The Cockettes (2002) | Interview with Fayette Hauser

I've been as good as I could possibly have been to not let you tell me too many stories in the past so I mean I know a certain amount about your past but there's a lot that I don't know too so a lot of my stuff is going to be new to me okay so um are we are we are ready to go ahead yeah [Music] where'd you grow up I grew up in New Jersey and in the 50s well late 50s 60s I was a teenager in the 60s actually and late 60s were you always a bad girl yes tell me how did you happen to become a bad girl well I mean I was a bad girl in my heart always and um but I I grew up I was a Catholic school girl in a small town in New Jersey and aspired to be an adventurous I mean that was my goal in life was to uh seek adventure and I wanted to live in New York I used to go off as soon as I could drive uh I would go off to Manhattan by myself and wander around the city all the time when I was in high school and come home late and you know I was supposed to be in an art school but I used to skip that and just wander the streets you know 42nd Street 42nd Street was incredible in the 60s there were so many things there that aren't there now anyway but um and then I wanted to live in New York I went to school first I went to art school in Boston and then I moved to Manhattan but then I read the Life Magazine about uh you know the with the great Irving pen picture of the Grateful Dead and Janice Joplin and the whole family dog photo that Irving Penn had taken and that inspired me to go west so I went to I first went to Colorado I went to Aspen Colorado for the summer and um just kind of spent the summer in the woods in a tent and and I met I met Nancy Gurley there who was the wife of James Gurley from Big Brother in the holding company and she was she was incredible she was the woman who changed my life really um she picked me up hitchhiking in her van and you know they stopped the van she was there not with James with another guy kind of a surfer guy and her her son Ango angoishi who was about two years old that mean you know Mushroom Man right and um so they stopped the van and I opened the back of the van and out came this mixture of hash and incense and the whole interior of the van was decorated with velvet and dried flowers on the dashboard and skulls and oh I mean it was it was an environment it was gorgeous and I climbed in and I never climbed out I mean that was my rabbit hole was that experience and so after that I was with her every day and we would walk around the countryside in the hills in Aspen and she would tell me stories she had been uh she had a master's degree in English she was from Detroit where a lot of them in the family dog were from Detroit and then they came they went West and they went to Mexico and took mushrooms with the Yaki Indians in Michoacan and so she was blown out and she could tell a story like nobody could because she had you know all this background behind her of education and so she just every day she just told me the story of San Francisco and what was going on and all the people there it was it was a walking book it was incredible and so then I followed her there and that's how I ended up in San Francisco and that was Halloween I think one of the first really big experience I got there around Halloween 1968. and immediately we went to the old Fillmore where uh Janice and big brother were playing and it was so this experience okay good first start my hair looks weird at any point I loved we just talked about sort of the metaphor going in through the Looking Glass and I think it was probably a number of those situations that will come up in this story who were you before you got into the van and what was the I mean there's various stages of you being a New York person and finding out about San Francisco uh well I was the same person in my head but [Music] um I think the most important thing about San Francisco was that people were allowed to live at the end of their imagination and not only be in their head with their imagination um that's what hallucinogenics Unleashed all that but also the people there it was a very supportive environment and if you produced something if you either wore something if whatever you came out with everyone said yes let's have more and that's what everyone did with each other so that you were really encouraged to live out whatever fantastic fantasy whatever thing you know your imagination could produce and um I mean I came from the same repressive environment that everyone else did in a small town plus the fact that I came from Catholic School only Catholic High School thank God but you know so that uh I was as shy as the next person but I definitely in my heart was seeking something and uh so when I came to San Francisco I saw how people were living and then people were able to live out all these things that were in their head I mean also in the 60s you had all the great European Cinema and I used to go to those movies endlessly I would sit in those movies all day long in New York I would go to New York and I would find all these truffaut and Goddard movies and sit and you know and so I was very inspired by that um I was into my painting I I originally went to Aspen to paint in the woods which I did I set up a tent and I had two easels one was a morning painting one was an afternoon painting and after I was there a while I would sit in the nude and paint and then people would come visit me and they would have to take their clothes off too and sit and you know model for me or something like that and I was also into photography black and white photography because of the European influence so I had a lot of these things going on inside of me but it just took that culture to really bring it out to allow me to live all of that fully which uh that was the greatest value of all of that had