CHAOS ARTIST: an interview with Phatima Rude
On October 12, 2017, I sat down with genderqueer performance artist Phatima Rude to talk about drag, fashion, and San Francisco nightlife. Fires were raging in the North Bay, and ash fell on us like snow during our conversation at an outdoor cafe on Market Street. The city felt apocalyptic — little did we know how common orange skies and masked faces would become in the years ahead.
During our far-ranging conversation, Phatima told me about her connection to San Francisco, the power of chaos-energy, and her views on living in the “in-between.”
Yesterday, I heard news of Phatima’s death in her apartment in Portland, OR. I was flooded with memories of her wildness, love, and brilliance on and offstage. It is with sadness for our loss and love of her audacious living that I share her words below. May she continue to inspire, influence, and shock us all.
JH Phrydas: Make sure we’re rolling. Okay, great. If you could just-
Phatima Rude: Hello, hello, hello. Hello. Hello.
JH: If you don’t mind just stating your name?
Phatima: Phatima Rude. Esquire.
JH: Hi Phatima! I’m so excited to chat with you. As you know, I’m collecting stories about Mr. David Glamamore and San Francisco nightlife for a book I’m working on. So naturally, I had to talk to you.
Phatima: Oh, wow. Thank you. I’m really happy you’re doing it also because our history is what makes us — what our lives have been about. And to be able to collect those stories and experiences is integral to our history.
Our history hasn’t been written for very long, and it’s very, very minimal. You know, nightlife runs San Francisco—whether people acknowledge it or not. The main reason folks come here is, yes, the sights and all that, but a lot of the time, it’s the nightlife — these experiences in the outer realms of the city. You know? And that’s where we all met and found each other. That’s how I met David, that’s how I met all of these people, and we all kind of co-mingled. Once we found each other, we were like, [excited] “Okay!” So, let’s hold on to wherever we’re at, and make things happen — make art happen — and just get it out there into the universe, and just let it go, and do whatever the fuck you want.
That’s one of our greatest abilities — confrontation. David and other performers get to be incredibly confrontational with the audience in this city. That’s what we do. It’s our art. You get people off their phone — outside of the screen — and actually experience what’s happening in front of you. Live. That’s what it’s all about. The live part is important.
JH: Why do you think we share this similar feeling — that when we got to San Francisco, it just felt like home. In your documentary [Ladies and Gentlemen, Phatima Rude], you talk about space and how important that is to our identity and our lives and how we express ourselves. What do you think it is about San Francisco? Where does that magic come from?
Phatima: I don’t know. It’s this innate thing. I always call it our “snow globe,” because from the outside, it looks quaint, and beautiful, and shiny, and sparkly, and then, when you get inside and you’re here, it’s like, “Wait a minute. This isn’t the same as I thought.” And then you look outside of the glass — it looks huge and scary and foreboding. There’s comfort in the snow globe. There’s a connection that immediately grabs you here.
When me and my mother moved here, as soon as we stepped off the bus — even though we had no place to live, we had no money, we had nothing. Nothing. And it was home. I knew, and it was like 7:04 in the morning. I remember it that well. That’s what a lot of us share about this place. It’s a comfort. The comfort is here, but it’s also been, for many years, becoming less comfortable. And it’s gotten a lot harder to even survive, or even sustain oneself. You know, just sustaining. And that’s wrong. That’s just absolutely wrong. The people in the nightlife who drive the city are barely sustaining themselves and having to leave. And each time that happens, we lose more of the comfort and connection, and it gets scarier and just uncomfortable. Or dissonant, I guess. There’s a lot of noise. Kind of a noisy Langoliers kind of feeling. You know? Like it’s coming, but you don’t know where, and you don’t know what’s causing it. You’re trying, but you keep feeling, “Is there something gonna happen?” And it could. Anything could happen.
JH: You moved to San Francisco in the late ’80s. Do you feel like that Langoliers feeling is always getting stronger, or does it shift, slow, change, or even reverse?
Phatima: It ebbs and flows. Political strife or economic strife are prime fodder for art and performance. Because you have a common foe. You have a common thing to focus at. Not on, but at. The late ‘90s—when the AIDS crisis and the drug companies and all of that was happening—was an amazing time here for art. The ’90s were kind of like the ‘60’s. It’s kind of like every 30 years, all of a sudden, there’s like, “Boom!” A creative explosion. I feel like we’re entering into another one now.
