Lucky Number Liz or Dick and Todd A/(oh my)!

“Hello Tabitha, hissed Kylie Jean Lucille. “I see you’ve done something to your eyebrows.” From where she sat in the back seat of our chauffeured ride, my friend Kylie or Kyle as he was known out of drag could see the wreck I had made of my countenance. Barely 21, I had only just acquired my license to drink which led the way to a new way of life I would be spending in drag. A few months past my long awaited magical graduation to 21, I was already bored with the boozed out patrons of the West Hollywood Boystown bars. Aching for inspiration, I fixed my attention on the splash of color and star quality that came crashing through the doors of the Mother Lode one night. Three of the only drag queens I had ever been in the same room with marched in grandly as the seas of crowds parted. They demanded respect and reverence on the spot as much as their sequins and feathers could sport. The drunk fag hairdresser I had adopted as my bar buddy was wearing my last nerve out. I was tired of the constant stream of self-loathing he projected on to me with critiques of my girlish nature and gender ambiguity. “You are such a flaming trannie,” he screeched the night he noticed my nails had grown out to rival the Lee Press-on length. “Girl, girl, fag, trannie, and woman” he chanted in a caustic tone. I knew full well that I represented the very qualities he loathed within himself. He was one of the biggest swishing lispers I knew, although he claimed not to notice. I longed to be free from his strict standards of masculine deportment. I had been told off and on throughout my life that I could pass for a girl. In high school, it presented a problem when I was asked to leave the men’s locker room of my family’s athletic club. Since my favorite pastime involved positioning myself in front of the showers for ample view of full frontal male nudity, I had to siphon my softness and butch it up for the team. At my 18th birthday dinner, I used the women’s restroom of a fancy restaurant and no one batted an eyelash before applying mascara. Oh, how I wanted to try on mascara. I had once exhausted an entire compact of blush after applying it for my 6th grade Christmas pageant. “Look what they did to me,” I faked to complain to my mom. But then somebody let the cat out of the bag and ratted me out that I had done my own makeup. “You did this?” said my mother. These were the types of sticky situations I would end up in every time I walked the line of blurred gender boundaries. By the time I was 21, I knew the time had come for me to cross over into cross dressing for fun, although I abhorred the term as it implied perversion.
Instantly, one summer evening, I attached myself to the waistband of a drag trio and was never the same. As they sized me up, their eyes looked me up and down like a searchlight as Olga said about the way Steven Haines goggled Crystal Allen in The Women starring Joan Crawford as the siren shop girl. Taking my meager age into consideration for a split second, the leader of the three, a dowdy dowager christened Anne Radcliffe said into my ear, “We will age you”. The following Friday, it was all I could do to prevent myself from nervous exhaustion as I ran around the strip mall across from campus looking for drag attire. The third world shanty town adjacent to the ivory tower of privilege at my alma mater of USC was a prime place to find cheap, tacky affordable drag attire in bright and gaudy spandex blends. A leopard print top with pants to match would serve as my first foray into fishdom. I was told to arrive at a certain time just after dusk at an address in West LA on the following Friday. When the door opened upon my ringing of the bell, I entered a world I knew had been waiting for me. I wasn’t sure I had found the right apartment when the crotchety milquetoast with green mud mask opened the door and ushered me in cautiously. He seemed incredibly nervous and suspicious as he inquired if I had been followed. “Please, you’ll do just fine, come this way,” he chimed as I was led into a great room. A sofa was over run with makeup containers and mish mashed fabric samples as a very homosexual man in a red thong sat upon it applying makeup in a full length mirror he had jury-rigged to the floor. “You’ll have to take your clothes off if you’re going to dress up,” he instructed me. I was shy and timidly undid the buttons of my pink jeans that I prided myself at having bleached and dyed to rival Versace. Peeling off my Wonder Woman baby tee-, I revealed my aerobicized anorexic frame in waxed regalia. “Oh, your body is flawless,” quipped the queen in red on the couch. “This will be fun,” While the milquetoast in mud fretted over the proper shade of foundation for my complexion, I noticed a tall and skinny queen with a hick accent calling for his tits from a bedroom down the hall. “Damn, your labia~, shouted the skinny bitch. “Precious pink folds of flesh, “she chanted. The other queens followed suit with the mantra used to describe the gorgeous womanly curves they all coveted. I was taken aback when I realized the folds of flesh they were describing were that of a pussy. A pussy they probably wanted if not for the advantages inherent in owning a dick, as it was soon described to me. “To be a woman, with superb curves, it is essential to eat and drink in splendor. And hide your candy until it counts, they would say. A tray of bon bons and half eaten buckets of friend chicken littered the drag zone amid falsies and various articles of indiscretion. I knew I had entered another vortex and clung to the railing for support. By the time it was time to go out, I had been adorned with a brunette bobbed wig like Sabrina from Charlie’s Angels. Anne went from milquetoast to sexpot Sally in a peroxide blond wig and summer pantaloons that matched the shade of her blow up doll lips. The other self-described skinny Marie they called Jackie Jones wore a denim short onesie described as the one worn by Sammy Jo in Dynasty. The only thing it seemed Jackie Jones had in common with Heather Locklear’s character was a white trash breeding. How else could she explain having been seen out looking like that last Tuesday evening or so I heard from more than one person?
I wore a pretty pant suit of transparent black organza and had brought my own stilettos just purchased from a discount chain in the ghetto. An established identity had never occurred to me so it was a surprise taken off guard when the question of who I was came up in the taxi. As the light changed from red to green, I flashed on an image of my favorite tattoo, a caricature of the comic cartoon that played in the opening credits of Bewitched. I had Elizabeth Montgomery’s likeness as Samantha Stevens tattooed on my upper right thigh. “You are a fag,” shrieked the first guy who fucked me the weekend after I got the tattoo from an artist at Easy Rider. The camp appeal alone was enough to start a conversation so I blurted out the next logical name. “Call me Tabitha,” I stated. I would be named after the daughter of the fag who married the witch daughter of a drag queen dowager with the shocking red wig. I once saw the words “Agnes Moorhead is God” tagged in spray paint on the side of a bus shelter and I knew it to be true. I could spin a whole theory about my viewpoint concerning the way I hypothesized that Samantha’s social standing as a secret witch mirrored the stigma suffered by queers as they blended with straights i.e. mortals in silent superiority. Faggotry wasn’t something you wore like blackface the way the blacks’ sported pigment. It could be turned up and down according to the degree of fierceness one wanted to flaunt. And so the basis for my tattoo was born.