you done psychedelics before you came to San Francisco a little bit I mean it was so different in New York because people were very serious about uh psychedelics and even about smoking pot when I was in school Tim Tim Leary was uh experimenting with us at MIT and when you were in college you could make money by being a guinea pig from all these weird experiments all over town and so a friend of mine was part of one of his early LSD experiments and I remember we were walking on the beach and he was telling me about it and he said that Timothy Leary took a little pin and put a tiny dot on his hand and his he completely uh you know his mind exploded and so he did these guided LSD experiments and it was that was the first time I ever heard about it and it was his telling of it you know I said to him whoa does it answer all your questions and he said well you know you just don't ask the same questions and I'll never forget that because it really it made me want to experience that it made me want to uh go out and find all those things too and uh I mean I think he Timothy Leary was the great Liberator of all of that I think if it weren't for him I don't know where we'd all be and in San Francisco was the energy was different though oh okay well in well like I was saying in New York uh even if if you had if you took acid you were in a group and you all wrote down things and it was very serious and you plan it out even if you smoked pot you'd be talking about it oh I feel this I think that but when we went to San Francisco it was one big party you know and you just took the drug and you know went out and had a good time and so it really loosened me up a lot a lot right off the bat and you meet a gang of people right away well no I had I went right away Nancy Gurley had told me about this girl Patty Cakes who lived with Paula on Noe Street and so that's where I went oh I had well let's see I had one friend that was in San Francisco who was an old boyfriend that was uh from art school he was a Boston a friend of mine and he was living there with these two dykes Franny and Sherry and so I went there first actually and stayed with him for a few days until I could find Nancy and Patty and when I first met Patty Cakes she was she was the ultimate groupie she was very gorgeous like a brunette Marilyn Monroe with a long wonderful legs I mean everyone adored her she was Jimi hendrix's girlfriend she was the you know kind of the the pet of Big Brother I mean everyone she was totally involved in the whole thing and so I moved in with her of course and she had a big front room on Noe Street that was you know just filled with a lot of stuff and an enormous bed probably the biggest bed I'd ever seen up to that point and we both of us slept in the bed and then you know in the middle of the night some guy would come in on a speed run and leap into the bed and I'd wake up and she'd be you know having sex with this guy and I think oh isn't that that's how wonderful that is that kind of thing but everyone came to that house the house was uh Victorian flat San Francisco flat but it was filled with I mean everyone went to the flea markets in those days and and filled their houses with the most incredible vintage when you walk down the hallway you open the front door and the hallway was lined with purple velvet drapes and in in the back of that was the kitchen which was had these lace curtains and all this beautiful light would filter through and uh it was a big round table in the kitchen and these two overstuffed chairs and that's where you sat and you rolled the joints and everything happened in the kitchen and then Paula had her bedroom which was also very turned out and full-on victoriana and So within a week of being there I was kind of the new person in town and uh within a week I had taken every drug there was you know because if you're new then everyone wants to turn you on so that's how it started anyway was there anything scary about it no as a matter of fact no uh I I was never scared in those days I mean I was never scared in those days I don't know how that was but uh even when I think about living in Aspen I I was alone in the woods in a little tent and I wasn't afraid I would never do that now you know uh no in San Francisco San Francisco was the the police were very lenient it was an incredibly um it was an innocent time too because there was not a lot of people that were doing this there was really a small one it seemed like a lot but there was a small culture of people so you could walk around on the street at night and nothing would happen to you you could um go off on a trip and just wander around for days and nothing would happen to you you know except the kind of things you would want to happen to you but um no it wasn't it wasn't frightening at all and you just had all this time to hang out and and let me take a break for a second I I kind of go you know I feel like I'm talking about this and I'm thinking about that and sometimes I don't exactly know which way to go with what I'm talking about this is okay so far it's great it's Dino it's great yeah okay feel free to pause so do I and I do in my dreams my Astro body lives there you know go ahead I'm sorry feel free to um you know come to a fork in the road as you want to think about which way to go you have to remember that you're editing and I'm not doing a monologue that's what it feels like I'm doing some models they're great monologues I mean you're answering questions that I would ask without me asking oh okay I mean this whole thing it's special it was special it's important for kids now to know about this I think okay yep now did you already were you dressing up I mean what do you look like in those days well when I met Nancy she she was in Long velvet skirts and lace and she had lace in her hair and her hair was long and my hair was really