Peel me a Book
Let's Peel
Our Lady of the Flowers
Perfect if you want to read a queer gospel whispered through prison bars, with lipstick on its breath and blood on its knees.
Synopsis
“We are thieves of our own destinies.”
Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers in jail on brown paper meant for making paper bags. He wrote to masturbate and to escape—but what emerged was no smutty diary. It was a myth of desire, a symphony of betrayal, a funeral for shame. The story centres on Divine—a drag queen saint—and a host of petty criminals, murderers, and lovers. But there is no plot in the traditional sense.
There is only performance. And Genet is both the audience and the actor. He turns every sentence into a mirror: to worship, to deform, to adore.
Mood:
queer · theatrical · ecstatic
Tone:
liturgical · erotic · extravagant
It Feels Like
Body:
felt in the throat and pelvis—half prayer, half gasp
Tempo:
slow as seduction, spiralling like incense
Texture:
velvet over bruises, smoke around stained glass
A Little Taste
“I shall speak of my heroes, and sing their joys and pains. I shall turn my thieves into kings, my lovers into saints, my prisons into chapels.”
“It is not enough that they live and suffer: I must exalt them, I must surround them with a light that is mine, transform their vileness into beauty, their betrayals into acts of grace, until they shine with the brilliance I have chosen for them.”
The Aftertaste
Watching shame dissolve into glitter
Feeling the sacred emerge from the obscene
Being invited to kneel, not in submission, but in awe
Peel With a Drink
A flute of cheap sparkling rosé, stolen from a hotel minibar. You drink it in the bath, wearing nothing but yesterday’s mascara.
Or a shot of holy water spiked with gin, because every saint has a secret, and this one likes to be watched.
Peel With a Reel
Pink Narcissus (1971, dir. James Bidgood) A dreamlike, erotic fantasy filmed entirely in a small apartment—anonymous, indulgent, and bathed in velvet light.
Un chant d’amour (1950, dir. Jean Genet) Genet’s only film: a silent, smoky ballet of longing and lust between prison walls.
Peel with a Beat
Peel me a Book
Or Try:
Eileen Myles
because someone has to walk through the same hell and write it with lipstick and poetry.
Let's Peel
Our Lady of the Flowers
Perfect if you want to read a queer gospel whispered through prison bars, with lipstick on its breath and blood on its knees.
Synopsis
“We are thieves of our own destinies.”
Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers in jail on brown paper meant for making paper bags. He wrote to masturbate and to escape—but what emerged was no smutty diary. It was a myth of desire, a symphony of betrayal, a funeral for shame. The story centres on Divine—a drag queen saint—and a host of petty criminals, murderers, and lovers. But there is no plot in the traditional sense.
There is only performance. And Genet is both the audience and the actor. He turns every sentence into a mirror: to worship, to deform, to adore.
Mood:
queer · theatrical · ecstatic
Tone:
liturgical · erotic · extravagant
It Feels Like
Body:
felt in the throat and pelvis—half prayer, half gasp
Tempo:
slow as seduction, spiralling like incense
Texture:
velvet over bruises, smoke around stained glass
A Little Taste
“I shall speak of my heroes, and sing their joys and pains. I shall turn my thieves into kings, my lovers into saints, my prisons into chapels.”
“It is not enough that they live and suffer: I must exalt them, I must surround them with a light that is mine, transform their vileness into beauty, their betrayals into acts of grace, until they shine with the brilliance I have chosen for them.”
The Aftertaste
Watching shame dissolve into glitter
Feeling the sacred emerge from the obscene
Being invited to kneel, not in submission, but in awe
Peel With a Drink
A flute of cheap sparkling rosé, stolen from a hotel minibar. You drink it in the bath, wearing nothing but yesterday’s mascara.
Or a shot of holy water spiked with gin, because every saint has a secret, and this one likes to be watched.
Peel With a Reel
Pink Narcissus (1971, dir. James Bidgood) A dreamlike, erotic fantasy filmed entirely in a small apartment—anonymous, indulgent, and bathed in velvet light.
Un chant d’amour (1950, dir. Jean Genet) Genet’s only film: a silent, smoky ballet of longing and lust between prison walls.