Story Images:

When Toronto’s top alternative drag artist first met Shirley Manson, she was arrested. Now the queen sits down with the rock goddess and talks breasts, Iraq and JT LeRoy

Queen sifts through garbage - by Donnarama

Chapter 1 - Winona Ryder, Shirley Manson and me

The first time I met Garbage, I was arrested. A rotten adolescent, I attempted to thieve a Björk CD from a Toronto music store. I was busted by a security guard faster than Courtney Love. But instead of receiving the death penalty, I was merely asked never – ever – to return, and to show up for a little court date, probably to be condemned to the hell of community service. Not only did I skip my appointment with Judge Judy, but when alt-rock super-group and six-time Grammy nominees Garbage held an autograph signing at the same record store a year later, I threw on my tightest little outfit and headed out to meet my heroes. My first stop, however, was MuchMusic, where the band was filming an interactive interview. I was selected to ask the band a question and had Shirley Manson’s, Butch Vig’s, Steve Marker’s and Duke Erikson’s glorious eyes on my hot little body.

Later that day, I hit the aforementioned music store to get my prized autograph. Thrilled to see them up close and personal, I gleefully slipped Shirley Manson a picture I drew of her kicking the shit out of the Spice Girls. Seconds later, before the ink had dried, the same security guard who caught me lifting Björk’s CD seized me and dragged me off to some dark dungeon where all the bad girls go. Well, call me a stupid girl! Not an hour after I had participated in the MuchMusic exclusive and come face to face with Garbage, I sat embarrassed and shocked in a prison cell with the most heinous bunch of criminals this side of America’s Most Wanted. They were a motley crew of the good, the bad and the motherfuckin’ ugly. As one of my new roomies approached, I thought to myself, “This hot little body’s gonna be popular around here. You’re toast!” He pointed at me and bellowed, “This is the guy who was just on TV!” Sure enough, the prison’s television was tuned to the nation’s music station. They aren’t kidding when they say Citytv is everywhere.

Chapter 2 - Free admission and a dancing chicken

Seven years later, I arrived at Kool Haus for Garbage’s much-anticipated, sold-out show. I’d been sent here with my partner in Garbage, entertainment writer Ryan Porter, to cover the show before an interview with the big red herself the following day. Exhausted from our rigorous exercise regimes (NOT!), Ryan and I dragged our sorry asses to the venue, only to discover that House of Blues had failed to arrange for our media passes. Disappointed, we thanked them and admitted defeat as lucky ticket-holders strutted inside, clad in their Garbage-glam ensembles. Not one to give up easily, I convinced Ryan to hang out for a few more minutes so I could at least sneak in to get a tour T-shirt. He wandered away as I patiently waited to claim my souvenir, hissing and rolling my eyes jealously at the happy crowd moving inside.

A sweet security guard snatched me a shirt and I tracked down Ms Porter, who seemed strangely pleased when I found him. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said. Out came two tickets: a group had given him a deep discount so they could dash off to another concert by metal hold-overs Motorhead (blah). The universe was on our side! We took our places in the line on which I had previously spewed venom and entered the packed venue. During the final strains of the intro, Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” Garbage stormed the stage and kicked into their amazing early hit, “Queer.” “Queer!” we shrieked to the heavens while jumping up and down, much to the dismay of the poking 5’2”, 13-year-old Goth girl behind me. (What does this look like, Chuck E. Cheese’s? Beat it!). Shirl and the boys twirled and stalked the stage to a set of greatest hits and future classics from their hot new disc, Bleed Like Me. Manson, in a tight pink retro mini, paused briefly onstage to trade in her sexy Marc Jacobs heels for more comfortable shoes. Drag queens would be stoned for even attempting such a move.

Manson’s fiery red weave would have melted drag diva Heaven Lee Hytes to a puddle of pan stick. The tight crowd started rocking, but the young ladies grinding into our crotches overwhelmed the very gay Ryan Porter and me. Poor Ryan played faux drums on his stomach to keep the shaking girl-bottoms back. Those poor men at The Brass Rail need only buy a ticket to a Garbage show to get lap dances all night for free. Suckers.

The concert’s mayhem came to a head when a Garbage crew member in a giant, mangy chicken costume took the stage wielding a birthday cake for Garbage’s super-sexy new member, former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery, with Manson and Butch Vig harmonizing like deaf dogs to “Happy Birthday.” “Abuse your staff,” Manson said. “That’s my philosophy.” She tilted her head and glared at the chicken humanoid. “This is a disgrace,” she said. “Get off!”

