Carmelita Tropicana was created almost by accident: a made-up name, blurted out at a radio broadcast in the 1980s. But Carmelita, and the woman behind the character, Alina Troyano, went on to become one of the pillars of downtown New York theatre.
Much of the biography that Alina created for Carmelita is shared —both were born in Cuba, both are lesbians—but, one difference that fascinates me is that Carmelita was talking onstage about her sexuality before Alina was totally comfortable doing the same in real life.
“She was born out. She didn’t even have to come out,” Alina says about Carmelita.
Alina is a foundational figure of the WOW Café Theater, a legendary collectively run queer and feminist performance space in the East Village. Her work includes Leche de Amnesia (Milk of Amnesia), a solo show about returning to Cuba, and most recently, Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, a collaboration with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
CT: And who do you want to interview, Carmelita or me?
JM: I think Alina. Yeah. Is that something you have to ask?
CT: Well, just in case. It took me like ten years to be able to speak as me.
JM: Really? Interesting. No, I consider what you do like a form of drag, and I prefer to interview the drag performer out of drag, with the makeup off.
CT: Yes, yes, okay.
JM: But of course she’s here. But, I mean, speaking of that, I think we should dive in.
CT: Okay.
JM: I want to go back to the moment that Carmelita was created, was born. I know you were performing in The Well of Horniness by Holly Hughes — a play that spoofs the early novel The Well of Loneliness. So how did Carmelita come out of that?
CT: Well, there were two things happening simultaneously. There was Holly having me in the show. I was one of the actors, and I was always the one who screamed. I was the best screamer, so I’m the one who screams after “the well of horniness.” But at the same time, this other stand-up comedian was giving a class in stand-up comedy at WOW, Women’s One World. It started out as a festival, then turned into a salon, which then turned into a theater. WOW Theater had a lot of people, had me as one of them, but I’d never written anything.
I was in a room when this woman, a stand-up comedian, was giving a class, and she needed four people and only had three. So I happened to be in the room, and they said, “Oh, come on, you can do it.” And I said, “No, I don’t remember jokes, ever, and I don’t think of myself as funny. Stand-up, I don’t know how to do that, I’ll forget the punchline.” And they said, “No, no, no, don’t worry about it, do it.”
So at the same time that Holly was having me in her show, I was also in this stand-up comedy class, and I was too shy. I said, “I can’t stand in front of people and just talk about myself. Who’s gonna want to know that my father was a revolutionary who fought in Castro’s revolution? Nobody’s gonna be interested in that.” So I thought, maybe if I make up a character. My teacher said, “Yes, that’s perfect, make up a character and that’ll be it.” At the same time I was doing the stand-up, I had to do Holly’s show live on radio. They said, “Okay, people, we’re gonna slate, you have to say your name.” And I thought, oh God, and someone said, “Well, if you want a new name, just say it.” The first name that came to me was Carmelita Tropicana, and that was it. It was very spontaneous combustion.
JM: That’s interesting. And so you wanted a different name in that moment because…I believe you had a government job?
CT: Oh, yes, that’s true too. I thought, “Oh my God, what if somebody hears this? I will never get to be mayor of the city of New York — not the one who did The Well of Horniness.” So I thought, maybe I should be a little more undercover, under the radar, and so I came up with that.
JM: What were you doing for the city?
CT: Just working at a community board. It wasn’t that big a deal. But I thought, well, if I could have aspirations… though that really wasn’t my aspiration.
JM: And so you weren’t out professionally, but were you out personally?
CT: No. Carmelita came out. Carmelita really—
JM: Carmelita came out before Alina?
CT: Absolutely. She came out. She was born out. She didn’t even have to come out. She was born out.
JM: And so Alina got to practice, to cosplay, being out.
CT: Yeah.
JM: When did…I feel like this sounds so dumb, talking in third person, sorry… but when did Alina feel comfortable declaring, “Also, I’m a lesbian”?
CT: Well, if I was in a professional situation they would know, because I was Alina and I was Carmelita, so that was clear. I would go to…NYU had the first conference I attended, and I would say things like, “I’m Carmelita Tropicana, I went to WOW looking for lesbians and I found thespians, lesbian thespians.” So it became sort of a joke, and I was out professionally. In terms of my family, my sister knew, my cousins knew, and all that, but because I’m a good girl, my mother and my grandmother didn’t quite know, and then I came out to my mother.