My turn as Tabitha never really had a last name that seemed to stick so I had printed a mono-moniker on my headshots. That first night out in the community spent as Tabitha garnered me new grace as I learned to saunter in high heels. “When you walk, lead with your hips, whispered Kylie Jean. I could hear murmurs of approval and star-struck bewilderment from the crowd as we walked. They were wondering if I was a real girl amid the drag queens. “They think I’m real,” I realized. “Honey, they don’t because you’re with us,” snapped the milquetoast turned dowdy dowager they called Anne. She liked the name Radcliffe because she thought it sounded like a pedigreed breed of blue blood aristocracy. As a man, Dylan aka Anne worked in a law firm and wouldn’t have been caught dead walking in daylight with the likes of the company he kept in drag. Kylie lived in a trailer with his ailing grandmother and worked days in the produce department of an Alpha Beta somewhere in the slums of what I presumed to be a primarily poor neighborhood. And Jackie or Eric Christie as he was called lived in a one room studio with his hot brother where he had to endure eavesdropping on graphic depictions of deplorable hetero-sex acts his sex starved sibling carried out over the phone while masturbating. “Lucky bitch,” I thought. I wouldn’t have minded being on the other end of his brother’s reach out and touch me kind of pillow talk any day. The bitch didn’t know how could she had it. Incest was best in my summation. I asked about pulling a crying game on the brother whenever I had the chance.
As the piece de resistance to my first evening out as a princess, I was witness to the most melodramatic acts of over the top machinations I had ever seen in person. I had only seen episodes of the like on Dynasty before it all erupted in the bar that night.
After the first round of cocktails, an argument about who would hold a handbag erupted in the ladies’ room as one queen accused another of ruining a new tube of mascara. Before I could grasp the crux of the issue, a cardinal sin had been committed as one queen reached over the head of another and yanked off the wig she had secured with only bobby pins. It is an unwritten law of the most magnitude that one never touches a queen’s wig. Without the wig, the queen is nothing but a balding fag in what might as well be his sister’s girdle. Screaming and shoving soon gave way to the roar of the mostly male crowd who loved the front row exposure they had only seen on television during the days of Dynasty. Krystal and Alexis never did it up as grandly as these queens were chewing up the scenery and tossing insults in glasses filled with tears. From across the bar, a 35 year old broken down alcoholic the queens would adopt and name Kingsley the first time he did drag was busy snapping pictures of the hijinks in between trying to film it for inclusion on the public access television show he hosted in West Hollywood. Paul Kent had graduated UCLA film school 15 years ago and regaled audiences with stories of the way his sexuality was explored in restroom glory holes on and around campus. He had taken a liking to me when we met for the first time in an aerobics class at the West Hollywood fag gym they called Sports Erection Connection. It was a virtual bath house amid a backdrop of hyper masculine camp carried out by muscular God like clones in a locker room that still sported orange carpet from the 1970s before AIDS wiped everyone out. I hadn’t yet come into my own on the sexual marketplace and was still growing used to the notion that wearing red, pink and purple tights was actually celebrated within the geographic boundaries flanked by Santa Monica Blvd at La Cienega. I spent every moment out of class at the gym in pursuit of a weight I could whittle down to double digits on the scale. The day after the episode and drag brouhaha, I spoke to Kingsley or Paul as he liked to be called in pants. “They’ll be friends again before next weekend. It happens all the time,” he said shrugging off the drama as if it was nothing.” They did the same thing last weekend,” he said. I would soon come to learn that that the god-awful cryorama jags of pure unadulterated spectacle were delicious in the right dose. But too much of a good thing can spoil the appetite for anything, as I would soon find out.
Kylie Jean Lucille was my first real friend of the trashy drag trio I first cavorted with. Not satisfied with the way my gal pal Alex tweezed my excessive eyebrows for the first time, I sought to correct her work. I must have been thinking in reverse as my memories had been sullied by the vodka sea breeze because the resulting mess I made of my brows brought joy to Kylie’s cackle. I had reversed the line of the brow, starting to tweeze the bulk from the top as the line thinned. It was an ass-backwards Bizzaro version of beauty as if Superman’s alter ego nemesis had done it himself. It was no secret as to why I had been banned from touching the makeup supply during my high school summers spent in the Bellevue school district youth theatre. The first tube of foundation I ruined soon gave way to the entire set as I squashed the tubes of greasepaint into their lids without retracting the stem. Hundreds of dollars of stage makeup had been ruined at my expense and I was forbidden to practice. Thus, my uncoordinated efforts of upkeep were relegated to professionals. It took me months for my brows to grow back as I was forced to draw them on the way I had read that Lana Turner had done when her eyebrows failed to grow back after being shaved off. Imagine having to draw them on before being able to leave the house, a thought that soon became my reality. I was one cocktail away from having them permanently tattooed which I penciled in to do after my planned electrolysis that I never got around to.
As the summer marched on, my time as Tabitha increased to take up most of my waking hours. Even while out of drag, I was always addressed as Tabitha adopting the persona as the one I would come to be known by.
As we drove along down Sunset the evening of my eyebrow scandal, I was pleased as punch to be back in what appeared to be Kylie’s good graces. She had vowed never to speak to me again only four days prior when I good naturedly brought up the tidbit that poisoned her against me forever. It was a Saturday morning after a Friday night we had spent out dressed as our fag selves in Weho. I had been introduced to a hunky guy who I soon learned had a reason for the way he swaggered. He strutted like a guy with a big dick, a detail I was fortunate enough to find out in person after I invited him back to my summer dorm just off campus from USC. I had my own two bedroom pad in the Trojan Moon off-campus housing, a decaying tenement priced exorbitantly high at fair market value considering its `early 1980s décor. But it was mine free for the summer while I worked the desk at the front office of another summer dormitory. Long hours were toiled with nothing to do except chat on the telephone as this all occurred in the days pre-Internet. I was at my post behind the desk when I called Kylie to tell her all about the latest conquest of cock I had consumed the night before. All of a sudden, she screamed and the line went dead. Confused and hurt, I called back only to hear her shriek and wail, “Tabitha, I’m never talking to you again.” before she clicked off. Worried and frightened about the consequences of my actions, I called Kingsley who informed me that the guy with the big dick was the stamped and branded property of Kylie Jean queen herself. At least they had been until he had dumped her for the chance to screw younger, seemingly more attractive boys like me. But those weren’t my words, just the plain facts. The rampant insecurities suffered by the aging Kylie soon came to blaring light when it became obvious that it was All About Eve as in All About Me. I was Eve to Kylie’s interpretations of Margo Channing, with the bravado and hubris to work the room. She could chew up a scene and spit out the lines like a bulimic on acid. For the rest of the time I would spend in the lair of Kylie Jean, she made it her life’s mission to have me ruined. I was crushed after she cut off our friendship and sought advice from all who would listen about ways to woo her back. “Repent, repent, kiss ass,” rang the masses. I had to eat crow to save face. So when I was invited out for a night with the “girls” the next weekend, I couldn’t hide my glee. It didn’t even dawn on me that the sickening sweet tone of Kylie’s voice was meant to mask the venom he meant for my bloodstream. We arrived at Numbers, the place for daddies and their boys, as the place was known. Quilted tufts of red pleather lined the luxurious booths that dotted the dim night spot on the Sunset Strip. The place was built for high priced Hollywood hunk hustlers to ply their trade to the rich, well—heeled and oiled power brokers of Hollywood. David Geffen was rumored to have a private booth reserved there. I had been to Numbers before, having been introduced by my college guy pal Steed who lambasted me for my lack of understanding about the high price of tuition as mine was always paid for. “Some of didn’t have rich parents,” he would point out. I have to work for a living. He would underline that remark by pointing out that the back window of the car he described as having belonged to Sanford and Son still had to be taped together since being shattered by the would-be thief. I lived vicariously through his high priced hustler routine as I eavesdropped on more than one occasion from the adjacent booth while he outlined on a cocktail napkin what it would cost his companion in coin to see his cock. He had the routine down to a science and would always call me the next day with tales of the wealth he had gained by setting high standards. “I show them my Rolex so they know I can’t be bought for less than quality,” he stammered.
