Lettin It All Hang Out

by RuPaul

  The Pyramid was a neighborhood bar in the East Village where everybody went—gay, straight, artist, famous models, actors, and, on weekends, transy cruisers galore. It was a totally mixed, really fun bar that was wild every night of the week. To us southern queens it was like a home away from home. For a start the place was run by kindred southern spirits like Sister Dimension. All the queens were there—Tabboo, Hapi Phace, and Ethyl Eichelberger—and they were doing that same gender fuck thing that we were doing. It was drag Mecca, and they even had drag queens dancing on the bar. In short, it felt like a slice of Georgia in New York City.

  The new drag, or superdrag as I liked to call it, came out of punk and parodied all that was held dear in our society. Of course, the ultimate sacred cow in respectable culture is this idea of a woman as, on the one hand, glamourous and fierce as portrayed by the TV and movie stars, and, on the other hand, as housewife and slave to the kitchen. The combination of the two is a whole treasure chest of imagery ripe for parodying and celebrating, and that was what the drag queens at the Pyramid were all about.

  When the run was over, Bunny and Lady Pecan both decided to stay in New York, as did Floydd and I, even though we had no place to live. Since the Pyramid was our hub, we kept our luggage there in the lockers downstairs. Hardly any time seemed to have passed since the last time I was homeless.

  I worked at the Pyramid as a go-go dancer for forty dollars a night. I really honed my go-go skills there. It wasn't about the dancing, because you danced on the bar and that was only two feet wide, so there certainly wasn't very much room to maneuver. No, it was all about the attitude. Now at that time in New York people didn't tip go-go dancers like they did back home in Georgia. I decided to change that. I didn't just dance, I worked my whole body and did seductive things. When I caught someone's eye I would lick my finger and point at them and say, "Come here, I have something to say to you, big boy!" And when they came over I'd say, "Give me a dollar," and they'd say, "What for?" And I'd say, "It's good luck," and so they'd say, "Okay" and that was that. It worked like a charm, and that's exactly what it was, my southern charm shining through the smoky disco. I worked the crowd, really worked it. At weekends I would go home with sixty dollars just in tips alone. Most of the other queens didn't work it like I did. They just got up on the bar with a "la-di-dah-let's-just-get-this-over-with-and-give-me-my-forty-dollars-thank-you-very-much."

  The Pyramid in its heyday was a sight to behold.

  DRAG PURSE CONTENTS

  - Compact

  - Lipstick

  - Condoms

  - Car and house keys

  - Super glue

  - Sunglasses

  - Hair pick

  - Cash/cab fare

  - Heat-seeking missile

  - TicTacs

  - Mace

  A bunch of twisted queens pumping this sick look all crammed up on this tiny bar working a room that was no bigger than your average living room—and no taller than one either. Most of us bigger gals had to duck the entire time or get a sprinkler stuck in our wig. A lot of us thought we could work on that bar forever. Little did we know that after we had been there for a month or two our shininess wore off, management got bored, new queens emerged, and the cycle continued.

  Still, we could keep our stuff stored in the basement of the Pyramid even if we weren't working. We would go there seven nights a week and it was always fun.

  Floydd and I became partners in crime, and looked out for one another. Most times we met someone and managed to hustle a place to stay. We had different methods. Floydd would get people to let us stay at their house 'cause they wanted to have sex with him. My commodity was never my sexuality, it was always my name. People knew I was RuPaul, and I think they let us stay at their house because they thought that maybe, just maybe, I was gonna be a star.

  We also met Nelson, a childhood friend of Dick Richards who went everywhere with a video camera. Nelson had come from a grand old family in the deep South to write his novel. But once he got to Manhattan he was so taken by the exploding downtown scene that he rushed out and bought a video camera instead. He taped everyone and everything, and we all called him the Video Vampire. That camera was like a pirate's parrot. Nelson was our New York liaison, and he introduced us to the city. Every time I walk around New York I think about him all the time. He taught us about the West Village, about Fire Island, and he introduced us to Tennessee Williams movies. He was our gay educator and taught us about our birthright, our cultural inheritance. And he always supported me, no matter what. So Nelson would always let us stay at his house, but, because we knew we could, we wanted to use it sparingly.

