I’m devoting this week’s column to Our Lady J’s upcoming Boob-Aid concert on December 16th, a benefit to raise money for her breasts. Looking back on the more than four years I’ve known the “trans songstress” (as she is often called), I want to express how much our relationship has meant to me and what I have learned about myself in watching her transformation. I first met Our Lady J when she was still Jonah, a boy, the hot young musical director of my friend Natalie Joy Johnson’s joint cabaret act with Adam Fleming at Feinstein’s at the Regency.
A week or so before their show, Natalie and Adam and Jonah did a couple of numbers on “Scott Nevins Presents” at Therapy. Despite the fact that Adam has one of the best asses on Broadway and I can rarely be distracted when a broad like Natalie is belting, I was smitten with Jonah. Who was this beautiful boy with the mad talent and black eyeliner? You have to imagine Adam Lambert with good bone structure, and somehow just cooler – much, much cooler.
Their whole act was cool; certainly in a class of hipness far higher than most of what you’d call cabaret nowadays. Natalie and Adam’s fresh faces had just adorned ads all over town for the cult musical Bare and the fantastic Dirty Sugar photos promoting the Feinstein’s gig took that attitude a good deal further with both of them dressed as if out of a Japanese production of Oliver on acid (with a byline advertising accompaniment by their band “Barely Legal Asian Teen”) – they were about as cutting edge as you can get in musical theatre.
Still, though, there was no doubt at Feinstein’s that the most forward-looking artist performing that night was their musical director and pianist, the gorgeous gothy guy driving a sizzling rock band through captivating and striking arrangements of familiar songs spanning from the Beatles to George Michael, plus showtunes from several different eras and styles. The highlights of the night, though, for sure, were two original songs by Jonah – the Girl-From-Ipanema-esque “Pink Prada Purse” (just everything I love in the best songs: tuneful, witty, emotional, quirky, hilarious and memorable) and the perfectly pop “Here and There” (which was all those things and also heartbreaking).
They were as different as two songs can be, but also of a piece, and they illustrated a sophisticated, distinctive and formidable voice in this basically unknown songwriter.
Everyone in the room was moved and it was wholeheartedly without hesitation that I agreed with Natalie, when in discussing our plans for her solo cabaret debut, she suggested Jonah for Musical Director. As we began working together, I was even more impressed with Jonah’s talent and creative work ethic. We would talk through a song and at the next meeting, he would have a fully formed, inspired arrangement blessing Natalie and me with an integrity of style and tone that is almost impossible to achieve in cabaret. And I’ll never forget the magic of Jonah at his keyboard in his crazy bedroom in Brooklyn with the sliding doors to the half-bath, from which Natalie would sit on the toilet and wail whatever earth-shattering new number Jonah had cooked up for her. Jonah spoke of his transgender inclination, but I don’t think he was completely committed yet, still dipping his toes in the water, so to speak, with snapshots of Amanda LePore and other landmark trannies tacked around the room, as if food for thought. Jonah did know that he wanted to be billed for our Joe’s Pub show as Our Lady Jonah and that he was going to perform in makeup, jewels and heels.
I was thrilled with the whole thing. Just as Natalie and Jonah and I had discussed a dissatisfaction with most of the cabaret performances we saw, how pop-culturally out of date and touch they came across, and just as we had strived to put together a show which harkened back to a sexier, more dangerous time in New York, when cabaret was more linked to the more interesting things in the rest of the culture, I was all too happy to add the cool cachet of a genderqueer artist to our line-up.
The show was a big success and people swooned for Jonah’s work. I couldn’t have been more proud, but something was disheartening me at the same time – riding home on the L Train to our respective Williamsburg apartments, after the final rehearsal, Jonah had told me that he was HIV positive.
At that time, I had known a handful of positive (or admittedly positive) people over the years, but never anyone my own age – shit, Jonah was a few years younger. It was devastating, a loss of innocence. I’d always believed that you could stay safe by generally playing by the rules, that having safe sex meant you were safe and that no one in my generation would get infected by a one-off fluke, a momentary lapse in judgment. And yet, here was Jonah – easily the most exciting and important artist I’d ever encountered in my years of collaborating with other young up-and-comers – casually mentioning it as a sidebar, an almost peripheral detail.
I’ll never forget how he phrased it, “Honey, I’ve got the hiv.”
I didn’t get that hiv (rhymes with “sieve”) was a pronunciation of the acronym for human immunodeficiency virus and had to ask, “What?” My mind raced to conjure a culture around that lingo, a whole world of experimental artists and tortured souls, bohemian bon vivants and angst ridden dilettantes – brilliant, dangerous cityfolk unlike the thoughtless spoiled suburbanites I grew up with.
