by Jake Shears
I saw Bikini Kill play their unrelenting sugar punk manifesto party music at an all-ages show at the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific. Kathleen Hanna in her joyful rage was so sure of herself and her own convictions. It freaked me out that she wouldn’t let any guys get within twenty feet of the stage; she said she’d kick their asses. I went to that show alone and I stood in the back. I think at the time I understood why I wasn’t welcome up front, but it didn’t make me feel any less unsettled. Still, I found the anarchy cleansing.
I only got to see Bowie play once in my life. It was the Outside tour that year with Nine Inch Nails, the first of two times I’d be in the same room with him. It was like seeing the Easter Bunny for real. I thought I was dreaming as he belted “Strangers When We Meet” in a powerful wide stance, his feet rooted to the stage.
These performers went out in front of the crowds boiling over the edge, making themselves and their work the spectacle, matter-of-factly embodying a creation of their own intent. There was so much pain and energy inside me. These shows made me want to stand up in cafés and flip tables over, cackle and squeal and break things, do the fucking Charleston, feel the loss of control, and let something else, something unknown, take the wheel. It all looked like a hell of a lot of fun to me.
Being juiced up on Jolt cola and half-cocked on my own rock fantasies and personal successes at school made it easy to slip into parts of my personality that weren’t so cute. I managed to betray myself and my values on occasion. The worst was when I became friends with a German exchange student in my grade named Jens. He looked like he had walked out of one of my tattered International Male catalogues with his blue eyes and cable-knit sweaters. It was a new sensation to have a straight “mate” with whom I shared common ground. My crush was undeniable, but I did my best not to lust after straight boys.
One night, with my parents out of town, Jens asked me if he could stay the night. The instant we were alone, I turned into the room and he was at my face. We started kissing. Taking a step back, I caught his eyes, skeptical. It was an unspoken question: Do you really want to do this? We kissed more deeply this time and began touching each other. I couldn’t believe that my daydream sexual fantasy was coming to life. We pulled off our clothes, moved to the bed, gave each other head, and came, our limbs forming a knot. We looked at ourselves and laughed at the absurdity of what we’d just done. Then fell asleep in each other’s arms.
He was in the shower the next morning when I called Ariel, one of my girlfriends from school. I had a network with the girls—we told each other everything. Malicious or not, we loved to gossip. “You’re not going to believe who’s in my shower right now,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. It was a conquest, and I’d triumphed. When I hung up, Jens came into the room with a white towel wrapped around his waist, smiled, and kissed me again. He had no idea I’d just sold him out.
By the end of the day on the following Monday, the entire school knew that he and I had slept together. He must have stumbled through his classes with a sinking feeling of disappointment as, one by one, every person around him suddenly saw him differently. For the rest of the year it seemed that Jens walked the halls with his head down. He couldn’t look at me—or anyone, for that matter. We stopped speaking, our friendship and the possibility of any future trysts decimated.
Whether he was actually straight or not, I’d outed him. I’d played the locker-room jock, bragging about a sexual victory. And by doing that, I’d felt a kind of power I’d never had, the sensation of putting somebody in their place. No one at school would have been inclined to bully him, but he now carried the label of being gay. I might have seemed adjusted and happy with myself, but the anger from the abuse that I’d taken in Arizona was still alive and well. It was a toxic, sick victory, and I was filled with a hollow satisfaction over finally having made someone else know what it felt like to be a fag.
HAVING JUST CONCENTRATED ON SURVIVING high school, I hadn’t properly considered collegiate life, so my choice of colleges was random. I had no real idea of where I wanted to be, or what I wanted to study. Attending Occidental College in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles was kind of like spinning a globe and blindly setting my finger down on a spot. Some girlfriends that had graduated a year ahead of me had decided to go there, so I figured, at least I’d know some people. At Occidental, I fit in well enough, enjoyed my classes, and made friends, but I still wasn’t happy with what campus gay life had to offer. The school was small and it didn’t seem like there were many other homos around, so I took my car into Hollywood often, looking for any kind of trouble. I was still seventeen when I started classes, so unfortunately there weren’t many options until October, when I became a legal adult, and could get into certain places.
