by Elaine Viets
I’ve always had my suspicions about Barbie. I knew for sure these weren’t real women. They were fabulous female impersonators hailing from Maine to Mississippi, here for the annual Miss American Gender Bender Pageant. They dragged U-Haul trailers filled with sets for their talent numbers. They packed eleven-thousand-dollar Bob Mackie gowns. They brought hair stylists from Elizabeth Arden and a queen’s ransom in rhinestones.
A successful female impersonator always travels with an entourage, and these brought their wardrobe advisers, set designers, and lovers. The men who accompanied them were decidedly gay. They wore a lot of black, leather, and chains. One of them was my friend Ralph the Rehabber. Ralph had traded in his daytime wear of paint-spattered, plaster-covered jeans for something a lot more interesting. He was going to be my guide for the evening.
Ralph was tall and lean. With his Vandyke beard and longish blond hair, he reminded me of those museum portraits of English aristocrats. Tonight he wore a silk pirate shirt, a studded black leather vest, and tight black leather pants with silver chains going places I probably shouldn’t look. The orange-and-yellow Proventil inhaler sticking out of his vest pocket spoiled the devil-may-care effect slightly. But Ralph had had a near-fatal asthma attack last December, and since then he didn’t go anywhere without his inhaler. He even kept one in a pouch on his ladder when he worked on houses.
My readers knew Ralph the Rehabber as a regular source on how City Hall worked—or didn’t. St. Louis is one of the rehab capitals of the country. We have some gorgeous old brick homes in the city, and they go cheap. You can buy what would be a million-dollar mansion in any city on the coast for less than one hundred thousand dollars here. A lot of people fled St. Louis for the new, boring burbs. They saw those areas as crime-free. People like me feared we’d die of boredom if we lived in the suburbs. We stayed in the older parts of town, rehabbed the handsome houses, and lived in luxury on the urban edge.
It takes skill and nerve to finish a rehab project, get the required bank loans and permits, and outwit the city inspectors, and Ralph had all these skills. I think my favorite Ralph story was about when he was fixing six bungalow breeze-ways in a postwar subdivision on the edge of St. Louis. The city code required a fire door between the kitchen and the breezeway, which spoiled any chance of enjoying the breeze. Ralph rigged up a fire door that could be hung just before the city inspector arrived, then removed. It traveled from neighbor to neighbor, painted six different colors.
I knew Ralph the Rehabber was gay, and had lost his heart to a three-hundred-pound drag queen named Bambi. Bambi was a southern belle trapped in the body of a sumo wrestler. Imagine a simpering sumo wrestler, and you had Bambi. She had doelike brown eyes, a charming giggle, long red hair, and thick, rubbery lips. She shaved her face and her legs. She loved green satin and wore the biggest pair of dyed-to-match green heels I’d ever seen—and I’m six feet tall in my panty hose and wear a size 11 shoe.
Ralph designed all of Bambi’s prizewinning outfits, including a green satin wedding dress with a twelve-foot train that made her look like Scarlett O’Hara on steroids. I thought Bambi loved Ralph’s work, but not Ralph, and was only using him while she made out with a hunky bodybuilder whose sole talent was flexing his pecs. But I never said anything to Ralph. You can’t tell a person the truth about the one they love.
The pageant had been going on for four days. Like most beauty pageants, this one had contestant interviews, rehearsals, bathing suit competitions, and judging for poise, posture, and presentation. Tonight was the climax, with the two most important competitions: talent and evening gown.
The whole event was a flashback to 1957. Female impersonators put on the things many women have cast off—tortured and teased hair, ballistic breasts, hurting high heels. The natural look is not big in this crowd.
Ralph was my guide into this world. Unlike some gays, he never played “shock the straights.” Talking with Ralph was like watching a National Geographic special. He narrated the most astonishing facts in a professional, didactic manner. “I got us both passes for the whole show, including backstage,” Ralph said. I wondered how many strings, or chains, he had to pull for that. The straight press usually wasn’t allowed in these pageants, for good reason. We tended to cover them like freak shows, and displayed all the sensitivity of high school jocks.
“What about the Gazette photographer?” I asked.
