As a book lover, an editor, and an author in Seattle, I have seen many memorable readings over the years. Those I’ve heard have included the infamous, the obscure, and, occasionally, the true legend. Margaret Atwood read poetry to me on a sofa in a Madison Park home. Allen Ginsberg hit on me over a pot of tea. I once took a limo to Sea-Tac with Tom Wolfe; when his flight was delayed, I spent five hours in an airport lounge listening to his tales of Hunter S. Thompson and Ken Kesey. I met Kesey himself a few years later and held his hat for him during a reading. I also met Thompson, but that encounter involved enough illegality that little should be spoken of it, even today. All of that happened to me while I was in college; the stories since are even juicier.
As the author of nine books, I have also had some of my own memorable readings. My upcoming memoir starts off with a story about my then-five-year-old raising his hand to ask a question at a reading I gave at Elliott Bay a few years back. I’ve written biographies of musicians Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, and both have attracted conspiracy theorists who have occasionally interrupted my readings. If having stalkers sounds glamorous, it’s not, though having a screaming attendee dragged away from a bookstore by police does tend make a reading memorable for all involved.
When it comes to Seattle book readings where drama, tension, and actual bloodshed were involved, none I’ve ever given or witnessed tops a poetry reading in Pioneer Square at the Graven Image Gallery in the ’80s. It involved a switchblade, a penis, blood, fecal matter, perhaps a live mouse, many threats to the audience, and some to the poet. It also was attended by a handful of people (including myself) who would soon play a role in the Seattle music scene that took the world by storm in the early ’90s.
The poet was Steven “Jesse” Bernstein, who at the time was just gaining a reputation in Seattle. He would later release an album on Sub Pop, open up for grunge bands (including Nirvana), and be called the “Godfather of Grunge” by the British paper the Independent. I knew Jesse and had attended a number of his readings. He also occasionally wrote for the magazine I edited, the Rocket. (We once had him interview William S. Burroughs for us.) A month or so before this most memorable reading, I was sitting in a bar with Jesse when an angry paramour of his threw a brick at the plate-glass window we were sitting behind. That was one of two times I was near Jesse when I was showered with glass (the other was a fight at a punk rock club). Jesse not only attracted drama, but he often created it.
The Graven Image reading was organized by Larry Reid. I remember it as a summer night, with three dozen or so people in the crowd. Jesse’s Bukowski-esque poetry did not appeal to everyone, and after a few poems, the crowd began to heckle him. (I think a punk rock band was to follow his reading, but many details, beyond what I am about to disclose, are hazy to me.) Jesse told the hecklers to “fuck off.” The hecklers told him to “fuck off.” A few people left. Then Jesse pulled a long object out of his pocket, hit a button, and, like in a ’50s movie, a switchblade unfolded. He pointed it at the crowd but soon had a better idea it seemed. He unzipped his fly, pulled his penis out, and put the switchblade at the base.
“If anyone else leaves, I’m going to cut my cock off,” he said in his dry monotone.
It did not appear to be an act. The knife was sharp enough that as he pressed it against the base of his penis, a little blood came out.
A man in the front row dramatically stood up and walked out. Jesse looked at him, and then looked at the knife against his penis, and paused.
There is an adage of playwriting that if the writer shows you a gun onstage, it will be fired. If a similar adage could be applied to punk-rock poetry readings, it should be “Poets should not put a knife against their penis and threaten to cut it off, unless they are going to.”
Another man stood up and left. The crowd that remained began to chant, “Cut it off!”
Jesse quickly pivoted. He screamed, “I’m going to cut off the penis of the next person who leaves!” A woman got up and left. Jesse paused again, but this time only for a moment. “I’m going to stab the next person who leaves, in the heart.”
That worked. No one else left.
After a few more poems, Jesse put the still-unfolded switchblade in his pocket, and while holding his poetry chapbook in one hand, he started to finger his butt rhythmically. This was actually harder to watch than the switchblade against his dick.
Someone cried out, “Gross!” Jesse took his hand out of his ass, grabbed the switchblade again, and threatened the crowd.