long then too um I had started uh dressing looking at vintage when I was in Boston we used to go to the thrift store to get things for our still lives and that's when I first because the the thrift stores were packed with stuff I mean nobody wanted it you know so I was even buying 40 stresses in Victorian beautiful things that were just there for the taking and so I had stuff but I really wasn't wearing it on the street it was kind of hanging up on my wall and I would admire it and I would wear it maybe for something special but I wasn't walking around in it all the time and when I met Nancy that's what she was wearing she was wearing everything that she thought was the most beautiful all the time and so I thought yes that's I'm gonna do that too so um so when I started living in San Francisco I just discarded everything that was uh even a remote remnant of my Suburban past and completely got into velvet and lace and just everything very beautiful was that something that Drew you to other people in the group people to you the the drag the clothing thing oh absolutely absolutely okay um okay let's see it's such a vast subject people really Express themselves through their look um because a lot of the times people would be so stoned they would become non-verbal myself included so that you really expressed yourself with how you looked and how you presented yourself that was that was definitely the truth so your truth you had you wore it and um also any type of fantasy I mean whatever fantasy you wanted to explore that's how you exploit it too was by uh putting it on so I mean I had a deep Victorian fantasy so I loved running around in long skirts I mean there was something about the the other eras and finding clothes from another era and wearing them as your irregular clothes took you so far away from anything normal you were immediately into the sexuality of that period you you felt like a different person it really brought out aspects of your personality that otherwise you wouldn't even think about um also we were very into see-through you know everyone was got rid of their underwear really quick and uh you know so lace tops and or you know or organza and things like that and did you start to notice other people who were particularly spectacular that's how you met other people um I remember when I first met Nikki we didn't speak we didn't speak for a month and we completely communicated through drag um I was living on divisadera in this was uh Patty and I had moved and we were living under visadero and Nikki had come from Seattle with Harlow and was living on Lyon Street right around the corner and um there was a a bar down the street that gave like free spaghetti night on Wednesday and uh one of the other people that was living in the house had met Nikki and came over and said there's this people living around the corner that you've got to meet and uh so they came over one day and Nikki walked into my bedroom and he was all in purple leather purple and orange leather from head to foot he was gorgeous and I just looked at him and I didn't know what to say to him I was in a particularly non-verbal moment anyway and he looked at me and we just didn't say a word and he went around and picked up things in my apartment he picked up this velvet I had it was an opera coat it was this dark green velvet Opera coat that was Victorian and he looked at it he took off the sleeves he sewed up the armholes he put one of the sleeves this is all in a matter of minutes he put one of the sleeves on the back of the coat made a cape with a hood put it on me put the hood on me and I was in a Rosetti painting I mean immediately I just went oh it was it was one of my darkest fantasies come to life and so I was immediately in love with Nikki and that's what he did he dressed you up and did your makeup and you just became something even more incredible and then we went out and we would go to North Beach and um he was living with Harlow and you know we would get very dressed up very dressed up it would take hours that would be the daily routine you'd go either shopping and then you would you know you would be expressing yourself with your clothes and with uh the costumes and and then we would go to North Beach and that's kind of where everyone uh hung out then in those days and that's where we met everyone else So eventually I moved over to Lion Street and we met Goldie she moved in we met uh this Trio Joey Richard and Charles and they moved in and Harlow was living there there were so many people living there at one point that if you came home too late there was no space on the floor to lay down you know you had to like claim a a part of the rug or something but the place was incredible because everybody was into the same thing so the place was draped and there was flowers and feathers and it was fantastic it was it was like a harem in there so and then we met uh we met Gary Cherry then too so we were all going out in a big pack um then there was a fire in the apartment below us so the apartment was kind of like on stilts so when the wind blew it moved like that so we knew we had to move so Gary Cherry knew scrumbly and he was living on Bush and Baker and so we were invited on mass to move in so we took over the basement at Bush and Baker and we laid down all these carpets and uh you know Persian hangings and we created this another Harem in the basement of bush and Baker and um and that's how we all met had you had much contact with gay men before not at all tell me about that well that really wasn't an issue in those days I don't think that um it's almost like it went from one extreme to the other I mean I never knew anybody that was gay I never even thought about it I didn't even know what it was uh when I was in school I mean even in Boston oh no I take that back in Boston I went out with a guy who um at one