At Home in the New Depression
Making money is a difficult thing to do during this Depression. My last steady job was at the Crazy Horse in 1967, and then it got so that I could make more money staying home on a weekend doing horizontal entertainment than I could make working all week long at the Crazy Horse. I had johns then, before they all got “liberated.”
I remember one I picked up about 15 years ago on the way to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is gone now. He was sort of shot, had an awful lot to drink, and a lot of mileage, but he started calling me “Baby” and holding my hand. He was only a $10 trick, but he was a darling boy, and a marvelous lover. He was only a $10 trick, but whenever he’d come into town he’d call me up, and he’d really treat me like a lady. I last saw him about six years ago. That last time he gave me $15.
Most of these guys in recent years — well, they’re weirdoes. What’s a weirdo’? I don’t know. Use your imagination. I just used to add $5 for anything new they wanted to do. Between the Depression and my age — I’m not sweet sixteen anymore and they always want youth and they don’t make many two-watt lightbulbs — it doesn’t make much sense to do johns anymore. Maybe I’ll become a telephonic Madame.
I keep my hand in a lot of things and make the money to stay alive. I have this transie I see once in a while, Julia Child. My job is to put him in drag and give him tips on being a woman and escort him. I play the male escort. Isn’t that a camp? He’s 6′2″ and he walks like a country rube, all hunched over. And he hunches over his food, asking me if he should take his gloves off while he’s eating. If he gets to be too much for me, I say “Grace and beauty!” and he straightens up.
And of course I have my music lessons. Even if your fingers feel like toes when you tickle the ivories, my new improved music lessons (at no rise in price) will do the trick. I love turning on my friends to old tunes.
But you boys came to hear about the art of female impersonation, and this has more to do with the art of staying alive.
Well, I guess we’ve run out of pictures. So many of those people are gone. Lots from drinking — it’s easy for a queen to become an alcoholic, always working around drinks. And of course there were the benny-heads that were very very brilliant for a short time and then eventually got evil and died. The hormone girls — I’ve known several where the operation was not a success. So they’re gone and here I am, still a young flapper.
When I took my first acid trip, I saw so much, and I’ve become more of a recluse. I no longer have the desire to be the life of the party, to be an Elsa Maxwell, like my sister Tommy. I have lovely things around me here, even if this isn’t such a campy neighborhood. See, most of these things I have had for a long time. They’re old, so the material is good. And I’ve lived with them for a long time. When I first moved here it was middle class. That was 1955. I thought I would stay a short time. Now it’s 24 years later, and the neighborhood is bombed-out looking, and I’m still here. Isn’t that a camp?
Sometimes, it’s not so campy. The slumlord downstairs has this hyperactive child and they feed it sugar all day so it runs around — boom da boom boom boom. All sugar. Look out the window — all black faces — oops! There’s a white face. Must be a cop in drag. Here, let’s close these shutters — we’re not putting on a free show for those bums. Nobody’s paying.
But it’s hard to beat a five-room flat for $32, even if the walls are Niagara when it rains. And I have my piano. I play every day, mostly rags, especially the master, Scott Joplin. There’s one song I’ve been looking for all my life. “I’m the Hostess of a Bum Cabaret.” I never found it, though.
My friend Crazy Arthur contacts spirits and he says one of them helps me play the piano. His name is Bob and he lived here from 1895 to 1905 and he played piano in one of the theaters. He was a straight man that wanted to come out, but didn’t, all those years before gay liberation. Bob’s crazy about me. And Crazy Arthur says that when I relax enough Bob can get into my body and play. So I’ll just relax and sit up real straight and say, “Bob, do your stuff!”
I’m glad I’m not a young queen today, honey. I think it’s very sad and tough, especially since the demise of gay liberation. Things are going in the opposite direction, back to the fifties. It’s like they won. The punks.
I hate to see the hippy style go. All those fabulous clothes. Gone. I have a friend, when I met him he had frizzed hair down to his asshole and glitter on his face. He was a parody of a hippy. Now he’s a parody of a straight person. If he dressed any straighter you’d mistake him for a Chinese waiter. It’s so altered. I definitely have a generation gap with this post hippy generation.
Times have been hard, of course, and they will be hard again, but that doesn’t mean you have to immediately get dark and ugly. No wonder straight people are worried about gay liberation. Now, not only do they think we are going to suck their son’s cock, they think we are going to bite it off. The only way to get out of darkness is to want to be liberated and try for something beautiful. If you do things ugly, people treat you ugly.
That’s all the campy tales for today, boys. I feel so lit up on that bit of tea. I guess it’s talking about all these gay times. If you want to go to the bathroom before you leave, take matches and light the candle over the toilet. The slumlord won’t fix the plumbing and there’s no electricity in there. It looks best in candlelight anyway. But be sure and blow it out when you’re finished, because my sister Double John isn’t working for the church where she liberated those candles from. Not anymore.
Take some tea for the road, boys, and make that subway ride gorgeous.
If you would like another copy of this book, please contact:
Ray Dobbins
57 Second Avenue
New York 10003
(212) 475-0071
Copyright
This book is based on many visits to Minette’s flat. The words are Minette’s. The text was edited by Steven Watson. The photographs from Minette’s album are mostly by anonymous photographers, printed, and re-worked by Ray Dobbins.