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The Waterfront Journals
A visceral and carnivalesque mosaic of life at the fringes.
The Waterfront Journals is a road trip through the sensuous, perilous landscape of alternative America—a series of fictional monologues that ventriloquise the real people Wojnarowicz met on his travels while he was sleeping rough.
We meet these hustlers, runaways and dreamers in unassuming locations—in truck stops, bus stations and parks. Their stories are disturbing, often shocking; but they’re told with an honesty and a hallucinatory intensity that simply demands to be heard.
Published for the first time in the UK, this electrifying collection confirms that David Wojnarowicz was not only one of millennial America’s most necessary and visionary artists, but also among its most humane and urgent literary chroniclers.
The Waterfront Journals is a road trip through the sensuous, perilous landscape of alternative America—a series of fictional monologues that ventriloquise the real people Wojnarowicz met on his travels while he was sleeping rough.
We meet these hustlers, runaways and dreamers in unassuming locations—in truck stops, bus stations and parks. Their stories are disturbing, often shocking; but they’re told with an honesty and a hallucinatory intensity that simply demands to be heard.
Published for the first time in the UK, this electrifying collection confirms that David Wojnarowicz was not only one of millennial America’s most necessary and visionary artists, but also among its most humane and urgent literary chroniclers.
189 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
60 people are currently reading
1811 people want to read
About the author
David Wojnarowicz
28 books328 followersDavid Wojnarowicz was a gay painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s.
He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City and worked as a farmer on the Canadian border.
Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made super-8 films, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries.
In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act.
Wojnarowicz died of AIDS on July 22, 1992. His personal papers are part of the Downtown Collection held by the Fales Library at New York University.
He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City and worked as a farmer on the Canadian border.
Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made super-8 films, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries.
In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act.
Wojnarowicz died of AIDS on July 22, 1992. His personal papers are part of the Downtown Collection held by the Fales Library at New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
June 8, 2023
“As we both came he fell back against the wall, his arms to the sides like he’d been crucified and was delirious in the last intoxicating moments of it like St. Sebastian pierced with the long reeds of arrows, silhouetted against a night full of clouds opening up, revealing stars and a moon. We felt like figures adrift, like falling comets in old comic-book adventure illustrations. I thought how science texts never reveal how far the body would go for a sense of unalterable chance and change, something outside the flow of regularity: streets, job routines, sleepless nights on solitary damp mattresses.”
July 25, 2019
Preface:
This last time that I went to Berlin I had plans to meet with this guy Markus, a friend who I had met here in New York. He moved to Germany just a month ago. I met Markus at a party in nyc and we bonded over the fact that we had both been to the same weekender in Berlin last summer; we went on two dates, but it always felt very friendly. I approached him with mostly fascination: he was 38, had lived through the raves of the 90's, and was still going at it, as a single gay man.
When we made plans to see each other in Berlin I was with my two other friends who knew Markus as well, and we were supposed to get drinks after Gina Mikeeh and I finished yoga. We agreed on 9pm but he said to just text him when we left yoga, because they were kind of far. We got to the bar and were waiting around, getting drinks, looking for Markus, when I realized that I had forgotten to text him when we left. I messaged him and he said that he had just assumed that we had forgotten about him and had just gone ahead and gotten drinks with his friends.
I was shocked by how quickly he pivoted, not even checkin-in, for the assumption that we had actually just forgetten about him. I recognized what had just happened though; it was a defense mechanism, built from flaky guys, straight guys, closeted guys, gay guys who want someone else, gay guys who only want to fuck and don't want a relationship--its a mechanism to minimize the amount of hurt that can come your way, by defaulting to your own plans, or assuming that someone would forget about you anyways. Why even exert the energy for a follow up text if you know its an avenue to ignored again? With the plethora of options people's eyes and hearts are always wandering...
Review:
Wojnarowicz captures the mental vicissitudes of gay men, the push and pull of falling too easily for strangers, aching for connection, furtive scheming around mothers and partners: mechanisms to assuage hurt, maximize "chillness," emotional nomads. The book paints a life lived in vignettes, a collection of entries he calls "monologues" based on different experiences he had living in the streets of New York and San Francisco. The entries are short, usually no longer than 1000 or 1500 words - but they are extremely evocative, and pull you in and pull you out in medias res, with the ruthlessness of memory as an editor.
"Young Runner Hanging Out by the River," "Guy in Car on Wall Street at Midnight," or "Man in Sheridan Square Park Drinking 1:00am." The stories are sometimes told from the subjectivity of the person described in the title, other times it seems that its some character's (possibly Wojnarowicz's) encounter with the title character. Some of them are so simple as to be about a homeless man talking about how he used to tap dance, how he doesn't understand all the men kissing men, how he wishes he could see his daughters. Many of them are about hookups, cruising, blowjobs, tricks and johns, pimps and motel lobbies. Some standouts were "A Kid on the Piers near the West Side Highway," a no holds-barred account of a super intense, physical hookup that sounds concerningly like a kidnapping, but the narrator is possibly into it? Violence lurks around every corner of these stories.
