Dear Lola,
Well, it has been a few years, hasn't it? I was very surprised and grateful to find your letter in my box. Please thank Cheryl for me when you see her online for giving you my address. Ten years have passed since our correspondence. That's a lot of pantyhose and dynel under the bridge. If that's a recent Halloween picture you still look wonderful. We are getting into that Jane Russell time of life. At least, the Jane Russell of my youth, shilling for Playtex in that full-figured way. I shudder to think what Jane looks like now. Anyhow, you can see from my picture that I've managed to stave off the worst of middle-age through careful dieting, exercise and strong whalebone corsetry with the emphasis, of course, on the latter. |
Actually, the only real exercise I get is traveling from my computer at work to my computer at home. Every so often I imagine myself on a stairmaster, employing a strenuous regimen of physical culture designed to turn the flabby pecs of age into something resembling a modest but pert bustline. This fantasy always hangs up when I see myself at the gym, surrounded by spandex and the clank of weights and explaining my exercise goals to some hyperactive muscular guy wearing sweats and a pained expression. I make a cup of tea and the fever passes. To answer those age old questions: I'm still single, still dressing (is the Pope Polish?) and yes, I finally have gone out on occasion. Mostly on our sanctioned holiday but once or twice in the off-season for special events like the Duds and Spuds Charity Ball. I even met some other TVs in the area who, alas, have since moved away or given up drag for an interest in the Men's Movement. A curious but fitting defection I guess. In a way, the society of tvs, our bugle-beaded demi-monde, is a precursor to the Men's Movement or at least the Lady's Auxiliary of it. Though we would never get into a boasting match, (unless we're claiming Victory at Stonewall like ancient civil war veterans), it's really been TVs that have championed sensitivity to our femme side she said flipping her curls haughtily. You're right about the internet changing everything for the subculture. Gone are the days of scouring the back pages of Tapestry for like-minded souls and then waiting by the P.O. Box for the response that never comes. E-mail, the web, the IRC, how quickly these things have descended on us and the whole culture and with a magisterial hand swept away letters and photographs that you can touch and then file away under the bed. We had precious little history before what with our periodic purges and retrenchments. Now the paper trail has evaporated entirely. Hit the delete key and an entire world disappears into the ether. God, I'm so professorial in my dotage. Forgive me. Next time I'll talk of nothing but big hair. Charlotte *************************************************************** Lola,
Received your e-mail last week and forgive me if I don't respond in kind. When I write e-mail, I feel like the phone company is breathing down my neck and it turns the rhythm of my prose into choppy little pun-filled memos. Plus, I can't end with my trademark matchbook artist's rendering of the current state of Charlotte which as you can see still resembles a big-haired runway slut. This is the art I've been trying for years to get my life to imitate without much success though on my last Halloween outing (interesting word) I wore all three of my brunette wigs at once. Honey, I was stylin'. And if I wasn't exactly the loveliest queen at the ball I had the hair height advantage over all the pretty girls by at least 6 inches. Some day, when shrimps learn to whistle, I'd like to host a queenly ball with one of those carnival yardsticks posted at the entrance: "You must have hair this high to join this party." Halloween was a spoonful of fun. As the only heterosexual tv in this one queen town I made common cause with my gay sisters once again. There is a Cinderella aspect to this kind of event, the dowdy heterosexual in his grubby plaid shirts doing double duty as the tight-sweatered belle of the ball and his own fairy godmother and then moving easily among the revelers as if she shared their station and desires. It's the kind of posing I enjoy up to a point. As you know, I am required by law to describe in brief detail what I wore. Tight, very tight designer jeans, (part of my ex-wife's legacy), black leotard with longline black bra beneath, 3 inch black pumps, and for warmth, my own non-vented wool blazer which gave me a sort of upscale middle-aged madam look. Arriving at the bar nervously I walked straight into the unisex bathroom area to check my teeth for lipstick stains. Okay, so far. Traversed the bar in provocative steps to check for signs of life. There were a few dragsters about. In particular a very comely young