The Mangina aka Patrick Bucklew

When Patrick Bucklew was 21 years old he finally grew public hair.  When he was 28, he lost his left leg.

If you think this even begins to explain The Mangina, you're sorely mistaken.

















Chief Magazine: What brought you to New York?

Patrick Bucklew: I’m from the northwest and raised there. I was born in Great Falls, Montana. I lived there just a year and then I moved to Bozeman, Montana. I decided I wanted to be an artist and I went to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and then decided that New York was a more serious venue and came to New York.

Can you make a living just doing art?

No, I do a lot of stuff like house painting and whatever I can do off the books and house painting and chore boy.

Tell me a little about the mangina device.

It’s a prosthesis that I use in my performance art where I utilize my scrotum and labia, and I call that the “lotum.” So it’s actual genitalia that comes out of a prosthetic vagina that I wear and people finger it. I’ve had thousands of people finger it. Slightly to my dismay, people on the street say, “Hey, how ya doing? I fingered ya a couple of months ago.” It’s pretty intimate and it was something that I did to – I saw a lot of art that I thought was great in terms of technique, but I didn’t remember any of it. So I thought I want to do something that people remember, and they do. They never forget what I do.

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You refer to yourself as “The Mangina” and it’s a device. Is the device for sale?

Oh yeah.

Are there knock-off manginas out there?

Oh, there’s hundreds. Oh, you mean other people copying me?

Yeah.

Not really, because I utilize my scrotum and labia so it’s such a bizarre thing that nobody’s copied it really. Sex shops make things that are a virtual mold of vaginas and that are in the shape of underwear now and men can wear them, but mine actually utilizes real genitalia. So I’m unique in that. And it’s so weird that nobody has ever copied me.

You know you’ve got an authentic mangina if it utilizes genitalia.

Exactly.

Besides the artistic creation, was there anything else that prompted you to invent the mangina?

I kind of invented a nine-pointed star that has all of the points to the mangina: late puberty; I was 21 when I finally grew pubic hair, similar to Jonathan Ames who was 18, and that caused kind of a psychotic disturbance in my development. It came so late, I was obsessed with
pubic hair and that kind of tied in.

The other thing is my father’s a bastard, that tied in. He had many affairs while my mom was having six kids. His mom was a Southern Baptist, so to have him out of wedlock was a very serious kind of thing, that has something to do with it, I don’t know how that all ties in...

My prosthetic leg, losing my foot, almost losing my life. Um, I had a handwriting analyst tell me that the invention of the mangina was tied into my prosthetic leg because I wanted to kind of build a sports cup to protect my genitalia. So that’s three, I’m trying to think of the other seven or six.

I almost hate to mention the fact that I was teaching arts and crafts on Fire Island to kids for five years and they inspired me to – you know the whole children-mention I try to leave out of this, but they did influence me. They invented this pretty pity doll that was like this twisted dark doll and I thought, “Oh cool, I can reinvent myself as a pretty pity doll and perform in burlesque clubs.” And I was hanging out a lot at Blue Angel in Tribeca so I made this wild hairdo and then I thought, “What’s next?” Well, a vagina. And then I started the mangina and then I called Jonathan Ames up and I invited him over after the show and we both laughed so hard. Like you were school kids and like you just could not stop laughing. It was like the most ridiculous, asinine thing that’s ever been done. So that was indirectly inspired by kids, and that’s one of the points of the star. Let’s see, what are the other ones...?

The need to be recognized as an artist and the need not just to be recognized but the need to be remembered. Not just as a technique, but as something that is permanent. Like when people finger me they don’t forget it. So that worked. In a way it worked and in a way it sort of backfired because they remembered it but they don’t really want to remember it. [Laughs] It’s like, “Oh, I’ll never forget that one. Wish I could.” The other ones are... let’s see, where do I go with this? [Long pause] Just trying to be an artist and being desperate to try and get recognized and then realizing that I don’t really want to be recognized. You know, it’s like, “Fuck all that,” I just want to make my art. So I just kind of calmly go about my painting and performance art that’s kind of like comedy/tragedy. And Jonathan and I have hooked up and we’re both kind of the same way. We both sort of fancy ourselves as being weirder than the other one. So he writes about me a lot, he’s my biographer. He can describe a lot of the issues that have come forward. It’s sort of part psychosis, part art. Art kind of saves your life. Like a lot of times you can transfer the psychosis of art and it’s a beautiful thing. I think that if you apply anything towards art you can understand problems that you normally would be frustrated or angered. Art helps to reveal things in a healthier light and you work things out that are very deep. And when you’ve had a near-death experience you can start to analyze it a little closer.

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Oh, exhibitionism is another one of the points. I’ve always been sort of an exhibitionist and I think that ties in to late puberty. Like I never grew pubic hair so I was freaked out about it so when I finally grew pubic hair I wanted to expose it to the world. And then after a certain point, like at age 40, I was like hanging out at Dunkin Donuts exposing my testicle and I felt like, “This is so disturbing, I don’t want to be this person.” You know, like this horrible exhibitionist. So I thought, “How can I do this in a way that’s like acceptable? And how can a man possibly figure out a way to show his testicles to the world and have it be acceptable?” Which is virtually impossible. But it worked, people are very accepting of the lotum, which I call the testicle sack. I don’t actually pull the balls out, just the scrotum sack. And literally a thousand people have put their finger in it and so I’ve succeeded in people accepting the testicles, the scrotum sack as something other than something ugly. It’s kind of like women get to expose their breasts as much as they want, you know? And a man kind of secretly wants to kind of do the same thing.