The last two stories, "The Waterfront 2:00am" and "From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy," at the very end, blew me away. Much of the vignettes use simple, stream of consciousness writing that make for very easy reading, but the last two stories slip into prose that is at once diaphonous and strident, like rubbing tulle on an open wound. "Waterfront" details a hookup between a young boy and a retired vet, and the intimacies they exchange over the course of an hour. The second, which feels the most autobiographical, chronicles an extended hook-up relationship between the narrator and a navy recruit. They're both kind of hot stories, but he manages to depict the push and pull of a one night, two night stand, the under cover nature of gay sex at this time, with prose that brims with a lust for life. To end with just some gorgeous quotes:
"In the ledge of that playground, with thousands of cars blindly swinging past, with the sense of my years circling around my forehead, this guy turns me around pressing himself bodily against me, his arms around my shoulders and neck, his hands flat against my chest, nuzzling my earlobe and neck with his warm breath, he entered me and breathed hard and rubbed his hands down my sides and said he wished it were summer so he could stay out all night and I know he probably hadn't slept indoors for over a week. As we both came he fell back against the wall, his arms to the sides like he'd been crucified, and was delirious in the last intoxicating moments of it like St. Sebastian pierced with the long reeds of arrows, silhouetted against a night full of clouds opening up, revealing stars and a moon. We felt like figures adrift, like falilng comets in old comic-book adventure illustrations. I thought how science texts never reveal how far the body would go for a sense of unalterable chance and change, something outside the flow of regularity: streets, job routines, sleepless nights on solitary damp matresses," (from Waterfront)
"I dive in the water and swim for the longest while beneath its surface slow and quiet. I'm aquatic, surrounded by silence, everything gray beneath my eyelids, feeling like I'm aware for the first time of my arms and hands and kicking legs and what they all mean...In the shallows of the lake I walk on my hands, digging into the sand. Further out it's silt all soft and deep you know it's black and rich; my feet sink into my ankles. It's a texture that's like the inside of a body when our fingers go wandering..." (from Wolf Boy)
"Sometimes I wish I could blow myself up. Wrap a belt of dynamite around my fucking waist and walk into a cathedral or the Oval Office or the home of my mother and father. I'm in the last rwo of the bus, the seven other passengers are clustered like flies around the driver in the front. I can see his cute fuckable face in the rearview mirror. I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds int he sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one o those kids they find in remote jungles or forests of India. A wolf child. And they've dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles. They're trying to give me a damp mattress to sleep on in a dark corner when all I really want is the rude perfume of some guy's furry underarms and crotch to lean into. I'll make guttural sounds and stop eating and drinking and I'll be dead within the year. My eyes have always been advertisements for an early death." (127)
This last time that I went to Berlin I had plans to meet with this guy Markus, a friend who I had met here in New York. He moved to Germany just a month ago. I met Markus at a party in nyc and we bonded over the fact that we had both been to the same weekender in Berlin last summer; we went on two dates, but it always felt very friendly. I approached him with mostly fascination: he was 38, had lived through the raves of the 90's, and was still going at it, as a single gay man.
When we made plans to see each other in Berlin I was with my two other friends who knew Markus as well, and we were supposed to get drinks after Gina Mikeeh and I finished yoga. We agreed on 9pm but he said to just text him when we left yoga, because they were kind of far. We got to the bar and were waiting around, getting drinks, looking for Markus, when I realized that I had forgotten to text him when we left. I messaged him and he said that he had just assumed that we had forgotten about him and had just gone ahead and gotten drinks with his friends.
I was shocked by how quickly he pivoted, not even checkin-in, for the assumption that we had actually just forgetten about him. I recognized what had just happened though; it was a defense mechanism, built from flaky guys, straight guys, closeted guys, gay guys who want someone else, gay guys who only want to fuck and don't want a relationship--its a mechanism to minimize the amount of hurt that can come your way, by defaulting to your own plans, or assuming that someone would forget about you anyways. Why even exert the energy for a follow up text if you know its an avenue to ignored again? With the plethora of options people's eyes and hearts are always wandering...
Review:
Wojnarowicz captures the mental vicissitudes of gay men, the push and pull of falling too easily for strangers, aching for connection, furtive scheming around mothers and partners: mechanisms to assuage hurt, maximize "chillness," emotional nomads. The book paints a life lived in vignettes, a collection of entries he calls "monologues" based on different experiences he had living in the streets of New York and San Francisco. The entries are short, usually no longer than 1000 or 1500 words - but they are extremely evocative, and pull you in and pull you out in medias res, with the ruthlessness of memory as an editor.
"Young Runner Hanging Out by the River," "Guy in Car on Wall Street at Midnight," or "Man in Sheridan Square Park Drinking 1:00am." The stories are sometimes told from the subjectivity of the person described in the title, other times it seems that its some character's (possibly Wojnarowicz's) encounter with the title character. Some of them are so simple as to be about a homeless man talking about how he used to tap dance, how he doesn't understand all the men kissing men, how he wishes he could see his daughters. Many of them are about hookups, cruising, blowjobs, tricks and johns, pimps and motel lobbies. Some standouts were "A Kid on the Piers near the West Side Highway," a no holds-barred account of a super intense, physical hookup that sounds concerningly like a kidnapping, but the narrator is possibly into it? Violence lurks around every corner of these stories.