fellow named Carl whom I briefly engaged in conversation. He gave me encouragement and laid me low in a single stroke, "You're very well preserved." I turned away shortly after that and proceeded to get pickled. That's a falsehood. My drinking was severely proscribed by the knowledge that a simple pee would involve shoving aside four layers of fabric, transvesting myself of fanny padder, tights and leotard and jeans. I resolved to be moderate. The place was not jumping though the music throbbed like a headache and tv monitors, sometimes four abreast, relayed music videos for a drag audience. Nancy Sinatra's Boots figured heavily as well as a true female impersonator video which though novel was not enough to hold my interest for very long. Two more "girls" arrived and my attempts at conviviality were similarly rebuffed, perhaps because my indecision about whether to adopt the femme persona left me in a disconcerting middle ground. I tried my best to evince an aging party girl impersonation but my male voice, unvarnished by effeminacy, crept out of my bewigged head like a bad tenant. The bar was slowly draining and I figured that the action must be at the brand X gay bar. I drove four blocks to brand x and parked, I realized later, too far away. Next to me, in a beat up compact with Guatemalan plates a pair of guys grinned out at me as I took off nervously across the parking lot. Brand x was jumping. Unfortunately the place was also low-ceilinged, overcrowded, dark and filled with an air of desperate celebration that seems endemic to gay bars in the post-AIDS era. Curiously, the favored femme role was fifties beehive bombshell. Mean leather-jacketed molls with big tornadoes of lacquered, cotton candy hair roamed in impenetrable cliques, moving from one corner of the room to the other like draggy Siamese quintuplets. In the dark corners, in sour solitude, sat the paunchy middle-aged TVs in their wash and wear Jabba the Hut drag. No attempt at copping an attitude here, just a Halloween night out in a favorite frock with dashed high hopes and a gin and tonic for solace. Of those in my age group, a very small category, I was the most fetching but in this crowded cavern it was moot beauty indeed. Carl had migrated to brand x as well and we exchanged smiles as I waited in line for a drink that never arrived. A small Spanish guy in his twenties passed by and threw an arm around my waist like a lasso but I kept walking and he let me slip away. Twice more we encountered each other before he finally asked me my name. "Charlotte. What's yours?" I said after a long pause during which I plotted my polite exit. He said something and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. It was disturbing because his eyes had gone dead with drink, leaving only his stony libido to light the way. I was afraid an impolitic rejection might result in something unpleasant in the parking lot but he watched me walk away, not in the direction of the bathroom and seemed to understand he wasn't my type. The encounter did serve to focus my attention on what I was doing there. And what had I been doing out on the previous Saturday? I wasn't in drag that night but had gone out to find what I had hoped would be the big Halloween bash. Alas, the BIG celebration had happened the night before a bartender told me but there was a drag show coming up at midnight. I hung around like a ghostly professor and watched a troupe of young drag queens lipsynch disco songs. It was mildly diverting. And here I was on Halloween night performing the very same role: The Invisible Professor in Drag. The sort of role you might expect Fred MacMurray to play. I couldn't pass as a girl but I could certainly give Fred a run for his money. Though, as far as I know, he was never given to wearing chokers. The chances for conversation were slimmer here than in the first bar. Finding a person to begin opening remarks to was near impossible given the hostile armored drag divisions, the bullet-riddled music, the chasm of age and the inviolable isolation of the solitary queens. My costume afforded me no instant insider status. I was just another oddity in a wig without a support group to give me safe harbor. I left. As I hurried across the parking lot I watched a cop driving by turn his head to look at me, a bewigged night creature, momentarily vulnerable out in the open air while it hustled from cavern to car. When I reached my car the Guatemalans were still there. They grinned and I grinned. And then the driver rolled his window down and asked me if I had any jumper cables. So the night ended with a jumpstart. The good samaritan in drag, high haired Hannah, fastening the big clips to pos+ and neg- while the rescued Guatemalans grinned and the streetlights of Pocatello illuminated the parking lot and blotted out the stars. Charlotte |