Bash Compactor: Man Enough To Be A Woman

“Hurry up, Debbie Harry just left!” curvaceous drag performer Isis Vermouth told me while go-go dancing in a window of The Chelsea Hotel. Oh well, Blondie had flown the coop. And I was there for something blonde, but just a bit taller.

“If you don’t want to fuck me baby, fuck off! I ain’t got time to catch the news, don’t shoot me up with your bullshit blues.” Now those are lyrics I can truly relate to, words I’ve wanted to say to plenty of men I’ve known. Direct and no nonsense. Jayne County is man enough to be a woman. But what a hell of a woman! Lucky she wasn’t on the rag the other night.

Legendary performer and artist County, who just so happens to be transgender and for years rocked it under the name Wayne County, first went in drag DJ-ing at Max’s Kansas City. She was in town last week and played a set with her new band The War Holes at the storefront of the Chelsea Hotel during a three-day event produced by artist Kymara Lecchi Lonergan and former Studio 54 party host Miestorm.

The Chelsea Hotel has been through a lot, and the room has a real funky vibe, smeared with DayGlo graffiti and bedecked with County’s artwork and costumes as well as the work of Billy Name and other miscellaneous Warholites. The crowd varied between freaky-deaky ’70s types and newcomers looking for grit.

Backstage, performer Penny Arcade, who appeared with County in 1970 in Femme Fatale (along with Patti Smith and Jackie Curtis) was smoking a ciggy. Also hanging out was Tony Zanetta, who appeared with County in the infamous Andy Warhol play Pork in London in 1971 and later went on to manage tours for David Bowie. Zanetta has many fond memories of County, who back then only went in drag while performing.

Pork had a controversial six-week run in London and hecklers would often show up, so one night County, who played Viva, delivered lines about a “plate job,” a euphemism for shitting on the plate glass of a coffee table with someone else underneath it. “People started heckling and Wayne goes over to the edge of the stage without missing a beat in her lines and gives them a piercing look, scaring the bejesus out of them and they ran out of there,” Zanetta told me with a chuckle.

County rocked the house with her usual standards, including “Max’s Kansas City,” “Storm the Gates of Heaven” and a lovely new song called “Rush Limbaugh.” She has always been electrifying on stage and this was no exception, weaving through the crowd, throwing herself to the floor, screaming out to the universe. “If you don’t want to fuck me, baby, fuck off!”