Sam Swanning in Drag

[Philadelphia, 10/8/12]

When Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning reached Philadelphia in 1991, I watched it in a theater. Having gone to art school, I had had many gay friends. Before Peter Beast died of AIDS, he bought me a mug of Rolling Rock at McGlinchey’s. An odd gesture, I thought, since he had never done that before. Looking back, I’m guessing Peter knew he didn’t have much time left.

Tony always dressed like a schoolboy from a much more innocent era and carried a lunch box with cartoon figures. Even now, I can see him standing in silence at the back corner of a packed elevator. Tony, too, died of AIDS.

A professor whose name I can’t remember just now also died of AIDS.

For a year, I worked in the slide library, which beefed up my knowledge of art history. My boss was John Caldwell, a very soft-spoken gay man who composed classical music. I saw one of his pieces performed at The Church of The Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square. Basking in the applause, Mr. Caldwell bowed ceremoniously, with just the faintest smile. Of all he said to me, I can only remember one sentence, “Was that your girlfriend?”

Coming out as a poet, I had two key mentors, Stephen Berg and Stanley Ward. The first edited American Poetry Review, the second Philadelphia Gay News. In freshman English, Mr. Ward had us read Calderon de la Barca’s La vida es sueño, in his translation. Now, that’s a serious intellectual, I thought. At City Lights in San Francisco, I saw Mr. Ward’s The Son of the Male Muse, but didn’t buy it. He never quite made it as a poet. Nothing is more beautiful, pathetic and presumptuous. Life is a dream, indeed.

Philly poet Lamont Steptoe said to me, “I have three things in my favor. I’m a Vietnam vet, I’m black and I’m gay.”

After college, I found a key ally in artist Richard Torchia, who was also a curator at Moore College of Art, an all-girl school. Dick included me in a well-received exhibition, had me guest-curate a show, Toys and Incense, and even hired me to work at Moore. Gay, Dick is very low keyed, with a mirthful laugh.

There was also Jeffrey Stovall, an artsy black man who fancied himself the next Jean Michel Basquiat. Spending almost no time in the studio, Jeff got nowhere, not even in Philadelphia.

Stovall was about his image, you see, and not his art. Like writing, painting is a solitary labor, with failure almost a certainty. Swanning about looking cool further ensures this. By the 80’s, however, many art fags saw themselves as their primary creations, a mode of being perfected by Andy Warhol. Unlike Warhol, however, most of these poseurs had done next to nothing.

After 440 words, we now return to Paris is Burning. Like most viewers, I had no idea black and Hispanic drag queens staged these shows in NYC. This film, then, was a fascinating probe into an unknown subculture. Most of my gay friends were just as startled, I’m sure. Those who died of AIDS would be shocked to see that the Paris is Burning universe hasn’t just become mainstream, but much more in-your-face, and spread across much of the developed world.

RuPaul’s Drag Race has won many Emmys, with versions also shown in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Philippines and Mexico, so most of NATO, basically, plus a few others. If you’re rah rah with war against Russia, you’re also cool with watching hideous men in lots of makeup pretending to be women.

Architectural Digest has a YouTube feature on RuPaul’s palatial Beverly Hills “crib.” Welcoming us, a wigless RuPaul wears a black shirt with symbols in gold for the yen, won, ruble and pound sterling. No dollar signs, interestingly.

PBS’ American Masters has a “Masters of Drag” series. The BBC has a video, “The World’s First Drag Queen.” On British TV, transsexual Jordan Gray stripped naked then played the piano with “her” penis, a clear nod to a similar stunt by Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. With three other queers in leather pants and stiletti, Zelensky has also performed a Village People type number called “Made in Ukraine.”

It’s not enough to be quietly or privately gay while going about your business, you must be flaming, to the point of parody. As spearheaded by the USA, the entire West has become a travesty of just about everything, manhood, womanhood, gayhood, adulthood and childhood, etc.

As for ethnicity, you’re stoked or prodded into caricaturing yourself most grotesquely. If you’re black, for example, you must at least pose as a homicidal nigga who strums on an AK-47 while dodging not just left crosses and bullets, but grammar. Otherwise, you ain’t a real nigga!

Never been locked up? Jail is good for you, nigga! It’s like a Zen temple, and a free love zone. You will come out with a really real understanding of your anatomy, human nature and all that shit.

In 37 years, American Masters has featured more than 250 individuals, including eight drag queens, who were basically theatrical performers, so has it done a profile on Ira Aldridge? Who, you ask?!

Against sickening hostility, this black New Yorker born in 1807 conquered London in his roles as Oronoko, Gambia and, especially, Othello. In a country that supposedly extols individual courage, Ira Aldridge should be a salient model, but no, he’s all but unknown in the USA. Americans are conditioned to cheer for their team, party and approved leaders. Even in dress, they conform.

In 1833, The Times said that Aldridge’s “lips [are] so shaped that it is utterly impossible for him to pronounce English.” Even before seeing Aldridge perform, Figaro in London threatened that “we must again inflict on him such a chastisement as must drive him from the stage he has dishonoured, and force him to find in the capacity of footman or street sweeper, that level for which his colour appears to have rendered him peculiarly qualified.”

In Paris is Burning, gay men don’t just dress up as women, but military officers, business executives, socialites, country gentlemen or, weirdly enough, merely students. The real theme, then, is a desire to be someone you’re not. When a transformation proves impossible, they can just pretend to be sexy, powerful, glamorous or studious.

Dorian Corey, a drag queen in her 50’s, explains:

In real life, you can’t get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity. Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. That is just the pure thing. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere. And those that do are usually straight.

In a ballroom, you can be anything you want. You’re not really an executive, but you’re looking like an executive. And therefore, you’re showing the straight world that I can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I could be one, because I can look like one.

To become an executive, one needs education and opportunities, Corey reasonably claims, but then states that appearance alone is proof of potential. That is nonsense, of course, but we’ve gone way past that in 2023!

In the insane West, you don’t even have to look like a woman to be considered one. Without a vagina, ovaries or womb, and with a raging hardon in your pants, you can just declare yourself a woman. It gets even funnier. Tomorrow, you can revert to being a man, then a woman the next day. When statements aren’t based on facts, anyone can say anything, but only in the West. The rest of the world hasn’t lost its mind.

When Corey died of AIDS in 1993, a partly mummified body was found in a garment bag inside her closet. It’s of her lover, Robert Worley, dead for about 25 years. Whatever the circumstance, Corey had killed him.

Before rewatching Paris is Burning yesterday, I could only remember this line by Venus Xtravaganza, “I would like to be a spoiled, rich white girl. They get what they want, whenever they want it.”

Half Italian, half Puerto Rican, Venus looked white enough. With her petite frame, she’s also the most feminine-looking star of Paris is Burning.

Venus made money by going on dates with men. Ninety-five percent of them didn’t require intercourse, she claimed, but what about those who did?

Venus, “I was with a guy and he was playing with my titties till he touched me down there. He felt it and he seen it and he, like, totally flipped out. He said, ‘You fucking faggot! You’re a freak! You’re a victim of AIDS and you’re trying to give me AIDS! What, are you crazy? You’re a homo! I should kill you!’”

Even before the film was completed, Venus was strangled to death. This horrified client didn’t just threaten. Her murderer was never found.

Though Venus didn’t deserve any violence, much less death, deception has consequences, with even the slightest deviation from truth exacting its toll.

When your entire society is based on false expectations, phoniness and lies, you must expect the worst, for reality doesn’t care what you think. Many, though, will keep voguing, strutting and cake walking away, as long as that music is still thumping, if only in their mind.