Two own-voice impersonators

Sometimes we get only a snapshot of a person, and never find out what happened to them later.   Here are two trans woman surviving as performers, who are incidentally mentioned in books on other topics.  This is all that we have of them.

Loretta Zotto (193? - ?)

During the filming of Trouble Along the Way, 1953, about a failing Catholic college that employs a has-been sports coach (John Wayne) trying to regain his lost wife and daughter, director MichaelCurtiz (who made Casablanca and Mildred Pierce) was noticed spending time with Loretta Zotto, an extra on the cast.   Zotto was tall, beautiful, well-endowed and was compared to film-star Jane Russell.   

One night Judy Garland, Peter Lawford and Merv Griffin (who had an uncredited voice part in the film) went to the West Hollywood club, Tabu.   Judy said: “I hear there's a drag queen there who does Judy Garland better than I do”.   

They sat through three ho-hum acts, and then the star, billed as Stormy Weather, came on and performed “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St Louis, 1944 and “Over the Rainbow”.   Judy graciously conceded that Stormy sang “Over the Rainbow” better than she did.   Merv recognized Stormy, instantly, as Loretta Zotto from the film set, and Peter scored a date with her, and reported back to the other two on Stormy’s actual genital sex.   

Merv blew his chances of a better, bigger part in Michael Curtiz’s next film by telling him that they knew.

• Darwin Porter.  Merv Griffin: A life in the Closet.  Blood Moon, 2009: 213-4.

Ruth Brown (194? - )

Ruth had a troubled career, divided between church gospel, drag bars and jail.  She  took the name of the well-known rhythm and blues singer, Ruth Brown, and was even presented in a night-club as if she were the Ruth Brown (several cis women also were so presented in other nightclubs).  

She was at the Stonewall riots, and performed at Harlem drag balls.

In 1976 Marion Williams, the gospel and blues singer, appearing at New York’s Town Hall encouraged the audience to sing along, but they were unable to match her range.   It was Ruth who stepped down from the balcony and sang a duet with Marion. 

A few years later, when Anthony Heilbut had produced Marion’s album I’ve Come So Far, a group of critics and fans were invited to hear her sing.   Among them were a group of what were taken to be church ladies, but were not.  Among them was Ruth who led the ladies in holy dance.   

Heilbut then got to know Ruth. In the late 1980s, he accepted her invitation to hear her sing at Sally’s Hideaway.  He describes her act: 

“She was indeed a powerhouse, a combination of Wilson Picket and Little Richard, but better than either.  She sang a typical soul repertory, including songs that predated her audience.”

·         William G Hawkeswood.  One of the Children: Gay Black Men in Harlem.  University of California Press,1996 :86.

·         Chip Deffaa.  Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues.  University of Illinois Press,1996: 263n9.

·         Anthony Heilbut.  The Fan Who Knew Too Much: Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations.  Alfred A Knopf, 2012: 22-5, 30, 34-5, 48, 70, 109.

Sally’s Hideaway and Sally’s II - nightclub

In the mid 1980s, after the coming of AIDS, the masculist gay sex bars in New York, the Anvil, The Mineshaft, the Toilet, went out of business, either voluntarily or under pressure from the city. The Anvil had in its early days featured Felipe Rose who dressed as a Native American (he was Lakota on his father’s side) and was later recruited for the Village People disco group. The Anvil also put on drag shows. It closed in November 1985, and Conrad, its manager, moved to Blues, a nightclub at 264 W 43^rd Street, between 7^th and 8^th Avenues. Blues was popular with those working in the sex trade around Times Square. This did not work out, and late 1986 – the year that Harry Benjamin died – the nightclub was re-opened as Sally’s Hideaway, managed by two femme queens: Sally Maggio and Jesse Torres, the hostess manager.

Sally and Jesse had worked in the early 1970s at the trans/gay 220 Club, at 220 West Houston Street, where Lou Reed drank and was presumed to have named his album and track, Sally Can’t Dance, after the manager (although it was photographs of his trans lover, Rachel, which appeared on the inner sleeve). Sally and Jesse then worked at the Greenwich Pub, at 8^th Avenue and 13^th Street, which attracted gay trans and their admirers.

