Peter BD and I met at a poetry reading in New York City during the fall of 2012. We both didn’t know many people attending, but were familiar with the internet writers through communities found on Tumblr, a handful of online magazines, and the Facebook group Alt Lit Gossip. Peter told me he preferred to remain anonymous and not disclose anything about his personal life, including his real name. He did not have a cell phone, or use social media other than a private, anonymous, gate-kept Twitter account. I wrote under a pseudonym at the time, and we became fast friends. Along with Beach Sloth, the three of us shared in the enjoyment of creating an online persona separate from our IRL lives. None of us were trying to make it as professional writers; we were just hanging out, writing in our free time, sharing our writing with each other, and enjoyed meeting other people who made things. Back then we didn’t take Alt Lit seriously, and thought the term would fall out of trend. After all, the writing we did was far more ephemeral than published work, we weren’t studying creative writing in formal programs, and our readings looked more like parties than serious literary events. I’ll never forget attending my first reading in New York City, watching a writer get pushed on a desk chair, like a bowling ball toward lined up beer cans after another performer had just screamed from his laptop while doing circles around the room.
Early in our friendship, Peter explained that he wrote emails. I didn’t understand what he meant until I received one. We had been following each other online and hanging out at Mellow Pages Library, once housed in 56 Bogart in Bushwick, Brooklyn off the Morgan L train stop. Founded by Jacob Perkins and Matt Nelson, Mellow Pages Library served as a lending library and literary hub for many emerging writers and small publishers. To gain circulation privileges, visitors could donate ten books or pay a fee to become a member. Books lined the walls like checkerboard with their covers in full view, displayed as works of art. One discovered unique material through browsing rickety crates and vintage bookcases. The first time I visited Mellow Pages, the library was moving from a small studio to a much larger corner space that would feel like home for many of us. It is thanks to Mellow Pages that I found a community where I could contribute. Over the next year, I hosted a reading series at Mellow Pages called Blackmail, and we’d often end up there at the end of the night, laying on the floor, listening to someone play Elliot Smith on the Mac desktop from the corner of the room near the large, grimy warehouse windows. Peter and I made many of the same friends at Mellow Pages and frequently performed in readings together.
Peter learned more about my interests, background, and personality during this time, as we went to readings and parties around New York City. He blended elements of my lived experience and online persona into a variety of short pieces and sent them to me in the form of an email message. The email included poems, micro fictions, and a selfie of me side by side with a selfie of Nicki Minaj in a fictional text exchange between two besties. It made me laugh; it made me feel heard, and it didn’t feel forced or insincere. Peter’s stories about me felt tender and lighthearted, but unnerving nonetheless. I saw myself mirrored back to me. As I read his poems about me, I recalled openly sharing private details both in person and online, and I wasn’t sure I liked what I read. How was I presenting myself in virtual and physical spaces? Did it accurately reflect the real me? Did I really love Nicki Minaj as much as I claimed? Who was Peter BD anyway? Was he mocking me?
The use of persona in Peter’s work plays with our cultural climate and what David P. Marshall calls the celebrity persona pandemic, in which ordinary people feel pressure to construct and maintain a public identity much like celebrities. Engaging in social media and sharing our personal lives online is a signature of the millennial generation, and it seems natural that these trends would influence creative writing and the development of new techniques and styles for producing literature. Just as we see series of Instagram posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, and TikToks produced by influencers as a new kind of celebrity, building parasocial relationships over time, Peter’s use of serialization is characteristic of his practice and starts with his emails. Like a magazine or journal producing several issues over a period of time around a particular topic, Peter’s art, no matter the medium, is rarely one and done. Over the last thirteen years, I’ve received three emails from Peter containing stories where I am the main character. In each story, a new chapter of my life is mirrored back to me. For many others that have received emails from Peter, it follows a similar pattern.
Peter’s approach to persona was the inverse of every other internet writer at that time, leveraging an anti-persona: instead of trying to reach a wide audience with short, meme style poems that most of us were experimenting with hoping to go viral, he wanted to deeply and genuinely connect with one person at a time. In Sean J Patrick Carney’s Humor and The Abject Podcast, Peter explains that the email project began as a joke and snowballed into something more significant over time as people enjoyed his emails and regarded him as a writer. Writers have composed books of tweets, or published print volumes from works originally created for blogs. Kathy Acker and Mackenzie Wark’s emails are printed in I Am Very Into You, gathered into an archive of a friendship. Peter BD’s emails exist only in our inbox. They are personal, they come as a single issue, and reach their intended audience upon clicking send. In a 2018 article for Wired, Craig Mod argued that the ebook and ereader were less important for the author than the power of an email list and a newsletter. While Mod doesn’t explore email as a creative medium for writers rather than as a distribution method, Peter did both ―five years before Substack was founded.