“He’s allowed in, too,” Ralph said. “But we’ll have to stay with him.” I knew that would be fine with Jimbo. He was about twenty-five and looked like Beaver Cleaver, right down to the freckles. He’d react to this assignment the same way as the Beav. He’d give a gulp and a golly. Then he’d grab his cameras and do his usual good job. While we waited for Jimbo, Ralph began his lecture:
“The subject of female impersonators is very controversial in the gay world,” Ralph said, and I almost expected him to pull out a pointer and a blackboard. “Some gays feel that men date drag queens because they aren’t fully out of the closet and haven’t completely accepted their gayness. In other words, we’re going out with men who look like women, rather than accepting who and what we are, and loving men who look like men.
“My own theory is that female impersonators let us show our creativity and our need to walk on the wild side. We go for the outrageous.”
Ralph certainly did. Dating the Jolly Green Giantess was as outrageous as you can get.
“You won’t hear it from the Chamber of Commerce, but St. Louis is a center for female impersonators. It’s estimated we have some two hundred fifty in the area.” And now, thanks to the King Louie, we had a whole lot more.
Impersonators may look cheap, but they aren’t. “It costs thousands of dollars to get up on that stage,” Ralph lectured. “The twelve finalists spent a total of a hundred thousand dollars for their dresses. Some losers wind up with colossal debts. Many bet the rent and the utility money and don’t even place.”
“Then why are they doing this?”
“Often it’s a way out of the ghetto or the trailer park,” said Ralph. “Many of them are poor boys who have pretty faces and not much else. If they win, or even place, they get a ticket to the gay club circuit. They can make two hundred fifty dollars a night at a cabaret and three hundred to five hundred dollars in tips. It’s more money than those boys have ever seen in their life.”
“Do they put it away for their old age in securities and real estate, like smart call girls?”
“Most of them don’t have an old age,” said Ralph.
He pulled out his Miss American Gender Bender Pageant program and showed me the back pages. They were loaded with tributes to drag queens who’d died of AIDS. In their photos, the dead queens shimmered and simpered, and looked pitifully young. Their epitaphs were short and sad. “Beautiful Bettina, 1993 AGBP Runner-Up. 1975–1995. We love you.”
I flipped through the fat five-dollar program and found a happier section. It proved a beauty queen is a beauty queen, regardless of sex. These gushed just like female contestants and wrote girlish congratulations to their competition in the program. Last year’s title holder, a glamorous brunette named Sweet Cherry Whine, wrote this: “To the contestants—remember to be the best that you can be. While only one of you will wear the Gender Bender crown, you are all unique!” I couldn’t agree more.
That’s when Jimbo showed up, looking weirdly normal in jeans and a baseball jacket. He was wide-eyed with disbelief.
“We can get you backstage, Jimbo, but you have to stick with me,” I said.
“I wouldn’t think of wandering off,” he said, clutching his cameras like a lifeline.
Ralph led us through the stage doors, where the medieval theme made way for makeshift modern. The backstage dressing area was a long room with scuffed unpainted plasterboard walls and rolling racks of costumes. Wigs perched on stands like small animals. The drag queens put on makeup at long folding tables or poured themselves into their dresses in front of portable mirrors.
; “To look beautiful, female impersonators suffer even more than real women,” said Ralph.
I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I was willing to listen to his arguments.
“Some have silicone implants or take hormones. Others go through worse tortures. They may wear six pairs of panty hose to keep their hip and rear pads in place.”
I was impressed. One pair of panty hose is often beyond me.
He pointed to one impersonator struggling to zip up a blue sequin gown while he stuffed his lush foam tush back down in his sheer blue panty hose. I hoped he wouldn’t have to use the john in a hurry.
“Should I refer to them as she or he?” I whispered to Ralph.
“It’s polite to call an impersonator she when she is in costume,” he said—a bit of etiquette I haven’t seen yet in “Miss Manners.”
We walked through thick clouds of hair spray and heavy perfume. Feathers floated in the air, lost sequins sparkled on the chairs and floors, and there were cries of “Has anyone seen my eyelash curler?” and “Who the fuck unplugged my curling iron?”