The last two stories, "The Waterfront 2:00am" and "From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy," at the very end, blew me away. Much of the vignettes use simple, stream of consciousness writing that make for very easy reading, but the last two stories slip into prose that is at once diaphonous and strident, like rubbing tulle on an open wound. "Waterfront" details a hookup between a young boy and a retired vet, and the intimacies they exchange over the course of an hour. The second, which feels the most autobiographical, chronicles an extended hook-up relationship between the narrator and a navy recruit. They're both kind of hot stories, but he manages to depict the push and pull of a one night, two night stand, the under cover nature of gay sex at this time, with prose that brims with a lust for life. To end with just some gorgeous quotes:
"In the ledge of that playground, with thousands of cars blindly swinging past, with the sense of my years circling around my forehead, this guy turns me around pressing himself bodily against me, his arms around my shoulders and neck, his hands flat against my chest, nuzzling my earlobe and neck with his warm breath, he entered me and breathed hard and rubbed his hands down my sides and said he wished it were summer so he could stay out all night and I know he probably hadn't slept indoors for over a week. As we both came he fell back against the wall, his arms to the sides like he'd been crucified, and was delirious in the last intoxicating moments of it like St. Sebastian pierced with the long reeds of arrows, silhouetted against a night full of clouds opening up, revealing stars and a moon. We felt like figures adrift, like falilng comets in old comic-book adventure illustrations. I thought how science texts never reveal how far the body would go for a sense of unalterable chance and change, something outside the flow of regularity: streets, job routines, sleepless nights on solitary damp matresses," (from Waterfront)
"I dive in the water and swim for the longest while beneath its surface slow and quiet. I'm aquatic, surrounded by silence, everything gray beneath my eyelids, feeling like I'm aware for the first time of my arms and hands and kicking legs and what they all mean...In the shallows of the lake I walk on my hands, digging into the sand. Further out it's silt all soft and deep you know it's black and rich; my feet sink into my ankles. It's a texture that's like the inside of a body when our fingers go wandering..." (from Wolf Boy)
"Sometimes I wish I could blow myself up. Wrap a belt of dynamite around my fucking waist and walk into a cathedral or the Oval Office or the home of my mother and father. I'm in the last rwo of the bus, the seven other passengers are clustered like flies around the driver in the front. I can see his cute fuckable face in the rearview mirror. I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds int he sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one o those kids they find in remote jungles or forests of India. A wolf child. And they've dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles. They're trying to give me a damp mattress to sleep on in a dark corner when all I really want is the rude perfume of some guy's furry underarms and crotch to lean into. I'll make guttural sounds and stop eating and drinking and I'll be dead within the year. My eyes have always been advertisements for an early death." (127)
February 21, 2024
my rating is clearly inflated by the fact that i love david wojnarowicz and i won't hide that im biased. but this is so unique and it touches on topics that very much remind me of conversations I've had with diego years ago. its true that i don't usually dabble in gay literature, because as a sapphic i just _get_ lesbian literature and feel so much, but it reminded me, in a way, to richard siken. it is tender while being devastating, aggressive, hard to swallow. i just wanted to read read read (literally the reason i kept procrastinating and now i only have five days left to work on my project and have done nothing other than reading my silly little gay journals). i also just loved the feeling of meeting people, even in such a precarious situations, talking, learning, listening... really thought about how difficult it would actually be to write this book nowadays, no one talks to a random person in a café, no one just gets to know for the pleasure of knowing. maybe it's new york.
going back to the main topic, seeing this hostile aspect to gay relationships, which, for what i gather, still kind of happens even if there is no epidemic, no AIDS, not so much prejudice (still is, for sure), just makes me realize how hard it is to navigate in circles that don't value or motivate tenderness, openness, and that those circles are where you have to find love, companionship, friendship. and how lucky i am that women hold dear emotions and honesty and vulnerability, and that i love women and probably also chose to love them for this, for the safe space, for the tender space
and well, im obviously mesmerized by the last two episodes. i hope i can read more of david's books soon (i will, im sure)
going back to the main topic, seeing this hostile aspect to gay relationships, which, for what i gather, still kind of happens even if there is no epidemic, no AIDS, not so much prejudice (still is, for sure), just makes me realize how hard it is to navigate in circles that don't value or motivate tenderness, openness, and that those circles are where you have to find love, companionship, friendship. and how lucky i am that women hold dear emotions and honesty and vulnerability, and that i love women and probably also chose to love them for this, for the safe space, for the tender space
and well, im obviously mesmerized by the last two episodes. i hope i can read more of david's books soon (i will, im sure)
December 1, 2025
every other page a phrase would slap me in the face with a warm open hand
October 25, 2019
’My eyes have always been advertisements for an early death.’
July 14, 2024
David Wojnarowicz has long been on my peripheral radar as a vital artist to NYC East Village scene of the 1970s–90s, but only after reading ‘Close to the Knives’ have I discovered just how stunning a writer he was, of huge importance not to just LGBTQIA+ communities but to all minorities dealing with oppression, particularly those on modern society’s sidelines, existing on the boundaries of acceptability including homelessness and prostitution.
Only bought yesterday and completed this morning (I couldn’t put it down), ‘The Waterfront Journals’ is a deeply compelling collection of stories from those living on the fringes. The British writer and biographer Philip Hoare says in his introduction to the book, “They’re flash-lit Polaroids, these scenes, ready-framed and developing before our eyes before being chucked away in the gutter to be trampled on by some passerby, the grit grinding into their gloss.”
Almost all the stories are told in the first person, as ‘a series of fictional monologues that ventriloquise the real people Wojnarowicz met on his travels while he was sleeping rough’. It is unclear at first how much of what you’re reading chronicles the people Wojnarowicz met, and how much is fiction, but as you read through them it becomes clear that not only is Wojnarowicz’s intention to give voices to those existing on our dimly-lit sidelines, but also to represent himself and his own experiences. A couple of them are clearly autobiographical, including the standout piece for me, ‘From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy’.
Highly recommend!
