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jbjb Again, like you said, you know, I come of the back of that. I was born mid-eighties,
showing my age, and em, I, I m kinda interested in, you know, to found out more where that,
probably that change came from because when I started clubbing and going out was the early
two thousands and there wasn t a lot of that so, about, so again, when I do go out to,
probably an East End venue like the Angel, and they are having a cabaret night, you know,
yeah, depending on whose on, I, I tend to not wanna go and watch, too much. Just because
I can t identify with, with what s, what s happening. I think technically there s a big
thing too which is that songs in the last twenty years don t lend themselves to be performed
in a cabaret way. Yeah, yeah They they are very much technically drum bass and everything
else whereas everything, a friend of mine is doing drag now and er, little trans guy,
and he said he just did a, a whole thing of em, Phil Spector music of the Sixties. It
s really weird because it didn t have a beat like that. Yeah. And er, so he was, em, really,
but, Well, yah. What are you doing this song. s like, you know, cause it, it wasn t going
hundred and seventy beats a minute. But I think that s a big one. Yes. And you see,
how can it keep going. If there aren t new songs put in, you can t keep on doing those
same old songs. So it just moves, I think. It moves. I don t know. Do we have more, shorter
attention spans now? Do we Much less. Have we got conditioned to always having something
new and fast and different. Because in the Eighties and Nineties I used to love to go
to drag shows and we d go every week to see the same performers do the same acts and we
all, sort of sing along and we all felt like we were a part of it, you know. And it was.
It was part of the fun. It was, it was simpler in a way but we really wanted to hear the
same act week after week after week, you know. Karen is there a sort of drag scene in the
lesbian sector. Em, I think there s a club called Club Whatever and they do Drag King,
er, nights em, and it s sort of, I ve only been once or twice em, a few years ago, em,
and it s kind of much more shorter performances and it s more performance art rather than
kind of old time, from what, from what you know, show tunes or anything like that. So
it is out there. There is a kind of Drag King culture that, that, I think maybe, maybe two
years ago, it really come across from the States, I think em, er there was a lot more
Drag King nights and, you seen it on, on Gingerbeer, which is a lesbian website. You see it more
advertised in, you know, had groups that were going out, we certainly went out as a group
all dressed up er, you know, er, you know, we were dragged up and it was, with, that
was interesting and fun. We had never done it before. And there s lot more Drag King
workshops and, and we had a, a Drag King er come to one of our youth groups and do a,
a Drag King workshop and getting dres, it was really different and er, quite challenging,
so. But I don t, you know, I think it s died down a little bit at the moment. But a few
years ago it certainly was a bigger, a bigger thing from what I know. So what kind of entertainment
Em, there was a lot of, I m not sure, it s all sorts of performance arts, short songs,
short plays em, you know, lots of visual arts stuff em at Club Whatever em, so yeah. It
wasn t, wasn t what I would, what I know is drag which is kind of, you know, er, er, you
know, typically show tunes and, and lots of banter and jokes and sauciness, do you know
what I mean. So, it was a kind of a bit more serious. In my mind, I thought it was more
serious. Did you like, did you go and see drag queens and stuff? Yeah! Definitely. Because
sometimes living in the East End, you know, that if, if you went to a pub, if you went
to a venue, it was generally more men and generally, you know, if the acts were on it
was a drag queen. So, and I, you know, I, I can give as good as I get in those situations.
So I like it, em whereas other, maybe other women may feel a little bit intimidate, but,
you know, I hang about with lots of gay men as well, so em. And there was a, there used
to be a pub in Walhamstow not far from here actually Central Station. but I went, that
I moved, yeah, that, that I moved and when I moved here, I went there and it, and it
was a Sunday night and it was quite, oh, I found it quite old fashioned em and there
s drag queens on then, but, but I like, I d been to Camden and the Black Cap and, you
know. Lots of places like that where there was a performance. But em yeah. You been to
Duckie? Yeah. Yeah. Duckie s fantastic. I went to Duckie for the first time actually,
yesterday. Yeah. I went to their New Year s Eve party as cheerleaders. About twelve
of us went. That was really good. Were you dressed up as cheerleaders. Yeah, yeah, em,
so that was quite good fun. Em, but that s kind of lots of drag, performance art and
Performance art. Interesting, creative things. Yeah, very creative, so,but they haven t done
anything in East London, have they, it s only South London What about you Ed? Oh I love,
drag queen performances. Er I used to work in Central Station, King s Cross. And every
Friday and Saturday there would be a drag artist on stage. So I worked behind the bar.
I got to watch the drag artist perform and it was fantastic, absolutely. The good thing
is that they sing their own songs er, whereas, correct me if I m wrong. Er, in the States
they have a lot of drag queens who tend to mime. Yes, they do. Em, it s, from watching
that kind of perspective, you know, looking at these people who are actually performing,
and, you know, exercising their vocal cords and I, you know, I could never do what they
do. Get up on stage, perform to a crowd and then not care who, who likes and who doesn
t. Just doing what they love doing. And, you know, I take my hat off to them. I do think
it is a dying, how can I say, fashion? Em, I mean there s the, the Molly Moggs in Soho,
that, that s the drag er, drag sessions now and again. And it I must admit, I don t consciously
go to them now em, as a, you know, oh it s Friday night, must go and see that, that person
perform. I don t do that. Probably if I m out then, great, I ll sit there. I don t mind
sitting for an hour, or hour and the half watching that, but I won t go out of my way
to do so. So what do you do instead. Er, it s very homey now. It s er, now, in front of
the TV or invite friends round for dinner and host a dinner party or pop to see a movie,
em, it s strange how, once you fall into a relationship, at least, that s not the way
I envisage it, well, maybe it was. Er, relationships, for me, tend to be, settling down, slippers
gown, TV, fire, that s it. Set, the real settling down kinda atmosphere scene. Em, but that
s you know, that s not how, how I always was. I did like going out. I did like meeting friends
in a bar, chatting over a bottle of wine and that s it. Going, maybe going to a club afterwards.
