Thar She BLOWS!!!!

Wow, it's been so long since I blogged, I feel like a virgin. This past Tuesday had to have been one of the scariest moments of my very scary life. I work on Fire Island on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesday night, I was hosting my weekly game show MATCH GAYM with a rooftop bar full of happy homosexuals. Out of nowhere a storm unleashes itself on Cherry Grove like I have never seen in my life. The wind was so strong and came up so quickly, I honestly questioned if we were in a tornado. Cocktails literally raising off of the bar and flying everywhere, the cash registers trying desperately to take flight. All of this mind you in a matter of what seemed seconds. Then a torrential rain and lightning like I have never witnessed before. The whole sky lighting up and lightning splintering off in more directions than I could count. We were literally trapped with no place to go but inside to wait and watch. As quickly as all of this happened, in the MIDDLE of July, HAIL starts pelting down from the heavens and making the most insane noise as it hit the ground, rooftops and anything else in it's way. This persisted for 2 hours!!! Try looking glamorous with that kinda shit coming down around you!!! Like a good hostess, I scurried all of the patrons to the basement where wonderously, the cozy bar awaited our arrival. A fully stocked bar for a room fullof shaken faggala's in drenched summertime beach togs. Whats a lady to do but initiate a rousing game of STRIP TRIVIA. Old and youngalike sitting nearly naked, drinking their enlarged livers to toxicity levels that boggle the mind and certainly scramble the brain. When it all subsided and the night became still, I tipped back to my little hovel in this modern day Oz, took a shower and climbed my war torn ass into bed. How was your week?????
Love
Sweets

Opening March 23!!!!!

Can't wait to have you all over at my new digs. I have assembled a merry band of freaks that is gonna work your LAST GAY NERVE!!! DJ's SAMMY JO, TEXXX, AARON ELVIS and COREY TUT!!! My in-house drag darlings Spanky, Noel and Bianca aka THE TURDLES!!! It's gonna be RETARDED!!!!!!!!

Forgive me father, its been nearly a month since I last Blogged!!

I write this with shame splattered all over my face. How could I do it? How could I be soooo negligent? Yes I heard the whining. Yes I heard the complaints. YES I heard the cries of abandonment, and still I dug my round little heels in and refused to budge. I had what I like to call "blogger's block". God knows my life has been insane enough in the last month to have written a book. I just didn't take the time. Please don't look at me that way!!! I am trying to apologize here!! Oh God, pleeeeeeease take me back and I will be the best damned blogger cyber space has ever seen! MERRRRRRRRCY I scream!!! Oh thank you.
Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very nice place to start........... MY BIRTHDAY!!!! For a dirty old bird who didn't want any hoopla, Jesus did I do a good job of milking it for all I was worth. My actual birthday is December 31, you know New Years Eve. What a hateful day to be born. PLOP!!! "Congratulations, it's a queen". Now let's start the party!! Everyone is soooo goddamned self involved!!! Ok so my birthday is on the last day of the year. Sure there are literally millions of parties going on all over the globe. Well FUCK THEM I SAY!!! It's my birthday damnit! Well I learned looong ago, you can't compete with ol' Father Time. I worked not once but TWICE on my big day. Did what I usually do and pay it nootch and just take the filthy dollars you can rape the straights for where big holidays are concerned. Well I raped the straights AND the gays this year. It was my birthday damnit and EVERYONE was going to PAY!!! ( Imagine a maniacal laugh right now). I did an early party at Splash and then rang in the new year with a bunch of black clad, Prada wearing Euro- Trash at The Thompson Hotel in Soho looking like a crayola box had exploded all over me!! All I needed was a tiny clown car to have gotten out of and the feeling of total humiliation would have been complete. But the money was cute and I was done by 12:30!!!
That was my actual b'day. I CELEBRATED my birthday however on Jan 1 with a handful of cherished friends at Blue Mill Tavern on Commerce Street. Kat Delaney, the genius behind a documentary that I am privelidged to be the subject of, was the perfect hostess. She took care of everything. I just had to show up. Something I usually am not afforded the luxury of. My dinner guests were Mother Flawless Sabrina, Rose Royalle, Nicky LaLa, my dear old friend Ashley, another dear friend and biggest supporter David Gatten and of course Kat who provided me with such a special gift of sharing quality time with friends over great food and fabulous conversation. Her documentary "Charmed Life- Conversations with Sweetie" is in the final stages of editing. It is a brilliant peek into the world of drag and the gorgeous kaleidoscope of souls that keep it alive. She and I have become very close during the process of the filming. I am so excited and a little nervous to see the final cut. It's a big step to open your life to the world. she made it feel effortless. Her love of the "girls" is so genuine. I have worked with so many assholes looking to exploit queens for their own ego trip. Kat is so opposite. She has such a reverance and respect for the queens. I am positive the film will be sheer magic.
January 16 marked my BIG birthday party at Diner 24 where I perform every Monday night. I invited about 50 people and over 200 showed up to wish me well. What a GREAT night of old and new friends. The show was spectacular!! If I tried to name everyone who did me the honor of performing, I am sure I would forget someone. Let it be said it was star studded and every queen turned it out!!!!! The room was filled with beautiful faces that I have come to love so much over the years. I had a ball and actually had time to mingle and chat. I was smart enough to recruit my roommate JB to stage manage the show. The anal retentive Virgo that he is, insured I could concentrate on other things. I recieved so many gifts I had to have help carrying them to the cab. I just WISHED people would include sales reciepts. I hate returning merchandise without the proper documents. LOL What a great night!!!
This past month I realized more than ever just how much I am loved. Not just birthday sentiments, but honest to goodness love. The kind you see in peoples eyes and you feel in your heart. Thats the best feeling in the world. I have made New York City my home for the past 20 years. What an incredible feeling to see so much of my adult life gathered in one room to spend an evening with me. It's extremely humbling. The '06 is looking good so far. I look foward to every new day. It's a great head to be in!!!!