Only bought yesterday and completed this morning (I couldn’t put it down), ‘The Waterfront Journals’ is a deeply compelling collection of stories from those living on the fringes. The British writer and biographer Philip Hoare says in his introduction to the book, “They’re flash-lit Polaroids, these scenes, ready-framed and developing before our eyes before being chucked away in the gutter to be trampled on by some passerby, the grit grinding into their gloss.”
Almost all the stories are told in the first person, as ‘a series of fictional monologues that ventriloquise the real people Wojnarowicz met on his travels while he was sleeping rough’. It is unclear at first how much of what you’re reading chronicles the people Wojnarowicz met, and how much is fiction, but as you read through them it becomes clear that not only is Wojnarowicz’s intention to give voices to those existing on our dimly-lit sidelines, but also to represent himself and his own experiences. A couple of them are clearly autobiographical, including the standout piece for me, ‘From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy’.
Highly recommend!
June 16, 2020
This has been a breath of fresh air, fabulous , poetic, heartbreakingly necessary ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
December 15, 2025
"Meine Augen sind schon immer Reklametafeln für einen frühen Tod gewesen."
"Waterfront Journals" besteht aus kurzen Miniatur-Porträts: Diese Porträts heißen "Boy in einem Trailer Park" oder "Mann auf der Second Avenue, morgens um zwei", auf zwei, drei Seiten erzählen Sexarbeiter*innen, Ausreißer*innen und Drogensüchtige von ihren Lebensgeschichten. Die Porträts sind Splitter, Schlaglichter auf das Leben von Menschen, die außerhalb der Gesellschaft stehen, irgendwo gestrandet sind. Trotz aller Düsternis, schwingt in vielen der Geschichten noch Hoffnung auf ein besseres Leben mit - oder zumindest auf ein anderes Leben.
Die 180 Seiten lassen sich schnell lesen, aber die Lebensgeschichten (es bleibt unklar, ob sie fiktiv sind oder ob der Autor die Menschen tatsächlich getroffen hat) hallen noch lange nach. Eine große Empfehlung!
"Waterfront Journals" besteht aus kurzen Miniatur-Porträts: Diese Porträts heißen "Boy in einem Trailer Park" oder "Mann auf der Second Avenue, morgens um zwei", auf zwei, drei Seiten erzählen Sexarbeiter*innen, Ausreißer*innen und Drogensüchtige von ihren Lebensgeschichten. Die Porträts sind Splitter, Schlaglichter auf das Leben von Menschen, die außerhalb der Gesellschaft stehen, irgendwo gestrandet sind. Trotz aller Düsternis, schwingt in vielen der Geschichten noch Hoffnung auf ein besseres Leben mit - oder zumindest auf ein anderes Leben.
Die 180 Seiten lassen sich schnell lesen, aber die Lebensgeschichten (es bleibt unklar, ob sie fiktiv sind oder ob der Autor die Menschen tatsächlich getroffen hat) hallen noch lange nach. Eine große Empfehlung!
January 23, 2023
'I keep having these strange dreams ... last night I dreamt that I was a giant ... I was draped all over the planet ... My head rested on North America and my legs rested on South America ... my arms stretched out for miles and miles over the oceans ... and I could feel millions of fish just below the surface of the water ... I could feel them nibbling on my arms ... real gentle ...'
August 26, 2024
Im such an enormous fan of David Wojnarowicz’s work and this was his first written piece I’ve read. The book creates tensions that work: are the monologues fictional, not fictional, half fictional? And tensions that don’t: why does every character sound exactly the same? For the number of short monologues you start to feel stuck in a sort of tone and voice, whether that’s intentional I don’t know.
Really want to read his memoir now but I think I won’t be picking this one back up
Really want to read his memoir now but I think I won’t be picking this one back up
July 6, 2024
JAV menininko užrašytos trumpos paribio ir užribio žmonių istorijos, tai ir jo paties išgyventų neteisybių ir pasaulio skausmo veidrodis.
September 9, 2020
I had high expectations on this, but found it to be quite disappointing. The quality of the stories ('monologues' based on fictional autobiography) is uneven, to say the least. Not a patch on his memoir Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, which I recommend and regard as a real literary gem.
March 6, 2019
These stream of consciousness - or stream of conversation - monologues from hustlers, sex workers, drug users, and men cruising offer a harrowing portrait of a Reagan-era America on the brink of collapse. Devoid of names, these stories wash over you like a flood of filthy water, immersing you in the underbelly of the 1980s. In some ways, this is an excellent complement to Samuel R. Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue - capturing the same time, the same place, the same action, but rather than theory providing an impressionistic stream of images. Wojnarowicz's America is cruel, tough, and connected by a libidinous current that runs from coast to coast.
August 15, 2025
If you were to sit with the drunks on tube platforms in the wee hours and ask them their life stories, you might end up with something like this: a sometimes garbled and fantastical account of the brutality of human existence and the humour found in its absurdity.
Here, Wojnarowicz combines an unflinching realism with the mythology of New York’s drunk and homeless. He isolates a world that sits within ours, unnoticed.
Reading this, I thought of those stacked architectural drawings where each plastic sheet adds new depth to the rendering. He chooses his details so precisely that it seems as though he has lifted a single dimension from life and is holds it to the light.
Reading Wojnarowicz, you realise the truth in that overused expression that being surrounded by people is the loneliest state of all. At the height of the AIDS crisis, young men struggle to leave their mark on a world intent on letting them disappear. Loneliness persists even in sex, where the violent fulfilment of need leaves bodies connected only by a chain of abuse.