“Every joke is a tiny revolution.” ―George Orwell
With the release of Milk & Henny, Peter’s work went offline and into print. The tongue and cheek title is a play on Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, and exemplifies Peter’s sense of humor and playful writing style while also nodding to internet writing and his joke on the celebrity persona of the writer. The collection, published by Inpatient Press in 2014, includes a variety of short poems, cultural commentary, personal asides, and witty jokes. Long before Brat Summer, Peter remixed Milk & Henny as a 25 song mixtape with tracks dedicated to various aspects of the book. The collaborations on the mixtape reflect Peter’s practice of working with a network, alongside other people in diverse communities, echoing the same methods employed in writing and sending his emails, decentering himself. Giving props to friends and associates throughout the mixtape, Peter’s work never lives in isolation, evidenced in the dedication to Mellow Pages Library in Bodak Mellow, which samples Cardi B’s Bodak Yellow. “Being Alive Is A Social Construct” taps into generational ennui, is translated into several languages, and read by friends. The poem is a single, elegant line in Milk & Henny that evolves and takes on new meaning through repetition. As an album, the mixtape iterates on those original ideas, with each song corresponding to an element of the book, and evokes a profound auditory experience. Interestingly, since Peter’s work often employs humor and compassion, the work remains fresh and the added layers create complexity rather than weighing down the listener. Before most theaters had reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter screened a second set of films titled Milk & Henny in Quarantine at his apartment in Gowanus. In 2022, Milk & Henny in Quarantine was screened at Canada Gallery in Tribeca, as well as during a series of performances at Kraine Theater in the East Village.
“you are nothing but a tiny dot in a universe filled with other tiny dots/culminating into a multitude of other dots. so many beautiful dots” ―Peter BD, quoted by Greta Rainbow in Interview Magazine
Peter’s playwriting seemed to evolve naturally out of his performance practice as he began to combine the narrative techniques found in his early emails with the visual storytelling of his video production, while transforming the audience participation call and response motif from his poetry readings into fully fleshed out scenes and vignettes, bringing his community with him and adapting his networked approach for the stage. In March of 2023, Peter curated and performed in Connection, a six-day program of performances at Canada Gallery, weaving together party, poetry, theater, dance, erotica, film, and music. Also in 2023, Peter wrote and directed a series of plays with a variety of characters and cast members, with all iterations sharing the title The Bus Is Fucking Late Again. Changeover took place in 2024 at Pageant, combining dance, music, poetry, and theater in a way that somehow didn’t resemble a musical but also did.
“The actor, so I believed, should try to interpret his own mystery, to externalize what he carries inside. One does not go to the theater to escape from himself, but to reestablish contact with the mystery that we all are.” ―Alejandro Jodorowsky
Last week, I was invited to see the fifth iteration of Peter’s play The Bartender. Like The Bus Is Fucking Late Again, each performance of The Bartender features different cast members and an evolving plot, that usually differs from show to show. This performance still contains common threads throughout earlier The Bartender shows, as well as between play series, in the form of recurring characters, references to previous plot lines, and overall structure. Sam Geller, playing Brody in The Bartender, also starred in The Bus Is Fucking Late Again, and worked with Peter to host plays at Rodeo after he and business partner Jameson Magrogan opened the bar 13 months ago on a vibrant tree-lined street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Sam and Peter explored how to stage The Bartender at Rodeo, as opposed to more traditional theaters. Peter’s excitement for hosting a play about a bartender in a real bar is infectious. Sober for eight months, my standards for bars are outrageously high these days. I despise the smell of most bars, hate bar noise, and wasn’t sure how closing a bar for a play made sense for the bar owners, but Rodeo is a cut above the rest. It has gorgeous lighting, a charming front patio, and isn’t rancid. A very cool record store is connected to the bar via a dance floor. Peter positions the audience in front of the bar which acts as the stage. The bar continues to run as it normally would until the show begins. The plays are a labor of love, as Sam and Peter share an interest in experimenting with theater and place, encouraging impromptu interruptions and organic scenes. During one performance of The Bartender, an unsuspecting patron walked in and asked to charge his phone at the bar during the show.
“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”
―Antonin Artaud
Giorgia Di Nicola, a bartender at Rodeo, served drinks until the performance started, before switching gears to clean glasses and tidy up as Lucia during the opening scene of the play. Di Nicola is a skilled actor, and her transition between her work at Rodeo and her role as Lucia felt otherworldly. Instead of breaking the fourth wall, the audience almost experiences the reverse. This subtle transition made the world feel magical, like art could sprout from our ordinary lives, if we only sit back and quietly observe. Moreover, it elegantly speaks to the challenging reality for most creatives in New York City, working multiple jobs to pursue their passions, and still finding time to participate in productions like The Bartender, that follow Peter BD’s ethos that everyone can and should make art with their friends. He explained that he met Di Nicola while he was in the bar, and after learning about her acting background, invited her to perform in the next iteration of the play. Every actor I spoke to after the performance agreed to act in The Bartender after meeting Peter serendipitously at an event or through friends.
