It's not just the stories that are exciting, it's the revelation they contain—that we might allow such wildness to stumble on to our own paths, even just for an afternoon. I love her for reminding me, with gentle pressure between the lines, to go out tonight, to see what happens, to live a little harder. It’s a mixture of Possum’s Run Amok, Patti Smith essence, Girl Interrupted, Funny Weather by Olivia Liang, wild, sensational, wisdom and humor. a b "Cookie Mueller Dead; Actress and Writer, 40". The New York Times. November 15, 1989. p.B 28. ProQuest 110155682 . Retrieved November 8, 2020– via ProQuest.

Mueller was married to Vittorio Scarpati, who died of AIDS in September 1989. [4] [5] Death and legacy [ edit ] Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p.Part II/20 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.

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The smaller scale of personal visibility in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s, produced a kind of alacrity toward the world that isn’t as common in contemporary writing. Mueller's appetite for life was impressive for any decade and her storytelling is as immersive and exciting as her life was. Through her writing, we travel with Mueller as she hitchhikes across the US, tries most of the drugs that come her way, and gallivants to far-flung locales with no plan. On one occasion, recounted in her essay “The Italian Remedy–1983,” she simply stayed with a man who worked at the train station of the train she came in on. Because of her writing style, we get to join Mueller in the way she fully occupied the present. In these moments with her, we get a taste of what it’s like to live in her embodied instant. We get to experience the unrestrained perspective of someone who, when she was a waitress, found the customers so miserable to deal with that she wound up throwing food at them. She looked for thrills and intrigue wherever she could find it, and took on hardship with a sense of grace. In one of her fables she wrote about a woman losing her toe, who after much inner turmoil acquiesces: “There is a great art to handling losses with nonchalance.” Mueller felt it all, processed her experiences, and kept moving. Waters’ cool, collected manner, as well as his taste in depravity and melodrama, come into focus in his brief exchange with a bed-bound Mueller.

The first time I saw a photograph of Cookie Mueller, it was the portrait Nan Goldin had taken of her in her casket. Shimmering in gold, like a mosquito encased in amber, Mueller lay supine, arms crossed in front of her like an Egyptian pharaoh. With a swath of pivotal events in Mueller's life—including her brother's death at age 14, the result of climbing a dead tree, which collapsed on him in the woods near their home—she went on to pursue her writing, and in high school hung out with the hippie crowd. One of Mueller's idiosyncrasies as a teen was that she constantly dyed her hair: "'Whenever you're depressed, just change your hair color,' she [her mother] always told me, years later, when I was a teenager: I was never denied a bottle of hair bleach or dye. In my closet there weren't many clothes, but there were tons of bottles."Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p.Part II/5 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com. Cookie Mueller (1949–1989), née Dorothy Karen Mueller, played leading roles in John Waters's Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, and Multiple Maniacs. She wrote for the East Village Eye and Details magazine, performed in a series of plays by Gary Indiana, and wrote numerous stories that would only be published posthumously. She died in New York City of AIDS-related complications at age 40. But as much as Mueller and her work may be seen as these examples of embodiment and self-actualization, her writing has its dissociative and escapist tendencies, too. She asks, “How does one forget? How do you empty yourself?” In a fable about a girl who drank only water and never ate anything, “She was convinced that since she would be only water she could disappear at will.” In another fictional story about two people convinced the world is going to end on September 3rd, “the world looked to them like it was going to go on for another few million years. Looking at the lights of Newark, New Jersey through world-weary eyes, Alex and Joanna were incredibly depressed.” After several trips to Italy, Mueller fell in love with an artist named Vittorio Scarpati. The two were married in New York in 1986. At the time, she was writing “Ask Dr. Mueller” for the East Village Eye, offering health advice without any professional qualifications. The column begins with queries about cellulite and apple cider vinegar. Then, in a response to one correspondent who complains of a small penis, Mueller abruptly writes, “I’m not going to talk about AIDS ... I’ve had too many beloved friends die lately from diseases contracted when the immune system breaks down. I’m tired of going to wakes. I miss these people.”