Nomy Lamm
September 12, 2002
written by Courtney Trouble & Nomy Lamm

What can I say to properly introduce you to Nomy Lamm? Would it help if I told you that she calls herself “a badass fatass jew dyke amputee, performance artist, writer and activist” on her website? Would it help if I listed all of her published works, awards, and record releases? Probably not. You can find those things out on your own. (try her website, http://nomylamm.com)

Nomy isn’t just a list of accomplishments, nor is she just a string of in-your-face double-whammy descriptive words. Those are just examples of the energy she exudes. She is a real person with passionate emotions that fill her every day life, and YES as well as the pages of her essays, the songs of her albums, and every element of her performances. She’s intelligent, compassionate, and strong. And that doesn’t mean that she’s not capable of feeling pain, anger, and injustice. Just like the rest of us. Human.

This interview took place at the YoYo Studios in Olympia, Washington. Nomy was working on mixes of her new songs from the upcoming album, Effigy, which she’ll sing along to during her summer tour in 2003. She describes this upcoming tour as a huge performance with role-playing, costume changes, and even choreographed back up dancers. (Move over Janet Jackson!!!) It seems like Nomy’s always had big plans, big ideas, and I'm going to get cheesy and say that yes, she’s got a very big heart.

Whats up, how are you?
I'm good, Im moving in a week and I haven’t packed. I grew up here so it’s kind of like a really big deal – Im moving away from my hometown! Im excited and finishing up my CD and trying to get time with people I care about, which is really stressing me out right now. And I went to the spa in Tacoma.

The spa??
The women’s spa, with my mom and my sister and we soaked in four different kinds of tubs! And they pored tea all over me and we got this full-body scrub, and they scrub you everywhere… well almost everywhere… It’s really cool I was naked for hours and hours and hours with all these other naked women around… It was crazy!

I grew up in Tacoma, I moved down here in May, and ever since I moved down here it seems like there’s cool stuff happening in Tacoma. It never happened when I lived there!
Im sure the spa was there… you should go there.

I will! Are you usually that comfortable in front of naked people? Not usually! That was like… the first time I’ve walked around naked like that. I had to take my leg on and off every time I would go in the tub, and put it somewhere, and I was totally the fattest person there, and the only one with lots of tattoos!!! But it was fine, if anybody thought any thing they didn’t make it known to me, and after a little while it felt totally normal and comfortable. The lady who was doing my scrub was looking at all of my tattoos, and she said “You’re entertaining me!”

I wonder if it occurs to them that the people they are scrubbing are queer. I mean, the whole feeling there is so open and comfortable and non-sexual and it’s weird because it’s just assumed that every body there was straight. The body comfort was easy because there was no sexual kind of energy. That was interesting. It’s not like there was sexual energy for me, but... there could be, you know? Like, I walked into the locker room and there were all these ladies putting on fancy clothes and they’re doing their hair… (She makes a dreamy sighing noise) and I though, “I better get out of here!!”

That’s really awesome. I went to a show last week and the fat lead singer took off like, everything. She was drunk... I couldn’t help but wonder how she felt about it.
But that’s her whole shtick. It’s awesome.

Guess so. Is this little box a studio? Where do you record?
I record on the stage, or down the hall in the green room. I like recording on the stage but it’s hard to get.

When did you start learning to love your body, and what was it like before that? Like, for me it was really linear – over the coarse of a few weeks I just figured it out. Was it the same for you? Was it linear?
No, it really hasn’t been because there are so many different things to deal with. At 17 I learned about fat oppression and thought that solved problems for me, but it was angrier. “This is fucked up that you treat me this way and make me feel this way about myself!” I’ve been trying to “figure it out” for a long time. When I was 17 I started talking about fat oppression and lecturing on it and talking about gender and sexuality and queerness and disability and fat. But my actual process of actually learning to be in and love my body in the past.. year. And that has more to do with learning how to take care of myself, learning. I could say “I love my body!” and wear a sexy outfit and flash my tits in people’s faces and say that that was cool, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to love myself or take care of myself.

I grew up with a really bad eating disorder and my whole family was fucked with food and my dad was bulimic, and I didn’t know how to nourish myself. And my foot was amputated when I was three and all this stuff that made it really hard to know how to take care of myself. I didn’t know how to eat food that nourished me, and now I have a lot of really unhealthy patterns and Im at the point where Im learning how to unravel that stuff. Okay, when Im stressed out I don’t eat at all and when Im depressed I eat all the time, and it never has anything to do with what my body actually desires. So, Im developing habits and patterns that feel good. It feels good to cook for myself and take time to do it. And broccoli gives me energy and I am going to eat some of it and feel really good!

