The Vanguard Project:

A performance-based "demonstration" talk presented at the invitation of the 4th AIDS Impact Conference in July, 1999, in Ottawa, Ontario.

Sister C's Angels:

"This is not a dress rehearsal"

Garry Johnson (a.k.a. "Sister C").

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: Sister C is an inner-city urban legend and performance artist who works miracles in the front lines of AIDS outreach and associated endeavours. Using her outrageous performance style, she will present her latest successful outreach: Sister C's Angels.

BACKGROUND: Sister C has worked in frontline AIDS Outreach in Vancouver, alone and in partnership with ASOs since 1990. The focus of the Angel Project is to continue direct outreach with added emphasis on peer interaction to stimulate discussion and modify behaviour.

DESCRIPTION OF DEMONSTRATION: Using comedy, music, safer sex demos and anecdotes, Sister C will demonstrate the importance of humour and direct interaction in outreach efforts.

You can do whatever you want in here; this is a safe place. If you feel like laughing, laugh. If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel like throwing up throw up on him. Don't throw up on me. This frock cost a lot of money.

All right. Hi! How are you? I am Sister C, and I am a Drag Nun from Vancouver. (It's kind of like Drag-net, isn't it? I have caught one or two in my net. But enough about my ex-husband...)

I have been called many things in my life. Many, many things. "Nun of the above" that's my favourite. "Mother Posterior" that's what they used to call me at F212, which is a steam bath in Vancouver. I have been called "The Nun of Your Fucking Business." It kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Whatever it is that you want to call me, what you've got to do is just get my attention, and the reason you have to get my attention is because I'm a pretty busy person, and I'm usually rushing through a crowd or wandering down the street or skateboarding or trying my best to get out there and do all of the work that all of the research says that we're supposed to be doing.

You're not going to get any statistics in here today; I'm not going to bore you with all kinds of details. But hopefully I'm going to move you a little bit and hopefully I'm going to say to you that what you're doing is okay and what you're doing is a great job and we need a little bit of a pick-me-up in the middle of all of this war and trenches and stuff like that, and maybe you're going to get a little bit of that from me today. And I'll tell you how you're going to get that if you just follow that simple little message right over there: "This is not a dress rehearsal." This is the main event and we are all on stage, every single one of us. And that comes from my dear friend Maureen de Montezuma, who is much older and infinitely much wiser than I am. Because there was a time in my life when I said, "This is boring," and she said, "Well get out there and live a little!" Look what happened.

I want to tell you how do you go from being kind of a regular, outrageous person living in St. Anthony, Newfoundland, to being a Drag Nun working the streets of Vancouver? It doesn't happen overnight. It is a kind of a process that happens. First you go get yourself some salted codfish No, that's not what you do. I actually got involved in a relationship with a drag queen who was much older than I, and much, much wiser than I, and way out there in terms of his gay spirit - when I was younger. And he had to do a performance at a show called "Christian Women in the Church of the Poison Mind." And you ought to know that I, like almost every gay man out there, have a few issues with churches, not the least of which is that the most powerful church in the world has a drag queen up at the top of it. He wears nicer outfits than I do don't think I'm not bitter about that.

Anyway, there we were, and of course this regular believe it or not, you know, I couldn't believe this, but believe it or not this drag queen was kind of a run-of-the-mill, regular old drag queen, and he said, "I have no idea what to do. You're kind of, you know, a bit antagonistic. Why don't you put something together?"

So we did. We got a group of people together, and we put together this performance which was, I have to say, very outrageous. "Agnes of God" was a very popular movie around that time, and I took inspiration from that movie. And we had people dressed up as abortion-rights activists, and we had a nurse, and we had a doctor, and we had a birthing coach, and we had me dressed up as a nun very, very pregnant and we had a Mother Superior. And in the middle of the performance the Mother Superior performed an abortion. It was rather nasty. But I'm here to tell you the baby lived. It was a Black baby, which made it even more controversial. And when we walked off the stage, the audience either booed very, very loudly, or they cheered very, very loudly. But nobody was apathetic. Nobody! Everybody was moved in some way. And I thought, "You know what? Like, this is a really good place for me to explore some of those issues I have with the Church, and I'm going to have an audience when I do it. And maybe other people will be able to relate.

So there started a number of years of performing and trying to understand my relationship as a gay man with the Church. It was not easy. It's not easy. It's still not easy. I still don't understand all of it. But I ended up meeting and making a lot of friends. And of course we were in the middle of the AIDS crisis, and so there were no end of opportunities to perform: there were fundraisers, and there were walk-athons and there were cut-athons and skate-athons and the one that I missed, the fuck-athon. I so wanted to be there. But they just couldn't pay me enough.

