by RuPaul
I had a deal with the Love Machine. Larry would pay me a hundred bucks a week and I could do whatever I wanted: lipsynch a number, emcee, tell jokes—whatever. One of my favorite things to do were the Champale commercials. Champale—-for those of you who don't know—is a pink-colored combination of beer and champagne.
The drink was vile, but the commercials were the best. They ran on the black stations and it would consist of this woman talking about Champale occasions. They went something like this:
Ladies, I want to talk to you about Champale occasions. You know, those special occasions where you just have got to celebrate with sparkling Champale? What if a prince comes up to you driving a Rolls-Royce and asks you to go to his private island via his Lear jet? Now you'd celebrate that with sparkling Champale, wouldn't you? Okay, what if a duke comes up to you in a Lincoln Town Car and you both fly first class to his beach house? Now you'd celebrate that with sparkling Champale, wouldn't you? Okay, now what if a guy comes up to you with a dog named Duke, two bus tokens, and you both take the train to look at other people's beach houses? You'd celebrate that with sparkling Champale, wouldn't you?
I would just get up on stage, fueled with a few cocktails, and recite those ads word for word and the audience loved it. It just goes to show it's not what you say, but how you say it that counts.
The success with Champale inspired me to launch my own fragrance and do my own line of commercials. The perfume wars at the time were fierce. Liz Taylor was ruling the market with Passion. Forever Crystal, Linda Evans's Dynasty fragrance, was flagging, and Joan Collins was having mixed success trying to give Scoundrel away. I decided to launch a fragrance that said it all and spelled it out quite clearly. It was called Whore, For She Who Is. Reediting scenes from my previous movies, I made a whole series of commercials and recorded a bunch of jingles to go with them.
Normally at the Love Machine I would kick off my show with a Whore or Champale commercial, throw in a quick "Everybody say love"—maybe even get the whole audience chanting "ohhhhmmmmmm" in an effort to be "at one"—and then finish it all off by lipsynching a number. My most famous lipsynching number was "If I Could Turn Back Time" by Cher. No one else was doing that. My look was very black hooker, very foxy lady. I would do rock and disco numbers like "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer, and "Do You Want to Touch Me" by Joan Jett.
Now I can reveal the secrets to lipsynching. Now it can be told. First, not all songs are drag-friendly. As with so many things in life, the choice is the thing! It had to have that southern perspective; it either had to be funny or have a certain irony that came from seeing a drag queen perform it. When I heard the queens were doing supermodel in the South, it was the ultimate compliment. I really knew I had made it then.
BEST RECORDS TO LIPSYNCH
(Don't do slow songs unless you're a pro.)
- Cher: "Save Up All Your Tears;" "If I Could Turn Back Time"
- Joan Jett: "Do You Wanna Touch Me;" "I Hate Myself for Loving You"
- Taylor Dayne: "I'll Be Your Shelter;" "Every Beat of My Heart;" "Prove Your Love;" "I'll Wait"
- Donna Summer: "Hot Stuff;" "On the Radio;" "This Time I Know It's for Real"
- Whitney Houston: "So Emotional;" "Dance with Somebody;" "How Will I Know"
- Michele: "No More Lies"
- Jennifer Holliday: "No Frills Love"
- Patti LaBelle: "Right Kind of Lover;" "Think about You"
- Melba Moore: "Lean on Me"
- Jody Watley: "Some Kinda Love;" "Don't You Want Me;" "Most of All;" "Real Love;" "Everything;" "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel"
- Gloria Gaynor: "I Will Survive"
- Tina Turner: "What You Get Is What You See"
- Boycrazy: "That's What Love Can Do"
- Vanessa Williams: "Running Back to You"
- Natalie Cole: "Party Lights (Live)"
- Aretha Franklin: "Another Night"
- Eurythmics: "Would I Lie to You;" "Must Be Missing an Angel"
- Nicole: "Don't You Want My Love" (Ruthless People soundtrack)
(Selections in bold are my personal favorites.)
