Years ago, George and I had this silly little thing we would do with
our
cat, Homer. George would lift homer up in his arms and stand behind me
so that his paws would rest on my shoulders , then we would turn our
attention to an adjacent mirror. George would point his chin toward the
mirror and stare through it while i would lower my head and look toward
the mirror's lower frame ,then, after asking him to do "Stevie's
girls", Homer would inevitably turn his head upward and stare into
space. Our impression was a tribute to the pictures of rock temptress
Stevie Nicks and her backup singers that usually adorn the back of her
album covers . Less concerned with producing a direct imitation of
Stevie and her girls then we were channeling their essence, we would
occasionally wear blankets around our shoulders to give the illusion
that we were wearing shawls, but that was about it. I always knew that
we were a far cry away from New York's famous "Night of a Thousand
Stevies" - an annual event known in the Stevie Nicks fan community
as "neither a contest nor a karaoke show, but a riot of shawls, lace,
baby's breath, twirling, tambourines and great performance" and
that naturally saddened me, especially when I read their website's
suggested dress code for this event and saw the following listed;
"Nightbird glamour in black and blue, capes, cloaks and enchanted
evening wear, eye makeup dark and careless, hand-held decorated birds,
Stevie Nicks Boot fetish (all summer long), black glitter tambourines,
Coq feathers and coke spoons, midnight blue velvet, moonstone amulets,
Lindsey or John McVie prince of darkness interpretations, Victorian
mourning hankies or black chiffon wings" . This is , of course, the kind
of shit I live for experiencing , so, when we learned that a less epic
version of the show was taking place within walking distance of our
house we decided that it was imperative that we attend.
When we
arrived at the gay bar that was hosting the event entitled "Sisters of
the Moon" (after an epic Stevie song), we immediately noticed a table of
fat lesbians gathered around a poker table playing Texas holdem .
"Well, at
least I'm glad to see we aren't the fattest guys here" I said .
George
asked a flabby woman draped in gossamer who was collecting admission
outside the showroom how much the price of tickets were .
"Five dollars
apiece, but you can give more if you want - it all goes to charity" she
said as she twisted a string of beads in her hair.
"Two, please" George said without even a
second of contemplation , passing her the ten
dollar bill from his wallet.
Ripping two tickets from a spool she warned
us "Be sure to hold on to your tickets till after the show - there's
going to be a raffle and the prize is an original painting of Stevie Nicks . Oh, and I'm the artist!" .
I loved how she said this last part
, the"Oh, and I'm the artist", like, I would never have believed it.
She
spoke so proudly of the painting that i knew I had to see it , and , not
surprisingly, once I saw it I knew I had to have it. It looked more
like a painting of washed -up eighties pop singer Marilyn Martin then a
painting of Stevie Nicks but that made it even more alluring for me. My
obsession with "fan-art" started a few years ago when George introduced
me to a website that celebrates the television show "Eight is Enough"
with heinous cartoon drawings of all nine Bradford children ( including
late - comer Jeremy), Tom and Abby. When I first saw the site I assumed
that some
legal issues made regular photographs of the cast unattainable and that
using charcoal drawings of Merle "the pearl" Stockwell was simply a
loophole around it. When I realized that the person who was
responsible for the drawings did them out of love and admiration for the
likes of Adam Rich and Willie Ames, I felt both captivated and
disgusted all at the same time. While I envisioned the Marilyn Martin
painting hanging proudly in our living room , George went to get our
drinks from a male bartender who was wearing a leather bra. I didn't
recall any mention of men dressing in black leather brassieres in the
dress code ,although I suppose it could have fallen somewhere between
nightbird glamour and enchanted evening wear .