What makes this book, and indeed all of Wojnarowicz’s writing, so unique is that he manages to give universal colour to our societal disconnect. Though the book appears to be told to him, we can’t know if these are exchanges, or just the imagined lives of those you cross in a bustling street, where you let your mind wander to imagine who they are and where they are going in such a hurry.
Here, Wojnarowicz combines an unflinching realism with the mythology of New York’s drunk and homeless. He isolates a world that sits within ours, unnoticed.
Reading this, I thought of those stacked architectural drawings where each plastic sheet adds new depth to the rendering. He chooses his details so precisely that it seems as though he has lifted a single dimension from life and is holds it to the light.
Reading Wojnarowicz, you realise the truth in that overused expression that being surrounded by people is the loneliest state of all. At the height of the AIDS crisis, young men struggle to leave their mark on a world intent on letting them disappear. Loneliness persists even in sex, where the violent fulfilment of need leaves bodies connected only by a chain of abuse.
What makes this book, and indeed all of Wojnarowicz’s writing, so unique is that he manages to give universal colour to our societal disconnect. Though the book appears to be told to him, we can’t know if these are exchanges, or just the imagined lives of those you cross in a bustling street, where you let your mind wander to imagine who they are and where they are going in such a hurry.
May 29, 2022
"The distinct sensation of being made of glass, of being completely invisible to him, was growing and curving like a cartoon wave. I feel so fucking dark."
"I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going I was just leaning into a drift and sway that I hoped would set me down gentle."
"This shit is painful, it's like being on a raft way out in the middle of a sea completely alone. I wave my hands in front of me, I know I'm not invisible, why are my thoughts so fucking loud? I'm lost in a world that's left all its mythologies behind in the onward crush of wars and civilization, my body traveling independent of brushes with life and death, no longer knowing what either means anymore."
"I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going I was just leaning into a drift and sway that I hoped would set me down gentle."
"This shit is painful, it's like being on a raft way out in the middle of a sea completely alone. I wave my hands in front of me, I know I'm not invisible, why are my thoughts so fucking loud? I'm lost in a world that's left all its mythologies behind in the onward crush of wars and civilization, my body traveling independent of brushes with life and death, no longer knowing what either means anymore."
August 2, 2022
Perhaps I wasn't meant to read these snippets right after I finished Memories That Smell Like Gasoline. While subtle insights continued to be fueled by such raw language and interaction, by their nature they were disjointed -- capable only of capturing fleeting moments that might not want to be captured. As a whole, though, the book was a powerful exploration of the desire and anguish that come with queerness.
April 28, 2020
Worth it for the Wolf Diaries
Another book with paragraphs I wish had written. After a while the entries from random meetings, the journal entries, become a bit tiring, but then you get to the Wolf Diaries and it’s all just one good, arc with great thoughts and ideas that cut like dull knives, leaving wounds on your psyche. Not the kinds of wounds you hide, the ones you treasure and show off to trusted friends.
Another book with paragraphs I wish had written. After a while the entries from random meetings, the journal entries, become a bit tiring, but then you get to the Wolf Diaries and it’s all just one good, arc with great thoughts and ideas that cut like dull knives, leaving wounds on your psyche. Not the kinds of wounds you hide, the ones you treasure and show off to trusted friends.
December 17, 2025
Relieved to be able to post about a real book instead of romance.
&& yet, in the numerous ways that I deeply love David Wojnarowicz & his work & his anger & his honesty there is in fact a very strong romantic urge. Each vignette is like poetry haunted by his ghost, hovering on the other side of the monologue, opening up to strangers across America and seeing them for a second (seeing himself for a moment?).
Those last two parts hit like dynamite and I feel shredded.
&& yet, in the numerous ways that I deeply love David Wojnarowicz & his work & his anger & his honesty there is in fact a very strong romantic urge. Each vignette is like poetry haunted by his ghost, hovering on the other side of the monologue, opening up to strangers across America and seeing them for a second (seeing himself for a moment?).
Those last two parts hit like dynamite and I feel shredded.
April 13, 2022
My first Wojnarowicz. I adore these tiny memoirs of anonymous peoples lives in the moment or recounting "that time when". Each story is extremely varied and covers a wide range of age, gender, race, and mindset. Some stories seem to be related or intersect in some way. All the stories are very bleak.
September 9, 2025
Lots of little very short vignettes, recording a similar New York ‘fringe’ scene to Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Think this got better as the book progressed, and I enjoyed the longer ones more when they were less fleeting and better developed.
October 21, 2020
brutal and chaotic with a gorgeous finish
May 4, 2023
the last two vignettes are so breathtaking
will be reading more from David!
will be reading more from David!
April 14, 2025
Remarkable
A bit like being battered with a 4 by 2 over and over again, but remarkable all the same
A bit like being battered with a 4 by 2 over and over again, but remarkable all the same
Read
September 8, 2011After reading the condescending, smug introduction by Tony Kushner that made reading this book sound like it was going to be like doing homework, I was surprised to find it wasn't all that bad. Very Burroughs-like. It seems like all the characters that share their various stories here aren't going to end up well, in fact most of them sound like they're going to die in a flea-bitten hotel room choking on their own vomit within a week or two. Verisimilitude can be interesting, in the same way talking to a bum or small-time con or crazy person on the street for a minute or two can be interesting. Unfortunately those "conversations" (or more often rants) usually last longer than a minute or two, and inevitably turn awkward. This book is wise in having every monologue be short, with each one no longer than two pages, so while they are intense they never become tedious or overbearing.
