Rene Imperato

Image courtesy of Rene Imperato. Portrait by Joshua Woods with assistance from Joey Abreu for i-D a Vice Media Group.

Rene is an activist and performer. This conversation was recorded on April 2, 2020 at 1pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to New York, NY.

Gwen Shockey: Typically I start off these conversations by asking about the first space you were ever in that was mostly queer and what it felt like to be there, but this time I just want to ask how you’re doing in this insane time in our history dealing with this pandemic?

Rene Imperato: I’m feeling ok! I know so many people who are just really in their heads, you know? What’s this I’m feeling? For instance my chest was feeling sore last week and I said: Oh, what’s this? Then I remembered that I upped my estrogen and I asked some of my friends and they said it’s a very good possibility that it’s from that.

GS: Are you mostly staying indoors?

RI: I have not left this apartment since the 13th!

GS: How are you getting food Rene?

RI: Believe it or not, and not to be egotistical, but I’m sort of referred to as the “Queen Mother” here and all these children in my community literally harassed me not to go out, not to do anything and they bring me stuff. My roommate does go out to some degree. They’re a little younger than me. They’re sixty-four. But I’m a social animal! You know?

GS: It’s hard! It’s really lonely!

RI: Well, one thing is! If you’re dead you don’t know you’re lonely! (Laughing) I must say though that these Zoom calls and Skype and all that… there’s so many of them now! I think they’re really helpful. I also know a lot of drag performers who are really effervescent, vibrant people and are getting depressed simply because they live for entertainment, you know? I worry for them. I do know a young person, a young trans girl, who I found out yesterday committed suicide because they couldn’t deal with this. So, I think a lot of people who are on the edge mental health-wise are at risk. I’m a PTSD patient myself, I’m a Vietnam veteran, but I’ve been in therapy for almost twenty-five years! (Laughing) But I do worry about those who are even more acute than me. This could kind of push them. I hope not, but… I wouldn’t be surprised. Obviously since I know one case I’m sure there are others, unfortunately, Gwen. How are you holding up?

GS: I’m doing ok! But, you know, you’re right! For people with underlying depression or mental health issues this is really the worst thing ever!

RI: It is. And I’m sure you might know about Lorena Borjas from Queens who died on Trans Day of Visibility. Breaks my heart. And then we have this buffoon in the White House. I believe that there are evil people who could easily think, hey, we reduce the population we don’t have to send out social security checks, veteran’s benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, we don’t have to educate as many people, we don’t need them! Really!

GS: In times like this the lower class and vulnerable communities just become more and more at risk.

RI: I’m looking here, “Fifteen dead at veteran’s nursing home from Coronavirus…” I get all my care at the VA hospital. My last appointment was March 9th I think. All of them have been delayed, cancelled or postponed now. I wouldn’t want to go near the hospital anyway. But do you know what the other thing is? We’re not only going to have people die from the Coronavirus, there’s going to be another category that needs to be added: those who die as a result of the Coronavirus. Think, Gwen, of all of the people who go for routine checkups and all of the sudden the doctor or whoever discovers a tumor or there’s something in the bloodwork, they’re not getting those routine exams now and may have delays of what, three, four, five months? And when it’s too late? (Laughing) I think of that myself!

GS: True and they’re cancelling major elective surgeries so people who are in a lot of chronic pain are going to have to suffer for even longer.

RI: Oh yeah! All kinds of stuff! Including trans people who are having surgeries whether they are bottom front or top, they’re all being rescheduled… You know what? I’ve been a flat-chested girl for years! (Laughing) I can wait. I never even really thought about it until a few years ago. So, yeah! That’s the tale. Let me just say that I was a sex-worker for years and still am… Well, not right now! (Laughing) Most of us are doing virtual work or like we used to do in the ‘80s or ‘90s when people did phone sex! But for a lot of people their income has just hit a brick wall. And the desperation… I’m on a lot of threads that sex-workers use. There is a sex-workers thread on Twitter and my thread name is Mama Francine so if you wanted to see what it’s like for people who… See, I get a VA check every month. You know what I mean? If you want to see what it’s like just go on Twitter and punch in Mama Francine and you’ll see everybody else. Strippers, dancers from all over the world and even though I’m not doing anything right now there is a comfort in the empathy and staying in touch with those who you share the same community with. You know what I mean?

GS: For sure! We need each other more than ever right now and it’s hard not being physically near each other.

RI: Plus a lot of clients, you know what they do, they now want to negotiate people to work for practically nothing because of the virus. So, these are a lot of the things that have, you know, come… My friend Mona Foot one of the greatest drag queens of the ‘90s in the East Village died a week ago.

GS: Oh, I’m so sorry Rene.

