It's hard work being
insane. People think I don't work for a living....! - Bambi
Lake
I first met Ms. Bambi Lake at
the crusty Barbary Coast hold-out bar, Spec's in North Beach, San Francisco,
a block from my home. I was trying to make myself invisible to the drunk
tourists, and focused on drawing subversive cartoons.
.
Still, there was something irresistable
about this extreme character at the end of the bar who interrupted my
concentration by grabbing an issue of "Wimmin's
Comix" from among my detritus.
.
We were soon bonding over
arcane L.A./S.F. punk rock lore, and just as soon, fuming loudly about
the merits (or lack thereof) of a certain S.F. fuck-up, about whom we CLEARLY
disagreed. She stomped off to Vesuvio's across the street. A half hour
later my curiousity broke me down. I wanted a copy of her book ( The
Unsinkable Bambi Lake, available through Manic
D Press ), so I slunked over and began what was to become a moody acquaintance.
.
I found her book to be a thoroughly
engaging read, and hers to be such an irresistable personality that couldn't
help but wonder what had motivated her to survive in the face of adversity
as her lifestyle committed her to. Bambi is not just a cross dressing male,
nor is she biologically or sythetically (for lack of a better word) female.
She is a glamour Goddess, and the fact that she took her femininity so
much more seriously than I, or any other woman I know, despite her genetics,
was poignantly fascinating.
.
I was fortunate to employ
this web-publication to avail myself of an opportunity to met her again
at Spec's and explore, if not entirely demystify (that's no fun!), a whole
subculture of non-conformity I could never be part of. There isn't really
a place for biological girls in the TV/TS scene. They don't really belong
to the gay male scene, either. Outside of straight society, excluding the
half that is female entirely, maligned by men who love "men", it would
seem that TS/TV's occupied a very narrow segment of the fringe.
.
Influential to the theater
throughout it's evolution, their numbers have yet to gain full acceptance
by the media. The success of personalities like Dame Edna and RuPaul have
still not made them mainstream. Which is perhaps for the best. During the
period in the '70s when glitter was, ahem "queen", Bambi was everywhere
that was where it ws at, meeting everyone who was anyone. But that's all
in her book.
.
What I was interested in was
the real, day to day toils. How does this woman, who does womanhood so
much more righteously than most girls I know, exemplify a Lady who came
of age in the heyday of glamour and come to terms with the persistance
of time, and managed it so gracefully?
..
Bambi
has given me great advice on dealing with men, romantically, and I think
I have benefitted from her unique perspective. Hopefully, you readers will
too.
.
-Karrin, 12/99
.
Karrin: What doyou do?
B: Well, I used to be a hooker
and a stripper. (I've also been) a "Ted" and a "skin" and a punk....
I realized I was insane about two years ago because,
when I was a stripper, we were paid to go crazy. You know, strippers are
paid to put on a show and get drunk.
.
Where I worked for ten years, at what I would
call the "Five & Dime" after the movie, "Come back to the Five &
Dime, Jimmy Dean", which is about this little enclosed bar where these
people lived in South Texas.
.
Anyway, I worked there from '76 to '86 and
basically drank with the customers and danced for them. We could get as
drunk as we wanted and if anyone gave us shit we could have 'em kicked
out.
.
It created a personality that is hard for
me to live with now because now you naturally have an urge to be outrageous,
but you can't have people thrown out anymore; they throw you out instead.
.
But, I went through a period of being a call
girl and I was away from drugs and alcohol for quite some time. People
would call and ask, "Do you party?" and I'd say, "No, I don't". So I was
able to get focused and be sort of elegant, like a courtesan. And, I was
able to write my book that way. I just sat around and ate chocolate and
gourmet food and actually put on some weight for the first time in my life.
.
I am diagnosed as being bi-polar but I've
always considered that everyone was. I also come out of the 60's drug culture
and the punk rock culture. (Talk turns to Debbie Harry - was she
or was she not a junkie back in the day...)
.
The insanity basically comes from my father.
But my father is also diagnosed manic depressive and has refused to get
help. They're finally locking him up. It's real sad.
.
So I came to realize that I had it and have
been on lots of medication over the last few years. I think I inherited
it from both sides because my aunt on my mother's side locked herself in
her room for three years. My dad was one of the first people to go on Lithium
and they still don't understand it.
.
K: It's a metal!
B: They came up with this stuff in the sixties.