  Often Floydd and I stayed across from the Pyramid in Tompkins Square Park. We also stayed in Central Park. It was perfectly safe because we would be up all night and sleep during the day. At that time Floydd and I really became close friends and soul brothers. Come December we thought we might as well go back down South for Christmas. Bunny stayed behind and took New York by storm. She became queen of the Pyramid, and then queen of Manhattan.

  When I got back to Atlanta, Dick offered me a record contract with Funtone records, and so I started recording Sex Freak. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't called it that. The title was meant to say that I am a sexual oddity, an androgyne. People saw it as something else, like, "I'm a sex freak, a freak for sex." Well if you have read this far, that's one thing you will know that I am not. That's all. I am not going to get drawn into steamy revelations.

  In May I got an offer from the Theatrical Outfit, a local theater, to do The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That summer for four months I played Riff Raff the butler. It was a smash success. We ended up doing forty-five or so performances, with two shows on Friday and Saturday night and a matinee on Sunday. Although everyone in Atlanta had heard of me, this gave me more credibility, more cachet—but not more cash. Frankly, at this point I must say that my path to money, success, fame, and glamour had been a long and winding one. Although all the detours along the way built character, between you and me a more direct route to the top would have been welcome.

  During that time the club next door, Weekends, asked if I would be a go-go dancer there. I did that four nights a week for two and a half years. I started at fifty dollars a night, then I went up to sixty, and then the last year I made seventy-five dollars a night, which was good for Atlanta. Mind you there was a price to pay. Every night some drunk would hit on me and grab my crotch. I couldn't stand it, but I just had to deal with it. It got to the point where I couldn't get up on that box without a drink. I couldn't beat 'em, so I joined them.

  During this period I became friends with Larry Tee of the Now Explosion for the first time. I had always been wary of him. But when Now Explosion broke up, he became a deejay at Weekends when I was go-go dancing there. Because we'd get off work at the same time, we'd go and have breakfast together. He was really at a vulnerable point, and for the first time I really warmed up to him. Once he was telling me about a story he read in People magazine where this boy wanted to surprise his family for Christmas by climbing down the chimney like Santa Claus. Well, he got stuck and he ended up suffocating. There was this poor kid trying to do something good for his family, and it ended in tragedy. As he was telling me that story, he started crying. When someone shows himself like that, how can you resist opening up to them? And I was like, "There you are, I finally see the real you." We became really good friends after that.

  With the money I was earning from go-go dancing I got a new apartment in Midtown. I moved in right next door to these two guys named Fred and Grant. Grant was nicknamed Spicy, but Fred didn't have a nickname, and since he didn't look like a Fred to me, I renamed him Trade. I put them in my act as the new U-Hauls, although I didn't call them the U-Hauls anymore, just Spicy and Trade.

  In January of eighty-six Starrbooty was born. The idea came from nowhere. I was busy promoting Sex Freak at the time and went on Spencer Thornton's television show in the spring. I had known him for years,
and he started out the interview by saying: "RuPaul, I've called you outrageous before, I've called you fabulous, what should I call you now?"

  And I said, "Baby, just call me Starrbooty."

  We must have laughed for a good solid five minutes, just wondering where that came from. I had never said that before, but as soon as I had I thought, "Damn that's good! I'm going to use that."

  So I got together with Jon Witherspoon and asked him to film a new movie.

  I wanted to do a takeoff on the blacksploitation movies of the seventies, and I was going to call it Starrbooty. We did three of them in the end. In Starrbooty I, I played a crime fighter whose mission was to put away these crack addicts who have kidnapped the President's son. In Starrbooty II, my sister Cornisha Ripperton had been killed by a pimp, and so I had to go undercover as a prostitute, infiltrate his organization, and bring him down hard. In Starrbooty III, the singing Peak sisters kidnapped Trade and held him hostage in return for a multi-million-dollar record contract. Starrbooty rescues Trade and shows the Peaks the way to stardom by producing their first album.

