Meet the Gorgeous Ghouls of Choke Hole
The Gorgeous Ghouls of Choke Hole Take Las vegas
Photos By: Amanda Altman of Bright Light Digital Art (@brightlightda)
Whoever famously declared that “Drag is not a contact sport!” was obviously unprepared for the adrenaline-soaked psychedelic bloodlust of Choke Hole.
Since 2018 the extreme drag wrestling collective has combined the spirited ingenuity of New Orleans carnival culture with an elaborate dystopian mythos, one which humorously reimagines the post-apocalyptic technocracies of 1980’s cinema as a spine-crunching live-action camptastic space opera (think Logan’s Sashay in lieu of Logan’s Run). In the expanded Choke Hole universe, wrestlers are forced to compete in televised death matches for IBS (Intergalactic Broadcast Services), a shady organization run by the abominable alien overlord Gorlëënyah. IBS heavily promotes the mysterious and highly addictive energy drink Squelsh on all its platforms, including a megachurch run by the terminally chipper televangelist Laveau Contraire. Add a cyborg sex doll, an emotionally unstable former pop star named Garlic Junior, and an insectoid lab experiment gone wrong to this already volatile concoction and you're sure to have a proper Outer Space SmackDown.
Heavily equipped with multimedia savvy while maintaining an illicit rave ambience, Choke Hole’s flair for tongue-in-cheek anarchic mischief and vitriolic satire produces frenetic neon spectacles of crushed breastplates, scorched wigs, and slime-drenched singlets, shocking and delighting eager spectators with a thirst for flamboyant ultraviolence and concussive whimsy across the globe.
Attracting the attention of reality television producers and international art world tastemakers after sold-out shows from Las Vegas to Hamburg (not to mention a coveted slot alongside Christina Aguilera and Caroline Polachek at 2021’s LadyLand festival), Choke Hole’s meteoric rise is a testament to the power of queer grassroots organization, repurposed industrial garbage, creatively forged documents, and a scrappy can-do attitude.
I entered the ring with three of Choke Hole’s founders, Ellery Neon (aka graffiti artist HugoGyrl, aka Gorlëënyah), insidious real estate mogul Jassy, and robotic femme fatale Visqueen to learn more about the gorgeous ghouls shaking up the world of wrestling.
Visqueen Woos Her Fans
Kamikaze Jones: I'm really interested in your collective origin story, how did y’all start working together?
Jassy: So in 2017, Visqueen, Garlic Junior and I were producing a monthly drag party called High Profile, doing silly themes every month, like a New Year's Eve party in March.
Visqueen: My dad was working with a sports foundation in New Orleans, so I got to go to WrestleMania, and became fairly obsessed.
Jassy: Visqueen kept trying to convince us to do a wrestling party, and we were all pretty against it. Then that summer GLOW came out, so we did a party called FLOW, the Fake Ladies of Wrestling, at the Hi-Ho lounge, where we were wrestling on the floor of the bar.
Gorlëënyah: At the same time, I was doing warehouse parties that were large-scale immersive theater productions. I did this play called Swish, where we had performers swimming like mermaids in a giant tank of water. When I saw what High Profile was doing, it felt like we had a lot of common ground to explore.
KJ: Visqueen, were there any particular wrestling icons from your visits to WrestleMania that served as future inspiration for Choke Hole?
Visqueen: The New Day comes to mind. In the WWE, they’re these three goofballs obsessed with the power of positivity, in a pretty homoerotic way. They’re really cartoonish and wear bright fluorescent colors, and at the time they were selling their own fake cereal called Booty-O’s as merch.
raid saves the day
KJ: It feels like there's a direct correlation between Booty-O’s and Squelsh.
Jassy: Definitely. Before Squelsh, we were very loosely sponsored by CheeWees, a local chips brand, for our first show.
Gorlëënyah: This kid who lived down the street and worked at the CheeWees factory hooked us up. We were so excited to have a “sponsor” that we ran with it and made the whole Choke Hole show about CheeWees.
Jassy: The storyline was very Soylent Green. Squelsh eventually took over the Choke Hole universe, the plotline being that we're selling the Squelsh, it's highly addictive, and we’re manufacturing it from the bodies of dead wrestlers.
Gorlëënyah: We will take any sponsorship as long as we can say that the product is made with dead drag queens. Consider that a plug.
KJ: It reminds me of that article about people paying an exorbitant amount of money for fecal transplants from star athletes because their gut flora is so pristine. Have you heard this story?
Visqueen: Amazing, that sounds right up our alley.
Gorlëënyah: We would do that, we're star athletes.
KJ: It would deeply resonate for the queer hotties with IBS, especially through the Intergalactic Broadcasting Services…there's a tie in there somewhere. Your first couple of shows were extremely DIY, often at the risk of being shut down.