I do acupuncture and yoga and therapy and Im going through the process of leaving my life and in a lot of ways its really hard, I feel like im in the middle of it right now. Its funny because ive been this spokesperson on this subject for so long and I’m at such a different place now where its not like, this idea that I have that im going to talk about to people – its my actual reality, what im living through right now, and its important to me.

But before all of that, high school, I dieted from age 5 until I was 17. And then I found riot grrrl and learned the words “fat oppression” and read a book, you know? I had the support of these other girls talking about their own shit, and I had so much shame about it, but its not like I suddenly lived in a world that supported my body. I think my body shit… its so interesting because my foot was amputated when I was three and I don’t remember ever not being worried about my body. I was really sexual as a kid, when I got fat in middle school I realized I was fat…

Oh I know what you mean!! When its like, “Oh Im so fat, ohh!” and then you realize, you ARE fat!!!
Yeah, like I would look at myself and think, “oh im fat im fat im fat!” but I didn’t really mean I was FAT! And then, I was actually fat, like, somebody would describe me as fat and that was like, the most shameful thing that could happen. That took away all of my sexuality. At that point, I felt like unless you were a woman who was sexually desirable to men you weren’t a real woman, not that I truly identify as a woman, but that’s probably WHY, I went through this really long period of being completely asexual and completely genderless and not being attracted to anybody and not dating anybody. That was my teenage years… I had a boyfriend when I was 18. For a while. And then, I didn’t date again until I was 21. And now! The world that I live in now, fat people are so hot!! Im naturally attracted to fat people. I mean there’s still all of that conditioning but in my life, there’s stuff that’s much more important for me than that. I remember a time when I couldn’t imagine fat being sexy, but now its like super hyper sexy to me now! I don’t know… do you think that??

(at this point im blushing) Uh HUH!!! Im trying to hide my little dreamy eyes at you, right now!
(she just laughs. Pa-shaw!)

You were talking about nutrition, and on my website I am constantly defending it in other places for being, very… nurturing of bad habits. Fat isn’t necessarily unhealthy but there are other things that make you unhealthy. How do you react to people trying to tell you that you are unhealthy because they see that you’re fat?
I don’t understand how anybody could possibly KNOW that. Ive had that – I haven’t had people tell me YOURE NOT HEALTHY but ive heard, “fat isn’t healthy, its bad for you, it increases your heart rate” and blah blah blah, and Ive got all these facts and can say “well actually, most of these things that we equate with poor health and fat relate to dieting and not fat itself,” and of course fat people have been on diets all their life, and they’ve starved themselves, it’s the whole way our culture thinks about fat, its demonized, and we put out bodies in these awful patterns that force us to fear.

Of course we’re all fat, that’s what we’re afraid of. The thing you fear the most is what’s going to happen. Our bodies are not set up to be abused like that. It doesn’t matter, Im fat, it doesn’t matter WHY IM fat, Im sitting here and I am taking care of myself in the best way I know how. 5 years ago, I wasn’t very good; I didn’t take very good care of myself. I was probably smaller, because I tend to continually gain a little bit of weight every year, and that’s my reality and nobody else has to fucking worry about it! I smoked for twelve years and got more shit about BEING FAT than I did about smoking. That really hurt.

Demonizing our bodies for the bad habits that we have is not okay, our bodies are doing the best that they can in the circumstances that they are in. we need to listen to ourselves and take care of our bodies the best that we can, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to get SKINNY, that’s not reality! That’s not how things work. We all have different bodies. You have no idea why people are they way they are…

We don’t have to demonize each other for that. And we don’t have to play saviors about it, either.

I tend to think that fat women are more accepted in the queer society than the straight world, I don’t know.
I don’t know… Men are so easy, in that dumb way…

I had this friend, she was over 200 pounds, and probably the first fat chick I was good friend with. She put this really bad stereotype in this head of the “easy fat girl” – she was always bringing home strange men. She really fit that saying, “Fat Girls are Easy.”
And she, specifically, was.

Yeah, I really had to work through that… Can you add to that?
Well not in any really personal way, but its interesting. My path with men was to shut them out because I thought if they liked me then they must be thinking really fucked up things about me…

And they probably were!
And they do have these really weird motives.