While I was reading the various monologues I couldn't help wondering if they were real or fictitious. Not that it really mattered, I'm sure they were based upon actual events and people the author experienced, and anyway I don't usually care about the authenticity of something as long as it's expressing something authentic. And because the sort of people giving the monologues are prone to self-denial and embellishment and, well, just plain madness, the validity of anything couldn't really be a question worth asking, especially when the bulk of the monologues are characters telling stories of other characters second (and sometimes more) hand.
But still I was a little curious, maybe if just because that douchebag Kushner had framed this book as a political/historical document in his introduction so I was stuck thinking about it as one, rather than just a piece of art. Then I read the last two chapters and they are clearly in a different voice than the rest of the book, the voice of the author, Wojnarowicz. They are overwritten and reflective and more coherent than anything else in the book. Not necessarily worse, just... more overwritten, MFA overwritten, the usual 80's/90's nihilist writing with no discernible point, aimless sex, very Bret Easton Ellis or Jesus' Son, good and stylized but nothing I'm interested in.
So I guess reading the last two chapters made be appreciate the authenticity of the other (better) chapters more, or at least marvel at Wojnarowicz for being able to pull of so many voices before sliding back into his own voice.
While I was reading the various monologues I couldn't help wondering if they were real or fictitious. Not that it really mattered, I'm sure they were based upon actual events and people the author experienced, and anyway I don't usually care about the authenticity of something as long as it's expressing something authentic. And because the sort of people giving the monologues are prone to self-denial and embellishment and, well, just plain madness, the validity of anything couldn't really be a question worth asking, especially when the bulk of the monologues are characters telling stories of other characters second (and sometimes more) hand.
But still I was a little curious, maybe if just because that douchebag Kushner had framed this book as a political/historical document in his introduction so I was stuck thinking about it as one, rather than just a piece of art. Then I read the last two chapters and they are clearly in a different voice than the rest of the book, the voice of the author, Wojnarowicz. They are overwritten and reflective and more coherent than anything else in the book. Not necessarily worse, just... more overwritten, MFA overwritten, the usual 80's/90's nihilist writing with no discernible point, aimless sex, very Bret Easton Ellis or Jesus' Son, good and stylized but nothing I'm interested in.
So I guess reading the last two chapters made be appreciate the authenticity of the other (better) chapters more, or at least marvel at Wojnarowicz for being able to pull of so many voices before sliding back into his own voice.
October 5, 2008
I love to read gorgeous books I've failed the gall to write. Oh well. This book is so sweet and breaking in that desolation angel faggot hustler way. Oh.
But so much better. It has this hard truth to it. It isn't fiction, but that's not why. It is because he is so used to it that he can't but fail to fetishize-idealize-exoticize these subjects--unlike everyone else. Name someone else, please, so that I will read all of their books and love you. I don't know much about Genet, but I wonder, in light of Wojnarowicz, how Genet is able fetishize his faggot criminals to the point of marbleizing them. It makes me think he wasn't really there-there. That he was there, but only as a writer is anywhere, a parasite sucking all the life out of his environs for later, not living it. "Let's avoid life by taking this picture in order to be able to look back on it later and feel that we were living, that we were beautiful--ect." This what I am saying is not a theory and is uninformed. I imagine Genet must have been there-there, had to have been. I just don't know how the high classicalism, of Querelle at least, can be extracted from the kind of experience that wears away a person's fantasies and replaces them with less interesting realities. Querelle was written by Plato. There are cops and gamblers and sailors who fuck eachother, many of them with homophobic rage, yes. And, regarding the ones I've met and the ones friends have told me about--I can't imagine us extracting a kind of dead trope from those entirely specific, un-ideal moments in physics. But fetishes are incalculable, and clearly, they survive their consummation and fulfillment.
But Wojnarowicz's kind of worn factuality pushes up against his young (totally fetishizable!) James-Dean-of-Sodom passion with a delectable irreconcilability that could only be elegant coexistence. The fat is burned off--entirely--whether that burning approaches burlesque in the final paragraphs. But its counterweight, a thing Susan Faludi or Henry Miller would never understand--to say nothing of Kerouac or Ginseberg--that is, real actual desperate homeless poverty, makes the book more true than any slum-tourist manifesto ever was, and more urgent than all the stack of Beat cunt and road visions.
But so much better. It has this hard truth to it. It isn't fiction, but that's not why. It is because he is so used to it that he can't but fail to fetishize-idealize-exoticize these subjects--unlike everyone else. Name someone else, please, so that I will read all of their books and love you. I don't know much about Genet, but I wonder, in light of Wojnarowicz, how Genet is able fetishize his faggot criminals to the point of marbleizing them. It makes me think he wasn't really there-there. That he was there, but only as a writer is anywhere, a parasite sucking all the life out of his environs for later, not living it. "Let's avoid life by taking this picture in order to be able to look back on it later and feel that we were living, that we were beautiful--ect." This what I am saying is not a theory and is uninformed. I imagine Genet must have been there-there, had to have been. I just don't know how the high classicalism, of Querelle at least, can be extracted from the kind of experience that wears away a person's fantasies and replaces them with less interesting realities. Querelle was written by Plato. There are cops and gamblers and sailors who fuck eachother, many of them with homophobic rage, yes. And, regarding the ones I've met and the ones friends have told me about--I can't imagine us extracting a kind of dead trope from those entirely specific, un-ideal moments in physics. But fetishes are incalculable, and clearly, they survive their consummation and fulfillment.
