Read Online Woman in the Making: Panti's Memoir by Rory O'Neill - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rory O'Neill
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was a kid (and had even made student cash doing my own version of a
Punch and Judy
show at Christmas parties in factories) and figured a drag show couldn’t be that much different. I’d never even seen a traditional drag show, but I had the entirely misplaced confidence of youth and the couldn’t-give-a-fuck freedom that came from already knowing I was unemployable.
I wrote a basic script for a fictional show starring a fictional queen called Simply Devune – a name I’d takenfrom a ridiculously camp movie called
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
starring Jayne Mansfield, during which the pneumatic Jayne would squeakily exclaim that everything was ‘simply devune!’ I drew sets and lighting plans, took photographs, and did line drawings that would be projected onto screens during this fictional show. I designed posters and tickets, then screen-printed them by hand. I made a ridiculous, uncomfortable and impractical dress, which I covered with surgical gloves and sprayed gold. The paint I used reacted with the rubber in the gloves and never quite dried so the dress would stick to everything it touched and leave a gold residue behind, as if a glamorous slug had passed clumsily by. And in those pre-eBay shopping days, I made matching ugly man-sized mules.
The show was awful on paper, but I was young and fun and stupid (and possibly a little high) so that didn’t seem like any reason not to put it on. After all, I decided, it was silly to go to all that bother and
not
put it on. And so it came about that I mounted the show for all the students in the college and for the external assessors from the Department of Education.
I persuaded my indulgent straight friends to be in it. I had two of my girlfriends dressed as purple furry angels on swings (I don’t remember why) and two fit game-for-a-laugh straight boys topless and baby-oiled (I don’t need to remember why). Neither do I remember what the show was supposed to be about, if anything, but I stolejokes from old songs and, with arty student pretensions, I started the show sitting at a table as a boy and slowly applied terrible makeup. On their way in, each audience member had been given an inflated plastic vet’s ‘arm glove’ – the kind vets use to shove their hands up cows’ arses – to wave pointlessly. I’m pretty sure there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to that except I thought it would be funny and stupid, and it was definitely one of those (and possibly both). My sister came and sat near the front, wondering what on earth art school had done to her tow-headed little brother, and the Department of Education assessors were clearly so confused and traumatised that they lost their reason because they gave me my piece of paper.
I was twenty years old, an art-school graduate, and an absolute fucking chancer.
7. Setting Out
A FTER MY ART-SCHOOL SHOW , Niall’s boyfriend, Frank, decided to let me do a show in Sides. Actually, ‘let me do a show’ gives the wrong impression. As was to be the case very often over the years, essentially Frank (and later Niall) had a nutty idea for a show and, unlike every other right-thinking person, I didn’t say, ‘Fuck off, Frank, I’m not doing that!’ In a pattern that would reach its apogee years later, when I was giving myself paint enemas to the delighted horror of clubbers in a dodgy club in the Docklands, Niall and Frank would come up with a complicated idea for a ridiculous show that nobody in their right mind (including Frank and Niall) would actually do – except me. I was the best fully poseable doll ever.
And so one Saturday night I found myself doing my first ‘professional’ drag gig, lip-syncing to Klaus Nomi songs and emerging from a tube of stretch fabric, like a drunk, gay sausage roll with a pointy cardboardheadpiece and a crappy wig, in front of a room of utterly unimpressed gays and increasingly angry lesbians. Frank watched from behind his fingers, Niall thought it was hilarious, and I
Punch and Judy
show at Christmas parties in factories) and figured a drag show couldn’t be that much different. I’d never even seen a traditional drag show, but I had the entirely misplaced confidence of youth and the couldn’t-give-a-fuck freedom that came from already knowing I was unemployable.
I wrote a basic script for a fictional show starring a fictional queen called Simply Devune – a name I’d takenfrom a ridiculously camp movie called
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
starring Jayne Mansfield, during which the pneumatic Jayne would squeakily exclaim that everything was ‘simply devune!’ I drew sets and lighting plans, took photographs, and did line drawings that would be projected onto screens during this fictional show. I designed posters and tickets, then screen-printed them by hand. I made a ridiculous, uncomfortable and impractical dress, which I covered with surgical gloves and sprayed gold. The paint I used reacted with the rubber in the gloves and never quite dried so the dress would stick to everything it touched and leave a gold residue behind, as if a glamorous slug had passed clumsily by. And in those pre-eBay shopping days, I made matching ugly man-sized mules.
The show was awful on paper, but I was young and fun and stupid (and possibly a little high) so that didn’t seem like any reason not to put it on. After all, I decided, it was silly to go to all that bother and
not
put it on. And so it came about that I mounted the show for all the students in the college and for the external assessors from the Department of Education.
I persuaded my indulgent straight friends to be in it. I had two of my girlfriends dressed as purple furry angels on swings (I don’t remember why) and two fit game-for-a-laugh straight boys topless and baby-oiled (I don’t need to remember why). Neither do I remember what the show was supposed to be about, if anything, but I stolejokes from old songs and, with arty student pretensions, I started the show sitting at a table as a boy and slowly applied terrible makeup. On their way in, each audience member had been given an inflated plastic vet’s ‘arm glove’ – the kind vets use to shove their hands up cows’ arses – to wave pointlessly. I’m pretty sure there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to that except I thought it would be funny and stupid, and it was definitely one of those (and possibly both). My sister came and sat near the front, wondering what on earth art school had done to her tow-headed little brother, and the Department of Education assessors were clearly so confused and traumatised that they lost their reason because they gave me my piece of paper.
I was twenty years old, an art-school graduate, and an absolute fucking chancer.
7. Setting Out
A FTER MY ART-SCHOOL SHOW , Niall’s boyfriend, Frank, decided to let me do a show in Sides. Actually, ‘let me do a show’ gives the wrong impression. As was to be the case very often over the years, essentially Frank (and later Niall) had a nutty idea for a show and, unlike every other right-thinking person, I didn’t say, ‘Fuck off, Frank, I’m not doing that!’ In a pattern that would reach its apogee years later, when I was giving myself paint enemas to the delighted horror of clubbers in a dodgy club in the Docklands, Niall and Frank would come up with a complicated idea for a ridiculous show that nobody in their right mind (including Frank and Niall) would actually do – except me. I was the best fully poseable doll ever.
And so one Saturday night I found myself doing my first ‘professional’ drag gig, lip-syncing to Klaus Nomi songs and emerging from a tube of stretch fabric, like a drunk, gay sausage roll with a pointy cardboardheadpiece and a crappy wig, in front of a room of utterly unimpressed gays and increasingly angry lesbians. Frank watched from behind his fingers, Niall thought it was hilarious, and I
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