Camille Paglia Quote of the Day
July 20, 2008
“Gay men were my liberators.”
– Camille Paglia
Donnarama Does Madonna
May 28, 2008
The first time I met Donnarama, more than ten years ago, she was plucking my roommate Dimitri’s eyebrows in my living room. I marveled at her beauty school skills, but it soon became apparent that Little Miss Vincent was good at just about everything. Those were happy days when life was all about the Spice Girls and Mike’s Hard Lemonade and every night was a drag show or dancing until dawn.
Of course, Donnarama helped make life absolutely fabulous, and we were a festive bunch. Sometimes, though, we would get frustrated or cry as we tried to figure out the chaos of this world and how to get through it.
One day I wrote a love poem for Vince called A Spell Against Sadness. (This appeared later in my book, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. You can pick it up online at indigo or amazon.) Here it is:
Poem for Vince (a spell against sadness)
for Donnarama
oh God how I wanted
to be a poet and a rock star and a stripper
and a shrink an artist
a missionary how I wanted
to have something
that the rest of the world
might notice
how I never wanted to care
what anybody thought
of anything
oh baby doll, it’s all about
staying alive
falling apart on your floor last night
with fat April and
Sylvester
turning their
yellow-eyed disdain on us
consenting to a brief purr
us being out of
our minds as usual
I wake up wrapped in my dirty old red coat
all the glamour of last night’s liquor and perfume
is a sticky film on our skins
and I go
oh baby doll I hope you get out of here
I want you to see the sights
I want everything to blow your mind
I want crowds for you
applause
I want everything that you ever needed
to be real
I’ll meet up with you
in New Orleans
for whiskey sours
in a dim jazz bar
where absinthe once drenched the floors
where whores and voodoo queens made
their trades
no one will recognize us in our Gucci shades-
we will get into trouble
raise a few eyebrows and a little hell
don’t you worry baby doll,
I am there
when you least expect it in this fucking world
I will be there
you will look up form your cab on Broadway
and see someone wrapped in pink velveteen
crossing the street and you will smile
you will recall stealing ghetto rags from the Goodwill
you will hear someone’s shrill laugh in a club and
you will laugh and that is
where I am
right there
remember:
once how trashed after the club
all the queens soaked in root beer shooters
drenched in late night madness and beats
you and me ran back to my house
with our little horde of marijuana
I was standing like a preacher
waving my arms
yelling about how Courtney Love fell into
the warm blood of the man she loved
feeling how dead he was how we bawled there
leaking stark and sour tears over laughter
our sad strength for Kurt Cobain who didn’t make it
oh baby doll it’s all about
staying alive
honey honey honey
let me hear you on guitar
I hear you plan alone at night
training your fingers to go where the sound comes from
I hear your crown go wild when you come on stage
dressed in drag your own designs
Salvation Armani
dressed up as your heroes
Barbra Barbie Garbage
I watch the spell you weave and know for sure
know for certain
how you of anyone I love
how you can do absolutely anything you damn well please
how you can do anything you want to
in this fucking world
shine on, you crazy diamond.
****
And here she is, friends, a cult on youtube. Here she is, interviewing stars like Garbage’s Shirley Manson for hot magazines. She is a comic genius, and a cosmic masterpiece.
She’s an absolute superstar, soaring higher and higher with every turn. Don’t miss this brilliant Madge parody directed by the talented Devon Poole. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Donnarama!
Papa, watch me fly!!!!
