The Writings of Cookie Mueller

A portrait of Cookie Mueller, taken by Kate Simon in 1989, the year Mueller died of AIDS-related illness.

My ex was a lesbo who was really into campy, queer and cultish things, like early John Waters. She had a poster of Divine from Pink Flamingos. One day I noticed that the credit on the poster said John Walters—not Waters—which reminded me of the Chinglish on the covers of bootleg films I got from China. One of the first films we watched together was her VHS copy of Multiple Maniacs. The film is one of the many early John Waters films to feature Cookie Mueller, who was described by John as “a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch-doctor, an art-hag, and above all, a goddess.” As John notes, she was a lot more than an underground film star, including (listed first) a writer. Cookie wrote the (drug)health column ‘Ask Dr. Mueller’ for the East Village Eye and was also an art critic/editor for Details.

Recently, I read Cookie’s collection of autobiographical stories titled Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, published by Semiotext(e) in 1990. I was floored by the strength of her storytelling. Her prose is succinct and hilarious, fast-paced and wild in a very understated kind of way. Contained within the stories are musing on drug culture, childbirth, eating shit, hitchhiking, life from within a mental hospital, burning down a house, riding horses, farm life, city life, film festival hopping, Baltimore, escaping German police, run-ins with murderers while go-go dancing, childhood, Sicilian perverts, drug overdoses, a failed sailing excursion, flamboyant eye makeup, and even a trip to Florida (which references Sarasota, the city I resided the last four years.)

But this book is also a deeply tragic document. The exciting romp through Cookie’s 40 years of life on earth culminates in the rapid deterioration of Cookie and her inner-circle of friends, who are decimated by the AIDS epidemic of the 80s. I come from a generation of queers who—although deeply affected by AIDS—will never know what it’s like to live through the emergence of such a crisis. A lot of queer theory I read is extremely indebted to the AIDS activism of groups like ACT UP, but we can be so ignorant and dismissive of those historical roots, simply can’t imagine what it was like. But before I digress too much, Cookie likely got AIDS through heroin use. However, she wasn’t straight, although I think most people remember her as a hetero who rolled with queer and trans weirdos. In the book she mentions her girlfriend “Shaggy,” who is likely fellow actress Sharon Niesp. They were partners for a while, and the story “The Stone Age” is about their “lesbian honeymoon” in Sicily. I like the image of two blond, hella-high femmes wandering around Sicily with a smart ass four year old (Cookie’s son Max) while making fun of pervert dudes.

Even if we put aside the eerie experience of reading an autobiographical text when we know our author is spiraling toward a devastating, unwieldy fate; there is a lot of pain accompanying even the most hilarious stories. With cool humor, Cookie depicts gruesome situations that involve rape and sexual assault. Her descriptions are oddly detached. [Trigger warning for the following description.] The piece titled “Abduction and Rape” begins:

“They were just three sluts looking for sex on the highway,” the two abductors and rapists said later when asked to describe us.

This wasn’t the way we saw it.

A lot of other people didn’t see it this way either, but these were women. Most men who know the facts say we were asking for it.

Cookie goes on to describe the unfolding of the situation leading up to the rape while her and her lady friends Susan and Mink were hitching. She starts by describing her naive optimism, her sympathy for humanity and tendency to give assholes the benefit of the doubt. She writes:

There comes a time when even the most optimistic people, like myself, realize that life among certain humans cannot be easy, that sometimes it is unmanageable and low down, that all people are quixotic, and haunted, and burdened and there’s just noway to lift their load for them. With this in mind I wanted to say something to Mink and Susan about not antagonizing these sad slobs, but right then the driver turned to me.

The story progresses, her friends escape but she is left alone with the driver. After the terrible situation, Cookie acknowledges the total inadequacy of the system in dealing with rape. She writes that she decided not to press charges because she would “lose anyway” and didn’t want to be dragged back to the town for court when officials had already expressed their siding with the rapist, who was the son of a religious man.

Even though Cookie is describing a traumatic event, the piece is written in a jocular tone. She uses humor to belittle the rapist, making fun of his “pitifully limp wiener” and describing his appeal to Jesus to help him get a hard on as “hilarious.” At first, I didn’t know what to make of her lighthearted tone when dealing with rape. Isn’t rape a grave and serious issue? But when I thought about it more, I realized that humor was the way that Cookie coped with the suffering that was an immanent aspect of her life. It seems as if by trivializing the pain in her life, it would lessen its power, allow her to continue living her life as a writer and general creative person. Tragedy surrounded Cookie, but she made light of it. When John Waters visited her while she was hospitalized for pelvic inflammatory disease, he asked, “What happened, Cook?” She replied, “Just a little female trouble, hon.” Cookie—in a move that could be described as Cixousian—even went as far as denying the finality of death. Even though she lived a life plagued by AIDS and drug addiction, she said:

Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.

Photographs of Cookie by Nan Goldin

Nan is an American photographer, probably most famous for documenting the post-Stonewall LGBT and artist underground of the New York City in the 70s and 80s. Cookie was a recurring subject of Nan’s photographs. Like many of the people photographed by Nan, Cookie and her partner Vittorio Scarpati were destroyed by AIDS. They both died of AIDS-related complications in 1989, less than 7 weeks apart from each other. As I was digging through pictures of Cookie scattered around the net, the pictures began to congeal into this deeply tragic and horrific photographic narrative. Below are some of Nan’s photographs of Cookie, assembled chronologically, that depict part of the devastating portrait.

Consider the following:

The first photo: A solitary and pensive Cookie hanging at a NYC haunt.
The second photo: A happy and teary-eyed Cookie getting married to Italian artist Vittorio.
The third photo: Cookie at Vittorio’s casket, looking ravaged and drained. She looks like she is walking out of the frame and into the next photo, walking into—
The forth photo: Her casket.

Three years between marriage and synchronous death. I wonder if she knew?

Cookie in Tin Pan Alley, New York City, 1983