For Genest and his family of friends who have stuck with him from a shared life on the streets all the way to the limelight, this pre-freak show high-jinx is business as usual. Genest is the tattooed muse of Nicola Formichetti, creative director of Thierry Mugler, fashion director of both Vogue Hommes Japan and Uniqlo and personal stylist to Lady Gaga. Genest shot into cultural discourse after appearing in Lady Gaga’s ‘Born this Way’ video and the Thierry Mugler Fall/Winter 2011 show. His head-to- toe tattoos depicting physical anatomy – bones and veins – in the process of decomposition and interspersed with bugs and ‘RIP’s proved to be impossible to ignore.
As Genest continues to snort worms, two girls in nipple tassels, SM shorts and vampire contacts practice French kissing behind him. A burlesque ventriloquist does a strip act in front of a mirror. A fire thrower teases a sword swallower with her flaming chains. A couple in wedding dresses prepare with some whiskey for the back piercing that will elevate them by their skin with hooks for the show’s finale.
Le Belmont is soon full of what Lady Gaga lovingly calls ‘little monsters’: misfits, loners, rejects and freaks, dressed in fittingly ghoulish costume. Their eyes alight and they cheer wildly as one after the other act comes on stage from the basement, playing out a ‘vice’ choreograp- hed to music that interactively encourages the audience to find their own ‘inner-vice power’. ‘You’re a freak and you’re worth it!’ it booms again and again from the stage, complete with a menacing beat. There is a lot of hugging in the mosh pit; fake blood smears from face to face and loving words are exchanged. ‘This is the humanistic appeal of Lucifer’s Blasphemous,’ the bartender says proudly and pours another drink. Rick and Imane the Snake Charmer do a bug-eating picnic performance to a song from Charlie Chaplin’s Circus, which ends in the mur- der of Imane and her snake. Then the wedding girls are elevated by the hooks in their backs, and they swing and hang from the ceiling, real blood running down their bodies and soaking into the pristine white of their dresses. The lights are low, the audience is primed, and by now this is a vision nothing short of spiritual: freak brides dangling from heaven to the transcendent lull of an eerie soundtrack.
From the streets
Rick Genest – or Rico, as he is known among his friends – officially brought this freak show ensemble together nine months ago, when the unexpected fame through his discovery by Formichetti on Facebook gave him the finances and conviction to realize his dream. ‘I’ve always wanted to be in horror movies, I’ve always loved freak shows, that’s why I got my tattoos,’ he says, shifting gracefully in his Frankenstein-like lea- ther pants, handmade by him using scrap leather and dental floss, a look so arresting that it found its way into the Thierry Mugler Fall/Winter 2011 collection. ‘We were all living together in a punk squat, fooling around,’ continues Genest. ‘I was the zombie and the game became this slap- stick thing about all the shit these mortals had to do to try to kill the zombie. This is how we invented our characters.’ And what they came up with might be an allegory for their own survival, and definitely plays on whatever skills they’ve learned to outwit the odds while homeless.
‘This Kill-the-Zombie game is more high stakes when your friends are hardened by street life,’ observes Genest. As example, the life of Miguel the Executioner began in a Mexican slum and went on to feature domestic violence, murder, suicide attempts, gang warfare and drug and alcohol abuse. ‘I’ve been working with electric tools, axes, knives and machinery for most of my life,’ Miguel says, grinning. ‘I like the danger. If I lose a finger or something, I don’t mind.’ It’s an attitude that, according to Lucifer’s Blasp- hemous philosophy, just makes the show all the more powerful.
Miguel also makes his own clothes: the thrift store Levi’s jeans he’s ripped holes into and then stitched together with a large needle to give them a brute post-mortem aesthetic; or the lea- ther vest on which he applied patterns of studs and sewed white leather bands into a diamond- shaped emblem. The work is so painstaking and refined that it is better quality than most ready-to-wear design. ‘We are punks,’ he says of this work.
