Tra-NZ-formations

On that big old Round The World In Drag (Part One) Journey I eventually reached New Zealand, and had a ball... As relayed in one of my regular E-Mails to my Home-Correspondent, Jo. Auckland Jo, Jo Mandy signing on, after a break. Lots of action in New Zealand to report. Hold your hat. It’s all been very strange, actually. It’s cold here – what an experience! – and we got searched for drugs at the airport which made Roger very sheepish. It’s very like the U.K. at first but with Pacific people everywhere, and I should say that Polynesian men are very, very do-able! We arrived in Auckland on a Saturday teatime and set out that night to find “the scene”. The hotel’s near K Road (and the red-light district as I soon found out….) which is a sort of long moody drag out of town. The first club, Legend, had closed (so much for guide-books) and we ended up at Surrender Dorothy which is the narrowest bar I ever saw. My tits were shoved every which way but whatever. But we got to know Judy, and her girlfriend behind the bar, and they told us lots of things. Did you know New Zealand’s so advanced – they have the world’s first trannie MP – a TS? We’d missed the drag-show so after that we headed downtown by cab to G.A.Y. It’s a place Doreen Mangannie recommended me to after she gonged me off at the Albury, and arriving there was scary! At the door this immense thing in pink top-hat and winged costume with huge drag make-up shrieking at everybody. This was Miss Ribena Toogood, who then answered to “Kevin” (!) and was surrounded by other queens. It was a smart place full of punters and lots of tall queens, - they stamp your hand with a big pink “G.A.Y.”, pity the poor little boy trying to come out to gently to his mates showing up the next day with that on his hand! - and they had their regular Saturday night show on – “It’s In The Fag”. Whoa, sister! They have a small stage at the end of the dance-floor and on it a huge pot of flowers and a chest of drawers, like you’d have in your bedroom, all in the dark. When the show starts Ribena comes on with a suit on and toilet paper drifting out of every pocket and zip, and she’s got the tallest drag-queen you’ve ever seen with her – this is Miss Kola Timmins. Even without her big boots she’s the tallest thing in New Zealand, even counting the spikey Beacon type tower they have in the city centre. “It’s In The Fag” is a sort of quiz-show and the contestants get asked three questions and get offered a prize if they get them right. But they’re offered money before they know what the prize is and have to decide which to take. One of the prizes is a VW car but (quelle surprise!) nobody won it on the night we were there. Ribena does a big audience warm-up talking about all the places she’s been to this week, places called “WhyHickey” and “Wangereye” which sound like things you’d do to yourself on a dull night, or somebody would do to you. The contestants are all quirky show-offs, - Miss Kola plunges into the audience like Boadicea and picks them out – and the questions are all jokes. It’s all very tacky – Ribena goes on about sound and light effects all of which seem to go wrong. When it comes to the choice the prize comes in an envelope from one of the drawers and it’s the “Fag” – don’t ask me why, it seems to be a New Zealand joke – and the audience scream “Fag! Fag! Fag!” to get the poor sod to take it and not the money. They always chose the “Fag” and the night we were there it was things like a coffee machine or a fan-heater or a big meal at a hotel. All in all it’s a big do and everybody has a lot of fun and Miss Kola drags the last contestant to her bosom (clouds drifting round it and eagles soaring) as a consolation for winning. We had a good time. After that we headed South to Wellington and stopped off at Rotorua where they have exploding hot-pools and sleepy volcanoes, and everywhere has a geyser-bath where you can soak yourself until the skin starts to crinkle, and we saw a Maori show with everybody in tattoos. I’m not sure what I think about a nice-looking girl with tattoos about her face but it’s a cultural thing isn’t it? And she could certainly handle her poi (not what you think – I’ll tell you when I see you). In Wellington we stayed in the red-light district (again! – Roger has a real talent with his hotel bookings) on Cuba Street where every other shop is a café, in fact I think New Zealand has more cafes than anywhere else in the world (and I am getting to be an expert on the world). Where it’s at is the Pound (£) Club down the road and we went there the first night. It was so wet and cold and I had to go out and buy a jacket. Somebody told me it was possum-skin, but it came from a charity shop (we’re not made of money these days) and it did the trick, whatever. They have Maori bouncers at the Pound and if anybody does bouncer better than Maoris I have yet