Gorlëënyah: Well, the first couple shows were at this warehouse, and we didn't exactly have the proper permits to be there. So we made our own “permits,” just in case the cops showed up, and sure as hell they did because the event was enormous. I remember I looked out from above the wrestling ring and saw the red and blue lights flashing; it was halftime, and there was this local drag troupe called Daddy Issues onstage covered in inflated condoms that were filled with liquid, which of course they were popping to spray the audience. I rushed over to the door person to hand them the paperwork to show the cops. When I looked back at Daddy Issues, they were standing in a circle pulling a long string of condoms out of each other's asses, all knotted together, and began spinning them around their heads. It goes without saying that not everyone was totally prepared for that, so people were screaming and running around, and it would have been a really bad time for the cops to walk in. But luckily the paperwork spell worked and the cops told us to keep it down and left.
KJ: Do you want to tell me a little bit about how each of your individual characters came to be?
jassy believes in a free market
Jassy: I actually pulled my character from a play that Ellery produced, The Subletter's Omen, in which I played a demonic real estate investor. When we were doing High Profile, I considered myself the most business-oriented member of the group, so I already had this idea of myself as a businesswoman. So Jassy became this ruthless landlord, a corporate executive, an 80’s high-powered She-E-O. I drew a lot of inspiration from my mother.
Visqueen: I've gone through many characters in the past; at one point Jassy and I were a conjoined monster twin that got separated in the ring. Then we had a match that was ‘Battle of the Brands,’ so I was Dippin’ Dots, the ice cream of tomorrow, for a while. When we started shifting the roles in the show I shared hosting duties with Gorlëënyah, who was our grand puppet master, and our alien dictator. So in that vein we came up with this concept that I was this femme fatale sex doll that Gorlëënyah bought off the dark web. I had a gun leg at the time because I tore my ACL during practice, so I was rendered useless in terms of actual wrestling, but I had a big old knee brace that we had to work with, so I decided to attach Nerf guns to my left leg, channeling Rose Mcgowan in Planet Terror.
Gorlëënyah: Gorlëënyah has lived in my subconscious for many years. My background is in graffiti, and I've always drawn these three noses or three pairs of eyes, and as I am getting older I am gradually morphing into that creature. Gorlëënyah is the owner of Choke Hole: the brand, the wrestling team, and the television series. She's a little messy, and a little evil, but also somewhat charming.
Gorlëënyah Schemes
KJ: Could you tell me more about the other primary characters in the expanded Choke Hole universe?
Gorlëënyah: I mean, Laveau and Ms. Toto are just so fucking talented. Toto is a marine biologist in Miami and also a competitive bodybuilder and an incredible drag queen and a DJ.
Laveau in a Moment of Worship
KJ: Literally?! I thought that was all the backstory for her character.
Visqueen: No, that's her real life! She does a Drag N' Tag event where she tags sharks on a boat in drag—it's amazing. She does it all, and so does Laveau. Laveau is New Orleans drag royalty.
Jassy: I think Laveau is the hardest working full time drag queen in New Orleans.
Gorlëënyah: She's incredible. I've barely ever seen her out of drag.
KJ: I would let her feed me a communion wafer for sure.
Jassy: Her makeup is beautiful and she produces her own music.
She does all her own digital design. She's a quadruple threat.
KJ: Who composed and recorded the Squelsh theme song?
Jassy: That’s Garlic Junior. Her character is a failed popstar who's trying to make a comeback through Choke Hole, but she actually also produces her own music under the name Nicole's Revenge. Garlic Junior is the official spokeswoman for Squelsh.
Jocelyn Change and Deep Sea Double Spar
Gorlëënyah: I truly don't think that Choke Hole would be what it is without Shitty Pebbles, aka Jocelyn Change, who is our most controversial and most hilarious character. Jocelyn is an ex-crust punk who's turned into a cop, so she can confiscate gay people's drugs to get high.
Jassy: She’s got white dreads and face tattoos.
KJ: But she's also a New Age conspiracy theorist, right?
Visqueen: Absolutely, she's the Alex Jones of the Choke Hole universe.
Jassy: Chemtrails, urine therapy, flat earther, you name it.
Gorlëënyah: She's probably done a couple of fecal transplants in her day. Whenever we do get media coverage, she's usually cropped out of the pic. This white girl with white dreads in a police uniform with face tats is a little cringe. But really that's the point. If we can't use this kind of show to make fun of the world’s many hypocrisies then what the fuck are we doing?
Jassy: Then there’s Candy Pain, who is our actual professional wrestler, a classic man-hating lesbian.
Gorlëënyah: Then there’s Deep Sea Double, a lesbian cruise captain turned climate activist trying to rid the world of plastic straws, and she also has the Poseidon-like power to make the sea levels rise and uses it as a weapon to combat gentrification.
Jassy Dropkicks RAID
KJ: The character RAID is also anti-gentrification; a mutant insect that is the closest thing to a hero in the franchise.
Jassy: He's my primary enemy. He definitely looks evil and disgusting, but he's very sweet. RAID’s story is that he was experimented on in a Squelsh laboratory and was transformed into this big disgusting bug humanoid that’s seeking revenge on all of us bad guys.
Gorlëënyah: His natural habitat got fracked by RuPaul and so now he is wandering the earth in search of justice.
KJ: There's different levels of experience, athleticism, and performativity coming into play here. Does each character have a signature move?