JM: You’ve been very clear all along that Carmelita is a collaborative project among other people. Can you talk about what others have brought to her, and how they shaped her?
CT: Yes. In the very beginning, I had the name, and I had to perform, but I didn’t — I’m also one of those people who really responds to the outer, to costumes, things that make me feel more the character. You also think of the inner, but a lot of times, as Carmelita, it’s like, “Just give me a costume and I can perform. I’ll be great if I have a costume.” But I didn’t have that, and I didn’t have a concept of it at all.
I told Ela Troyano, who’s my sister, a filmmaker and my longtime collaborator, and Uzi Parnes, also a filmmaker and director and my longtime collaborator — they’re really visual. They said, “Oh God, we’ve got an outfit for you.” So they came up with the outfit, and it fit me and made me. The first one had a lot of flowers, and it was great for the character — and then came the fruits. The fruits were problematic at the time, because in the ’80s — this is hard for people to imagine now — if you wore fruit, and you had a décolletage, and you were like, “Hello, how are you doing,” people thought, “Oh, she’s a coochie-coochie mama,” the Latin spitfire, and that’s about it.
So I got a lot of commentary. Even in a show I did early on, this guy came up to me during a break in the performance — I was emceeing — and he said, “You’re the most racist, sexist performer I’ve ever seen.” I had been talking to other people who were saying, “Oh my God, you’re so great,” and I said to them, “He thinks I’m sexist,” and I let the audience member talk to him about it instead of answering myself — I said, “Do you think I am? Go talk to him.” He felt very embarrassed and left the show. But it was interesting that it had such a powerful effect. Back then, the fruits meant Chiquita banana — think of Banana Republic, “I’m going bananas,” all those kinds of things. But you can appropriate that and play with it. Somebody who wanted to sleep with me told me afterward that she’d been a little afraid, because she’d never seen me perform and had just heard about the fruits — but then she saw what I actually did and said, “Oh my God, I totally get it now.”
JM: Because these are stereotypes, but you’re also spoofing that.
CT: Exactly — it’s to go beyond the stereotype, but people take things at face value, and when you take things at face value, it’s like, “This is what you are,” and they put you in a box.
JM: Yeah. With your collaborators, you mentioned Ela and—
CT: And Uzi.
JM: Yes. I know at one point they were married.
CT: No, they were not. They never got married. Uzi’s only married other people. My sister’s not the marrying kind, I shouldn’t speak for her.
JM: So Uzi’s a liar? No, because I know Uzi, I told you, but for the audience, I know Uzi loosely, and he described Ela as his first wife. I guess that’s just kind of casual?
CT: A colloquial thing, yes, but not through the ceremony, not any of that. We came up with plays that we did together, and wrote together, and it was a collaboration that was fluid and transparent. They also did a lot of the visuals. We put a lot of film into the pieces, so that was part of the plays too, which were very much spectacles.
JM: I guess what I was wondering is, their relationship status aside, did it feel like Carmelita was a family project, in a way?
CT: Well, sometimes — yeah, I guess I never thought about it, but yes, in a way, because we all worked together. Even when I won — at the Copacabana in the ’80s there was a talent show, and it was Ela and Uzi who put me into it. They said, “No, no, you have to be in the talent show,” and I said, “Oh my God, how?” But it was great, because they dressed me up again — they’re very inventive with the looks of things, with outfits you can make. The ’80s were very resourceful — whatever you had, you played with it, glitterized it, put fruits on it.
One of the things that happened is I had a fire in my apartment, and everything burnt down. That same week I had to go to Philadelphia, because someone I knew was doing a kind of pilot TV show interview. I said, “Well, everything is burnt, look at my bustier” — it had sequins, and the breast side was totally burnt. Ela said, “Don’t worry about it,” and they just put fruit, fruit, fruit, and added glitter. The only thing was, when I got to the studio in Philadelphia, the woman said, “Oh, that’s beautiful — what is that barbecue smell?”
JM: That’s so funny.
CT: But they’re inventive.
JM: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you originally didn’t start to see this as performance art until you got a grant for that.
CT: Yes, it’s tongue in cheek, but yes, it’s tongue in cheek and real, both things can exist at the same time. I wasn’t that familiar with performance art. Some of it I was, some I wasn’t. I’d seen a lot of experimental theater.
