"Birds of a Feather" by: Rick McKay as published in: Frontiers National News Magazine San Francisco Bay Times Windy City Times OutFront Colorado.

Growing up in Beech Grove, Indiana, I spent every minute I could at the movies. I knew one day I would work in film, but, all these years later, I was beginning to give up on it. Then one day a friend called to tell me that the director Mike Nichols was shooting a re-make of "La Cage au Folles" called "Birdcage." Robin Williams was the star and Mr. Nichols needed someone to do research for him. The job entailed videotaping drag shows, a subject that Mr. Nichols was not familiar with. My friend was sure I would be perfect - in spite of the fact that the only time I had ever run a video camera was for 10 minutes at a sister's wedding. The catch was that the film started shooting in a month so I would have to call the Nichols office and beg for an interview - quickly.

There was one other obstacle - I knew nothing about drag queens. I was a gay man, but drag had fallen out of favor on the isle of Manhattan, except for the Wigstock phenomenon that was more akin to a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade than it was to classic drag.

I had to work fast. I called the Nichols' office, having no idea what I would do if I got an interview. Luckily, Mr. Nichols was "on the coast" with his wife, newscaster Diane Sawer, and would not be back for five days. "We will call you," I was told.

That gave me a little time to work. Friends recommended a few drag queens I could call. The first was a staple in the Greenwich Village cabaret circuit and was known for his Judy Garland show . He set me straight right away: "I am not a drag queen," he told me. "I am an actor who is playing a role - there is a difference, you know." He knew very little about the drag world, but he made it clear that he had just played Judy in the film "Stonewall 25," and was available to work with Mr. Nichols. What a surprise.

Drag Queen Number Two had won numerous awards doing a one man/woman show and was getting quite a bit of attention. When I explained what I was looking for, he replied in a haughty tone: "I am not a drag queen - I am an actor who is playing a role - there is a difference you know." I was beginning to get the point. He had also played a drag queen in the film "To Wong Foo... ," but he knew nothing much about the scene either - but, let me know he too, would be happy to appear in Mr. Nichols' film. I was getting a little worried. These were my two contacts - my only two. Were there no more drag queens? Were there only gay male actors dressing as drag queens to get a gig?!

Then I realized I had another option. I had just gotten a new computer and with it America On Line, the on-line service everybody was talking about. I had heard that you could find anything on line, so I decided to give it a try. I looked on gay boards, transgender boards and finally started posting notices - the cyber version of hanging Xeroxed fliers with tear-off phone numbers - but, all over the country. The responses were not forthcoming.

While I was waiting, I learned that AOL had a search facility where you could enter a string of "stats" and the names would come up of everyone on AOL who had those same stats in their member profile. Perfect, I would find all the drag queens on the "net". I wasn't sure how many people listed drag queen as an occupation, or how many listed it as their hobby - but, there was only one way to find out. I inserted drag queen into the search box and hit enter. I would soon know.

Well, who would have believed it? There were hundreds. I had hit pay dirt! I quickly composed a simple letter to each, promising they would be properly recognized if they could help me. I used the very handy AOL mail merge/c.c. function and instantly hundreds of letters went to drag queens and their fans all over America. I knew my e-mail box would soon be filled with willing and happy dresser-uppers eager to help.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Oh, my mail box filled up all right, but not with the kind of e-mail I expected. It turns out that in my excitement I had not read AOL's instructions very clearly. When you do a search and it has two words, you have to surround them in quotation marks or it will search for the two words separately. In other words; the great number of letters I had sent out went to everyone on-line who liked drag racing or lived in the borough of Queens. They wrote me some very interesting letters. From "Who in the hell do you think you are talking to?! I could beat the shit out of you" to "Who told you about me?! Please don't tell my wife!" I learned more than I wanted to know, but none of it very useful. And I was getting very nervous...

