by RuPaul
- Don’t wear high heels in soggy grass.
- Remember: beauty is pain.
By the summer of '76, Laurence and Renetta decided that they were moving to Atlanta, Georgia. Laurence felt he could get an advantage if he went to a black boom town on the sunbelt. San Diego was a very white and conservative Republican community, but Atlanta had a black mayor, a black senator, and was known as Chocolate City for being 64 percent black. When they asked me if I wanted to go with them, I said, "Sure, why not?" The only thing I knew about Atlanta was that Henry "Hank" Aaron, the Home Run King, was from there.
I'd been living with Laurence and Renetta for six months, and I couldn't go back to my mother's house because you can never go home again. I had spread my wings and flown the nest.
In the space of six short months, although I was still a kid, I had grown up. Even when I went back to visit, everyone seemed caught in a time warp. My mother thought it was a good idea because Atlanta had more to offer than my old neighborhood.
On July 23 we packed up and drove cross-country in a '73 Mercedes. When we arrived we stayed at this Ramada Inn overnight. The next morning Laurence called a real estate agent to look at houses in Buckhead, an affluent area. The realtor was this white woman called Queenie (or something royal), and because I had told her that I was into performing she told us about the Northside School of Performing Arts, and how it would be ideal for me. Queenie may not have sold us a house that day, but she sold me on getting my education. When the school year started I was determined to go there.
But for a while we were in dire straits. Renetta was pregnant with her baby Morgan, and we didn't have any money. This reverend and his wife—Hattie Ruth and Reverend Joseph Stafford—ran the Free For All Baptist church. They took us in and we stayed with them until we got our feet on the ground. Eventually, Laurence got a job, and I got my wish to go to Northside School of Performing Arts.
The part of me you see on stage now came alive at Northside. I was free, I was away from all the kids I grew up with. And not only that, but I was with other kids who were artistic, who had the same feelings I had. For the first time in my life I felt like I was home. Since this was the first year that they had forced integration in the schools in the South, there were also a lot of black kids there. In fact, it was strictly half black and half white. Coming from California, I had never seen so many black people. I never knew so many black people existed.
I got enrolled into the musical drama department, but it was too stiff for me. I really hit pay dirt after the first quarter when I switched over to straight drama. My teacher Bill Pannel was twenty-six years old and had just come from L.A., where he had studied with Mr. Strasberg himself. Bill was hot-headed, young, and full of cum. We were all in love with him. He was so passionate, so dynamic, and if someone was doing it wrong he'd have temper tantrums and scream, "Damn it! Get back there and do it right." He taught us Strasberg's Method acting, which is all about becoming the character from the inside out. Once you feel you are the character, fuck the lines!—at least that was my understanding of it. I remember doing these improvisations with my friend, and we'd just go off ad-libbing endlessly. We didn't know the lines, but Bill loved it. I found it so captivating because it was real, and it was raw, and I really got to explore myself.
Soon I developed a name for myself, partly because I came from California and partly because I dressed so freaky. I got on Renetta's sewing machine and made my own clothes. I would think nothing of going to school in stripes, plaid, and a cowboy hat. Everybody was like, "Whoa—what are you thinking?" I was thinking Fame! I was Irene Cara, and I was going to light up the sky with my name! People thought I was losing my mind. I was, and it was fantastic. So when I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show as I turned sixteen, it was just in the nick of time. Because otherwise I might have lost my nerve and turned back. But, after that, there was no turning back. I just knew I had to do something with the dreamer in me that was screaming for release. My girlfriend took me to see the movie—another example of how girls are always more in touch than boys. Since then I've seen it maybe twenty-five times. I loved the freedom of it. I also loved the weird black humor, and it was the first time I really "got" camp and that whole idea of adopting something based on how seriously it takes itself, while being totally whacked out and demented. Since then I have made its message my credo: "Don't dream it, be it!"