I eventually found a club that I loved on Sunday nights called Velvet. It was fronted by this terrifying queen dripping with black mascara called Candy-Ass, whom I’d watch, enraptured. He had all kinds of sleazy looks and themes: no-nonsense businesswoman, satanic flapper, Easter Jesus. It was drag, I guess, but he did nothing to hide his hulking frame. Candy-Ass was a man, glam and scary, and seemed like he’d bite your head off if you ever talked to him. He presided over a crowd that was a grab bag of LA party weirdos. The regulars included a silver-haired cowboy, a severe burn victim, and countless Debbie Harry look-alikes. I went religiously, my eyes never leaving Candy-Ass and his floozy go-go minions. I loved how they were always the center of the room’s attention.
Maybe my wistful fascination with Candy-Ass wasn’t only focused on his aggressive performances, but also on his gargantuan size. I was scrawnier than ever. The cafeteria food at Occidental was putrid, so I just lived off chicken sandwiches from Burger King every night, supplemented with a pack of Camel Lights—and despite how unhealthy the sandwiches were, I didn’t gain a pound. When I took my shirt off, it was ghoulish. You could count my ribs. But still, I brightened up my gaunt look with loud colors and a penchant for dumping a very fine glitter over my eyes and face.
I was unhappy with how I looked and felt less than desirable. I’d thought I was going to arrive in California, make a ton of new friends, and get laid all the time, but that was just not happening. However, there were a handful of people I liked hanging out with, and there were new drugs I began to enjoy.
I tried ecstasy, which kicked in on my way back from a club, as I drove past downtown Los Angeles. I stroked the car window saying, “Oh my God” over and over while “Water from a Vine Leaf” by William Orbit took me down a waterfall. It felt fucking heavenly.
I’d make mushroom milk shakes with my friend Abbey or we’d take acid and putter around her Renaissance castle–style house or take in her epic Tron-board view of the valley until sunrise. She had a pet monkey, an emu, a trampoline room, a little movie theater, and their old favorite pet goat’s head taxidermied and mounted to the wall wearing a top hat. We’d be tripping really hard in the kitchen at four in the morning when her little sister, a body contortionist, would come in and start folding herself into a box in complete silence. Her whole family seemed like they stayed up all night, and I convinced myself at one point, high on LSD, that they were actual vampires.
Mary flew from Arizona to visit and we cruised around in my Chevy Beretta, spent a day at Disneyland, and sat on my dorm room twin bed and drank beer. Our barbed conversations and jabs would sometimes turn into little fights. She was so sensitive and would get mad if I said something the wrong way, or if she perceived a slight. Still, no one could make me laugh like her. In another life, one where she wasn’t so pummeled by the world, she would have done good stand-up.
On her last night with me, I took her to Velvet and she wore a funky, diagonal-striped maroon and blue dress with Lisa Loeb glasses. Mary didn’t seem so self-conscious there among all the club freaks, she didn’t stick out like she did other places. I had the rare sensation that we both belonged there, even if just for a night.
I wasn’t going to stay in LA. It was too sprawling and I felt
like a tiny fish. Who was ever going to notice me here? And what for? I had fleeting dreams of being a filmmaker, but after trying to write a short script about frat boys taking a drug called “fairy dust” that made them have sex and then kill each other, it seemed futile. I’d been making music, had scored and done the sound design for Occidental’s spring play, but when I saw a Chemical Brothers concert, or listened to Daft Punk’s Homework, music production seemed like a stretch, too. I was trying new things, but I understood that just because you gave something a shot, it didn’t mean you were sealing any deals. There were other kids who would blather on and on about all the movies they would make, and I could tell it was just talk.