It is very early Christmas morning. For me Christmas is always a season overflowing with memories. When I was very young Christmas was a time that my grandmother and grandfather would come to spend the night. I spent many nights as a child with them, but it was such a treat to have them spend the night at my house. My grandfather suffered from Parkinson's disease and was very hard to understand because the illness effected his speech. He was good natured and loved to laugh. Alot of times when he would laugh out loud or yawn, his dentures would slip and fall from the top of his mouth. That always fascinated me. He loved my mom's peanut butter cookies with his coffee. My grandmother (Maw) was almost indescribeable. She was truly a character in the best sense of the word. Feisty, outspoken, extremely loving and very indulging. To get me to go to bed Christmas Eve which was much more of a celebration in my house than Christmas day, Maw would come in and sit on the side of my bed. She and I would talk and she would scratch my back better than anyone ever has since. She would tease me and say she was getting the fleas off of me. She would also bring my brothers and I baby aspirins and tell us they were sleeping pills. Kind of funny your grandmother administering placebo narcotics, but it was the 60's after all.
My mother would obsess and work her fingers to the bone preparing for Christmas. We had beautiful honey colored hard wood floors when I was really young, and at Christmas the livingroom was so beautiful with the reflection of the twinkling christmas lights against the floor. My mother would bake about four days leading up to Christmas Eve. My grandmother made something each year that when I think about it now, I wonder how any of us escaped a heart attack. She would make something called boiled custard. A southern thing that you drink that is LETHAL. Eggs, sugar, heavy cream, you name it. It was delicious but a little bit went a looong way. Momma would make cookies and pies of a wide variety. All of us had our favorites and she loved to make sure we all got what we wanted. By Christmas Eve my mom would be so exhausted and short fused, but as soon as everyone would gather and compliment how pretty the house looked and how delicious the food was, momma would get a second wind and finally relax and enjoy herself. From the time she was 16 momma wore a perfume called White Shoulders. Undoubtedly she would get at least one bottle each Christmas. She loved pretty nightgowns and collected music boxes. she was always so easy to shop for. As I got older it was always my thing to get her a new outfit to wear out for New Years Eve. I would always splurge on her and get her beautiful things that I knew she would love to tell all the other women her "baby" had taken the time to pick out for her. I loved making my mother happy. I loved watching her open up gifts. She was a person that was ALWAYS happy with anything that anyone took the time to choose just for her. She was very childlike in that way. My father has never really gotten excited about too much. They balanced each other out very well that way. Daddy was always pretty liquored up by the time the gift exchanging would roll around. He was appreciative but the gift giving thing never really sank in to him. Probably because my mom was the only person he ever really had to buy for and it was usually done with instructions from her. My favorite time would be late in the night after everyone had gone to bed. Momma would always get up extremely early to get the turkey started for Chritmas dinner and it would be just her and I. We would talk about the earlier gathering in detail. Who got what,and so forth. My grandmother would be the next to get up. There I would be, sitting with these two amazing women, loving them both so much. They both would be sitting at the kitchen table smoking cigarettes in their robes. Momma would always have to have something sweet, which would start another feeding frenzy. LOL. I would go to bed about 6am and wake up with the house filled with what I can only describe as Christmas smells. Dinner would always be early in the afternoon. My brother Shawn had collected every wishbone from thanksgiving and Christmas for as long as I can remember. After Dinner the holiday was pretty much over. It was now time to see friends and relax. Momma would usually take a well deserved nap until early evening when everyone would gather again for leftovers. My brothers and their wives and children. Extended family stopping over. People we most often loved to see and LOVED to hate to see other times. After I had grown up and moved to away, I would always have to figure out how to spend tiome with my family AND see everyone I needed to during the duration of my visit. My mom was great with guilt trips about spending time with the family. If I could take back time, I would have definitely spent that time right there at the dining room table. Just sitting around with my brothers and my parents. I would not trade those times for anything.
My mother has been gone for four years now. I made the mistake of going home just once for Christmas since then. I say mistake because the house is so empty without her. I would much rather remember Christmas the way I can, than wade thru the emptiness that is apparent everywhere I would turn. I have had the luxury and curse of not having to be in my childhood home for any extended period of time since we lost my mom. Maybe its easier for my dad and brothers because they are there on a more constant level. Then again maybe its ten times more painful because they do have to walk in and feel the loneliness that the house has so much of since her death. I miss my father and brothers and their families during the holiday, but have to say the pain of visiting my mother at a cemetary instead of at that diningroom table outweighs the need to go home and face that tremendous void. My family has never been the same since my mothers death. There is a distance now that has gone too long I am afraid to be able to fix. I don't know if they can feel it like I do. What I mean is they have wives and children and even grandchildren to occupy their time during the holidays. I feel like where they are concerced, I more or less stand alone looking in from the outside. I used to be so worried before going home. Afraid that things would change, that home wouldn't feel like home anymore. Every time I walked thru that door and sat at that table with my mother, I always was instantly comforted, that home would ALWAYS be home. I keep those memories locked away in my heart. I keep the Christmas I want to hang on to right beside it. It's safe and warm and full of love. Thats what Christmas is to me.

