She Stoops To Conquer- With The 1950s Film Some Like It Hot Painfully In Mind   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

He, John Samson to give him a name although his condition could apply to many more than one would think, did not think he could keep going on that way, keep on living a lie. Keep on letting the whole wide world think he was just a reclusive oddball, a quirky nut- case, especially when old time friends, high school guys or guys at work tried to date him up with women, usually but not always their sisters, or their sisters’ friends. But what was person like him to do in the year 1961 with the whole world arrayed against him, and his kind. His kind being a, uh, cross-dresser, a transvestite, a flaming drag queen. His instinct, his survival instinct said keep your head down, keep to your secret world, keep the wolves of society away, and mainly to keep his parents in the dark for as long as possible.

That secret world of his was caught up in midnight dates with guys who liked to swing with drag queens, got their kicks that way, or at least keep them company in anonymous locations, usually far from his North Adamsville digs. Or putting on titter shows for strangers down in closed door social clubs in the South End of Boston, occasional trysts in New York City, mainly the Village, and in summer, sweet summer down in Provincetown with all its delights. No, he could not keep going on that way. His parents were becoming increasingly suspicious, suspicious enough to inquire incessantly every time they could about why he didn’t settle down with some nice girl. They were suspicious that he has no girlfriends, and they would be crushed to know that he had no interest in girls and no freaking desire to be interested in girls unlike to of his brothers who were raising broods to terrorize an unknowing world. What he was interested in was cross-dressing, wearing female attire and to be, frankly, admired as a girl, as a woman, to be a femme as he liked to call himself in his lonely minutes. So no girls, nice or evil, as his parents called them were to be treated as competition, or to be asked for beauty tips, stuff like that.

His parents with whom he had lived at home off and on the previous several years since he had graduated from high school in 1957, usually after some unsuccessful affair went sour, or he got kicked out of some digs for being, well, odd were beginning to speak to neighbors and relatives that Johnnie was “different” from their three other sons. Those blooming brood-growing sons. Although the youngest, a college kid, Albert, and maybe a little more worldly-wise that his parents and other brothers having broken out of the cloistered small town mainly Irish Catholic enclave, seemed to sense what John was all about, although he never said anything about it to him.     

[We will hereafter use not this male name John, or Johnnie, bestowed, no what do they call it now, assigned at birth to him by his family and convention in the year of our lord 1939, the year of his birth, but his secret world name, Jackie, and use feminine pronouns to avoid any further confusion on that point.]

They, her parents, Delores and Paul to give them names, would say that she had always been sort of a loner, sort of liked to look at the world differently from the other boys. Always had her nose in a book, unlike the sports-driven other boys. Those books and her secret hide-away public library visits from such things are what saved her lots of harassment on that score although she was not particularly interested in academics and had been a middling student, at best. Little did Delores and Paul know as well how different Jackie was from her siblings. How early on Jackie was fascinated by her girl cousins’ things, frilly girl things, when they came to visit or she went there and, naturally, her mother’s things, rummaging through her bureaus when she was home alone,  and abhorred sports, dirty boy talk, and male swagger in general. That hit home to her at first when she had, secretly in downtown Boston, seen Some Like It Hot, and almost had an orgasm when she saw Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed in drag even those they were just using it as a ruse. (She would see that film several more times at that time and have that same reaction).  Moreover little did they know what she himself had begun to realize that she liked, really liked, to dress like a girl (woman) hard as that was for her to understand at first. She would always be confused by those feelings because while she loved to dress up she didn’t necessarily feel like a girl (later woman) like some of her friends, her secret friends, who were almost praying they could be women and were always talking about some kind of operation to just that that was being performed over in Europe some place.   

She had Georgette (birth name, George Sampas) to thank for breaking down her confusion about her feelings. Jackie had previously thought she was just weird, weird even by South End, Village, Provincetown conventions, when she wanted to assert her girl-ness without dreams of being transformed like some fairy tale princess into a woman. Most of the homosexuals she knew turned her down when they found out her inclinations, couldn’t understand why she was not attracted to them like other men in a manly man to man way. That misunderstanding had exploded in her last relationship when Clip (she preferred not to use his real name so Chip) flipped out when Jackie started to see a straight man occasionally who was willing to treat her like a woman, treat her like the real woman she felt inside even though no science, no medical advances could help align her body with her soul. Once she met Clint he knew that her affair with Chip, who never really accepted her girl-ness except when it came to sex, would soon be over although she really could have used a friend and a place to stay so she wouldn’t have to move back home and face that whole “different” song and dance. But see Clint was dependent on his wife’s money and that wife would flip out and divorce him if she ever found out about his relationship with Jackie. Would take the kids, the house, the dough and all. So while Jackie clung to him (and he to her) she would have to make her own way in the world.                             

That is where Georgette came in and kind of saved her, kind of made her more comfortable with her feelings. They had met at Sally’s down in the Village (Sally, the owner,  of course being not some girl Sally but Salvatore Domino) where Georgette sat at a table one night by herself in high fashion- pompadour blonde wig, fluttering eyelashes, ruby red lips, and a gorgeous dress from one of the better New York fashion houses. She was in short in full drag regalia as befitted a queen of the night. Jackie, still too shy to go all out in drag, went up to her and remarked on her attire. Georgette maybe with a few too many drinks in her kind of snickered at that and asked what the hell Jackie thought she was doing looking like some housewife from Jersey (where Georgette was from so she knew) in Sally’s.  From that moment Georgette took charge, for good or evil. And that started their friendship.                

After a couple of weeks Jackie was comfortable enough to wear fashionable dresses and accessories out in the streets, the hard bitten early 1960s New York streets (although not alone but always in Georgette’s company). That done though she, they had hit a wall. They had no dough, no prospects of dough and a landlord who was not happy, and made his unhappiness well known, to have two drag queens mooching off of him. That is when Georgette put together the idea of a drag sister singing act since as it turned she had a great female voice and Jackie was not bad on harmony. And so for several years in all the drag haunts of New York City, P-town, Frisco town and some foreign ports they had a following and kept the wolves from their door. But like all fashion, or all beauty for that matter, things fade and as they got older they were in less demand and eventually abandoned the act and opened a small bar in Frisco. And it is still there, Jackette’s, in that golden town although under new management.

The new management part was not accidental. About fifteen years ago Georgette passed away and Jackie ran the place herself for a while. Then she too passed away a few years later. The way I can across this story though was that my old time high school friend, Peter Paul Markin (although we always called him just Markin, forget that upper-crust Peter Paul stuff), grew up across the street in North Adamsville from the Samsons. Although Markin  was several years younger he had heard stuff about a Jackie Samson, the famous drag queen,  who had lived right across the street and investigated it some later . ( Funny how times have changed I remember, and Markin does too, when our mothers would warn us away from The Shipwreck  a bar located on a cove on the outskirts of my hometown, Hullsville, because drag queens performed there like it was some kind of disease.) One time a few years before Jackie died when Markin was in Frisco he went into Jackette’s and introduced himself. They chatted for a couple of hours and Jackie invited Markin over to her apartment. That night they watched Some Like It Hot, a favorite of Markin’s as well. What do you think of that my friends.