Take Three Girls

West Coast action as the Round The World In Drag journey in 2001 proceeds, as mailed to Jo,- Time for a catch-up, Jo. I’ve met so many amazing people while I’ve been on my travels, especially here in L.A. I’ve got to tell you about three of them, Billy-June, Trish and the Lady Dante. I met Billy-June at the Queen Mary which is a local drag “institution” I have to tell you about. When you’re in L.A. everybody says you have to go to the QM which is on Ventura Boulevard, just over the hill from West Hollywood. It’s a club that’s been going for years, next door to a transformations shop which is owned by the same man. They have shows almost every night and sometimes special shows and it’s a place where you’ll find a lot of trannie-chasers, as well as a lot of trannies!. So, a week after our nightmare trip to Rudolpho’s, I decided to take the car and pay a visit. And it was another jinxed Saturday night! You have to go over Laurel Canyon to get to Ventura which is a bit like saying you have to cross the Alps to get to your corner shop. Coming down the other side the car played up and I had to sit for an hour outside a Japanese restaurant in Studio City while they sent a replacement car. (just for the record, dear, Los Angeles restaurants employ somebody to wipe their menus down – have I missed out on this one over the years?). So I missed most of the Queen Mary show. $7 to get in (of course you need to know this, Jo!) and the theatre is full. It’s like a bar-theatre with tables inside a rail in front of a wide stage. And the show is what they call here “vaudeville”. That’s old-fashioned. A girl sings and wanders into the audience covered by a spotlight. People give her money. She may be a girl or a girl-girl, my eyes haven’t adjusted properly. I can see that there are lots of queens watching, sitting with their men or on their own. The stage cleared for a big Roman-gothic diva in a spacey costume, with two plumed warriors with torches in their head-gear at her side, to do some lazy synching, and take her notes. Not impressed? You guessed! I slip out front to the verandah for a smoke when an older girl-MC with immaculate high-piled hair starts her chat with the audience. It’s more fun with the smokers, as usual. From Tatiana who’s Tongan I hear that they have respect for “us” in Tonga. Pacific rules! And from there I slip through the theatre where a “schoolgirl” is doing cartwheels for a “Chorus-Line” number, and go out to the back. This is where it’s really going on. Trannie-chasing. The new Olympic sport. It’s like the 7969 – or the Piano Bar, or the Taxi Club – but there’s maybe even more shades of trannie-dom (there’s a word for you, Jo, I just invented it!) on the dance-floor. Awkward Anglo trannies on a tourist trip (and that’s not me, I’m not awkward, and I’m Draggin’ Around The World!) through to totally convincing sexy Latino working girls. It’s very busy and the spill-over is onto the Terrace at the back, under the L.A. moon, which is smoggy tonight. Not that much seems to be happening there, men standing by them-selves, girls talking, all very social and a bit casual and unreal. But there’s Billy-June, older and sort-of convincing in that way older queens can be, although s(he) didn’t think so as I found out when she came up to me for a talk. Quite a story. Five weeks in town, living a female life, after years of marriage, parenting and home-making. She has a machine in her hotel-room for cutting CD’s and has got a band together and made music and done a gig at the Lava Lounge. She gives me a copy of the two CD’s she’s made. I’m impressed. She’s the first girl for a long-time I’ve met who likes to wear more clothes not less. It’s her own hair, and she has a long flowered dress on. She’s not very confident about herself but I tell her how good she is. And then she tells me about how she’s had this ability since she was at school to bring herself off without hands by squeezing her own balls. Wow! I admit I’ve never heard of anybody who could do that. And she’s not had sex with anybody else for three years! What a role-model! Katrina joined us, and she’s big on philosophy. She has this idea about us being one of the tribes, like witch-doctors, and we need to make a circle to protect ourselves and connect with each other. She really connects with BJ and I’m in awe. All these ideas to have, and such bravery. I mean, I’ve listened to Billy-June’s CDs now. One of them is her first concert as the Billy-June Foundation, and the other is a song “I-2-3-Baby” which has this in it – “Women are 1, Men are 2, 3 are the People who Choose to Choose”. And “A’s are girls, B’s are boys, C’s are the colors of all the other toys”. I can’t quite get my head round all of Billy-June but I think she’s amazing. When we leave at the end I take a picture of her and we say we’ll keep in touch. She thinks she may move to Montreal for the climate. All those layers of clothes. And that wasn’t my last trip to the Queen Mary, But more of that in a minute. Then there was Trish. I met her on the Internet – not really a date since she’s a sister-queen and I contacted her on one of the sites – and we got together on Tuesday for a bite to eat late on Melrose. She drove over from Santa Monica where all the artists live and she’d just got back from Milan where she was showing her paintings. She sent me a picture of herself before we met. It showed a dark-haired beauty with a sophisticated, distant look and a big diamante choker over a nylon and PVC bustier. Almost intimidating, I thought. When she turned up at the motel she was in more demure stuff but still very classy. I wasn’t surprised to hear that she does a regular Diana of the L.A. circuit. It’s strange meeting somebody off the Internet – you really don’t know where to start but I had the advantage because I’ve been meeting new people for the last six months. It was all questions at first but