Cutting-Edge Queens Living their Dreams!
What makes a queen a queen? Oh, screw poxy, polar opposite role models – who’d willingly be a dull-as-piss, straight-acting gay, or non-stop, shrieking drag queen? They’re both killer stressful and suck, big-time; being on, 24-7, RuPaul style, demands amphetamine stamina, and why be an invisible suit who only discreetly sucks cock?
Mercifully, there is an alternative – gleeful, artistic diarrhoea sprayed all over lazy, gay scene stereotypes. Meet killer, confrontational queen Matthew Glamorre, one of the few, genuinely marvelous mavericks not crucified between faux-female caricature and business-suit buggery!
Like all outlaws – criminal, sexual and creative – he’s got well tasty, previous form. Forget notions of nightclubbing as a passive consumer experience – Glamorre, always, saw hosting as a gloriously confrontational, performance art. It shows. From legendary, late 80s art attack Kinky Gerlinki and playing in Leigh Bowery’s banned by Westminster Council band Minty, Glamorre’s simply fucked complacency senseless!
It’s pure, full-on gender terrorism, exploding male, female and in-betweenie clichés left, right and centre. Never embracing stereotypes easily mocked and ridiculed by bigots, Glamorre, instead, makes pop culture itself fantastically queer. His events, always, are post-gay and post-straight – who after all, cares what and how you screw? – and artistically, are as shockingly indiscriminate as riot cops busting heads.
Take Scism, his newest, filthily provocative project. ‘Show up and do your shit!’, the open invite proclaims, insisting performers bring their anger, psychosis and shameless expertise live on stage where anything’s allowed. Split over three nights – male, transgender and female – Glamorre’s summons drew fallen, sick-fuck angels city-wide, desperate to piss in the transgressive footsteps of David Hoyle and Jonny Woo!
So, did I suck and deep-throat Glamorre’s irresistible bait? For sure, and I unleashed a nuclear, nakedly honest rant on the pitfalls of being fucked for five years by a celebrity. ‘When, exactly, do you invoice your boss for added benefits?’ I screamed. ‘Before, during or after anal sex? And crucially, should you charge VAT?’. Christ, why was I so polite to the celebrity involved? I should have reported him for sexual tax evasion! See, his idea of panache was using me as psychological arse-wipe. Still, revenge was sweet – I slipped him laxatives, then locked the loo and hid the Andrex. Predictably, the watching, innocently naive audience looked completely appalled!
Tough. Following me, an anti-social tsunami of Countess Alex Zapak – the fiercest, multi-media diva alive, with Dalston Ballet, a transgenre dance troupe – demolished any possible audience resistance. Stunningly surfing on the endless, whining heap of micro-aggressions from a prissy, PC crowd, the Countess and her dancers re-injected mass, punter confusion as pure, artistic rocket-fuel!
But don’t despair – soon, you too can gorge on the finest fruits of Glamorre’s twisted genius, as Scism’s depraved highlights are edited for public exposure in May. Meantime, welcome Thierry Alexandre, AKA Tierney, yet another unimaginably perverse, queer visionary. Sheer poison to corporate queens, a creative engineer par excellence, Thierry’s latest, totally immersive project is Cage Royale, an infrequent flocking of barely-sane, totally unorthodox beauties.
Sure, compared to Glamorre, Thierry’s of a milder, interpersonal bent entirely, but never, ever assume that serenity implies artistic timidity. Instead, he’s sweet subversion personified, the mind-twisting psychedelic inside an innocuous sugar-cube. One lick, and suburban proprieties are fucked en masse –Thierry’s gatherings become live Fellini movies, choreographed by Baz Luhrman on a GHB bender!
And personally, Thierry’s an extraordinary sight; not male, not female, more a living Toulouse Lautrec cancan poster, all frills, feathered fascinator and impish grin. He’s joined, fittingly, by fellow outrage conspirator Kala Kala, a one-man, Hindu explosion of hippy Flower Power, swamped in robes, blossoms and utopianism, a living art installation. Other show-stopping delights included octogenarian poet Ruth Miller, avant-garde jazz diva supreme Holly Penfield, and a woman in red and white velvet bewitchingly dressed as a magic mushroom. So no, London’s gay scene isn’t dead – it’s morphing into shapes undreamed of!