There was a tiny bit of fecal matter on his finger, and by then, the room had a “bathroomy” smell to it. I so wanted to leave, but I was as afraid of Jesse’s poop-specked hand as I was of his switchblade.
I remembered that speck of brown when I began researching Kurt Cobain’s life, and discovered that Kurt had seen at least one of Jesse’s early readings and perhaps was at this one. Kurt was a complete unknown then; a skinny blond kid in the audience wouldn’t have stood out. Kurt shared some of Jesse’s same obsessions, and the name of his first band, the first version of Nirvana, was Fecal Matter. My guess is Kurt saw Jesse a couple of years later, but it is impossible to know, and a number of the people in the crowd were from the same crew of musicians and artists that hung out at the nearby Metropolis.
I saw many of Jesse’s readings during that era, and at another he urinated on a heckling attendee. The reason I said that “perhaps” a live mouse was involved in the Graven Image reading is because I can’t honestly remember if it was there that Jesse had his mouse. I do know for certain that at a couple of readings Jesse pulled out his pet mouse, Blinky, and read with Blinky in his mouth. I witnessed it, but I can’t definitively say when it happened. It says a lot about how dominant the switchblade/penis action was in my memory that it could overshadow a writer reading with a live animal in his mouth. It also may be that the mutilation of a penis with a switchblade scares me more than a rodent. (Jesse always licked the mouse before sticking him in his mouth, and I found that more disturbing than watching Blinky’s tail flop in and out.) When Jesse read with the mouse in his mouth, he had to mumble, so the poetry itself was less effective as poetry even as it remained incredible performance art.
I’ve seen plenty of performance art over the years, which sometimes is masked as literature. Larry Reid once brought Karen Finley’s infamous “yam jam” show to Seattle. That was a show that involved Finley, her butt, and a can of yams. (You do the math.) That kind of event seemed typical of New York, where Finley was from. But “yam jam” could happen anywhere.
Jesse’s switchblade/penis/mouse act was homegrown, it seemed to me, and it felt purely Seattle, if only because it was held before a very small audience in what at the time was a derelict and rundown part of town. The linkage between grunge and early Seattle punk-rock poetry readings is important to note. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was first played live (a few years later) at a venue just two blocks from that Graven Image poetry reading, but both artistic creations were off-center enough to be interesting. That’s what Jesse Bernstein shared with the other acts on Sub Pop: they were all just a bit fucked-up, and it was that very fucked-up-ness that made them interesting. Kurt Cobain’s genius was making fucked-up lyrics and music palatable and catchy.
Jesse Bernstein’s switchblade reading ended without major mayhem, but there was a spot of blood on his pants. Visual memory is trickier than other senses, because traumatic real-life events often feel like dreams even years later. Other senses are more accurate, and the “bathroomy” smell of the tiny gallery on that hot day is still seared in my memory. In a way, it was a failed reading, as the poetry was lost to the drama, but it was one night I’ll never forget.
I went on to write about Northwest music for many outlets, and eventually become an author. Kurt Cobain, who is the subject of my 2001 book Heavier Than Heaven, went on to create a musical revolution that would change culture. Larry Reid went on to run Center on Contemporary Art for years and book Nirvana there, and now is in charge of the Fantagraphics Bookstore in Georgetown.
Jesse Bernstein suffered with depression, addiction, and bipolar illness. He died in 1991—almost at the moment the entire world began to notice Seattle’s music culture. Jesse went out in a dramatic suicide that also involved a knife: he stabbed himself to death near Neah Bay.
In the years since his death, Jesse’s poetry has gained new readers and a bit of literary respect. Oliver Stone used one of Jesse’s recordings in Natural Born Killers. A 2010 documentary on Jesse, I Am Secretly an Important Man, contains footage of Jesse reading with Blinky in his mouth. It is something to watch.
The switchblade/penis reading was not filmed, as far as I know. It exists only in the memory of the few who were there, and some of them are dead. But like most great Seattle stories, it is so weird, so strange, and so unique that you simply couldn’t make it up. You had to be there.
I never heard what happened to Blinky.