Sally’s Hideaway put on go-go boy contests, male stripping and drag shows – some by transsexuals. Trans entertainers such as Dorian Corey, Jayne County, Angie Xtravaganza performed.  The customers were a mix of pre-op transsexuals, drag queens, cross-dressers, transvestites, chasers, male strippers and all kinds of hustlers.

Monica Mugler outside Sally's II

There was a serious fire in 1992. Sally moved the club a few doors away to 252 West 43^rd Street, which was attached to the Carter Hotel. It was now known as Sally’s II, or simply Sally’s. The bar was circular, two flights up from the street, and there was also a small lounge, up another flight of stairs at the side of the bar. Behind the bar there was a wall of doors permanently closed until one day Sally discovered the unused theatre of the Carter Hotel, only another set of doors away from the hotel lobby. Sally’s II expanded into this space and used the stage. Drag pageants and drag balls were held, usually hosted by or in homage to the ballroom legends of the day: Octavia St. Laurent, Pepper LaBeija, Avis Pendavis. Paris Dupree’s “Paris is Burning” ball was held here in 1992, and the subsequent 1990 film included opening and ending sequences shot outside Sally’s, and strongly featured Dorian Corey and Angie Xtravaganza.

Grace

There was also the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, lip synch performer and comedienne, who had started in the Anvil, and when that closed she emceed and performed at Greenwich Pub for Sally Maggio, and then at Midtown 43 where she did a Sunday Night drag revue. Midtown 43 closed in 1989, by which time Grace was also working at Sally’s. After the fire and the move she was given a steady gig emceeing Sunday and sometimes Monday night. At Midtown 43 Grace had had a following among the butch queens of the ball house crowd, but these did not feel at home in Sally’s.

Trans musician Terre Thaemlitz dj’d there in the early 1990s, until fired for refusing to play the music that was in the charts. The Transy House people, Rusty Mae Moore, Chelsea Goodwin, Julia Murray, Sylvia Rivera, Kristiana Th’mas, went as a group and were regarded as a ‘house’ in the Paris is Burning sense. Self-described tranny-chaser Jonathan Ames was also found there, and the club is featured in his bildungsroman and the subsequent film, The Extra Man.

Sally Maggio died in October 1993. Jesse Torres continued the club, although Mayor Rudolph

Jesse

Giuliani, real estate interests and the Walt Disney Corporation were changing the character of the Time Square area. Jesse died, unexpectedly, in September 1996 while attending the Miss Continental Pageant in Chicago. Giselle, a long-time Sally’s barmaid, took over, but business was waning. After a series of police busts, Sally’s closed in November 1997.

• Lou Reed. Sally Can't Dance. RCA Records, 1974.
• Jennie Livingstone (dir). Paris is Burning. With Dorian Corey, Paris Dupree, Pepper Labeija. US 71 mins 1990.
• Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man. Scribner, 1999: 91-9, 107-110, 144-5, 157-9, 209-210.
• Brian Lantelme. “Sally’s Hideaway”. LadyLike, 46, 2001: 17-21. Online
• Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (dirs) The Extra Man. Scr: Robert Pulcini & Jonathan Ames, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, with Paul Dana as Louis Ives and Gisele Alicea as Miss Pepper. US 108 mins 2010.
• Jeremy Reed. Waiting for the Man: The life and Career of Lou Reed. Overlook Books, 2015: 82.

www.sallys-hideaway.com  
____________________________________

The one and only account of Sally's is at www.sallys-hideaway,com, The author is identified only by email address as Brian Lantelme, which explains why the Ladylike, 46, 2001 account is virtually the same.   However Lantelme does not mention Lou Reed, Jonathan Ames, Terre Thaemlitz  or Rusty Rae Moore.

There is no mention at all of Sally's in Julian Fleisher's The Drag Queens of New York, 1996.  There is no mention at all of Sally's in Laurence Senelick' The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre, 2000,

I would have liked more information about the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, and her transfer from the Anvil to Midtown 43 to Sally's.   Was her act the same, or did it change to reflect the audience?

