Madam Carmen

Transgender icon Carmen Rupe, who passed away aged 75, will be remembered for her vivacious style, colourful outlook, feisty attitude and tenacious spirit, as exemplified in this revealing and cheeky autobiographical account.

This is an extract from ‘Madam Carmen’, which is included in the 2008 anthology, Trans People In Love. These are Carmen’s own words.

I started my professional career in drag as a female impersonator in Sydney’s Kings Cross, in 1958 doing belly dancing and dancing with snakes. Of course it was all illegal and run by the mafia but in those days you were just a queen that got on with things. The Cross was a fascinating place full of sex workers, drag queens, male whores, curb crawlers, transvestites, strippers and dancers. It was an exciting place to be the first Maori drag queen from New Zealand.

I worked in clubs such as the Jewel Box as a female impersonator and then, when the famous Australian drag queen Carlotta opened Les Girls, I went to work there…I was also one of the regular performers at Sydney’s first gay bar called the Purple Onion.

When I was seventeen I went on holiday to Auckland and happened to meet a man who was much older then me. I was very innocent. We had dinner and drinks and I really thought we were just having a platonic relationship. It seems I had more drinks than dinner. Back at his apartment he photographed me naked, and after getting me even more drunk, ensured I was innocent no more. It was the ruin of me because after that, I was man crazy and that is how I’ve been ever since.

There was a girl when I was nineteen, though. She was really pretty like the English actress Diana Dors and such a lovely person. I was quite taken with her big time but when I started to cross-dress and do drag she could not really cope with it and it put her off me. I don’t know what happened to her but I often think about her and have her picture on my wall.

Men were my real passion. Before I started to live full time as a female, I would hang around in the gay bars which were often secret rooms at the back of hotels in those days. I would also go down to the docks with friends in New Zealand and we would pick up the sailors.

When I became a cabaret star and lived full time as female, men went nuts for me. They seemed to be absolutely fascinated. I suppose there were not that many of us around in those days so we probably had a larger fascination factor and mystique. I was dark and sultry and really enjoyed playing the sexy siren. I think I truly was Bizet’s Carmen. I was not like many of the other trans girls as I never wanted to meet just one man and settle down. I like variety and lots of it. The more men the better and it’s not something I’ve ever been ashamed of because I’m just me and I wanted to share it around...

I have fallen in love often and for brief periods but when a guy wanted to get too serious, I wanted to get someone else. There were two men, however, who I was quite in love with. One was a New Zealand All Blacks rugby player and the other a very famous cricketer. I have always sworn I would never reveal their names; after all, like the rest, they were married and had families. By now they would be grandfathers and I would not want to embarrass their families with me being so well known.

In the 1950s I took hormone pills which really feminized me and in the early 1970s I had breast augmentations. So I’m a brass with a rack. And what a rack, as I never do anything by halves. I never had genital surgery, though, and believe me, the men did not actually mind. For some of them it was the cherry on the cake and I was the most colorful cake in the shop...

I’ve been a nurse, soldier, male prostitute, night club bouncer, drag queen, striptease artist, cabaret act, madam, night club owner, businesswoman and street hustler, and enjoyed the lot. I never looked down on anyone and I hope in their kindness, people have the good grace not to look down on me either.

[Pictured] Vale Carmen Rupe. Photo: Jason Nichol

Trans People in Love, co-edited by Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox, is published by Routledge and is available from GLBTI bookshops.