RI: Yeah… You start hearing about people passing but then it’s people you know. So much of this could have been avoided. I remember when I used to talk to my shrink at the VA and twenty years ago we used to say that the threat we would worry about in this country was domestic fascists. And you know what? It’s in the White House. I’ve got to look at a presidential press conference and see Mike, a homophobic, transphobic Nazi… He can kiss my fucking ass. He wears a button-down shirt and wears one of those little crucifixes over his collar and before I knew anything about him I said I know this guy is right wing. I tell them, you know, you’re god is the fucking devil as you can see by these Evangelists who support Trump. He’s so ignorant. It’s scary. It shows you how far you can go in this country when you’re rich and white and you can’t tell your ass from your elbow!

GS: Money gets you power here unfortunately.

RI: It sure does! Talk about white privilege. Well, anyway. So, I saw your post about the 220 Club and I still occasionally walk by the old 220 Club location. I use it as one of my alarms in the morning! I use the names of clubs I worked in.

GS: That’s so cute! I love that. 

RI: And it’s right across from the Film Forum. I don’t know if you took that picture? There’s a documentary being filmed right now about me called “Rene” and there’s an eight-minute trailer which has been shown at some film festivals! I can send it to you. It runs eight minutes and the 220 is in it! We haven’t filmed in a little while. Hopefully we’ll finish it! (Laughing) I don’t know if you went but I was part of an exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum. The exhibition was four months and ran from September 28th to January 19th and it was called “On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work”.

GS: Yeah! I went to the opening!

RI: Oh did you?! Oh! So, you know that whole exhibit in the corner with all the names? I was on there! Rene Imperato!

GS: Amazing! That show was fantastic. 

RI: Yeah! I’m not surprised that you told me you went. And by the way, you know it’s amazing, but there was a, um, sex-workers pop-up that ran from… Well, it was supposed to run from Monday, March 9th to March 16th on 8th Street. That was kind of like the last real public gathering except for my performance in Brooklyn!

GS: What was your performance?

RI: Pardon?

GS: What was your performance?

RI: Um! I was part of an ensemble that put on a Purim spectacle that goes on every year! Purim is when Haman wanted to kill all the Jewish people… And just to say, by the way, all of the performers and production crew were not all Jewish! Mostly! But I think that’s really cool. We usually did Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then Sunday we did sort of a cleaned-up kids version. It’s very, very kinky. (Laughing) If I could say that. Um, so we only actually wound up doing one performance. The Thursday. Because I would almost say that if we took the four days at the Jewish Center I’m sure I would be comfortable saying a total of four hundred people saw all those performances. We did one and I think there was eighteen people.

GS: You do this every year?

RI: Yes, every year in March. Usually somewhere between the middle and end of March. Science-willing I’m still here I can invite you to the next one! Starting in the late summer I was in Orchid Receipt Service with Asia Kate Dillion from Billions. Do you know them? They were also the adjudicator in John Wick: Chapter 3. We did a show there based on thirty-four dreams that their partner had and each scene in the play was one of the dreams. I played the grandmother! (Laughing) Well, I actually played two. One was mother and the other one was grandmother. It was a great experience! And you know the funny thing is that really came about from some other smaller performances I did and then things started rolling for me! Modeling and a show at Dixon Place on February 14th we sold out the house! I had things kind of rolling! You know? I was like, hey! I’m getting work! And now of course it’s a brick wall here. I miss it.

GS: Hopefully things will get back to normal fairly quickly.

RI: Yeah! Let’s hope so!

GS: Please invite me to your performances once things get going again!

RI: Yeah! I will! I’ll be glad to be around to do that!

GS: So, Rene! I’m curious – did you grow up in New York?

RI: Born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen!

GS: Really? Wow!

RI: Where are you right now?

GS: I’m in Crown Heights!

RI: Oh! Crown Heights! Where in Crown Heights?

GS: The corner of Pacific and Nostrand!

RI: Get outta here! A year ago I was on Bergen between Kingston and Albany!

GS: Really! Oh! We were neighbors!

RI:  I drove a taxi for twenty-six years! That’s how I started in the 220! My motto was: If I didn’t make enough money off the meter, I’d make it in the backseat! So, I know the city!

GS: I bet!

RI: Oh! I could describe your intersection! But I don’t need to do that.  

GS: (Laughing) That’s amazing. What was it like to grow up in Hell’s Kitchen?