The Anvil was, in effect, a gentleman's club: women, cis or trans were not usually admitted as customers, although it is said that  Lee Radziwill, sister to Jackie Onassis, frequented the place in male drag.

Terre Thaemlitz (1968 - ) musician, DJ.

Originally from Missouri, where his first social musical experiences were at roller-discos, Terre moved to New York at the end of the 1980s to study fine art, and became a DJ immersed in the queer house scene.

Terre became a resident at the trans hangout Sallys II. Sallys was a

“site of education, where people could share information about their transitioning experiences. There were times when you really learned things on a political level, on a social level – that’s what’s interesting. Music is usually one of the least interesting things about clubs. (quoted in Hutchinson)”

“I was identifying as Transgendered at that point. Before that I had identified as Queer in sexual terms. If I had to identify, I’d identify as Transgendered rather than male but yeah, back in the Nineties, by the time I was at Sally’s, I was identifying as Transgendered. The scene at Sally’s was dominated by Transsexuals. For a person like myself, who is not interested in surgery or hormone therapy, there was a lot of pressure to dress and look a certain style that I just couldn’t. So, I don’t think most of the people at Sally’s even knew that I was Transgendered-identified at that time. (quoted in Petros)“

Terre was fired from Sallys and other trans clubs for refusing to play music that was in the charts, particularly “wailing diva stuff”. By 1994 Terre was known as a composer in the ambient/ computer synthesis field, and established her own Comatinse label. By 1998 she was also releasing music as DJ Sprinkles.

The first DJ Sprinkles single, ‘Sloppy 42nds’ was subtitled “A Tribute to the 42nd Street transsexual clubs destroyed by Walt Disney’s buyout of Times Square”.

In interview with Carlos Pozo, Terre explained:

“Anti-essentialist transgenderism is about an appropriation and recontextualization of cultural signifiers around gender. Anti-essentialist refers to an outlook that does not believe in an inherent "essence" or content, as opposed to an essentialist transgendered outlook that one is "trapped" in the wrong body, etc. I think computer synthesis is also very much about appropriation and recontextualization, drawing from external audio sources and materials much like quotations in a book. There is no essentialist core of creativity, or sense of originality - but there can be an awareness of difference and change. So from my experience, transgenderism and computer synthesis definitely have resonations between them. When you ask about fetishization, are you asking about people fetishizing or tokenizing my music as "Queer" above any other contents? I haven't really seen that happen.

I like to think when I talk about Queer issues in my projects they arise in a complex way that doesn't reduce easily. Queer sensibility, as opposed to Lesbian and Gay sensibility, is also about anti-essentialist appropriation (the appropriation of a derogatory term to reference a notion of one's sexuality being inextricably tied to a larger social condition) and notions of pan-sexual diversity, not rigid Heterosexual vs. Homosexual binarisms. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of that gets across to people who equate Queer with Gay, but I haven't really sensed any problems with negative over-simplification. All of these ideas are simultaneously about processes of identification and processes of transition between points of identification, so that inability to solidify an essentialist identity can lead to misrepresentation or offending those with essentialist outlooks, but you can't worry about that or it will socially paralyze you.”

Terre moved to San Francisco and then to Japan, where she released material under the K-S.H.E. alias. On the Routes Not Roots album, one track, ”Saki-Chan”, incorporates a monologue from a Japanese transsexual, and in “Stand-Up” Thaemlitz tells how she was beaten senseless by Latino queens in New York. Terre has become an established figure in the Japanese house scene, and many of her releases are Japan-only.







In 2004 she recorded Trans-Sister Radio for radio. Her 2012 album Soulnessless is the “world’s longest album in history”, a 29-hour piano solo split into five cantos. It was released on an SD card, and comes with a 150-page commentary.

Her debut mix CD, 2013, “Where Dancefloors Stand Still”, protested Japan’s restrictive fuzoku law (prohibiting dancing in clubs beyond 1am).