When I waltzed into Numbers on the arms of Kylie flanked by the drunken Kingsley, I noticed that I was indeed noticed. “An all American boy,” could be heard as I walked to a rich red booth. I hopped up on the table and threw one leg over another in a kick up my heels celebratory power gesture. I loved being young, gay and single and looked it in my pink jeans that everyone thought was made by Versace. A bright, polyester top bedecked with butterflies in baby blue hue contrasted with my tight pink painted on jean. I had youth on my side and knew I was a commodity for the moment. I was the number one It girly boy of the minute in that Sunset Strip boy bordello. I was surrounded by some of the most gorgeous seemingly sophisticated men I had ever seen and none of them were within my grasp as we were all prey to the predators at large. Soon, I found myself scrunched into a lavish center booth nuzzled up next to an overweight aging self-described Hollywood power broker named Dick after what he tried to see of me. The drinks flowed and my lightweight frame soon fell victim to the effects of too many fruity daiquiris that didn’t feature a hint of alcohol. I drank them down like Slurpees until my world was spinning. In a surreal dream like sequence of images, I flashed in and out of states of awareness. The graying geezer feeling me up underneath the table was clearly trying to impress me with tales of his affiliation with Todd A/O the groundbreaking wide screen film format developed in the 1950s by Elizabeth Taylor’s second or third husband Mike Todd before he perished in the crash of his plane lovingly christened Lucky Liz after his voluptuous wife with the violet eyes. Entranced at the prospect that I was sitting a degree or two shy of meeting Elizabeth Taylor, “suddenly, last summer” I let myself be wooed by this poster candidate for Viagra with one foot in the grave. I was old enough to be his great grandson which would have made him a pedophile to my prepubescent prey if I was a handful younger. As the drinks clouded my judgment, I could feel my cock growing under the pink Versace knockoffs. Something about being desired was a thrill. But then, I saw a would be buzz kill as a guy I had brought home to my dorm a few months prior suddenly spotted me and my hard-on being groped by the troll of Todd-A/O fame. I was mortified that someone from my burgeoning fuck web should see me doing business like the type I prided myself at learning by the ropes in this working boy bar. “Glad to see you’re still in school, “smiled this cute guy who had once come all over my dorm bed. “I love being a man,” he had said upon climax. It was one of my earliest conquests having been brought home from an early night out in the Weho bars. I didn’t quite know the rules of the male dominated make out room when I had hosted the hottie who now mocked me from across the table. He took up a seat next to Kingsley and glared downward at the groping grip of the gray haired geezer who was trying his best to unsheathe my candy tableside. “What are you doing now?” I inquired half-heartedly as I feigned disinterest in a been there, done that kind of weariness. He launched into a litany reciting a slow of activities he purportedly did in the months since we had fucked in my student dorm room. “What am I doing now? What am I doing now?” he repeated in seething spurts of spittle. “I’ve been…da da deed ah dah tum.” but his words were a blur. All I could hear was the laughter spat by a drunken Kingsley who took great delight in the episode unfolding before him, what with the graying geezer groping me in between tales of Liz and Todd/AO and the mad like a hornet former boy toy of my early sexual half-life spewing swords like a snake into my space. The name of the plane that killed Mike Todd was named Lucky Liz as in the way someone was getting lucky at my expense while I did my best turn as Butterfield 8, one of Liz’s best roles. Just ask anybody. And on the other side of the booth sat Kylie Jean who weaved a web of cigarette smoke and smut as she described events taking place across the bar where someone was negotiating with her Argentinean heartthrob actor friend, a man called Giorgio like the perfume. There he is, “negotiating with Giorgio”, which I soon learned was a euphemism for drug dealing or black market sex or anything ferreted across state lines in cadavers used for mules. It was all sweetly sordid and my head slimed in strawberry daiquiri Slurpeed decadence. With a twist of lemon... When they rang last call for alcohol, my next moment of clarity occurred sometime around 3:00 AM on the rooftop pool deck of the West Hollywood Palm Apartments, a fag infested, overpriced ratfuck tenement on prime West Hollywood real estate that Kingsley had lived in since the decade he was sober. I had suffered almost a third degree burn over my entire face and body earlier that summer after falling asleep in the sun on that very pool deck. At my most present moment of clarity in the wee hours of the morning, I lounged languidly in the chaise as the graying geezer of Todd/A-O fame tried to lure me into committing unseemly acts a la my best Diane Arbus moment. Later, as I retired on the bed that I thought might belong to Kingsley, I allowed myself to be pawed by this man three generations my senior. There was something powerfully erotic about being wanted and it was nice to know that y youthful prowess wasn’t wasted. Todd ravaged me with his dick or Dick ravaged me with his tongue, or maybe it was both.. Soon, he was on me, then in me as he writhed and moaned atop my surprisingly hard dick considering the grotesque factor. There is something arousing about being wanted and I allowed myself to be ravaged and exploited (was that a flash?) for what became an hour. He called me a bad boy and spanked my bare ass until he choked me with his dick or was that his name? Then with a final blast of energy, the graying geezer of Todd A/O that got lucky on my “Liz”ard came in spurts on my nubile bare boy’s ass. And one beat later, three cackling queens pulled back a curtain and said, “Dick, time to pay the piper darling. And a flash went off just before the lights went up to reveal all the sin that had taken place at my expense. Kingsley spelled out the painfully obvious truth that crept over me like a used condom. The entire evening at Numbers had been bought and paid for by the graying geezer they called Dick of Todd-A/O fame who had paid three queens a handsome sum and drinks with dinner for an all American boy to be delivered on a plate. I had been officially pimped out and if You-Tube had been around, I’d be a viral porn star by now. I was new to sex and certainly new to life as a whore at somebody else’s expense. Years later, in a drug induced effort to make my way in the world as a martyred whore upon being drummed out of a drug treatment center in San Francisco, I fucked my way up and down Polk Street to line someone else’s coffers while I played victim while secretly loving the exploitation. . Something about being wanted is arousing enough to warrant prostituting for someone else to profit. It has become a theme into my advancing years. Just call it my Lucky Liz factor. As seen in Todd A/O widescreen splendor.