I’ve always found it creatively dangerous to spin fantasies about your work. Dreams and desire are necessary, but if you talk about your ideas too much, they can get weak, and remain unmade. There are a lot of people who equate having the thought with having implemented it. If you spill too much to the world, it can make you less excited about creating.
I had no goal, other than to find my aim. And I needed to be in a smaller place to find it. I’d get a job again in Seattle at the movie theater I had worked at in high school. I’d hang out in cafés and smoke. I promised my mom and dad I’d go to community college and figure something out. But I was uneasy, on the verge of feeling completely lost.
A friend of mine and I decided to drive my car up from LA to Seattle. About an hour out of the city, the engine exploded. My father had to drive all the way down from Seattle and we towed the car back up the coast.
When he arrived, he didn’t say much. We both knew I wouldn’t be returning to a proper college the following year, and he must have thought I looked terrible, nothing but eyes and bones, probably assumed I was on drugs, with no real plan for the future. Most of our ride was in silence. The mutual disappointment was like a choking smoke, filling the air between us.
Seattle turned out to be a good move. There was plenty of culture to satisfy me, but it was compact enough for me not to feel like I was being swallowed. I tore tickets at the movie theater, studied American Sign Language at school, then got an extra job working for Sub Pop’s record store in Pike Place Market, hawking all the local bands and labels to tourists.
I didn’t realize how badly I needed to perform. Not by seeking it out, per se, but by finding myself onstage in strange ways. I became obsessed with Billy Idol, listening to him nonstop and bleaching my hair, wearing leather vests, perfecting my sneer in the mirror. One night it occurred to me that I could get in front of a crowd and sing his songs at the various karaoke nights around town.
I was now nineteen, still not old enough to get into bars, but I found an ID at Bimbo’s Bitchin’ Burrito Kitchen, this fast-food joint I’d been working at. The guy pictured on the ID obviously wasn’t me. His name was David Joseph Wiktorski. He was in his early thirties and was balding. But somehow, when I was brave enough to use it, it worked. On karaoke nights, I would go to a bar by myself, nervously flash the ID with my eyes to the ground, and walk straight to the DJ booth. After picking a song, I’d keep a low profile until it was my turn, then pounce on the stage in my best imitation of a pro, as I strutted and growled through “White Wedding” or “Cradle of Love.” I saw people’s faces light up with surprise, both at the performance and at the fact that I was obviously underage. As soon as I set the mic down, I ran for the door, knowing I’d get thrown out immediately.
I had a friend named Jon who lived down the street from me and worked the door at 20th Century Foxes, where the clientele was a broad swath of transgender women, gender illusionists, run-of-the-mill drag queens, and men who simply liked to wear women’s clothing, plus a few drifters and grifters, surly bartenders, and the occasional homeless person huddled in a dark corner. There were shows every night, and it occurred to me that I could dress in drag and have a regular place to perform. With enough makeup, a wig, and a high fur collar, who was to say that wasn’t me on the ID?
My looks were assembled without a great eye for style, but I did my best with what I had, borrowing cheap dresses or fur-lined coats from girls I knew. I decided that every week I would do a different James Bond theme song and call myself Cubic Zirconia. The soaring melodies were a strange but complementary juxtaposition with the weary interior of the bar. I would have rather been actually singing, but it brought me enough adrenaline every week to get up and lip-sync.
Each time I performed, I felt a sensation not dissimilar to déjà vu: that I was in the right spot, doing something I was meant to be doing. Which was strange, because I had no real desire to dress in drag. It felt like someone else’s world in that bar, but it was still a stage—a glorious ramshackle proscenium with a wonky railing around it that made it look like a wrestling ring.