Jonah would fill in more blanks in my idea of that world as we continued collaborating on further shows for Natalie and Jonah, now being billed as Our Lady J, began wearing more female accoutrements and more often. Then came her decision that she would indeed begin hormone therapy and dress exclusively in women’s clothes. And she would now be known as Jonnah (rhymes with “Donna”).
Cool. Fine with me, I’m good at name changes and switching pronouns. But looking back now, I see how uncomfortable I was with it, although I didn’t dare let myself know it. I have always prided myself on being “the least judgmental person I know.” “I’m far too self-involved to be judgmental.” “I don’t give a shit what other people do.” If there were something I did judge, it was judgmentalness itself.
I’ve often thought of this in terms of the common Old Gay dismissal of bisexuality. It’s no secret that men who come out as bisexual are often sneered at as merely stopping temporarily at the easy middleground of “Bi” before moving on to admitting who they really are in full. Indeed many of us, myself included, sought initially to identify as bi in just that manner. But how dare we scoff at someone’s definition of himself? Herself? What is true for us is not necessarily true for them.
Still, in this early period of Jonah’s transition to Jonnah, I found myself ill-at-ease when we would hang out. Now, Jonnah was the one sitting on the toilet en suite (in that crazy half-bathroom always more overflowing with HIV meds and beauty products) and I didn’t know who to be with her. The time we spent actually working was different, more comfortable, easier for me to define and categorize.
That’s the thing, I knew who I was and how to behave in relation to gay guys, straight guys, straight women, lesbians, but Jonnah’s changing left me confused about myself.
When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a girl. I hated sports and I loved playing with dolls and dressing up, even dressing up like a girl. I didn’t relate to other boys, but felt very simpatico with the girls. Adolescence, among other things, taught me to suppress that, which was hard because suppression is not part of my personality, but I did whatever little bit I could to fit in a bit more or stand out a bit less. Coming out in my late teens seemed to relieve that tension. I finally felt free. I still wanted to dress like a girl, but it seemed like a fun thing to do for parties and events, not like a representation of who I wanted to be.
Later in life, even this occasional drag became, well, a drag, when I found myself in full wig and make up, heels and falsies, meeting people not within the gates of a college campus, but in New York City. Even on Halloween, I felt a disconnect with myself in drag – it felt lame to extend a bedazzled gloved hand and say, “Hi, I’m Ben Rimalower. I’m Lonny Price’s assistant. I like musicals.” Drag was much more fun when I let gentlemen get the door and help me up the steps and light my cigarettes. But what was the point of meeting someone as Harlot O’Scara? They wouldn’t have met me, darling.
And I think, on a certain level, I actually believed that transgendered people – while certainly entitled to every legal right and to be treated with dignity – were not as evolved as I was. I would think, I can understand them wanting to dress like a woman, but how could anyone choose to mutilate their body?
And here I was, hanging out with the transitional Jonnah, feeling that same awkwardness. Jonnah, on the other hand, was flourishing, really coming into her own.
She had begun to focus her whole life on her work in a most together way, even saying that HIV had forced to her to get real, take a good look at herself, decided what was important, that it was her positive status that had motivated her to find herself as trans, as an artist and as a human being. She was churning out amazing new songs and had begun to perform spectacular solo concerts. They could only be called solo concerts because they were ALL ABOUT OUR LADY J.
She wrote the material, she arranged it, she put it together, she sang, she played piano, she chatted with the audience and the audience reveled in her. But she was not alone on that stage. Jonnah would fill even the smallest performance space with musicians and singers to achieve the rich sound she loves. If you caught one of her more recent (and legendary) Zipper Factory concerts and were amazed at her fitting a 15-piece orchestra and 50-person choir on that tiny stage, then you really would have marveled at her unpublicized solo concert debut at the Duplex where she had almost the same production squeezed in where a piano barely fits.
As Jonnah began to look like this breathtakingly beautiful, extremely tall woman, as I began to look at her as a woman, I began to feel more comfortable.
Oh, okay, I know what this is, now I know who I am. And then, I wondered, was I only finally comfortable with her as her appearance conformed to my idea of a woman? Does being trans take you so far on the spectrum of sexuality that you come back around the other side? Is that progressive or regressive? And it made me realize that we don’t come of age in a Petri dish, we grow up with our parents and our friends. We all understand ourselves in relation to others. We live in the world with people and those people are men and women and these are the primary colors, the broad strokes by which we identify ourselves. It is as reasonable that one person would change their gender to find harmony with themselves as another person being straight or gay. Or bi.
Nowadays, I feel great around Jonnah – not just because I think I know who she is, but because she knows who she is and her very success and happiness are inspiring tales of self-actualization. This is just one of the important messages in her brilliant, exhilarating work. I want her to be a huge star. Everyone needs to see her do her stuff. And I want to help her shake it!
