/lit/ - Literature

https://www.thecut.com/amp/2019/11/rachel-rabbit-white-poetry-book-launch-party.html
>It’s her first-ever book party, and Rachel Rabbit White — the poet, writer, sex-work legend, activist, and ex–Times Square stripper — is all dolled up. I’ve never seen her otherwise, online or off. Tonight her brunette hair is blown out, curled, and piled on top of her head, held up by two rhinestone clips that spell out “ANGEL DUST.” Five-foot-two, the same height as Kim Kardashian and Debbie Harry in flat feet, she prefers to go out in six-inch Lucite platform “Pleasers,” the most popular exotic-dancer heel in the world. For the event, they’re coated with cobalt-blue glitter to match her monochromatic outfit: a marabou-feather strapless bustier and skintight, high-waisted disco pants with a gleam that catches the light. The title of her first full-length book of poems doubles as the party’s dress code: Porn Carnival.

>“I’ve overdone it a little with fillers and Botox this past year. Lately I’m trying to look more like a regular Bratz doll,” she explains matter-of-factly. “Or as someone called me online, ‘a haunted Megan Fox Bratz doll.’” Before the party, she’d posted an Instagram Story saying she bought angel dust and wine for the event’s after-party, instead of spending the money on fillers, “bc I care about COMMUNITY.”
>Puffing on a Juul to stave off pre-event jitters, Rabbit White purrs, “I became a poet because I was experiencing ego death from sugaring too much.” (Sugaring is the verb form of “sugar baby.”)
>A woman dressed as a “slutty milkmaid” says she doesn’t know Rabbit White personally but she’s in a union with one of the other readers. Her friend pipes up, “We’re going to overthrow capitalism. Although the form to sign up is kind of complicated.” Someone else nods, “I’m a dumb Marxist bitch."
>“I just saw the Chapo guys over there.” I had in fact just come from attempting to talk to Chapo Trap House host Will Menaker, but he’d answered five different questions the same way: “I need to ask my girlfriend.” Soon enough, the girlfriend, Katherine Krueger, joins us, having heard from Will that her insights were needed. (She and Rabbit White have a podcast of their own in vitro. Working titles: Disassocialism or Eyes Wide Sluts. “Our group chat is called ‘untitled socialite project,’” says Krueger. “We want to have Cat Marnell’s ex-PCP dealer on.”)
>The transcendent moment, in my opinion, is her reading, lilted out in her husky voice, of three lines from a poem that reduced the audience to screams: “I would rather die than work / I would rather die than work / I would rather die than work.”