point confessed to me that he had strange feelings and I I didn't know what he was talking about I didn't know that he was telling me that he was gay and I was I just thought he was very sensitive and uh but then when I got to San Francisco it really wasn't an issue that you would say that because people were more who they were inside and being gay was maybe an aspect of their greater personality or their Persona which was the kind of which was the thing that you were really interested in exploring your inner self your persona um but if you don't have much history or background with gay guys what does Goldy Glitters look like when you make golden Glitters Goldie Glitters did not look like Goldie Glitters when we first met Goldie Glitters Goldie Glitters had just come from Florida I thought they were fantastic I thought they were fascinating um they were all wonderful I mean everyone was wonderful in their own way and uh I mean in those days saying that stop saying that um you didn't even know someone's last name you didn't ask them where they were from or anything well that was irrelevant um people presented themselves as as to who they wanted to be and their creation their own personal creation at the moment and so you knew people they all you know I was fayetta and Nikki and Gary cherry and uh Goldie and all these people you had no I mean it was totally in the moment and and I realized that we were living in some kind of parallel world because it was only our own culture that everyone was really interested in so being gay people were gay and bisexual and and sexuality was under such exploration too at the moment that people didn't really classify themselves in that way as either you know I'm straight I'm gay that didn't really exist all those boundaries were gone so when I first met Goldie Goldie was this very tall curly-headed boy from Florida and I remember sitting in on Lion Street and hearing his tales about Florida and about how he had this man that was taking care of him but then he had to be on his own and it was this kind of tragic tale and it was I never heard anybody talk like that before I never heard any kind of story like that so I thought it was fascinating Okay so but then we all you know when we all moved in to uh to Bush and Baker with scrumbly scrumly was a musician and then there was music everywhere so tell me how hang on face absolutely fantastic sometimes I feel like I'm going not bad I'm like sitting here just I'm trying tell me if I start drooling or something oh that'd be great oh God I think I spit or anything yeah do they go um oh with the women yeah yeah I have to touch up my lipstick [Music] but sure I'm sure the men are as vain as the women in this regard I've been looking forward to this for such a long time oh me too in a way definitely now I want to know use please use his name in the answer yes you probably already know the question how I met hibiscus well that is the next logical question okay is the sound working okay with the way she's coming forward and back yeah okay okay tell me tell me the story how I met hibiscus well we were on the street I was with Gary Cherry we were walking down the street and Bush and Baker was up on a hill and I looked down the hill and in the distance was coming this creature that was so colorful the two of us stopped in our tracks and just stared and this was beyond anything that even at that point that I had seen anyone Express at all uh it was this combination of robes and great headdress and all these colors moving in profusion coming up the street and we just looked and that was hibiscus and he was coming to see us he was coming to Bush and Baker he was coming to present himself to Bush and Baker because he had he had seen us he had heard about us and he wanted to move in he wanted to be with us because we were all of like mind at that point so we we just you know he crossed the street and came up to us and we just stood there and he said I'm hibiscus and we said yeah so we just went back to the house and uh introduced him to everyone and he moved in the next day if not that day because he said this is where I belong I remember he just said um I'm a dancer I'm an artist and I want to be with the artists and so can I live with you and of course I mean all you had to do was ask and that's it you know and so of course he moved in and um so he said it's not enough that that we're just we're on the street like this we need to be on the stage and I'll never forget that moment when he said that I thought what an idea what a great idea what a leader he was a leader in that in that way absolutely because he had been born he always said he was born in a trunk in New York and so uh he had been he came out of very liberal theater his his uh parents his whole family was in theater and um so right from the beginning he talked about putting it putting whatever we were doing which was as he had very undefined on the stage so his idea was to create a book and he got this big book and he said let's make a scrapbook of all our ideas all our fantasies whatever it is that you love that you want to express that you would want to see on the stage and we'll put it in this book and then we'll start we'll do the performances out of this book and we decided this was in uh this was in 1969 this was probably probably met him around the spring or the summer of 1969. I think it was late spring and um he said we should have our show ready for New Year's Eve so that we can show the new theater for the new decade for 1970. and so we went around looking for a theater and we found one in the Fillmore in the funkiest part of the film where there was an old theater that was had been a porno theater and it probably still was and was owned by this guy you know bald guy with a cigar and we talked him into it so uh that's where we were gonna do it initially