Signing Off

One of the many E-mails I sent to my friend Jo during my first Round The World In Drag Tour in 2001. About to travel home and the action is getting busier, including meeting Miss Vera,- Jo, What am I going to do? No, don’t answer that – I’ve got to do it. What am I on about? Don’t ask. The last two days have been a dizzy whirl – amazing, whatever. I’ve got to tell you about them Shopping. The Patricia Field shop, - famous assistants, all the stuff I want, great clothes, and only enough money to buy myself some pearl-powder for my face. The Make-Up shop. More shine and lots of advice and help, nice girls. I’ve given up face-powder. 8th Street – I buy a pair of crystal heels, the boy is sarcastic, then gets into a spat with a feisty black customer who doesn’t like his attitude. I don’t care anymore, I don’t care. I’ll walk down the street in just my crystal heels singing “New York, New York!” History. I spent a night at Stonewall, you know the place, you’ve been there, where us queens helped start the Gay Liberation movement. Endless go-go boys and Christopher Street on a hot summer night was really kicking. It’s my birthday. Nightclubbing. I’ll wear the fiery dress from Dream Dressers. Jane and I are going to meet at Barracuda for a show. It’s hot again. The Barracuda’s one of the smartest of the mid-town bars, very well-designed, and I went there a couple of nights ago to catch the show by Miss Edie. She’s the nicest, cutest, most stylish drag I’ve seen. She does Sixties stuff, unusual, like “The Boat That I Row” and Beatles songs, and has a lovely manner with the audience. I wanted to take her home with me. But birthday night is Shequida who is opera-trained at one of the big music schools and everybody says she has the finest voice. She’s also a big friend of Lee who was going to meet Jane and I for the night. And James a friend of Jane’s who designs for Calvin Klein and other labels but comes from Liverpool originally. They were all late but Jane and I got talking away, and it’s funny but I must have been in one of those moods because we got talking deep, about parents and family and friends and sex and lovers and all that jazz while the place filled up with quite a lot of lovely men. Jane had got me this fabulous new bag for my birthday, by this designer from L.A. called Joomi Joolz, and it went great with the dress, the big hair and the trusty stillies. But then I started to get a headache and by the time Shequida arrived with Lee and Tommy and we took some front row seats in the Lounge for the show I was all a bit fuzzy in the head. And didn’t I end up sitting under a ventilator and nearly shivering myself into a cold! It’s all been getting on top of me. Shequida’s a hot black number and does a lot of costume changes while she sends up Whitney in drug after-shock, all of that synching. Then she does a sort of on-stage competition with people getting sent off for their looks, I think, which went on a long while and then she finishes off with an opera number in her own voice which is, of course, fabulous. She’s one of New York’s big names in drag and I had wanted to spend some time with her getting a few tips about performance and things, but she was so busy – everybody in New York is so busy……… So it was very late when it all finished and I felt quite worn out and queasy, - not very birthday girl at all. But Lee wanted to go on to this new, hip young night in town and invited us all along. Jane and James went home but I thought, Why not? So off we went, leaving Shequida to sort out the Barracuda people. One cab-ride later we’re at this odd door on one of the streets with a big tough rock-type bouncer asking us for age-I.D.’s! My dear! The night is called ”Hush” and It’s the latest thing in town. Well, we managed to persuade the man that none of us was under 18 (I wish…….) so we got to push through this curtain into a big crowded dance-floor where everybody seemed like they were under 18. So, Jo, if you want to know what the hot Manhattan scene is like since you were here I can tell you it lives on beer, retro-punk and Gary Glitter (!) And wears either punkstyle ripped-off or Gap sweaters. And gets off its head and bumps into you a lot. And is gay and straight. And actually we weren’t the only adults there, because it’s being managed by some of the old 80’s folks, still in punk and glam, so you get an age-mix as well. Lee introduced me to _______ who is one of the queens involved, but it was too crowded and loud for a talk. The music wasn’t all punk but it was very retro and rocky in a trashy way. And remember what N.Y. does today….etc. Lee was really excited about it all, and I began to think that if I hadn’t got a headache I’d have been up to my neck in it. But Tommy and I were a bit tired so we left after an hour and Lee and he waved me off in a cab. Back at the Carlton I’m just getting ready to dress down for a short night’s sleep before I hit the sights for the last time the next day and I’m wandering the corridor waiting for some-one to vacate the bathroom and I hear, “Wow!” I turn round and it’s this big slightly greasy guy looking out of his room. I say, “A vision of the night!” to him and go into my room but I leave the door open to cool the room down and he comes along and looks in. We start talking. He gets it straight that I’m not quite the woman I look and then he says, “How much do you charge?” “I’ve got a headache”. Isn’t that