Imane the Snake Charmer wears a t-shirt saying ‘Kill Me’, inspired by the game of Kill-the-Zom- bie. It’s designed by the freak show members, and printed by a friend who’s self-improvised a silk-screening press. Imane has torn hers at the back and knotted it, to give her version a perso- nal signature. ‘Everything we do on stage has evolved from own experiences,’ she says. ‘Being on the streets, in trouble, lonely, lost, hungry. We use what we have – our negativity – for art, to make people faint, scream, cry or feel strong. We want to show others what we have learned – that personal pain can be turned to gain. We’re transforming our vices and weaknesses into an art that inspires young people to believe in themselves.’ She herself was raised in a strict Muslim family. ‘I was taught to be submissive; I was forced to be obedient. My snake act is the ultimate in submissiveness. I worship Lucy [Lucifer, her four-meter albino Amazonian Boa Constrictor] – the snake as evil, the apple, temp- tation and all that – I worship this devil on my knees and do what she asks me to do. This is not an easy message to give and it can be misunder- stood, but my point is that it’s important to be clear about who we obey and why.’
The Snake Charmer’s humorous act delivers a subtler message than the one of Caleb the Self- Mutilator, whose performance is one of the most confronting of the show. ‘I cut myself open live on stage and then I sew myself back together.’ It’s a skill he has also used on his army surplus cut-offs with roughly sewn-on leather patches, his cheap baseball caps adorned in studs and the leather boots that are combined with salvaged parts of other pairs of leather boots to create a layered, nearly knee-high lace-up. About sewing together his body, he says through a fog of cigarette smoke: ‘I don’t use anesthetics or any shit like that, I feel everything. This is my vice. I’ve been cutting myself since I was eleven years old. I couldn’t help it. I used to be just fucked up. But now that I understand it, I use it like I’m that shaman dude Fakir who fucked his body up to discover his limits.’ Caleb’s girlfriend, Mari- anne, has recently joined him on stage as The Sinister Nurse – in a look that she has fashioned from the vintage candy-stripper uniforms she’d discovered at a garage sale. ‘At first Caleb would do shows and he’d come home and I’d fix him. Now this is part of the act – I’m like the satanic medical person who assists him to hurt himself. But by doing this I am also his soul mate.’
That loving feeling
Miguel the Executioner delivers his message of primitive instinct by warding off the fire- burning destruction of Fire Throwing Melissa, wielding machetes in wild swinging motions. ‘It’s fire, knives, guts, made in hell – but it’s real. What I’ve learned through experience is that the only way to survive is to love,’ says Miguel. ‘We need each other to survive, we need to stick together, we need to open our hearts and trust and love and share or we will die of loneliness if we don’t die of cold and hunger. In real life someone might actually cut off your hands. But the show is different: there is danger, blood, romance, comedy, love, friends, horror, action, beauty, drama. We play with all the emotions of the audience, showing ourselves as we really are, to join us all together – all races, all classes, all genders – in friendship,’ says Miguel with gen- uine feeling. Imane agrees: ‘It’s communal and it doesn’t follow what is corrupt in society.’
This creative togetherness has its own checks and balances: no lying, no stealing, no stars. ‘With Rico it’s different because he is a star but he is using his stardom to create openings for Lucifer’s Blasphemous,’ says Imane. A fact that is noted with awe by Genest’s agent, Colin Singer, the immigration lawyer who was hired by Formichetti to clear Genest’s way to Paris Fashion Week. He enjoyed working with them both so much that he began to represent Genest officially: ‘Rick is warm, kind and magnetic; he touches a very wide range of people and shows them the values of street people in a moving way. He is very lucky: his friendships are extremely important to him; he devotes all of his time and resources to them. Their mutual loyalty could be the envy of most of us. I’m mainstream, so this is an educational exercise for me – I am really struck by the sociological bonds of these friendships.’
In his soft-spoken, confident way, Genest sums it up: ‘We are putting ourselves on the map because we have something to say for which the time has come: be yourself, believe in yourself, make yourself heard and seen – because a lot of others dress up nice but they’re corrupt. We dress corrupt but we’re nice.’
CODE issue.