At a
table not far away from us, a
petite young blonde woman in a corset and cape sat with her mother, a
petite old blonde woman in a corset and cape. I couldn't imagine
attending something like this with my mother - she quite simply would
never understand it. One Halloween when I was little, perhaps inspired
by a
reissue of the film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" I decided I
wanted to be the dwarf named Dopey. My mother tried to convince me to
go as Donald Duck , as I had done the previous year, since she had
already shelled out probably three dollars on that costume the year
before, but I had my heart set on going as Dopey. Back then , all the
Halloween costumes consisted of a hard plastic mask of the character's
head that elastic banded around your head and a hot vinyl apron-like
shirt that featured the character who you were supposed to be on it ,
making it clear to the people who passed out candy who you were supposed
to be. These costumes were sold at K-mart , a place that my mother was
apparently too cheap to shop at based on the following events; on
Halloween morning I had to attend my elementary school wearing my
costume, so, my mother pulled it together at the last minute . She
pulled one of her sweatshirts over me and cinched it with a large belt
around my waist . Then she pulled my socks over my pants , so that they
would make my shoes appear to be boots . She then took her lipstick and
smeared some on my cheeks to make me appear "jolly" ( which was
decidedly more "elf" then "dwarf" ) and then took some flour from the
kitchen and dusted it into my hair before hanging a pillow case over the
back of my head as a hat. While in the car on the way to school I
caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and began to cry. Aside from
the pillowcase that hung like a flaccid penis from my head, the
combination of flour and Avon lipstick had made my face appear old and
cracked like an alcoholics. I looked like a freakish version of Madame,
the puppet that used to frequently appear on the dance show "Solid Gold"
alongside her gay ventriloquist Wayland Flowers. I begged my
mother to turn the car around and take me home , but she wouldn't. so,
when I entered the school I raced to the bathroom , washed my face of
whatever make-up my tears hadn't already removed and flushed the
pillowcase down the toilet, leaving me to spend the rest of the day in
an over sized sweatshirt and a belt , like any cast member of "The Facts
of Life" might have worn . On subsequent Halloweens my mother offered to
buy me a bag of whatever candy I wanted if I would forgo trick or
treating to stay home and watch television with her , and without any
resistance I agreed to it.
Watching the performers
on stage at the Stevie show I realized I had probably made the right
choice in not
allowing my mother to dress me up anymore. The show's m.c., a seemingly
ten
foot tall transsexual, ignored the risk she was already running of
cutting her head on a ceiling fan and wore high- heeled boots (all summer long) . It
is in situations like this where I have to
wonder what I would call myself if I were any sort of gender
illusionist that worshipped Stevie Nicks.
"Do you
combine song titles like say "Sara Rhiannon" or do you go a little bawdy with something like "Stevie Dicks" ?" I asked George
"You refer to yourself as "Kinda
woman" ( after her song) and that's that". George replied and immediately the discussion was over.
Much closer to a Stevie-like appearance then the giantess that had been
tromping the stage was a performer
who's overweight figure and wracked
voice represented the late-eighties version of Stevie. Watching these
self-proclaimed "Legends of Stevie Realness" we became more and more
enthralled in
their performances , and how seriously they took themselves during them.
A performance art troop did a piece
called "A Tale of Two Stevies" that featured two Stevie Nicks impersonators on stage
singing "Gold Dust Woman" together . One stevie was the enigmatic
performer we all know and love , while the other was the young Stephanie
Lynn Nicks who worked as a cleaning lady , alongside them on stage was a
sissy that was dressed as a silver cokespoon that pantomimed the act of
digging a grave.
Later, a tall, overweight , bald man came out on the stage with a beaded shawl wrapped around him and
announced to the crowd" You know, i turned forty this year and I feel really good
about myself." before launching into "If Anyone Falls" .
I turned to
george and said " First of all, he looks more like one-hundred and
forty. Second of all he looks like he should be singing "Sailing" or
"Ride Like the Wind" at "Night of Twenty-Three Christopher Crosses" or
something . Third, if he feels good about himself, I feel great !"
Because I suffer from instant karma, this remark was followed by me being cruised
by some slug-like ghoul who seemed to creep out of a crack in the floor
tiles . Despite my attempt not to make eye contact with him, he
slithered over to our table and sat down with us, making it extremely
difficult to avoid seeing him . the creature stared at me , actually through me as I moved my
chair closer to George's , so, assuming that he could only track me if I
was in motion I remained still through the end of the show, when my
Marilyn Martin painting was given to someone with a home-perm.
It was a
consolation prize that the next day I was playing around on the internet
and found pictures from the event on a myspace page .
there were pictures of what might have been Abe Vigoda in drag , the flamboyant cokespoon, the Christopher Cross ( well, not the Christopher
Cross of course ), the artist behind the Marilyn Martin painting , and
a queen that we saw that had at least three rows of teeth , if only
three rows showed up in the picture. in the middle of it all was a picture
of us
sitting at our table ,unaware of the camera that was being aimed at
us. In comparison to the other snapshots , we look so..... boring , so
mundane, so "normal". No
victorian mourning hankies , no black chiffon wings , no moonstone
amulets. As the "Tusk" cd played in the house I searched the closet for that ratty old LL Bean blanket
that we found so much comfort in , and crawled under it.