What it does is make it really difficult for you to think and remember
stuff. I don't have to do anything right now but recover, but it makes
it really hard for me to umm, memorize lyrics, and, umm, perform
and, umm...
.
K: Concentrate?
B: Yeah ! If I'm doing a nightclub act, I've
got to memorize twenty songs and I can't do that anymore. I mean, I keep
out of trouble now, and (so) I'm sort of going off my meds. I have a right
to. I'm going to try to manage without them. The insanity thing is something
that I'm confronting head on and I think the main thing that unleashes
the vengeful goddess Kali is that I have always had a lot of trouble with
authority. I usually get into fights with doormen and club security guys.
.
K: Those are the people to schmooze!
B: When I am lit drunk I usually go after
the doorman, because he's in a position of authority. I have this paranoid
fantasy that they are all from these old-moneyed San Francisco families,
and being a native I have a lot of issues with these people.
.
K: Do you have 'poor guilt'?
B: No, I have 'poor rage'! It's because they
come from these rich families they get to be in these positions of authority.
It's hard to get there in the first place. That's how they get there. (These
are doormen she's talking about! -ed.) I do always end up always going
for these guys and I always punch them. I swing at them and box, or I run
and they box me.
.
K: You now they wouldn't be working there
if they were really rich though. I'm sure !
B: The thing is authority. That is why I
never worked in school, becausse it's all about authority. Like, I just
got out of jail and it's like "Yes, daddy, I'm obedient."
I had my arm broken by eight cops, three females.
.
K: Do you think that (authority issue)
has something to do with your family, too?
B: Everything goes back to high school. In
AA we are learning that we have to write down the names of people we resent
(oh boy! -ed), because those are the people that you're fighting with,
it's those assholes from high school. I always hung out with the stoners
and artists.
.
K: Weren't you involved in the drama
scene?
B: I hung around all the genius' and still
do. (spanish accent) "Nobody said it was going to be easy"...
.
K: No muy facil.
B: No. So yeah, I love a good stiff drink
but I just can't do it anymore. So I'm in AA and my sponsor just walked
out. Believe me she's got more problems than I do ! So I just go to meetings
for myself.
.
K: Good for you, Bambi. (swigging Guinness.)
B: I don't want to put my friends through
what I put them through this year. I had people coming down to the jail
to give me shampoo money. Coming down to the San Francisco General Hospital
Mental Ward on Christmas Day to talk to me. And you know, I spent Christmas
Day in jail this year and we didn't get no candy on Cristmas. We had a
pentecostal service. It was just really awful.
.
K: They don't give you like, an old newspaper
or something?
B: Nuttin'. They give you shit. THey say
"How you boys doing today?". I was in the queens tank, but they call us
"men". You know, we're all, like flawless women, and they're like, "How
are you gentlemen doing today?" "Stand up straight. Bend over." It's kind
of sexy in jail. Actually, there was this skinhead that fell in love with
me. I got cought giving him head through the bars and I got reprimanded.
He wanted to marry me, but when I got out I just never called him.
.
K: Do you think you could have Center
of Attention Deficit Disorder?
B: (laughs) Center of Attention. Well, when
I'm drunk I demand attention, and when I'm sober, I allow others to talk.
Tuesday Weld played a lot of beautiful, psychotic characters and I kind
of developed into her, slowly. Like a raging brat. She's kiind of who I
become. She rages and screams and break things. The positive one's are
who I become when i'm sober, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly types. I think
you have to have 'been there' in order to become a great actress.
.
K: You have to live to tell about it.
B: Look who's talking!
.
K: How did you come to choose the modest
life of a transexual punk poet over that of a porn-slut to the superstars?
B: I really tried to become a porn-slut.
But what happens is, they send a couple movies out into the blue, and if
they don't get responses for more from you, you don't get called. I saw
the films I was in and I don't think the lighting was right, and I didn't
have enough interst in it. They always put me with girls, for one
thing. Never put me with a guy. I just don't sleep with women. I've had
the chance to sleep with lots of women, and I just can't. It's always been
sorta silly, 'cos I can't even get it up. THey're marketed to men, so they
can watch a "dyke" scene. Jamie Gillis (porn star) was in the room while
we were filming and, if he would have come into the scene, something might
have happened. But porn, where does it get you? Poeple see you naked, you
don't get any money. I mean, sex work pays my rent and I'm good at it.
Call girl work is terrific work. It is soul draining. I've got dates waiting
online right now, but I just don't want to call. I could use a date right
now to buy some new dresses.
.