And then finally, the replies started trickling in. Queens from Salt Lake City to Baltimore, Atlanta to London. Soon I was corresponding with the creme de la creme of the Imperial Court. Thanks to America On Line, I had created my own "Drag-Net" and it was working. I was putting all the information into the word processor and I was I was beginning to look like I knew something. More and more information came in about London. Luckily, I had a sister there - maybe I could put her on the case?

Before I knew it, my little sister Sandy - 8 months pregnant - was off to her hairdresser quizzing him about drag queens. Before you knew it, her international banker husband was coming home to a kitchen table full of BOY magazines and weekly gay rags. She attacked the case like an underground Miss Marple. She was calling me daily with reports: "I have Regina Fong and Titty LaCamp booked for you on Monday," she would tell me. "I don't know if you can make it - but Tuesday I have you at the "Queen of England Pub" to see Earl Gray and then straight to "Madame JoJo's" and then to a tavern called "The Black Cap." You'll make it if you take the tube...otherwise you will miss Sugar Cane and she is very `glam,' not common like Lily Savage!" All of this while her husband is waiting for dinner and her four year old son is crying. Meanwhile, I have no job yet. I am beginning to wonder if I am out of my mind.

"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz..."

I am more than a little nervous about my meeting with Mike Nichols. This is the man who directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?", Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," and Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in one of my favorite movies, "Postcards from the Edge." I look him up on my new CDRom encyclopedia and - Oh my God - I forgot he had also been half of the seminal comedy team, "Nichols and May" - not to mention the director of numerous shows on Broadway - and, as a footnote - he discovered Whoopi Goldberg. All of this and he is still relatively young, to boot. I staple together my 17 pages and head for his office across from Carnegie Hall.

I arrive ten minutes late, but his assistant Liz tells me the great director has just called and hasn't even left the house yet - I should relax - did I get to finish the script yet? Oh - sure, I tell her, it was great! Now, I have lied and am much too embarrassed to take the half finished script out of my back pack -even if they had only just messengered it over that morning. I wait. I watch the beautiful assistant, in jeans and bare feet, run around the office, field phone calls and pack boxes for their move this week to Hollywood for pre-production. I can't believe this is happening so soon. What will happen when they find out that I have no idea what I am doing? The jig will be up and I will be out.

Like a tornado that the elevator has just discharged, Mike Nichols blows into the office, coat flying off and umbrella dropped behind him. All energy, Mr. Nichols is not what I expected. I suddenly am not sure what I expected - but, he is very tall and is dressed like a country gentleman in tweeds and wool. Very smart, very busy, very boyishly handsome and very flustered. He marches past us all with - "I am sorry I am late all of you, I did the best I could; what a day!" and disappears into his office.

I watch, stunned, as his assistant Liz disappears behind him into the inner sanctum. Soon, she is back asking me to come in. I am disappointed to see that Mr. Nichols is nowhere to be found. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps this is the pre-inner sanctum when suddenly the legendary one explodes into the room: "I hate drag queens! I am sorry - I just do. What can I say." I have not even been introduced to him yet, but I venture: "Maybe you hate them because you don't know anything about them. That's my job. I do the homework.". It is true, but how in the world did I think of that?!

He smiles and asks, anxiously, if I have read the script. I tell him yes, but only comment on the parts that I actually did read. I already know better than to bullshit this man. He asks me what I honestly think of it, listens closely and seems totally engrossed in what I have to say. I can't imagine that I am that interesting, but he is making me start to believe I am.

I tell him what a fan I am of his work and how I have seen Postcards from the Edge three times. He proceeds to gossip with me about the film and the stars. His conspiratorial tone makes me pull in an extra foot and a half. I can't believe he is telling me all this dirt. He has a way of making you feel that you are the only person in the world that he would like to be speaking to at this moment.