eventually we settled in for a good gossip. And Trish – Trish Van Cleef is her full name – is a busy girl. She’s been in L.A. for years but came from the U.K. She’s designed record-sleeves for big bands, has written a film which is being produced, and there’s the paintings. I haven’t seen any of them but I gather they’re quite surrealist, a bit gothic. Which sort of fits. And they sell well in Italy. In fact she doesn’t go to the Queen Mary any more but to a goth club where they enjoy the weirder end of dressing up. I’d like to have gone along with her but we’re due to be leaving for New York at the weekend. Trish was interested in what I was up to, and I said I’d keep in touch. I hoped she’d say she’s make a film about me Draggin’ Round The World. Maybe sometime. Anyway Trish was a bit jet-lagged so we didn’t stay out too long but I thought she was so sophisticated and on top of her life and I thought, I want to live here and do all that. But first, Jo, I’ve got to learn to paint – and write. And have lots of money. Which brings us to The Lady Dante. Not lots of money, but being an artist. How I met The Lady Dante is amazing. Roger’s friend Jane here used to run an Internet magazine for L.A. and she used to have a person to write the rock and drag reviews called The Lady Dante (I love the sound of that – I’m going to be The Lady Mandy from now on, when I’m not being Queen Mandy, of course). Jane put me in touch with her by E-Mail ands she sent me lots of info and advice about who to meet and where to go. And I said we should meet up but nothing got arranged. So, anyway, there’s me strolling the Boulevard one day before the Parade and I stop into this clothes shop and ask if they know how I can get into the Parade. And the assistant asks what sort of thing and I say a drag float. He’s a really buff black guy, good-looking to a degree, and I say I’m Draggin’ Round The World, and looks at me and says – “Jane…..” and I say, “You are The Lady Dante!” Yes, Jo, believe in the witchiness of life – this is the he/she, in person, the Lady Jane put me on to. Well, of course we get to talking big-style about all that I’ve been up to and he’s up to, and we agree to meet again, and I drop into the shop for a chat when I’m out and about and Dante says we should “go storm”. (Jo, I’m never going out again now, I’m going stormin’). And last night we did. Dante’s another really impressive girl, you know. She’s a musician and actor, and was born in Alaska but got out of there to Seattle in time for all those big bands like Nirvana. And she got to be a boy-dancer and a girl-dancer and mixed up in lots of drugs. And then one day she cleaned up, got on a plane to L.A. and started a new life with acting school and bands. Just now she’s looking for a new band because her last one was a drag-rock band called _______- _______ ______, and last night she took me along to see them now she’s not in them anymore. I did the driving. Dante, like a real queen, is driven around by other people. I didn’t mind – it was all a big buzz for me. Dante dressed up is a picture. We thought we might go to an Eighties Night so I’m in my silver gear again and she comes bouncing out of her house under a big pink feather hat wearing a pink chiffony dress with a black bodice. And she had a pink fur bag. She was very “she”, most punkalicious (new word again, Jo!). And silver me and pink her set off or this punk club where the band are playing. It’s all very raunchy, the sort of place I used to go to in my teeny-brain years. All the boys are punky and the girls are gothy – and the “girls” are friends of ours. There’s one and a half bands to go before Dante’s ex-s so we sit in the yard and smoke and talk to the band and anybody around really and wind up a few shy boys and are really getting into the girl–together thing. Then when the band’s on we sit on seats by the DJ box. Dante’s a bit formal about this and it only dawns on me why later – they’re not so good. The “girls” are off to one side and not really synchronized or choreographed and the songs are O.K. but it’s not very together and a guy in a suits and tails is on and off the stage all the time doing mad but nothing things, and as soon as they’ve finished Dante whooshes us out of the door. Very unimpressed. I’m O.K. but I’ve never seen them before or that many drag-punk bands so, you know, but Dante – The Lady Dante’s a bit pissed off. Or maybe she wasn’t. You’ve got to remember that Dante is like Miss Bel-Air, and Trish in a way – drag is a profession for them. And Dante can’t stand people who don’t do things professionally. Which is why she left the band, and is looking to set up a new one. And sees them as what she’s left behind, so they didn’t ought to be good or she’s done the wrong thing. Which she hasn’t. People in L.A. are out to make something of themselves. Or they get lost in it all. It’s a big city. We talked about all this at the Queen Mary where we went after (we never got to the Eighties Night – we were the Eighties Night!) and it was all about the people we liked, performers and singers with real talent and genius. The QM has a projection of trannies who’ve been to the club (U.K. girls too) and I thought, I don’t want to be just another one who passes through, I want to be up there somewhere for my talent like Dante. And Dante is playing boy as well as girl again. The Lady Dante is a “character”, like Scott’s, and s(he) has web-site for getting people together. The place was quiet midweek - I think they were doing bingo – and apart from Katrina there was nobody I knew. Lots of trannie-chasers - but we weren’t trannie last night – we were stars waiting to make a big moment for ourselves. I dropped The Lady Dante off at her apartment and we’re going to keep in touch. Jo, does that all sound a bit mad? I hope not. I’m due at the QM again at the weekend for a real Internet date, with a film producer. Watch this space. Mandy