Why I Owe my Life to Ronald Reagan

My story has evolved from the case of an anonymous adoptee to allow me to consider myself to be the direct product of a giant political turn of events that permanently changed the social landscape in California. I am reading a newly published book called The Insanity Offense by E. Fuller Torrey that adequately serves as a historical corrective account of the poli-social climate taking place in California during the early 1970s. From the first moment I was told that I was adopted up to the most recent time I was last in contact with my reunited biological family, I have yearned to understand the circumstances of how I came to be. Mine was not a common "girl gets pregnant too young from high school sweetheart" story.
My mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic in her early adulthood and subsequently shut up into Agnew Insane Asylum, a virtual cuckoo's nest to befit the stereotype. The book traces the story of deinstitutionalization, legislation that ultimately led to my conception, birth and adoption. Governor Ronald Reagan championed a cost-cutting effort to shut down the state's mental health facilities. "Ronald Reagan has frequently been called the father of deinstitutionalization in California..." (Torrey, 42) Under an act named for its authors, Lanterman-Petris-Short, the LPS act moved to close the asylums under the guise of protecting the civil rights of the mentally ill. The authors stipulated that no one should be committed to custody without their consent nor required to take the psych meds that quieted their sick minds. "The 1973 proposal... caused immediate controversy." (Torrey, 45)
The film "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest", with its portrayal of inhumane treatment to mental patients was used to influence opinion and pad the testimonial advocating for the closures.
As a result of the LPS act, the behemoth San Jose institution called Agnew Insane Asylum closed its doors and opened up the floodgates for patients to roam the streets unsupervised and under medicated.” Many discharged patients were placed in rundown boarding houses with little or no supervision." (Torrey, 50)
"As these individuals stopped taking their medications and wandered away from their shabby accommodations, observers noted an increase in the number of mentally ill homeless persons on the streets."(Torrey, 50)

I am not even halfway finished with the book and I am already astounded with chills. It's as if the author is setting the stage for the drama of my birth to occur with my parents as the players. When I was reunited with my biological mother, I learned that she was an ex-patient of Agnew Insane Asylum where she had undergone years of inhumane treatments ranging from medications that all but lobotomized her to ECT shock therapy. When she was filtered with the trickled masses down to the slum-like boarding houses surrounding San Jose State College, she was free to exercise her civil right to refuse treatment which she did sevenfold. I was told she was known to wander from the house, opting not to take her medication leaving her family to wonder if she was still alive for extended periods of time. It was in those first years that the LPS legislation was in action that my sister and I were born in 1971 and 1973 respectively. Our mother had cultivated a regular fling with a drifter she first met in the boarding house who was seeking a respite from an extended drug run. During the years of our conception, the couple had tossed around a plan to marry but after frequent unpredicted episodes of destruction, the drifter i.e. my father, backed out of it. When my sister was born, the authorities wouldn’t let my father near her much less consider him for custody citing his frequent bouts of absenteeism and alcoholic behavior as reasons. My sister was placed into the system, thereby securing my fate before I was born two years later.
My mother was pronounced :”gravely disabled”, a condition evidenced by behavior in which a person, as a result of a mental disorder is likely to come to serious physical harm or serious illness because she is unable to care for her basic needs.”( cpsa-rbha.org/doc)
Based on the limited documentation from my case that I was able to glean from the Santa Clara County Department of Family and Children’s Services, I learned that my adoption occurred just over a year after the date of my birth. When I met my mother and inquired as to the reason, she recalled through tearful flashbacks, an account of the way she was forced to sign away parental rights. The caseworker I spoke to told me she was given the chance to volunteer before the mandate was set in place. “It would have been disastrous” (if she had been allowed to retain custody”, said her family members.

Having discovered the book, I am satisfied at having the next best thing to my own original birth certificate. In this book, I have found direct historical evidence of what had previously been spun to me in wafted anecdotes losing steam through time. The hazy history I harbored in the case of how I came to be has been duly documented as a direct result of deinstitutionalization by Governor Ronald Reagan. It breathes life to a sketchy past and lends credence to my sealed case. In putting the pieces together, my case ceases to be such a puzzle.

Sparkly Blue Eyeshadow, she said

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Michael Thomas Angelo
To: james st. james
Date: May 31, 2009 7:18 AM
Subject: Sparkly blue eyeshadow


Picture it.

September 1997

I had just been released from the Max Factor wing of Cedars-Sinai after a two month stint battling anorexia induced gastrointestinal gangrene. I was 95 lbs and dreamed of reprising my stunted career as a transsexual ingenue of Dragon Talent. It was well past the point of no return on the evening as dawn rode the horizon. But the atmosphere inside the tweaker haven at 7702 Santa Monica Blvd was pitch black. Suddenly you and your minions swooped in with full regalia. The Weho whores and scores of strange dick that populated the place had never seen the likes of your East Coast chutzpah. I was hungry for some glamour, having left the care of my hospice AMA to return to my club-fabulous life. So far, the scattering of tweaked losers weren't worth my efforts. Then you arrived with the models. We migrated toward each other and weaved in and out of each others network for the next three days.
You assumed I was going through the change. I scoffed aghast with disdain. You turned around from where you sat in the front seat of our shared car and said,

"Pardon me, Sweetie, but it was the sparkly blue eyeshadow that threw me off,"

I grumbled under my breath, completely offended but secretly thrilled that you had considered me so. You gave me your card and introduced yourself as James St. James. Based on the timeline of the trajectory you would write about in Disco Bloodbath, it had been one and a half years since Angel had washed up on shores of the Hudson River.
You haggled over the price of Special K with my friend. When Party Monster was released a few years later, I noted with interest the large Ketamine habit you featured in the film, having seen evidence of it first hand that weekend. You gave me a couple of roofies and I drooled into the telephone as I as in a daze, mapped out my return for Robin of Dragon Talent. "I'll be back by November," was all I remember saying before waking up in an alley off of San Vicente behind Don't Panic. It would be representative of my attempt to crawl back to Hollywood before they drummed me right out again.
You had a couple of heroin junkies in tow. Noam (sic) a model doe and another blond, skinny thing were with you. You were staying at West Hollywood Palm Apartments, a fag infested flea bag prefabricated palace off of Santa Monica Blvd. We reconvened one evening before traipsing out. You were full of high handed scorn and swagger, swooping through the hallway with loud goggle eyed takes. I played the scene for high comedy but sensed you were preoccupied.
Do you remember me JSJ? I took your confession that you were a writer as one takes a bullet. It was a painful reminder that I was not cultivating my one true talent, that of a writer. I was living what would become the contents of my memoir from the gutters of glitter.
I hope to see you in San Francisco, this June 9, 2009. You are presenting Radar Superstar at the SF Main Library. Hopefully, this anecdote will spark a note of recognition into the black hole of the past.