RI: My mother made wigs and toupees for a lot of people in the theater. By the way I should say that I was born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen when there was hell in the kitchen. It always overlapped a little bit, the theater district and Hell’s Kitchen. So, I was on 44th street. My mother had a store in The Iroquois hotel and we lived in the back. I slept on a cot my whole childhood. (Laughing) It folded up and out depending on what time of day it was! I had a history at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and I was going to go to Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse then I got drafted! And instead of being drafted I joined the air force in 1967. I was young, white and stupid. I wound up going to Vietnam, which I volunteered to do, and um, got converted, really by the Vietnamese, to sympathize with the other side. I was almost killed there. I got quite a few bullets in my life. So, anyway I came back from Vietnam and then I got out of the military in 1971. In ’72 I started driving a taxi and around ’74 I remember I got a fare from somebody who took me to the 220 who I picked up from the Gilded Grape club. Do you know of the Gilded Grape?

GS: I’ve heard the name before! That was another drag club right?

RI: Oh yeah! 8th avenue between 45th and 46th street! West side of the street! On the corner was the Camelot coffee shop where all the queens reined! And in fact 45th street between 8th and 9th in that time had all these pre-war buildings on the north side of 45th and it was kind of known as TV city – TV meaning transvestite. I never really liked the word transvestite. I preferred the word drag-queen. Because everybody, we were all drag-queens. That kind of got a little distorted now. I had to go on Twitter yesterday and slice and dice one ignorant motherfucker who said Marsha P. Johnson never identified as trans. Marsha died in July of 1992. We didn’t have a lot of the terminology of today. People say it wasn’t just drag queens at Stonewall, it was trans women too! I say, drag queens can be trans women! But listen, this country survives by dividing and conquering everything. Black, white, brown, trans, non-binary… that’s all they wanna do. Divide, divide, divide. That’s how they stay in power these fucking capitalists. You know? So, it’s a constant fight. Well, I don’t want to go off on that because I could talk about that shit for hours. So, anyway! I forget how I even stumbled upon the Gilded Grape! You’re talking about me being like twenty-three or twenty-four years old but wow, I was fascinated! I got to know so many people! They were my regulars, they were entertainers, they were working girls and I kind of fell into that! Anyway, one day I got a fare from the Gilded Grape because I worked almost all nights, you know. So, I got a fare from the Gilded Grape to 220 West Houston and I didn’t know what the fuck it was. I got there and there would be a few cabs hanging outside. The 220 Club opened at four in the morning. It was an after-hours club. It usually went until about eleven, I would say, depending on the night. After a while of hanging out on the taxi line I would go into the club either to get fares or have sex… You know! (Laughing) Whatever! Um, and then, well, I got to know so many people to different degrees. I worked with Stormé DeLarverie who was a legend and Marsha and Sylvia [Rivera] were in there… Not as much as some of the other people… But, I could rattle off names. And then I kind of worked out of the 220 for years. Let’s see, probably ’74, ’75, ’76 and then I sort of got hurt and on workers comp driving the taxi. I slipped in a taxi garage in Hell’s Kitchen and started hanging out at the 220 even more and this is when we were just upstairs on the second floor. You’ve probably seen that door there that says “Don’t disturb our neighbors” that used to be the main entrance. For the two years that I was there and then we expanded to downstairs. Because Sally, she had a place on the corner of Leroy and Bedford and that became Sally’s II and then that was expanded into the 220, which became two floors in ’77.

GS: Who was Sally?

RI: Sally was… Can I just say in parenthesis “the owner”? Do I have to say who were the owners?

GS: No you don’t.

RI: Oh ok. Let me tell you something. They weren’t necessarily the worst people to work for! You got hurt on the job? I worked the door and people used to shoot into the door of the 220 Club! My friend Angel got shot in the leg, black guy, right? Wonderful person. Do you think he had to go through the worker’s comp process? Nobody was working on the books. They took care of Angel’s family and took care of everything until he was able to go back to work. It’s a different kind of loyalty. Some organizations, whether they’re Italian, like I am, or not loyalty is expressed sometimes more dramatically than these fucking capitalist wall street companies I can tell you right now. They’d leave you hanging out to dry. So, anyway! I worked at the 220 kind of until ’78. There was an incident that happened after work where… do you know the phenomenon at the basketball courts on West 3rd and 6th avenue? Well, it’s a cultural thing that’s been going on for decades probably predominated by people of color… playing basketball. But you take certain parts of the village because… by the way most of my family came from either Hell’s Kitchen or the West Village, right? My grandparents and so forth.

GS: Oh wow, so you go back many generations in New York!

RI: What was that?

GS: You go back many generations in New York?