When I saw you playing your accordion in Olympia, I had just moved here and didn’t have any friends. And there you were, a cool fat punk chick playing the accordion. You were playing, we were just really idly listening. A car drives by and the guy puts his head out and scream, HEEYY BAABBBY! I don’t remember exactly what you said, but it felt like you were down there to face that kind of pressure on purpose.
It doesn’t sound exactly like what I said, but I probably meant part of why I was there to learn how to do things for myself, regardless of what other people think. I wasn’t really talking about those guys, I was thinking more about being a performer. But it totally has to do with those guys too – I felt like I needed to be in control about how people perceive me. Like when Im on stage – Im like, here’s what I have to give. I fell like I am being watched all the time, and that’s kind of how I feel like I have any worth in the world.

Having my accordion is a really big part of getting rid of that – it’s like, This Is What Im doing Right now, and you can listen if you want. Im not going to play FOR them or cater to them, and im not going to let bullshit like that hurt me or not let me do what I need to do because I fucking feel like it.

A BIG PART OF BEING A FAT PERSON IS AFRAID OF BEING VISIBLE, having it be known to you that other people know that you are fat. But that doesn’t hurt me any more, and that’s a pretty cool to me. I mean I don’t like it when people are assholes to me, that still hurts you know?

But that’s there problem, not yours.
Exactly Its there problem. If I were to sit down with them, if they actually had the guts to have a conversation with me, instead of driving by me and yelling some bullshit out the window which is SO WEAK! What a fucking loser. Then maybe, I could be like, “What is your issue that makes you feel like you can’t deal with yourself unless you yell something at me? How does that make your life better, How does that add something to your existence that you were able to feel better than me for a minute? Guys are so... That whole culture of “guyness”, of validating each other in their complete ignorance? It’s insane.

“Oh you’re an idiot? I’m an idiot too!!”
Idiot pride! But they wouldn’t even acknowledge that. Its cool to be mean to people, its cool to be rough, and take up lots of space for no reason even when you’re not doing anything important at all and nobody’s paying attention to you. You still have to take up as much space as possible and nobody can say anything to you that could possibly cut you down. But they’re still vulnerable – the want to feel like men.

Yeah, you have to validate them in this really sneaky way…
Right, the ways men are vulnerable.. If you call him a fag or a pussy, make him not feel like a man, it wont cut him down – it will make him aggressive. Like when I went to this nude beach in Victoria (British Columia, Canada), this nasty naked hippy that everybody said was really cool, started taking a liking to me and hanging around me constantly and making more and more inappropriate comments and as I left her said something so fucked up, like, he said, “Next time you have sex, think of me.” He said that to me. Isn’t that the sickest thing?? And I totally know what his dick looks like; it was standing right next to my head you know?

Ohh gross!
It was so sick. And it was nothing to him. He’ll forget, he doesn’t care, but it had such a huge impact on me and if I responded to him on the level that he affected me I would be deemed as an insane, crazy fucked up bitch. There’s nothing I could say that would have that affect on him, because he’s a man. That was infuriating to me.

Oh man, I’m a phone sex operator and I feel that way all the time. “Think about me next time you masturbate.” And… you know… did you think about him the next time you had sex? I know that’s what happens to me.
Yes! Well I haven’t had sex since then but when I was jerking off I was thinking about him.. but I was totally thinking about this really fucked up shit, like him with this baby bottle and he was jerking off into a cupcake and then eating it… He is just going to suffer through the most humiliating shit…

My most recent really witty comment was “Think of me the next time someone cuts your dick off and feeds it to you!!!” Oh my god, I was so mad. Another thing he did was ask me to play my accordion. And I didn’t want to.

Because specifically, that accordion is a symbol of YOUR CHOICE.
Yeah, exactly. I was like, No I don’t want to! And he did this gross imitation of me, like this way men flirt, and he cooed “Ohhh I don’t waaant tooo!” I couldn’t believe it. OH my god, fuck off. I thought he got the point, but it was after that that he said that shit to me... Arrgh! It still pisses me off.

As my phone sex character I talk to guys all the time, and I totally have to play that “Ohh!” kind of girl. But now Im a phone domme, and Im not much of a bitch. Im too accepting of fetishes, and the guys don’t like that. I have to come up with really awful language. I hope it turns me into a better woman. A bitch.
I want to learn how to do that shit.
I have friends who do dome work, not on the phone, and she is like… Okay, I really go off on people like, “You fucking blah blah blah!!” and she and the other domes are like, “Oh don’t you want to do that, hmmm? Don’t you want to, lick my boot? Hmm!” I love to be able to see people do that work, see how people are. The images we get from porn are so fake and ridiculous, and you cant learn anything except how to fuck some one if you’re a guy.

Or how to be docile and sexy if you’re a girl.
Oh, personally I don’t think those girls look very hot! Have you seen How To Fuck In High Heels? She’s really talky... its so funny. Any way.