But there was just one tiny problem. Because I lived about eighteen miles away from the school, I would have to get a ride to the bus, take the bus, and then hitchhike when I got to the other end. In other words, I was always late for school. This might not have been such a big deal had I not flunked the tenth grade in San Diego and I had to do it over again. Finally Laurence got fed up and told me I was going to have to change schools.
"Laurence, don't do this," I said.
"Yeah, you're moving schools," he said. I begged my sister and Laurence to let me stay, but to no avail.
I was just so upset. Bill, my teacher, said, "Come here, I want to tell you something... Ru, do not take life so seriously."
At that point, I was like, "What?"
He said, "Do not take life so seriously."
It took me a few years, but now I totally know what he means, and it's probably the most important thing anyone's ever told me. The point is that life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. To put your problems and anxieties into proper perspective, you need to realize that as serious as they may seem to you, compared to the plight of the rest of the world, they aren't half bad.
Andy Warhol's tip when you get upset and freaked out about something is to sit back and say, "So what?" So what? because, believe me, the rest of the Universe does not give a shit about your problems. So what? because in reality your problem is probably no big deal. And, finally. So what? because there may not be anything that you can do about it—these things often have to unravel themselves, and there is nothing you can do other than have the grace and patience to sit them out.
And I shouldn't have taken it all so seriously, because, as things turned out, they let me stay.
It's funny because even though Laurence and Renetta were only a few years older than me, they were my guardians and were in charge. And because they were so close to me in age, they were just coming out of this phase themselves, and so they knew the bottom line was that I was a pot-smoking, havoc-wreaking good-time boy. They were more strict with me than my mother—they had to be. But I didn't let that stop me. Laurence had a passion for cars and every six months he got a fancy schmancy new car—somehow. This was fine by me because in high school I would take my friends, many of whom came from rich families, to concerts in Rolls-Royces. Rarely did I get permission. I would wait for Laurence and Renetta to go to bed, then I would sneak out of the house and roll their Porsche—or whatever it was that week—down the hill so they couldn't hear it. Then I would start up the engine, drive into Buckhead, and park outside the local bar called The Place on Paces, where I would get stoned with my high school friends, sitting out front. Because in the South people are a lot more loose and hot to trot, there were lots of wild experiences. Later that night—sometimes as the sun was coming up—I would drive home and get a quick couple of hours sleep before heading back to school, with no one any the wiser.
PHOTO SHOOT TIPS
- Have a good night's sleep before the shoot. (Although I never do! I always get insomnia!)
- Insist on having a mirror right next to the camera so you can play off it.
- Make sure the lighting is as close to the camera as possible.
- Have the flash and the camera coming from the same direction.
- Never allow a photographer to shoot you from below unless it's a full-body shot from across the room.
- Try to imagine a person or a place that will give you the desired expression.
- Study Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in advance so you can have some posing ideas.
- Relax your forehead.
- Make sure the photographer has either a computer to do retouching or a budget for airbrushing.
- Keep your eyes open and have Visine on hand for redness.
- Bring the music you like to set the mood.
- Make sure you see the Polaroid tests.
- Bring an assistant!
- Don't rely on stylists for clothing. Bring your own stuff as well.
- Put lots of gauze over the lens!
It was around this time that I started to get my education in other things—let's call it career orientation. In San Diego I'd seen some drag queens and transsexuals hanging around, but I never really thought anything of it. The first time I got to know anyone like that was on the bus to school when I was in the tenth grade. Every morning there was this transvestite waiting at the bus stop. I remember thinking wow, how weird! She used to work nights at a sex club up the street called The Down Under. So when I was on my way to school in the morning, she was on her way home. She always wore purple, and we used to talk about this and that, like the weather.
