The Closing of the Connection - The Origins of Calpernia

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Categories: Diary • Showgirl • In Print • Interviews

Nashville Scene article on the closing of The Connection
This article is from awhile ago, I remember being interviewed for it via phone, but it only just came to my attention recently. The Connection was an amazing place to work, and to evolve… I started going back when it was at 5th and Demonbreun, and it was there that I saw my very first showgirls and realized that I could maybe someday become the person I wanted so much to be. On my first visits, I became transfixed by a weekend-cast showgirl named Mahogany who performed songs by Grace Jones and Annie Lennox, and befriended a tiny Wednesday-cast showgirl named Latarsha who operated the spotlight for the weekend show. 

At the time I was a gawky kid, strikingly skinny and pale, with a bad haircut, thrift-store clothes and reserved personality. I was fresh out of the Navy, did not drink or smoke (drugs weren’t even on my radar), did not curse or “talk dirty” and was generally socially withdrawn and fearful. Latarsha and the sound operator, Andromeda, took me under their wings and soon I was sitting up in the spotlight booth with them for weekend shows, watching the amazing shows over the heads of packed-to-capacity crowds. Every shocking, sassy, cutting comment out of Latarsha’s grinning mouth stunned and delighted me with its no-limits humor. Every number Mahogany did was a mesmerizing display of the most taut, athletic, curvaceous and feminine body I had ever seen outside of a superhero comic book, topped by an exquisitely painted and expressive face. She would be followed by the sunshine-golden blonde and tan Danielle Hunter, so much like a Playboy centerfold that watching her bursting out of ever-smaller costumes left me subconsciously fearful of being caught looking. There was the hilarious comedy of MC Dana Alexander, an outrageously wild performer who I would later discover drove a school bus in the daytime. The embodiment of Diana Ross, Miss Rita Ross, who was rumored to have a warehouse full of thousands of custom-made costumes. Others came and went, but these girls were amazing and magical to me. I couldn’t look away, and I knew that someday I would have to try to become one of them.

I began holding the spotlight for Latarsha while she went down on ever-lengthening trips to get drinks. I learned to operate the light board, with sliders and bumpers for the can lights, strobe, searchlights and even the occasionally working smoke machine. Eventually, I was filling in on Sundays, and then Saturdays and Fridays. I studied their movements, techniques and strategies. I began to practice at home alone. Finally, one Saturday night, I donned a gorgeous black dress I had made myself and came into work for the first time as Calpernia. I was met with universal disbelief, but the genie was out of the bottle and I never looked back. At first, I was pre-transition and only got to be myself by doing shows or for special occasions at work. I was learning my way, and eventually the girls started to see me as “one of them”, albeit an amateur, and they began to help me become a better showgirl.

By the time the club moved to Cowan Street down by the river, I became the full time lighting operator. I did my first “talent night” on the floor of the country bar, which you see depicted in the photo accompanying the Nashville Scene article. It was on one of those nights that the hostess, Chyna, took pity on me and began to guide me in earnest. Soon I was officially one of her daughters, a member of her showgirl family. As someone who did not use drugs, drank only on the rarest of occasions and practiced an ethical lifestyle, she was probably the best mentor I could ever have found, and she was a big part of allowing me to develop into the person I am today.

I got better and better at talent night, and I began to win (via audience applause) again and again, until finally I had won so many times in a row that they disqualified me from competing and I began to perform as a “special guest” instead. Chyna guided me through my first pageants, lending me jewelry, shoes and gowns… choreographing my talent routines… and after many losses I began to win those, too. Soon, I was filling in on the main stage on the weekend when someone needed a night off. I was booking out with Chyna and on my own. I worked hard, building my wardrobe, teaching my graceless body to dance a little better, working on my performance skills.

Finally, one weekend I was given the wonderful news that I had been chosen as the newest full time weekend cast member! There were usually only 4-5 full time headlining weekend cast members at a time. We had our own dressing rooms, a salary, and even medical/dental benefits (though I never got to use them and could never seem to get the main office to send me the information). Having a weekly platform to express almost any creative idea I had in front of 2,000 screaming fans was a dream come true, and those were some of the best days of my life. In those days, The Connection would fill up to overflowing on the weekends. The floor below our elevated stage would be a standing-room-only pit of seething, cheering people and the balconies would be packed to the edge with more. When the heavy black curtains parted for our opening production, we would do our choreographed routine to deafening shouts and applause, bathed in a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and heavy, thumping dance music. Then we rotated through our individual numbers, raking in fist after fist of money, laughing and playing with the audience the whole time. Good times, good times…

As the years went on, everything was not rainbows and lollipops… the club’s crowds began to dwindle on Friday nights, and then on Saturdays, as people found new places to go or became disenchanted with the politics of the owners. There were the usual squabbles back stage—boyfriends, music, costumes, drugs and alcohol. As someone who didn’t drink or use any drugs, I was safe from problems with irate dealers, mini-overdoses, “missing” money/stashes and the like, but I had my problems with boys and music like everyone else. Over time, the new began to wear off and though I still loved the work and couldn’t imagine doing anything else, I became ever more tired of hearing the same Whitney Houston/Destiny’s Child songs over and over. I became weary of performing my own standards over and over - “The Pussy Song” by the Lords of Acid, which I had remixed into oblivion, was a crowd favorite and there was a time when I could not do a Saturday night show unless I had performed that song for the crowd. Some nights, as I heard the dreaded strains of “Heartbreaker” wheeze to life for the billionth time from the theater below our dressing rooms, I had to spread my fur coats out on the floor of my room and lie down on them in the costume for my next number, turn out the lights and crank up an Enya CD until it was time for me to go on, lest I lose my mind.

Everything came to an end for me after the Tennessee Entertainer of the Year 1999 pageant, when I won the pageant at the same time that my boyfriend Barry was killed in his sleep in Clarksville, TN. I finished out another several months of work there, because I didn’t know what else to do with myself, but my heart wasn’t in it and soon I packed up and moved to Chicago to start my life over.

So the Connection was a very important place for me, and though I was glad to leave it behind, what I wouldn’t give sometimes to be able to slip back in time for a night in the heart of those perfect times… When the club was packed, and everything was new and unmarred by tragedy, and the heavy black curtains opened before me into a vast world of love and applause and music.