But it’s tricky. I think the biggest thing is the double-edged sword of RuPaul’s Drag Race. There is the influence of its exposure for people that have never seen it — but it’s also narrow. That’s their vision of what drag is, or what it should be, or all of a sudden, your goal is to get on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Or copying or emulating it, you know?
You have to find your own voice. You have to figure that out, and you have to get rid of the Langoliers. That’s there, and you need to figure out, “How can I make that go away?” Or, “What do I find in myself to make that go away?” And I think that is drag a lot of times. It’s that “let go,” that “release,” that clench and release of the build-up, and then the doing, and then it’s done, and then the “let’s do it again.”
Our spaces are disappearing right and left. And it’s scary. That’s really frightening. The Dot Com era was the same kind of thing, where all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, god. Where do we go now? Where’s open?” Nothing. There was a good five years where the city was kind of dead. It was kind of like a ghost town here. There were random things, but nothing really happening. After Club Uranus, and Chaos, and all that, The Queer Nation Variation happened, then it crashed. And then eventually Trannyshack started — or, as I call it, “singing for our supper.” And you know, it was bare bones — it was like being in your basement with a flashlight and a box doing your show for your neighbor or your friend. Which is kind of like Andy Hardy: “Let’s do a show! Let’s get together and we’ll make this happen.” And all of a sudden, we have a full stage. Some people would say, “Wait a minute. These kids couldn’t build that.” But we did. It’s space, and we create the space, and we create the reality in the space. Or surreal reality, which I think is far more entertaining.
JH: David tells this amazing story about going to the DNA Lounge in the ’90s right when he moved to San Francisco from New York. He walked in and saw you go-go dancing and said to himself: “I’m home.” Do you remember that night?
Phatima: Oh yes. My friend Matt and I put on a party back then at DNA called Itch, and we had a group of crazy, very intense go-go performers. The night David saw me, I was doing my Buddha: I was covered in dark paint and glitter. The club had these huge square blocks that we would dance on. At that time, I could still do a lot of contortion, so I was in a ball rolling around like a gigantic Buddha statue—in a diaper. That was perfectly fine. Go-go dancing wasn’t necessarily trying to look hot, where you’re wearing the perfect shorts and having the perfect body.
Have some fucking fun with it! Life can be boring — find some way to entertain yourself, and you’ll entertain other people. My favorite performers (like David) connect to something deeper: the universal consciousness, or the chaos of life. It’s a gift to be able to show people—and let them find—the chaos.
’Cause it’s great. Chaos is amazing. Chaos is what we create, and it, in turn, creates sex. It creates energy. It attracts these vital triggers in our body. For someone watching a show, they can feel that connection and find that chaos in themselves for a short time. It’s not easy to get to, but it’s there. It’s hard to share that. You have to find it. Someone can’t give you your phone, and all of a sudden, you’re there. You just have to find it, and I think that’s one of my favorite things about San Francisco, is that there’s always this beautiful chaos going on.
JH: You just got back from living in Philly. Did you perform while you were out there?
Phatima: No. I wasn’t even there that long. Not even a month and a half. Expectations can be hard. Can be really painful… It was weird. I had no tether. No connection. It was kind of like floating in a negative sea. I didn’t have my family tree like here in San Francisco. Family tree, that’s the other thing now that kind of annoys me is that because of this Drag Race, there’s a lot of the “mother-daughter,” “mother-sister,” “this one begat that one,” you know? We all got out of our families because we hated each other, or we were abused, or we just hated it. It kind of reminds me of high school, and I hated high school.
JH: Me too.
Phatima: I like the term “flow sheet” better than family tree.
JH: Or “star constellation.”
Phatima: Exactly. I didn’t have my constellation — I had no connection. I felt like I was floating and didn’t have anything to grab onto. I had no ground to stand on. Not even with my husband. We didn’t consummate our relationship. It was more like sharing a bed with a grandpa.
I was expecting a lot. I am a romantic. I always dreamed of a life that included the perfect house and a white picket fence and a legion of dogs. There was a house, but it was far from perfect. Including us. It’s like he expected the Phatima from 20 years ago, which was when we first met. He was a stalker-fan of mine back then. When we began chatting, he only showed me one part of him. I didn’t know all the others personalities he had within him.
