XMAS WITH CHARLES BUSCH

Remembrance of New York Awesome

When I was a young playwright in San Francisco, writing and performing plays (on no budget whatsoever) for a converted storefront called Climate Theater, the producer of my first play spent a long time drawing on the dressing room wall in dripping red letters:  VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM.   

It was the title of a play that had been a hit in New York’s East Village around the same time, by the iconic playwright and drag performer Charles Busch.  The play name was meant to inspire us to bring the electricity and verve to our humble underground endeavor in punk-rock, alternative theater. And it did. 

Charles Busch, for me, was, a North Star.  Theater in San Francisco in the late 1980’s had taken a bit of a rowdy, avant-garde turn, and crazy little shows were turning up in various warehouses. 

 I was baptized into the theater underground at 18 by being recruited out of my SF State drama class into a musical called “Imelda: The Opera,” created by a group called Dude Theater. 

We performed several shows of this musical extravaganza in a gay bar called The Stud, where I wasn’t legally old enough to be inside (but had been inside frequently since I was 14). 

Dude Theater was a hilarious, sarcastic group of actors and writers who somehow managed to grow between the cracks of the sidewalk, in alleys and punkrock venues in the shadow of the big SF theaters like ACT, Magic Theater and the opera house.  Dude’s idea of theater was, among other things, throwing meat out of pick-up trucks.  I was in a horror-spoof play with Dude called “Buckets O’ Blood - A Slash Play.”  It was a real Grand Guignol spurt-fest. (I had to make blood nightly for my ‘teenage slut who gets killed’ role, from whatever was available at the tiny liquor store across the street — ketchup and syrup, mainly, which the foam rubber entrails I wrapped around my waist nightly absorbed, being spongy.  They smelled strongly of vomit for the entire run of the production.)

It was sheer pleasure to perform rowdy bloody comedy theater late at night for largely drunk club-going types.  One felt one was doing something valuable, despite the fact that there was zero money in it. 

I ended up doing it for years. 

So you can only imagine how utterly stoked I was in New York, years later, when I enjoyed the great privilege of working and hanging out with the great Charles Busch himself.  I adored him — his Marlene Deitrich face, his great talent, his devilish sense of humor — I was thrilled to be in his orbit.

He was also incredibly supportive:  He once performed a monologue from my book “Caligula For President: Better American Living Through Tyranny” — in the middle of a raging blizzard at a small art gallery in Chelsea, and killed it dead.  He also invited me to be a reader in a regular, intimate little gathering in his fabulously appointed Broadway Superstar apartment in the West Village, an event which I believe was called “The Manhattan Ladies’ Theater Club.”  We were cast in our parts, Charles would send us scripts, and we would all perform the play in his living room.  It was deliriously fun. 

Through one thing and another, I was given the honor of being a performer in Charles Busch’s annual Christmas pageant.  This was a real a gem of a show — a spoof of old noir movies, with Charles as the Barbra Stanwyk-like lead.  It was performed only once a year — but with a tradition going back God knows how long.   I played an angel and an old hag.  I was always jealous of the incredible actress (and muse to Charles) Julie Halston, who got to play GOD.  One year, Julie couldn’t play God, so Joan Rivers played God instead.  She had terrible laryngitis, but was perfect all the same.  Within months of the performance,  she died while getting plastic surgery. 

My favorite part of participating in the production was being backstage and watching Charles become a woman.   He and his assistant would cram his body into pointy pumps, an ingenue wig and a draconian corset contraption that gave him an hourglass figure. 

The show was routinely stolen by the giant black drag queen that played Charles’ maid, who had ineluctable comic timing.  I won’t mention his fabulous drag name, due to the fact that I am dishing some dirt: He/she had mental issues.  There was an incident a couple of years into my doing the pageant wherein this performer was arrested and imprisoned.  Apparently, in a club where he/she was performing in drag, he/she got into an altercation with some mouthy yuppie woman….and he/she snapped, and took her eye out with the heel of his pump.   We did the performance with another actor playing The Maid that year. 

The next year, when he/she was out of jail, fortunately for the show, he/she was back onstage with us again. 

I must have been slightly nervous about The Maid’s return.  When we were in rehearsal, I was throwing plastic snow at everyone, as directed.  The Maid turned to me and growled something like, “Better watch where you’re throwing that snow.” 

And something in me went haywire.  I didn’t want to be afraid of The Maid: I loved The Maid.  And yet there was this sudden threat around The Maid’s aura that wasn’t funny all of a sudden, and some kind of punk rock attitude rose up in me from the depths of my teenage rebellion, that said fuck that fear.  It created some kind of obnoxious, Tourettes-style response in me.  The next time we rehearsed, I threw extra handfuls of snow at The Maid, kind of aggressively.  In a weird way, it was to demonstrate how unafraid I was of him/her taking my eye out with a size 14 pump.  

But I could tell, after throwing the snow, that I had severely annoyed The Maid. 

I didn’t know what had come over me or why I was throwing snow like I was begging for a near-death experience.  It was just happening.

Once the rehearsal was over I ran backstage and found The Maid, who towered over me.  I flung my arms around him/her and said I was sorry.  “You crazy,” he/she said, and shrugged me off gently. 

It was a minor Christmas miracle, but one for which I will always be grateful. 

IF IT ISN’T, give me a holler: cintraw@gmail.com

Photograph: From the Twitter feed of Charles Busch

Artwork: “Donnie and Marie,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2020