Chapter 3 - Gay connection and Shirley Manson’s erection

The next day, I donned my blonde wig with apple streaks, and my black and banana-yellow feather boa, joined the humped and traumatized Ryan Porter, and flitted down to meet the band at their swanky hotel. Slightly nervous about our pending interview (as if anyone couldn’t tell by my crooked eyeliner), we stepped into the elevator. It halted on the 22nd floor, three below where my Shirl was staying. “For fuck’s sake!” I hissed, half-expecting the security guard from that music store to seize me. The doors opened and the super-thin Ms Manson pranced in. “Oh hi!” we said, like we were old friends. She smiled graciously, then did a double take before cracking up. Shirl ran off to fulfill her other duties, and while we waited in the hallway, genius producer and Garbage drummer Butch Vig, the man responsible for Nirvana’s groundbreaking Nevermind and The Smashing Pumpkins’ delicious Siamese Dream, sauntered by. “Have fun torturing them,” he smiled.

In our interview suite, we hogged the big, comfortable superstar sofas, leaving two creaky wooden chairs for Shirley and electric guitar man Steve Marker. Shirley hunted down her tea and purred to me, “Don’t I know you from somewhere? Working the elevators, perhaps?”

“Yes,” I confessed. “The other whores have hogged the stairways!” I was half-expecting an angry redhead to come charging in, kicking a wall and wailing, “Make the beats go harder!” But instantly, the pair became sweet and lovable. Relief coursed through my body.
“So Donnarama’s gonna do the interview,” Ryan said.

“DONNARAAAMMMAAA!” Shirley hollered. I took her caffeine away immediately.

“So I guess I ask questions?” I blurted out as I mentally prayed to Barbara Walters.

“I think that’s the general idea of an interview!” Manson laughed.

“I knew that!” I’d pinned on my wig too tight and was already screwing up.

“Stop being such a daft, ditzy blonde!” Manson said.

Though now she was wearing a tight red T-shirt that read, “Red Heads Have More Fun,” she lopped off her famous flame-coloured locks before promoting Beautifulgarbage in 2001. Her new short blonde do was widely dissed.

“I got a lot of flak for that,” she said. “I was not myself when I cut my hair off. I was going through a divorce and I just wanted to escape myself. It was an extreme act of self-hijacking. When I got my red hair back, I felt like Samson with his hair long. I really felt all my power literally coming back up my hands and up my arms and into my heart.”
At home, I have a binder full of Garbage memorabilia, my psycho Swimfan homage. I’d brought a few favourite items to the interview, including a Manson photo in which her ink-black eyeshadow is seductively thick. I showed it to her.

“Recently in a publication, they said that you look like you apply your eyeliner with a...”

“Trowel,” supplied Manson.

“Sharpie.”

“Oh! A Sharpie!” she laughed. “Well, let me tell you my fashion secrets – sometimes I have.”

“I have once, too!” I replied, recalling those Magic-Marker days. “I was so poor. I didn’t know what I was doing! I was 13!”

Well, maybe 18.

Next I showed her a shot from British music bible Kerrang’s awards show. In it, Manson’s wearing a dress printed with an illustration of an androgynous guy holding his erection.

“Shirley! Please explain this photo!” I demanded like Dorothy scolding Sophia on The Golden Girls.

“I’ve never seen that photo!” she shouted, leaning in. “Give it to me!”
I obliged.

“That’s my favourite dress! That’s my finest moment right there. But girls, let me tell you. All the male crew couldn’t even look me in the eye. I was freaking guys out, like freaking them out. And yet, think how many times we see T-shirts with ladies with their hooters hanging out. The effect of this one dress was unbelievable. Like, you should try it.” It didn’t freak me out. I’ve seen this thing in dressing rooms up and down Church Street for years.

“Was it supposed to be you?” I asked. The short hair did resemble her cropped, bleached blunder.

“Oh, no.” She leaned towards me, horrified. “Honey! I have many talents but that I don’t! Just for the record, I do not have a large, pulsating cock!”

“But at times she wishes she did!” Marker cracked. Now we were bonding.

“My vagina’s an outie!” I confessed.

Chapter 4 - AIDS

Shirley Manson’s alterna-vixen style made her a perfect candidate for the Mac Viva Glam campaign of 2002, when she posed alongside fellow lipstick-lovers Elton John and Mary J. Blige. The trio donated their time and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for AIDS research.

“As a former MAC girl, and a fashionada, it’s appropriate you are in fab’s Fashion Cares issue,” I told Manson. Then I realized I was ignoring someone: “You too, Steve. A fashionada.” Back to Shirl: “Why did you get involved?”

“I start to feel guilty in a perverse Scottish way. Here we are having an amazing time, and I think we all wanted to do something to kind of balance out our karma.”

“Why was it an AIDS charity that you wanted to work with?” Ryan asked.