to hear about it, - big wide buggers with nice sleeping smiles. Upstairs there’s two bars and a big, wide stage which has a silver door with a star on it, and which nobody, I found, ever uses. In New Zealand everybody talks to you – as though they were trying to prove something, but it’s nice and you make loads of friends. I got talking almost instantly with this charming old lush with a bent cigar, James, who had an ex-wife in the U.K. and said everywhere he’s travelled to was “boring” except Mexico. And, Jo, if anybody tells you that dope-smoking is only what the trendy and low-life young get up to, let this world-girl tell you it’s not true (I know we know it’s not true, but you know what I’m getting at) – here was old James asking me outside for a spliff before I hardly knew him. It’s everywhere – somebody should tell the politicians. There were lots of nice boys in the club all buying their drinks with swipey-cards they run through a little machine on a curly wire attached to the till, - very cool –“just swipe me a drink, will you, darling?, and mind that curly wire on your tit-piercing!” The resident queen is Paris, who is Maori and has a nice line in big drag. We talked a lot, about her travels, coming from Sydney and now in Wellington to get the drag scene going again after two lean years. Paris was the only drag-queen at the Versace exhibition. Oh, Jo, I’m forgetting to tell you about that! I went to see it the next day at the Wellington Museum – the big Versace exhibition we kept missing on our travels – the clothes, the drawings, the workroom, - it was fabulous. If I die bury me in Versace! The swirls, the halters, the challenge to your tits. The hips, the shiny oroton stuff, the slits! – they had Diana’s dress and well, everybody’s, Diana’s was pale blue silk with embroidered patterns. It’s all very tarty, but…..what can I say? (that you won’t say first) And to cap it all one of the exhibition attendants was such a hunk, I stalked him all round the gallery - he was so fine with long wavey hair! Anyway, Paris. She says she’ll “give it two years “ to get the drag scene going, and she’s really nice and I think she will. She said to come back again the next night as well. There were lots of cute Polynesian boys and other queens around, mainly Maori (and Paris says the Maori are cool about drag which is good, but then they all mess with their bodies most of the time anyway) and they have a good forehead for it. One had a feather in her hair, and a Versace-style bustier. The next night she did a spot in the show. Even the little student girls in knitted dresses and hats were coming up to me and saying how fabulous I looked – I had my long black slit dress on with the starlet hair- and everybody was drinking tequilas with salt and lemon – it was a buzz. The show went on late, about 1.30, and it wasn’t that much. Paris did “Reach for the Stars” with a boy called “Sex Kitten“ and a girl called Julie in an ultramarine boob-tube did a big number, (synching lazily I thought) and that was it. James had been feeling me up a bit, but I went wandering and suddenly he was gone and I thought I’d save myself up for the next night, so I set off back to the hotel. It was wet outside and all the kids were lined up by the bus-stop. “Fifty dollars!” they shouted when they saw me. Cheeky sods , I thought, but at least I know how much to charge now…… But what you do after the Pound, if you’re a queen, - and this apparently hasn’t changed in ages, - is you wander up to Vivian Street and you stop off at the Evergreen. There’s a door and a window, just like a shop, which is what it was once, of course, and you knock on the door and when they eye you through the slit you say – “Paris said….” (well, at least I did) and you get let into this little parlour where you can get a tea or a coffee, and you’ll find a few girls, mainly TS’s, and fellers sitting around and smoking. I was told it’s run by Chrissie, a TS, but I never found out if she was one of the women there and the story is that, no, hang on, the décor, Jo, most important. Bavarian prints on the wall, and prints of Spanish bandits, little lamps on tables at the end of these banquettes, cards and pictures everywhere, just like some-one’s front-room, but probably not yours or mine. Music playing, and a film on the TV above the window, and the window looks out onto the rainy street. One of the women behind the counter gives me a tea and I sit down. When I wander a bit I find cuttings pinned up of Carmen, who was a big drag star in Sydney, “Carmen’s International Cabaret”, and she’s the one who came to Wellington years ago and started the Evergreen. I’ve never been anywhere quite like it, a sort of late-night drop-in centre for trannies. You sit, maybe chat a bit about the way the world is, drink your tea, listen to the old soul tracks, and when you’re done you say Cheerio and