  Larry Tee and I wrote a bunch of songs for Starrbooty the Motion Picture Soundtrack, and I recorded it in New York with the Pop Tarts producing. The Pop Tarts were rather like the Pet Shop Boys only sicker, much sicker. The whole thing from start to finish was done in three days over Memorial Day weekend. Robert Warren came in and we laid down a track that was me riffing on some of my favorite slogans like, "Peanut butter head suck my dick, your mama's in the kitchen cooking thirty-minute shit, your daddy's in jail raising hell, and your sister's on the corner selling pussy for sale." For my money the real hook of the album was The Theme Song From Starrbooty, in which I did a kind of macho trailer-style voiceover: "Coming soon, to a theater near you! Starrbooty! Badder than Bond, more bullets than Rambo!" Talk about Method acting. But the kicker of the song was this insane chorus that just went:

  Starrbooty, Starrbooty, Starrbooty, yeah

  Starrbooty, Starrbooty, Starrbooty, nooo

  Over and over. It was—it is—insane! It's simple and stupid, and that's how the best pop records are made by keeping them simple and stupid.

  Later that summer I went back to Manhattan to promote the record at the New Music Seminar.

  The seminar was being held in the Marriott Marquis, this massive twenty-first-century hotel, very corporate and glitzy, with a giant atrium. I just grabbed a bunch of records and stood in the middle and started making a scene. And when I turn it on, it's like bees to honey. I am a magnet. By this time I had turned the volume right up on my tribal look. I was doing football shoulder pads, wild voodoo-style makeup, with "Fuck Off” and "Asshole" written on my arms as tattoos. And apart from that I was butt naked, except for a tiny jock strap and thigh-high wader boots. It was my not-yet-ready-for-MTV look. Security tried to escort me off the premises, but neither I nor the crowd was having any of it.

  That was during the day. By night I worked the clubs and played at the Saint with Spicy and Trade backing me up. Back then there wasn't much of a difference between what I wore in the day and what I wore in the night. Everything on my back I made myself. I shredded dozens of white plastic Hefty bags into ribbons and attached them to my shoulder pads. The end result was a massive mop come to life. Although I called it gender fuck drag, my friend Nelson was of the opinion that it was terror drag. I suppose if you hadn't seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show it was pretty frightening.

  We also played at Danceteria, and that was the last time I saw Ruth Polsky, because a few weeks later a cab went out of control just outside Limelight nightclub, and plowed into the crowd waiting to get inside. Ruth was pinned underneath the cab and died. I was stunned by the news of her death. Not only did I lose a dear friend, I lost my closest ally in New York City. She really did help me out, and thanks to her efforts the album became a cult hit and charted in Rockpool, the grunge college chart. That was the first time I'd ever had anything on the chart.

  Returning to Atlanta, I practically became a one-woman studio turning out films like mad. My Starrbooty epics got the attention of this kid named Wayne Hollowell who was going to the Atlanta College of Art. He was like a modern-day Robert Aldrich of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? fame. He was very exciting to me, because here was someone who had a script, a camera, and the sick sense of humor to go with it. He was an artist, a painter, so he had this beautiful vision of the way things should be. He first came to me with a script called The Connie Francis Story in which I was to play the black guy who rapes Connie Francis at the Holiday Inn. But the project that really floated my boat was his script for Mahogany II. The title alone was enough to send me to seventh heaven. To play Miss Ross in the sequel! I didn't even have to read the script, I just said, "When do we start?"

  In the end the title was perhaps the best thing of all. It has some cute parts. Wayne's films were decidedly more racy, more sexy, more sensationalistic and sicker than anything else I had done before. All his films were laced with gratuitous sex and violence, but it was all done with such humor and lots of ketchup (although later we learned that Hi-C syrup made better blood). The trouble with ketchup was that it made the whole house stink like a garbage dump. But more important than his sophisticated blood techniques was Wayne's enthusiasm, which was so infectious. After Mahogany II I starred in American Porn Star. My name was firmly above the title—that was always in my contract.