These chance encounters arrive when openly engaging with the world. Chance and making it against the odds are themes in The Bartender, evident in several characters including a magician named Ted played by Hal Schulman. As Ted tries to impress Lucia with his playing card magic skills, we reflect on the hand we are dealt and what’s in the cards for each of us. Lucia shares with Ted, “this is just a money job for me. I started bartending in Italy to fund my trip here. Now I work 5 days a week to fund myself, barely being able to pay New York rent. The American dream.” Critical thoughts on class, race, immigration, politics, and success are woven through the characters' experiences and reflect the realities of New Yorkers from all walks of life, across generations, sharing their stories at the bar, a la Friends or Seinfeld. It is an exercise in solidarity. Each character is developed enough to elicit memories and emotions, and fluid enough to reflect something different for each audience member, and perhaps even for each actor, as embodied composites of the New Yorkers we’ve all been, or met at a party, at work, in the bodega, at the art gallery, at the hardware store, in the bookshop, at the bar. Instead of world building, Peter mirror builds much like he did in the early days of his email writing. As an anonymous artist, we are less focused on him as a creator or cult figure, even as he holds the mirror world together through his writing, directing, producing and relationships. This reflection is a powerful tool for gaining self and community awareness, and can serve as a catalyst for transformation.
Through care, skill, and collaboration, we can take the cards we are dealt and play them well, cultivating luck in the process. This isn’t magic but a strategy for creating opportunities to build community and support on our own terms. Erin, played by Mattie Barber-Bockelman, tells Brody (Geller) about her recent acting role, playing a serial killer in a television show directed by M. Night Shyamalan. While explaining the role to Brody, she is interrupted by Darcy, a casting director, played by Elise Wunderlich. Hiding in the crowd, we can’t locate Darcy (Wunderlich), only listen to her disembodied voice bellow from the direction of the audience. Since Erin (Barber-Bockelman) can’t see Darcy (Wunderlich) either, there’s a playful tension between what might be an unexpected audience interruption or a real scene in the play. As the scene closes, Darcy reveals:
"I’m casting Ira Sachs' next film about a woman who has just wrapped on filming a serial killer series that’s directed by someone who has both good and bad movies who then goes to her favorite bar and vents about the method acting process to her bartending friend while being berated by a casting director who’s hiding within the shadows."
It’s fun. I full-belly laughed. Wunderlich and Barber-Bockelman brought the earlier scenes full circle, where multiple characters shared their woes and struggles at the bar, as many bar patrons do, and in this scene we watch characters use humor to catapult the plot into new absurdity. This unexpected place is where we are reminded of life’s mysteries, and how things have a way of working out, even when you can’t see the solution coming.
After Monday’s performance, a sixth iteration of The Bartender took place the next evening with a different plot. While the themes were similar, the actors and characters changed. A down on his luck bartender played by Sam Delong opens the play, and we soon learn that his building was recently sold to developers. He’s struggling to find a new place to live. There are many stories woven through The Bartender plays that speak to very real American experiences, and the way that Peter elevates common struggle alongside glamour, and the intoxicating allure of New York, translates into an overarching theme of chasing losses, and the bar as a symbol for New York as a well of promise. In the Tuesday performance of The Bartender, Ruth (played by Jean Coleman) downs a couple double Mezcals. While the characters' excessive alcohol consumption is silly, it also nods to the relationship many of us have with New York, especially creatives: just one more show, just one more poetry reading, just one more class at the Cate Blanchett School of Thespians, and I’ll be starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s next six part television series. I’ll make next month’s rent. I’ll pay off my student loans. I’ll get out of credit card debt. I’ll win over my ex. I’ll honor my grandmother’s legacy. I’ll finally stop reliving New York parties of the 80s. I’ll make my mark. I’ll be remembered for what I have done here. And maybe you will.
Audiences appreciate these touching vignettes. Both Monday and Tuesday evening performances sold out. In Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy, she encourages us to get comfortable with emergence, which Nick Obolensky defines as a way “complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple actions.” Emergence is a system, not one single act or connection, often made up of seemingly simple, joyful relations, that makes use of the whole: “It’s all data.” Peter combines this data with his own experiences and worldview, his creativity and humor, and through group dynamics and thoughtful repetition, inspires emergence. Brown cites Octavia Butler’s well-loved words on change: “all that you touch you change / all that you change, changes you.” She reminds us that when the “quality of connection between the nodes in the patterns” is based on love, and not capitalist fantasy, we weave threads of resilience. Unlike the Brodernists of our time, or the Alt Lit writers of the past and somehow present, Peter does not center himself as an influencer-writer-genius producing work so insular few can relate. Instead, he masterfully turns the tables, asking us to look at ourselves, and find harmony in creating together.
Production photos by Dane Manary. @undertonecommunication