I did see Jack Smith. My sister said, “You gotta go see Jack Smith, he’s really amazing.” I was like, “I don’t know, I’m not sure I want to.” And I went, and I was really blown away by his performance, because I’d never seen anybody do something so bizarre. He poured gasoline in the middle of a concrete floor, set it on fire, and danced. I thought, “What the hell is that?” And then he went to one side and actually put the fire out with a plunger, a toilet plunger. I thought, “I don’t know what I’ve just seen. This man is either crazy or he’s absolutely brilliant.” It was that kind of performance you have to unpack.
JM: Jack Smith is considered the grandfather of performance art in the US.
CT: Exactly. So when I saw that, it was like, “Oh my God, this is absolutely amazing.” I even wrote a performance art manifesto that’s really a kind of homage to Jack Smith.
JM: What did you learn from him that you applied to your art?
CT: That surprise is a very important element to have in performance, and in plays. When you’re dealing a lot with the audience, mistakes can be great things, because how you recover, how you embrace those mistakes, is really great — you’re in the moment. Performance art has a real sense of, that’s the audience, and you’re dealing with them — at least the kind that I do. It really takes the audience into account all the time, whereas with plays you’re a little more removed. You may break the fourth wall, or you may not — you’re carrying on what’s going on onstage rather than dealing with the audience.
JM: In your work, you’re always aware of the audience. They’re always present at all times.
CT: Yeah, I have a sense of, what are they going to see, what are they going to like, but you can’t just rely on them, because then you’re not concentrating on what you’re doing. So you have to concentrate on what you’re doing, and hope that they’re coming with you.
JM: You wrote in that manifesto, “Performance art changes the way you look at the world. Your perceptions are changed. An object is no longer what it seems.” How did it change how you look at the world?
CT: Think of an object like a toilet plunger, such a disgusting kind of object, and what we think of it, and Jack used it as a dance, he used it to dance. So we’re elevating something mundane, trite, dirty, disgusting, trash, into an objet d’art. He’s changing it into something else. If you can transform objects…I really love using objects, I really love costumes too, because a lot of them, that people have made for me, are sculptural. I’m really into animals, species, and I’ve done a lot of sci-fi, but not in a clear, realistic way…more fun, more abstract. It’s not going to be, “Oh, I’m going to be a real dog” or “a real cockroach.” It has elements of it, but it’s not so realistic a presentation — sometimes they don’t even know what it is. They know it’s an animal something because there’s fur, but no clue what it is. And you have to explain, which I love — I can go into an explanation like, “Oh, it’s a hyena. I’m a hyena — you see these long threads? That’s my vagina, it’s really big.” So things can be different, and you’re looking at it through a different lens.
JM: I feel like performance art gets a bad rap. It’s like when we read Shakespeare in ninth grade, and you hear thirteen-, fourteen-year-olds reading horrible Shakespeare, and you say, “I hate Shakespeare.” Same thing with performance art, you’ve seen one person do something dumb, and you think, “Performance art is dumb.” So what is, and what isn’t, good performance art?
CT: It’s something that makes you think, something that really makes you question things, something that delights you, that gives you pleasure. There are so many ways of looking. Or something that confronts you and makes you uncomfortable. I don’t do that kind of thing, but there are people who do, and it makes you think in a different way. There are people like Ron Athey who do a lot of body work, people who cut themselves, who do all kinds of things to their bodies, which I’m fine with — it’s a very different type of performance art. Even Marina Abramović has done things to her body, and that’s okay. Yoko Ono, I love some of her pieces, the cut pieces: she places herself in the middle of a room, and people go with scissors and cut pieces of her outfit. That was really daring, very different. That’s not the kind I do, but I really applaud it, and I think that’s really good performance art too. It can be many things, humorous, playful.
JM: It seems like things really started to click for you when you started making more autobiographical work. Is that fair to say?
CT: Yeah, yeah. Well, it almost always dealt with autobiography, without even saying it’s autobiography, because it’s a high pitch. Carmelita is on a ten, Alina’s on a five, but it’s the same material, I’m just using it at a ten. Even in a movie my sister made, Your Kunst Is Your Waffe — “Your Art Is Your Weapon” — it’s compacted, but a lot of what happened in that movie did happen. We didn’t get put in jail, but we did go defend an abortion clinic. When we made that film in ’93, we thought, “This is gonna be so dated by the time we finish it.” But no, it’s something we’re going through now. Time is now.