Love Michael Thomas Angelo

Tripping Down the Stony End

chapter 1 — updated 06/14/09 —
Upon my graduation and subsequent manumission from an esteemed college education, it was understood that I should make good on the investment. My mother had footed the bill for the entire four year jamboree of cardinal and gold. It was an act carried out oblivious to me. As a kid who grew up with what others deemed as having "everything under the sun" anything less than the cornucopia I consumed was unthinkable. Thus, my years at USC gave credence to its nom de guerre, University of $poiled Children. My mother often joked in between cocktails when she was most lucid that she expected a "return on her investment". Laughter would ensue until the moment had passed but I understood it would behoove me to become what the bon mot spelled.
I was lucky to have a mother whose success made it possible for me to afford such a lavish, lackadaisical lifestyle. She loved me enough to want the best things for me that could be borne from a top notch education.
Therefore, I regarded the sixth day of the fifth month in my fourth and final year of schooling with the guarded grace of a hot air balloon carrying an anvil in its basket. I wanted to soar freely but a pestering thought kept me on my toes just above ground. I knew that graduation would open my future to new opportunities of which I had no leads. In my misguided attempt at a search for direction, I fluttered about fruitlessly. Seeking a high ranked Hollywood assistant job, I sent hackneyed letters to every casting director in the CSA directory that were subsequently tossed into the circular file. I never received one response from the hundreds of letters I individually addressed and stamped. I shudder in hindsight to think of my wasted, misguided efforts. Why was I left without a hand in the wind? I attribute it to the manic program of extra-curriculars I deemed more important than the impending future. In the months swirling around graduation, my time was divided among the requisite running routine I completed above all else. I ran 9 miles minimum no matter what the expense, a cost I was willing to absorb at any rate. This left little time for me to be present on campus as every day required my jettisoning off to West Hollywood for my run of the loop. I was also trying to balance a commitment to act in my friend's play that was running in a theatre off of Sunset Blvd. In drag, no less. As for vocational goals, I had my sights set on what I understood as le mode de rigeur of Hollywood. I surmised that people fell into the entertainment industry by virtue of its magnetic allure through the city. There was no way to escape it as it seemed everyone who was anybody was connected to the industry. Those without a hand in it need not be reckoned, with, I presumed. Thus, I deemed it inevitable that affiliation with the industry was at hand. I was determined to take my best shot at making the most of this reality. The summer before my senior year, I had adopted a new pastime of dressing up in drag to socialize at the gay bars I would frequent. Dressing up added an extra needed layer of substance ta the practice of barhopping that had soon lost its luster after the novelty of turning 21 wore off. It was easy for me to masquerade as a girl in drag because my youthful features were able to appear duly female with only meager application of street makeup. Soon, I had taken this sch-tick beyond the campy costumes created by the cunty clowns I cavorted with. My coming of age into this identity evolved coinciding with the advent of a new talent agency that would take Hollywood by storm within the next couple of years. The first time I saw an ad from Dragon Talent posted in one of the bar rags was during the hottest of mid summer days. I read the ad while parked on the side of the road in a permit restricted area of West Hollywood. A tag hung from the windshield of my Blazer indicating I was allowed to be there. It was the next best thing to actually living in West Hollywood. Reading the ad, I imagined myself enjoying the freedom to dress in drag without having to commute from campus. I would definitely be checking out this agency. It sounded a cattle call through the community for serious queens to come and audition. The first chance I could get my act together, I dressed up and made an impromptu drop in surprise appearance at the Garage bar, a trendy club in East Hollywood promoted by Robin Ezmeralda "Camel-toe" Harrington, the proprietor of Dragon Talent. Dressed in a hot pink zipper onesie from Contempo and my signature black strappy stilettos, I walked directly up to Robin and introduced my stage name. She invited me to come to her office the next business day. The following Monday, I appeared before her in my every day disco clothes to audition for representation After reading a few lines from a side script, she prefaced what she was about to say with tenuous tiptoe. "I hope what I'm about to say, doesn't offend you," she began. My heart sank and I felt a gulp in my gut. What was she about to tell me? I dared not imagine. She continued.. I'm only telling you this because I also underwent something like it, and I understand... but if I am going to represent you, the reality is that ..... (here's where I died on spot. I could feel the reflection beaming from my forehead actually shining like the top of the Chrysler building. My pores were awash in derricks of oil. It was enough to overwhelm the little rice paper things from Crabtree & Evelyn that were packaged like rolling papers. And then she gonged me. "Something must be done about your ahem, little problem." I wanted to get up and run away forever right there. I was horrified and more embarrassed than I had ever recalled being. No one had ever come right out and declared that the emperor had no clothes. She was not only talking about the elephant in the room, she was basically making it the focal point of decor. The cat was out of the proverbial bag and being drowned in the river. She must have noticed my horror and segued seamlessly into a solution. Handing me a card that she promised would end the lifetime I had spent suffering at the the expense of my skin, there was nothing I could do now except try and humor her. Any chance of my return to bliss of denial was nil. I had to accept that I had a problem beyond my ability to manage. I would call the number on the card. In plain black italicized font against a white card stock, read, Accent on Skin. I didn't know until I met Victoria and Laura, the Russian Yentas of their North Robertson boutique that the accent was a double entendre referring to the thick Soviet sound that filtered everything they said. Just as we associate the Vietnamese with manicurists and the Brtis with their nannies, it is fitting that the Russians shall be known by their esthiticians. Within one month of my first visit with Victoria, my skin flaunted the vestige of a virgin. My pores had achieved glasnost at last, finally opening up to assuage a lifetime of festering acne. Victoria reassured me that the mask of scars I was leaving the shop with would heal to perfection with my patience.
When I made my debut back into drag upon the dawning of my new face, I glowed beaming.
Robin sent me off on a slew of ready auditions right off the bat. Gender bending had reached a new high in popularity among the culture at large. The Crying Game had just produced immense box office smash and global gossip-mongering grew with the spoiler alert of all time. The outcry resulting in "Dil has a dick" laid way for an otherwise impervious public to take notice of a theme once relegated to the berdache ballrooms of Paris is Burning.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert followed suit with a bigger global impact and inspired a new addition to the lexicon. To be "priscillaesque" meant to dress ornately and divinely. (urbandictionary.com) The American counterpart "Too Wong, Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar" starred big name beefcake in the lead roles as superstar drag divas and smashed another barrier of gender roles. The trendiest talk show topic would feature New York costume clad kids in drag trotted out in tandem with Rupaul's just released anthem. "You Better Work," was the number one hit on her "Supermodel of the World" album and it seemed every queen was intent on doing so. I was cast in an independent film playing a typecast role of an "is he or isn't she" character. It was shot the week before my graduation.
That is why the call I received two days before my scheduled appearance in cap and clown regalia was appropriate for the storm that surrounded my map to stardom. Robin had set me up for an audition with a popular HBO sitcom, Arliss. The episode would feature a female character to be revealed as male upon advancing the plot. Another is he or isn't she? I was practicing with my fax of sides at the same time my mother was packing to come attend my grandiose graduation. I explained the minor adjustment to my agenda that would be taking place on that day. "It's a very important audition," I prevailed. It's for a sitcom. A cable sitcom, I stressed the cadence of each syllable. My mother simply sighed in surrender. What could she do about this acting career undertaken as an action of my adulthood? The ensuing episode that would take place rivaled the fake one I would act in out in the casting director's office at London/Stroud.
After the cap and gown was retired back to Jostens, I donned a lavender silk shirt dress that I had bought at Contempo to debut at my 22nd birthday celebration the previous September. Steed and I had rocked it at Trader Vic's of Beverly Hills bedecked in girl garb joyful at having passed the hetero litmus test by going undetected. The same look would be appropriate for this situation that required me to look the most real. Applying my piece de resistance of glamazon extensions to my hair, I was good to go after I had the stilettos and simple street makeup on. But it was my gams that got me a call back. Sitting in the chair with bare legs peeking out from my skirt that sat just above my mid thigh, I noticed my visible back quad muscles leading the execution of my appearance. I looked like a fit girl model. The marathon endurance I had suffered on the tree-lined tracks bordering Weho ultimately paid off, I was certain. I sensed that Lisa, the 30-something female directing my audition wished she looked equally as good as I did. Her partner Catherine warmed to me as well. After I misread the lines, both ladies gently guided me into another interpretation. Had they not been interested, I would have been ushered out after the first reading,but their persistence paid off and I was asked to return for a call back.
The late audition time had created a logisitical conflict as I would not have time to drive all the way back to campus to change in order to make it to Century City in time for the party my mother had planned. I had no choice except to bring my evening attire with me to change at my mother's hotel, the Century Plaza on Avenue of the Americas. I entered the air conditioned hotel lobby dressed in the hooker chic starlet garb that won me fanfare at the audition. I carried a hanger holding my clothes over my shoulder. As I sashayed indoors, I was used to the head turning that would take place. Greeting my mother and her brother having drinks in the bar, I retrieved the key and went upstairs to change without a word. My mom reported that the only thing she could do was point me out to her brother, "Tom, take a look at your niece" she purportedly said. I believe even my boorish uncle was impressed.

