One of the words you may be thinking of when you read the title GG Alien and the Mystery Meat is “bizarre,” unless you do your research or routinely listen to anarchic punk. Unsurprisingly, this reaction is exactly what author Justin Pearson is targeting with his all-too-brief chronicle of working as a security guard in San Diego. Detailing life as a minimum wage worker at a gay club during his 30s, Pearson paints a picture of chaos, oddity, connection, and haze. Although the sentences are dutifully long-winded, the memoir is startlingly intense. Filled with pictures of different scenes and events, Pearson strives to photograph and record the intersection between punk and gay culture. His anarchic writing is certainly remarkable for its fiery honesty. He is able to talk about absurd and brazen moments at the drop of a hat.
Being Pearson’s third book, GG Alien will strike readers as an incredibly conscious and confident book. While the subject matter is extreme at times (a section where Pearson describes how his romantic partner was being paid to “pee her pants” on the internet comes to mind), the audience will absolutely know what they are getting themselves into (the pants-peeing scene occurs on page five). Pearson seems to be operating entirely differently than most modern writers—and most people, for that matter. The harrowing memoir is rightly brimming with references to obscure noise-punk bands, the songs of which he deployed as a DJ to discover who are the “real fascists” rather than the pretend ones. To say the least, Pearson’s story is insane. Rather difficult to pin down, Pearson airs out a lot of dirt on the people he surrounded himself with. Thankfully, Pearson freeze-frames these portraits of endlessly confusing humans with a clear lens of authenticity.
Essentially, the ethos of his memoir is detailing how exactly he has tried to embrace absurdity within his life. The primary vocation of his life during this time period was being a security guard at Rich’s, in San Diego, which is open to this day. Scrounging Craigslist for ways to make some money, he initially showed up at Rich’s to be a dancer, only obtaining the security gig when he ended up running into a friend who worked the door at the club.
Fortunately, Pearson is politically left leaning, so the material is immensely progressive and dynamic. He comes across as a thoughtfully kind person, but some sections will have readers wondering how to react. His genre of reactionary writing is intriguing, but ultimately limiting. Passages within the memoir are funny for their searing truth, although the language utilized to get that truth across is unfortunately not politically correct.
There are some exceptionally honest moments within the memoir which leave me wondering how exactly it got published (Answer: he released it himself). This is not to say that Pearson’s subject matter is morally wrong, it is just intentionally divisive for this day and age. To summarize Pearson’s writing style in one word, it would be: Punk. He is saying things we can all agree upon, since he describes Neo-Nazis as “fuckheads,” however, his use of the F-slur is very abrasive.
One component of the memoir I wonder about is how positively performative it is. As a character study on the extremities of performance art, I think the outrageous aspects of Punk can be obtusely exciting and different. These results are only found with Pearson’s open and accepting approach to life. However, the ideas of performance as a way of life appears to be dually harrowing and freeing. If anything, GG Alien will make you laugh, grimace, wonder, and scream, which is an achievement in itself. | Joe Hindle
GG Alien and the Mystery Meat is available now. You can order it directly from the publisher here.