Go see Boob-Aid! There are two shows this Wednesday, December 16th at 7 and 9 PM, with many fabulous guest stars including The Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. You’ll have the time of your life.
There’s also an online auction to raise more money selling memorabilia donated by such famous Our Lady J fans as Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, Margaret Cho and Tori Amos.
And if you can’t do any of that, then at least do yourself the favor of buying Our Lady J’s CD, or downloading her new iTunes single of “Pink Prada Purse.”
Their whole act was cool; certainly in a class of hipness far higher than most of what you’d call cabaret nowadays. Natalie and Adam’s fresh faces had just adorned ads all over town for the cult musical Bare and the fantastic Dirty Sugar photos promoting the Feinstein’s gig took that attitude a good deal further with both of them dressed as if out of a Japanese production of Oliver on acid (with a byline advertising accompaniment by their band “Barely Legal Asian Teen”) – they were about as cutting edge as you can get in musical theatre.
Still, though, there was no doubt at Feinstein’s that the most forward-looking artist performing that night was their musical director and pianist, the gorgeous gothy guy driving a sizzling rock band through captivating and striking arrangements of familiar songs spanning from the Beatles to George Michael, plus showtunes from several different eras and styles. The highlights of the night, though, for sure, were two original songs by Jonah – the Girl-From-Ipanema-esque “Pink Prada Purse” (just everything I love in the best songs: tuneful, witty, emotional, quirky, hilarious and memorable) and the perfectly pop “Here and There” (which was all those things and also heartbreaking).
They were as different as two songs can be, but also of a piece, and they illustrated a sophisticated, distinctive and formidable voice in this basically unknown songwriter.
Everyone in the room was moved and it was wholeheartedly without hesitation that I agreed with Natalie, when in discussing our plans for her solo cabaret debut, she suggested Jonah for Musical Director. As we began working together, I was even more impressed with Jonah’s talent and creative work ethic. We would talk through a song and at the next meeting, he would have a fully formed, inspired arrangement blessing Natalie and me with an integrity of style and tone that is almost impossible to achieve in cabaret. And I’ll never forget the magic of Jonah at his keyboard in his crazy bedroom in Brooklyn with the sliding doors to the half-bath, from which Natalie would sit on the toilet and wail whatever earth-shattering new number Jonah had cooked up for her. Jonah spoke of his transgender inclination, but I don’t think he was completely committed yet, still dipping his toes in the water, so to speak, with snapshots of Amanda LePore and other landmark trannies tacked around the room, as if food for thought. Jonah did know that he wanted to be billed for our Joe’s Pub show as Our Lady Jonah and that he was going to perform in makeup, jewels and heels.
I was thrilled with the whole thing. Just as Natalie and Jonah and I had discussed a dissatisfaction with most of the cabaret performances we saw, how pop-culturally out of date and touch they came across, and just as we had strived to put together a show which harkened back to a sexier, more dangerous time in New York, when cabaret was more linked to the more interesting things in the rest of the culture, I was all too happy to add the cool cachet of a genderqueer artist to our line-up.
The show was a big success and people swooned for Jonah’s work. I couldn’t have been more proud, but something was disheartening me at the same time – riding home on the L Train to our respective Williamsburg apartments, after the final rehearsal, Jonah had told me that he was HIV positive.
At that time, I had known a handful of positive (or admittedly positive) people over the years, but never anyone my own age – shit, Jonah was a few years younger. It was devastating, a loss of innocence. I’d always believed that you could stay safe by generally playing by the rules, that having safe sex meant you were safe and that no one in my generation would get infected by a one-off fluke, a momentary lapse in judgment. And yet, here was Jonah – easily the most exciting and important artist I’d ever encountered in my years of collaborating with other young up-and-comers – casually mentioning it as a sidebar, an almost peripheral detail.
I’ll never forget how he phrased it, “Honey, I’ve got the hiv.”
I didn’t get that hiv (rhymes with “sieve”) was a pronunciation of the acronym for human immunodeficiency virus and had to ask, “What?” My mind raced to conjure a culture around that lingo, a whole world of experimental artists and tortured souls, bohemian bon vivants and angst ridden dilettantes – brilliant, dangerous cityfolk unlike the thoughtless spoiled suburbanites I grew up with.
Jonah would fill in more blanks in my idea of that world as we continued collaborating on further shows for Natalie and Jonah, now being billed as Our Lady J, began wearing more female accoutrements and more often. Then came her decision that she would indeed begin hormone therapy and dress exclusively in women’s clothes. And she would now be known as Jonnah (rhymes with “Donna”).
Cool. Fine with me, I’m good at name changes and switching pronouns. But looking back now, I see how uncomfortable I was with it, although I didn’t dare let myself know it. I have always prided myself on being “the least judgmental person I know.” “I’m far too self-involved to be judgmental.” “I don’t give a shit what other people do.” If there were something I did judge, it was judgmentalness itself.
