Almost exactly twenty years ago this month, I was taking these photos on a Sunday afternoon in winter, when I hoped for empty industrial spaces that evoked the garages of Herb Ritts and a man named Fred holding onto a couple of tires. It was freezing cold, but something impelled me not to waste any more time. I understood on some level that I had to capture the magic of the last few months of my twenties. Even then, I felt the tug of age on a gay man’s body, the way time tears away at the very things that would make it necessary to stay even marginally attractive. The majority of my thoughts were that I didn’t mind aging if I was more or less happy in my life, and if I wasn’t happy in my life, then not aging certainly wouldn’t change that. Bottom line: I was contentedly resigned. 

That would ebb and flow differently over the years, and now that the years are piling upon one another faster and faster, thanks to my own perception of time after going over the middle-age hump, I find pockets of space where I look back at the person I used to be. 

Now you know you’re a cute little heartbreaker
You know you’re a sweet little lovemaker
Hey

I wanna take you home
I won’t do you no harm, no
You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine
Oooh, foxy lady

Andy said this is the song that presented itself in his mind when he first saw me walk across a crowded bar floor – ‘Foxy Lady’ by Jimi Hendrix. I wasn’t even aware that he was there or watching, so I could not have been putting on a show for him. It was his first impression, coupled with a mental assessment of ‘Bitchy queen‘. He’s usually spot-on in his initial readings of people. Foxy and bitchy and everything-but-nice ~ and I won’t pretend that wasn’t me way back when. 

I see you down on the scene
You make me wanna get up and scream

I’ve made up my mind
I’m tired of wasting all my precious time
You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine
Foxy lady

I’m gonna take you home
I won’t do you no harm, no
You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine
Ooh, foxey lady

Here I come, baby
Comin’ to get ya
Foxy Lady

Some nights I can still summon that spirit and energy and attitude, some days too, if I work hard enough at it. Mind over body at this point, and the latter is becoming slower and slower to follow. For ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale’ I channeled what it was like to inhabit the body of a man on the verge of thirty – and what once felt impossibly ancient now feels impossibly young. How were we ever so old, and ever so young, all at the same time?

One of the dangers in presenting a project from twenty years ago is the inevitable comparisons that crop up. I must remind myself that, ‘Comparison is the ultimate thief of joy.’ Words worth remembering and honoring. Would you switch your mind and body so as to maximize when they were at their best? I’d rather not risk it – the way we age is designed in the way it’s meant to unfold. Fighting that has its fun, but is always a battle that can only be lost. 

Right now, I’m looking back at these photos of me at the age of 29 and I’m mildly amused, lightly impressed, and mostly grateful for having had the youth not everyone is afforded. 

A favorite scene from ‘Schitt’s Creek’:

• Moira Rose: I am suddenly overwhelmed with regret. It’s a new feeling for me, and I don’t find it at all pleasurable.
• Stevie Budd: You regret that embarassing photos of you aren’t online?
• Moira Rose: No, I regret that they’re lost. They were the one perfect memorial to who I once was. And I should’ve appreciated those firm round mammae and callipygian ass while I had them.
• Stevie Budd: If you’re talking about your body, uh… I think you still look amazing.
• Moira Rose: Then allow me to offer you some advice: Take a thousand naked pictures of yourself now. You may currently think, “Oh, I’m too spooky.” Or, “Nobody wants to see these tiny boobies.” But, believe me, one day you will look at those photos with much kinder eyes and say, “Dear God, I was a beautiful thing!”
• Stevie Budd: Will I?
• Moira Rose: Mm-hm. Oh, and make sure you submit those photos to the Internet. Otherwise, your own children will go looking for them one day and, tragically, they won’t be there.

~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~

1. Pink Frilly Fairy: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three
2. Homage to Herb: Part One 

This post may be the most powerful piece of counter-programming that the Super Bowl has ever seen – and I’ve made more than my fair share of counter-programming posts for Super Bowl Sunday. Here we continue the magnificently opulent opening of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale which finds a stripped-off and stripped-down before-and-after scene, where ruffled lace bloomers stand-in for more hidden lace and ruffles. The essence of a woman intersperses with the essence of a man – and who can tell which is which? We each play a part, usually several, in any give day. To even attempt to dull the shine and sully the sparkle of another creature because you do not fully understand them… is a certain destroyer of one’s karma. There are places in hell for that kind of behavior, even when you don’t realize you’re doing it. Ignorance is not bliss, nor is it an excuse for hatred. 