But Wojnarowicz's kind of worn factuality pushes up against his young (totally fetishizable!) James-Dean-of-Sodom passion with a delectable irreconcilability that could only be elegant coexistence. The fat is burned off--entirely--whether that burning approaches burlesque in the final paragraphs. But its counterweight, a thing Susan Faludi or Henry Miller would never understand--to say nothing of Kerouac or Ginseberg--that is, real actual desperate homeless poverty, makes the book more true than any slum-tourist manifesto ever was, and more urgent than all the stack of Beat cunt and road visions.
June 24, 2013
these short, rich glimpses of various lives read like pieces of the same monologue, one that tells the stories of the hidden and unwanted, the savvy and fearless, the lost and forlorn and hopeful. the only downside, aside from some possible triggers, is that these are too short -- i want to know more about these people, i want to hear them talking to me with their own voices. maybe the abruptness of only two or three pages doesn't suit my current mood. still, from the diaries of a wolf boy was my favorite piece precisely because it stuck around long enough for me to explore all of its corners. and it included some of the most striking writing of the whole heavy pile of beautifully striking writing.
"Death was a smudge in the distance. I don't know exactly what I mean by that but lying down inside this cradle of arms in my head was sometimes all I wanted ... I'm lost in a world that's left all its mythologies behind in the onward crush of wars and civilization, my body traveling independent of brushes with life and death, no longer knowing what either means anymore. I'm so tired of feeling weary and alien, even my dreams look stupid to me."
is it more heartbreaking because wojnarowicz died way too young, kicking and fighting against the forces who tried to tell him, until the very last, that he was sick and wrong? maybe. it's hard to separate the reality of his life from the words and images that came out of it, and i'm not so sure we should try. these things stand together, but they also stand on their own. but i can't help, whenever i read his stuff, mourning the words he could have written.
"Death was a smudge in the distance. I don't know exactly what I mean by that but lying down inside this cradle of arms in my head was sometimes all I wanted ... I'm lost in a world that's left all its mythologies behind in the onward crush of wars and civilization, my body traveling independent of brushes with life and death, no longer knowing what either means anymore. I'm so tired of feeling weary and alien, even my dreams look stupid to me."
is it more heartbreaking because wojnarowicz died way too young, kicking and fighting against the forces who tried to tell him, until the very last, that he was sick and wrong? maybe. it's hard to separate the reality of his life from the words and images that came out of it, and i'm not so sure we should try. these things stand together, but they also stand on their own. but i can't help, whenever i read his stuff, mourning the words he could have written.
January 20, 2019
At any given point, any moment, it is possible to suggest that there are at least as many things being forgotten as there are being remembered or learned. When one introduces the variables of births versus deaths, and the shear amount of things forgotten when an individual dies, it might be fair even to say that the probability is high that more things are being forgotten each moment than learned. Forgetting is part of the process by which we are able to move forward, to grow, to move on; but it is also the force that silences and omits and strangles that which might not fit the desired image - of ourselves, our world, or others.
There are few larger examples of the forced forgetting than the decimation wrought by AIDs. Yet, for the past two decades, this process has been impeded at each turn by the hard work and dedication of people who refuse to let their loved ones, colleagues, and peers by silenced and forgotten so easily; to not let their words be omitted from the record.
The recent release of Wojnarowicz's The Waterfront Journals by Peninsula Press, marks the first UK publication of this extraordinary and important volume. This volume is simply one amongst many recent releases, including Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz (by Semiotext(e)), Anna Vitale's Our Rimbaud Mask (by Ugly Duckling Presse), and History Keeps Me Awake (by Yale University Press) - which was published as the catalogue for a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. These are a mere fraction of the work being published on or by Wojnarowicz in the past years.
In The Waterfront Journals we are able to peek into brief conversations; like sitting in a coffeeshop and overhearing the tables around you. Catching glimpses into the goings-on of their lives. Whether it be funny, painful, happy, or sad, it is but a moment in their lives. The Journals do something extraordinary, they put the reader not into the seat of simply overhearing, but as the person listening directly to the story, the conversational partner. So, while the reader has no ability to dialogue, they are at the same time meant as the recipient of the piece. Each vignette - of which there are forty-five - is another person, another conversation, another time and place. And yet, as Philip Hoare suggests in his introduction, each of these people is, possibly, a part of Wojnarowicz. Each piece is also David listening, and shining a story on others. These forty-five people are both David and people he met, his friends, lovers, and strangers.
Many times, people will say that these pieces provide insight into the past, of a time when homosexuality was criminalized, a time that it is hard to remember now. And that, because of this, the text is a representation of a time gone, a reminder of where we have come from and where we've ended up. This is certainly true here. At the same time, this text strikes sparks on each page. There is little that seems dated about this book. While New York City and the US that the book speaks of might have changed, the US that it speaks to is, in so many ways, the same place.
In Olivia Laing's engaging Afterword, she visits the archivist from the Fales Library at NYU. The archivist has spent much of the past thirty years trying to preserve the life force of artists and writers. The publication of The Waterfront Journals builds on and extends this work, and the audience it is able to reach. What it also does though is provide a venue for remembering and learning. For it is not simply that we must archive and keep things, but we need to find a way to bring things to people; to get people to see and know and learn and interact with these lives. In this sense, it requires an act not just of not-forgetting or archiving, but one of building. How does one get people to learn these lives? To bring this art and living into the lives of those who never had a chance to know them? In a time when there has never been a greater access to information, the fight is no longer maintaining the information, but getting it into people's lives. The actions of small presses like Peninsula Press are a critical component in this process of radically keeping the worlds created by the like Wojnarowicz open and as spaces to build from.