He confesses that he doesn't really hate drag queens at all. Just the shows he has been seeing lately. He is frustrated - an artist looking for his muse. He asks me why drag queens always do Judy Garland - when he feels they have no chance of comparing to the original. He proceeds to tell me about the night that the Burtons took him to see Judy at Carnegie Hall, as he vaguely gestures at the venerable institution visible over his shoulder. I stagger at the thought of a young Mike Nichols in a box with Liz and Dick; this must be 1961 - Cleopatra time - they were only the most famous couple in the world then. And Judy on stage performing the legendary Carnegie Hall album as it was being laid down on vinyl. I am stunned. Liza, film acting, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, drag queens, Robin Williams, technique - it all comes up. My five minute meeting runs 90 minutes.

When Mike (he is "Mike" now...) stands up I follow. What else do you do? As I follow him to the door I wonder if I will remember a word he has said. I don't even care if I get the job. I "took a meeting" with one of the screen's legendary directors. He says everything looks great and mentions me leaving for London as soon as possible. I am slightly dazed and am amazed to hear myself bringing up money. Mike looks slightly embarrassed and I realize I have breached good taste - but, he gets me off the hook by telling me his lawyer will speak to me tomorrow about "my deal." Before I know it I am out of the inner sanctum and surrounded by boxes and assistants on the phone renting office furniture in Los Angeles. Did I even say good-bye? It doesn't matter because assistant Liz is saying it to me now and next thing you know I am standing in a hallway trying to find an elevator that appears to have been misplaced. Or perhaps I have. Next thing I know I am standing on the street and trying to figure out what happened. Am I really going to London in 72 hours to shoot drag queens?

"Come out, come out; wherever you are..."

And off I went. I borrowed a video camera from a friend and was on a night flight to London. I slept fitfully through nightmares of cameras not working, voltage problems and elusive drag queens. After checking into my hotel and calling my now 8-1/2 month pregnant sister/research assistant, I was off to tape my first act in a seedy little tavern on the fringes of London. I was a nervous wreck. I thought the performers might laugh at me or toss me out. I was wrong.

They all knew about "the man from Hollywood who was looking for drag queens." I would soon find that it was the same in every city - they thought this was their big chance to be the next Ru Paul. The first few days were a blur. Feathers and falsies, lashes and lipstick. Some were young and eager. Some were old beyond their years. Some were just plain bitter - feeling like they were never going to get out of "the pubs."

My first subject was an old veteran who was now reduced to doing Scarlett O'Hara, Bette Davis and Queen Elizabeth in pubs full of drunk and rowdy working class. When I met him after the show and he told me his age, I was shocked to find he was younger than I was. This was not an easy line of work.

And so it went, day after day and night after night. I saw Judys, Marylins, Madonnas and Lizas - Earthas, Chers, Dianas and Bettes. But, I soon realized that the real story was in the dressing rooms and I took to going backstage with the camera. I was trying to do a good job, but I also I was becoming very curious myself.

As a gay man I wanted to see what made these other gay men tick. I wanted to know all about them. Did drag queens sleep with drag queens, I asked in London? "Oh darling no," I was told at Madame JoJo's, "never on purpose!" These performers in London were desperate to "get somewhere." They were all talking about who knew who in "Priscilla," what did I think of "Wong Foo" and wasn't this proof that more gender-benders were on the way? After all, hadn't I been sent by a Hollywood director to find them?!

Regina Fong held court every Tuesday night at "The Black Cap" in Camden/North London. She/He is a bizarre, red-wigged, middle-aged, dispossessed comtessa who holds her audience in thrall. He had started out as a chorus boy backing up performers like Englebert Humperdink at the Palladium and had done drag as a dare. Now, Reg was laboring away each Tuesday to a full house of a good 800-1,000 people who did anything that Regina asked of them. Not only did they do as he said, they memorized it so they could bring friends and do it the next Tuesday. Straight couples, lesbians, college students, gay couples - you name it. They were there. Regina would lip-synch to sophisticated sound bites of everyone from Joan Crawford to England's Cilla Black. Out of the blue, Regina's signature music, a huge brassy orchestra track playing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," would come on - and as if on cue, the entire audience would throw their hands over their heads and sway back and forth like a swarm of locusts. Later, their hands flew up into the air as if on imaginary typewriters as the strobe lights caught those 10,000 fingers madly hunting and pecking away to the sound-track of a secretary being hounded by her boss in a long forgotten English film. The audience was ecstatic - they loved being a slave to this man in a wild red wig. Regina was like Hitler in a dress and these Brits loved him.