K: I don't value things I buy new as
much as things I score in the trash!
B: I do. $120 for a dress, that's not bad
for me. (Karrin is having a caniption fit.)
.
K: Would you say there was a definitive
moment or experience when youmight say punk rock changged your life, or
caused you to mutate into the freak that you are today?
B: There were three moments. My life falls
into three sections: the Cockette years, the Punk years, and peotry years.
In the late sixties/ early seventies, I met these Svengali-like people
like John Waters, Lady Divine, and This tall, balck man named sylvester
I talk about in my book. Anyway, they all performed at the Palace Theater,
where the Pagoda theater is now, near Washington Square Park, and hung
out with a drag queen group known as the Cockette's. At midnight they'd
let all these freaks in and they would watch these old movies, and these
drag queens would put on these long, beaded gowns and put on shows. It
was totoally cool. Divine and Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller came, and the
Warhol people. THey went to New York and were discovered by Truman Capote.
Rex Reed and Joanna Carson were in the audience, and in those days they
were powerful people. They went to New York and met the Warhol people and
became the Cockette's. I think they had tons more talent than the Warhol
people, and they had better clothes, and they did less drugs. It was platforms,
shaved eyebrows, frizzy hair, glitter make-up, monkey-fur coats. I drifted
through that era, went to Europe through the Nixon years. My generation
just left the country. It was hopeless and pointless to be here in 1973.
We went to Amsterdam. The Dutch government paid for us to go over there
and be part of the gay liberation and throw glitter at people. We were
young with headdresses, feathers and rhinestones on our eyes and appeared
in festivals. That went on until 1975 when you had Bowie doing..
.
K: the Thin White Puke?
B: That was when I met Bowie. I was working
for Romi Hagg(Hague). He came to see us the night of the Thin White Duke
tour and she didn't know who he was. She was too busy with Aristotle Onassis
and Jane Fonda and she's never really listened to any of his albums, which
was kind of impressive to him. She was already a millionaire, and they
had this fling. Iggy Pop was there, sitting on a couch. They were learning
from us. All my life, rock stars have been coming to see me, Siouxsie came
to see me perform. I take pride in that, because I think drag queens have
always been on the cutting edge of everything theater, and I think street
style is coopted by important people. So drag queens will always be, because
they can't help it.
.
A lot of the Nineties has been about me evolving
out of being a drag queen, into being more of a girl, with girl's concerns.
When I was working as a stripper I developed my girl's voice. Meeting Bucky
(Sinister) and Danielle Willis, meeting the Sex Pistol's, I've been lucky
enough to meet everybody. Not nearly everybody I want to meet.
.
K: Bad Boyfriends: What was your most
fucked-up, insanely surreal relationship scenario. I know every girl has
got a secret stash of those!
B: Bambi reads two from her book, on Manic
D.Press, "The Irrepressible Bambi Lake". She reads us "Vince the Vice Cop"
(remember, I taped this amidst the ruckus and hullabaloo of the notorious
cruster dive bar, Spec's, the last outpost of the Barbary Coast...)
.
K: If there were one particular asshole
you'd like to rip on, if you could summon anyone who had ever fucked with
you, who would you call up first and how would you up first?
B: Well, you see, I'm in AA, we don't do
those things!
.
K: Awww, give it a rest! You wrote up
a shit-list!
B: I know, but that's high school. I just
got kicked in the face last night(for talking shit), with a boot in the
eye. It just doesn't get you anywhere. I mean, I don't really want to go
into it, you know? It's like, it could happen at any time. The harder you
kick the harder you get kicked back. You've just gotta be careful who you
invite into your life. Every guy'll give you warning signs, like "I'm:
"an Asshole", "borrowing money", 'making you buy me things", "fucking
other girls at the same time I'm fucking you", and if you keep saying "Oh,
we're still in love, you're going to get all you can handle. They always
give you warning signs. THey hit you. They do drugs in front of you, they
use other women, "Do you still want me to come over?" ( She warns me against
Satan-worshipping Nazi's.) I went through all that and, by about thirty,
I got wise to that. And I stopped doing that. I just became a pro. I wasn't
graced with a boyfriend, until the two weeks ago, whom I've written sixteen
poems about. I'm being graced with his presence.
.
K: What is your greatest fear about growing
older at this point in your life.
B: That's why I can't drink anymore, because
I am old, I have no home and no partner, and I'm really scared of that.
Being alone and broke. In order to not be alone and broke.
.
K: So you want to get married is what
you're saying.