wander of into the street. That night there were a few rastas in and when one of them got a bit obstreperous they turned him out. I was a bit tired too so I left soon after. Straight across the street is one of the strip-clubs, our hotel (!) just past it. The next night I put on my PVC outfit for the occasion and drifted down Cuba Street to the Pound for another outing on the scene. Paris was there in a Chanel suit and high black hair and she introduced me to “Sex Kitten”, as “Mandy, from overseas”. He was better off-stage than on, I thought. No sign of James, but Tim and Jason were enough of a distraction. Tim was from Auckland, living with “drama queens” (been there, haven’t we?) in Wellington and working in a bank. They thought I was a “nice drag queen”, not like the others who were “hard“. I can do hard but I didn’t want to spoil their night. Anyway they gave me a number for a friend in Dunedin where there are “lots of trannies”. I checked with Roger later and we weren’t getting as far as Dunedin which was a pity. We danced together and had a buzzy time until the show came on. It was different. Paris was in a deco-pattern blouse which suited her and had three boys with her. Then a sexy boy celebrated his birthday with a sort of hip-hop routine, and in the later section they did “Relax”. And the girl with the feather in her hair, called Cornisha, did a number looking very Carmen Miranda. But I was being distracted by Simon feeling my arse. “You are the bee’s knees”, (they’re so polite these New Zealanders) “How many cocks have you made hard tonight?” “I know one,” I said. And so I ended up giving his cock a good servicing while we were stood there in the thick of the crowd watching the show. And then, even quainter, he had to go to catch the 3 o’clock bus! I never said but I’d fixed up an Internet date for Wellington and sent him a pic, of me on the roof of the Sydney hotel. In it I was taking a drag on a cigarette, and when I got to Wellington I got an E-mail from him saying, “you looked quite attractive, I seriously don't like smoking or smokers, they smell pretty bad. regards Shane” And I felt like E-ing back to say, “This girl smells of Thierry Mugler, mate – your loss” – but I didn’t. Life is too short and the nights at The Pound were quite cute enough for me. I’ll get an Internet date before we’re home. I ended up at the Evergreen again on the way home. One of the girls there had been in the club, with a black girl and various odd men. It’s a working girls’ hang-out of course, and some of them were out in the rain looking for business. Beats the corner of Hope and Huskisson Street anytime. I sat talking to Marcus who was quietly grooving to the old soul songs all of which had some lesson for us – “It’s A Wonderful World”, “Stand by Me”. What are all songs about? We wondered. Love, not being loved, friends…. A few days, and a sea-crossing and a lot of driving and landscape and cold later we were in Christchurch on the South Island for a night. They like celebrating the Queen’s Birthday here in New Zealand, well, queens do, and on the Sunday, which was Liz’s big day, they were having a “Miss Gay Christchurch” competition which I would have entered (and won, naturally) but we were due to fly back to Auckland, and there wasn’t much going on in G.A.Y. Christchurch that night, but a soft-porn on the video and a few boys playing pool. So I had my last New Zealand night out back in G.A.Y. Auckland, but first I hit the Queensferry Bar which is a classy sort of place with a girl from Devon behind the bar and the sexiest bar-boy I met on our travels, China, as Eastern as I could want and with piercings. But sexy bar-boys are always all over the place and never where you want them and I made up for it with a chat to Dave from Christchurch who was a good-looking closet-gay in town on a sales conference, drinking so hard that when I met him again later in G.A.Y. he hardly recognized me, man-sex in his eyes. G.A.Y. was much quieter midweek than before but still a lot of 7-foot queens (I mean I’m 6 foot in my heels but I had to strain to talk to them), nice-looking, like Misty (If I ever steal another name it would be that), and strange boys covered in tattoos, drinking rows of shots and feeling their arses. China turned up and I got him into a photo with me (have camera, will travel, you’ll see them one day) but I think he lost it for the camera. Anyway I have the feeling to remember! And because we have a lot to do before we go I left a bit early, looking for a cab on Queens Street among the mad Poly-Pacific kids. Are you as exhausted as I am, telling you, Jo? It’s been interesting here, very up and down, but I’ve held my own and made lots of really nice friends. Winter isn’t much fun though, and I’ll be glad to pack my possum coat at the bottom of the case for the rest of the trip. It’s Tahiti next – can’t wait! Love Mandy