But, yes, that s what I used to do for entertainment then what I do now is totally different. If
I saw myself ten years ago, I wouldn t recognise myself. I have changed in that ten years.
So Brian, is that the same thing with you and Bob. Woo!...well we no, we, we, em, I
can only speak for myself. Em, we have, I think we have a big life. We go out. I love
cruising. We have an open relationship. Well, at least I do. Em, no, we do, we didn t meet
up. We met when I was forty-two and Bob was forty-eight. We ve been together for six years.
Em we, we re both in AA so a lot of our lives is around being in our quotes anonymous ,
we ve both in it for many many years, so, it s not about a battle against not drinking.
It s about that s where we find all our friends and, em So yeah. Our social life is probably
three or four meetings a week and er, er, er we go for meals afterwards. There ll always
be a table of gay people em, somewhere, wherever you go, you might be sitting next to a table
of gay alcoholics having pizza. Em, yeah. We can still, don t get, we don t get drunk
but we have a wild time. I do em, crazy things and so does Bob. Em, I dunno. I can t really
say and so does Bob . He does what he does and I do what I do. We have a good life. I,
being older though too, I don t have the desire to go out. Often going out sounds fun at seven
in the evening but when by the time eleven or twelve comes around I just don t have the
energy to go out but I do kind of miss the old drag shows you know. I, I always admire
drag queens because they were out there. They were out, you know, the affirmation like I
am what I am. They had the balls to be out when a lot of other people couldn t or wouldn
t for, for whatever reason, you know. So I ve always sort of, Yeah! I mean, I remember
the first time ever did drag and walked down the street, in a, in a dress. It was very,
er, it felt very free in a way, to do that. It was a Marilyn Monroe dress. It was a Marilyn,
see through Marilyn And he tells a lovely story. I was much younger and thinner at the
time. I was once, I was once walking down em, the Castro s down Market Street in a Marilyn
Monroe dress and white shoes and a wig and he said, It is the most free feeling I ever
had in my life. I think that s a great, er, thing. And there s an interesting thing though.
Something em, I want to grab hold I remember it, which is the, at that whole *** and AIDS
thing. Because, I came, I m forty eight and I came out in nineteen seventy eight when
I was sixteen and em, before it happened. And er, so I saw it begin to happen and I
and after the war, who saw all the old queens and, and all the people who didn t make it.
And so they gave to me a sense of humour and a certain something that died really quick
afterwards. Except for the people that didn t die. And it s that kind of, Oh, never mind
dear. Wasn t it, oh it was fan There was a whole camp kind of thing that was just, and
they gave to me em, what wine to have at dinner, bit of gold here and there and all that old
fashioned camp stuff that by the end of the eighties, so much of that was lost. Even passing
something like Judy Garland down. You know, so Oh, you ve got to get that LP dear. She
s fabulous on that. And all of that would would be lost by the end of it. And it got
lost quickly because so many people died of, of AIDS. And that was, that was er, so culturally,
something slid really quickly because of that, that er, disease. And that was that whole
drag thing as well we re doing, the reason I was, I a performer, biggest thing because
I was, I loved Judy Garland and I can sing like Judy Garland in, I, I sang. I m primarily
a singer and after years, all these old drag queens like Phil Starr and everyone would
say, Dear! You, you should do Judy Garland. You ll be marvellous! I said, m only twenty-four.
I want to be, you know, Elvis Presley for a bit. But em er yeah. That was I, I think
that s a, that s a thing worldwide but especially in London was that so many people were just
wiped out that culturally, something stopped being passed along and so a lot of people,
I, I have got young friends who don t know who Better Davies is and I just think, how
can you, how can you be gay and not, you know. Yeah. A lot of, time changes things but, sometimes
if the people to hand it over aren t there, things get er, they get lost. So I m really
glad I actually came along at the end of the seventies and had tons of what s called unsafe
sex. Because it wasn t. It was just sex then. And I can count on one hand since then, how
many times I ve had unsafe sex which is one of the reasons I m still here, I m sure. But
we didn t, we didn t have any idea what was coming in that decade. In nineteen seventy-nine,
we were just didn t know what was coming. No. Ed, were you aware of that or are you
too young. Em, I learnt about it. Em, I, even though I didn t, I, I was born in London in
seventy eight, er but I didn t live through that, I, I don t consider myself living through
the eighties really, you know, because I started to come about, my age, mm, N i early Nineties,
went through secondary school, discovered I was gay em, but I didn t know, I didn t
truly appreciate this whole legacy that was laid before, you know, before I was even around.
Em it was only till I, you know, discovered the fact that I was gay, I then began to learn
about my, well, history as it were, em, and then just begin to understand, it wasn t just
tough for me. It was tough for so many other people and that made me not feel, good about
myself, but, you know, I felt a bit more calmer. I felt a bit more accepting of what I was,
em. It was only then that I could accept what I was. And I could tell other people what
I was and what I am. So it no, I, I, I was totally aware of the whole AIDS thing cause
I remember the ad, TV adverts when they came on TV and just, how shocking it was. But I
also remember my parents not paying much attention to what was on there. So, almost like it was
like it didn t affect them because it was seen as a gay disease . So they. They didn
t mention it. So it was, it was difficult growing around that kind of em, discriminatory
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