San Francisco Sentinel
July 19, 1990
Street Talk
A Letter from Paris
By Doris Fish
“Dear Possum,
“I would write more often but nothing happens. I thought Princess Di would be plaguing me with phone calls and invitations for ‘at-homes’ with Elton John at the piano, but no; the Palace is probably afraid she’s already too sophisticated and has a racy nature. [Jackie did attend Di’s brother’s wedding some months back, where she shocked Di’s kiddies — the heirs to the throne — with some racy tales of homosexual rape in Arab prisons and other party gossip.]
“Last night I went to a lovely tiny little club in the back streets of Montmartre to see ‘Marie-France’, the ‘travesty’ chanteuse. She was great. She looked just like you, Doris! In a bad thick brown wig and hard makeup. She sang all these rude songs from the 1930s to 1950s and did lots of cute little gestures. There were all sorts of chic types there, including Betting, former top model in Paris in the 1950s and mistress of Ali Khan. She still wore the same style of clothes as when at her height; peplum tailleur but old leathery crocodile face peeking out from under a baby doll hairdo.
“Marie-France came back into the lounge area afterwards and sat around like it was really normal and she hadn’t done a show with lots of attitude and personality and pretended no one really knew who she was or who anyone was (although she was dressed exactly the same). So, I went over and told her she had ‘done real good’ and that I normally didn’t like lip-synch (a lie) but that she had been perfect at it, and that while she had been miming to that scratchy old record, I’d watched her lips really closely and she hadn’t given it away at all. Everyone was really shocked and took it seriously and explained that she had been singing in her own voice (which, of course, I knew all along, but I acted real dumb and surprised and that made them real uncomfortable and took the edge off her triumph). No one laughed.
[Romantic Cruelism vs Existentialism in the cradle of 20th century Philosophy]
“Roxy arrives any minute. [Roxy is a very old Queen who discovered Drag late in life and is making up for lost time. She is not very pretty — but let’s read on, shall we?) She wanted me to meet her in Rome. Can you imagine? She’s been having electrolysis and thinks she’s ready for anything! She’s actually had quite a success here with the men! I made her shave her earlobes — all those long grey hairs just didn’t look good under cute clip-on fluoro earrings — and push those old fat freckled dugs into the smallest bra she could fit on. One drunk said, “You’re not eighteen but you are still a beautiful woman!”
“Darling, you look so marvelously well-preserved as Barbara Bush [a recent West Graphics card] — imagine that respect you’d get if you lived in B.B. drag; all those matrons’ cocktail parties and very attentive shop assistants and it looks like it’d be much easier than ‘always being stunning’.
“Well, Roxy — ‘Obnoxy’ as Tippi will have it — has arrived and has already started picking out very crushed, unwashed polyester/cotton outfits out of her dirty old suitcase to dress herself as the beautiful woman only very dim lighting and an excess of alcohol and wild abandon on the part of the horny drunken male viewer can perceive her to be and has actually been arousing their passions as well as (she claims) the jealousy of the scantily clad prostitutes who hang out on her doorway. [Jackie purchased the seedy, filthy little flat in the sleaziest part of Paris on Roxy’s behalf. At first Roxy, who in real life is a well-respected journalist for the Australian equivalent of the BBC, was horrified but time has proven Jackie’s choice a lucky one for Roxy.]
“She really does pick up great ‘numbers’ — hell bent on self-humiliation one can only assume. Roxy has the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo and she refuses to shave them or leave her stockings on. One man asked her to undress — for sex — and then asked her to put it all back on again — for sex. And she thought he had a sexual problem!”
Dear readers, space prohibits my printing any more right now, but when ‘nothing happens’ again in Paris, I’ll let you know. (Gosh, it sure was an easy column for moi this week.)