“I have friends who are HIV-positive,” she said, using both hands as she self-consciously played with the back of her deep red do. “In one case, I’ve lost a friend through full-blown AIDS. Also, I’ve had an AIDS scare myself and very briefly thought that this might be in my future. It was unbelievably terrifying.”

“How did you deal with it?” Ryan asked.

“I can’t even begin to tell you,” said Shirley. “I literally started getting physical symptoms because I got myself into such a state over it. I just remember feeling frightened for my life, obviously. But more than anything, it was the overwhelming realization of the stigma that surrounds the disease. Not only are there people with this disease dealing with this… pain…and fear for their life, literally, but they are also dealing with the social stigma and people’s ignorance and people’s reluctance to get close.”

“And it’s still awkward,” said Marker. “If our administration back home [in the US] had their way, we’d be talking about it a lot less.”

Chapter 5 - Bush and hate

The tracks on Bleed Like Me are meant to shake up the establishment. Each song makes a defining statement that hits the listener right between the eyes. After their bizarre 2001 disappointment, Beautifulgarbage, the band has earned both commercial and critical success for their new disc. The album is like 24 red roses delivered in a sleek black limo at gunpoint. The party anthem “Sex Is Not the Enemy” is a particularly pro-sex, booty-shaking anthem.

“It’s imbued with my own sexual politics,” Shirley says of the song. “When we were making this record, I was freaked out by the Bush Administration’s clamping down on women’s rights and gay marriage. I just saw it as complete hatred. I have many gay friends who are wonderful, committed partners to one another, and I don’t see why they’re being robbed of a human right.”

Chapter 6 - Janet Jackson and Iraq

“You’ve said some funny things about the Super Bowl scandal and Janet’s boob falling out,” I reminded Manson.

“I think we were mystified by...a beautiful woman like Janet Jackson’s beautiful boob coming out... Whether it was deliberate or accidental, who gives a shit? And there was more coverage of her breast falling out in major papers in America, particularly USA Today, than there was about the invasion of Iraq. I find that mystifying. How could one woman’s breast be more horrifying and frightening than what’s going on overseas where men and women are being killed on a daily basis?”

“How’s about I ask about ‘Cherry Lips?’” I blurted. The only song from Beautifulgarbage that the band played at their Toronto concert is also one of many Garbage songs to celebrate diverse sexuality. “‘Cherry Lips’ is an example of Garbage’s acclaimed conglomeration of pop and rock…” I stumbled mid-question, blushing. “I memorized this…”

“Ha!” Manson laughed. “You’re adorable!”

“Was it inspired by queer author JT LeRoy?” I asked, referring to the 25-year-old reclusive gay author whose stories of child prostitution are based on his own experiences.

“Yes. [LeRoy] is a very special person in my life and has been enormously helpful. He’s like a little priest in a way. I’m so proud of that song. We sped up the vocals so it was like 1980s Madonna. It’s an homage to someone who is very special in my life. It’s about cross-dressing,” – Manson gestures towards me – “and sexual confusion and sexual liberation. A lot of our songs have something a little subversive going on.”

I have something subversive going on myself: my tuck is killing me.

“Golden showers,” Marker cut in, citing an example from 1998’s “When I Grow Up.”

“That was our biggest fucking triumph,” Manson said. “That we got golden showers on pop radio!” Patrons of The Black Eagle, rejoice!

“Did you make up an excuse?” I asked.

“We didn’t have to. Nobody even mentioned it.”

“Nobody knows what that is?”

“Obviously not,” she said. “We often feel we’re getting little Trojan horses past everyone. And the only people who get it are the people coming from the same place as us. They’re all going, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you fucking managed that!’”

We hated to say goodbye, but we couldn’t be selfish and keep these fierce and funny people all to ourselves, especially with former fab Music Editor Elio Iannacci out in the hall getting pissed off waiting for an interview of his own. Believe me, I wanted to steal Ms Manson and take her downtown for drinks, but instead I’ll just have to dance around to their amazing music when I want their company. But before we left, I allowed Shirl and Steve to have some photos taken with me. I blew kisses and imagined taunting all the jealous 13-year-old Goth girls. (Watch out for m’weave!). Shirley did a little directing.

“Put the man in the middle,” she ordered.

“I am in the middle!” I replied indignantly.

“I mean Steve! C’mon, Donnarama, be a girly just for me!”

“I’ve been trying for years!” I said.

• Donnarama is a Toronto drag artist, the Coors Light Queen of Halloween and the Queen of Grapefruit. She performs every Saturday at Bar 501 with Miss Conception and Nicolette Brown. She last contributed to fab when she wrote the scandalous gossip column Chatterbox.