How summmer138 Kicked Oxy and Xanax and Broke Up With Her Boyfriend, Killa T
by Paul Hiebert
On May 29, 2008, summmer138 joined YouTube. Now she has 593 YouTube subscribers. Her real name is Monica, she lives in Denver, and she grew up in Dillingham, Alaska, which she refers to as “DillingHOLE,” population roughly 2,500. She is 22 years old, a high-school graduate with a bit of college education, and a fan of “True Blood,” in both book and television form. Her only love is filming and editing videos, which she does through her production company, depRAVEd wONderland productions. I have no reason to believe that her production company involves anything more than-until recently-a video camera, laptop computer, and pink-themed YouTube account with a black-and-white background that resembles the hide of a cow.
Summmer138 uploaded her first video, Bitch Hoez, on July 26, 2008.
This video features her boyfriend, Killa T, performing his own style of horrorcore hip hop at a local club before a crowd of about a dozen people. Killa T’s face is lean, his head is shaved, and there’s an undecipherable tattoo on the left side of his neck. He paces back and forth across the stage with a cordless microphone in his right hand. He is wearing a silver Hatchetman necklace, the logo for the Insane Clown Posse’s Psychopathic Records, and what appears to be a XXXXL white t-shirt.
Killa T’s lyrics include lines such as, “We the real killaz in the game, and all y’all bitches be the motherfuckin’ same / Don’t hate me cause I’ll be shit, and all y’all hoes straight suck a dick.” Profanity aside, it’s not always easy to understand what he’s rapping about, but you can hear the animosity in his cadence. The song ends with Killa T yelling, “Fuck the police” a couple of times.
That video has 182 views. Many of summmer138’s videos show her lip-synching to songs that she feels express her current mood, such as “In My Room” by Insane Clown Posse. This song contains the lines, “Without you I’d bring a shotgun to school and I will if you want me to for any reason / I hate that you leave when the lights come on and if I had it my way the fucking sun would be gone.”
Other videos are recordings of Killa T’s live performances, where it seems like there are just as many people on stage as there are in the audience. In his song “The Kill,” Killa T maliciously repeats the succinct chorus: “Kill motherfucker, kill motherfucker, kill, kill / Kill motherfucker, kill motherfucker, kill, kill / Kill motherfucker.”
Video montages, like ABK Gang Related, show summmer138, Killa T and their group of friends clad in bandanas and tilted baseball caps. They are rolling joints, drinking in the street, flashing gang signs with their hands, flaunting a small arsenal of high-powered guns and generally getting all up in the camera’s lens. At one point, a friend sits on the floor attaching a circular saw blade to a wooden handle with a thin rope. He’s later seen testing the makeshift weapon by swinging it in the air like a badminton racket. With 17,782 views, it’s one of the most-watched videos in summmer138’s catalogue.
Most outsiders only notice the horrorcore culture when members within it do something egregious. When an exceptionally violent fan commits a crime or Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope make the transition from singing about daring someone to stab a stranger and steal his wallet to singing about the magnificence of giraffes, pyramids, rainbows and magnets in their sentimental jam “Miracles,” we hear about it. Otherwise, the world of Juggalos and Juggalettes is not discussed much.
Most lately, the Insane Clown Posse and their devoted followers have been in the news for the recent Gathering of the Juggalos music festival in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, at which attendees cut the face of B-list celebrity Tila Tequila by hurling rocks, beer cans, rubber dildos and, allegedly, a chunk of watermelon saturated with urine and feces at the artist during her musical performance. Similar audience behavior resulted in Wu-Tang Clan member, Method Man, receiving a slit cheek during his set at the festival.
I came across summmer138 somewhere between reading Vice’s excellent first-person article about 2007’s Gathering of the Juggalos and listening to host Tom Scharpling and company breakdown an infomercial for 2009’s Gathering on WFMU’s The Best Show. A preview for one of her videos popped up after I watched the epic 17-minute-long infomercial for this year’s Juggalo jamboree, and I clicked on it.
In that video, entitled Gathering of Juggalos 2010 Who needs a ride from me, summer, summmer138 does just as the title promises and offers not only a seat in her car but also a spot in her hotel room to anyone who lives along the way from Denver, Colorado to Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. She has straight, blond hair and blue eyes that bulge whenever she rolls them due to feelings of annoyance or anxiety, which she seems to experience quite often-especially during the precise moment when she extends her invitation. Her eyelashes are long, her nails are manicured, and she has a silver barbell piercing directly above her right cheekbone.
The three-minute segment begins with a clip from a song about the drug oxycontin, regarding which summmer138 shakes her head, mouths the words “Fuck that” (while giving the finger with both hands), and rolls her eyes. She explains that she’s no longer addicted to the opium-derived painkiller.
Summmer138 stands up to display her thickening (yet still quite thin) body underneath her blue and white floral dress. She says she’s glad her breasts are filling in, and a moment later suggests she might have sex with whoever decides to take up her offer. Throughout the video, she says the words “fuck” and “shit” more often than most people use prepositions.
Summmer138’s third video, Money, shows more than $5,000 in cash arranged in rows across her off-white living-room floor. All this money, she explains, is “going towards my boobs.” She sits cross-legged at one end of the pile of money while Killa T films from the other. He zooms the camera in on her chest. She wears a pink Hustler t-shirt, and her blond hair contains streaks of black and pink. The young couple express their ambivalence about spending this much money on cosmetic surgery. In a rare tender moment, even Killa T admits that it’s a shame.