JM: With one of your shows, Milk of Amnesia, you return to Cuba and all these memories resurface. The other character in Milk of Amnesia — he pops up in a lot of your work — is Pingalito. He often holds a cigar, and I’ve seen him grabbing his crotch while he talks. Pingalito is a long-running character, much like Carmelita.
CT: Yes, yes. It’s almost like the two of them are cut from the same — yes, absolutely. You could say Pingalito is Carmelita’s alter ego.
JM: And so talk about what his function is, this character, with the machismo.
CT: Well, it’s to talk about what that is in our culture, and how he sees things in a very male-centric way. When he speaks, he’s a populist, which is really interesting, because now the word “populist” has such a bad connotation, but with Pingalito, he wouldn’t be right-wing. He’d be weirder. He’s really in love with Carmelita, just wants to do everything for her. He has a really interesting take on Cuba, giving you the facts of Cuba from a placemat — how could you get the facts of Cuba from a placemat? But he does, and he spouts them out as if it’s the truth, and then comments on them. I think it’s a way for him to guide us to a more Cuban culture.
JM: It’s so interesting that you’ve serialized your work in a way — people return to see Carmelita shows and they’re seeing characters they’re familiar with, that they’ve seen throughout the years.
CT: Yeah, yeah. Well, there are things Carmelita’s not in, when I did something with Marga Gomez called Single Wet Female, Carmelita’s not in it.
JM: Were you playing Alina, or was that a different character?
CT: No, I was playing a creep. It’s very campy, a takeoff on Single White Female, but we went against our types. Marga is usually — I hope she doesn’t mind me saying — more butch than I am, and I’m a little more femme. So we wanted to switch them, and I’m the butch who’s absolutely in love with Marga. We’re roommates, there are killings, it’s a fantasy, really over the top. So I played a butch kind of character that’s not Alina. And José [Esteban] Muñoz, who’s written about my work — in a way, José put me on the map, because he could speak about my work in academia, and contextualize it, make it something people wanted to read. Not just that it was funny, stupid. It had critique, it had commentary.
JM: José Esteban Muñoz — queer theorist, academic, very famous — he put a spotlight on you. He calls you a pioneer in the aesthetics of disidentification. That’s a concept I wasn’t familiar with, that he invented.
CT: Yes, I know. He’s very academic, I’m not. I’m into the doing of it.
JM: Yes, us bottom feeders over here. He says disidentification is a survival strategy for marginalized people, often queer people of color. Instead of fully embracing mainstream culture, or fully rejecting it, it works with the culture to rework and transform it into something more inclusive of these historically underrepresented identities.
When you read that, did it automatically ring true for you?
CT: I try not to read too much theory. I know I should. I loved hanging out with José, he was the most interesting, wonderful person. We had a relationship where we talked a lot, and I read his stuff a little bit after. I’m always a little nervous about reading about the work, because then I think, “Oh, is that it? Can I not go anywhere else?” Will it take the magic away?
JM: Are you saying it draws a box around who you are?
CT: Yeah. But you know what, it doesn’t. Even this play I wrote, Chicas 2000 — José was very instrumental in it, because I wanted to use — I love language, maybe because English isn’t my first language. I love words, because words aren’t just words, they have a lot of different meanings, cultural concepts — like chusma. I wanted to tell people what chusma was — it’s kind of like a bottom-feeder, white trash — you could use all the things we use to put a group down, it also has a lot of class connotations. I was using it to say Latinos have been called chusma, and sort of appropriating it — like taking over “dyke,” which people might be offended by, but we take it and say, “Hey, it’s a dyke.” So those things get appropriated, and we think of language differently. Language evolves — sometimes we don’t use certain words anymore, and that’s a good thing, because we’re having a different, more expansive way of looking at what things mean.
JM: It must be a very funny experience: you’re out here making art, and then someone is studying you and placing theory on top of you.
CT: Yeah, but it’s great. It got me gigs. He really was an amazing friend, a colleague but also a friend. In fact, I’m having a new show based on my memoir, and he’s in it — I’m writing a scene with José, because he’s really influential in my life, as a friend, who made me see things differently. The word chusma — I got it for the play because he would call me and leave it on the answering machine, remember those? “Hey, chusmita. Hey, it’s me, little chusma.”
JM: How funny that the person studying your work, you also have a relationship with, so he’s giving you language, then studying that language that he gave you. It’s this circle.
