Divas

One of the many E-mails I sent to my friend Jo during my first Round The World In Drag Tour in 2001 - this one's about the New York Club scene Jo, Hello there, girl. Mandy, all present and correct, ready to report. All panics over. I think. We are now in New York and it’s all very busy here. I can hardly keep on top of it all. Yes, the girl who wandered round India, lazed though Asia, basking on beaches and watching TV, and found herself in Australia, is now run off her feet in America with social engagements. It’s wonderful but it all flies by me so fast I’ve hardly got time to remember it for you. I have to snatch these times to E-Mail. Like Los Angeles New York is very hot and there’s non-stop drag action. Thanks to Jane (another Jane, friend of ours from way back) I’ve got into the swing of it very easily even if I’m not going to be able to do half of it in the time we’re here. Jane knows people who were involved in the swinging N.Y. scene of the 80’s and run parties and we’re going to one of them, a special one, on Saturday. I thought I was going to one of their nights last night but they’re very busy and it’s just been New York Pride (which we missed) so it wasn’t on. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. We’re staying at a hotel on the lower East Side which Jane found for us called the Carlton Arms. It’s a weird place where all the rooms, and the corridors and the lobby and bathrooms and toilets (we’re sharing, low finances again) are decorated by different artists, all very strangely. My room has cartoons and messages all over the walls and the bed is raised up and there’s a little curtained boudoir underneath with silver hangings. It’s really chic but so small, I’ve hardly got room to put my case and lay out my make-up and it’s very hot. It’s hotter than outside I think, and making up is about getting the stuff on before it falls off. Oh, the trials of being an international drag-queen down on her luck! Still I’ve got ready in worse places, even on this trip. There’s no air-con, you see, and at night you fall asleep with no sheets or blankets on you (very sexy, but can be sweaty. At least the showers work). They’re very friendly here anyway. Jo, never trust guide-books – they go out of date so quickly. There is supposed to be here in New York a shop called Lee’s Mardi Gras which is the shop for trannies but after I’d walked half-way across town to it I found it closed up. Lee has died and there’s no shop now. But Jane has told me about the Patricia Field shop so I’ll get along there soon. Thank God for local contacts. Her friends are Johnny and Chi-Chi and they have run a famous night called “Jackie60” which is the one which I was going to go to last night. I heard from them it was off. But I went out anyway because there’s a bar called Bar D’O where they have a regular drag cabaret and Sherry and Joey perform there, only Sherry’s moved to Europe now. I took a cab there. I don’t know which is the harder way of getting around, driving in L.A. or cabbing it in New York. Cabs are easier, and the thing to do here, and if you’re expecting all that talky driver stuff with Yankees nut-cases telling you their life-problems well it’s not how it is. All the drivers are from somewhere else, mainly India, and don’t say a word so you don’t even know if they’ve got the right address. So when you’re speeding along all these cross-streets and avenues in the dark you really wonder if you’re going to arrive and where you are when you do. Bar D’O is in the Lower West Side, Greenwich Village, quite nice and leafy place, - it’s a small place, and when I got in and sat at the bar with my drink and the show started I was behind the singer and in the spotlight. Looked good enough. The rainbow dress for the n’th time, but its first outing in New York, and the big hair, as nicely made-up as the heat would allow – and the bars are air-conditioned at least – but Joey wasn’t on. He was in Seattle and nobody knew if he’ll get back for the Party at the weekend . Who was on was Raven O who is the other regular there besides Joey. There supposed to lots of others singing but I guess it was after Pride and everybody had gone away and Raven was on her own. She sings not synches and does a lot of old favourite songs, like “Some-one To Watch Over Me”, which I like, and has her hair scraped back, and has on this sort-of see-though-top dress and short heels. The first thing you notice is her tattoos. They’re all over her arms and chest. And she reminded us that she used to sing in punk bands in the 80’s, and someone told me that she still does a regular rock-set in town somewhere with a band, not in drag, I guess. Well, the Americans may not have been good at punk always, but it seems they never fell out of love with it, and this answers the question – where did all the punk-rockers go? They turned into drag-queens. Maybe