'What Matters Most' Suzi Quatro 'In The Spotlight ... - Beige Magazine

Touring to promote
both autobiography
Tango, and solo
album Dendrophile,
JVB (aka V. these
days) managed to
squeeze me in for
lunch before flying
back to the States.
Over a deliciously salty salad we
exchanged gossip and generally caught
up. I hadn’t seen Justin in ages. Not
properly. I find all time spent in Justin’s
company quite magical and usually
graced by the unexpected; something
I dont get enough of. A couple of
years back I was in New York and
Justin rang me up asking me to come
to The Townhouse. I had never been
there before and didn’t know what to
expect. Nothing could have prepared
me for the tableau that met me: JVB,
Nath Ann, Armistead Maupin and
Rufus Wainwright on piano all singing
“Over the Rainbow”. Does it get any
more camp? We talked about the
advantages of short-sightedness and
the thrill of dangerous living.
V: I am currently displaced: I had
to move out of my apartment as the
building is being demolished. I don’t
know. I was watching the Scissor
Sisters the other night and there was
some move in the dancing that made
me think ‘aerobics’. And then I thought,
‘Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda... L.A! I should
move to L.A...’ - I don’t think that I
should really need to stay in New York.
And who knows? I think I might like L.A.
for a while. Hmmm... the Hollywood
Bowl is there...” (Justin has played on
Broadway and twice at Carnegie Hall).
The one thing that I had planned to
ask V. about somehow escaped me
during lunch. Maybe because there
were always other waiters and diners
in earshot and it is a topic that some
find distasteful. You see, I have had
dendrophile experiences. Dendrophile:
one who is sexually aroused by trees.
I didn’t interpret my own dendrophilia
as a deviation or perversion as I have
since found many others I previously
counted as open-minded do; to me it is
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natural - an expression of a joy in being
alive (and drunk too I guess). Maybe a
flight of caprice? They reckon one per
cent of the population are dendrophiles.
Wow that’s millions! Here I was with a
fellow dendrophile, and not only that
but someone I know who I can talk to
about absolutely anything and I was
curiously hesitant. Our photographer
Claire took care of everything when
we met her at the Lord Nelson after
lunch. She had chosen a colourful and
quite dendrophilic painting to use as
a backdrop. Frank and forthright, she
plunged right in with “Dendrophile! I
love that word. I didn’t know what a
dendrophile was until I looked it up.”
V: I didn’t either. One day Nath Ann said
to me ‘You’re a dendrophile,’ and I had
no idea what he meant.
D: (coming out) I’ve had sex with trees.
V: (beaming) Me too! Inside trees.
C: My friend puts microphones inside
trees and records them... they make
many different sounds (makes tree
sounds). I love listening to them.
V: The voices of the forest.
C: Like trees talking to each other;
tree conversations.
V: Sounds beautiful.
‘Tango’ is what mx modestly calls a
“novella length autobiography.” Did
I say Mx? Mx is the personal pronoun
that Justin prefers rather than the more
gender specific ones. We all got over
assigning gender to garments based
on which side the buttons fastened on,
and even the prefix www. is becoming a
thing of the past. Things change. I wish
they had changed before I struggled all
these years to master French but c’est
les temps perdu as they say.
Tango opens with an elegant preface
by Hilton als.
V: I mean Hilton is fantastic. Absolutely
genius. But then my stuff comes
along. I don’t think the comparison is
favourable.
D: You don’t go in for five-page
sentences! I love your book and it is
definitely worthy of an intro by Hilton
Als.
The book explores growing into one’s
self rather than simply growing up; a
sexual and sensual evolution, at once
both natural and alien.
All V’s early formative sexual
experiences are described, as well as
mother’s unpredictable reactions when
she finds out about them. V. confessed
to fooling around with a couple of
boys at Summer Camp and she (to his
mortification) summoned the boys to
the house and held a kangaroo court!
D: Has your mother read Tango?
V: Not yet. But she will when it
comes out.
D: Will she be ok?
V: No. she’ll say “Why did you have to
go and write a book like that?”
D: Were there things you thought you
perhaps had to withhold in case of
upsetting people?
V: No. I changed people’s names. I
didn’t change the truth as I remember
it though.
“What is on your lips?”
she asked me in what
I could only register
as horror.
I froze in fear, not sure
what to say. I opted for
what I thought at the
time was the truth.
“It’s my lipstick.”
JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND
“That’s not your lipstick! that’s my
lipstick. what are you doing with that
lipstick on your face?”
“Well I’m going to school. You don’t
leave the house without your lipstick so
I thought I should wear lipstick too.”
“Boys don’t wear lipstick!” she shouted,
as if this were something I should
know, and using that word “boy” which
grated against the very fiber of my
being every time it was applied to me.
“But Mom! I’ve been wearing it every
day. No one cares.”
“You’ve been wearing lipstick to school
for days? How many days?”
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“I don’t know.” I was crying.
“But it’s okay!” “No, it’s not.”
She marched me to the bathroom and
wiped it off my lips. I left for school that
day defeated, disappointed, and bland.
It would take me another twenty years
before I realised that it was okay to
leave the house with my lipstick.