Paris was beautiful and fast. Huge discos on the Champ-Elysees' - full of dark clad teens with incredibly loud music and furious laser light shows. Drag queens high above the crowd on a raised platform, looking like caricatures of the high fashion models that have replaced movie stars as the icons of today. Old clubs like Madame Arthur's where the talent looked like it had been there since World War ll. Chez Michou was small, elegant and expensive boite with ancient drag queens on a tiny elegant stage. They had a very French show with everyone from Josephine Baker and Edith Piaf - to a Sammy Davis who turned into Shirley Bassey in mid-number.

But, it was time to go back to America. I didn't know what I would find, but I knew there was more there. I was trying to think of this as "just a job" - but each day I was realizing that it was affecting me more deeply than I realized it would. On the long flight from Paris to San Francisco I had plenty of time to think it over.

I was a gay man fast approaching 40. I had been "out" to my friends for years. And if I didn't tell everyone what my sexuality was, it was because I firmly believed that I was not defined by who I slept with. And I believed it, I supposed. My "real job" was as a solo act in nightclubs and if I had never "come out" in my act, it was because I didn't want to pigeon hole myself. I believed that, too - didn't I? I was beginning to wonder.

San Francisco was a surprise. Not the drag scene that I had hoped. I found a tourist trap revue that had well worn performers playing in a huge, old family owned supper club. What had once held 350 - 400 people now was lucky to have 25 customers at a performance. And these world weary troupers did three shows a night for very little money - and earned every penny of it.

A big, black man falling down the stairs as Patty LaBelle; a big white man crammed into Sophie Tucker gown; a young beautiful Madonna imitator who was a far prettier and softer man than the real Madonna would ever be as a woman; long, wiry mulattos and short, chubby South Americans - there was truly something for everyone here. And everyone was here. The house may have been 90% empty, but there were straight couples, a bachelorette party, a table of Japanese tourists and two priests at the show I saw. Everything but your garden variety gay man.

I was really curious to go backstage at this club. But, in spite of all the backstages I had seen in my day, I was shocked. This one looked like it had barely survived the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 - and was still waiting for repairs. Deserted rooms, floorboards missing, doors fallen off and left to climb over, rooms lit with a single bulb hanging by an exposed wire from the ceiling and water puddles in the middle of the hall way. These girls had to be dedicated - there was obviously no union for them.

They were more than a little wary of me. They didn't find me to be the "Savior from Hollywood" that the Europeans had. They were only a good drive away from the city of lost angels and they no longer expected it to make their dreams come true. One had recently had a heart attack and the priests that were at the show were from the hospital that he had been treated in. He had evidently won the priests and nuns at the Catholic Hospital over with his ribald humor. Still, it didn't get the nuns there.

The mistress of ceremony of the entire evening was a man who in drag looked something like Dina Merril probably would have if she had never been able to afford surgery. He was a real veteran and did 15 shows a week. He didn't lip-sync like others in the show. He used his own low, tough voice, but was very feminine and elegant in a slightly tattered way. With his beaded gowns from the fifties; turbans and upswept, helmet-like wigs; he looked like the illegitimate child of Blanche Dubois and Norma Desmond - waiting for old Hollywood to come back or his "gentleman caller" to arrive.

When I asked him what was toughest about this business, he hesitated. The other performers had said "working in this dump" or "the 4 or 5 inch heals we have to wear to make our calves look half-way decent." Instead he thought about it and said: "I think it is having most of the world scared of you ... not liking you." When I asked him why people felt that way he answered simply. "Because we know who we are. Most people don't and it scares people when someone does ... and I do know who I am." He said it with complete conviction as he stared straight into the lens of my camera. As I looked back through the viewfinder, I was left speechless - and more than a little troubled. Could I say the same thing with such certainty?