It becomes evident after a short while that summmer138 works as a stripper and struggles with Xanax abuse. In summer and xanax COMMENT ON XANAX BITCHES, she mentions getting home after a bad day at work, and how she hopes to feel better after swallowing some prescribed Xanax. She tilts the camera down away from her face, showcasing her new cleavage along the way, and stops to reveal her right hand, which is full of pills.
But a year and a half later, we are introduced to a more mature summmer138. She talks about the “hardest five days of her life.” She tried to get off Xanax over the Christmas season. She says in the video that she plans to make a documentary about what it’s like being hooked on painkillers to help others caught in addiction.
Not all these videos are so personal. In one video, a big friend does the Worm in her living room while she laughs behind the camera and Killa T clasps a bong off to the side. Another shows summmer138 at her most content: she’s standing beside Killa T without any makeup and her hair in a ponytail. Both of them are smiling, and both of them are wearing identical Hatchetman necklaces. The two are excited because Killa T is holding a giant rectangle of Rice Krispies Treats, bought from 7–11, that extends beyond the width of his shoulders. Killa T rips open the shiny blue package while simultaneously cursing at whoever may be watching. He takes a bite from the corner as summmer138 watches and laughs, and then she takes a bite herself.
Commenters post messages on summmer138’s site ranging from “hey what’s up babe” to “watt up juggalette family hit me up drop a line ninjas” to the popular “WHOOP WHOOP” greeting often heard within the Juggalo community. Many comments are accompanied by the acronym M.M.F.W.C.L., which means “Much Mother Fucking Wicked Clown Love.”
Some commenters take a less formal approach to courtship and simply post statements like “can i suck yer titties.” Summmer138 logs into her profile often, her latest visit occurring one day ago.
On December 17, 2008, three days after uploading the Rice Krispies video, summmer138 posted another video. In it, she stated that she and Killa T have broken up. She mixes photographs of herself and Killa T with video of her lip-synching in front of a gas fireplace to a gentle song about remaining loyal and trustworthy to a friend. The song is “Always” by Zug Izland, a former band on Psychopathic Records. Whenever Killa T appears in the video, he looks uninterested, even bored.
There is a period of quiet. Summmer138 doesn’t post anything again until February 14, 2009, when she wishes everyone a happy Valentine’s Day. Five days later, she’s back with another video, in which she tells everyone that “life’s pretty shitty.”
Then comes a series of posts taken from various raves held in different parts of the country. There’s many images of shirtless men twirling green glow sticks, dancing young people in white pants and shirts that look purple underneath the glow of black lights, and copious amounts of girls making-out with one another, including summmer138 with her best friend, Marissa. Summmer138 also makes a compilation of footage from 2009’s Gathering of the Juggalos, with a guest appearance by Killer T, who now sports two-inch braids on the top of his head. He’s briefly seen swearing in the backseat of a car, and taking a jovial shot to the forehead from another Juggalo armed with a red octagon from a dismantled stop sign. Throughout these video segments, it’s notable that summmer138’s skill at editing, music dubbing and overall filmmaking has improved.
In two of her most recent videos, summmer138 has started a video log, titled The Diary of a Stripper named Summer. She tells her viewers that Killa T and her ended their relationship because he constantly accused her of doing “extras” on the side for men who frequented her strip club. Also Killa T threatened to shut her mouth with his fist if she didn’t shut up. She also relates how mean the other girls at work are to her.
One coworker in particular told summmer138 to “stop coming to work faded” after a strap on one of summmer138’s translucent and extremely high heels broke, causing her to fall to the ground in the dressing room and spill everything she was carrying in her hands. In the next installment of her video log, summmer138’s sister, Tantra, who’s also a dancer, is set to appear as a special guest.
DJ Clay, in the infomercial for the 11th Gathering of the Juggalos, said something interesting. “Fuck yeah, cause ain’t no two Juggalos alike, truthfully. Everybody came from different background, grew up in different places, and listen to different music.”
And Violent J raps in “Miracles” that he’s seen “85,000 people all in one room together as equals,” and I think that’s one aspect of what being a Juggalo is about. That’s the reason why summmer138 was offering a ride to the festival: she didn’t want to go alone.
In her most recent YouTube post, from late this month, summmer138 says she didn’t make it to the Gathering. After driving for 800 miles, she got a flat tire. She was also pulled over on four separate occasions in Kansas alone.
She is shooting from her Android, because her camera has been stolen, apparently, though she says in passing that her TV was stolen. “lol no of my shitty phone def not hd someone stole my hd cam my 1600 lap top and also my 1300 ( maybe more hd flastscreen tv. karma is a bitchg,” she explains in the comments.
Then, in the video, she rebukes Tila Tequila. Summmer138 is wearing a black dress with spaghetti straps, and pans down to show her own chest. She argues that not only did Tila Tequila get what she deserved, but that she should be sued for her salacious behavior. “You’re hot, I would fuck you, but how about we sue you,” she asks, “for fucking baring your breasts to underage people?” The video lasts exactly one minute and is cut off prematurely.
Paul Hiebert lives in New York City and attends classes at New York University.