Soon after making her acquaintance, I also saw my first drag queen performing. It was Crystal Labajia at Numbers Disco. The year was 1978. She was on the dance floor doing a Donna Summer song, and she had on a black bustier bikini thing with black fishnets and big black hair. The illusion was so incredible I was fooled, and thought to myself, "Is that Donna Summer? Is she really singing?" Of course she was lipsynching, but I couldn't believe it, I just couldn't believe it. After that I saw all the queens performing: Ashley Nicole, Charlie Brown, Lily White, Tina Devore, Dina Jacobs, and Yetiva Antoinette, who was the fiercest of them all. All the black queens were very current. They did looks that were up to the minute and performed the latest songs, while for the most part the white queens were more traditional. They did sappy things like show tunes from A Chorus Line.
As my dragucation took off, my academic career nosedived. Having scraped through tenth grade at Northside, I went to a school in South Fulton County for the eleventh grade, where I finally dropped out. Kids, do not do this! Stay in school! Meanwhile my brother-in-law's ambitions to become a lawyer also seemed to have gone off the rails, and he had gotten into the car business instead. Just shy of seventeen, I threw myself wholeheartedly into his company as his man Friday. He was a car broker and would sell Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, Porsches—any expensive car, because they had high profit margins. He would send me to the library to go through the newspaper classifieds from all over the country, looking for cars and circling the ones I thought were good. Then he'd call, make a deal, and I'd fly out to Kansas City—or wherever—with a check draft to pick up the car, which I would then drive back for him to resell. I was never good at selling the cars. Too honest, I guess.
I worked for Laurence off and on for about five years and traveled all over the United States. I probably drove by myself from Atlanta to San Diego well over a hundred times in a car. It was really good for me to see the country, and I sang the whole time—training my voice.
It was the summer of '81. I was wondering how my life was going to unfold, and how I was going to become a star. The answer came when I stumbled upon this weird cable program called The American Music Show. It was basically a variety show consisting of skits with a sick sense of humor performed by a kooky cast. As I wrote the credits down on the back of an envelope, I discovered that it was produced by a company called Funtone.
The Funtone group came out of the early seventies. They were a bunch of writers and artists who all met up when they were working on the McGovern presidential campaign in '72. Subsequently they started a comedy troupe called Red Meat and Sprouts, very much like an alternative Saturday Night Live.
They also launched a record label called Funtone Records. The corporation has two mottoes: "Fight Boredom" and "If It Ain't Fun, Don't Do It." I have tried to live my life according to both those golden rules. Soon after they started doing their improv skits, public access started. Public access meant that by law the cable operators had to provide one or two channels to the community for people to make their own programs. These programs could be made by anyone about anything.
I am sure that the bright spark in Washington who thought up this concept imagined an endless series of worthy but dull shows about local rotary meetings. The last thing he would have imagined would have been a bunch of old hippies and drag queens seizing the airwaves. If he had I am sure the idea of public access would have remained an idea. But it didn't, and not only are we the richer for it, but for me it was my launch pad.
The American Music Show was taped in Dick Richard's place, which was this really hippified house with funky kitsch things all over the place. It became Funtone HQ. The show was hosted by Dick Richards, James Bond, Pam Perry, Bud and Holly, and Potsy Duncan. It featured all these incredible guests with unbelievable multiple personas. Paul Burke played Ralph Bailey, Duffy Odum, and a whole bunch of other characters. He once tried to illustrate the concept of cable television with an anatomical map of the human spine. Molly Worthington looked like a Cher from India, and she created the sick character, LaWanda Peak. Later I discovered LaWanda Peak had two sisters, Starla Peak and Deaundra Peak (who in real life was the fabulous Rosser). They lived in a trailer park and had, as they put it, the "gift of voice." Well they were like the Andrews Sisters on acid. Bad acid. When they sang—as they insisted on doing—they would all scream, holler, and screech at once, out of time and out of tune. Genius, pure genius. Then there was Jon Witherspoon, who was known in drag as Lahoma Van Zandt, David Goldman whose alter ego is the cocktail-slugging Betty Jack Divine, and the band the Now Explosion, who consisted of Elouise Montague Cougar Mellancamp, Lady Clare, Lizette Quatro Christian, and Larry Tee. The list just goes on and on. I guess there were about twenty of them altogether.
