March, 1999 A Fireside Chat with Quentin Crisp, Homosexual Extraordinaire, PART 2 by Carlin Langley

Continuing our fireside chat with Quentin Crisp, I asked him, "What was your role in "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar"? He replied, "In "To Wong Foo", I was a judge of a competition to decide the most beautiful drag queen in New York City. And the competitors were Mr. Swayze, and Wesley Snipes, and Mr. Leguizamo. And Leguizamo did not win and Mr. Leguizamo was very upset, and then the plot consists of Mr. Swayze and Mr. Snipes taking Mr. Leguizamo to Los Angeles where he can try again. And, the movie is hopeless! Everything is Disneyfied! I mean they arrive in a middle western village where the villagers accept them. Can you imagine it? And the villagers rush through the village and the streets holding bits of pink chiffon, and all wearing red. It's absolute nonsense throughout the whole film. But it was made on the model of "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" which is a wonderful film and very real and very wounding, and I don't know why the American edition missed out entirely. It's a pity because, Mr. Swayze made a real effort to make the part of a drag queen with a heart of gold work, which is a little difficult to imagine, let alone to personify. Because drag queens are the bitchiest people in all the world!"

Next, I decided to really get personal! "When it comes to relationships, how many relationships or true lovers have you had?" His response surprised me. "Well, I've not had any true lovers, and I've had very few relationships. I did get stuck with someone who came to visit me every weekend for four long years. And my life became a series of weekends for which I prepared and from which I've recovered. Because I've always lived in one room and he was a huge man who occupied the whole room. You were always moving out of his way! So it was very, very tiresome, but it was very sad, because when I couldn't bear any more after four years, I said, "I'm afraid you have to go because I have to go to stay with my mother, who might die at any moment. And it was true. Because, if I went away, then he couldn't occupy my room. I never gave him a key. I never let a weekend pass without saying, "When you have a room of your own..." but he never got one, and finally when I turned him out, he really had no where to go. He still hadn't prepared himself for the day when I would get rid of him. And it was very sad, but it was a terrible burden. Other people... if you live alone for a long time, you become very spinsterish and you go around at night putting everything in it's position and so on.. And if everything gets upset and moved, you're very worried. But I lived through it and I never lost my temper. And I never told him off. I decided... he was a common garden porter. That is to say, have you seen those old fashioned pictures of men with fruit baskets up on their heads, one on top of the other? Well, he was one of those people, and he had never been on the winning end of anything. He had never been in the position where he told people what to do. He was a slave of the world. And so I decided that I would never tell him what to do. I would never place him in a position of being my slave. And it was a great effort, while he lived with me, but that's the only relationship that I've ever had. We didn't have sex in the beginning, then we did, then we gave it up. Sex really was nothing. It was him having somewhere, where what he said, went, and I tried to constitute his wishes. To be his slave. I'm really a born slave and it's a role that I've become accustomed to."

Then I asked him, "What type of man turned you on, or turns you on if there's still fire in the furnace!" "Well, I don't think I should say that anyone turns me on now, but I once said that a man could not consider himself attractive unless his neck was thicker than his head. This was regarded as ridiculous, but you know, like Mike Tyson. You can't knock Mike Tyson out, because when you knock someone out, you hit them on the chin so hard that their brain rocks inside their skull. Well, you can't get Mr. Tyson's head to go back, because his head is one with his shoulders. Those are the people that I found attractive, but I never, of course, made a pass at anybody, because I feared to be killed."