Thus began the lighthearted anecdote that became of my first post college gig. I wish the attitude that recounted this optimistic event carried on for the rest of my trials but it would not.
I toiled at Starbucks all summer in between accepting ludicrously low wage and undervalued positions with charlatans of the entertainment industry. I had been placed by an employment service at a child's casting arm that turned out to be a thinly disguised sham designed to bilk eager parents from their cash. I was horrified at the scads of stage parents I saw lined up clutching pictures in the same hand they used to braid Polly's hair while wiping Michael's mouth with the other. Squalling, wailing, tearful toddlers were the mainstay of the little office suite in West LA. The staff was akin to the type one might find logging hours at the local 7-11 or Dairy Queen After two weeks of eavesdropping on the sales recruiter try and convince a cold called sheet of parents to give up their credit card numbers, I was asked not to return. The only positive result that became of the job happened a year .later when I was working in my last gig before they drummed me right out of Hollywood at the actor's trade paper, Backstage West. It had not yet merged with sexier Dramalogue. A group of artists had blown the whistle on the shady sham and the reporter doing the story was hungry for anecdotes. I regaled him with detailed damnations of the dishonesty I saw dealt on the derrieres of LA's little dolls. What was even more disappointing is I had painstakingly planned my first outfit into the corporate foray, a hot pair of Dolce & Gabana pinstriped tapered slacks and an equally couture top garnered from deep within the Beverly Center. I had banked on a job that would require such vestments. My outfit cost more than the combined salary of the entire office staff. My coworkers wore jeans and oversize sweatshirts one had stained with Slurpee. My big money, big fail safe dreams of riding that Trojan family network were fading. These are the circumstances that led me to accept the first offer of a real job I received for other employment. I considered anything not behind a retail counter to be a real job. I was called into interview at petite talent agency in the wealthy Wilshire corridor off of Sunset. A few miles due East on the same street would have dropped me near the ritzier environs of the Beverly Hills Hotel and larger, more glamorous agencies. But this address on mid Wilshire seemed grand enough based on the marble floored lobby. A short, plump albeit seemingly jovial man with tight curls and Truman Capote glasses asked me a handful of inane questions between bouts of twittering mirth. I didn't detect it at the time as I was often oblivious to attention afforded to me from attraction, but this man, introduced as Craig Dorfman or Dorkman was flirting with me. The paucity of questions he asked me that ranged from the availability of my hours to the salary I would settle upon were undoubtedly the same questions he had asked to another young, pretty boy auditioning for this job just last week. As I knew the bottom of the salary range for an agent's assistant position to be starting around $350 a week, I figured, "what the hell" when the job was offered to me at $250 to be paid under the table so as "to avoid taking taxes out", presented as an added bonus. I was happy to have a job at last and with the added bonus of a bona fide industry spot. I had toiled for no pay and even less respect in the utility room of a talent agency one shade less shabby in an office building on Sunset and Doheny. I had taken that thankless servile post after answering an ad for suckers in the back of the student paper, the Daily Trojan. My fate served me right since the ad was designed to appeal directly to someone blinded by the implied hint of celebrity delivered between the lines. I was a goner the first time I saw the words Hollywood and talent agency on the same line. I dialed them up and secured myself as dedicated doormat for the two years until my graduation. The skills I put to use at Don Buchwald and Associates were created to weed out the chaff. If I stuck to it, I could write my own ticket. The same sentiment is echoed in a Devil Wears Prada although that movie was barely a book back then. The first time I met Buchwald, I took him to be a figurehead at best.During our introduction, seemingly fascinated by my few tattoos, he leaned in closer and asked, "Is your tongue pierced? Huh? What about your dick?" This was nothing compared to the way I was treated by Buchwald's bitchtress daughter, a hormonal heifer in high heels. Julia was the JAP-de-jour who woke up one day and decided she wanted to be an agent. Once he enlisted her as a junior she wasted no time tearing around the office in custom Italian suits that favored a little on the baggy side. She bellowed and barked orders with a tone ranging from shrill to raggedly caustic in the way it cut through several layers of the sound barrier. Subbing on the phone lines one day during the receptionist's lunch break was a practice I nearly perished under. I was thrust upon the lines without training and fumbled through a botched transfer to JAP's office. "Line 60," she screamed. "Sixty... Sixteee" she screeched. All I could think of was New York's club Jackie 60 but I was sure she had not been. She called into the universe for the return of her former assistant. "Jill! I need Jill. Where is JILL?" she demanded. When Jill worked for Julia she had taken advantage of the access she had to the video editing lab to create her own anchor reel of broadcast journalism footage The overachieving annoying Asian had just accepted the ensuing job at an out-of-state television station. I, on the other hand was spending equal time failing to advance above being Julia's bootlicker.
Wearing linens to work earned me a slap on the wrist from the British lead assistant as she chimed, "No knickers for the nothings".
On the other end of the office, I reported to the only one in this "so close, we're a family" unit of neurotic narcissists to represent writers. Tony had a long Italian name that ended in vowels and a sex appeal that I couldn't help fantasizing about. He starred in several of my own private bedroom fantasies although they usually took place in the company's men's room. I wamted him to reupholster my own casting couch and hold my career in the wake of his climax. Oh, how I yearned to be seduced by a sleazoid talent agent. "Stick w'mee baby, and I'll make you a star, pronounced st-ah," as the fable goes. Tony brought in books he instructed me to xerox page by page on the inferior copy machine. The big behemoth required a programming license to operate and was wont to break down without notice. I likened my experience to Jane Fonda's encounter with the poltergeist in her Xerox room during 9 to 5. She was threatened to have her first name replace her last. Copying pages out of scripts and books that would be used by ungrateful actors to rehearse lines were largely unappreciated. As I filed the client's head shots away, I