It wasn’t long til he slapped me really hard. It instantly woke me up. All of a sudden, I could see everything in him, and I knew this was not going to be the last time he hit me. And when he kicked me out, I came back here.
Now, I couldn’t care less. Which is great! When I was younger, I held on to resentment and stories and fights. Years later, these arguments would still be going in my head. So, Philly was actually an amazing experience. Even though it was intense, it woke me up. Like waking up, and then waking up. You know? I feel much more here — in my body, and in my head. I was always very weak. I was a people pleaser. I’m not interested in living like that anymore, after Philly.
JH: You mentioned earlier you’re not into the “mother-daughter” dynamic, but you are a mother, aren’t you?
Phatima: I’ve recently just kind of been pushed into being a mother. For a long time, I had no children. They all self-aborted. So, the ones that have survived are much more recent, which is great. I do like it. I just don’t like hierarchical things. That whole like, tier thing. The “family tree” again. We don’t fucking need these tiers. The whole “this one’s better than that one” kind of thing. Competition like that is banal. It’s just beige.
JH: David showed me a photo of you wearing a corset he made for you.
Phatima: He did. At the time, I had a 46-inch natural waist. And he made me a corset that went down to 30 inches.
JH: What?
Phatima: Mhmm. It had 28 bones of metal, so it stood up by itself. I was doing a club at the Stud, and he brought the corset to me 20 minutes before I needed to be on stage. He puts it on me for the first time and just laces the sucker full — completely closes it. So, my chest, everything… I can barely breathe. I mean, and all my organs were shifted. My chest was 54–30–48. It was amazing. Of course, I was doing lots of drugs and things, so I didn’t notice it. I could feel my kidney shift. When I took it off, I could feel them slide back down.
JH: Do you still have them?
Phatima: No. I was doing a photo shoot, and I had the corset on — at the time, I was just starting to do the negative heel thing where I cut the heels off my shoes, and I duct taped a shoe to my foot. And so, I was walking en pointe in a corset at the Phoenix Hotel. After the photo shoot, the ground was painted and really slick. I fell. When I fell, the corset burst open, and the smooth bust literally flew out of it and hit the bar. It was under so much pressure that when I fell, it literally shot out across the room. I mean, it could have killed somebody!
JH: Do you feel like your performances bleed into your daily life?
Phatima: Yes. I used to do makeup for a photographer named Haruku Yano. She’s in New York now, and I worked on like 120 head shots with her. She taught me that a head shot has to be EVERYTHING in one second—or less than a second. She told me: “Whatever your goal is, say it out loud. Say, ‘Smile.’ Now say, ‘Smile with your eyes.’” In those days, you used a roll of film. You only got one roll for a head shot, and if you didn’t nail it in those 12 or 24 shots, you’re fucked. And I hope you enjoyed your four- or five-hundred-dollar shoot! That’s always stayed with me, because it’s really a powerful tool. That’s exactly how you self-actualize, you know? You see it, you say it, and you be it, kind of thing. You have to say it, and see it, and feel it to translate it to something.
JH: And it’s not just the song that you’re saying and feeling—you’re saying and feeling your body, too.
Phatima: Yeah. I like calling it dialect.
JH: Dialect?
Phatima: Because it’s communication. It’s how we communicate and how our voice, our body, everything says something. It’s a magical thing. You find it in you and then connect it to the earth. It comes from somewhere, and the planet has a lot of it. She’s cranky. I mean, I’ve always been one of Kali Ma’s fan — the birth and destruction all at the same time kind of thing. And so, it’s that. That’s what you do on stage: you birth something and then you kill it and you let it go.
JH: Do you feel like you would shift into a different type of person or being on stage? Or do you feel like you would become more yourself?
Phatima: It’s nice to explore characters. That’s all what drag is. You don’t have to be yourself. The capital “Yourself.” It’s something else. Which is great. You can create a backstory, and the backstory doesn’t even have to be verbal. No one has to know it. No one else knows if it went exactly as you planned or not — except you. You know, I used to do the thing of, “Oh, well I didn’t do this. This is wrong, this is wrong, and that was wrong.” So, I ripped my own stuff apart.