they always were drag queens. Remember the New York Dolls? That record-sleeve is still the inspiration for all of my trash-experiments (yes, I do that still, Jo). Raven O did two sets and was good, but I was sorry to miss Joey. Sitting by me, but coming in late, was this couple. I’ve forgot his name, Lester, I think, but she was Holly and there were a hip sort-of two-some and they’d gone looking for the Jackie60 night and found it wasn’t on and ended up here. They told me how sexy and orgy the nights were. The Mayor here is apparently a bit of a prude and has “cleaned up” lots of New York night-life and gone and spoiled it all. You could tell these two were up for a bit of action, and were fed up when they couldn’t find it. Anyway after Raven O had done her show I got talking to them and showed them my list of places to go so they said let’s jump in their car and go looking for them. So we did, only it was a Tuesday night and most of them were closed and there was the guy phoning ahead on his cell-phone while Holly drove around the streets. By the time we’d found somewhere to go they were tired and decided to go home so they dropped me off at the place. But the guy had been giving me these “bumps” (“You a party-girl?” he said) on my hand (and up the nose, you know) so by the time I was trotting across the Avenue to Judy’s Bar in Chelsea I was a very happy and couldn’t-care-less girl indeed. I waved them good-bye and went in. Another New York bar, window on the street, as full of regulars as you’d expect on a Tuesday, which is not full but nice – and I didn’t care anyway, I was in New York in the early hours. Having a time. So I get settled at the bar, get my drink, and get talking. It was a piano bar and there was a guy playing for people to sing to up by the window. I got talking to Richard, an older guy who had opinions on everything, and was a bit political, which I like sometimes, and last night I didn’t care. So we chatted away drinking and after a while I went to the toilet. And I looked in the mirror! And of course my nose was all white spekky with all those bumps, - they must have thought I was a real drug-lush – which I can be you know – so I had to do a quick clean-up on that. And then this girl came in and she said, “I’m glad you came because we’ve run out of people to do songs. You will do one, won’t you?” Oh, Jo, you know I can’t sing, and I hate those “Now it’s your turn” parties, and I hadn’t got a song anyway, but I was nice and said Maybe to please her. And then as I was walking back up the stairs I thought, But I have got a song, there’s that Tom Waits song I’ve been learning since Townsville, and it doesn’t need a piano-player, and if I’m terrible I’ll never be back so I won’t have to live with the shame of it so if they ask me again I’ll say Yes. It was the powder talking of course, Jo, but I wasn’t in any state to notice that. So when I got back to the bar I paid attention to the songs. There were quite a few gay-boys there who were doing their show-songs from the book the pianist had and they were mainly very good, And I had second thoughts. So I kept chatting away to Richard, and the barman, and drank a few drinks (Cheers, Richard!) and then the girl came up again and said, “You will sing a song, won’t you?” and “I said “Yes” and after a while there was a break and she said it was my turn, so I stood up an went over to the pianist. I told him I didn’t need him to play for me, and there was this big fuss. He said he was being paid to play and he couldn’t let me do an unaccompanied number. Well! big anti-climax. Relief and disappointment. Back to the bar. But the girl and all the gays caused a bigger fuss, and they all insisted that I go to the microphone. Apparently the owner of the place was in and he said I could so there I was, up at the microphone in Judy’s Chelsea bar in Manhatten in front of a crowd about to sing for them. So I told them about Draggin’ Around The World and who I was and how I got the song, and then I sang it. It’s not a difficult song and I knew the words so I was not bad, a bit quavery, and they all listened quiet and gave me a big round of applause and I came off all buzzy. I’d done it again, and when I’d not expected it (How I passed my driving test, after all), and now I was a Singer as well as a Drag-Queen Entertainer, a Diva like Raven O. Beat that, Jo! I said to myself I’ll practice it and I’ll be better next time, and thankyou Judy’s Bar for making me push myself (and thankyou, bumps!). After that I sat a while and chatted some more and the barman said he liked my song and sometime after 4 o’clock I said goodbyes all round and went out to look for a cab. It was a hot night but I came home safely. That Mayor may have spoiled the nightlife but the streets are safe enough for drag-queens in Bad Old New York Town. Another debut, Jo, Where will it all end? Love Mandy