“It seems that the queer factor of today’s house events is really low,” she says. “If you’re in the US and it’s a straight, white club then it’s just a fucking nightmare. These events are the celebration grounds for heteronormativity. There is a historic connection between queerness and deep house, and also things like transgenderism and vogue, that, to me, was really important – and it’s utterly absent.” It’s not just about the music having broader appeal, either: “It has to do with this cultural shift away from the necessity to actually have clubs function as safe spaces for different types of sexual enactment. (quoted in Hutchinson)”

Carlos Pozo asked: “Is Terre Thaemlitz your real [sic] name?” And got the answer: “Yes, the family name was a little mangled by US immigration several generations back (it was originally Thamlitz). As for the spelling of my first name (pronounced "Terry"), I think my parents were trying to name me after St. Teresa of the Roses, but they didn't want to spell it "Terri" because that's for GIRLS, and they didn't want to spell it "Terry" because that refers to St. Terence, or something weird like that. This whole gender-ambiguity thing goes way back! It's made for lots of free tampon mailings over the years.”

Terre suggests to Kate Hutchinson that “if pronouns really have to be used, Terre is ‘she’ and Sprinkles is ‘he’”.

• Interview with Carlos Pozo. Furious, Feb 1998. www.furious.com/perfect/terrethaemlitz.html.
• Terre Thaemlitz. “Collateral Damage”. Wire, January 2012. www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/collateral-damage_terre-thaemlitz.
• “Terre Thaemlitz, DJ & Producer”. In George Petros. The New Transsexuals: The Next Step in Human Evolution. Creation Books, 2012.  Online  
• Interview with Ryan Diduck. The Quietus, June 20^th, 2012. http://thequietus.com/articles/09107-terre-thaemlitz-interview-soulnessless-dj-sprinkles.
• Kate Hutchinson. “DJ Sprinkles: ‘Music is the least interesting thing about clubs’”. The Guardian, 25 October 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/25/dj-sprinkles-terre-thaemlitz.

www.comatonse.com    EN.Wikipedia    Discogs     Factmag

Jayne County (1947 - ) Part III: London and Berlin

Part I: Atlanta
Part II: New York City
Part III:  London and Berlin

Wayne debuted at London's Roxy in March 1977, and renamed the band to The Electric Chairs. New Musical Express journalist Julie Burchill (who in later years would express anti-trans opinions) was very supportive of the band. They were the only punk act at the Reading Festival that year and played to an antagonistic audience.

After a gig with Adam and the Ants, Wayne was introduced to Derek Jarman who cast her as a transvestite rock star in his film Jubilee.

Safari Records signed the group who put out their first album, although the more controversial tracks were kept apart for a special EP, Blatantly Offenzive. Wayne's transition can be seen on the album covers of the first three albums. On The Electric Chairs, 1978, Wayne has a masculine appearance; on Man Enough to be a Woman, 1978, the two personae are juxtaposed; on Things Your Mother Never Told You, 1979, there is only a feminine version.

The second album, which was also issued under the name Storm the Gates of Heaven, contains "Man enough to be a Woman" but also songs against organized religion as well as a statement about County's belief in a god.

"When we recorded the second album, I was beginning to feel very strongly that I wanted to take the transsexual thing a lot further; I'd stopped doing hormones for a while and really toned down my appearance, but I wasn't happy with that. I'd got a lot of attention with the Electric Chairs, and I decided it was time to come out and be the first up-front transsexual in a rock band. The music press was really interested and supportive for a while; they'd never had this before, and they could see me changing right before their very eyes."(p126)

After a European tour for the second album, County stopped in West Berlin for a fortnight before returning to London for a nose job. However she ran into the wrong immigration official, was detained overnight and returned to West Berlin.

There, she was introduced to Romy Haag and her club. She had her nose done by a doctor on the Kurfürstendamm, who had worked on several trans women. When County returned to England at the end of Summer 1978, press reports suggested that she had had the full sex change, but she tired of explaining and let people assume as they liked.

"It bothered people. There was a distinct cooling of attitude, even among the fans; underneath that liberal attitude exterior, a lot of punk fans were really straight-down-the-line conservatives, and they hated the fact that I was actually living out the implications of my songs. Some of them even said 'You've betrayed your sex'." (p131)

Late in the year the band went to a farm in Wales to write the third album. Things Your Mother Never Told You came out to good reviews and was followed by a gruelling tour of Europe.

