COMMUNITY

On the Sundance Channel this month they’re showing a documentary which garnered a bit of acclaim last year called The Cockettes. The Cockettes were a sixties, San Francisco based, pansexual commune who eventually ended up becoming a popular theater ensemble. The film documents their beginnings, their 15 minutes and interviews several of the participants now.

They were constantly on LSD. Constantly. But rather than adapt their state to the world around them, they chose to alter the world around them to their altered state. If you’ve ever taken acid, you can relate to a LSD induced urge to document your expanded vision. Well The Cockettes made it happen 24/7.

One of the main players began as a young actor - he’s quite handsome and you could easily imagine him on, say, Dawson’s Creek. While at college, he became involved in the extensive anti-war movement (remember that?) which led him to San Francisco. Now imagine that young actor discovering LSD, changing his name to “Hibiscus” and wearing glitter face paint and long sheer dresses - all the time - walking to Golden Gate Park where everyone was tripping and he’d take more acid and dance. It’s like Colin Farrell just deciding to wear drag and change his name to Wisteria and everyone’s, like, OK. The hippies in SF were loving it.

The Hibiscus Look caught on with queers, women and “straight” men - all of them painting their faces outlandishly and wearing dresses. There was no Orientation Distinction. When they reflect and recount the source of what brought them all together, the emotion is almost religious. Not in a Cult Way or Some Messiah Drama, but they felt they were making an effort to push life to an extreme, to smudge the line between their inner and outer life and create their appearance to reflect Artistic Connection. It is an age-old impulse - to get lost in the dance around the fire, speak in tongues, try to touch God.

Or it could have just been all the acid they took. It sounded like these guys pretty much just munched on the stuff all day. Apparently there was an entire network of communes in SF at the time and not all of them were as, uh, “free spirited” as the Cockettes. However their theatrics became well-known and they offered to perform brief bits at the midnight movie at the Pantages Theater so they could get into the $2 movie for free. The crowd went wild and their shows became longer and longer. The rest is... you guessed it.

All of this was happening only ten years before I moved to San Francisco in 1980 so there were still remnants of that era when I arrived. One thing I learned from the documentary was Sylvester, the falsettoed drag disco singer (You Make Me Feel) was a Cockette. By the time I arrived, he was a Star and performed at every Gay Event, Street Fair or Party which means I heard him sing alot . He lived down the street from a good friend and I’d see him often. He was big as a house and rode this tiny moped and, bless his heart, looked like a circus act where an enormous animal rides a little tricycle around the rink.

The Cockettes took their SF show to NYC where they anticipated the enormous acclaim and cult following they’d garnered in SF. Opening Night’s Celeb list reads like the future Studio 54 crowd - Truman Capote, Diana Vreeland, Bianca Jagger. Slumming, the Park Avenue Drag Queens came Downtown to see the freaks from SF.

They didn’t get it. The Cockettes bombed. New York City is not an Acid Town. I stopped taking LSD when I lived in NYC because frankly, NYC has too much going on already. Adding to the calamity was never a good idea. Back when The Cockettes performed, NYC was gearing up for the Coke Generation and watching a bunch of whacked drag queens on stage was probably a little messy for someone who’d just snorted a gram or two.

The recent interviews with members of the Cockettes are fascinating, switching between how they look now and pictures of them back then. Oddly enough, despite their obsession with Self Expression at the time, they frankly all looked alike and it’s hard to discern who was who in the photos or old film clips. Now they’re all so different. The women speak of the experience as radiant, the queens vary from haggard and bitter to handsome and astute. The male member who was “straight” now looks like an Old Trucker, a man you’d imagine hanging around a gas station in a small town. Then he talks about his life with The Cockettes and from the gleam in his eye, you know it was the Time Of His Life.

2:04:28 PM    sro home /