Panti Bliss in a twist
NO one wants to bang a national treasure,” Panti says early on in her first stand up show, High Heels in Low Places, using language more profane than I am willing to repeat. And while her tongue may be firmly in her cheek, Rory O’Neill — the sir beneath the her — has learnt that no one wants to be insulted by one either.
“People don’t expect me to be funny,” he tells me in the Morrison Hotel, post-show. “They expect me to be a freedom fighter all of the time and are hypersensitive when you poke fun at ‘their group’ with some silly, off-hand gag. When they go to a drag show people should expect to be slagged off, but now all they want are the serious political speeches.”
You get the impression that the ‘accidental activist’ is tiring of her title. Ever since naming names on The Saturday Night Show, when asked by Brendan O’Connor about what journalists he considers to be homophobic, the public have got their Panti in a twist.
For many she has become the bouffanted battle-axe swinging righteously into that great oak belief that marriage should be constitutionally enshrined as in being between a man and a woman. For others, she’s a heckling harridan picking mercilessly on an ‘institute’ that swears it’s not homophobic.
Just 12 months ago. Panti was best known for owning a pub with her name on it. Her transformation from Bet Lynch to Rosa Parks has gotten in the way of her principle passion. For mercilessly taking the micky.
“It’s ironic. When I walked out on that stage to deliver my speech at the Abbey, the audience had all these expectations. They had this image of what a drag queen was, because maybe they had seen one once in Lanzarote. So when I opened my mouth they were expecting tit jokes to come spilling out. Now, because of that speech, I have to spend the first ten minutes of my act clueing them in to the fact that this won’t be a repeat performance.”
She had to have her set signed off on by her lawyer to prevent more suits being swung her way, and she has noticed her barbed comments coagulating, rather than flowing vulgarly off her tongue. “Doing this show, there were a few times where I have stopped myself and gone, ‘can I say that?’ I was beginning to censor myself because of this new expectation on me. Proof of how the mainstream can bland-ify. So I have made a conscious decision not to think about that anymore. If I want to talk about semen, or Venezuelan guys who have left their children behind and are gay for pay, I have to tell that joke. It’s part of my job description.”
She may be just doing her job, but even though it’s a stand up show, you can almost hear the lips pouting in disdain when Panti makes a throwaway joke about lesbians, hepatitis or anything that’s not aimed at accepted hate figures. You’d swear, going by some of the pusses pulled, that Newgrange itself had stuck two fingers up in Ogham at the people who’d constructed it.
“I never make a silly joke thoughtlessly,” he says. “If I make a joke about HIV, I’m making it for a purpose. People assume I said something to get a cheap laugh, that I am unaware of the gravity...but that’s never the case. I always think about the atmosphere I’m creating. If you are sensitive about being gay or straight or trans, a drag show is not the place for you. The humour comes from a place where we are all excluded.”
There are those who cannot fathom how a drag queen has become a voice of a generation. Rory suggests that they consult their history books and to make particular note of the event that inspired the first pride parade, the riot at The Stonewall Inn.
“Long ago, most gays were trying to remain hidden, under the radar. The ones who couldn’t, wouldn’t, were the trans community. Well... the girls in the Stonewall Inn didn’t have ‘trans’ terminology. Some were drag queens, some of them were trans. But they were all ‘obvious’ in a sense. It’s those who can’t pass that are forced to take a stand.”
“They were the mothers of the gay community and the cheerleaders of self expression,” Panti’s protégé, Chris Rowan, aka Bunny, tells me.
“Marsha P Jonson threw the first brick at Stone Wall, a rentboy who dressed in drag, who was homeless her entire life.
“She wrote about the fact that she would be walking past bars and there would be signs up saying, “No Drunks, No Dogs, No Drags”. She was the queen who started the riots, started the revolution.
“And yet they deny it. They still do today. So many gays go through this rigmarole saying that they don’t want drag queens in the pride parade.”
“I mean, know your history,” says Panti. “If it weren’t for the queens you would be pretending to be straight in Mullingar right now.”
Marsha P Jonson was found dead at the Hudson River, murdered, in 1992. Her name is memorialised by Antony Hegarty in his band’s name, Antony and the Jonsons, and is foremost amongst the names of trans or drag activists. Others include Jose Sarria aka The Widow Norton, who became the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in the United States.
“I feel it’s my duty rather than a particular passion,” Rory says. “I’m an entertainer. All this other stuff, it’s my civic duty. To say I don’t want to do it, isn’t right. I do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Dublin being a small place, the devil in me wonders if Rory, or Panti, have run into any of the folk she so egregiously offended. “No, but when I was on my way down to (the writers retreat) Anam Carra in Monaghan, to work on this show, Philip McMahon, my collaborator, told me the last time he was down there, John Waters was also in residence. Could you imagine? No TV, no radio, in an isolated house and you walk in the door…
“I think he is absolutely wrong in his views of gay people, but I do have some sympathies too, for how he got really caught behind the ear. Iona should be much more the focus. They are the bad people in this.”
In the coming year there should be a book, a documentary and a national and international tour of High Heels in Low Places.
“I get offered lots of things on TV,” he concludes. “You can imagine what they are. They want you to be outrageous, make over peoples fashion choices or variations on that. The only project I would take is a talk show. A Panti chat show.”
RTÉ handing Panti the reins of the Saturday Night Show would have a nice ring of justice to it.
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