CT: Yes. You feed off each other, especially if there’s a real connection. One time he came, and he really thought about it, and said, “Carmelita’s really good, she’s sweet, she’s really sweet.” And I said, “Oh my God, is that all I am? Sweet? Is that it, there’s nothing else?” So when Marga and I did Single Wet Female, I came up with a creep. The biggest compliment I got was when I asked, “José, how was my character of Cami?” — and I’d do this crazy laugh — and he said, “It was creepy. Creepy.” There are people you want to like your work, and to collaborate with — like Ela, Uzi. Sometimes they don’t like it, but you’re hoping for that. José was always somebody I had my ears out for — “Is he laughing?” He died in 2013, but you carry people like that with you.
JM: I think in the queer community too, he’s one of those figures that’s always being constantly quoted.
CT: I know. He’s had such a renaissance. So many memorials. It was like the traveling José memorial. Here we go again.
JM: That’s so funny. It seems like you stumbled into performance art, by accident, let’s say. What was the moment when you realized, “I actually want to do this forever”?
CT: I stumbled into the WOW Cafe, and that was very important. That was the first time, when Peggy Shaw saw me, and somebody hadn’t come for the variety show, she said, “Alina, get over here, get up there and do something, because so-and-so hasn’t come.” I was like, “What? I can’t do anything, I don’t know what to do.” And she said, “Just get up there and do it.” When Peggy tells you that, you kind of do it. So it was that particular moment — I didn’t even have Carmelita yet, but I did do something.
JM: What did you do?
CT: I had to go home first and find an outfit, because I felt so stupid. Ela and Uzi didn’t even know I was performing. Not that WOW had that many people either, if ten people were there, that was great. So I went home, got an outfit, got a hat, got a dress or something, and the only thing I knew by heart was a poem by José Martí, the Cuban revolutionary — funny how easy it is to come back to that. And I’m not that good a singer either, but I sang “Guantanamera,” which I kind of knew, and people in the audience helped me sing it. It’s a singalong. So those were the two things I could do.
JM: You had to go home and get a costume. Similarly with Carmelita, you didn’t feel like her without a costume. Do you still today, at this age, this year, feel most comfortable on stage when it’s a character, and not Alina?
CT: Oh, yeah.
JM: Have you done shows as Alina?
CT: I probably…well, yes, the last show I did, a version of myself, written in collaboration with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who’s a MacArthur “genius,” a Tony and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright — it was for Soho Rep, called Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! I was Alina throughout it, and I hated it. Oh my God, it was like torture.
JM: What did it feel like?
CT: It’s a kind of me, but I’m used to Carmelita, or somebody else, a horse, give me a horse, give me a pig, whatever it is because then it’s a mask. I feel comfortable if I’m wearing a mask. If I’m unmasked, it’s more me. But again, when I was Alina, it was more a concept of Alina. When you’re on stage, it’s a little different too, it’s heightened.
JM: In that play, Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, on stage there’s a debate about whether or not you should “kill” Carmelita, the character, and just be Alina. I know that’s heightened and exaggerated for performance, but how real is that question?
CT: It’s happened to me at times, when I was doing Carmelita for ten years, I thought, “Well, is that it? Don’t I have something else?” You do something for a long time, you want to switch. As an artist, you want to find, even if you do the same thing, a way for it to be somehow a little different, a fresher way of dealing with all the themes you’ve always dealt with. So at some point I thought, “Oh my God, maybe I should kill her.” We played with that idea, because it was so heightened. What does it mean? In that play, he was trying to buy the character and then it’s like, “No, I can use it, I can do it.” So it was a whole thing about what it means when you’ve created something that’s been part of you, and all of a sudden you’re not that anymore.
JM: You’ve been doing Carmelita for over 40 years now. What has kept you coming back to her?
CT: There are levels of heightened and not heightened, and you have to evolve, make her different. And again, it’s a blend of Carmelita and Alina, what’s happening in a lot of ways. It’s a blend of both of them. In the other shows I’ve done where I haven’t been Carmelita, it’s that kind of situation, but it’s a mixture — as José called it, he wrote something about how Carmelita is a queer assemblage, all things put together and mixed. We have different parts of who we are, so I’m just playing with the different facets a personality can have.
JM: We’re talking about your career, but personally, I don’t want you to give me the last 40, 50 years as a summary, but who was the great love of your life? Start there. You look terrified.
