One night, Ray and Preacher take me to a notorious gay bar way west in Greenwich Village –The Toilet. (I ain’t makin’ this up – The Toilet!) The dress-style ranges from crotchless black-leather pants to crotchless black-leather pants with metal studs. And, the metal studs are on the penis, not the pants. While who knows what is going on in the back room, we are entertained out front by the floorshow. This consists of an acrobat pulling his upside-down body up a thick iron chain, link by link, with his anal sphincter muscles. Yes, this intrepid aerialist climbs up the chain with his asshole!
Time passed, medicine advanced and we forgot. We forgot what a scourge AIDS was, especially in show business, especially in New York. By the late 1980s, I was the only actor still alive from several casts I’d been in during the 1970s.
At the height of the AIDS panic, I dated a public health official. She told me plans were in place to quarantine the entire city of New York, if necessary. The authorities foresaw streets piled with corpses collected by robot-controlled plague-carts. “Bring out your dead.” They were that ascared.
Vision of a dystopian Greenwich Village
I first heard of AIDS in 1979 – the dawn of the epidemic. I had moved to a Brooklyn brownstone. Ray, my gay landlord said, “Have you heard that all the guys in the Village are getting sick? They’re calling it the gay cancer.” I still see Ray sitting there, still see the terror in his eyes, still feel the terror that shot through me. We both knew that what he was describing will kill him and maybe me. We were both ascared.
Sorry, New York, Paris and London but Columbus got it first!
Columbus. The capital city of Ohio. Home to me while I perform at the spanking new theater in town. And, home to the world’s first Wendy’s restaurant. For the record, I am second-to-none in my admiration for and appreciation of Wendy’s hamburgers. But, I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing when my “Host Family” drives me to the original Wendy’s as if they are Romans taking me to The Pantheon. They enthuse at me, using an “I know you’re not gonna believe this but” tone of voice that this very building, the very first Wendy’s, was opened in 1969!
Throughout my time in Columbus,three ancient Black women shadow me. Wherever I go, they are there.
Are they unemployed Witches seeking a production of Macbeth?
The Weird Sisters of Columbus, Ohio
The three are identical in size, shape and age. And, they dress identically – cloth coats, hats with veils, orthopedic shoes and black handbags. They seem teleported from an undefined time “back there” somewhere – not quite the 1920s or ’30s but rather from “no time” and “all time.” But, definitely a more righteous time. I assume they are Jehovah’s Witnesses making the rounds. But, no. They carry no religious tracts of any kind or creed. I somehow understand that I may not speak to them. And, they never speak to me but only stare in mute judgment. Compassionate but disapproving.
Allow me to expound on the subject of men performing in women’s clothing, aka Drag. More specifically, I wish to discuss the surprising and surprisingly potent erotic effect that Drag exerts on the female of the species. I am aware that some women dispute this fact but I can do no more than honestly recount my experiences as a female impersonator. So there.
In South Pacific, I played a World War Two sailor who entertains the troops by wearing a hula skirt, a bra fashioned out of two coconut halves and a mop for a wig. Not a sexy outfit. Or, so I thought until I got it on. It drove the women crazy. The chorus girls slinked up to me and whispered words in my ear that would have made a real sailor blush. The spinsterish theater secretaries were the worst. They cornered me and fondled my coconuts while hissing about what they were going to do to my tits and then to me. But, as soon as my coconuts came off, the erotic spell was broken. No coconuts = No dice.
Naked breasts… er, I mean, coconuts. Oh, hell, even I’m confused!
1988. West Palm Beach, Florida – a hateful shithole where the theater has imprisoned me and the rest of the cast in a retirement home hi-rise that overlooks the Greyhound Bus station. We are in sub-tropical Florida but our rooms have no air-conditioning. So, to avoid heat prostration, we are forced to keep our windows open and eat bus-exhaust 24/7. Meanwhile, our fellow residents sit staring into space while drooling prune juice down their T-shirts that proclaim “Sexy Grandma” and “Over What Hill?”
Minus the prune juice stains
West Palm. Did I mention it’s a hateful shithole populated by hateful rednecks, hateful New York Jews and hateful Haitian junkies? Did I mention the hateful Haitian junkies have AIDS? I’m warned before embarking on a drive across the Everglades not to stop in Belle Glade – the Haitian capital of Florida and the AIDS and felony capital of America.
West Palm Beach is, not to put too fine a point on it, a hateful shithole. And, a hateful shithole drowning in a drug-fueled crime wave. Make that crime tsunami. Muggings and burglaries do abound. So, to protect its vulnerable residents, the retirement home hi-rise hires Rottweiler’s to patrol its halls after 10 PM. One Rottweiler per floor.
This Brooklyn Boy has always had a strong affinity for Oklahoma – the Broadway musical, the college football team and the Okie cowboy in the movie Mighty Joe Young. As a wee tot, I would rise at dawn to watch the Oklahoma televangelist Oral Roberts sweat, shout and heal hillbilly hernias – “In the name of Jesus, HEAL!” My soft spot for all things Okie may have a genetic component. My great Uncle Ugo had fallen in love with the promise of Oklahoma and moved there in the 1920s. How’s this for a coincidence – I discovered that Ben Johnson who played the Okie cowboy in Mighty Joe Young was from the town where Uncle Ugo settled – Pawhuska. In family photos, there is tiny Ugo, right out of Dago Central Casting, standing on Main Street amongst the Oklahoma cowboys and Osage Indians. And, he is smiling. He is home.
One of Uncle Ugo’s friends?
