Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit

296 Pages·2013·3.931 MB·English

by  Marlon M Bailey

Butch Queens Up in Pumps

Up in Pumps
butch Queens
Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit
Marlon M. Bailey
The University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2013
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107
and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2016 2015 2014 2013 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Bailey, Marlon M., 1969–
Butch queens up in pumps : gender, performance, and ballroom
culture in Detroit / Marlon M. Bailey.
pages cm.— (Triangulations: lesbian/gay/queer theater/drama/
performance)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978– 0- 472– 07196– 8 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978– 0- 472–
05196– 0 (pbk. : alk. paper)— ISBN 978– 0- 472– 02937– 2 (e- book)
1. Gay and lesbian dance parties— Michigan— Detroit. 2. Female
impersonators— Michigan— Detroit. 3. Gay culture— Michigan—
Detroit. 4. African American gays— Michigan— Detroit. 5. Sexual
minorities— Michigan— Detroit. I. Title.
GV1749.5.B35 2013
793.3086'64— dc23
2013015604
For Xavier,
Ballroom “kids” everywhere, and
in memory of Noir Prestige; may your life
continue to inspire others as you inspire me

Preface
Courageously Queer
I first learned the meaning of queer family as a teenager in the 1980s at
Cass Technical High School in Detroit. My friends and I— five men and
three women, all queer in the full sense of the term—c alled ourselves
“The Family.” Most of us attended Cass Tech, and we always hung out
together— as a family— whether it was at a high school event or going
to a gay club. In a sense, we were typical kids participating in the usual
heteronormative high school activities, such as hayrides, homecoming,
and prom. And likely because most of us were performing arts majors at
Cass Tech, we inherited the residual faggot, sissy, dyke, and freak mark-
ings placed on people in the arts. The name- calling was only one of the
ways in which our lives existed in tension with those of our classmates
and how they were coming to understand their racial and sexual selves.
In spite of derogatory names and the relatively hostile environment we
experienced at school, we continued to do everything together, and with
a rebellious flamboyance and flair, as if to say, “Eat it!” In this queer fam-
ily, we supported and provided for each other in ways in which our bio-
logical kin, for a variety of reasons, could or would not.
When I was a sixteen- year- old Black gay teenager, still trying to figure
out and grasp my Black gender and sexual selfhood, my “bestie,” a bur-
geoning lesbian, took me to my first Black gay bar/club. We had acquired
fake IDs so that we could go to Black LGBT nights at Todd’s, a popular
nightclub on East Seven Mile Road and Van Dyke that we affectionately
called The “Tabernacle” to signify its role as a space of Black gay sanc-
tuary. Soon going to Todd’s became a weekly ritual that my group of
friends— none of us yet eighteen— attended as a family.
But there was danger there. I was still a naive teenager, and men old
enough to be my daddy were trying to swoop me up. The more experi-
enced members of The Family tried to protect me, especially my gay sis-
viii preface
ter, who would snatch me away as soon as she saw one of those “vipers,”
as she called them, look at me. “He’s with me,” she would always say. Yet
we did not perceive the space as dangerous but as a refuge where we
could be our queer selves in ways that we could not in a city hostile to our
presence. In the Detroit environment, going to a gay bar or simply being
around other Black LGBT people is a way of coming out, regardless of
whether you announce it to your family or anyone else for that matter.
We grew up marginalized or on the fringes of our families, churches,
peer groups, and social institutions of origin. Reflecting on my own life
and those of other Black LGBT people I know and love, it is clear that
exclusion from and marginalization within Black belonging has had an
indelible impact on us.
We engaged in a lot of risky sexual behavior back in those high school
days, simply because we did not know any better. I used to hang out
at the infamous Palmer Park in the gay ghetto on Detroit’s northwest
side, where late at night, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone, I
would cruise guys on the strip. Cruising was the way many of us found
sex partners, tricks, and even romantic partners. This was very danger-
ous because the guys walking the streets were often hustlers and drug
dealers, and Palmer Park was known as a place where gay people often
were bashed, robbed, or arrested.
When HIV/AIDS came on the scene in the early eighties, it seemed
a scary but altogether distant problem. One of my first jobs was as a sex-
uality educator for Planned Parenthood, cautioning others about risky
behavior, but in my mind the warnings seemed not to apply to me. HIV/
AIDS was just not on my radar at the time. In Detroit, where the gay
population was racially segregated, we assumed that the only people who
“got AIDS” were the White gay guys that hung out at Menjos in the heart
of Palmer Park, or so we thought.1 The entire city of Detroit seemed to be
in denial about HIV/AIDS and perhaps ignored the disease to a greater
extent and for a longer time than other cities did.
In the late 1980s many of my friends became infected with HIV and
some eventually developed full-b lown AIDS at a young age. There were
no life- prolonging forms of medication at the time— at least none to
which my friends had access. For the most part, when my friends tested
positive for HIV, it was indeed a death sentence. Many of the people I
knew who were infected have since died of complications resulting from
AIDS.
One of my first direct encounters with the epidemic, a situation that
Preface ix
put my notion of queer family to the test, was when a member of The
Family, my gay friend/brother Kendall, tested positive in 1988, during
my first year of college and his first year in the U.S. military.2 He was just
nineteen years old, Black, gay, and HIV- positive, “doing time” in the mil-
itary before the era of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Who could he talk to back
then about his seroconversion?3 He had no access to any kind of coun-
seling services to deal with the trauma of such a diagnosis. There were
no HIV/AIDS prevention or treatment organizations that he could turn
to for help at that time. He certainly could not tell his biological family.
His family was poor (hence his motivation to join the military, so he
could obtain a postsecondary education) and they were neither under-
standing nor supportive of his sexual identity. He had no conventional
means through which to seek help coping with the dire consequences of
an HIV- positive diagnosis, particularly at a time when his prospects for
survival were far bleaker than they would be today.
At least he could talk to me, but, then again, who was I? I was only
nineteen and grappling with a wide range of issues such as trying to fig-
ure out how long I was going to be doing the “gay thing.” My family
was finding out about me, and, as my mother’s suspicions were growing
stronger as the days went on, she was tightening her grip, trying to “de-
gay” me. For me, and I suspect for Kendall as well, the moment of clarity
about the vital role of our courageously queer kinship occurred during
a phone conversation when in tears he said, “Marlon, I am going to die,”
and, I, also in tears, provided the only response I could: “But we are all
going to die; we just have to do the best we can while we are alive.” At that
moment, I had to console my Black gay brother, for whom I felt respon-
sible, because I had brought him into the Black gay world as it were. I am
happy to say that Kendall has been living with HIV for almost twenty-
five years now and is healthy with a successful career. I like to think that
our relationship has played a key role in his life. We have maintained our
relationship over the years, and from what I have observed, he has always
surrounded himself with people who value, love, and care for him. How-
ever, it was only while writing this book that the magnitude of what my
friend must have gone through became clearer than ever to me. Indeed,
he was and is courageously queer. This concept of family— the kind of
bond that two Black gay teenagers who are not blood relatives formed at
that moment of crisis— is the true subject of this book.
All Black LGBT people, including many in the Ballroom community,
continue to struggle against the disproportionate impact of the HIV/