Random Rocky Photo of the Day
Gather ‘round, boys and girls, for an adventure in the Way Back Machine. Imagine, if you can, being a 21 year old woman in March of 1988 and having joined Sins one month ago. As I have said before it was just a matter of showing up as a tranny that got my foot in the cast where I would stay for the next thirteen years. When I first joined cast, screen accurate costuming was pretty dismal except for the primary (and only) Magenta that I would later replace that August. Her name was Sarah and she was incredible, but I’m not talking about her today. On the far left in this picture is my first real friend I made in cast, a fourteen year old kid named Daniel. I know, it sounds freakish to even say it now but he was not a typical fourteen year old, and even at 21 I was nowhere near grown up, especially when it came to being a tranny.
Daniel lived in Silverlake with his parents - an artist and an ex-New York model who moved to L.A. from New York a couple of years earlier. They were old Factory groupies and fantastic people, the mom with her high-pitched Betty Boop N.Y. accent, bright red hair and lipstick. The dad, an angry Argentinean artist who was actually pretty good looking and brooding. The house was constantly in a state of construction and with his weird sculptures everywhere. I had a bad break-up of a 4.5 year relationship at this time and I started spending all my time with Daniel and his folks or at my house. He slept on my couch every Saturday night and we spent our time reading Life in Hell, watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and The Wall, listening to the Talking Heads and combing thrift stores for perfect tranny costuming. Of course, the movie was not even out on video yet, so we had to rely on viewings in the theater (impossible when you’re performing) and photos I bought from the fan club. Eventually someone gave me a pirated copy of the movie with Japanese sub-titles and I came home from Rocky and watched the whole thing, and then I rewound it and watched it again. I remember being amused by the silences which are not there in the theater (particularly the “Janet, Brad, Rocky, Bullwinkle!” bit). Around this time Daniel, the first tranny leader, and myself made or helped to make the entire tranny squad screen accurate for the first time ever. Also, trannys were not allowed guest even though they paid $1 cast dues that everyone else paid, and we changed that, too. But this was a very difficult time for me made worse by the fact that I broke up with my boyfriend that I planned to marry and my friendship with Daniel helped me get through it. I consider it be my first fag/hag friendship but he was not yet willing to come to terms with his homosexuality. He dated a couple of girls and I tried to nudge him toward boys but he didn’t really want to confront that. He came bounding out of the closet a few years later, moved to San Francisco, did drag, and even became a model in Madrid from what I hear. He can be seen in the first Addams Family movie as young Gomez at prom and he was very much into acting classes at the time.
I haven’t had contact with him for over a decade but I love him and think about him so much. Last week I saw his Godmother, Lauren Hutton, on tv talking about her godchildren and I had to look him up. I found a phone number and address for his parents, now in Palm Springs, so wish me luck. I would be delighted if there was still a friendship there. I love that my close friend Raven who was a few years older than me would visit him and love him, too. And his mom would drop him off at my house on the way out with her girlfriend who was my age. It was the first time I realized how little difference age makes with the people you feel comfortable with. Best Daniel memory ever (there are so many); Thanksgiving, a blue spiked haired Daniel comes to mom’s house wearing a leopard trench coat, blue docs, and cut off Dickies with suspenders. He ate nothing but a giant pile of stuffing and was mercilessly ridiculed by my mom’s Irish boyfriend who we called Paddy O’ Furniture.