In Late summer 1979, Wayne fled to New York and decided that it was time to change her name to Jayne. She founded a new band, played CBGBs and toured. She also toned down her appearance.

Early 1980 Jayne returned to West Berlin to be in a play with Romy Haag. The play was a success, but Jayne and Romy fell out and remained so for many years. Jayne lived with PJ from San Francisco who had been in the Angels of Light before moving to West Berlin. However PJ decided not to continue as a woman and after being sacked by Romy returned to living as a male, and then her Turkish boyfriend did not want her any more.

"It was during my time in Berlin that I came closest to the idea of having a full sex change; it certainly would have been easy enough to arrange, and it's what everyone expected me to do. … The only reason that I can see for having the full change is so that you can move to a different town and marry a man and live completely as a woman, without anyone ever knowing what you are. But I don't think I could do that. Let's face it, if people know you're a sex change you'll never be accepted as a woman. … I'm happy in between the sexes; I'm comfortable and I actually like the idea. … I certainly wouldn't be happy with idea of being a man, and I don't consider myself a man, but I'm not going to try and convince myself that I'm really a woman." (p138-9)

Jayne was friends with Zazie de Paris (Solange Dymenzstein). She starred in Rock & Roll Peepshow. She also did a St Patricks Day concert at a US Army Base.

Jayne was introduced to the Latvian-born director Rosa von Praunheim and was cast in the film Stadt der Verlorenen Seele (City of Lost Souls) 1982 with Angie Stardust and Tara O'Hara.

In 1983, Leee arranged a gig in New York, and Jayne put on Rock & Roll Peepshow at the Pyramid, which led to the show Les Girls with Holly Woodlawn and Alexis del Lago, and International Chrysis.

Then Jayne returned to Germany for the City of Lost Souls tour, which was followed bt time in London where she was booked at the Fridge in Brixton, and she encountered Alan/Lanah Pelley during his transsexual phase.

She stayed in England until 1987. She recorded a couple of albums but they were not promoted.

On return to New York, Jayne took up with drag performer Constance Cooper, who introduced her to Sally's Hideaway off Times Square.

Jayne had not been home for 20 years. She phoned her mother and proposed a visit. She got a gig at Atlanta's Club Rio and attempted to find those she knew from the 1960s, but could find only Diamond Lil. She was introduced to the rising stars RuPaul and Deandra Peak.

To visit her parents she really dressed down. She ended up staying the summer.

"However much I may be Jayne County, my old personality, Wayne, is still there; it never goes away. … Jayne County is the one who's out there hustling and trying to do something with her career. But when I get home alone I can't wait to get the wig and make-up off, to put on an old t-shirt and my reading glasses and read my religious books or my history books or a horror novel, to eat cookies and drink tea." (p164-5)

Afterwards Jayne did a gig in Tel Aviv, and then returned to London for another four years. She became a regular at the Apollo Club in Wardour Street, where she met met old-time transvestites such as Francis Bacon, the painter.

She returned to New York at the end of 1992, and was in the Wigstock film, 1995. Her autobiography Man Enough to be a Woman came out the same year.

In 2014 Jayne was banned from Facebook for using the word 'tranny' a word that she has been using for 40 years. She spoke back in an article in Queerty:

"Tranny is not a slur word and I resent anyone trying to make it one. It’s the intent behind the word, rather than the word itself, that can be sometimes offensive. It may be a silly word, but it’s certainly not worthy enough to be banned. That is censorship, pure and simple and no better than right-wing Christian extremists or any other tyrants, who want to force their narrow-minded, conservative opinions on others."

Jayne has also been posting controversial opinions on FaceBook and on her blog,   rockandrollantirepublikkkanleague.    An article in Haaretz interprets them as simple support for Israel, but they are also anti-Republican.  

• "Rock on the Wayne!". Melody Maker, 6 October 1973.
  
• Pete Silverton. “A Self-Made Woman”. Sounds. 2 June 1979
  
• Jayne County with Rupert Smith. Man Enough to be a Woman. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995.
  
• Jim White. "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman ". The Independent, 19 June 1995. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/sometimes-its-hard-to-be-a-woman-1587170.html.
  