I interviewed the big, black guy who rolled down the stairs as Patty LaBelle doing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." He was big and strong and wearing a little knock-off of a Channel suit that looked most interesting on his hardly delicate figure. This was not a costume - he was wearing this outfit home. When I asked him where he found such outfits he coyly answered that a man liked to see a girl in pretty things and that men bought him his clothes. He then smiled coquettishly and told he liked straight men - and that he liked me. I told him I had to confess that I wasn't straight and he was very surprised and began to treat me very differently - the coyness was gone. I was very confused by the change in his treatment to me, but even more so by myself. Was I putting out some kind of "straight" vibe to "protect" myself? What was I up to?

As I flew to Atlanta I thought about the drag queens in San Francisco and how they had affected me. My last sight of them had been out on the street late that Saturday night as the clubs were beginning to close. I couldn't imagine how they could still stand up in those high, high heels after three shows. Maybe if they were ordinary women they could have slipped into jeans and sweats after a show, but these were professionals. They were trying to hail a cab, this rag tab ensemble, and enough of them were still in drag to keep cab drivers from stopping. I couldn't help feeling a grave sense of injustice as I thought how tired they must be after three shows and how often this must happen. I started to walk back to my hotel, but kept turning around to see the cabs whizzing by them. I was hesitant to leave them out on the street like that, even though I was sure they could more than take care of themselves. Finally, I saw them all hide in the shadows as the prettiest of them, a tall slim mulatto marched back into the street, hiked up her already short skirt another 3 inches and raised her hand and waved daintily. Within moments a cab screeched to a stop. As she slowly opened the door to get into the taxi, I saw the rest of the ensemble dash from the shadows and pack into the cab. "Bravo!" I thought.

I got off the plane in Atlanta, grabbed a rental car and raced to the Miss Gay America Pageant. It was a lucky fluke that the annual pageant just happened to fall in the two weeks I was researching. As I entered the hall, I felt like I had gone back in time to old Hollywood. I mean the Oscar ceremony would be hard put to challenge these gowns - and they definitely couldn't keep up with the production numbers - this was Viva Las Vegas meets The Ziegfeld Follies. It appeared that no expense was spared, but the fact was that it was all done on a shoestring. What money there was is usually raised by the home-town gay bars and their patrons.

Feathers were flying and the divas were carried out by armies of half naked chorus boys. They were impeccably rehearsed and pulled out all the stops. A black Liza lip-synching "New York, New York;" an entire chorus line of tap dancing, high-kicking guys and girls; an aging, but elegant diva resplendent in miles of lame; a perfect Lucy doing her Vita-veeta-vege-meena commercial; and a distinctly senior Philippino dressed to the nines as Imelda Marcos and throwing shoes to her adoring fans. Where else - tell me - could you see half the likes of this?

I was in Atlanta for five days and I never stopped. There wasn't a night that I didn't shoot three shows in three different places. I was exhausted, but fascinated. This was a Drag Valhalla. One place had a nightly show hosted by a beautiful, full breasted queen who looked like she could give Raquel Welch a run for her money. She was, I was told, a "pre-op" - which meant that the entertainer was on hormones, was soft and feminine, had budding breasts or breast implants - but had not been "under the knife" for the final step into becoming a woman. Drag queens were divided on this subject. Some loved the hormones and stopped there, some were saving money for the surgery and others were very happy taking off the make-up every night and "keeping Daddy's plumbing."

The one who impressed me the most was the self-appointed "Drag-mother of Atlanta." His stage name was Charley Brown and when I first saw him he was in full drag receiving the Lifetime achievement award at the Miss Gay America Pageant. He was not a little woman by any stretch of the imagination. He was a good 6'4" in heels and looked like Ann-Margaret on steroids ... with a very healthy appetite.