Then you have to practice that mother over and over. But you don't—and this may seem surprising to some people—have to know all the words. You have to live the song, every breath and every beat. Beyond that it doesn't really matter if you know the words or not. People are not looking at your mouth to check you've got the words right, they're drinking in the whole picture—the gestures, the moves, the attitude. If the attitude is right, the words are the last thing you need. It's really all about Method acting. A lot of times the girls lipsynch and have all the words, but they are not connecting with the song or with the audience. Well, you could be reading the Declaration of Independence, but if you're not making that connection, all the words in the world aren't going to make the difference.
It's total Kabuki. It's all about exaggerating your face and body movements, where your every gesture tells a story. When it came to telling a story, the girls down South were totally over the top and an inspiration. There was Chocolate Thunderpussy who was no waif—she was a big-boned girl. Couple of hundred pounds. But that didn't stop her from doing a triple somersault in six-inch heels across the stage at the climax of "Who's Zooming Who" by Aretha Franklin. If I'm lying I'm flying, and you don't see no wings.
Another popular thing down South is the rubber face, where you make your mouth do one thing and your eyes do another. That's as basic to lipsynching as bricks to buildings. One of my favorite moves—and you can do this at home too—is to lick your finger, as if you had just dipped it in honey, and then trace a spiral circle on the wall. Then quickly slap the wall—pow!—as if you're smacking a roach. It can really help you get your point across.
And let me tell you, the Lady Bunny is the most incredible lipsynch artist out there. She's a great mimic. I'll never forget her rendition of "Popcorn" by Hot Butter. She got all those pom pom pom pom pom pom poms smack dab on. It was a sight that could make a drag queen cry. Back down in Atlanta, when we were inseparable, we would go out and clock the moves of all the drag queens. I have a different style from her, but we're from the same source, with plenty of bubbles for whatever you fancy.
The second week of the Love Machine was Independence Day, but Nelson died of a heart attack in the early hours of that morning, which cast a dark cloud over everything. That night we had all been having a party in Nelson's backyard, making hamburgers. Around midnight I left. I meant to say goodbye, to give him a hug and a kiss, but a lot of people were there, and he was washing dishes from the meal, so I thought I would just wait. Never wait to tell someone or show them that you love them. Trade called me at two that morning with the news. I couldn't believe it. We had become very close when things had been really tough for me. It was the first time someone who I was really close to, who I saw every day, died. I only really came into my own after he died—and I'm sorry he never saw that.
That was the only thing to mar the experience of the Love Machine, which instantly became the party in town, and the A-list flocked. I remember Liza Minnelli going there when her album was out and heading for the DJ booth and asking, "Do you guys have my new single?" which, if I remember rightly, was the camp classic "Losing My Mind." They didn't have it, but Larry Tee played the Pet Shop Boys instead.
The Love Machine was a springboard to a whole host of other things. All of a sudden we were the new darlings of downtown, and the offers started pouring in. Suzanne Bartsch started asking me to emcee for her at Copacabana, which was another A-list event. Then the B-52s asked me to be in their Love Shack video. Love Shack was a big hit and still plays on VH-1. Then in January 1990 I was crowned Queen of Manhattan. I was the first black queen to wear that crown, and also the first queen of the nineties, a truly new age.
Only a year ago I had been sitting all by my lonesome in the Beverly Center, thinking of cashing in my dance card and hustling to that great boogie wonderland in the sky. Now I know that a lot of people don't take "
Queen of Manhattan" seriously, and of course you shouldn't, but I was not going to fake it for granted. I milked that sucker for all it was worth. I reigned all that year like a queen should. I had pictures made up that said "Queen of Manhattan 1990," I really did! Even today the other queens don't really take it to town. But I did. I used it as a launch pad.
During my reign Geraldo was a high point. At first he wanted me in the audience, but I said, "I ain't getting out of bed unless I'm on the panel." So the word came back that they needed a black person on the panel because they didn't have one to represent the club scene, which was basically all white—and that ain't no lie.
