessed with sparkly butt toys any time soon, so we’re going to need to find a way to do it safely. —Insertion Toy Extraction Messy Situation

A: I’ve seen those jeweled butt plugs in shops and in photos online—they’re usually made from stainless steel and have glass “gems” mounted at the end of an alarmingly narrow base—but I’ve never actually seen one in person. Or in a person, at least not in person. But knowing what I do about butts (and how they relax after some play), and knowing what I do about plugs (a flared base is your first line of defense against a trip to the ER), I would’ve worried too much about losing one to use one. As for safe bejeweled butt plug options, ITEMS, you’re going to want a flared base and a jewel that’s at least the size of Cullinan I Diamond, the fist-sized rock on the Queen of England’s royal scepter, which come to think of it . . .

Q: As you’ve surely heard, the conservative Supreme Court majority plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. While my wife and I were lamenting the state of this fucking country, she mentioned that nobody ever hears men talking about the abortions that kept their lives on track—even though that’s obviously a very common thing that happens. How many guys shat their pants after a condom failed during sex with a woman they weren’t that into? How many prominent men knocked up their mistresses or assistants or babysitters? How many Republican boys have pressed a wad of their parents’ money into a girl’s hand because having a baby would ruin his future? These men need to speak up. I’m not expecting actual Republicans to do so, but perhaps there are men out there who are willing to speak up and admit what we all know: Men benefit from abortion while bearing none of the shame associated with it. It’s time we heard from them. I’m sorry I don’t have a catchy name for this or a cute sign-off. I’m so tired and the world is falling apart. —Men Should Speak Up About Abortion

A: Now for some real worries. We are weeks away from American women being stripped of a fundamental constitutional and human right. And we face the prospect of an out-of-control and illegimate Supreme Court stripping us of a host of other rights: the right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage, even the right to have sex for pleasure—you know, the sex most people have most of the time. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws that criminalized not just consensual gay sex, but consensual sex between men and women that wasn’t open to conception as well.

While it should be enough to hear from women who’ve benefited from safe and legal abortion—and it should be enough to know that women die from unsafe and illegal abortions, and enough to know that banning abortions doesn’t stop women from getting abortions—I happen to agree that cis men who support abortion rights and have benefited from them need to speak the fuck up about reproductive freedom.

“There are millions of men whose lives would have been worse without abortion,” the writer Jill Filipovic wrote on Twitter last week. “Men who wouldn’t have found their big loves, wouldn’t have their kids, wouldn’t have been as successful, wouldn’t have taken big risks” if they had become fathers before they were ready. To those men, to all men, Filipovic says, “This is your fight, too. Get in it.”

And gay men? The exact same arguments being used right now to strip women of the right to decide when and whether they want to bear a child—abortion isn’t within the “history and traditions” of the United States, abortion isn’t a right enumerated in the Constitution, abortion is a moral question—can and will be used to strip us of the right to have sex and the right to marry. Republican assholes are passing laws in red states right fucking now that force women to give birth to their rapists’ babies against their will. Don’t for a second think these same assholes won’t pass laws forcibly ending your gay marriage or throwing your gay ass in jail for getting your gay ass fucked. This is our fight, too, faggots.

Q: Is there a website where we can legally find out how to buy the abortion pills you’ve mentioned on the podcast? —Make It Stop

A: Everything you need to know about abortion pills—how they work and where to get them—can be found at plancpills.org. And anyone using those pills at home needs to read Dr. Jen Gunter’s essay “Your Medical Team Cannot Tell If You Had a Self-Managed Abortion” at vajenda.substack.com. And everyone should read Jill Filipovic’s advice on what we can do right now to fight back (“Get To Work, Get Informed, Get Brave”) at jill.substack.com. And if you can afford to donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, now would be a great time to do so. They’re at abortionfunds.org. And finally: don’t vote Republican, don’t fuck Republicans.

Download the Savage Lovecast at savagelovecast.com.

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Credit: Coco Picard

In a new exhibition, longtime collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger created an immersive multimedia installation that explores intimacy, distance, and the fluctuations between. The above comic captures their reflections on making together and materials in play. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability.

Our collaboration developed organically. We were both ceramic students at Illinois State University but did not collaborate (or date) at the time. We worked cooperatively as many craftspeople do, sharing tasks like making clay and firing kilns. We are both from large families where cooperation is necessary. 

A few years later, we started living together and working on collaborative performance pieces. Those performances grew out of a shared interest in performance and each other. 

The silhouette is very present in “Loving Repeating.” The silhouette is made from tracing a shadow. A shadow is a reminder that a body is present and a silhouette is a reminder that a body is gone. What is missing causes loneliness. In “Loving Repeating,” there is a large painted mural of our silhouette repeated many times to form a pattern. That pattern is then pushed into a forced perspective, creating an illusion of the mural receding into space. Some may see a hint to the infinite in this receding in space. 