I’ve often thought of this in terms of the common Old Gay dismissal of bisexuality. It’s no secret that men who come out as bisexual are often sneered at as merely stopping temporarily at the easy middleground of “Bi” before moving on to admitting who they really are in full. Indeed many of us, myself included, sought initially to identify as bi in just that manner. But how dare we scoff at someone’s definition of himself? Herself? What is true for us is not necessarily true for them.
Still, in this early period of Jonah’s transition to Jonnah, I found myself ill-at-ease when we would hang out. Now, Jonnah was the one sitting on the toilet en suite (in that crazy half-bathroom always more overflowing with HIV meds and beauty products) and I didn’t know who to be with her. The time we spent actually working was different, more comfortable, easier for me to define and categorize.
That’s the thing, I knew who I was and how to behave in relation to gay guys, straight guys, straight women, lesbians, but Jonnah’s changing left me confused about myself.
When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a girl. I hated sports and I loved playing with dolls and dressing up, even dressing up like a girl. I didn’t relate to other boys, but felt very simpatico with the girls. Adolescence, among other things, taught me to suppress that, which was hard because suppression is not part of my personality, but I did whatever little bit I could to fit in a bit more or stand out a bit less. Coming out in my late teens seemed to relieve that tension. I finally felt free. I still wanted to dress like a girl, but it seemed like a fun thing to do for parties and events, not like a representation of who I wanted to be.
Later in life, even this occasional drag became, well, a drag, when I found myself in full wig and make up, heels and falsies, meeting people not within the gates of a college campus, but in New York City. Even on Halloween, I felt a disconnect with myself in drag – it felt lame to extend a bedazzled gloved hand and say, “Hi, I’m Ben Rimalower. I’m Lonny Price’s assistant. I like musicals.” Drag was much more fun when I let gentlemen get the door and help me up the steps and light my cigarettes. But what was the point of meeting someone as Harlot O’Scara? They wouldn’t have met me, darling.
And I think, on a certain level, I actually believed that transgendered people – while certainly entitled to every legal right and to be treated with dignity – were not as evolved as I was. I would think, I can understand them wanting to dress like a woman, but how could anyone choose to mutilate their body?
And here I was, hanging out with the transitional Jonnah, feeling that same awkwardness. Jonnah, on the other hand, was flourishing, really coming into her own.
She had begun to focus her whole life on her work in a most together way, even saying that HIV had forced to her to get real, take a good look at herself, decided what was important, that it was her positive status that had motivated her to find herself as trans, as an artist and as a human being. She was churning out amazing new songs and had begun to perform spectacular solo concerts. They could only be called solo concerts because they were ALL ABOUT OUR LADY J.
She wrote the material, she arranged it, she put it together, she sang, she played piano, she chatted with the audience and the audience reveled in her. But she was not alone on that stage. Jonnah would fill even the smallest performance space with musicians and singers to achieve the rich sound she loves. If you caught one of her more recent (and legendary) Zipper Factory concerts and were amazed at her fitting a 15-piece orchestra and 50-person choir on that tiny stage, then you really would have marveled at her unpublicized solo concert debut at the Duplex where she had almost the same production squeezed in where a piano barely fits.
As Jonnah began to look like this breathtakingly beautiful, extremely tall woman, as I began to look at her as a woman, I began to feel more comfortable.
Oh, okay, I know what this is, now I know who I am. And then, I wondered, was I only finally comfortable with her as her appearance conformed to my idea of a woman? Does being trans take you so far on the spectrum of sexuality that you come back around the other side? Is that progressive or regressive? And it made me realize that we don’t come of age in a Petri dish, we grow up with our parents and our friends. We all understand ourselves in relation to others. We live in the world with people and those people are men and women and these are the primary colors, the broad strokes by which we identify ourselves. It is as reasonable that one person would change their gender to find harmony with themselves as another person being straight or gay. Or bi.
Nowadays, I feel great around Jonnah – not just because I think I know who she is, but because she knows who she is and her very success and happiness are inspiring tales of self-actualization. This is just one of the important messages in her brilliant, exhilarating work. I want her to be a huge star. Everyone needs to see her do her stuff. And I want to help her shake it!
Go see Boob-Aid! There are two shows this Wednesday, December 16th at 7 and 9 PM, with many fabulous guest stars including The Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. You’ll have the time of your life.
There’s also an online auction to raise more money selling memorabilia donated by such famous Our Lady J fans as Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, Margaret Cho and Tori Amos.
And if you can’t do any of that, then at least do yourself the favor of buying Our Lady J’s CD, or downloading her new iTunes single of “Pink Prada Purse.”