I’d been ridiculed for my Brooklyn accent at a summer camp in nearby New Jersey. What must those cowboys and Indians have made of a greaseball barber & fiddle-maker from far-off Brooklyn? But, maybe his fiddle making bought Ugo acceptance and, I hope, friendship. Yup, Uncle Ugo made violins for country musicians. Then he caught some disease that my mother was sure was syphilis but wasn’t. My man-hating mother was convinced that any and every male illness was due to illicit and even licit sexual intercourse and the only solution was prolonged, painful punishment for said intercourse. She actually liked Ugo but even he could not escape her censure. Poor Ugo returned to Brooklyn to die. I like to think that his fiddles are still being played and that I’ve heard them. Maybe one of his instruments was used by my favorite Western Swing band – Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. It’s possible because despite their name they were based in Oklahoma.
The specialty of the house in Oklahoma’s City’s best diner is brains-and-eggs. (The diner’s original owner had bashed his wife’s brains out with a hammer. Brains-and-eggs had been on the menu prior to the uxoricide in question and there they remained.) But, it seems that only Oklahoma City’s minuscule hipster-community is alive to the irony of this situation – “Hey, let’s get stoned and go for brains-and-eggs.” And, that’s exactly the line I use on Miss Oklahoma. She’d been in the Miss America pageant and we are acting together and she is gorgeous and I want to fuck her. It’s a guy thing.
Now, here’s my plan. We’ll feast on brains-and-eggs then I’ll feast on her.
Simple. A guy thing.
And, they taste worse than they look!
Miss Oklahoma and I slide into one of the diner’s red Naugahyde booths and order platters of the house special. As we wait, we watch oil wildcatters and cow wranglers chow down at the counter. They are having a hard time keeping their dangling lariats out of their brains-and-eggs. This is when Miss Oklahoma tells me about her husband’s wiener. It is small. Teeny-weeny small. Shame. He is a Tom Selleck look-a-like and a successful doctor. But, a doctor who is playing “hide the teeny-weeny wiener” with his tramp of a nurse. Things are going swimmingly, think I. It’s always a good sign when a woman has a big appetite and her husband has a teeny-weeny wiener.
And, this being America’s Bicentennial Summer, Tiny accents her décor with all manner of “1776” memorabilia. She has, in fact, decorated her apartment entirely from late-night TV commercials. True, I don’t spy any paintings from the “Vincent Price Fine Art Collection” – available only at Sears – but I feel sure that a Popeil Pocket Fisherman and Veg-O-Matic lurk in the closet. Everything that can be encased in clear plastic slipcovers is so encased. And, Tiny’s place smells like the burrow of the chain-smoker she is. It doesn’t help that her windows are painted shut.
Dressed in a floral print housedress and with the two remaining hairs on her head wound around curlers, Tiny leads me into her bedroom. She gets down on all fours to reach her collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles stored far under the marital bed. In order to reach the bottles furthest away, Tiny is forced to hike her dress up and arch her back. Thus, she presents to me like a mandrill in heat. Realizing her compromising position, she coyly glances back over her shoulder and, using her most girlish voice purrs, “Now don’t you get no ideas, Buster. I love my husband.” It is a Herculean struggle but somehow, I resist the urge to bury my cock balls-deep in her pert ass.
The Sheik… er, I mean the King!
Her collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles is a wonder to behold. Here are a dozen bottles, containing a variety of spirits, molded to evoke the figure of “The King” at various stages of his career. Here is “Sun Studio Elvis,” young, blond and full of jism, the bottle filled with Jack Daniels. Here is “Harum Scarum Elvis” attired in Sheik garb and filled with Hennessey. Here is “Aloha from Hawaii Elvis” complete with detachable lei and filled with Kahlua. And, Tiny’s favorite, “Viva Las Vegas Elvis” karate-kicking in a white cape and filled with Drambuie. Little do I know as I admire Tiny’s collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles that “The King” has but one year to live.
It’s the Bicentennial Summer of 1976 and I’m touring Indiana schools in a children’s play. But, this is a kid’s play that adults enjoy because we manage to secrete more double-entendre smut into it than would seem humanly possible. The kids are too busy laughing to catch the jokes that sail over their heads. One outraged teacher threatens to report us to the Indiana Board of Secreted Smut but the rest shake their heads in amused admiration.
“How the hell did you do that?” they giggle.
“Do what?” we deadpan.
We traverse the highways and byways of the Hoosier State in a dilapidated VW bus driven by our tour manager – a nymphomaniac from the producer’s office in Indianapolis. We don’t know she is a nympho back in Indy. There she is a prim, hair-in-bun, librarian type. But, once Indianapolis disappears in her rear-view mirror, Sweet Bleeding Christ this chick turns savage. She porks her way through the stage-crew and when that fails to slake her libidinous thirst she darn near porks her way across the state – bell hops, soda jerks, grease monkeys, school principals, school janitors, school crossing guards, the Taco Bell Employee of the Month – if it’s in pants, she porks it. The woman is insatiable. One night we have to call the Kokomo fire department to hose her off a motel balcony from which she is dangling naked. Once rescued, she porks the fireman. She is nothing if not resolute. She is nothing if not nuts. We ship her back to Indianapolis packed in ice.
I do my best to avoid Doris and Daddy but one night he corners me while I’m eating “sausage and mash” in the kitchen. No sooner have I casually mentioned that one of my favorite war films is Zulu than Daddy’s drooping regimental mustache springs to attention and he is off, seizing the opportunity to re-fight the entire Anglo-Zulu War on my plate. I am more trapped than Michael Caine at Rorke’s Drift –
My sausage didn’t have a prayer!
“Let’s say your mashed potatoes are the British encampment near Isandlwanda here… mmm… perhaps that’s a bit too much potato… there, that’s better… your sausage… here… represents the Zulu army under command of Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza… an untenable position I’m sure you will agree… now your broccoli…”
Boy Outa Brooklyn 