The other performers were quite memorable. “Star” was a girl who seemed in some way developmentally disabled. She was very large, and wore dirty leggings and a T-shirt that was way too small so that her belly rolls hung over her waistband like melting ice cream. She always did “Proud Mary” by Tina Turner. It was a master class in confidence. She was a showgirl, and you could feel the happiness radiating as she shimmied and jiggled and stomped, her cherubic face vacillating between distorted beauty-pageant grins and dogged determination. It was effortless the way her hands shot out to collect all the dollar bills flying in from the bar patrons. To this day, that number is one of the best things I’ve ever seen.
Then there was “Wheelchair Betty,” as people called her. No one knew her actual name, and Lordy, she was a sight. Frail and wrinkled in a gray Barbara Bush–style fright wig and a tattered, gold-sequined blouse, she sat in her wheelchair with a kind of stately poise, chain-smoking. Her eyes were crudely shadowed and sunken. She had no legs and was also deaf.
Whoever was hostessing would wheel her onto the stage and start the song, then would run in front of her to signal that the song was playing. It was always “Strike It Up” by Black Box. She’d move her mouth like a goldfish and wave her arms in a repetitive circular motion, as if she were an animatronic figure trying to explain itself out of a loop. The DJ let it run for about two minutes and then turned it off, unceremoniously. Someone would stand up and wave their arms again, indicating to her that the song was over.
I was studying ASL at the community college, so I approached her one weekend, introduced myself, and asked her what her name was.
“D-A-R-R-E-N,” she told me.
“Nice to meet you, my name is J-A-S-O-N.” I thought it was appalling they’d been calling her Wheelchair Betty this whole time.
“Get me a cigarette,” she said.
“No problem,” I replied, and retrieved one from my purse.
“Get me a beer.” I did.
“Tell the DJ to play ‘Black Box’ again,” she demanded. That was usually the extent of our conversations.
I really loved that little corner of the universe. It was a place for those whom the world ignored. In 1997, so much of the LGBTQ world still lived in hiding. There was something a little magical about this stage, a light in the middle of a long shadow. Star and Darren were examples of consummate performers, satisfying a need to be up in front of people, sharing themselves, however rough they were.
I was tending to a compulsion I’d had ever since I was a child harassing my sister’s friends, or singing to stoners in our college dorm rooms. I needed an audience. From friendships to boyfriends or conversations at a bus stop, it was through other people that I learned about myself. I’ve never been good at deep examination on my own, so I take all these extreme experiences that I hold inside, spit them out, and invite others to help me understand what it all means. I never want to carry any baggage, which compels me to shake out my tragedies like a man possessed. Since I was a little kid, I just wanted to entertain people.
It’s why I sometimes overshare and let out embarrassing information in formal conversations. It’s why I throw myself around like a rag doll onstage, to the point of harm. The attention that I n
eed is for the expulsion of pain, in turn transforming it into a tangible thing that people might connect with. Straw to gold, water to wine. This was never just to feel accepted; that’s never been my driving force. It’s a pageant on the proscenium of my heart. Performance makes me feel good, and for a moment, be a better person than I actually am.
But I suspected the karaoke and drag numbers were nothing compared to my potential. I had twenty years so far pent up and ready to throw on the table, ready to tip my hand, win or lose. If I didn’t do something I was going to implode. I knew that the longer I stayed in Seattle, the harder it would be to leave. Whether or not it would chew me up, I’d heard New York City was the place that people went and fucking did something. So why not go where the gettin’ was good?
I MOVED TO NEW YORK in early January and the trip took a full two days. It started in Seattle, then I flew to Phoenix, where I stayed overnight and got to see Mary. She greeted me in the brownish terminal, leaning against a concrete pillar, her hair newly auburn, holding a beige purse in front of her, trying in vain to cover her size. It had been about six months since I’d seen her on a visit to Seattle when she’d needed to buy two seats next to each other to sit comfortably on the plane. Since then, she had gained even more weight. I pretended not to notice. We made a pilgrimage to the Phoenix Denny’s where all the gays went, stayed up all night talking. She was proud of me that I’d made the decision to move to New York. I longed to see her more.