The episode was to be called "The Agony and the Ecstasy," and was to be all about drugs on the scene. Geraldo had his agenda. He wanted a tabloid show about all these wild kids running around New York whacked out on drugs. But I had my own agenda. I still felt like I was biding my time, and although I didn't know exactly what it
I knew I had more to offer than "Hey, y'all." This was my opportunity to show that I was more than just the Queen of Manhattan. And television—a language I have always spoken fluently—was my way of taking it to another level. Because we were on such a gutter tabloid level, it really wasn't difficult to out pooh the pooh.
I didn't plan to upstage the others, but everyone was so well behaved. I always forget that people get nervous and can't talk on TV. I have never had that problem! Doing The American Music Show every week for years and years and years and years, I already had a TV career before I even came to New York.
And the one thing I have learned is that a camera is a camera is a camera, and they demand a certain performance. It's like feeding a lion. If you go up to the cage shaking and say, "Here's your food, Mr. Lion," the lion will bite your arm off. But if you march right up to that sucker and say, "Here's your meat, now eat it!" the lion can only obey you (kids, do not try this when you go the zoo!). It's really no different with the camera. The camera loves the people who love it.
During the taping of the Geraldo show, I said there was more to clubbing than just kids dressing up. It was a sign of people being free spirits. I said, "These bodies, this flesh and blood, they too are drag, because they are just temporary outfits for our eternal souls, Amen." At another point I yelled out, "Everybody put your hands on your TV set, because this is the most important thing you'll ever hear." It may have been the Ecstasy, but I could feel the whole nation leap up from their sofas and place their hands on top of mine on the television screen.
"Now everybody say love!" I said.
"Love!" everyone roared in the audience.
"Everybody say love!"
"Love!" roared the entire nation with one accord.
And then the kicker...
"'Cause if you can't love yourself—how in the hell you gonna love somebody else—can I get an A-men in here?"
It was fun—but it was also true.
Anyone with a heart who was watching could see that here were young people being free. Instead of seeing life in black and white—and maybe a bit of gray—they were indiscriminately using all the colors of the rainbow in their palette. That's what the club kids are all about: dressing up and having fun. That's what we're here for. In the animal kingdom that's what the male of the species does in his natural state, he struts about like a peacock. So for me to be in drag using all these colors, and for all these kids to be using glitter and what have you, that's what it's all about. The medium is the message, and no matter what moralistic, judgmental frame Geraldo tried to put the whole thing in, I think my point came across. And a lot of people in the audience, on the panel, and at home watching sat up and took notice: "Here's a live one. She's definitely got something else going on." They got to see that I was more than just a fierce drag queen. Something I knew all along!
That show was also the first time my mother saw me in full female drag. I was wearing a necklace that she had given me—a piece of bad seventies costume jewelry, but she didn't notice that. All she said was, "Why are you wearing all that makeup? That's too much makeup." And you know what? She was absolutely right!
In spite of all this fabulousness that was going on, it wasn't all sunny and cher. By this point I really had a drinking problem. Lahoma and I at this time were drinking like fiends. Drinking wasn't all bad, because it provided an opportunity for some of my alter egos to surface. Bianca Dinkins was my drunk persona. She was who I turned into at two in the morning after eight cocktails. Bianca was the illegitimate daughter of David Dinkins, "whose father threw her out of the house 'cause she stole her daddy's color TV set. Now, what kind of way is that to treat your daughter, can you answer me that?" The alcohol certainly seemed to fuel the characters, which in turn fueled the audience.
But then it was getting to the point where I needed a real cocktail—three-quarters vodka and a quarter-inch of orange juice—just to get me started. I was at the latter part of my go-go career, and it wasn't interesting to me anymore. I wasn't getting any younger—but the kids were— and I needed something a little more than coffee to get me through the night. I felt old. I didn't feel that I belonged, and I didn't understand why I was doing it anymore. So to get excited about it, I had to have a drink. Several drinks.
Meanwhile, in my zonked out way I was trying to get a singing career together. Larry Tee and I started working on a song for Cardiac Records. It was called "I Got That Feeling," which really meant "I Don't Got That Feeling," because I was so tanked up on booze and drugs I couldn't feel a thing. More than that Larry Tee wasn't hearing what I was saying, and I wasn't hearing what he was saying. It was a mess. Somehow we got that song recorded.