I stopped doing it the first time I got sober. It was really intense for me to be sober doing drag in a bar. The early days of Trannyshack, when I got sober, I would see David and the other performers, and I would sit there, and I would be crying because I was so stressed. I would do my number and literally run out of the bar and go away for a long time because it was so intense to be present and actually do what I needed to without that part of me, that other part. And it was terrifying, but it was actually good because it showed me that being present in it is exhilarating. You know? There’s an endorphin rush. However it went, you did it. It’s let go, and you’ve done it, and now… It’s like cumming. You know? And then you want to fall asleep.
JH: How is your relationship with sobriety these days?
Phatima: I’ve been sober twice. The first time was like a year and a half. The second time was nine years, and that nine years, I was able to be comfortable without the numbing. Even though it was like anxious, anxiety, panic — all of those things were going on — you turn that into the drug. You turn that into the crutch, you turn that into however you want to feel okay doing it. To get into it, you have to kind of turn that into the drug. One of the things I did at Trannyshack, which is in the documentary, is that I broke my back in 2003, on stage. It changes things. All of a sudden, my body was very, very different. I had to learn to love and embrace the chronic pain from it, which is why it’s kind of a pain management. You have to kind of find a place where you learn to love it. Because it’s always there. And I was doing lots of opiates just to make that go away. I hurt a lot of people, I did a lot of stuff I don’t even remember, you know? I stopped doing the opiates with pot, which has actually been great because I don’t take pain medicine anymore.
JH: Wow.
Phatima: I don’t. I have nerve medicine, but I don’t take other pain meds.
JH: And how is your pain level?
Phatima: It’s okay. I mean, it’s there but it’s more of just worn-out structure. It’s like “this tranny needs an overhaul.” And I will use that word, because I can. So there.
I just need new parts. You know Spaz — Suppository Spelling. I’ve known her equally as long as David. And it amazes me to see how violent and brutal to her body she can be. Drag can kill. It can be brutal — depending on how much you want to put into it. She puts everything into it. But like Spaz says, drag is also therapy.
JH: I was going ask if you thought drag was therapeutic, actually.
Phatima: Oh yes. Very much. It’s all so personal. Because whatever you’re saying, it may be completely different from what the song is. So, it’s what your connection to it is and how you want to say it, and it doesn’t matter. No one else knows exactly what you’re trying to do. No one else has any idea what you’re doing. It’s supposed to happen, that’s how it happened. Don’t limit or censor your Id.
JH: I know that you’ve gone through different phases with your relationship to gender and identity. How do you view yourself these days?
Phatima: At my heaviest, I was 370 pounds. And I was over 300 pounds when I was here, when I first moved here. My body image and all that was really fucked up. I have body dysmorphia, which is very common for trans or gender fluid people — I’ve always been very in-between. When I moved here when I was 22, I could shave once a month. My body had hair, but my face barely had anything. So, I always looked kind of like in-between. People had no idea. As soon as I started to do drag and shave my face, poof, all this hair started growing in.
So, I ended up being this burly girl. And that was my biggest thing. I was in transition for over three years. And my biggest battle was body hair and facial hair, because I’m hairy. I was on so much medication to make hair disappear. I would Nair my body — full body — once a week. And it’s horrible. When I got sober the first time, and I was in transition, I met a woman at the Tom Waddell Clinic. They used to have Transgender Tuesdays, and I went there, and she was sitting and crying. Beautiful girl. She was Latina and just stunning and crying and crying. And I asked if she was OK. She had gone to the bathroom and come back and burst into tears. That’s how much she hated her penis. That part of her body, it made her so upset and so sad. And I was like, “What do I feel?” I wasn’t in my body. I had not been present in it — in my body — at all, really. And then all of a sudden, I was present, and I had to decide if I really wanted to go through with a full surgery. Did I really want to continue this process?
It’s important to be present in the body. To make that a clearer decision, because it’s a huge fucking decision. You know, surgeries and all that. So, I was finally present, and I actually found that I liked the parts I had. I was having fun. I had a full C-cup boobs just from hormones. After I stopped the hormones, everything came back. I was burly again.
I’ve been on hormones again recently, a small dose, but I’ve been going to an actual gender doctor this time. I’m being more conscious and not trying to do it full force and have it happen now. I get very impatient. Because I want it to happen now. I want the boobs now, I want this now. Now! And I had to resist, let that go.