• Kris Kirk. “From Wayne to Jayne” A Boy Called Mary: Kris Kirk’s Greatest Hits. Brighton: Millivres Books. 1999.
• "Why was transgender punk icon Jayne County banned from Facebook?". Dangerous Minds, 04.23.2014. http://dangerousminds.net/comments/why_was_transgender_punk_icon_jayne_county_banned_from_facebook.
  
• Jayne County. "EXCLUSIVE: Transgender Icon Jayne County Is Fed Up With Being Banned And Censored". Queerty, Jun 5, 2014. www.queerty.com/exclusive-transgender-icon-jayne-county-is-fed-up-with-being-banned-and-censored-20140605.
  
• Marisa Fox-Bevilacqha. "Famed Transgender Performer Stands Up for Israel" Haaretz, Aug 02, 2014. www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.608412.
  

www.jaynecounty.com    EN.Wikipedia    QMH   ArtofExmouth    IMDB      rockandrollantirepublikkkanleague      FaceBook     


German television, Rockpalast 19/12/1978

Rusty Mae Moore (1941–) professor of international business.

Moore’s first marriage at 21 to a woman lasted for 10 years and they had a daughter; a second marriage produced two children. As a teacher of international business, Moore became associate dean at Hofstra University on Long Island. He also won a Fulbright scholarship to teach at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, in São Paulo.

Her increasing desire to be a woman led to a marriage breakup as she entered her forties. In 1992 she met Chelsea Goodwin in a transsexual support group, and went to the New York drag clubs together. Moore was dressing as female more and more. In 1993 Rusty announced to the Hofstra officials that she would be living as a woman from the fall semester.

Until 1994 they and Julia Murray, who transitioned at the same time as Rusty, shared an apartment in Long Island. Then Rusty purchased a house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. Despite abuse from the immediate neighbor, the man's wife became very friendly. In 1995 both Rusty and Chelsea flew to Belgium and had genital surgery from Dr Michel Seghers.

They welcomed half-a-dozen other trans persons including Kristiana Th’mas, a Workers’ World Party photographer and later Julia’s spouse Sylvia Rivera to share what they called Transy House.  Sylvia regarded Transy House as a continuation of the STAR House (run by Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) of the early 1970s. They would go as a group to the drag club, Sally’s II in Times Square, where they were considered as a ‘house’ in the Paris is Burning sense. Those at Transy House without any other employment did telemarketing for trans artists and others.

When Dr Leo Wollman died in 1998, his widow donated his papers and other material to Transy House which established the Wollman Archives of Transgender History and Culture. The next year year Lee Brewster donated his extensive library. Rusty was chairperson of Metropolitan Gender Network, and active in the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and other groups.



Rusty now runs a bookstore in Pine Hills in the Catskill Park, in upstate New York.

• Rusty Mae Moore. “Transy House”. In Joan Nestle, Clare Howell & Riki Wilchins, GENDERqUEER: voices from beyond the sexual binary. Alyson Books, 2002.
• Rachele Kanigel and Michael Cervieri. “Transition: Crossing the Gender Divide”. NYC24 Feb 22, 2002. www.nyc24.org/2002/issue02/story01/index.asp
• Deborah Rudacille. “Conversation with Chelsea Goodwin and Rusty Mae Moore”. The Riddle of Gender. New York: Pantheon Books. 2005: 141-150.
• Rusty Mae Moore. “Satan and Lady Babalon: Polyamory Again at 64”. In Tracie O’Keefe & Katrina Fox. Trans People in Love, 2008. Excerpted as “Blood Lust”. Cherrie. 22 Sept 2008. cherrie.e-p.net.au/features/blood-lust.html.
• Cristiane Segatto. “Entrevista com a transexual Rusty Mae Moore”. Epoca. http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Epoca/0,6993,EPT442433-1655,00.html
• www.transyhouse.org.
• http://drmooresibblog.blogspot.com.
• http://greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com. 
• www.pinehillbookbunny.com.

Angie Xtravaganza (1966 – 1993) sex worker, performer.

Angel Segarra was one of 13 children, of many different fathers, of an abusive Puerto Rican mother in the South Bronx.