  FAVORITE TV SHOWS

  - Style with Elsa Klensch: Was Gulf War coverage really worth pre-empting Elsa? I don't think so, CNN...

  - Merv: I wish the show was still around—so I could do it.

  - The Cher Show: I never missed an episode.

  - Mike Douglas: I grew up with Mike.

  - Carol Burnett: My favorite skit was "Blossom Butterworth."

  - Oprah: She makes me cry.

  - Robin Byrd: When all else fails, Ms. Byrd is always there for you.

  - The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Oh, Mr. Grant!

  - Roseanne: I love Roseanne so much! What a trooper!

  - Rhoda: The funniest ever.

  - Soul Train: I watched it religiously in high school.

  - The Simpsons: I'm waiting for my cameo, Mr. Groenig.

  - Melrose Place: Spelling strikes again.

  - Martin: Love it, though I could teach Sheneneh a few tricks of the trade.

  - Laugh-in: I'd love to re-create it.

  - Dynasty: The classic.

  - Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely fabulous!

  Then I did Psycho Bitch and then, the masterpiece, Voyeur. It took four months to film, four whole months, and it's the raciest of them all. I had twenty-two sex scenes with twenty-two tricks. In the end we had to cut them down because there were just too many. To make the film we employed every hustler and transy cruiser within a five-hundred-mile radius as extras. It wasn't too hard to fill those positions. I was the star of Midtown at the time. Everyone knew we were making a movie, and everyone wanted to be in it. Everybody wants to be in a movie, no matter what the budget. Even the dogs on the street were on their hind legs begging for a part.

  The story was basically Basic Instinct years before it was made, and is about a hooker who kills all her tricks. This guy sees one of the murders by chance, and he falls in love with the hooker. He becomes the voyeur of the title and witnesses all the murders. In the climactic scene they finally get it together and, like she's done with all the others, she kills him! In a pool of blood!

  For Wayne the fun thing was to audition. He would go out, get drunk, and say, "I'm making a movie, it's full frontal nudity, why don't you audition for me?" The stories he would tell—ah, the power of the casting couch! We had tons of full frontal nudity. At one point I had to take this huge butcher knife and cut off this guy's dick and balls in the shower. This was years before John Wayne Bobbitt. The way it's edited every man watching it goes "Whooo!" when they see the film. You can just taste that knife. As for the boy I was operating on, he must've had a horse for a father.

&nb
sp; What can I say, it's a great movie. And let me tell you there's nothing more exciting than having sex on film with a camera crew watching. It's really a big thrill. You act more, you scream more, you writhe more, while making sure that all the time you keep your face toward the camera. I love it.

  There's one scene in Voyeur that still makes me squirm. It's the scene with me and this black Mandingo stud. We were in this small kitchen, and he mopped the floor with my ass. It was amazing. You can see his big black ass in the camera, and his muscles glistening. Oh child, cool me down.

  That said, for the record let me make it perfectly clear that there is no penetration in those movies. They are not porno movies, they're comedies. I wouldn't do penetration. Everything was strictly fake. No matter what my booty felt like doing, I stuck to classy Method acting. And I wouldn't do nudity, either. I played a woman, so I always had on at least a bra and a G-string, for tucking. And I always had on a garter belt with stockings and gloves—so I'd be nastier than naked! Sure you'd see the cheeks of my ass, but you'd never set eyes on the crown jewels. Meanwhile, all Wayne ever cared about was the size of my hair. No matter how huge I made it, he'd always say, "No, make it bigger."

  I knew when I was making these films that they would resurface when I became a real star. To tell the truth it was a little embarrassing watching some of the films back, 'cause I was playing a whore, cussin' and killin', butt naked and dripping in blood. At the same time being embarrassed was part of my criteria for all the films. Remember this was punk time, and if I didn't feel like, "Oh my God," then I didn't feel that I had done my job. So I'm not ashamed, and if I'm embarrassed, well, that was what punk was all about, being anti-establishment and kicking up a fuss.