When I saw those guys on public access I thought, "That's where I belong." I knew these were the people who would get my sense of humor and understand what I was doing. I vowed to get to these people by any means necessary, and sent in a picture of myself and a letter saying that I'd like to be on the show. One day while I was home Paul Burke called me and invited me on the show. I couldn't believe he was calling me, because in my mind he was a star. Meanwhile they couldn't believe I had written them a letter. When they read it they were falling about screaming, "Oh, my God, somebody wants to be on our show!"
I will always regard writing that letter to Dick as my start in showbiz, and as one of the most important things that I ever did in my life. However, the sixty-four-million-dollar question was, What was I going to do once I got on the show? Fate took care of that. I had just left the downtown library when I found twenty dollars on the street. I thought, "Great! I'm gonna go have myself a drink." I went to a bar and the waitress who waited on me was a living doll. Her name was Robin, and we became friends. She had a two-year-old little boy and a roommate named Josette. She needed some help to move into her new apartment, so I helped her out by driving the U-Haul truck. As we were driving I said to her, "We should start a group called RuPaul and the U-Hauls, and you guys can come on The American Music Show with me."
I made costumes for us on my sister's sewing machine and we did a dance routine that we had rehearsed all week to "Shot Gun" by Junior Walker and the All Stars. It went off without a hitch. After the show they interviewed us. Dick really liked us, and we became a fixture on the show immediately.
So, in January of '82, with that appearance on The American Music Show, I officially started my show business career. Of course not everyone would regard an outing on public access as the "business," but from Wayne's World to Coffee Talk, so many of the skits on Saturday Night Live are parodies of public access shows—and often the original is better. For me it was the equivalent of Roseanne's first appearance on Johnny Carson, or the Beatles' debut on Ed Sullivan. Okay, the audience share was not of the same magnitude, but you couldn't tell me that. Show business for me is a state of mind. If you want to be a star, you just need to believe that you are one. When I ap
peared on Dick's show my star was born, and it really made no difference whether millions were watching or just a handful of cable subscribers.
Something else was important about it too. Up to that point in my life I was all dressed up with no place to go. I felt the creative juices flowing within me, but had no idea in which direction to channel them. The American Music Show showed me the way. I was a child of television. As someone who had grown up watching as much of it as possible, whenever possible, I belonged on television. I was never at a loss for things to say, and from my years of study I instinctively knew just how to turn the volume up, how to pitch myself, and how to speak in sound bites. In short, I knew how to speak the language of television. Fluently.
That spring I was invited to a party at the Inman Park Festival that everyone was going to. I showed up with my bleached blond hair driving this huge four-door Mercedes Benz. Jon Witherspoon was making a movie about prostitutes starring Lady Clare from the Now Explosion. I said to them, "I have this big car. Maybe I can drive by, be a john, and pick her up." But they were like, "Oh, uh, right."
You know how everyone is when a new person comes into a clique, it's like, "Who does she think she is?" I've never been good with cliques. Cliques are all about people trying to find security in groups. "Oh, I'm special now because I'm part of this clique." But it's really just the emperor's new clothes. People aren't really together in cliques, and the sense of security that they feel is just an illusion. Eventually, all cliques disintegrate. That's why I've always felt secure in my insecurity.
Before I left the party that night I distinctly remember making some sort of speech: "Guys, remember my name 'cause I am a star, and this isn't the last you'll see of me blah blah blah ..." and I drove off into the night in my lime green Mercedes.
Of course, it wasn't the last they saw of me because Dick asked us back on The American Music Show again and again and again. Sometimes we would take the instrumental version of a song like "Too Busy to Think About My Baby" by Orbit and rap my live vocals on top of it.
