11:54:31 PM    sro home /

In the spirit of the "holiday", I'm reposting this story which (believe it or not) I posted on the very first day of Standing Room Only. Bon Appetite!

THE MISFIT

Years ago, before RuPaul, before Dame Edna on Ally McBeal, before Harvey Fierstein on Broadway, before Mrs. Doubtfire, To Wong Foo and Priscilla:Queen of the Desert, there was drag. I'm talking strictly about gay men dressing up like women, hence the phrase "drag queen". At one time drag was either something you did professionally or - and here may be the hard part to believe - a ritual of self-acceptance. Gay men became terrified of being perceived as "sissies" or "fairies" during the seventies, it all became about being macho and shedding decades of stereotypes. It was levi-wearing, deep-voiced posing and frankly, it wasn't always very fun.

Dressing in drag - even at a celebration like Halloween - was a statement that somehow, someway, you had gotten in touch with your, shall we say, sensitive side. The side that dug a nice heel on a strappy sandal. The side that instinctually knew how to pick the perfect purse. The side that denied my being six-foot-six and 230 pounds of hairy beef.

I decided if I was going to do drag, I wanted to do it right. I would be Marilyn Monroe in How To Marry A Millionaire, the outfit Madonna would recreate in her "Material Girl" video. Now imagine that dress on King Kong and this was the challenge before me. Fortunately I was in the position of being able to make a dream come true. Armondo, my best friend at the time, was - surprise, surprise - a clothing designer and volunteered to make my dress. We also decided I would have a pink silk stole to match.

I can't begin to describe how complicated the dress was. He bought a corset and constructed the whole thing around this enormous flesh colored tube that hooked on my side. The dress and the stole both took fifteen yards of fabric we'd bought on Fourteenth Street - forty-five feet of pink satin. The bow on the back was 3 feet across. When hanging on it's hanger, the dress looked like a good-sized pink puptent.

The most emphatic advice people gave me was to buy my shoes far in advance to practice walking in heels. So approximately one month before Halloween, Armondo and I went to the one place in Manhattan we knew I could find women's shoes to fit my men's size 13 foot. It was called "Lee's Mardi Gras" up an unmarked stairway in the West Village and was, technically speaking, a store intended for transsexuals, not drag queens. For transsexuals, the big thing is "passing" or supposedly looking so much like a woman, noone would know you were born Bobby with a "y" not an "ie". I had pretty much taken "passing" off the table. Lee's, however, was all about the "shopping experience" where they "treat you like the woman you really are".

Whatever. They sold size fourteen spike-heeled sandals. I finally picked a pair I liked, the choice wasn't exactly Barney's, slipped them on and - surprise, surprise - walked fine. I walked, I sashayed, I danced in the mo-fo's without a second's hesitation. I was, and still am, totally like "what's the big deal?".

I ended up painting the shoes pink too. I found a satin clutch purse at the Salvation Army and dyed it pink along with some satin elbow length gloves. I bought some cheap costume jewelry - rhinestone earrings, necklace, ring and tennis bracelets to wear over the gloves of course. I bought white sunglasses, Ray-Bans like I imagine Marilyn might have worn. I put them in my purse with lipstick, a compact and handfuls of loose rhinestones I'd found in a trimmings store in Brooklyn.

I did not shave my legs. Instead I did an old drag trick of wearing two pairs of panty hose. My hair under the nylon looked like little black worms swimming over my body. I also didn't shave my chest or arms. Again, who was I fooling? I shaved off my goatee, fully aware that a smooth face the day after was an obvious giveaway that I'd done drag on Halloween. It sounds drastic now, even to me, all this worrying about wearing a dress (albeit a fabulous one) for just a few hours.

Armando was to accompany me. He went as Arthur Miller, wearing a tuxedo and black horned-rimmed glasses. I knew he would also do a kick-ass job on my makeup. We decided to go to the Halloween Party at a disco, the disco of the times, The Saint. After donning the shoes, the dress, the platinum wig, I was over seven feet tall. Believe it or not, despite the hair covering my chest and arms and abetted by the fact I was in my mid-twenties, I actually looked a little like Marilyn Monroe. Ok, maybe Marilyn after a long night with the Kennedys but I definitely felt... different. We left my apartment, walking to a corner ATM before I stepped onto Seventh Avenue and brought a cab to a screeching halt.