At the age of 15 she was taking female hormones, courtesy of the quack doctor Jimmy Treetop, and presenting as female on Christopher Street. She was inspired by Dorian Corey, and lived for a while in the House of Corey.

At 16 she was a star at the voguing balls, standing out by her fashion sense, as opposed to the outlandish costumes of Corey and Pepper LaBeija. She won the prize for being the most convincing model.  She performed at Sally's Hideaway.

She lived by turning tricks and was the house mother for the Xtravaganza clan, being regarded as a mother by trans women and hookers several years older than herself.

Anji was diagnosed with Aids at the age of 25, and died of complications at the age of 27. Her ashes were sent back to the South Bronx, but under the name of Angel Segarra.

• Jennie Livingston (dir). Paris Is Burning. with Dorian Corey, Pepper Labeija, Angie Xtravaganza and Venus Xtravaganza. US 71 mins 1990.
• Michael Cunningham. “The Slap of Love”. Open City #6. 1993. www.opencity.org/cunningham.html.
• Jesse Green. "Paris Has Burned". The New York Times. April 18, 1993. www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html.
• "Anji Xtravaganza". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anji_Xtravaganza.

Dorian Corey (1937 – 1993) performer.

Frederick Legg was raised in Buffalo, New York State. He was a mother from the age of eight when his own mother, divorced and remarried, gave him the new baby to look after.  His first paid job was window dressing in a Buffalo department store.


Legg studied at the Parsons School of Design. In the 1960s she was part of the female-impersonation act, The Pearl Box Review, where she performed with a live boa constrictor.  She got breast implants and took female hormones, and broke off contact with her family.

In the 1970s, as Dorian Corey, she was a major participant in New York drag balls, often in very extravagant costumes, sometimes multiple costumes worn over each other. In the late 1970s, her boyfriend ran off with all her ball earnings.  However her next husband, Leon, stayed with her all the rest of her life.  Dorian was the founder of the voguing house of Corey, and holder of over 50 grand prizes from the voguing balls. She was house mother to Angie Xtravaganza, who later became a mother of her own house. Dorian also performed at Wigstock and was featured in Paris is Burning, 1990.

In later years, she was a regular performer at Sally's II, off Times Square, across from The New York Times.

Corey has attained a posthumous notoriety in that after her death from AIDS, friends cleaning out her Harlem apartment found not only an expensive wardrobe, but also a trunk containing a mummified body that had been dead for about 25 years. The police eventually were able to extract fingerprints, and identified Robert Worley, who had an arrest for rape and assault. It is assumed that Corey killed the burglar in self-defense, but it is also said that it was her boyfriend who had turned abusive. In either case, she had no idea how to get rid of a body. She moved twice with the body in the trunk. This was turned into a play, Out of the Bag, by Reg Flowers.

• Jennie Livingstone (dir) Paris is Burning. With Dorian Corey, Anji Xtravaganza, Venus Xtravaganza. US 76 mins 1990.
• Michael Cunningham. “The Slap of Love”. Open City #6. 1991. www.opencity.org/cunningham.html.
• Jeanie Russell Kasindorf. "The Drag Queen had a Mummy in her Closet." New York v27, n18 (May 2, 1994):50 (7 pages). Online at: http://bit.ly/9rFYK4
• Edward Conlon. “The Drag Queen and the Mummy”. Transition, No. 65 (1995), pp. 4-24.
• “The Drag Queen and the Mummy”. The Motherboards. March 2007, Dec 2008. http://motherboards.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7106060101/m/17210836931.
• Simon Doonan.  “Why Drag Queens Should Handle Disaster Relief”.  The Daily Beast.  June 4, 2010.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-04/simon-doonan-on-gulf-oil-spill-and-paris-is-burning/?cid=tag:all1

Jonathan Ames (1964 - ) novelist, columnist.

Jonathan was raised in a Jewish family in suburban New Jersey. He studied at Princeton, and his first novel, I Pass Like Night, 1989, was his senior thesis.

In 1990 he flirted with an older woman in a bar in Pennsylvania, and the memory stayed with him.

