Porn Valley- His A Man Called Horse impersonation being the biggest story of last week, Matt Zane, and his stigmata, came on KSEX Monday night to give his take on the Society 1 Suspension Show.
KSEX was playing the tape from the show all weekend, and all Wankus could keep saying Monday night was “holy shit- what a party Thursday night.” Zane agreed.
“I hope you got a chance to watch it,” Wankus told his listeners. “If you didn’t you’re a fucking idiot.” Wankus said the broadcast would be condensed for subsequent purchase. Zane said for the most part he had a good time that it was a show he wanted to put together for the last year and a half. “But to be completely honest, I think everybody had a much better time than me- the fact was, previous to the suspension, I had to sit backstage by myself. I had to meditate. I had to stretch out. I had to get ready.”
Zane said after the suspension he was left with 12 open wounds on his back that bled profusely until 5 in the morning. “Basically I was completely drained,” Zane went on to say. “I really was out of my mind by the time that I actually got washed up.”
Zane said, consequently, he could only mingle for about an hour before he had to go back stage and crash. Wankus observed that people were giving Zane congratulatory smacks on the back probably forgetting that he was in near-trauma. Zane conceded that people tend to be overwhelmed by such spectacle and want to touch you afterwards. “The best way to do it is a hug or a pat on the back.”
Zane said the jacket he was wearing is now ruined having been saturated with blood. Because the hooks went in his skin and out, each hook produced double marks. “It’s almost like a big assed vampire was biting his back,” Wankus observed. Zane said the hooks actually go into your layer of muscle. And because of that Zane suspects that it will take at least a month for him to heal. “I’ve been in pain ever since this happened,” he said. “I barely made it down here tonight.” Zane said he had to have “The King” John Finberg drive him to the studio.
“Your back isn’t actually connected,” Zane explained. “Your tissue has to connect back to the body and it takes about a month for it to completely heal.” Zane said such wounds make you very tired because you’re constantly in pain. Zane figures by weeks end he’ll be coming out of it and doing normal things. Zane also pointed out that people were trying to give him Valiums afterwards. “I said, no- that’s not part of the deal.”
Wankus said the set-up was amazing and the music was a perfect choice. “You had the technical crew come out- they measured, they marked your body. They did it so professionally. They did it in a rhythmic way where they slowly slid in, they had their hands covering it so we didn’t get to see blood squirting everywhere.”
Zane said he wanted to bring people in from the very beginning of what it takes to do a suspension. “I didn’t want to just come out pierced. I wanted people to see the marking and the piercing. Me preparing for it, the stringing up, the stretching, the pulling up.” Zane explained that you don’t often seen those accoutrements with other suspensions because it takes up to an hour and a half to be able to take all the piercings.
“They’re afraid that the crowd’s going to get bored.” Zane said there was a tremendous pressure to do everything within 15 minutes. “Which is what I did. I took all my piercings in under five. I stretched for under five and I went up.”
Wankus suspected that Zane must have been in agony because the camera never turned on his face. Zane said the piercings were okay but when they started to stretch him the hooks closest to his spine on the right hand side gave him tremendous pain. “I thought they hit a nerve or it was too close to my spine and I was really, really worried about it.” Zane said if you watch the tape closely, there were moments when the crew was touching his one hook and checking to see if it was free and clear of everything. “They’re trying to tell me it’s okay, that it’s just in a sensitive area. We had to constantly communicate with them reassuring me that everything in the back was going on okay. To me it didn’t feel like it was.”
Zane explained how after being pierced it was necessary to acclimate his body to the mode. “If they did the whole yank right off the bat and pulled me out, I would have totally passed out from the pain. It was really painful at first and I was a little nervous about the fact that I might not be able to sing all of the songs.”
It was Wankus’ frank opinion that the Key Club camera crew sucked and missed vital elements of the performance particularly when Zane was yanked up and that wasn’t shown. “They’re a great bunch of people over there but they fucked up. They had a close-up the whole time of you.”
Zane said for the DVD that they’re releasing of the show they had a professional camera crew that got all of the performance. Wankus said when the cameras finally opened up to show full stage, you could see how high up Zane was. “And it was very effective.” Asked how hard it was for him to sing, Zane said for the first song there was a lot of adrenalin, then halfway through it, his body was asking himself what the fuck was he doing. “No wonder nobody ever tried doing this before. I got really nervous.”
As behind the scenes information, Zane said when the hooks went in and he got hoisted, people lost their cues. “Nobody remembered any of their cues including my guitar player- everybody. And the two guys that were used to piercing weren’t used to being in front of 700 people, so they forgot all the cues.” Zane said he was giving cues, singing and being upended all at once. “So it was a lot of work up there.”
Wankus conceded the experience is something you don’t get unless you go and see it. “I was there in the audience saying, holy shit, this is some of the most amazing shit I’ve ever seen in my life. I got a chill.”
Even though Zane popped twice afterwards backstage after sexually abstaining for over a month, Zane said he lost so much blood. Wankus said the evaluation of one of the pops was such that Peter North wishes he had a day like that. “And that was your second pop.”