B: Yeah, I need company. Any girl who doesn't
want to get married is a dyke.
.
K: I don't know about that, but you are
allowed.
B: All this about "I want to sleep in my
own bed..." - closet dyke. I happen to be a women I I happen to need a
man. Hello, anyone else out there? C'mon. And I'll get it. I'll just do
it. Everyone needs somebody. That's just all there is to it.
.
K: Do you consider 'straight ' men out
of your league?
B: I've never slept with anyone who was gay,
since I got my tits. Have you ever met a gay man who sucked a titty?
.
K: So there are no straight men?
B: No. Transexuals sleep with straight men.
They have to. And then (the men) ignore them the next day. Gay men are
repulsed by breasts. My book is saturated with sex. I get all the sex I
want. I don't get any love.
.
K: Can you provide any insight into the
psyche of the average male for girls?
B: They don't accept it. They don't believe
it. It's a difficult, wicked subject but, if you're interested, you have
to observe. Go into tranny bars and you'll see tons of straight men. You'll
see them falling in love, shooting up speed together in the bathroom. It's
a shitty underground world. White boys from Fremont that want to get off
with Filipina queens, keeping it hidden from their families or coming out
as a tranny-chaser, or they OD on drugs thru shame.
.
It's got nothing to do with your kind of
nightmare, which is a different nightmare, actually being a woman. You
could actually get hurt and you've really got to watch out. So I don't
know that I would really want to be a woman. When you think about it, men
have a pretty hard job too.
.
They have to actually fight the fights that
go on in the street, hold the guns, and protect the women. I couldn't quite
manage that. I wasn't butch enough to play the gay man role. To play a
gay man you have to look the part. If you're going to be a faggot man,
like a hair dresser, that's totallydepressing. So you become a chick
and if you can, then you become a super drag queen. And if you can, actually
get into being accepted as a woman, maybe by other women, and really put
up with it. Which is kind of what I've done. I like it and I'm happy. I
mean, I go nuts and stuff. But when I think about what everyone else has
to go through, I don't blame men for everything. I like men. I don't like
asshole's. A guy who worships Hitler and beats up women, beats his wife,
well, they may be funny for a while but like I told you, if a guy's an
asshole, he'll let you know. Those boys in Colorado who killed all those
kids? It was Hitler's birthday. There are a lot of those people around.
.
K: What compels you to live on in the
face of so much adversity?
B: Belief in myself and love for myself.
I look in the mirror and I see one of the most beautiful women I've ever
seen. And I can't believe she's going home alone, but I know now why she's
going home alone. Why she has to play the game. When you learn how to play
the game, you have a chance to find some sort of peace. I've gotten some
peace. I've gotten some hell, but I'm getting a clue now as to what I have
to do, what my calling is. And that is to be a writer. To confront all
my issues head-on, with people, without blaming anyone. And, hopefully,
help this whole Jerry Springer world move on to a more interesting, Masterpiece
Theater kind of existance.
.
K: How would you like to be remembered?
B: As on of the people who replaced Diane
DiPrima and Anais Nin and Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller. To move on into
the Millenium of new writer's. And maybe a little bit as a singer, and
a pretty girl who managed to do it all while retaining her vulnerability.
That's the hard part. To do it all without losing your tits.
.
K: To BE the tits without losing them!
B: Yeah. That's why I worship Jessica Lange
- people like that.
.
K: I've often wondered, because I do
respect you so much, if part of the reason that you & I have fought
so much is because I am a girl. Do you find that you feel resentful towards
girls?
B: Totally, because I've never had a girl
friend I could trust. There's a power struggle between girls and queen's,
over who's sucking "his" dick, and who is a "Real" woman. They always say
the same thing. It's an issue that always come's up: "You're not a woman.
You can't have daddy. These are my boys, I'm protecting them. They don't
go with you, you're lying." It'sall the same girl. And as soon as you introduce
them to your boyfriend they're like, "Well, get rid of her and spend your
money on me". (!) I've never met a girl I could really trust. Don't take
it personally, you're talking to a tragedy case here. If you can come to
accept me.
.
.
Well, Bambi and I have very different
taste in men, so one would think that jealousy and possessiveness would
be non-issues for us. But she still doesn't treat me with much respect
for my feelings, and I suspect that acceptance is one thing she could
come to accept. To accept girls and others as individuals, and to accept
being accepted by them. .To
make exceptions, because we are NOT all the same. .I
hope so. Because I think Bambi RULES ! - KV |