The daily Astorian., May 10, 2018, Page 11, Image 11

MAY 10, 2018 // 11
with all men,” Kirk said. “From CPAs
to lawyers to financiers to contractors,
there are no women in my business
apart from the realtors who sell my
houses when I fix them up. And I find
that my natural sassiness works to my
benefit about 70 percent of the time.
A lot of the men find it hilarious and
refreshing.
“Then there are those who just can’t
handle it, and I can usually pick them
out within a minute of meeting them.
It’s very often the guys who control the
money who give me the hardest time.
There’s an energy there I just don’t jive
with. It’s the hardest part of my job, go-
ing to the fifth floor of these buildings
and trying to negotiate with these guys
with all the trophies in their offices and
their manicures and their striped socks
— it drives me a little bit crazy.”
By WILLIAM HAM
FOR COAST WEEKEND
T
he recently-published anthology
“Nasty!,” released through Port-
land’s King Shot Press, is very
much a book of its cultural moment. Its
19 essays, all written by women, are
bold, raw and defiant — a perfect encap-
sulation of the zeitgeist, where #MeToo
is the hashtag of choice and Stormy
Daniels an unlikely feminist icon.
It’s appropriate, then — insofar as
anything about the book can be consid-
ered “appropriate” — that one of those
essays comes from the pen of Astoria’s
Diana Kirk.
Kirk, a career real estate investor and
owner of Workers Tavern in Astoria’s
Uniontown since last November, spends
what remains of her spare time plying
her sideline as a comic essayist. Her first
collection, “Licking Flames: Tales of
a Half-Assed Hussy,” was released in
2016. A second volume, a compendium
of travel tales provisionally titled “On-
ward Ho,” is in the works.
If you haven’t read her work, suffice
it to say that it’s definitely not for the
faint of heart or the clutcher of pearls.
Kirk’s writing is brazen, bawdy and un-
apologetic. Which, as it happens, made
her a perfect fit for this project.
“’Nasty!’ is not really a political
book, though the title makes it seem
that way,” Kirk said. “It’s more about
being a woman in this day and age and
all the (nonsense) that we’ve had to put
up with. It’s really about all aspects of
womanhood. A lot of the writing is pret-
ty fierce, and some of it is pretty funny.”
Which is not to say that it can’t be
both, as you might infer from the title of
Kirk’s contribution: “Tampon Trigger.”
“My piece came about because of
a post I wrote on Facebook about how
Washington state was going to start tax-
ing menstrual products, and I was like,
‘We already pay too much for haircuts
and shoes. Why can’t we get this one lit-
tle break?’ And this guy responded with,
‘Oh, I’m so glad I don’t have to listen
to my ex-wife talk about these things
anymore.’ Instead of saying ‘screw you’
like one does on Facebook, I decided to
share with him all the details his wife
probably never told him, as if to say,
‘Oh, this grosses you out? Well, here’s
my life, you big jerk.’ And it turned out
really funny.”
‘Too sexual’
Funny as it was, Kirk’s essay took a
Comedians are truth-tellers
COLIN MURPHEY PHOTOS
Diana Kirk pours a drink at Workers Tavern, which she took over as the new owner last year.
while to find a home.
“It was rejected by seven different
publications, which was interesting,”
Kirk said. “Not just that it was rejected
— every writer gets rejected a million
times, that’s just part of the business —
but that, in every case, it was rejected
for being ‘too sexual.’
“But if you read it, you’ll see that
it’s not sexual at all! It’s about menstru-
ation! Which goes to show you that no
matter how hard a woman tries, that’s
the slot she gets put into. So it became
kind of a badge of honor to get rejected
on those terms.”
“Tampon Trigger,” like much of
Kirk’s writing, serves as a riposte to the
preconceptions and prejudices faced by
women in a traditionally male-dominat-
ed society, something she knows all too
well via her day job.
“As a real estate investor, I work
The ability to channel that craziness
into laugh-out-loud prose is a quality
Kirk shares with her chief creative
influences.
“I can’t read serious feminist litera-
ture very much, it’s just too exhausting.
I gravitate more towards humor writers.
I love it when people say my essays
remind them of David Sedaris; he’s
so rad. But I mostly get compared to
comedians, especially when I do my
readings. Amy Schumer comes up a lot,
and I love everything that comes out of
Chelsea Handler’s mouth; she’s just a
goddess to me.
“I think that stand-up comedians are
the smartest of all entertainers, because
they can sell you something that you
know is so horrible and make you laugh
at your own hypocrisy. They can bring
our deepest, darkest secrets to our fac-
es. They’re truth-tellers.”
Such truth telling has proven reso-
nant. Since its publication in January,
“Nasty!” is already the fastest-selling
title in King Shot Press’ catalogue, the
profits for which are being donated to
Planned Parenthood, and a sequel is
already in the works. You can find it at
bookstores or online, or you can just
stop by Workers Tavern, where both it
and “Licking Flames” are on prominent
display next to the bar.
“I’ve done a lot of work on this
place, but I don’t want it to lose its
rough-and-ready atmosphere,” Kirk
said, contemplating the display case.
“Maybe we should get a couple of
those fake bullet-hole stickers for the
glass.” CW