I made an appointment to interview him before one of his shows at "Charley Brown's," the bar that had been named after him and where he ran the nightly drag shows. It was 7 PM and I arrived before him. There was not much business at this hour and the only one at the bar was a big, burly, balding, middle aged truck driver in a baseball cap, drinking a beer. This was the deep south and I figured I would be safe and avoid any conversation - but, before I could, he brought me over a beer and said, "Hi, I'm Charley Brown."

Once I recovered from the shock, I followed Charley back to his dressing room, one that he shared with all of his "girls." We were the first ones there for the evening. Before my eyes he began to slowly turn into that industrial-sized Ann-Margaret I had seen a few nights before as he told me the story of his life. He had grown up in a town so deep in the hills of Tennessee that you had to follow the milk-man to get out. He was raised on a muddy dairy farm and groomed to carry on the family tradition, but it was clear early on that he was not going to be the boy they hoped he would be. "Hell! They wouldn't even let me be a male cheerleader. So, I decided to show them - I became a drag queen!"

And show them he did. He followed that milk-man out of the little town and made a name for himself in the cities of the south in the sixties. Later he settled in Atlanta and became such a sensation that the popular gay entertainment complex, Backstreet, named a bar after him and put him in charge of creating, casting, directing and starring in the shows. He told me how he cast them. "Personality," he drawled like a true Southern mother of a cheerleader, "a smile shows over those footlights." He then told me how straight couples came in for a hoot and how the next night one of the husbands would come back by himself. It happened time and again, Charley said. "They're curious. They want to step out on the `other side' but the likes of us are easier for them to make that step with than some body-builder."

By now the "girls" were showing up for work. Most were very young, but there were more than a few veterans, too. As they dressed and made up in the crowded communal dressing room, duct-taping their private parts into places that I never dreamed of, they shared stories with me. One said that his mother had been his biggest influence - his chlildhood years spent watching her make up every day. Now the mother wouldn't speak to him. "I don't care," he said - critically gazing at the perfectly peroxided reflection in the mirror, "I always wanted to look like my Ma, and God help me, now I do." Another's father was a military man who "had drank all our money away." As a teenager he had started by sewing the ladies' costumes for local productions on a cheap sewing machine that an aunt had given him. Soon he was wearing them. His family stopped speaking to him, too. There was an ex-marine who was supporting his daughter by doing Tina Turner impersonations, but his ex-wife still his best friend. Another spoke to his mother every day, they were best friends, too - but, he was the exception. Most were disenfranchised "orphans" who made "Charley Brown's" home.

And home it was. Charley auditioned, hired and practically raised each girl himself - and his standards were stringent. They were all expected to be "ladies" and behave accordingly. The girls lovingly complained that Charley was constantly reminding them: "Smile! I want to see those teeth!" The costumes had to be perfect and each girl was responsible for her own. The former seamstress made it clear that "a queen's best friend was a glue gun and some sequins, baby."

Charley functioned as director, mother, boss, sister, confidante and marriage counselor. Charley's own long time "husband" was the lighting and sound designer of every show. If one of the girls was smitten she would bring the new beau to the club and Charley would interview him and see if he came up to snuff. If the boyfriend passed muster he might even get a job as a bar-back at Charley Brown's.

That night I got a chance to see Charley and his chorines on their home turf. They girls were pretty amazing. One dancing through a stage of fire as she did splits surrounded by flames. "Tina Turner," the ex-marine, looking softer and more feline than the original and with better legs. The seamstress in a Star Wars costume that conveniently stripped down to next to nothing - thanks to Velcro and that glue gun. Former gymnasts, ballet dancers and you name it coming out one after another in an endless variety show till 4 o'clock in the morning. And between each act Charley would take center stage as a cross-dressing Will Rogers, regaling the audience with his home-spun/revisionist opinions of the state of the world.