One of my next big projects is to start a porn website for alternative punk/goth/whatever models. All the other sites that do that, the girls are still skinny and white mostly, even though the site claims to be “alternative.” I can’t go on those sites – Im too big, and Im short, and Im too small for BBW, but I still want to do porn. My site is going to have everything on it, all grouped together. All sizes.
Ohh that sounds like something I want to do… Its just an idea, it has no existence in reality, it’s a web site, kind of a porn site, of myself, with different costumes and stuff!! All me.

Can we call it comeinnomylammscupcake.com ???
(big laughter all around) I only want people I know or approve of to see the site. Like, you’re paying me for it, to help me with my healing process, and you get to support my exhibitionism. I want to make porn and I have all these ideas, Im a very creative person, but I don’t want it to be for “anyone!” I wouldn’t even show it at a festival I don’t think.

That would be pretty easy, you can do it!
I would want to know who they were in the physical world, not just any person. There would have to be an agreement that they wouldn’t talk to me about what they saw…

Okay… back on track… Im going to turn over this tape and record over all of my crappy guitar music… Oh well I don’t fucking care any more. I’ve given up on my fucking guitar. I can play it, but I don’t like what I make. How do you deal with that??? I don’t want to be what I always end up creating. What is it like when what you create isn’t what you WANT to create?
I haven’t been super critical of myself in that way. Up until the Transfused basically, everything I created was pretty good I thought, even though it wasn’t what I wouldn’t imagine myself making. I just kind of put it together, here it is. I guess I just kept working on it, doing it, and like, I know that what Im doing right now is only a piece of it. My first CD that I put out… have you heard it?

Yeah, my roommate Ellen found it for a buck at the flea market!
A dollar!!!

No, like everything… really big names... it was all for a dollar.
But yeah, that CD... I like it as a document of what I was doing and what I had up to that point, its interesting. Its totally not… umm... I was experimenting. It doesn’t sound great, it’s not perfect sounding.

Well, it was your first CD.
I didn’t know how to wrap my brain around it as a full thing yet.

I think it exposes. I haven’t really listened to it enough because it’s always with Ellen, but I think it shows a lot of different sides of one person. What you’re saying is very personal.
What Im doing now, is how I want it. Its what I want to be making. Its taken me a lot of years, and being in a lot of bands, and not getting and recognition for my music. Im a singer, Im really good at that, but I didn’t ever focus on it. I was always a spoken word artist, or all these other things before I was a singer. But I needed all this time to develop my own sound and my own kind of music.

I said to people online, “Tomorrow Im going to interview Nomy Lamm and she’s a writer, a musician, and activist… all these things” because a lot of the people who read this aren’t necessarily people from the scene that knows you. But within this community, people really DO recognize you and there are a lot of women out there (like my roommate) who consider you a real hero.

How do you handle notoriety? My first impression would be that you really like the creating and being seen, but you also really resent being noticed. You were in Ms. Magazine, you know? How does that effect you?
Um.. It’s weird. You said it pretty well. Im an artist and I’ve always known that, and I’ve always wanted to be recognized for it. I get a lot of really special privileges, and there’s a lot of great things that have happened in my life because people know how I am and what I care about, and they respect that, so they take care of me. I can travel and know that I have people in any city that will take me in and love me.

On the other had they might treat you like a big super star,
Yeah, I can usually tell the difference. It has a lot to do with where the people are coming from. If somebody has everything that they need for themselves, and they got something from me that inspired them or helped them or showed them something, I want to hear about it. That’s awesome, that fills me up. Like, “8 years ago you gave me your zine and it changed my life.” That’s awesome. But people who have like, this needy role that they need me to fill by letting them be around people they think are important. It’s a tricky line, too, there’s this whole mythology built up around Olympia. Being from here and going to lecture at a college some where, where the person who set it up is carrying a Rebecca Pearcy bag and has their Nikky McClurr calendar on the wall and the Need in the CD player… Its crazy!! To go into a place that’s not Olympia, and then seeing these things. I mean, they should totally have them! But it becomes this whole thing about “What Olympia is.” I’ve lived here a long time and worked with a lot of different people, and I could tell one story about 10 different famous people. I find myself engaging in that… But how cares? If the point of the story, is that I knew that person? That’s not an interesting story. It’s fame, but its good for me to learn how to deal with it. I grew up feeling like a nerd, totally not cool except in my own fantasy.

Oh me too.. I think we would have been friends!!
Probably! Now I have this thing about never wanting to be mean to people. I can be sitting at a restaurant with my friend, dealing with drama, crying, and some one will interrupt with me and say, “Ohh I heard you on the radio today! What are you doing now? Are you taking the Transfused on the road???” Its like, I know people have good intentions, they aren’t trying to fuck me up, but I don’t need to know every time people heard my voice.

