22 OCTOBER 26-NOVEMBER 1, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | AC/DC. I would wear a Motörhead T-shirt, and they would think I was a straight man coming in there to harass gay men, because I didn’t fi t into the package. “When I discovered the local music scene in late ’99, it changed everything,” he con- tinues. “The rock-and-roll community is my community. That’s my family. Most of them are my minions now, because I’ve killed so many of them. But that’s where I feel like I’m with my people.” Maris, who rarely breaks character, says he was transformed into an undead master not long after he started his own band. “I died in late ’99,” he recounts. “I had a band; it was called Maris the Very Good and the Heterosexually Challenged. We were a dance band. One night I picked up a trick and took him to a hotel. I thought he was the strong and silent type — turns out he was the strong undead type. He fucked me so hard, my head went through a headboard, which is how I got this scar” — he dips his head and points to a prosthetic scar, “stapled” shut. “When I reanimated, I went back to my band and said, ‘Dance music is out, you see. We must become a rock-and-roll band,’” Maris goes on. “So we changed our name to Maris the Great and the Faggots of Death. But now we’re Maris the Great and the F.O.D., for PC society. I decided we would become the most popular band in the world. The only problem is, there were other bands vying for the same posi- tion. Thousands of bands. It was at that time I decided my mission in death was to kill all of the bands and eliminate the competition until only my band remains and becomes the most popular in the world! I’ve killed 154 bands, and there’s only about 1,532,000 more to go.” His monstrous voice lilts with the come- dic turns of his statement, leaning into the more bizarre aspects, as a standup does in a tight fi ve. With fake blood spilling from his mouth and nose and gray stains covering his teeth, Maris cuts an eyebrow-raising image that matches his fi ctional beginnings, but it isn’t long before you’re in on the joke. The police have had no choice but to be in on it: When Maris was getting photos taken for a poster to advertise his fi rst Hal- loween showcase, he and a friend made a fake penis out of latex and meat to hang out of his mouth. “After we were done, we threw it on the ground,” Maris recalls. “The street got entirely closed down. Someone called to investigate the fake penis.” One of his fi rst kills, a manager at the Gothic Theatre, ended up having to go to the Englewood Police Department because someone saw Maris’s murder photos on the website and reported them. “When he walked in, the detective had pictures from my website all printed out on his desk. And he was like, ‘We fi gured it probably wasn’t real, because there are people smiling,’” Maris says, chuckling. “Because we all know that gay undead are real.” His notoriety quickly grew, advancing Maris’s ultimate goal. And when it comes down to it, that has nothing to do with his character’s obsession with killing bands. “All I was trying to do was get the word out about the local music scene,” he says. The work was so exhausting that the mortal Maris took a fi ve-year break begin- ning in 2015. “I spent fi fteen years being this character, and never came up for air. I would be in makeup for days at a time,” he recalls. “I slept on a bloody mattress. Theatrical blood was splashed all over the walls of my home. It’s much like what a method actor does with a role, but I didn’t know any of that. I didn’t know it can damage you. So around 2015, I was really fucked up and very ripe for spirituality. I found a master that taught me meditation, I became a philosophical Taoist and also became vegan. The pendulum just had to swing the other way for a while.” But when in character, Maris attributes the hiatus to the complete decomposition of his body. “I acquired demonship fi fteen years after I started here in Denver. I decomposed and went to hell. I joined a number of training programs to better myself — you can train as a demon, you know — and I became an awarded, decorated demon, with a demon name of Gay Zuzu,” he explains. “Since my body completely decomposed, there was no way to come back here,” he continues. “However, in the ancient scrolls of Gomorrah, there was a ritual that had never been performed, that is decided by the local music scene here to perform. It is called the Dickening.” So Maris rose from the dead in May 2020 through a ritual involving a “virgin boy toy” and a pentagram, and entered the local music scene once more. But the world had changed during the pandemic; people were spiraling in isola- tion, obsessing over whichever trend was the latest to condemn. There wasn’t much mental space left for understanding Maris’s mission. “When I came back, a lot of people were offended, because I came back into a world that was fi lled with politics and whatnot,” Maris says. “And the dead really don’t care about your politics. We just want to have a good meal, we want to have superior butt sex, and I want my band to be number one.” It initially translates as shock-jock dark humor akin to that of a John Waters fi lm. But if people look beyond that, they’ll fi nd a headier statement. When Maris and the F.O.D. formed 23 years ago, the band was an incred- ibly in-your-face LGBTQ+ act in a punk-rock genre that was dominated by straight men. And when Maris did have the “F” in F.O.D. spelled out, it was a reclamation of the word by a gay man who’d been called that word as an insult all his life (and this was long before Amber Rose made that concept popular with her Slut Walk). L’Whor, the host of the Halloween-season showcase, says that critics who focus on the name of Maris’s band name need to go deeper: “I don’t think it needs to be as focused on, because it’s not with the intent of causing harm to others in the way that others use it to try to degrade or downplay queer people. “I continue to this day, online and in per- son, to get called a faggot,” L’Whor continues. “And when I hear that, all I resort to is: We’re in 2023. Yes, I’m queer, gay, gender-fl uid, non- binary. If that is the word that you want to refer to me as, it just doesn’t faze me the same way. It’s a lack of creativity. And I really like that nowadays, Maris has, like, not reclaimed it, but claimed it. He can say that. He can make that part of the title of his band.” The name also has marketing value, L’Whor adds: “There’s a power behind the shock. When I tell people, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m doing this showcase for Maris the Great and the Faggots of Death,’ it’s such a memorable conversation starter. That part of it is in branding. It’s a memorable name. It alerts you to pay attention and not forget it. But if you talk to him more, you realize that it’s really just another way to say we’re expressing queerness.” Kermit the Fag, a member of F.O.D., wrote the song “Go Fag” to say as much. “It’s a gay anthem on the surface, but it’s actually an anthem for anyone that’s felt like a freak and been called faggot,” Maris explains. “When I was mortal growing up, it was something that I thought only gay people experienced, but a lot of straight mortals told me over the years that they got called fag, usually by jock bullies or people in society that no one wants to be like. So Kermit’s idea is: Since none of us want to be like those people, then we’re all fags, and let’s make it something to stand up and be proud of.” The band made a music video (X-rated, of course) for “Go Music continued from page 21 continued on page 24 Maris prowling around his lair in Cheesman Park (above), and with members of his band in 2021. EVAN SEMÓN ANDREA PUTMAN