Garlic Junior Kicks Miss Toto
Jassy: It's changed over the years, but now every character has an outlandish signature prop. In Vegas we produced this immersive wall-to-wall projection-mapped experience, so we were able to have each prop trigger a special move, very much like a videogame. Garlic Junior’s prop, for example, is a giant microphone that she can swing around to attack people, but when she sings into it, it creates an unearthly high-pitched noise that shatters glass.
Miss Toto Poses with Insulin Needle
Gorlëënyah: Miss Toto has a giant “insulin” syringe for her diabetes, which is secretly full of steroids, so she injects herself to get super strength.
Visqueen: Our Vegas show was a huge feat for us in terms of world building, because we actually got to physically immerse ourselves in the mythology that we've been cultivating for so long. Before Vegas my primary tech role was making all the projections or creating videos depicting the behind the scenes drama between wrestlers before they took to the ring.
Jassy: In Vegas we got to really expand the narrative and design multiple digital tableaus: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, The Church of Squelsh, the radioactive gymnasium. The idea is that they are virtual simulations that take place on Gorlëënyah’s BioMech spaceship, the PinkStar.
Visqueen: Which is essentially a pulsating interstellar butthole.
Jassy: It was just so cool. It really felt like we were in a video game or inside of a movie.
Gorlëënyah: Take that Mando Experience.
KJ: Do y'all have a favorite set piece of all time?
Jassy: It has to be the giant butt plug.
Gorlëënyah: The 4 foot fiberglass butt plug that launched 1000 ships.
Visqueen: It's been used for tons of videos and events even before Choke Hole started. It's a sacred talisman. It’s always brought us luck.
KJ: How did y’all land the LadyLand gig with Christina Aguilera?
Gorlëënyah: I don’t really want to reveal how that came about. What I can say is that she was an incredible backup dancer during our show, and that initially the prospect seemed fake. A lot of what we do is rooted in parody and satire, so it can be difficult for people to tell when we’re being serious. But when we announced that we were doing the show on September 11, with Christina Aguilera as the headlining act in Brooklyn, New York, most of our friends thought we were taking a piss.
KJ: What’s the difference between staging this experience in an institutional setting versus staging it in an illegal warehouse space?
Jassy: I think that we are so accustomed to DIY, doing it ourselves, making it happen at any cost. Now that we’re being invited into more international art spaces, we're realizing that there's lots of red tape that we’re unfamiliar with. It’s hard to adjust to all the budgets, rules, and regulations when we're just used to shoveling trash.
KJ: You're weary of being commodified, or made into a formal academic study, because that's against the spirit of what y'all are doing.
Gorlëënyah: That would be hilarious though, for somebody to write a dissertation on us.
KJ: Somebody will.
Gorlëënyah and Visqueen Plot
Gorlëënyah: That's great. I think that what we're doing is unlike anything else. There's something really beautiful about doing something new, but uncharted territory can be dangerous. People will always try to take advantage of us and steal our ideas. You know, potentially sue us for not having the right permits…
KJ: It’s exciting, but you also have to brace yourself, and be cautiously optimistic about people's intentions.
Gorlëënyah: We’ve gotten offers from Reality TV people, including some really heavy hitters, but we've always said no, because I think that Reality TV isn't as interesting to us as actually getting to tell our fantasy story.
Visqueen: We don’t want to sacrifice the world we’ve created together.
KJ: Do you think that Choke Hole would have been able to truly flourish anywhere other than New Orleans?
Gorlëënyah: New Orleans is a great place for art in that there's a lot of freedom, but there's also not much institutional support, so it's hard to keep things going sometimes. But I don't think we could have done it anywhere else, because the cops would have shut us down before we even got through our first show.
KJ: It's a kind of wisdom or experience that you couldn't have gotten any other way.
Gorlëënyah: It's a double edged sword when you have to do everything yourself, but we wouldn’t have this incredible community, this vast network of people we love, if it had happened differently.
Jassy: It definitely shaped how we performed, because we didn't have any wrestling training when we started. We were leaning heavily into slapstick comedy in the early days. Then we ended up creating these props to compensate for us not being great wrestlers. But now that we've done it for a long time, we can actually hold our own in the ring as well.
Gorlëënyah: Another interesting note about the props is that they're mostly car Styrofoam, which is a technique that RAID, Jocelyn Change and I all learned from working at different Mardi Gras float companies.
Visqueen: The satirical air of Mardi Gras culture, the camp sensibility, is baked into how we operate.
Gorlëënyah: We're a very New Orleans show in many different ways. It's worth mentioning that if you think that Mardi Gras is just boobs and beads on Bourbon Street, you're really fucking wrong. There's no other holiday like it.
Visqueen: Also the community building months beforehand, the working towards a common goal, leading up to this big weekend once a year. It’s truly a beautiful ritual that doesn’t occur anywhere else, and Choke Hole definitely comes from that tradition, of celebrating with friends.
Check out the full feature of Choke Hole, written by Kamikaze Jones (@kamikazejones_) with photos by Amanda Altman of Bright Light Digital Art (@brightlightda), in the pages of WUSSY vol.11 — available now to order.