Thought For The Day: John Waters

Before I told [my parents] I was gay they were scared I was about to say I was a necrophiliac or something. "Do you have to say it to USA Today?" my father said. They were fine about me being on the cover of [gay magazine] Out, just not the publications their friends read. My parents were married for 60 years. They never had a fight. They were the perfect example of a good marriage. Now my mother wants me to get married. She'll say: "Why aren't you married to that nice friend?" who is usually a successful guy. But the successful gay men I know rarely have other successful gay men as boyfriends. They have hustlers. Marriage equality is a hustler's feeding frenzy of gold-diggers. I campaigned for marriage equality in Maryland because I believe we should have the right to it, but I personally don't want to get married. I don't want to imitate the traditions of heterosexual people. I hate weddings: they make me uneasy.

The Observer.

Been a while since we heard from this Sunday paper standby.
Mr Waters is appearing at Homotopia in that Liverpool.
He's interviewed on Radio 3 on Wednesday evening.

April Ashley: Portrait Of A Lady

Two months after April Ashley entered the world at the age of 25, she lost her virginity – to an American man called Skippy. “It was 14 July 1960, Bastille Day. Afterwards I was crying with happiness. I remember Skippy opening the window and everyone was honking their horns and waving flags and he said, 'Look, the whole of Paris is celebrating the loss of your virginity.’”

I bring up a rumour that she was pretty promiscuous for a while after the sex change. Again she looks at me from under one arched eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you have been?” she says dryly.

Back in London, she began to get modelling work. For a time she wasVogue’s most popular underwear model. But this honeymoon period didn’t last long. A year later she was the subject of an exposé in the Sunday People revealing that she’d once been a man – she was betrayed by a friend for just £5.

“And I never got another modelling job from that day to this. Six months’ worth of booking was cancelled overnight.” She’d already been hired to appear in the film The Road to Hong Kong with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope when the story broke. “But when the film came out only my back was seen and my name didn’t even appear on the credits.”

Elvis, John Prescott  And Me: An interview with April Ashley, Britain's first transsexual, Daily Telegraph.

Fifty years on, the tabloids still think it's good fun to out transsexuals.

An exhibition, April Ashley: Portrait of a lady, opens today at the Museum of Liverpool, it is free.