At the Saint, and this will show you how times have changed, I was one of only two dozen drag queens out of the approximately 2000 men there. I wasn't, however, the only Marilyn, my competition being some Puerto Rican who was in the white dress from The Seven Year Itch. However, he was not and would never be seven feet tall.

I was Uber-Marilyn. I was Imax Marilyn. Even without drugs, I was Marilyn knocked out of the park. I posed for pictures and smiled at the slightest flash of light, not hard to do at a disco. At one point, I heaved myself onto the bar and re-applied my makeup in my compact mirror, scattering handfuls of rhinestones all over the floor around me. On the dancefloor I removed my sunglasses from my purse and complained to Armando about how bright it was.

"Queen", he said, "they have a spotlight on you."

And so they did, my bright white wig floating above the dancers like some huge teased cloud.

I have pictures of us that night. Some we took when we got home, showing the soiled, dirty hem of my dress. The shoes also took a beating and though I kept them for years, I never wore them again. For months afterward, I would be approached, even by strangers, who realized I was the fifty-foot Marilyn that Halloween. I had officially gone through some primal gay ritual. I was a six-foot-six hairy man and I was Marilyn Monroe, even if just for a few hours, and how many men or women can say that? It didn't make me a sissy or a drag queen, it made me a miracle worker and in my book that's a good thing.

1:42:53 PM    sro home /

Liza darling, it's me. Halston.

Sorry about the whole Beyond The Grave effect, but I figured after living with your Mother, how shocking could anything be? I'm terribly sorry your show on VH1 was cancelled. The boys here in Homo Heaven are as well. Andy was just telling me how "Neat" he thought it would be and I myself had some smashing Outfit Sketches I'd planned to Transport to you somehow, maybe in the makeup residue on your pillow one morning.

It's that Gest fellow. I saw this coming (really, we can do that you know and it would have been a great help with Hemlines). What were you thinking? He made them wear surgical booties when walking on the carpet? Really, you need to get rid of that White Shag already. Andy used to say it started out Black but was so packed with coke, you could fall on it and be high for weeks. What he should have given the workers was straws and you'd have not only had a show, but you'd have filmed the whole thing by now.

Of course in Homo Hell (up here we call it Pyre Island), they're all distraught as well, for different reasons. Rumor has it Steve and Roy were down there plotting Distribution Rights as part of some evil plan to punish the masses on Earth. It's all in terribly Bad Taste but apparently there's not much else to do there unless you're a Big Scrabble Fan. Hell indeed. I tremble thinking I could have spent Eternity nit-picking over ten point words.

Speaking of tremble, remember that delicious little bartender from Studio with the enormous appendage? Well, he's here. Really! Quite sweet (in that "Touched By An Angel" kind of way). Seems he was a Temple Attendant in some former life and had built up a tidy caché of Good Karma and decided to check it in after the Disco closed. We've been having a smashing Eternal fling or as much as one can fling and not be licentious and immoral (Rules, you know).

I've dreamt up some smart New Robes of UltraSuede for some of the older Queens here. Miss Wilde, while quite a Wit, had the most deplorable taste in accessories (Young Nobility, what was she thinking?) but fortunately things have toned down and I'll tell you, Halos make you look fabulous. Nothing like warm muted lighting right above the head to wipe those Eternal Wrinkles right off.

By the by, your Mom says hello. She's not here permanently of course, Homo Heaven is a pretty restrictive community, but it seems she's scheduled a concert once a year for, well, forever. What a doll. Thank God, or at least one of his minions, pharmaceuticals aren't a big Issue here in HH. What is she going to do? Kill herself?

Anyhoo, just wanted to send my regrets. Really, get rid of that Old Queen. I'll tell you one thing, we aren't exactly warming a spot for him here if you catch my drift. More likely he'll be getting his brows plucked by Edgar Hoover till the end of time and if you've seen Pics on Earth, you know what an ugly adventure that will be.

Best of luck, my dear. You'll always cut a Z in my heart and who knows, one day we'll dance again and nothing would be more like Heaven.

12:29:00 PM    sro home /