Charley started each show with an introduction to her world. Everyone was welcome in her club: "heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, trisexuals - and freaks." She only asked that you respect each other, that you didn't hurt anyone and that you had a good time. Somehow, in this club, he had accomplished what most of the world couldn't. Here straight and gay, black and white, men and women, and everything in between - all got along just fine - with Charley teasing each mercilessly. She ended her evening with a reminder that "if a man pays your rent, kiss his ass. If a lady pays your rent, kiss her ass. And if you pay your own rent, tell everyone of those #$&%'s to kiss your ass!" "Above all,' she said, "respect yourself." The audience gave her their full attention and they howled as if they were at a combination of a revival meeting and a political rally. Don't be surprised if she runs for office one of these days.

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

As I got on a plane to NYC, the last leg of my journey, Charley's words echoed in my ears.. I was finished. Well, almost anyway. I got back to my apartment in Manhattan and there were at least a dozen tapes of drag queens waiting in my mailbox; "Cowboy La Cage" in Tennessee, Las Vegas glitzy revues and a follow-up from the urinating diva of Baltimore. I had two days of editing ahead of me. I had shot over 60 hours of video footage and I had decided to edit the performances and interviews into a 75 minute documentary. The prospect was daunting, but the deadline was days away and production was starting the next week.

Editing began. I had not been able to watch footage on the road and I was mesmerized now by what I had shot. There were no pulled punches. There were hearts and souls and hopes and dreams out on the table. Even the editors were amazed by what they saw. Flashes of big production numbers at the Atlanta pageant; rag tag numbers in San Francisco; the veteran telling me "I know who I am" simply and starkly; London draq queens squealing with horror at the prospect of sleeping with other drag queens; the same Josephine Baker that the real Josephine had coached days before she died, still performing in Paris - and of course- Charley Brown, reminding all of us to "respect ourselves."

I finished the tape, but was amazed at how hard it was to let it go. I made myself a copy, but it didn't matter. I fed-exed it off to Hollywood, Mike Nichols, Robin Williams, Nathan Lane and whoever else's path it would cross. I felt very protective of the tape and of all of the performers that I had met. Some friends suggested I shoot my own "dragumentary." There was a man in Atlanta very interested in what I had done who wanted to invest in it. I didn't know why, but I was depressed. I got a call from Liz, Mike Nichol's assistant and she raved. Mike was so happy, she told me - he locked himself in the trailer with writers, cast, etc. looking at the footage. A letter soon followed from Mike, amazed that I had done the project alone. Would I like to work together again? Why didn't I feel better.

It slowly dawned on me. I had been changed by this project. Once you have learned something there is no going back. These queens that suddenly seemed so far away were haunting me. It was almost as if they were not going to let me off the hook. I was being besieged by phantom drag queens. And they were not going away.

Not until I did something about it anyway. I had a run of my one man show coming up and I knew that was my opportunity. I didn't want to play safe anymore. I decided it was time to get honest and talk about who I was. If I could do it on stage - I could do it anywhere. I realized how safe my life had been? I thought of those poor queens standing out on the street in San Francisco in full drag without a cab to stop for them. This was how their life had been every day. I was a white male who almost never felt prejudiced against. Why? Because I was stronger? No, because I was safer - and more cautious. I wasn't very happy about my new revelation. There is no pleasure in finding out you are not someone you would have a great deal of respect for.

Gay white men are the last minority who can completely "pass" in America. The heterosexual white male in America has more opportunities than any other human being on the planet - and it is not easy to pass up that chance to take advantage of it. And I was realizing that even though I had never lied - I had chosen, through omission, to let people think what they wanted for a long time. I had made their lives easier, rather than take a chance on being proud of who I am.

I knew my show would be a step in the right direction. A few months later I began to tell my story on stage - in an honest, non-threatening way. I talked about my big family with more than a few gay siblings, the kid who grew up in love with all those MGM musicals and the job I did for Mike Nichols where I learned so much about drag queens ... and about myself.

We never know where our teachers will appear. Or where our lessons will come from. I am afraid I can't tell you that I found myself on stage in a silver lame gown, lip-synching to "I Will Survive" - but, I did find out the value of truth and honesty and knowing who you are. And my teachers were in feathers and falsies all over the world.

Brava, girls! I am proud to have known you. Thank you, and long may you wave.