Fighting Back

It took forever to get a cab Friday night after my show. There I stood in a black lace dress (not very warm), high heels and a short fur jacket. The streets were full of everybody and their momma wanting a cab. I stood on the corner of 54th and 8th ave for almost 20 minutes before moving up to 55th street in hopes of a west bound cab to get me home. If any of you know me, you know the kind of hairdo's I wear for shows. Huge, henna red ringlets blowing in every direction, wind blowing up my dress. It was less than pleasant. To make matters worse 2 straight couples, all very drunk, come walking up. One of the men a total drunken asshole starts some shit with me. I know what I look like. I just stepped off of a stage for chrissake. A big girl in big hair with ALOT of make-up does cause some attention. Look all you want, giggle even, but don't get hateful! The drunken asshole starts screaming at me. I ignore him. Finally after 3 minutes of antagonizing remarks I turn and simply ask the guy why he is so fucking threatented by me standing quietly trying to get a cab? This prompts the human turd to threaten to chew me up and spit me out. The guy was about 6ft4, on the stocky side and full of hate. Like a fool I told him if he wanted to put his mouth on me it would cost him $300. Out of nowhere he charges towards me and literally knocks me into the middle of 55th street. I went BESERK!! I was holding a huge Gucci overnight bag in one of my hands overstuffed with 3 costumes and three pairs of heels. Before I could even think of what I was doing, I swung the bag at the low life and hit him square between the shoulder blades with all of my might. Mr. Big Shot WENT DOWN!!! The other man ran towards me at that point and started apologizing saying the man was very drunk and they were all very sorry. Mr. Drunky Tough Guy starts to get up spewing hate even worse than before. I took off a high heeled sling back, held it firmly in my hand and told him that he got a free shot, I reacted and knocked him down, and if he came for me again I was going to open his head with my heel and his next stop would be the hospital. I was totally prepared to knock this fools head in. I was so infuriated that not only did he take too much time to spew hate at me from the sidewalk, he then became physical AND THEN wanted to do more. He got to his feet screaming that I was insane and needed help as his friends took him by the hand and led him away. Like magic, a cab pulled up and got me safely to my home. I have to say that on the cab ride home I had a sense of empowerment that overshadowed any feelings of rage.