Anyway, so there we were, doing all this fundraising, and all of a sudden, as you can well imagine, AIDS starts to have a personal impact on me. I knew lots of people with AIDS that was not a big thing. Most of the people around me, probably, I just assumed were HIV-positive. I don't know if the rest of the world did that, but I did. But nobody had really died. You know we were all kind of merrily prancing along and going out on stage and having these outrageous performances, and then suddenly someone did die. And that person was somebody who had been in a choir. I had done this performance at the Commodore Ballroom. We were a bunch of nuns, and I remember wearing the great big French wings, and we did the song "Shout" do you know the song "Shout"? It was so much fun. And I had what we called the Moron All Queer Choir. It was made up of women and men and gays and straights very inclusive and this guy named C.J., who was a drag queen.

And then C.J. died. And C.J. actually reminds me of a lot of what goes on in Mexico. C.J. was taken from Vancouver, where his support circle was, and shipped back to Sault Ste. Marie, which is where his family was, his family that he had been estranged from for many, many years. And then a couple of months later we got word that he was dead. And that was June.

And then in July...I had moved to Vancouver, and one of the very first friends I ever made was this guy named Kevin. We worked at Hamburger Mary's. And if any of you have ever been to Vancouver, you know that Hamburger Mary's has got to be the gayest spot on Davie Street, or at least when I worked there it was we used to have drag queens actually waiting on tables in those days. And every now and again, I used to...I started out washing dishes, and I'd be so excited when we got a new mop in, because it was a new wig, and I'd walk out into the dining room, hop up onto table #5, it didn't matter who was sitting there, I just pushed the cups out of the way, put my apron on just so, put the new mop on, throw a quarter in the jukebox, and it always had to be Aretha Franklin "Chain chain chain...chain of fools." It was kind of my own personal tribute to the customers, you know. Those were the days! And Kevin, Kevin had just moved from Toronto, and Kevin taught me all kinds of things. He taught me one of the most intimate things that I have ever learned as a gay man. He said, when his boyfriend and him were having sex, they only had sex facing each other cuz he had to look into his eyes. I had never that had never occurred to me. It was always somebody facing the wall, and somebody behind them. And Kevin turned me around. I just loved him so much for telling me that. And Kevin and I used to prep the burger buns you know, lettuce, two tomatoes, a bit of mayo, whatever cuz Hamburger Mary's sold a lot of? Hamburgers! (And a lot of pot; there was a dealer who worked the floor).

Anyway, there we were making these buns and bonding, and Kevin and I would go out dancing, and I remember so fondly what's-her-name, Donna Summer yes, how that woman turned her back on us, didn't she? Oh, that woman spent far too much time on her knees, and it was not productive. Oh, you can take that right to L.A. or wherever she is, my dear, and tell her while you're at it that she needs a new hair-do. I am bitter, bitter about Donna Summer. We did the last dance, I even put up with "McArthur Park," and then she turned into a Christian nut-case and started to condemn me. I bought those albums; how dare she?

Anyway, I sidetracked. She recorded this album called "This Time I Know It's for Real" do you remember that song? And Kevin and I would go to a place called Numbers, and Kevin couldn't dance. At all. But when that song came on he'd hit the dance floor, and like somebody who was having an epileptic seizure, he would be out there doing his thing: "This time, this time, I know it's for reeeeaal! Whooo!" That would be Kevin. Well I knew that Kevin was HIV-positive. I knew. But, you know, I didn't really know, like, how far along, what his T-cell count was, what his viral load was, whether he was on any of those new pills, AZT...he never took any pills. When they actually packed up his apartment after he died, they found boxes of pills. He never took a single pill. Kevin was found hanging in a closet. He took his own life, at his moment. And don't think that that didn't impact me. That was July.

In August, something else happened. I have a hero, much like you have heroes. I have a hero whose name is Vampyra, and Vampyra is somebody who is an institution in Vancouver. Vampyra would go out to the nightclubs and she would sit on a barstool, cross over her legs, put her purse on the end of her foot, dangle it up and down, dangle it up and down, and she'd say, "Come, Sister dear, I wanna talk to you dear." That's the way Vampyra talked. And I'd come over and I'd sit down on the barstool, and she'd say, "Not too close, dear. I'm expecting a gentleman caller. I don't want it to be mistaken to be you." Like there's a chance!

Well Vampyra was, as far as I could see, the biggest and best queer spirit I had ever seen. She was so far out there. She'd walk down Davie Street, and if you were walking with her trying to get to the drugstore, count on 45 minutes for a block, because everybody stopped and talked to Vampyra. She had this purple rinse in her hair, which was at that time not quite fashionable for gay men, if I remember correctly. More fashionable for the bingo crowd, if you know what I mean. But Vampyra, she'd just bob along, didn't she? She'd just kind of mince along Davie Street, and there she'd be, proud and queer. And you know what was the best thing about Vampyra? Every single person had a purpose. Nobody was useless in her world. She'd find something for you to do. Back in the days of the bottle clubs that one drag queen who didn't quite get her makeup right? The one who had got that outfit from, you know, great-aunt Dorothy's closet, and it looked like it Vampyra would put her at the back with a bottle of rum, and she'd sell shots for a buck or so, and Vampyra would take 75 cents. Vampyra had a purpose for everybody. It was wonderful! In Vampyra's world, everybody had a purpose.