I guess so.

[Unintelligible] ...that cool persona of exhibitionism, which is one of the most [unintelligible] things to do because I just meet such a gnarly group of people. And it’s random. I talk to a lot of friends that it happens everyday and I feel like said sad. Like, “Oh my god, that guy did that to you.” And in the back of my mind I think, “Oh shit, I’m one of them.” But I figure if somebody’s got to be a spokesman, you know, so be it, I’ll be the spokesman and try to analyze it, understand it, and figure out what it is that motivates this and maybe we can take a step towards resolving it and make it less violent.

So you can see yourself doing the Mangina for the rest of your life?

Oh yeah, there’s no turning back now. There’s no turning back now. I’m proud of it in a lot of ways. I think it’s a great invention. I get invited to these weird orgies where I perform and I wear this thing. People finger it, they’re titillated and it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty open and people don’t feel violated because I let them have control. One of my main emphases is to give the viewer control and to give the person that’s on the receiving end control so it’s not longer a violation as an exhibitionist would do. It’s more like: give the viewer the power.

Can you tell me more about your near-death experience?

Yeah, I drank a bottle of tequila and then I stepped in a hole in the beach. I lost my left foot and they removed the fibula and left me with a symes amputation. I severed a main artery and my heart stopped three times. So I came close to dying.

How old were you?

I was 28.

And that’s why you have a prosthetic leg?

Yeah, it was a dislocation that cut off the main artery and I came close to dying.

But you’re okay now?

Oh yeah, I’m okay. I’m pretty much okay. [Laughs]

How did you meet Jonathan Ames?

We actually dated the same woman and we bonded instantly. We both dated Amy Stein and then he went from Amy Stein to Amy Sohn and I went from Amy Stein to Amy Klein. So we met through a mutual woman, I broke up with Amy and then Jonathan dated her.

Your wife must be pretty accepting of all of this.

She’s very accepting of all this, yeah. Last night I was performing and she fingered me and she told me that it wasn’t very deep. But she’s an amazing performance artist in her own right. She just got a great plug from Fiona Apple of being one of the most amazing artists alive. She’s an amazing, excellent performance artist, she invents her own dance, she’s incredible.

What’s her name?

Her name is – stage name of real name?

Stage name.

Valmonte sprout.

Are you working on a pilot with Jonathan?

I am. He’s doing an HBO/AOL series and Simone [wife’s actual name] and I are both involved in that.

What’s it about?

They want to give him 40 slots and we’re going to be doing some Quicktime movies and performing. We don’t really know. I shouldn’t probably even talk about it because I’m not really – details and money have not been specifically nailed down so there’s nothing I can really disclose right now but it’s pretty much in the works and looks like it’s going to happen.

And you’ve been on Howard Stern?

I’ve been on Howard Stern twice. Once for the world’s largest hemorrhoid. I came in third place. It was a prosthetic hemorrhoid and fooled them. The first time I was on I exposed my stump which is very phallic, and they liked that a lot. I think actually the two favorite shows I was on because I was the most disturbing in all of the history of Howard Stern [laughs]. Which says a lot, I guess. I don’t know.

And how was it for you?

It was fine. I’ve grown very accepting of all of the gnarliness of this whole process because I take it on. It’s like, “okay, this is who I am, this is what I’m doing.”

Are you still doing shows at Mo’ Pitkins?

I am, yeah. I don’t have anything planned right now. I think the next thing is going to be Comix.

What happens at these shows?

I’ve wrestled a blind woman recently and lost to her twice and then beat her the third time. It’s basically kind of a wacky stand-up/tragedy, stand-up comedy. Jonathan does his thing and I do my thing and we both just kind of like – a lot of it’s spontaneous. “Wacky” is the only word I can come up with. It’s just humorous and spontaneous and wacky and there’s music. Often times Moby will step in and play some songs or beat on somebody’s back as an instrument. I mean all kinds of stuff. Simone does a very beautiful dance and The Saturn, Julie Mears, all the downtown people, he tends to gather them all together for a pretty interesting show.

Who are some of your influences?

Currently: Marilyn Manson and David Byrne and the Pixies and Talking Heads and I love Ween, I love music. I play music. Visually, Paul McCarthy, probably number one influence just because he’s so sincere, wacky and strange and bizarre and wonderful and so wonderfully full of his own art. And I love Red Grooms, I love Picasso, I love Van Gogh, anybody that’s got passion, I’m with them.

Has David Byrne fingered you?

David Byrne did not finger me but he came to a show. The Impact Attic had Boxing Operas, three of them. And David Byrne was at opera two. Bjork and Matthew Barney were at Box Opera three. And she almost went into tears because I almost died. I’m a chain smoker and I took on this big 50 year-old boxer and he kicked my ass so hard I was breathing so heavily I literally almost died. I came very close to death.

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So you’ve had more than one near-death experience.

Yeah, I take a lot of risks. I guess at one point I decided I just don’t really care. [Laughs.] I mean, I don’t want to die. I love boxing, but I do take risks, yes.

Website

themangina.com

Photos

Max Ryazansky

Artwork and performance images courtesy Patrick Bucklew

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