CT: Yes, I am. What do you mean, love? Love can take many faces. Right now, my Sphynx cat, Tutti — Tutti Common — Tutti is a love. Friends have been great loves. In the romantic love department, there is one person, but — not happening now.
No, look — if you’ve had good memories, that’s what you’ve got. If you’ve been in love, if you’ve had good memories, if you’ve been passionate, that’s something you can hold onto. And life is, that’s the one thing that’s constant, change. I’ve had, more, a serial monogamist kind of life. I did have a bit of a throuple a long time ago, but not really.
JM: So you’re on the market—
CT: I don’t know, okay? So if you can think of somebody for me, sure. I’m good with friends, or at least I’ve been able to maneuver that, negotiate it, and be successful, whatever “successful” means. I know people from decades and decades, and they’re still my friends, and also colleagues.
JM: Yeah, I see. Thank you for humoring me. I know that’s a big, grand, maybe too big a question to ask.
CT: Oh my God, that’s, in that department, I feel like I could be better. I could be better.
JM: Tell me this, when you were coming up, and even now, what was your goal? I ask because a lot of young actors want to get on TV, want to get on Broadway. But I feel like that wasn’t your end-all, be-all.
CT: Well, you know what it was? I grew up in the ’80s. In the ’80s, lesbians weren’t really represented anywhere. We didn’t think, “What, you being on TV? It’s not gonna happen.” It was such a different time. Were you gonna make money from it? No. But the good thing was that life was cheap enough that you could make work and keep on going. It wasn’t what kids growing up now are like, “Okay, I wanna do this.” I would have loved to. At a certain point I thought it’d be great to be on TV, that’d be great. Has Broadway been my thing? Not really. I go to it, I think there are good things on Broadway, but I favor off-Broadway more, because you can take more chances, it doesn’t have to be a certain thing. And again, performance art is a very different thing too. It functions more in spaces like museums or galleries.
JM: It’s funny that the hit show on Broadway right now is Oh, Mary!, which ten years ago would have been downtown only. It never would have moved.
CT: Exactly, yeah.
JM: We talk about how gay Broadway is, but if you look at the numbers, lesbians are woefully underrepresented. Always. It’s gay men only.
CT: But that’s always the case, unfortunately. We did have Lisa Kron doing Fun Home, thank God.
JM: That was 2015, Fun Home, the first lesbian main-character protagonist in a musical on Broadway. 2015, so that’s insane.
CT: Exactly, yeah, I agree with you.
JM: That was just the way it was apparent in the ’80s, and you just said, “I need to make my own way instead.”
CT: I think all of us at WOW sort of thought, “Nothing’s gonna happen.” And it was really a great launching pad, a great education. Lisa Kron came from WOW, the Five Lesbian Brothers came from WOW. But the Five Lesbian Brothers couldn’t really tour, and their work was edgy, and because it was so edgy, it wasn’t as produced. So there are these questions of how you sustain a career, what you’re working for. You find different ways, different people to work with. Sometimes people leave the city, sometimes people decide to have kids, or move away. There are many different answers to how the work becomes part of your life.
JM: Last question: I’m staring at you across this room. You’ve got your neon hair, but what’s drawing my attention is your necklace. Does that say Fierce Pussy?
CT: Yes.
JM: Yes.
CT: Wow, you really — oh my God, you are young, Jeffrey, you are totally young. I can tell who’s young and who’s not, because they can’t see it, they go, “Fa, fa, fa, fa, fee, foo.” But this used to be a group — one of the people who set it up, a very radical group, was Zoe Leonard, an amazing visual artist.
JM: Oh, she did the famous poem, “I Want a Dyke for President.”
CT: Yes. We went to Participant, an amazing gallery, and she was there with the other members of Fierce Pussy. I’m so sorry, I don’t remember their names, please forgive me, I know Zoe more. My sister said, “Buy it, buy it,” and I said, “Okay, okay, okay.” They said, “We’re only taking cash,” so we had to go to Chinatown to get cash, went back, and — you have certain things you really value in life, and it’s not that they’re so extraordinary, but it hits the spot. Fierce Pussy hits my spot.
Click here to listen to the full interview on the LGBTQ&A podcast.
LGBTQ&A features interviews with the most interesting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the world. Hosted and produced by Jeffrey Masters. @jeffmasters1
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