I had worn out my slogan RuPAUL IS EVERYTHING, so had moved on to a new one: RuPAUL IS RED HOT. I pasted posters with that one over every telephone pole in town. I knew the message was spreading because when Floyd, Bunny, and I were out on the balcony of my room, getting stoned or dancing around, people passing in cars below would stick their heads out of windows and scream: “RuPaul is red hot!”
Eventually, someone launched a counter-campaign, crossing out my name and writing who-paul. Around the same time, a piece of graffiti in the dressing room at the 688 Club was pointed out to me. It read in the blink of an eye, rupaul will fade into obscurity. I took it as a compliment. You’re nobody until somebody hates you.
The first concert I ever went to was in 1969, to see James Brown and the Famous Flames Revue at the San Diego Sports Arena. I understood that a revue was a show centered around one star that also incorporated supporting cast members. I needed a new act, and the answer was obvious: I had so many friends who were entertainers, too. They could help me round out the show. I would open, bring on two or three additional acts while I changed costumes, then close the show and invite everyone back on for a grand finale. And I knew that I could get booked, because I had built a name that was now recognizable. I was self-aware enough to know that this was marketing 101—the only thing I didn’t know is why other people weren’t forging ahead with the same kind of brand-building.
We previewed the RuPaul Is Red Hot Revue in Atlanta before we got ready to take it up to New York in July. We all knew, even if we didn’t say it to one another, that New York had the toughest crowds in the world. I had learned this from experience. At clubs like the Pyramid—which was at that moment probably the coolest club in America—the audiences were jaded and precious. This was not so much the case at Danceteria, which was more commercial in its sensibility but still intimidating. The Pyramid would never willingly court the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. People in New York were dead-set on holding on to their identities as downtown dissidents—and that’s where we’d be going, in an attempt to charm them into laughing along with us.
The owners of the Pyramid arranged for us to stay in an apartment right above the club, with the two waitresses who also lived there. They had a boyfriend, an Israeli guy named Ayel, who flirted with me shamelessly. Two women sharing one bisex- ual beau? It couldn’t have been more cosmopolitan.
I’d had a feeling our show would be a hit—it was fun, optimistic, and glamorous. But the reception felt rapturous in a way it hadn’t in my earlier performances in the city. New York was still recuperating from its dreary, bankrupt darkness, and here we’d come from Atlanta—gorgeous and dripping in fringe, showcasing a low-rent Vegas morality, luminous in our fake Bob Mackie best. To win them over with love and kindness, the message I’d always wanted to spread in my work, felt like conquering Goliath—as if we had vanquished the darkest, most cynical monster imaginable. On my arc to stardom, this was a triumph—a local one, but a triumph nevertheless.
My friend Floyd and I decided that we wanted to stay in New York, but we wanted to go back and get some things organized before moving. Back in Atlanta, I cleaned out my room in my apartment and liquidated what little I had. I brought just one tiny suitcase back to New York with me, packed with underwear, a few pairs of homemade pants and tops, a coat for when it got cold, and some makeup. Those elements could be combined to create perhaps three different costumes, interchangeable pieces that could be mixed-and-matched. For shoes, all I needed were a pair of thigh-high rubber boots I could dance in. It didn’t matter—the promise of New York was irresistible. Never mind that we didn’t have a place to live. We would figure it all out.
By Jon Witherspoon.
And we did. Floyd and I met a pair of girls, Suzie and Jennifer, with an apartment on Sixth Street east of Avenue B, who would let us crash on their couch. We slept in parks, on benches, and on the pier, but only during the day. We showered wherever we could, but that wasn’t a high priority; after all, we were bohemian scallywags.
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