Beautiful Ghosts: A Queer Memoir of San Francisco

by Sherilyn Connelly

Overview

A Generation X transgender woman, Sherilyn Connelly came out of the closet in 1999. Her own identity still emerging, she had stumbled into a difficult, stifling relationship. Also, her employment at a tech company ceased when the dot-com bubble burst. It was a goth boy from Bolinas that first took her shopping for make-up, and the San Francisco goth scene became her respite.

This wickedly eye-opening memoir reveals how Connelly dealt with a toxic partner and found her voice as a woman. A longtime cinephile, it tells how she became a writer, rekindled a love for cult films and horror conventions, and learned "the secret to becoming a star." Her remembrances are also a tale of a bygone era of sex, music and San Francisco and its darkened underworld of goth strays--her literate vampires and beautiful ghosts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476645438
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	12/02/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	209
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer and librarian.
Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer and librarian.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Hymnal
Introduction: Out of the Bag and into the Abattoir
Prologue: Infernal Cartography
1. Six Feet Down at Age ­Twenty-Five
How the End Always Is 17 delete• deleteBaby Doll, Check Your Cheek 22 delete• deleteLeave Your Expectations at the Door 27 delete• deleteLove in the Dying Moments of the 20th Century 38
2. Honor Thy Error as a Hidden Intention
El Ritual de la Caja Para Gatos 44 delete• deleteThe One to Walk in the Sun 47 delete• deleteChoking on the Dirt and Sand 49 delete• deleteGood Morning, It’s Possum Day 51
3. eXistenZ Is unPauseD
Josie and the Vampire 56 delete• deleteKeep Circulating the Tapes 62 delete• deleteSpang of the Loathsome Dead 68 delete• deleteShe Gets to Sing Just Like a Bird 75
4. Dead Cats and Cab Drivers
For Rent: Black Sheets, Never Reported 79 delete• deleteYou Probably Think This Book Is About You 84 delete• deleteThe Midnight Sisters Convene in Kopenhagen 91 delete• deleteWere You Jerking Off to Her or Were You Jerking Off to Me? 97 delete• deleteA Large Room, Full of People 103
5. The Epoch of Recombination
Mechanism of Occupant Ejection 106 delete• deleteKeep Your Tracking Knobs Properly Adjusted 109 delete• deleteJohn Calvin, He’s Long Dead (We Gotta Get That in Our Head) 113 delete• delete“Someday, This War’s Gonna End” 116 delete• deleteBleeding Like a Polaroid 119 delete• deleteI’m Not an Angel, But at Least I’m a Girl 124
6. The Lightning of Early May
A Walking Study in Demonology 133 delete• deleteIncept Date: 22 Sept. 2006 138 delete• deleteVisions of Dazzling Rooms 142 delete• deletePerilous Night, Their Voices Calling 148 delete• deleteA Flicker of Light Before the Dawning 151
7. Welcome to Annexia
Partners in a Benevolent Psychopathology 155 delete• deleteTwo ­Semi-Metallic Human Beings 158 delete• deleteSome Semen Is Saltier Than Others 163 delete• deleteProphecy Is Ragged and Dirty 169 delete• deleteA Universe Gone Quickly 171
Epilogue: Under the Zodiacal Light
The Beautiful Ghosts Mixtape
Index

Editorial Reviews

Sherilyn Connelly is a brazen, brilliant, and brave anti-hero who suffers no misogynistic fools, and her book Beautiful Ghosts is a metropolitan fairytale where the scares are dangerously real but the saving magic dust is all her. Her self-acceptance comes at a calculated rate fueled by Connelly’s interpretation of disreputable blondes like Courtney Love until she herself becomes not the marginal villain that so-often inspired Connelly, but indeed, our own villainous heroine of the marginal space populated by women, mythical or ordinary, who leave abusers, who don’t hide their snappy brilliant selves, who find that living and yelling their truth is how life becomes legend.”—Shar Rednour, co-director of Sugar High Glitter City

From the Publisher