I watched a platinum blonde apply false eyelashes one by one with a tweezer. She was better at it than I was. She wore black stockings and a fetching black satin merry widow, which pushed up a pair of foam hooters the size of honeydews.
Jimbo was nearly pop-eyed. I guess he’d never realized beauty was only skin deep.
The Merry Widow grabbed Jimbo by the thigh and said, “Oooh, you’re cute.”
“I’m married,” quavered Jimbo.
“That’s how I like them,” the Widow said, merrier than ever.
Jimbo put his camera firmly to his face and started snapping. He aimed at a feather fan as big and bright as a jukebox. The sequin detail on a Bob Mackie dress. A large, sexy foot in a large, sexy shoe.
He spent a lot of time shooting a stunning impersonator the color of creamed coffee, in a rhinestone dress just a shade darker than her skin. She wore a pheasant feather headdress and glided gracefully on four-inch heels. Most women I knew couldn’t have managed that getup. Most wouldn’t want to.
“That’s the favorite, Chocolate Suicide,” Ralph told me. “She’s expected to win this year.”
She looked scrumptious, but a shade too short and plump to be a beauty contestant. “She’d have to lose twenty pounds to compete in a female pageant,” I said.
Ralph looked hurt. I didn’t fully appreciate Chocolate’s artistry. “This is one beauty contest where it’s good to be short and a little chubby,” he said. “They look more like real women. A little natural padding gives them curves and breasts.”
I thought the female impersonator standing next to Chocolate Suicide made a better woman. Sharlot Webb was slender and wore soft makeup. Her shoulder-length hair was a natural brown. Her black velvet dress with the big shoulder bows had hardly a sequin anywhere. I could imagine wearing it myself.
“How about Sharlot Webb?” I asked Ralph.
He shrugged. “Sharlot’s okay, but she’s not Chocolate Suicide. Let’s go out and see some of the talent part of the show.”
Jimbo looked relieved to leave backstage. We three made our way through the dusty velvet stage curtains to the ballroom. The stage and runway were decorated with mounds of flowers. The ballroom was jammed with folding chairs, and more people were standing.
The audience was part of the show. At first glance, it appeared to be almost all women. At second glance, some of those women had five o’clock shadows. Others looked distressingly good. After a while I could pick out the impersonators. They were glamorous. The real women looked dowdy, like brown sparrows among the peacocks.
A tall redhead in a black satin gown cut to there made me feel like maybe I should check into a salon for a makeover. I mean, if makeup and padding could make a man look that good, think what could be done for me with the right equipment. “Is she in the show?” I asked Ralph.
“No. Some of the best impersonators never compete. They just do it for fun. I know one who is a banker by day. Another is an accountant. A few are hookers.”
A brunette in a red dress slithered by. “That one has a pretty face and a beer gut,” I said.
“That’s a real woman,” Ralph said.
Onstage, things were dull. The talent competition was the slowest part of the evening. Many of the sets were fantastic. There were dungeons and harems and enough fake fog to cover London. But too many contestants simply lip-synched and paraded in flashy outfits. Watching men pretending to be women pretending to sing was boring. “How much longer does this go on?” I asked.
“One more to go,” said Ralph. “You’re lucky. They scratched the Ass.”
I blinked.
“Maria Callous, the Ass with Class. She looks a little like Princess Di and plays on it. She wears these dresses you could wear to Buckingham Palace, with a little rhinestone bow over the butt. She’s always escorted on stage by a guy with big ears who wears a tux.
“Last year she was Second Runner-Up. This year, she didn’t show after the first day. Rumor is she knew she hadn’t added anything to her act this year, couldn’t afford a hot new outfit, and didn’t have the club support. Rather than risk her title, Maria dropped out. Now she can still call herself 1995 Second Runner-Up, rather than 1996 loser.”
“Does dropping out midpageant happen often?”
“All the time. On Tuesday, the Shady Lady left in a snit after she told the judge to stuff himself during the poise and presentation competition. She figured she couldn’t win after that, and she was right. The Sue Warrior, who dresses like a lawyer and strips to her briefs for her talent competition, left after her boy friend punched her in the face and broke her nose. No way those bruises could be mistaken for war paint.”
