the story of mandate (conclusion)
Part I is here. Here is the completely signed magazine.
I went to a Paul event thanks to my dear friend @elrohare and I was a woman on a mission. This was my holy grail, my twelve labors of Hercules, my ultimate sacrifice of good sense, my Mandate, if you will. Paul is a man of constant sorrow who's seen trouble all his days. Paul had not known trouble until he saw my face again a mere two months after his last time.
Unlike Gene, who will randomly set a date to hand out his crap for hilarious prices, Ace, who will appear at any 500-1000 seater across the country and balefully advertise his meet and greets onstage, and Peter, who will roll out of bed every six months for a horror convention, Paul does his events at Wentworth galleries across the country. Paul is basically like Pokemon Red's Porygon. You can get him, but he'll take everything you have.
I was prepared. I had done the legwork and the paperwork. Part of my purchase included an autographed item. (Please note that this is not nearly the entirety of the, uh, Paul Stanley Experience, if you will-- this is only the Mandate aspect of it. There was more!)
Paul remembered both of us. "It's been awhile."
"Yeah, couple months, since February, yeah." I'm actually sort of not shocked he remembered us since neither of us look like typical KISS fans. There is also a very large height difference between us, so we are distinctive. We talk. I manage some conversation, some of which is sort of funny. But I'm not here to provide Paul with wit and candor. I'm here for Mandate, which he has already by that point seen the back of even with me trying to cover the naked men in the tub with my phone. He has already also seen the front of it, with its doodled-on-by-Gene cover. He has seen it open, because I had to set it down in order for us to take our picture together. He has probably spent the whole rest of our conversation leading up to this determining what to say to the lone weirdo that has not given him RARO, his solo album, his other solo album, the KISS comic book (mint condition), or various and sundry other KISS collectibles.
He has hit on it. He gestures to the president of Wentworth who is, incidentally, the one that's borrowing my phone to take our pictures. He comes closer as Paul shows him the magazine, along with me.
"Gene drew on it [the front cover of my copy]," I say.
"Mandate... this is the very first magazine we were ever in." (Peter said the same thing in his first book. They are both technically incorrect, but far be it from me to correct Paul Stanley on things that happened before I was born-- and to be honest, knowing what I know about how slow it could end up being to go from writing a feature for a monthly magazine to it actually being published, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they'd done the magazine some months prior to it being on the shelves).
"Our manager at the time said he could get us into a magazine. We didn't know it was a gay magazine. I mean, whatever you're into, but... ["I wasn't," basically, though I don't know if he said those two words specifically]....." as he flips, completely needlessly, through the pictures, sort of slowly, until he gets to page eight and page nine, where all three of his bandmates have signed in black Sharpie. "Of course, they blew me [the photo] up. ... And Gene drew on it."
I finally manage to pipe up.
"Yeah, Gene texted you about it, purportedly, anyway...."
"Yeah, he did."
"He did? Really?"
He looked like he was weirdly thoughtful. Well, sounded like he was. Maybe even a little bit amused. I had a hard time looking too hard at him while this was going on, and I found myself looking more at the naked men he was flipping through. But I had my plan and I would not be too distracted. I had brought my own black Sharpie, since I knew he had a penchant for signing in silver (this is because his Wentworth artwork always comes with an inscription on black paper that he writes on in silver). The Sharpie was right there and, possibly because he was keenly aware of my level of distress at the thought of Mandate being signed in a different color, he obediently took it and signed it and shut it, and handed it back to me. My smile could've broken through my dimples.
Triumph complete. Thank you, @elrohare for again allowing me the pleasure of coming with, and I was glad to plus-one and for once, return the favor.
Thank you, Mr. Paul Stanley of KISS. And thank you to Peter, Gene (especially Gene!), and Ace. I hope Mandate gave you all an unexpected blast from the past, and I really wish I'd told Paul that Peter quite appreciated the ass on the guy on the front cover. Maybe next time.
27 notes
·
View notes
Hi there, me again (sorry 😅)!! This isn’t anything art related unfortunately, but I hope you’ll enjoy the ask nonetheless!
I’ve heard you mention a couple of times that KISS is one of your favorite bands and you grew up listening to them, which has managed to make me beyond happy, as they’re also my favorite band!
With that being said I’d like to know some of your favorite things about them, like which persona you love (Spaceman all the way), favorite song (maybe not expected, but Psycho Circus definitely) or favorite album (Alive for sure), so on and so forth!
Again, this is just a silly little ask because it’s so incredibly amazing and important to me to see someone that I look up to so much share one of my interests and has been so enthusiastic about it!
Sorry for the ramble bamble and thank you for being you Mr. Sava! :)
Thanks. To me, KISS were like Superheroes. They were larger than life. Ace/Spaceman was always the coolest looking. For sure.
But we would dress up as all of them.
I had their toys and all the albums.
When KISS Alive II came out in 1977... I was 9 years old. And... it came with... TATTOOS!
That was the coolest thing ever.
Favorite song may be Shout It Out Loud (mainly because I always loved the guitar solo).
And here's a little painting I did one morning during a live.
205 notes
·
View notes