And then there was the Robert Palmer video fiasco.
They were shooting the video right outside the door of Nelson's house, where we all were living. The Lower West Side of Manhattan, more popularly known as the Meat Packing District, had become trés trendy since they shot Fatal Attraction there, and it was the place for many Vogue fashion shoots. One day I staggered in at some ungodly hour and the street was full of supermodels. Linda, Christie, and Naomi were sitting on the steps of Nelson's house. At first I thought it was the drugs, and then I thought I was having a vision. But once I started chatting with them they seemed real enough. Turns out they were doing a massive photo shoot for Chanel. Quite a bizarre combination, haute haute couture in this grimy low-rent district. Once that spread came out, the fashion world and its dog wanted to do something there. Robert Palmer, who had made his mark in music videos by packing them with hundreds of ice-cool model clones, was obviously not going to be left out.
So one day I staggered in from a full night out and there were all these cranes, cameras, and lights in the street. It looked like a full-fledged feature shoot.
In no time we got cast. They had a holding pen for all the extras, and we were waiting there ready to go on. We had a gallon of vodka with us and someone offered us a Quaalude. Just as it was beginning to kick in, we were called to get ready to go on. The last thing I remember was riding the elevator to wardrobe...
The next morning I woke up lying on the couch with the TV going, still in drag and with my makeup on. I had no idea-how I got there. Since it was a two-day shoot, I headed back to the set in the evening.
But when we got there, they told us we were not working.
"Oh yes we are," I said.
Then they told us that we'd been fired the night before for being so fucked up and out of control. I must have still been high, because I then had the nerve to kick up such a big stink that they said we could work after all, which just meant hanging around all night and getting paid for it. They didn't film us.
When the video finally came out, there I was prancing around, having a conversation with Robert Palmer, dropping my purse, having him pick it all up, and I could not remember any of it. Not a single thing.
I had finally gone overboard. I'd been fired from a gig for being sauced! That's when I said to myself, "This has got to stop, I can't go to work fucked up on liquor
and Quaaludes." The big thing I remember from the School of Performing Arts is that you need to show up and be a professional. Broadway doesn't stand for booze and pills.
It was time to clean house and move on.
I did a trip with Suzanne Bartsch to Miami in December 1990. I went to this Ford Model Agency party, had about ten cocktails, but felt nothing. To tell you the truth I was scared. I was scared that I had turned thirty in November and seemed to have so little to show for it. I was scared that the little I did have—my reign as Queen of Manhattan—was coming to an end. I was scared that I couldn't leave the house to go work in a club without a cocktail or three. I was scared that a dozen cocktails later I still didn't get a buzz. And I was scared thinking, "Where am I gonna take it from here, what am I gonna do for an encore?"
On the other hand, I'd made it to thirty in the fast lane, and so it was not a fluke I was still around. I decided that from now on I would be here for this life, and that I would be there for me. I quit drinking, quit doing drugs, and I started to take care of myself, getting up in the morning and going to aerobics classes. I still continued to smoke pot, but I cut out caffeine and all other narcotics. And once I had made that decision, the fear melted away. I wasn't scared anymore. I didn't know what lay ahead, but whatever it was I was doing the right thing, so I knew that one way or another I would make it.
My life changed totally. For one thing, it was the first time I really saw New York.
Although I'd been there for years, it was the first time I saw the city by day, knew what streets were what, and learned where things were. Until then I didn't know the West Village from the East Village, because I'd normally be in a drunken stupor and see it whizzing by from inside a cab. When I was doing the clubs I slept all day and woke up in the evening with just enough time to get something to eat, take a shower, get in drag, have a cocktail, and go out. You had to go out every night to get the go-go gigs, and if you were gone for more than a week "they" wouldn't know if you still had the juice to go over big at "their" party. Out of sight was out of mind. So you had to go out. It was a treadmill. I was, I suppose, a real slave of New York. But once I quit night life I became a student of New York. I would get up, put on my backpack, and go do my work, which involved a lot of footwork. I had to walk around all day because I didn't have money to catch cabs, and I was living off popcorn and seltzer from the Film Forum theater where my friend Floydd worked.