Devour Me, Again: The Poems of Bambi Lake

A landmark collection of poems by Bambi Lake, the beloved (and bad-mouthed) icon of San Francisco’s counterculture.

Bambi Lake was a trans chanteuse performer, provocateur, and countercultural darling of the ‘70s, and subsequent decades. “The Glamorous Life follows me around,” she wrote, and sang about in her ballad “The Golden Age of Hustlers” (later popularized by Justin Vivian Bond). Her life in San Francisco—including being on the fringes of the Cockettes, and a member of the adjacent Angels of Light—was “sort of legendary,” sort of “sweet, sticky, nasty,” and always precarious, lived in spite of addiction, homelessness, and the horrors that came from chasing and surviving her own desires.