RI: Yeah! Oh yeah! My mother was born in 1908. My grandmother and grandfather had grocery stores in different locations in the West Village. My granduncle worked in the meat market… There were even fruit and vegetable wholesalers in the meat market back then. He worked in the fruit and vegetable stand until he was eighty-seven years old! But there were racist elements, believe me. I could tell you shit that went on. There’s a church on the corner of Bleecker street and Carmine, Our Lady of Pompei? Have you ever seen that church? There’s a corner stone there that says 1926, that’s when the church was built, my grandfather donated that cornerstone!

GS: You’re kidding me!

RI: Nope! Francisco Imperato! I’m part gutter, part sidewalk! (Laughing) I actually feel fortunate to have lived and worked in the lower, steamy underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village. That was a time! Lots of oppression… But we faced it! Our community was smaller. But we had a community.

GS: So, you were mentioning something about the basketball courts?

RI: Well, Pedro, who was the deejay, and I got off work and went to McDonald’s believe it or not… That McDonald’s was there since the early ‘70s. We noticed this pack with bats leering at the people playing basketball and we ran to protect them and we were outnumbered! Anyway, these racist elements saw me late at night getting off the train, I was actually living in Hoboken then, and, uh, they must have noticed me walking to work and going into the 220 Club… I guess if I had gotten off the path at Christopher and walked up Hudson or 7th it wouldn’t have happened and my boss talked to me one morning and said, “Oh, you know Rene, could you please just call 911 next time and don’t get involved like that…” I was like but Sally, what am I supposed to do? You see it right in front of you… And so because of that I was sort of let go and anyway, I didn’t make a lot of money but it was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had!

GS: What were some of your favorite parts about working there?

RI: The comradery! I mean, you were family, you know? Sally was like my mother! By the way, when the 220 closed in the late ‘80s Sally opened up Sally’s on 43rd street between 7th and 8th. Have you ever seen Paris is Burning? There are all these people being interviewed? That’s Sally’s! Sally’s gone as are a lot of people… You know it’s funny I saw your post on Instagram and all of the names from the 220 Club just flashed in front of me! I wrote some of them out but the one hassle with Instagram is if you’re on your iPhone and you write some long shit out and you just kind of scroll a little bit it just gets erased! So, I had to re-do it and I didn’t write as much because I thought I’ve got to learn how to, what is it, copy and paste? (Laughing) Now I’m a bit of a dinosaur… Anyhow, it’s one of my most tender memories. Just all the people I knew and the ones I know now. 

GS: You mentioned a lot of people have passed away who were involved with 220, are there still people you’re in touch with?

RI: (Sighs) A few. A few. But you know what it is? There are people who reminisce about the East Village drag scene in the ‘90s! That’s nostalgic now! Twenty-five to thirty years ago! But I mean I’m from even before that! I do know people from the East Village drag scene like Mona, Mistress Formika and one of the best drag names ever, Miss Understood. I love that name. Hedda Lettuce, I mean, I can rattle them off. So, I still know people from then but from the 220 era a lot of people died from AIDS! Oh, and all those names… The softball leagues of all the different bars. I think I mentioned how I played first base on a softball team. Not well! (Laughing) They converted me to a relief pitcher at the Leroy street ball field that runs from, um, Houston to Leroy on Hudson street… I’m sorry, Carmine! Not Houston. It was just one of the greatest periods of my life. I also was… How can I say… I just had the libido that enabled me to work so much! (Laughing) To be frank.

GS: Was there a lot of sex work going on within the club?

RI: (Laughing) Oh, hell yeah! Let me just say this, I’m sure there was stuff in the bathroom but for most of it that was the meeting place. I was in the taxi. I had people who took their tricks or their Johns out of the club or maybe it was just their partners, non-paying partners, so that’s really how it started but most of the stuff was actually you rendez-vous’d at the club and it wasn’t just to centralize sex work, I shouldn’t say that, a lot of it did just happen to come out of there. Know what I mean? So… You know, I could tell you so many stories… Want me to tell you about when Hell’s Angels invaded our club?

GS: Of course! 