cursed their careers. Actors didn't talk to people like me in the office. I was invisible and had to endure my shifts never reaching the social stature enjoyed by the clique of Entertainment Industry Assistants as they called themselves. Acceptance into that group required a job serving one of the city's many tortured talent scouts. No, I wasn't cool enough for the comparative practice of chewing someones food. On the off chance that an actor would come into the office, as was the case with Seth Green one day, his manager and agent would engross themselves into a heated negotiation while thousands of dollars potentially earned by him hung in the balance. The lead assistant on that project, a plucky blond named Peggy, (who could never be described as pretty, only pert) frantically flew from her desk to butt me out of the copy machine's path. A pile of papers fell to the floor. "Move, fucking move. I mean, it's a major contract. He has a fucking major contract," she wailed. "And look at him," she motioned to the bored 21 year old redhead transfixed in our direction. I tried not to think about the six figure salary shuffling through my fingers as we stapled it together. I was more interested in what a six figure star does while his minions mull over his fate. He had lost interest in the dykish duo's deliberations to focus his quizzical gaze on me. He stood behind a pole and peeped out with one eye as I made grand, sweeping gestures and loud goggle eyed takes for his benefit. I was wearing one of my infamous ensembles, a few thrown together pieces that I imagined others thought I pulled off as effortlessly as a Parisian garcon ,would. Wasn't I wearing a French sailor's scarf? It was queerly Querelle. Tony, the book agent, (sounds like a gambler from New Jersey) previously intent on writing me off through eyes that looked through me, all of a sudden had an epiphany one day after I gave him my impression of that week's scandal, the Hugh Grant and hooker debacle. The incident with the Englishman and black street hooker was on the tips of everyone's tongue and the agents on Sunset that day wanted to know my gay take. Was Divine Brown a transsexual? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Suddenly, I was EF Hutton. I have a quick rundown social critique on what I knew of the Santa Monica Blvd ho stro. When my five minutes of fame was up and the agents went back to their world, Tony lingered and remarked that I had come across as "smart" and on point, despite my flouncy, feminine shock appealing wardrobe. It was one of those things that made me go h'mmm for all of 30 seconds until I concluded that it was not my fault that I was so misunderstood. Case closed.
With this dodgy bank of pseudo experience on my back, I took the job at Alliance Talent. It seemed to be a natural progression since I hadn't perfected any trade-savvy skills, like the ones achieved interning at a movie magazine, an opportunity I had passed up.
I started the job during the last week of August and by September, I was chummy enough with the three person office staff to feel comfortable accepting a copy of the Broadway hit Rent soundtrack as my birthday gift. I began to live the Kevin Spacey film, Swimming with Sharks. Its portrayal of an abused assistant to a talent agent featured scenes that could have been lifted right out of my life. When I first took post at the front desk, I was wide eyed and eager to learn the industry from the ground up. I was duly paying my dues and putting up with the weeding process I had heard so much about. But then it became clear that no matter what I did for Craig, it would never be enough. He had very strict rules about who he would accept calls from on the telephone. If I deviated from the list and put a call through from someone that was not included, there would be hell to pay. If he told me he wanted his calls held except for Stella, Sally and Hank I would only patch the respective calls through. Somebody else, other than the three privleged few would always call, thus presenting a nightmarish dilemma. If I interrupted him, I wouldn't need the intercom to hear his rage. "Why didn't you put her through?" he would snarl. It was futile to remind him of the previous directive he extolled that caused the slip-up. It was like working in an alternate universe where the carpets were riddled with eggshells and no one knew where they stood on any given day or any given moment. No matter what the situation was, everything from me failing to place his daily Variety in the right spot on his desk to me chatting too amicably with Mink Stole, my favorite client, he would abuse me. I was seeing a therapist on a weekly basis and had confided to her about the severe treatment I was enduring. She pointed out all of the emotional baggage and PTSD I was carrying.
The day I dodged a crystal paper-weight that hit the wall was the afternoon I drudged up the courage to quit. "I've already replaced you, You miserable little punk. You worthless, nothing little piece of shit," he said through clenched teeth and spittle I was in tears by this time, sensitive as I was. After I deposited the meager final pittance into my account, the bank returned the check. The bastard had stopped payment on it.
I knew a cute attorney I had met at the gym who would order his coffee from me in my line at Starbucks. I took him on as counsel to write a threatening letter to CD.
So, since I had graduated, none of what I had been told about my charmed life was coming true. I has been raised with the entitlements and sense of understanding that things would always work out for me. It was reiterated repeatedly in college everywhere I went on campus. It was naturally assumed that the big money parents shelled out to put their kids through such a revered school would pay off in dividends. The far reaching safety network of the Trojan Family Network would garner me a job. And on and on went the blanket statements. By the time I had come through the experience at Alliance, my disillusionment led to increasing disenfranchisement. I regressed further away from the status-quo as a self defense mechanism stemming from my inability to catch the brass ring. I was beginning to realize that LA was not like other mainstream settings where a degree like mine could actually make a difference to someone's career. Here, the bag of tricks I carried was either too ubiquitous to be special or misapplied in an industry that lacked scruples. I feared that my degree was being weighed as just another dime-a-dozen the way every third fag in the West Hollywood weight room undoubtedly had a porn contract. From where I currently stand today, I can clearly see why I was led down the ill conceived path and crash landed so many times. I can see why I am deemed a disappointment to some members of my family.
I didn't have such enlightened thinking when I went back to the drawing board at 23. As my disbelief and frustration mounted into what somebody wrote off as my "growing pains", I sought solace in a parallel social life peppered with drag, dick and drugs and attributed it to my alter-ego.


