#gay culture

Martin Padgett’s got a great profile of the always-welcome Leslie Jordan over at The Bitter Southerner. A nice pick-me-up for these times.

When he was 17, Jordan stole his mother’s charge card, took his mother’s red Chevy Monte Carlo with the excuse of going to the library, and bought a dress for himself. He then parked the car at the Cross Keys Lounge, a gay bar on the Black side of Chattanooga.

Repulsed and scared — he was the treasurer of the Spanish club! — he also was fascinated. He watched two men in full drag uniforms of dresses, full makeup, feather boas and stilettos make their way to the door and toward him. He nearly threw up on the sidewalk in fear.

“You’re trying to gather up the courage to go in that big, bad, gay bar, aren’t cha?” One performer said to him. “Come on and help me, Sister Sue. We’ve got to be good Samaritans and get this scared, helpless creature into his first gay bar!”

A drag queen on each arm, they marched him in. He enlisted in a new life. Inside, lawyers in suits drank cocktails next to women dressed like Elvis. The only thing they had in common was they were gay.

“I think I exhaled for the first time in my life,” he recalls.

Illustration by Abigail Giuseppe.

An early film directed by William Friedkin (who would go on to do the French Connection and The Exorcist), The Boys in the Band is also unusual for a 1970 film in featuring an all-gay cast, adapted by writer Mart Crowley from his own Broadway play, and features some amazing dialogue and one-liners. It’s getting a restored re-release on Blu-Ray this month, my review is up on my blog