My next question of Quentin, in light of all the people that he's had the occasion to meet over his 90 years of life, was, "What person has had the most impact or influence on you that you've met, and why?" "Well, I've been asked that before, and I've always said that I was non-susceptible to influence. But I suppose my parents really. My parents hated one another, but they never raised their voices at one another. And it became unnatural for me to display emotion. To fly into a rage, or to become convulsive with laughter or weep, or anything like that in public. And I think that is due to their influence, so I suppose they formed the way I went on in the world, although they would have disapproved of almost everything ever did. But otherwise, I've never thought I would like to.... When I went to the cubbies, where the boys were, we all talked about the movie stars. We could all imitate the movie stars. Some of the boys actually took the movie stars names, although I don't think anyone ever called himself Marlene, but people called themselves Greta, and they called themselves Heddy because Heddy Lamarr was the most beautiful woman, and we passed into a sort of dream. I don't think anyone expected to reap the benefits reaped by those women, by imitating them but it was a sort of dream world in which we lived. And I think that most homosexuals do live in a dream world. And I've said that, and make a distinction between "real people" and homosexuals and that is frowned upon, but obviously, homosexuals are not really living. They're imitating people who are alive."

I then asked him if he equated homosexuals with those who we call in America, drag queens? He said, "Not actually, but that type, those who wish they were women, or who want to personify women. And there's an extraordinary law, that if one group of people envies another, given half a chance, it will imitate the worst characteristics of the group it admires. Homosexuals are never nice women. They're always the cattiest, bitchiest, vainest women you can possibly imagine. And I tend to wonder why that is. Lesbians- some lesbians wish they were men, but they never wish they were nice men. They wish they were men who spit in the carpet and carry on like that. I don't know why it is, but that's what they all do." I then commented to him and asked him, "What about normal men who just happen to prefer the company of other men?" to which he replied, "That's true, but then, you never meet them because they are part of the real world, so you don't know, unless they tell you." I pointed out his host and his producer, and he said, "That's right, they are real people, well, nearly real people, and I don't think the world takes them into account. I think if you mention their names in a discussion about homosexuality, that people would disregard them. They like the conspicuous and showy people who create scandals and drag queens are very witty, in a bitchy way. I try never to make jokes which are unkind about anybody because it seems to me to be very unfair and creates a world that one doesn't like." Then I asked him if he had performed as a drag queen, and he said, "No, I've only worn drag once in my life, when I was very young and had been in London only a few weeks, I decided that I would wear women's clothes and I borrowed from my friend's. And I didn't go out into the world as an exaggerated woman, but just disguised as a woman. And you can only say the evening was a success in that nothing happened. I got away with it. I don't know why I did it. I thought, "Could I pass as a woman?" I did know a man who lived as a woman, and even worked as a waitress with other waitresses, and must have changed his clothes in a room full of women changing their clothes. So people have done that, lived as women, and that I understand, because that is the fulfillment of a dream. IF, when I was young, "the operation" had been available, and I'd have had the money, I'd have had it. And then I could have gone off far away and lived in some small town, and run a knitting wool shop and no one would ever have known my guilty secret. I never understand why people who have had the operation tell everyone, because then they are in a position that is just as bad as they were before. It means that before they come into the room, someone's going to say, "She used to be a man!" and then you come into the room, and everyone's attitude is different. You see, I wanted to be part of the "real world", the normal world."

In closing, I asked him, "What's your regrets that you look back upon?" He replied, "Well, I don't think I can really regret anything. I was asked that in the theater, and I've always said, "You can only regret something, if you had alternatives, if you could have done otherwise." But I did the only thing I was able to do. Really, I was a hopeless case. Now, I've come to America, and I've become a sort of "national hero" but why, I don't know! Because I did the only thing I could do, which is, be myself. You see, even the boys who liked me in school said, "You have to stand like that. Put your hands down." They were trying to teach me to make like a school boy. I never learned. And then, of course, in the end, the moment comes when you do deliberately what you used to do by mistake because you're fed up with doing it badly, and that's a remark that is made in Philip O'Connor's book, "The Memoirs of a Public Baby". He says, "The time comes for everybody when he has to do deliberately what he used to do by mistake, and then the joke becomes your own."

I doubt that I'll ever talk to anyone else who is quite as captivating, interesting, or inspiring to get acquainted with as having this discussion with Mr. Quentin Crisp was. Anyone with computer access, can access his website at www.quentincrisp.com, and can even get your own email address by registering. They also make available a Quentin Crisp Lapel Pin, for free which you can wear with PRIDE.

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