the classic excuse, Jo? But I had, and it was a real nagger, and I don’t know this guy from Captain America. So I say that, but I go along to his room for a talk. He’s Al and he’s come up from North Carolina to find himself a nice woman, and he’s not had much luck so far. He talks in this slow, soft drawl. “Do you do Deep Throat?” he says, and I admit that I have been known to go that way. “Well, could I have a sample, do you think?” Now I’m not averse to exercising my tonsils in a good cause, as they say, but there was something about this guy. I mean he was cool about lady-men and obviously thought I was the bees knees, but… the way he went on about “faggots” and the rest of society I kept thinking that here was one of those dangerous loner-types who you read about and see in films but never meet. Unless in the Carlton Hotel. You never know, and I don’t know anything at the moment. I can’t tell up from down. And that head-ache just hung on in there. So I excused myself from duties and left him to it in his hot room and went back to mine. Thinking…..maybe tomorrow. Anyway, slap off, sleep, slap on, and off in the early morning, a bit grey and misty – that’s the weather and me – to the Empire State Building for a look at the view. Well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? and best when it’s not so crowded. Needed my possum coat though. Fourth of July – top of America. And I had an appointment for after, but more of that in a minute. Oh, Jo, it’s the world in your view. The whole city and beyond it the world we’ve been round. For ever. Everywhere. “I’ve been to Paradise but I’ve never been to ……” - me. I just can’t go home like this. To debts I owe to Sugar Daddy, and the same old places and people, and the same queens pulling me down. I can’t. It was misty and grey and I wanted to have a little weep and one of the attendants asked me if I was alright and I asked him to take a picture of me (Have camera, will travel again!) and pulled myself together. You can’t make a tragedy of yourself – it makes the mascara run. The tourists wandered about looking at the view and I couldn’t see what was going to happen, but something will happen, somehow. All those miles and all those places and people. “Just when I thought a chance had passed, you went and saved the best for last.” So I went down the lifts and out into the street and caught a cab to the West Side. To see Miss Vera. You know about her, Jo, you saw her book in mine,- “Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want To be Girls” – I’ve been reading it for ages since Holly gave it to me. She lives in New York – that’s where her Finishing School is, and I’d promised myself a visit to her, because you can’t Drag Round The World without saying Hi to one of the main people in the world of boy-girls, can you? I’m sure I told you all this before I came away. So I’d rung Miss Vera and she’d said come round and she’d interview me for her web-radio show. Wow! Me, being interviewed by Miss Vera. For the radio! All over the world. Well, it was almost a big anti-climax because she wasn’t at her apartment when I got there. The man on the reception said she wasn’t there and when I rang the Carlton they said that she’s left a message to come at 5.30 instead. So I spent all day in the muggy heat shopping and stopping in at the Diner we’ve been spending time in and getting things packed up. You can imagine how I felt by 5.30. But I got another cab and turned up on time, in Roger’s jeans again, very Girl About Town, and she was there, Miss Vera. There’s not time now to remind you about Miss Vera but she’s been in the “alternative” performance scene since the 80’s and she was very interested in the Strange Party and, of course, everything I’d been up to. And we sat down with some iced mint tea in her lovely apartment, with the cat roaming around, and she recorded an hour’s worth of interview. She got me to sing a bit of the song I sang at Judy’s Bar, and spill the beans about the sexy moments and the girls in Cambodia and DJ Station and all the queens and working girls I’d met and performing in Australia. And it all came to me in a Big Vision what I’d done, and I felt so good. Here I was with Miss Vera who’s helped more boys into being girls than I’d had Southern Comforts with Coke and she was interested in me. I knew it had all been worth it. When the tape-recorder was turned off we got to talking about the School and she told me how she’d closed it for the season because of a personal tragedy and it was moving and was all in storage but would be back in action soon. Then we talked about why boys want to be girls and decided that there was something early which can just set you off and sometimes it comes from You, just You. And I was even cheeky enough to ask her for some tips about my appearance, and for a picture. She’s smaller than I expected and less of a dominatrix (cause she runs a school for men and marks them and tells them off, I thought) and she sat there all demure and let me take it. And we could have gone on for ever and it was me who had to take my leave because we’re going to see the fireworks with Jane tonight, our last night and all that. But we swapped E-mail addresses and when I went we said we’d get in touch soon. I’ve been back to the hotel, - no sign of Al. I left a note on his door. And now it’s fireworks time, Jo, and then, it’s DECISION TIME! See you tomorrow (?) Adieu Mandy