Stay tuned... Watch as I begin to lose my marbles... Upcoming chapters...
by Michael Thomas Angelo
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Hopelessly Devoted to Danny

In February 1987, I was at what would be the lowest point of my teenage years. Not yet having come into the rewards of puberty, I was still sporting excess baby fat, eyeglasses that occupied over half my face, a haircut that epitomized my self esteem in the way it covered my eyes and a gentle demeanor that teachers described as sensitive. The detour I took in 7th grade as a result of my failure to speak up stemmed from a fear that I would offend either of my parents. By silencing my voice, I became a pawn of my parent's guessing games and ended up suffering a watershed year of my development. The mean spirited kids from my new class at St. Mel's of Sacramento took tremendous joy in making me an example of early hate crimes.
I was used to the kids from my familiar former school, St. Louise calling me fag. The effect they had on my self esteem had lessened over the two years I had attended school there. My feelings were long since callused against the wrath of hate.
But dropping into the culture of established snobbery among the urchins of Fair Oaks, all Christian values of "love thy neighbor" were seemingly forgotten. Walking into Mrs. Tompkins classroom on my first day of school, I took an empty seat in the last desk of the furthest row. It had a sticker with my given name on it. Michael Angelo, read the magic marker. I raised my hand and told the teacher in my most polite tone that "I preferred to be called Tommy". This set off a wave of laughter from the other rows. What had I said to spurn such a reaction? I thought. By recess, and for months afterward, the busiest bodies of the class took delight in explaining how I had dug my own grave upon uttering that first sentence. Apparently, I had outed myself as a fag simply by declaring the words, "I prefer Tommy". On another occassion, later in study hall, after running out of paper, I asked my seatmates for another piece. "I thought I had had plenty, I explained. Suddenly, a group of boy bruisers buzzed around my ear mocking me in lisping tones, "Do you have pleeennnntyyyy Tommy? Do you have P-L-E-N-T-Y?, they whispered hot breaths into my ear. As it was explained to me, the word "plenty" was another red flag that I was a fag. According to the 7th graders, my vocabulary was grounds for ridicule.
Circling among the fray, my cousin Erin had been my favorite summertime pal in the dog days of Sacramento heat. We spent whatever free time my dad allowed me by hanging out between his two turquoise swimming pools in the brick encrusted back yard. A waterfall cascaded from a gazebo covered hot tub to a shallow wading pool over a rock laden edge to the bigger, deeper pool. Erin wrecked more than one bathing suit from trying to slide down a cement chute, no matter how well we both knew the probable outcome. Erin was the one who recruited me to join the cast of the local community theater in suburban Sacramento. The production was largely a product of the public schools. My private schooling had kept me apart from other like activities. When I first heard about it, my closest confidante and only contact outside of school was Diana, the most exotic of the three nannies my Dad hired to mind me that year. Her roots harked from the sequins and stale liquor inherent in the lounges of Bobby McGees and other stripmall pickup joints. It may have been Vegas on the cheap, but it was the closest exposure to show business I would find in Sacramento's square mileage. Diana did wonders for my development as a future fag. I appreciated that she left her subscription to Playgirl discreetly covered in the brown paper wrap it was mailed in. Sometimes she would be reading it when she picked me up from school. Of course, I feigned disinterest. Diana was hired right around my 13th birthday and presented me with a gift of Shirley Maclaine's autobiography. Shirley was on the cover dressed up as Charity Hope Valentine complete with heart shaped tattoo.
Diana recognized my affinity for the genre of dramatic arts and nurtured its blossoming. By the time I went to bed the night I met her, I was armed with a list of films to "must see". This was why she was the best suited to share in my enthusiasm at joining the cast of Grease. Upon picking me up from the crowded warehouse after my first rehearsal, she said, "a star is born" on our way to the car.
Weekend rehearsals were coveted as much as they were loathed on my schedule. I painstakingly planned my outfits to alternate every other weekend, lest my limited collection of oversized Generra be recognized. Generra, the Uber-trendy 1980s label was a result of my mother's sympathetic savvy. I considered it a gift because if it wasn't for her cool factor, I would have been a leper.
When my dad began to shuttle me back and forth from rehearsals, I was horrified. I was hell bent on keeping a low profile among my new theater crowd. I knew no names and no one knew me. I didn't want to ruin my chances of social acceptance by being seen exiting from my father's white pickup truck. It wasn't bad enough that the truck was emblazoned with our last name so everyone would know he was an electrician. "Angelo Electric" was the bane of my childhood on many levels.
Once I made the mistake of letting my dad know that Meredith, the most popular of the Pink Ladies lived three doors down from our house on Big Canyon Lane. My dad pestered me to no end about approaching the teen queen about carpooling, a possibility that sent chills down my back. "Why can't you just go up and knock on their door>" my dad would say while driving by her house. "They're never home," I lied. I would say anything to avoid the awful inevitable. Meredith played Rizzo, queen of the Pink Ladies. Her name was worth total star billing on the marquee of our social scale. My anonymous post amid the cattle of the chorus wasn't enough to bear consequence. Plus, she had intimate relations with the director. I once watched as he crucified her for forgetting to wear her Pink Ladies jacket to one rehearsal. "Well maybe you don't want to be a Pink Lady," he seethed through spittle for the benefit of the entire company. He dangled her star status above her like a candy that could be taken away at any moment. I had once heard Meredith liked to get "fried on acid", a practice that I imagined had something to do with the way she teased her bangs to attain their crunchy texture. Meredith was a tormented teen and a source of great mystery. I could never have gathered the gumption to enter her realm, lest she turn my head to stone.
When I wasn't being scuttled to and fro in forced participation of rehearsing crowd scenes, I sat in silent observation of the company's teenage boys. Cast to make up the student body of Rydell High, the older boys stood out like rebels of their own cause. I listened with fascination to their stories of sexual hijinks and scores. They were cast to exude the sexuality spawned by Jimmy Dean, icon of his era. They were to make up the T-Birds teenage motorcycle gang bandits.
As the show's debut neared on the calendar, rehearsals became more familiar. Soon, I had begun to recognize regulars and put names to faces and musical numbers. These cast mates were the friends of my fantasies. It could almost be said that I was one of the group if no one had asked them. For instance, if I didn't speak outright to anyone, I could linger in the background and vicinity of my favorite wanna-be friends. Like the cutest find of my focus, a boy named Mitch. I imagined him to be about three years my senior. Always the center of attention amid scurrying sidekicks, I had heard him boast about being cast as "the gay guy" in another show. While regaling the new nanny, Olive with my stories of Grease. I quickly adopted the tale as my own by recounting the experience like it had happened to me instead of Mitch. Olive had been a bobby-soxer in her day but was now a born again Christian of a certain age. After Diana skipped town over my Christmas holiday back to Seattle, my dad had hired Olive to take her place. She claimed to have once worked for Ernesto and Julio Gallo, the wine kingpins. Olive clearly suspected my future fag tendencis and did everything she could to scare the fear of eternal damnation into my act. "If he wanted to cast you as gay, he must have seen something..." she warned. Taking Mitch's reality as my own thrilled me to no end and my heart soared to new heights.
Backstage on opening night, I snapped photos of the most attractive members of the cast. Because my efforts at recording my cousin Erin dressed in Beauty School Dropout garb were to no avail, I finished out the role like purloining paparazzi. I had watched the guy cast as Danny Zuko belt out Travolta's tunes like the son of Sinatra. The number Hopelessly Devoted to You was to serve as soundtrack and mantra to my most tangible of crushes. The Latin-like lover of my first Broadway show looked like Rudolpho Valentino and amassed as much fanfare I surreptitiously tried to snap his photo only to learn upon developing the role that he had been in on my crush the whole time. Smiling at me from the other side of the high gloss paper, I translated it as evidence of his devotion. Then, I tucked the photo into my album for posterity. Coming upon the long forgotten photos after two decades of neglect, I decided to dispose of all the forgotten faces holding fast to the dreambeau Danny. My most favorite T-Bird and first homosexual crush has been captured for eternity. Danny, my first male role model of the stage, Danny, my first real homo crush of the teenage years, Danny Zuko, my greased lightning rod. I've always been hopelessly devoted to you.