Jimbo had been taking pictures, but Ralph and I hadn’t been paying much attention to the stage. Now, we sat up and noticed. Chocolate Suicide appeared, and it was like the room had a jolt of electricity. The audience was cheering and chanting, “Chocolate! Chocolate! Sweet baby girl!”
Semisweet, actually. Six studs in black leather carried her out in a sedan chair. She stepped out on their heads, then dismissed them with the flick of a whip. The music started, Tina Turner at her wildest. Chocolate was at her wildest, too, all fire and energy. Her rhinestones shimmered, her feathers shook. So did the rest of her. She strutted and high-stepped and practically turned herself inside out as she danced. The crowd cheered and showered her with money. She wiped her sweating face with a handful of bills. No doubt about it. She had style.
She was the last act in the talent section. Now it was time for the worst test a man can face: the evening gown competition. Wobbly high heels and heavy beaded gowns have dethroned many an aspiring drag queen. The judges were merciless. Careers were ruined by the slightest slip.
“You have to be able to walk naturally,” Ralph said. “The winners will be dragged around to all the talk shows. These are our movie stars, our society. They raise money for charity.” Also, for themselves. I couldn’t forget the ten- and twenty-dollar bills shoved at the contestants for tips. Tipping is an innovation female beauty queens should consider. The retiring queen and the new title holder parade on the runway, while the audience hands them money. Serious money. At this pageant, a winner might make one thousand dollars in tips, plus five thousand in prize money.
Who would wear the nine-inch-tall rhinestone crown this year?
It was down to three contestants, and just as in female beauty pageants, they were all Southerners. The judges made their choices, and I thought they were good ones. The bland, tuxedoed announcer called them out:
“Miss Florida!” She wore a stunning green sequin number that showed off her sleek, dark red hair. She was a sensational Third Place.
“Miss Lou-ee-zee-ana!” Her gown shimmered in gold. With her blond hair, it was a blinding combination.
“She’ll probably get the crown next year,” whispered Ralph.
But it was clear who the winner was: “Miss Texas!”
It
was Chocolate Suicide, in a cocoa-brown gown to die for. I knew it looked like money, but I didn’t know how much. Ralph did. “I heard that gown cost thirteen thousand dollars,” he said.
The crowd chanted her name: “Chocolate Suicide! Chocolate Suicide!” and pressed forward to give her money. I saw men waving tens and twenties, crawling over each other to hand her the money. They were practically rioting to make her rich. Trust men to add this moneymaking innovation to a pageant. It sure beat Bert Parks singing “Here she comes, Miss America.”
Chocolate graciously grabbed it all. “Get used to this, girl,” said the announcer. “It’s going to be like this for the next twelve months.”
More cheers. The pageant was over. It was after midnight.
Jimbo the photographer packed up to go home to the burbs. I told him I couldn’t wait to see his photos tomorrow.
Ralph wanted to talk a bit more. “Let’s go to Burt’s Bar for a nightcap,” he said. “It’s on the way home.”
That was the beauty of Burt’s Bar, and one of the keys to its popularity. It was on the way to everyone’s home. Right on the edge of downtown, a few blocks from three major highways, I-55, I-44, and I-64. The other key was Burt himself. He was the perfect old-fashioned bartender. His martinis had zing. His beer was cold and his glasses were chilled. Burt was a vigorous seventy. He always wore a starched white shirt, striped tie, and clean white apron. His mahogany bar top was polished. There were no ashes in the glass ashtrays on the shiny black-and-chrome tables. The bottles and glasses gleamed on the back bar. He ruled over this clean and pleasant place. No one, but no one, was allowed to say a four-letter word or harass a woman in Burt’s Bar. Burt’s wife Dolores did the cooking in the spotless stainless steel kitchen.
I thought Burt’s Bar was a fine example of a city saloon. My readers agreed. Six years ago, when I ran a contest to find the Best St. Louis Saloon, they voted it Number One. Burt was so proud when he won. He gave the first prize—an engraved beer mug—its own shelf over the bar. He framed my column and hung it over the ice machine.