RI: So, this was ’77… I heard they may have sold their building because of gentrification. They had a building on 3rd street between 1st and 2nd. I think you might know that when there’s a gay bashing or a trans bashing it sometimes does get publicity on the news but when we bash back you hardly ever hear about it outside the community. They want to perpetrate that limp wrist stereotype of us which is like one thousand percent bullshit. We would have never survived with limp wrists. We survived with fists! I can tell you, you know, in the ‘80s, shit, I carried an axe in my purse! Oh yeah! Not the biggest one for cutting down trees but big enough! But anyway, getting back, here’s what happened. It was actually on a Tuesday night, I’ll never forget, and the guy who worked downstairs, the downstairs door… Oh, you know what? It might have been ’76. Come to think of it I think it was ’76. His name was Blonde Frankie and it’s dubious as to whether he let them in or they forced their way in but they went up the stairs to the second floor and they got in there and just went after every drag queen in the club. A lot of girls fought back now, don’t get me wrong, but there was blood. You know what happened the next day? A caravan drove to their headquarters, knocked on the door… I’m not going to tell you who was there because “I don’t know” parenthesis… ok? A little birdie told me… Knocked on the door, they open the door, and they were told, “You come to our club again, we’re coming back here and we’re going to burn this building to the fucking ground.” Those are the stories that don’t go in the news! They never came back. And by the way, when I say the caravan went, don’t think for a minute that people weren’t carrying shit… Oh yeah! They never came back. It’s a fucked-up story but I always want there to be a new day besides Trans Day of Remembrance and Visibility and Action because we all look forward to the Trans Day of Vengeance. Self-defense is not violence, it’s intelligence. So, anyway… Even in the 220 we would have cis straight couples! They’d come every night of the week, practically. Just because they felt like they were in liberated territory. I just think of all the names that flash before me, you know… Jackie LeFrenchie, Monique, Wilemina, Sally, Mona, Frankie, Felice, Gary, Pedro, Tito… You know. And Blonde Frankie who somehow the Hell’s Angels got past? Blonde Frankie was fired and also his arm was broken as punishment. Do you want to know something else about Blonde Frankie? The night of the Stonewall Rebellion Blonde Frankie was on the door at the Stonewall. You can even read about that in Martin Duberman’s book Stonewall. That was a time. Then I went on from there through the AIDS struggle and William Friedkin filming Cruising where we harassed all the filmmakers shooting it in the West Village through the ‘80s then the ‘90s and Wonderland, the Crow’s Nest, the Pyramid Club, and Wigstock, which I’m sure you know of, I must say some of the nicest people… What’s her name from Drag Race… Why am I forgetting that… I hope I’m not getting Alzheimer’s… 

GS: Ru Paul?

RI: Yeah! Nicest person in the world. A real sweetheart. I sort of almost feel like Ru Paul is like bi-gendered. You know what I mean? Or some people could be tri… As Leslie Feinberg says… I met Leslie Feinberg in 1972 when we were in Workers World Party, which is still now a socialist party. Some people even say communist. I don’t give a fuck what people think. And when a lot of these left-wing organizations were kicking LGBTQ people out Worker’s World was printing pamphlets in the ‘70s in support of trans liberation. And in fact, right now, there is an organization called Peoples Power Assemblies, it meets in Workers World’s space on 24th street where there are about four trans organizations at 147th West 24th and the PPA, we call it, meetings even though that’s not specifically a gay or trans organization, there’s cis people in it, when we have meetings, and I’m not exaggerating now, this is not wishful thinking, the majority of people are not cis! (Laughing) Yeah! It’s really… Anti-capitalism has really blossomed!

GS: I hope it gets even bigger as a result of this Coronavirus situation…

RI: Yeah! This is an example of what capitalism is! The anarchy of production… Have you seen the video of how nurses and doctors gear up? They’re supposed to have two gowns! And here! The so-called richest country in the world we’ve got people in Elmhurst Hospital wearing garbage bags. And then this piece of garbage – because frankly I consider the president to be the lowest living entity on the face of the earth – a speck of cockroach shit has more value than this piece of shit. He never worked hard in his life and then to suggest that people are stealing stuff? These people are risking their lives serving people selflessly! And that’s how you talk about these people? You’re a fucking low-life piece of shit. I mean really. I stopped watching those press conferences that are really campaign rallies. I just stopped watching them because my stress just goes through the roof!

GS: I’m curious Rene, because you’ve experienced so many phases of turmoil in this country and in New York… how does this compare? This period of time in our history?

RI: (Sighs) I think it’s kind of checkerboard. You know what I mean? Let me just say this. For me, as a trans femme person or a trans woman, it doesn’t matter, the emergence in the last five to ten years of gender non-conforming people has been the best thing that has ever happened to trans women and especially to older trans women, drag queens, whatever you want to call them. Because for years we were haunted by this word “passing” and I say: Pass as what? You know? And now I think it has been great not just for gender non-conforming people because the emergence of the consciousness of scientific reality that gender has nothing to do with hair, no hair, breasts, no breasts, penis, no penis – all that is irrelevant! Your gender is between your ears! And so many people, they spend their lives in a prison cell the size of their body! You know what I mean?

GS: That’s so well put!

RI: What were we, what was I, before I finally came out? You know what I was? I was an unconscious male-impersonator. And the only thing worse than that is a conscious male-impersonator. That’s torture. And then you know what happens? You can’t even pinpoint it because you start to just not give a fuck and then after a while you graduate from “I don’t give a fuck what you think” to “Watch me not give a fuck what you think.” That’s freedom. There’s an ancient saying in China and I have to give the person credit from the tenth century. I sort of just changed a little bit and it applies to my community and it may not apply in every scenario in the world and that is this, Gwen: When you worry what other people think of you, you will always be their prisoner. 