What is it about people that makes them think they are entitled to bring their narrow minded bullshit onto the streets with them? I do NOT buy the drunk thing. You may have less inhibitions if you have been drinking, but that kind of behavior is just plain senseless. Enough about WHY, let's talk about WHAT to do if you are met with this kind of negative bullshit. I say if you are AT ALL ABLE fight back!!! These imbeciles will only feel more relaxed to act out in this way if people passively let them get away with it. I know I acted in a rather reckless way by goading the man with a smart comment, BUT I have just as much right to be anywhere as he does. I am sure when he woke up Saturday morning and felt the remains of that wollop I gave him with Miss Gucci he will think twice before talking shit to a pretty lady on the street. We are living in dangerous days folks. The right keeps closing in on the left. People are spoon fed messages that it's OK to hate other people. It's ok to voice your distaste for other human beings. I think everyone deserves a right to be heard, but you cannot knock someone down on the street JUST BECAUSE you don't like the way they are dressed. If that were the case I would carry a stun gun and zap every badly dressed boob I come across. The West Village would be a heap of fashion violators lying in piles of spandex and International Male distasters. My friends and I LOVE to coment on what we see on the street. We don't become agressive about it however. We all have to band together and send a clear message that acts of violence will not be tolerated. Otherwise everyone is just a sitting duck until they somehow silently piss someone off. Be careful my friends, please be very careful.

Brokeback Mountain

While it's still fresh in my head I feel compelled to write about this film I saw tonight. I sat with a room full of mostly men at The Chelsea Cinemas for the first showing of Brokeback Mountain. I have to say what I expected and what I got were two very different things. I expected half naked bodies frolicking in the sunshine with the great landscape of Wyoming serving as a backdrop ala some Falcon Video. By and large Hollywood has never been able to, or had the courage to present a true love story about two men without drawing on stereotypical characters and cheesy gay themes. Brokeback Mountain is a moving tale of two men and and a love that spans 20 years of getting married, having children, going thru the day to day routine in seperate states and always secretly longing for the other. These men meet on "fishing trips" over decades, but never spend more than a week together. In the end one is left alone when the other dies in a freak accident. Heath Legers character finding out his best friend and lover of twenty years (Jake Gyllenhal) is dead by a DECEASED stamp in red ink across a returned post card he had sent in hopes of seeing his buddy Jack.

These two men were so thought provoking to me. I have lived my life "out loud" since I was 24, which is pretty late compared to many of my friends. I move thru life surrounded by proud queers who live for the most part safely within the confines of the concrete that makes up Manhattan. On an average day I would have to say at least 50% of my interactions are done with people who live the same lifestyle I do. The other half is done with people who see me and my community on an everyday basis. They might not understand it, but certainly don't chase me down the street with a baseball bat. I have never really had to explain my life to too many people once I stepped up to the plate and owned who I was. The main characters in Brokeback Mountain are quite the opposite. This question keeps coming into my head. Does falling in love with another man make you GAY or simply capable of loving another human being without thinking FIRST about what is between their legs? Being "GAY" is a lifestyle in many ways. I do not believe an individual has a choice in the matter of desiring someone of the same sex. Your brain may try to reason otherwise, but your heart tells you what feels right to you. These men of Brokeback Mountain were not flag waving, freedom ring wearing guys you would see at the parade. They were two men that no matter how conventional they tried to live their lives, HAD to have each other.

