She said I need to reload and pulled out a new tampon. I said “let me do it” and she said ok. She lay on the ground on her back with her legs in the air; I inserted the tampon with her assistance. I got it in there and it was like a little cotton mouse with its tail hanging out and I turned to my friend and said the fateful words “do you have a lighter?” (laughing) He did! He did in fact have a lighter. Despite the girls protests I lit her fuse, let it burn for a few moments and blew it out. There are photos and videos of this, which were sent to different parties who were not present, and they thanked me for my oddness. I never saw the girl again. KCM- I like that one. Moving onto a very interesting topic now: haters! I'm sure you have a lot of them. Manzin- They're funny. There is this one guy that I would frequently have words with. There is actually a rivalry with the quote unquote “Manson lookalikes”. There’s some bad blood amongst various ones. There is one in Texas that I do not get along with well and it's funny because no one gets along with him but, he seems to particularly not like me for various reasons which I shouldn’t even go into because I am pretty sure the reasons are obvious. There are always haters and there are always people who write me saying “Marilyn Manson preaches individuality and he said never to be like him he always said to be like you and make a difference”. If I had a quarter for every time someone said that to me I could pay my rent with that. It's ridiculous because I'm aware of that but what I'm doing is different than that. I'm doing different things than what they're accusing me of. They seem to think that all I do is Manson-related stuff and honestly, I’ve been shooting Manson-related looks since 97 or 98. I’ve shot almost everything of Manson that I wanted to shoot. They think I am a one trick pony but I'm not. I shoot so much more espe-
cially these days I do more of my own shoots. I like to experiment a lot between the feminine and masculine and blur them together. KCM- Speaking of gender, do you get a lot of controversy for playing the role of both genders? Manzin- I actually don’t. I get a lot of people saying “I really like you in heels”. My favorite is when a guy will add me because my main photo is more feminine and then be very confused as to why I have all these boy photos in my portfolio. There’s some people that see me as a guy who cross dresses as a girl, some people see me as a girl who cross dresses as a guy, there’s some people that see me as both genders, neither gender, third gender... KCM- Do you keep your gender a secret? Manzin- I don’t really know. Honestly I just kind of do what I do. I work on mood and whim and I think everyone should have the same freedom to play with gender. Just like there’s a whole spectrum of color, it’s also like that for gender as well. I identify as male but sometimes I have more feminine qualities than masculine. Sometimes I feel more female than male, sometimes that varies by the hour, by the day, by who I'm with, by what I'm eating, what movie I've seen. I don’t like to limit myself with anything. KCM- That’s what I like about you, you don’t really know exactly what gender you are and that makes people wonder but in a way it works with you because it’s like you feel yourself as both. I’ll admit growing up I got called lesbian a lot, got called a guy a lot and people still think I am a guy. Manzin- (whispering) but you got massive boobies! (Laughing)