In 1992, Ames moved to New York, started sharing an apartment with an older man, and succeeded in becoming a columnist at The New York Press. Looking for inspiration for his second novel, he took up boxing and also started spending time at Sally’s, the transgender bar on 43^rd Street, across from The New York Times. He turned much of this into his second novel, The Extra Man, 1999, in which Louis Ives is fired from a New Jersey prep school after being caught trying on a bra, moves to New York, shares an apartment with an older man, and spends time at Sally’s where he is unsure whether he is a budding transvestite or a tranny chaser. His apartment mate later catches him in bed with a trans woman.

In 2001, Ames was sent Aleshia Brevard’s The Woman I Was Not Born to Be that he should write a blurb for the book, and remembered that the woman in the bar in Pennsylvania in 1990 was also Aleshia. He noted “a rash of books” on gender changes: Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, As Nature Made Him, Crossing,

Also around this time, Jonathan Lethem gave me a copy of The Vintage Book of Amnesia, which he had edited, and I thought to myself, I want to put together an anthology, it looks like easy money. So I asked Lethem how much he was paid for the book and he told me a rather high number, which turned out to be all wrong. But I didn't discover that until much later. Thus spurred by visions of money, combined with the confluence of all these gender books, I got the idea in my head for an anthology whose unifying theme would be the changing of one's sex. I was going to include transsexual memoirs, the Middlebrook and Colapinto books, some stuff on hermaphrodites and transvestites, and works of fiction that featured transsexuals. Gore Vidal, Jerzy Kosinski, John Irving, and David Ebershoff all had novels that qualified on this front, and I figured I could self-promote and include a passage from The Extra Man.

I was teaching then at Indiana University, so I used the Kinsey Library and Xeroxed about a thousand pages of material and sent it off to Vintage. They made an offer that was one-third of what Lethem had told me he got. I checked with him and he realized he had made a mistake.

I was disappointed but took their offer, and the editor and I decided I should whittle the book down just to the memoirs of transsexuals. Then it was such a pain in the ass  to get permissions--I had naively thought Vintage would do this for me--that I didn't do anything with the book for years. I kept waiting to make some money from Hollywood so that I could pay Vintage back the first part of my advance. Then some money from Hollywood did come in, and instead of giving up on the anthology, which I had been privately referring to as the "tranthology," I hired someone and he did everything and now the book is out! So the book is about sex and I did it for money. A classic tale! (Ames & Ames 2005).

Ames regards transsexual memoirs as akin to Bildungsromans, coming of age novels. He also makes an intriguing claim that Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ draws on case 129 in Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis.

He has described himself as “probably the gayest straight writer in America”. In his interview with himself, he makes a distinction between a tranny-chaser and a transy-chaser, and then does not really admit to being either.

• Jonathan Ames. The Extra Man: A Novel. Scribner, 1998.
• Jonathan Ames. Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs. Vintage, 2005.
• “He said, s/he said: Jonathan Ames on Jonathan Ames”. Artforum International. Jun 22, 2005. Online at: www.thefreelibrary.com/He+said,+s%2Fhe+said:+Jonathan+Ames+on+Jonathan+Ames-a0133644421.
• George Koschel. “Jonathan Ames”. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture. 2002. www.glbtq.com/literature/am_mes_j.html.
• “Jonathan Ames”. Current Biography. October 2007. www.hwwilson.com/currentbio/cover_bios/cover_bio_10_07.htm.
• Interview with Jonathan Ames. “Boxers and Transsexuals in Times Square. Big Think. Nov 11, 2009. http://bigthink.com/ideas/17265.
• Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (dir & scr). The Extra Man. From the novel by Jonathan Ames, with Paul Dano as Louis and Kevin Kline as Henry. US 2010.
• “Jonathan Ames”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_ames. 

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Given that Ames is quite out about having a thing for trans women, it is odd that the Wikipedia page about him mentions it not at all.

The selection of excerpts in Ames’ anthology is - how shall we say – conservative.  It you have read several trans biographies, you will have read most of them.  The book would be much more rewarding if he had sought out the less well known biographies, and perhaps translated some that are not currently available in English.  But that would have been more work.

Here is the trailer for the film version of The Extra Man.  Notice how the trans content is just not there.