“Loving Repeating: New Work by Miller & Shellabarger”
Through 9/3: Mon-Thu 10 AM-7 PM, Fri 10 AM-4:30 PM, Sat 10 AM-4 PM, Sun 10 AM-1:30 PM, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520, hydeparkart.org

The name of the exhibition comes from a Gertrude Stein novel, The Making of the Americans. She talks about history being made by the repetition of the everyday over generations and that is a type of infinity. She also suggests that love is tied to loving the way that another [person] is repeating. These ideas of togetherness and separation run throughout most of our collaborative efforts.

We’ve done two other similar shows like the one at the Hyde Park Art Center. The ashes of both are included in [“Loving Repeating”] in their pine box urns. Like those shows, all the work—excluding the murals—are made of paper and after the show ends will be burnt and placed in a pine box urn.

We talk about our collaborative work all the time and everywhere: at breakfast, on walks . . . We have art dates where we hash out details about this and that. We’ve been working collaboratively for almost 30 years, so it comes easily—but it really always has. We’ve also had very separate solo art practices since the very beginning.

Don’t force your collaboration. If you give your work time and attention it will grow.

Miller & Shellabarger’s artist page at Western Exhibitions
westernexhibitions.com

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For Chicago-based director Donterrio, the late-00s musical Passing Strange represents a road map for how an artist—no matter the medium in which they create—can live their life. 

The show’s story of a Black musician’s coming-of-age depicts “what happens once you have this crazy dream as a teenager to be an artist, and this is how you end up if you don’t cede to the message,” he explained. 

Porchlight Revisits: Passing Strange
Wed 5/18, 7 PM and Thu 5/19, 1:30 and 7 PM; Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $49.

Donterrio has been at the helm of Porchlight Music Theatre’s new production of Passing Strange, which will be presented this Wednesday and Thursday as part of the company’s ongoing Porchlight Revisits series, highlighting musicals that have fallen off the theater community’s radar.

Opening with much acclaim on Broadway in February 2008, Passing Strange was created by musician and playwright Stew. (Heidi Rodewald collaborated on the music.) The show depicts the life of a young musician—simply referred to as “the youth”—and his struggles with love and work as he searches to find his voice as an artist. Songs bridging numerous musical genres are interspersed throughout. The narrator, identified as “Stew,” was originally portrayed by Stew.  

The show was essentially a primer on how to be “a healthy, well-rounded artist,” according to Donterrio. “It says, ‘Watch out for these things. Spend time with your family. Be careful of the people who don’t love you back.’”

Passing Strange ran on Broadway through July 2008 and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning one for Best Book, and also received three Drama Desk Awards. But even after Spike Lee filmed two performances for a 2009 movie, Passing Strange has only rarely been performed in subsequent years. (The now-defunct Bailiwick Chicago—not to be confused with the also-defunct Bailiwick Repertory—produced a critically acclaimed staging of the show in 2011, directed by Lili-Anne Brown.)

Porchlight artistic director Michael Weber suspects the show’s original marketers had a difficult time selling the show since it “was a live, personal piece written for Stew to perform himself.” The Broadway milieu, he added, “is more tourist-based and more international-based, and they want to see things with the biggest-name actors or the biggest-titled shows like Wicked or Phantom of the Opera.”

Passing Strange, Weber noted, is a “thinking person’s show—it is very nuanced in terms of the vision it is trying to expound upon, and I think that made it a little difficult for people to put in a nutshell what the experience is. . . . I think that, had they had a star that everybody knew, it would have had a different life, but on the other hand, it would have lost everything it had [with] Stew there on stage.”

Donterrio, for his part, embraced the challenge of Passing Strange being so intrinsically interwoven with the personality and memories from its creator.

“If people look at the core of the story that’s there, it’s the story of any artist,” he explained. “With our production, we’re kind of able to dig into that. I think we’ll be able to open up to a new audience and we don’t have to rely on Stew’s being and his physicality, [and] the way he sang the material. We can just do the material, be honest to it, and it can kind of be like Pippin, where it can be any performer.” 

Donterrio further described the cast as “a roomful of multifaceted artists. The actors are [regularly] directors and costume designers, for example. They do other things as well, so it’s been a really fun creative process. It will be a really fun show to experience.”  

The Porchlight Revisits series has been featuring stagings of little-seen musicals since 2018. According to Weber, Passing Strange demonstrates that Porchlight is programming not just a retrospective of forgotten vintage shows but important and compelling shows that did not have a chance to connect with audiences.

“Passing Strange is definitely one of the newest shows we’ve done in the Porchlight Revisited series,” Weber said. “[But] it will always be a mix of the lesser seen shows that we think deserve a second look.”

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