I think its just timing and intention. I like meeting people, and I never want to close myself off from that. I never want to be so famous that there are too many people. I think that kind of fame that comes from touching a lot of people, it’s a big responsibility but it’s worth it to do what I love and get support for it. My favorite people to play for are other artists, people that are also doing their own stuff. My community. Ladyfest! Homo a GoGo!!!

HomoaGogo!!!
I am soo excited about the slot that I got for that!!!!

They’re charging extra for that night!! In advance. Tribe 8. Kate Bornstien. Lynn Breedlove. You. It will be perfect.
Lynn Breedlove, I love her so much, I toured with her in May. Her book is so good, Godspeed! She is an amazing person.

That day is going to be very cool… fashion shows, drag shows, my zine and craft thing…
Im so glad to know that new people are getting involved with things! You do all this cool shit!! People act so traumatized when they hear that Im leaving, Ive been in this community for a long time and people rely on it. But there’s other people doing stuff.

There’s something about this town. And I know every body says that, but it’s kind of true. I grew up in Tacoma, 25 minutes away, and I wasn’t doing SHIT in Tacoma. I move down here on the first sunny day of the year and everything has been different for me ever since. Now that I'm here I'm doing SO MUCH SHIT and im loud and queer and I'm doing zines, planning festivals… Fat Girl Break Down!!! I couldn’t do that shit in Tacoma.
Everybody I know is so burned out, its no nice to hear that there’s other stuff going on.

It takes a bunch of people leaving for a new scene to emerge you know, The Need doesn’t play every weekend any more so now other people can come in and play. We need that.
I know there are fucking cool new people here. My feelings right now about being here are really negative, I think Olympia is great and it’s been every thing I’ve needed it to be, and I'm ready to leave. But that means I haven’t been able to open myself up to these new people. My down stairs neighbors are these really cool artists, these amazing creative people all around me that I haven’t connected to. I'm glad though, I’m glad that I'm leaving and that I’ll be able to come back and see all this new stuff that wasn’t available before.

This tiny little place.
There’s a history of support here.

So you’re moving to Chicago? Why?
Lots of different reasons. They way I operate is to figure out what I want and see where it all comes together. I'm not necessarily doing all the things that I said I was looking for. I have a really good friend there who started calling me every day saying, “Move to Chicago! Move to Chicago!!” But I had to figure it out for myself. I wanted to go to Rabbinical school…

What’s that?
I want to learn to be a rabbi. Usually every year right around the high holy days I want to be a rabbi. I say that because I go to services, and I'm so disappointed in the way it’s done. And I know that if I were up there I would be kicking ass and be really involved and shit. I want people to leave feeling changed. But I don’t want to go to school Chicago, there’s so many Jews there... I decided I needed a spiritual mentor and my family’s from there, it’s very familiar to me.

Oh yeah, my parents are from the East Coast too.. I would love to get out there and be part of that family… but I was born out here and I’ve never experienced that.
Its weird because I'm not romantic about my family right now, I don’t want to be in that web any more. Its not about that, but there is that familiarity, I’ve been there a lot and I have friends there. Its so different than Olympia. And we got this amazing apartment, 2 bedrooms, ground floor... it is so great not to have stairs…. Two coffee shops, two Thai restaurants, an independent movie theater, Kinko’s… there’s a neon sign right in front of our window that says “Psychic” because there’s a psychic next to us.

Did you perform at Ladyfest Chicago?
No

Which ones have you been to?
Olympia and San Francisco

Isn’t it weird that it’s kind of.. Rippled?
It’s amazing!

I didn’t even know Ladyfest Olympia was happening when it did. Half an hour away and I wasn’t even exposed to it.
It was right after the Transfused, so I was totally fucking high on myself, Olympia, what we had done here. I was also very exhausted after a year and a half of working my fucking ASS off.

A whole year and a half?
Yeah. It was the most passionate work I’ve done in my life.

Is there a tape?
There’s a video we’re giving to Rainy Day (a record store in Olympia) so they can rent it out.

Wow, I’ll have to see that.
Maybe you should write a rock opera!

No, I want to do a Moulin Rouge burlesque show. When I think about all those people saying “Oh the Transfused we have to see it again! They have to do it again!” I disagree with that. If I had been there to see it, it would have been really fucking cool, but it happened once, so let it be.
Yeah! Right. It was so much work, I want to say, “and why don’t you make one” you know?

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