GS: That’s really empowering and true.

RI: So, guess what? Time for jailbreak! So, in that sense, Gwen, things are way better. I could tell you about so many things in the community. I know people who have been in the closet for fucking years! And then all of the sudden they come out and then two days later they’re all judgmental about shit. I’ve heard people talk about hating drag queens and I think: You know how many drag queens have been murdered in the streets? I’ve actually had times where I say: Listen! You know what? I think we outta settle this on the sidewalk or in the gutter! Take your choice. Really! Fuck you! Because as Leslie Feinberg perfectly said there is an umbrella that covers all those who blur the illusion of gender identity whether you’re a crossdresser, trans femme, drag king, drag queen, whatever! We’re all to some degree blurring the illusion. I gave a talk not too long ago in Chelsea to a mostly cis audience, right? I don’t get up there and say: Oh, thank you for inviting me tonight, my name is so and so, it’s nice to see you… I start like this. I go up to the podium and the first words out of my mouth are like I’m in the middle of a story. I’m serious! I’ll start like: So, I’m standing on the corner of 23rd street and 7th avenue, finally getting through to this guy as I eat this dollar taco and explain to him the absurdity that there are only seven genders. And then people get up and say, “Well, Rene what do you mean by that?” And I say, look, when I walk down the street I can’t count how many genders I see. And this, this is the most liberating thing that we did not have thirty-five, forty years ago and now it’s just… I mean, I’m an atheist but that’s heaven. You know what I mean? And in fact, you want to know something Gwen? I have never in my life felt more free than this moment right now.

GS: That’s incredible.

RI: I’m serious! Hey, I really mean that. In the movie we were working on I basically confess painfully that I’m intimidated by the ignorant. I’m not saying that these are bad people but they’re conditioned and brainwashed. You know, they smirk… Why in the world should the ignorant rule the enlightened. My love and my people… there is no love like that. It’s not better than other loves! It’s not better! But it is more enlightened. When you finally reach that point of, for instance, not letting anybody feel ashamed, hiding shit – for years I did it! Walked down certain streets, didn’t tell certain people certain things, fuck that! You don’t like it? Too fucking bad! I don’t give a fuck. You know? I really don’t! It’s true! What I wanted to say, and I sometimes lose my train of thought, is that it’s kind of like you just can’t take it anymore but I don’t have a boss. You see what I’m saying? I try to convey this especially to every young person I know. I went to the Philly Trans Wellness Conference in July and there really is a plenary at this conference it’s like a bunch of workshops of which there could be a hundred people in each one or even more sometimes. The one on gender dysphoria had people on the panel who represented many genders! I have trans men friends who remove their breasts or don’t, take hormones, or don’t. That’s a personal decision! Whether you do or you don’t is your own realness. I got up from the audience – I almost became an extension of the panel – and I got up and said a lot of the things about gender and hair and beards and no beards and this and that and I got up and I put up both my middle fingers and I said: Fuck that shit! I am tired of hearing this fucking garbage! I went through a whole litany of things, of what I went through, and what I conquered and you know what was amazing Gwen? When the workshop broke up there were people who came over to me and I’m not talking about young people: eighteen, nineteen, twenty! I’m talking about people around fifty, fifty-five! They came over to me with tears in their eyes… I’m almost starting to cry telling this… And they said to me, “I’ve been waiting all my life to hear what you just said. I can’t tell you what it means to me.” And then I start thinking, oh my god, I’m making a difference for someone! It overwhelmed me emotionally. And you know now I’m doing a lot of work in the theater! I think I told you? I’m one of the facilitators of the Transgenerational Theater Project. This would be our fourth season! And that is completely collectively produced! Everyone contributes to the writing! We say facilitators because there are a lot of anarchists in the project and they don’t like the word director. (Laughing) So, I’m one of the facilitators. And some of these people in there are some of the most brilliant people in the world and they’re homeless. By the way, most are people of color! Most are poor! We did a lot of rehearsing out of the SAGE center, you know the SAGE center? It’s the senior center? In fact I was elected chair-person of the SAGE advisory council. I think I was the first trans person! I’ve actually seen people in our rehearsals and they always, you know, have a big backpack because that’s their apartment, and they go from rehearsal and walk to Penn. Station to scout out a place to sleep. There is no empathy, how could there be, like the empathy in our community. Even like with sex-workers too, even the ones who aren’t trans, who are binary. So, yeah! I just continued to do what I’m doing and, like I said, now I’m one of the “Queen Mothers”!

