Redwood City Transinfatuation

7364 Steps

Where we ate and places along the way in the EV.









Why does performance art seem so RETRO? And if so, what is au courant these days? I am not the Mr. Blackwell of what is hip and happening I will confess, yet I am not in a fox hole next to a Walmart either. I applaud people who are out there doing their thing. And I also applaud people who are just out there. And I applaud people who are out there being their thing.

Ron and I went PS 122 in the East Village to see Justin Bond's show called "Lustre: A Midwinter Trans-Fest." Now Justin isn't exactly some unknown up and comer. He is a Tony nominee. That ain't obscure. And he, as Kiki, along with Herb played for years in San Francisco and were just at Carnegie Hall. Not so underground. But I guess this was his/her own thing and s/he was trying it on. It was a gender-f*ck cabaret theatre thing. Here I am in the East Village in this boite with trannies and those who love them and I am wearing a cardigan. A safe blue starched shirt, tan corduroy trousers and a cardigan like I just put down my pipe and put the kids to bed. WHO is the real trannie? I was horrified when I saw myself in the mirror of the multi-gendered bathroom.

I have to say the show was rough, but I really appreciated where it was going to with the idea of sexual fluidity. Not a path I am on, just thought it was interesting. There were the tired drag queens, but the womyn at the piano whom I could not TELL for sure and Justin were great. There was also a tap dancing obese dyke/chick in a tux who took her clothes off, sat in a chair in all her floppy post-breasted cottage cheese glory and then shimmied effortfully into a unitard. Quite moving. Justin sang a song about being in the I Magnin dressing room in San Francisco and how he is able to get his bearings when he is in that dressing room. He only knows where he is in New York and the I Magnin's dressing room in San Francisco. (which, of course, is no longer there.) There was a lyric about Market St. and Church St. and the white trash in Redwood City. Ron and I were the only two who laughed at that. And not because of any white trash connotation with Redwood City. Only the pure randomness of hearing someone sing about Redwood City in New York City. To me that was the most random thing of the evening. Until the guy sitting next to me leaned over and whispered in my ear "I live in Redwood City." He was here on business. I loved that.