I’ve also had two prostate surgeries, and I got the only testicle I had left removed. I wanted that done for a long time. I tried doing it myself once. But I got it actually done by a surgeon, and it’s had lots of ramifications. But I’m far happier. One of my demons was sex drive. I had a very high sex drive. But I also was Phatima. I was kind of like mom to a lot of people. The only way I got to have sex was anonymously. Completely anonymous, or people in dark rooms, that kind of thing. Because if they knew me, they knew me. But now, I don’t care. Sex is sex. Wherever it happens, it’s okay. And I’m fine with whoever it happens to be. I do have low standards, but not necessarily gutter standards. [Laughter] I do have a little bit more standards now. It’s still random, but it’s a little higher than the ground. Are you on this side of the ground, or that side?
JH: Above ground sounds like a good standard to have.
Phatima: [Laughs] And also, the self changes, you know? It’s the self, but not ego. That’s what this “choose death” thing is about — is about death of ego, death of self. Take “you” out of it. Your “you” out of it. Reverse your vision. Instead of mirroring everything, actually look and see what’s in front of you, what’s happening, and don’t filter yourself.
JH: You’ve always been unfiltered, and I’ve always loved that about you.
Phatima: Oh, thank you. There’s a phrase I’ve heard for a long time: “Live your art every day.” That was the other thing about the ‘90’s, that era. And also like the ‘60’s, and we’re kind of getting there again. People getting dressed up to go out at night, and then they wear the same thing during the day. They live that. It’s living that truth, living that vision, you know? And people would walk around, and they were just fucked up, crazy ass people. You’re like, “What the hell is going on?” But that’s how they lived. You don’t see that as much now, because it’s gotten dangerous to do it. To be that “you.” Live every day exactly how you want. But you have to filter now, because it’s dangerous. A lot of people have been hurt, killed, or… I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t get reported, or you don’t hear about. My friend Bubbles was killed recently. We did clubs together. I’ve hung out with her and known her for a long time. I mean, she can be very intense. Bubbles was a lot. But she lived that. We had this talk at Aunt Charlie’s about how she finally felt comfortable. Whatever format it was that was comfortable, she felt that’s what she was, is. She went into this whole straight world where she was actually embraced, and lifted up, and became really hugely popular in that kind of world.
JH: Does anyone know why she was killed?
Phatima: No. I haven’t heard anything. It happened and then fell away, like it always does. Other things become more important. A trans person is not important. It’s a buzz word. A buzz experience, a thing. But that’s short lived. And she’s still dead. We don’t know why. Still. And a lot of people end up like that. A lot of people trans, and people in the Tenderloin. The TL is the last bastion of what San Francisco used to be, and even that’s being taken apart. It’s hard. It’s very hard to see, and it’s the natural inhabitants. The people that are really here, that have lived here, that … You know?
They’re changing SROs into Airbnb things. And I’m like, “Where the fuck are these people gonna go?” You expect these people to be okay being displaced, pushed away, discounted, eliminated from your thought process. And it’s like a zit. It’s gonna pop. The tension, the energy, it’s gonna pop. That’s where Kali Ma comes in. You know, Mother Earth, whatever you want. It’s like a zit, and she’ll pop. And you have nowhere to run, nowhere to go, you’re right here. No matter where you go, it’s like … Like these fires.
Our planet goes through these fits, and she gets cranky, and it’s gotten unbelievably 3D lately. You know? How can you deny — how can you not say that this planet is fucked up? And even in the last five years. I think that’s kind of exciting but also terrifying and one of the things people come to San Francisco for — because you never quite know what’s going to happen.
I was here in 1989 [for the Loma Prieta earthquake]. I was living down the street on 6th Street with my mom in the Dudley Apartments, and it was like walking on a waterbed. We were living in a one room place, and I was taking a nap. I was laying with my head in the closet and my mother was on the couch, and we had a friend over. He grabbed my hand and pulled me up, and we had a glass block window. One of those metal ones. It wasn’t even secured to the wall. It was just wedged. And it fell right where my head was. That would have been a glamour accident, you know? [Laughs]
It was amazing after. It was beautiful. The energy. It’s like after a lightning storm. The negative ions and everything, you could feel, and smell, and taste that release. It’s amazing, but it’s also one of the most terrifying experiences. You literally don’t know when it might happen.
I mean that’s that “snow globe” syndrome. It looks pretty. Everything’s perfectly fine. Everything is A-Okay. And then it’s not.