GS: I can really see why Rene!

RI: Oh but you know, when those kids get too much into the “What would I do without you…” nonsense, you know what I tell them? I say: Wait a minute! We inspiring each-other! I tell young people: You have liberated me! Especially, especially older trans women. To overcome this fucking word “passing”. I was never obsessed with it. There was probably a period where I flirted with it. But when you overcome this infatuation with passing, that’s another freedom. It really is!

GS: Because then it’s just a total rejection of the gender binary and that’s powerful!

RI: Yeah! And it’s not only that. What I’ve said to you in this past whatever it is… when it becomes not wishful thinking and becomes so grounded in dialectical material… You know. So much of my education is from my community! I never graduated from high school! When I came back from Vietnam I read every book that I could get my hands on. So, I don’t have a piece of paper that says I read the book. I used to wrap rings around people who would get into my taxi with a master’s degree and try to talk to me like I’m stupid. I’d tell them things like: You know the law of physics is not an opinion! And they’d look at me like, a person driving a taxi knows the word physics? I love to slice and dice people with my tongue. Believe me.

GS: Rene what was your coming out experience like?

RI: Um, hm. That’s a good question because… Well, first of all let me say this. My first homosexual experience was kind of being assaulted by my English teacher when I was nine. Yeah… those were wild fucking stories in a school in New Jersey. My mother had sent me to sleep-away school and you know, we’d have sex, uh… And uh, then as a teenager I became homophobic. 

GS: Were you able to tell anyone? 

RI: Eventually, yeah. I told my parents. I guess that was 1959 I think. Then I started to go to public school and shit, back then homophobia was so bad you’d get beat up for wearing shorts! I’m not kidding! I guess going into the military in ’67 I didn’t much think about it and then I really became radical politically in Vietnam. I used to listen to this show when I was ten or eleven years old called the Barry Gray Show and he used to have Malcolm X on and I remember once I heard Malcolm X say the American government loves to paint the face of their enemy in their own image. I never understood what the fuck that meant and then I went on R&R while I was in Vietnam to Australia and I bought the autobiography of Malcolm X, went back to Vietnam, and that phrase came back to my head and I said being in Vietnam, watching this slaughter and genocide of the Vietnamese people, and unfortunately contributing to it, I said that’s what Malcolm X meant! Because let me tell you something, let me tell you this, I worked for military intelligence in Vietnam and everything that the U.S. accuses other countries of doing, we do. We do it. These people in the government, they lie all the fucking time. All the fucking time. Even the liberal ones. They love socialism for the rich, nobody else. This bailout now, it’s mostly for the super-rich. And how do they get it? They get it from the taxes we pay, from the wages we make, and the from what we produce, they steal! They steal. So, I’ll tell you what, no matter what happens in this world, capitalism is doomed. Doomed. 

GS: I feel that more than ever right now!

RI: Oh yeah! I mean really! 

GS: We just have to figure out a way to get rid of our addiction to consumerism.

RI: Yeah and we can even start with a few public trials of certain criminals. Seriously. Because they’re thieves! Did you ever stop and think how much misery there is in the world: wars, famine, bombing… This country conducts 9/11 attacks against other countries every day! The endangering of species, the disappearance of wildlife… Jane Goodall says two thirds of all wildlife has been annihilated. Two thirds! The wars! The destruction! All for this tiny sliver of parasites who produce nothing and have more and more wealth. What the fuck does Jeff Bezos need with two hundred billion dollars? What the fuck do you need that for? I heard a twelve-year-old in some town hall meeting ask a congressman, who had said something good about Jeff Bezos, why he needs that much money and we don’t have it. Sometimes children at town hall meetings fuck up a politician more than an adult! This one kid who was I think thirteen and in a wheelchair and said to this congressman, I don’t know why you want to kill me, but you do want to kill me because you don’t want health insurance companies to cover the medical procedure I need to save my life. You’re a murderer and you are going to murder me! And the fucking politician didn’t know what to say and got tongue-tied! And that’s how they should be spoken to! You’re a murderer! And you should be behind bars now. I have no respect for them!

GS: What was it like to live in New York when Giuliani was running the show?