There are few larger examples of the forced forgetting than the decimation wrought by AIDs. Yet, for the past two decades, this process has been impeded at each turn by the hard work and dedication of people who refuse to let their loved ones, colleagues, and peers by silenced and forgotten so easily; to not let their words be omitted from the record.
The recent release of Wojnarowicz's The Waterfront Journals by Peninsula Press, marks the first UK publication of this extraordinary and important volume. This volume is simply one amongst many recent releases, including Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz (by Semiotext(e)), Anna Vitale's Our Rimbaud Mask (by Ugly Duckling Presse), and History Keeps Me Awake (by Yale University Press) - which was published as the catalogue for a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. These are a mere fraction of the work being published on or by Wojnarowicz in the past years.
In The Waterfront Journals we are able to peek into brief conversations; like sitting in a coffeeshop and overhearing the tables around you. Catching glimpses into the goings-on of their lives. Whether it be funny, painful, happy, or sad, it is but a moment in their lives. The Journals do something extraordinary, they put the reader not into the seat of simply overhearing, but as the person listening directly to the story, the conversational partner. So, while the reader has no ability to dialogue, they are at the same time meant as the recipient of the piece. Each vignette - of which there are forty-five - is another person, another conversation, another time and place. And yet, as Philip Hoare suggests in his introduction, each of these people is, possibly, a part of Wojnarowicz. Each piece is also David listening, and shining a story on others. These forty-five people are both David and people he met, his friends, lovers, and strangers.
Many times, people will say that these pieces provide insight into the past, of a time when homosexuality was criminalized, a time that it is hard to remember now. And that, because of this, the text is a representation of a time gone, a reminder of where we have come from and where we've ended up. This is certainly true here. At the same time, this text strikes sparks on each page. There is little that seems dated about this book. While New York City and the US that the book speaks of might have changed, the US that it speaks to is, in so many ways, the same place.
In Olivia Laing's engaging Afterword, she visits the archivist from the Fales Library at NYU. The archivist has spent much of the past thirty years trying to preserve the life force of artists and writers. The publication of The Waterfront Journals builds on and extends this work, and the audience it is able to reach. What it also does though is provide a venue for remembering and learning. For it is not simply that we must archive and keep things, but we need to find a way to bring things to people; to get people to see and know and learn and interact with these lives. In this sense, it requires an act not just of not-forgetting or archiving, but one of building. How does one get people to learn these lives? To bring this art and living into the lives of those who never had a chance to know them? In a time when there has never been a greater access to information, the fight is no longer maintaining the information, but getting it into people's lives. The actions of small presses like Peninsula Press are a critical component in this process of radically keeping the worlds created by the like Wojnarowicz open and as spaces to build from.
July 23, 2024
I was made aware of David Wojnarowicz by way of Maggie Nelson’s writings and recommendations sometime between 2016 and 2020. Last year I attended an in-conversation event with her and Michelle Tea at the Hammer in Los Angeles. Waiting for the lights to dim and the presenter to take the stage, I noticed a copy of The Waterfront Journals in the hands of a man sitting in the row in front of me. I don’t like to touch strangers (or be touched by them), so I called out Hey many times until he turned around. I asked him how he liked the book, and he said that it was good, and that Voy-na-row-vich was a powerful writer. Hearing his pronunciation of Voy-na-row-vich indicated to me that he’d seen the recent Wojnarowicz documentary. Having learned of David through Maggie, I’d learned to say his name Von-uh-row-vich and mostly stuck with Maggie’s pronunciation. Not at all to my surprise, the stranger asked me if I’d seen the documentary. I don’t know why, but I lied and said that I hadn’t. He recommended it to me, in addition to the new Nan Goldin film before repositioning his body toward the stage and effectively ending our conversation.
From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy was a beautiful and touching story, a perfect and tight ending to David’s character studies.
From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy was a beautiful and touching story, a perfect and tight ending to David’s character studies.
November 27, 2024
Wojnarowicz is one of my favorite authors/artists/activists ever so it's no surprise this book was absolutely incredible. he always captures the human condition in its most bare, vulnerable, and vulgar form no matter what medium he uses. this book was a (part autobiographical, part fiction) collection of 1-5 page interviews/monologues of lonely, depressed, and generally alienated people in the late 70s/early 80s. each evokes a different sense of isolation despite their common motifs. some of them have a unique twist on despair; the narrator's hopeful lilt that you -- fortunate as a reader with the knowledge of hindsight and common sense -- know to be ungrounded, perhaps implicitly (in that maybe you shallowly share this same false hope as the narrator despite your better knowledge). with others, the despair is practically jumping from the pages --- there's no ignoring the hopelessness of a boy being brutally taken advantage of, for instance.
yet, Wojnarowicz never shies away from these horrors. in fact, he leans into them because they're real life --- his life (maybe it's less of leaning into it as it is the only thing he can do?). he doesn't have the privilege of looking away, skipping towards the end of the chapter or skimming the pages that depict the wild barbarity of his world --- perhaps neither should we. so read the book!!
yet, Wojnarowicz never shies away from these horrors. in fact, he leans into them because they're real life --- his life (maybe it's less of leaning into it as it is the only thing he can do?). he doesn't have the privilege of looking away, skipping towards the end of the chapter or skimming the pages that depict the wild barbarity of his world --- perhaps neither should we. so read the book!!
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