Long Before RuPaul, Doris Fish Wore the Wig. Fiercely.
nytimes.comWHO DOES THAT BITCH THINK SHE IS? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag, by Craig Seligman From wee-hours cabaret to prime-time reality TV to fiercely contended children’s story hour at the local library, the American drag queen’s journey has been a long and bumpy one.
For Doris Fish, alter ego of Philip Clargo Mills, it began not in America but Manly Vale, an apt-sounding suburb of Sydney, Australia,and ended in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco, 1991 — with resurrection, one source maintains, as a ghost composed variously of golden sparks and Evian water.
I had not known of Fish before reading the journalist Craig Seligman’s minutely observed new biography of him (though some friends used the female pronoun, “he never wanted to be a woman — he never even wanted to seem like a woman,” the author writes).
I finished it persuaded this was a life well worth examining, if only because his peers are so often celebrated, or excoriated, in aggregate.