I have met so many men in my lifetime that desire other men, but could never commit to living their lives in the open. They could never come clean with themselves or the people around them that they have felt an emotional as well as physical need to be with the same sex. Many need their partner to at least appear as the opposite sex to be ok with being intimate. These men live their day to day routine with girlfriends and wives and children. Their lives are burdened with shame and denial. They carry a secret that they feel is so bad that if they were find out their lives would be ruined. I don't know what living like that must be. I have had an on again, off again love affair with the same guy for nine years. What I wear is not an issue with him. I have always been introduced as his friend, which I am. BUT I am also something much more. His face kept flashing in front of me during the film. I thought how bound he must feel. How heavy his heart must be to never be able to say out loud who he is. I used to try to pressure him. I WANTED him to be gay. I wanted him to say it. How selfish on my part. To him gay is not a life he is cut out to live. IS he gay, or is he simply a man that for what ever reason found another person that he wanted to share himself with? It really is baffling. Why is my desire so strong to live my life in the light and his so secretive that he constantly wrestles in the darkness?

This film is important. Number one is paints a picture of two men in love that are not lisping leather daddy's or drag queens. It is a story of two common men living their lives a million miles from Christopher Street, the East Village or the Castro. They know nothing but what feels right to them. There is a purity to this film that I have not seen before. Jake Gyllenhal is admirable as Jack Twist. This movie belongs to Heath Leger. His portrayal of Enis is so human. Roles like this don't come around often, like stories like this seldom get told. Go see Brokeback Mountain and tell me what you think.

Sweetie's Christmas List

Dear Santa,
I hope this letter finds you and the Mrs. happy and well. I'm sure you know how wonderful I have been all year. You knew when I was sleeping, you knew when I was awake, bad and good and all the rest of that happy horseshit, lets quit the ass kissing session and get down to business.

For starters, could you run your sleigh over Oprah's self righteous ass? I am sick to death of watching that mug with her eyes on each side of her head, sittin' up in her diamond earrings and Chanel being an armchair mother, wife, gay man, attorney, AND expert on everything else thats going on in the world. She has no clue of what the real world is about anymore. Please Santa, rid her from my television. While you're at it, can you take Tony Danza, Tyra Banks, Judge Judy, Dennis Miller, Paris Hilton, Kathy Griffin, Ant, that screaming asshole from Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Adrian Curry, Donald Trump, and Martha Stewart with her? Thanks Doll.

What I would love to have for my very own is Colin Farrell, Jaime Foxx, Max D'Million from MeatPackers Video, The Gotti Boys (magically ALL over 18 of course), Jake Gyllenhal, Dermot Mulroney, Busta Rhymes, John Cusack, Anderson Cooper, Freddie Prinze Jr, JLo's first ex husband, Vin Diesel, the Mexican guy with the tats and long hair that delivers from Famous Deli, and that HOT Indian dude that took his turban off for me two Sundays ago and showed me his long, beautiful, shiny hair sitting in front of my apartment. These things would definitely make me very good for the next year.

Santa can you please force certain designers to start making their clothes in plus sizes and ask me to be their spokemodel? I will do it for free as long as I get to keep the clothes. Also Santa, please make sure that every shoe store carries up to size 15 for ladies, that way even I can feel like "at least my feet aren't THAT big" as I browse thru the 13's and pity the big footed women around me, hoping that the 15's are cut generously enough for their mammoth tootsies.

Santa I wouldn't be truly good unless I asked for a few things for other people. Please refer to the video of "The Wizard of Oz" that I am sure some of your happy little helpers have hidden in their drawers next to their International Male catalogues. Santa please bring President Bush a heart, some courage AND a brain. Please leave a lie detector at the Cheney's house, and please lift the obsession from Condeliza Rice to always appear as if she has just farted in public.