RI: Oh, yeah… You know what’s funny? Now he really shows his true colors. More even then when he was mayor. He’s a fascist. And by the way, you know what? I don’t ever call anybody a fascist just as some rhetoric. People challenge me and I say I don’t just throw that word around! People say to me, was George Bush a fascist? My honest answer is I don’t know! Fascism is not just a word, it’s an endeavor and a horrible one. And you know what? One day they’re going to pay. During the Chinese Revolution and even in Italy in the 1900s when there was a worker’s uprising – workers and peasants – landlords ran to the communists! They did! Ran to them and begged them, please shoot us in the head! Peasants had pitchforks! That’s the truth! And I’ll tell you what there’s a sleeping giant and boy when it wakes up the social democrats will be following the ones they think they have to enlighten now they’ll be left in the dust! I don’t want to get along with these people and you know how we say now… sick, demented or insane? These are not words that we should use. I don’t use them for people. Capitalism is insane. It’s an insane system. There’s no reason why any of this shit has to happen.

GS: It is. It’s clearly failing and I just hope people will really start to notice and do something about it because we can’t go on much longer like this.

RI: Yeah! And you know how I look out for me? By looking out for others. That’s how.

GS: That’s beautiful! And a beautiful thing about the queer community for the most part I think…

RI: Oh, absolutely. And maybe even more so for people of color in the queer community. 

GS: Well Rene you just have so many wonderful stories and it’s really inspiring to listen to you speak! If there are any favorite memories you have from 220 Club before we wrap up I’d love to hear them! 

RI: Oh geez you know there are so many! I had different jobs you know? I worked the door, I worked waiting tables, I worked the snack bar and coat check with Stormé DeLarverie who the night of Stonewall was walking up Waverly place, turned the corner and there were the cops and Stormé just slugged em right in the face. In fact there’s a photograph of Stormé right there on the corner of Wooster street and Grand street. Boy, I wish I had a picture of our softball team… I always tease the younger people with some of my older friends. Boy if we could take pictures of what we were doing years ago, you’d see the crazy fucking shit we used to do! Oh my god! Weehawken street at the end of the pride parade in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s? Forget about it! Talk about golden shower parades! Oh my god! The shit that we did. Forget about it. We don’t have any pictures of that of course. I’ll send you some pictures that aren’t on Instagram. I think I’ve learned that I have to copy and paste now! (Chuckles) I’m just starting to get with that. You know what that is? I’ve been able to sort of navigate around online because you know this sex work has become, you know, you do this encrypted stuff and it goes to Europe and then comes back to the states and you know, all of the security concerns, just imagine! I mean, when I had my taxi it was one of the safest ways to work! First of all most of the work was in the taxi, right? Most of it. I never got busted. Because what were you doing? Here you are in this car-shaped space that you control! You open and lock the doors yourself. But it’s on a public street and when most people walk down the street they don’t look inside every car. So, I had my spots! I had my spots where I took people! You know? Even in the meat market, which was more patrolled by cops than other spots but I worked the meat market sometimes just to help my other girls get out of the way of the police! I’d pull up next to them and I’d say: Hey, they’re coming around the corner jump in! It was a challenging time but it was such a great time too. Kinda priceless when I think about those memories. But anyway I’ll send you some pictures and stuff as soon as we get off!

GS: Yay! Great! Thank you so much Rene for reaching out and for letting me talk to you today! It was such a pleasure! I’m grateful to Instagram for connecting us! (Laughing)

RI: Yeah! It’s kind of funny… they had that show for Stonewall at the New York Public Library and I confronted the curator about that. When they got to the part about Julius’s bar and how they were protesting the State Liquor Authority and they had a sip in you know Julius’s bar was like so against the Stonewall rebellion I can’t even tell you. When people were running from the cops they wouldn’t let them in the door! They had spotlights on Julius’s bar in that show and nothing about the 220 Club, Gilded Grape, all these other clubs! I didn’t see shit! And I remember, I confronted the curator who said oh well, I had to deal with Randy Wicker who has a spot in history and I’ve known Randy for years… You know, Marsha lived out of his apartment for the better part of a decade and he’s sort of a historian of Marsha so I’m grateful for that. But you know, I confronted the curator on the second floor and I actually had a cis friend with me who I was talking to on the way there about Julius’s bar. By the way Julius’s bar is not like that now, it still exists, and I’m not condemning the present-day Julius’s bar. But they were for the “respectable” gay people, you know, back then. When I confronted the curator after he had given a talk or something in one of the rooms, all of the sudden there was this crowd around me and I said: You’ve got this fucking spotlight on Julius’s bar and you’re selling Martin Duberman’s Stonewall downstairs which will tell you all about what the fucking bar did and believe it or not I had people who requested friends with me and I didn’t know where I knew them from and they would say, oh I saw you confront the curator at the public library! (Laughing) Anyway…

GS: (Laughing) Wow! Good for you!

RI: (Laughing) Oh yeah. Well, ok Gwen!

GS: Thank you Rene! And please stay healthy!

RI: You too! And remember this is only a couple chapters in the book! (Laughing)