Glitter and be gay
That’s the part I play
Here I am in Paris, France
Forced to bend my soul
To a sordid role
Victimized by bitter
Bitter circumstance…

Ah, ’twas not to be
Harsh necessity
Brought me to this gilded cage
Born to higher things
Here I drop my wings
Ah!
Singing of a sorrow
Nothing can assuage

And yet, of course, I rather like to revel, ha ha!
I have no strong objection to champagne, ha ha!
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil, ha ha!
Perhaps it is ignoble to complain

Enough, enough
Of being basely tearful
I’ll show my noble stuff
By being bright and cheerful

Let us not be saddened by worldly wear and cynical tear; let us instead escape on clouds of ruffles and lace, lit by lamps of beaded glass fringe, and hung by ropes of diamonds. 

Pearls and ruby rings
Ah, how can worldly things
Take the place of honor lost?
Can they compensate
For my fallen state?
Purchased as they were at such a, at such an awful cost?
Bracelets, lavallieres
Can they dry my tears?
Can they blind my eyes to shame?
Can the brightest brooch
Shield me from reproach?
Can the purest diamond purify my name?

When questions of a darker time plague the mind, and shadows elongate into the fierce and deadly, the sparkling lot of a jewelry box is sometimes the only thing that will pierce the blackness. We’ll make our own damn stars if the universe refuses to deliver. We’ll don our own starlight – and we’ll stay in the glorious fight.

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.” – Dan Savage

And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha!
I’m oh so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha!
I rather like a twenty carat earring, ha ha!
If I’m not pure at least my jewels are!

Enough, enough
I’ll take their diamond necklace
And show my noble stuff
By being gay and reckless!

~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~

Part One and Part Two

Eartha Kitt provides her signature cheeky glamour in this song selection for the next installment of ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale‘. It reminds me of that hilarious time one of my, shall we say ‘critics’, voiced their claim that I married Andy for his sugar daddy status, which Andy actually found more riotously funny than me. All these years of joking about being a ‘Material Girl’ somehow left an impression that I was actually a material girl, but when you know something isn’t true it doesn’t really leave a sting. An amusing anecdote perhaps, never a sting. There are scorpions far more skilled than issuing such amateurish accusations. And so I play it up, giving the people what they want and indulging in the very image with which they find such bothersome fault. Eartha had this playbook down pat.

I’m just an old-fashioned girl with an old-fashioned mind
Not sophisticated I’m the plain and simple kind
I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence
And an old-fashioned millionaire

I like the old-fashioned flowers, violets are for me
Have them made in diamonds by the man at Tiffany
I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence
And an old-fashioned millionaire.

I like Chopin and Bizet and the songs of yesterday
String quartets and Polynesian carols
But the music that excels is the sound of oil wells
As they slurp, slurp, slurp into the barrels.

My little home will be quaint as an old parasol
And instead of carpets I’ll have money wall to wall
I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence
And an old-fashioned millionaire.

~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~

Part One

All is an-ti-ci-pa-tion.

My very favorite part of any endeavor: the anticipation. 

A quick tuning of the orchestra – arpeggios and scales and troublesome stitches of difficult passages – and then the lights go down.

An-

ti-

ci-

pa-

tion…

A lone figure stands at a podium. The music laid out before them. Everything has already been written. Every piece of the story is already in place. All that is left to do is follow the leader. 

The overture begins… and this one has been heralded as the overture to end all overtures.

The comical drama of the flawed ‘Candide’ was more fitting for this opening than I cared to realize at the time, full of folly and beauty and poignancy, all amid a world of wicked waywardness and the worst of humanity. Glimmers of the best surface too, little sparks in the blackest night, and you too may be surprised at the might of one candle’s flickering flame. 

A figure shrouded in layers of lilac tulle steps onto a golden chair – a fairy on the precipice of flight or fall…