And then one day I was performing at a place called the Heritage House Hotel, and I'm up on stage and Vampyra's in the audience, and I can still remember the song: (sings) "I ain't never gonna love nobody but Cornell Crawford, he's the one that turns me on. He's gonna pick me up in his pick-up truck. He's gonna take me down the road to have a little fuuuuuuuun. He's got a pack of Camels. He's got a quart of whiskey, and it's all wrapped up in a brown paper bag. Oh that Cornell is so sweet, and he knows how to treat this girl so good, yeah." And I walked down off of that stage, and Vampyra called me over and keep it in mind that I was to sit one barstool away I sat down beside her, and I leaned over and Vampyra said, "Sister dear, do you know what? I like you." I said, "Really, Vampy? I like you too." She said, "No, Sister dear, I like you cuz you're just like me."

I couldn't believe she said that. I know to some of you that may sound like a really stupid little thing, but Vampyra was what I wanted to be. Vampyra was not afraid. Vampyra was courageous. She wasn't afraid about walking down Davie Street and letting everybody in the whole wide world know that she was gay. I hadn't gotten to that point yet. So Vampyra was my hero.

And then, as it goes, Vampyra died. That was August.

You know, one of the great things about being a performer is you get to meet these other fabulous and amazing performers, and one of those performers who was my age, born in the exact same month, March of 1965, was my friend Larry Battiuk. He went by the drag name Zola. And him and I used to travel up and down the coast, from San Francisco all the way across to Edmonton and Winnipeg, and we were famous for doing one routine: there's a song called "In the Mood" from the '40s, you probably remember it. And we would captivate the audiences. I walked out on stage wearing my very customary black and white nun's habit, looking very much for all the world like that evil, evil schoolteacher that you all had, you know her, Sister Mary Margaret or whatever her name was I never got over that Sister Mary Gerard stuff. You know, when they started calling them men I thought, "This is it. We know you're lesbians. Stop pushing it down my throat!" Anyway, there I'd come out, looking like that Sister Mary Margaret or Sister Mary Gerard, and Zola would come out in some fabulous Las Vegas red sequinny slit-up-to-here and slit-up-to-there and cut-down-to-there kind of outfit, and we'd start the song "In the Mood."

Now I was there to do deaf interpretation for the people who were not quite mentally with-it enough to understand exactly what my dear friend Zola was doing. And he'd work that runway or wherever we were, that stage, and he'd pump the energy level up higher and he'd pump it up higher, and of course the more he pumped up, the faster I'd have to do my deaf interpretation. I cannot do a single bit of sign language, I'm here to tell you. Not one bit. But that particular performance didn't require a whole lot of sign language. As you can well imagine, as the performance went on, my sign language got more and more graphic to the point where they were no longer watching him, they were watching me, this crazy nun who had actually put things into a whole different sign language, and of course the number ended with the two of us doing this fabulous choreographed you know how drag queens are, we were choreographed right to the last step, right, until one of us fell off the stage. And we would do that all over the place, anywhere we got a chance, we just loved to do that number, and in the afternoon we'd go for coffee, and if I was working he might call me at work and say, "Hey what are you doing tonight?" We had that kind of friendship, friendships that you all have. And then he died. That was the end of August. That was number four. And I was starting to lose my mind, if I hadn't already lost it. I remember talking to Larry at the hospital on the phone because I couldn't go to the hospital, and it was like talking to a voice from another world. It was so clear. He knew what I needed to know and he was trying to tell me. And we don't get it. We don't get it. But if you get the chance to hear that voice that comes from another world, listen to it, even if you just get a little bit of it. It's a glimpse, that's all we get.

Anyway, that was my friend Larry, and I loved him very very very much. And then I went to some grief counseling. I actually went to my doctor, and said, "I don't know what's the matter with me doctor. I've just done an eight-ball of cocaine, I've downed 40-ouncer after 40-ouncer after 40-ouncer, and it's not getting any better. The pain is still hard." And my doctor said to me, "Well, we'll talk about this, but I want you to promise me for at least 30 days, you won't do any drugs and you won't do any liquor." Thirty days! What's 30 days? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. So, and true enough, 30 days I didn't do anything, and at the end of 30 days I saw him and he said, "You know, there's this really great grief group."

"I'm not suffering from grief," I said to him. "It's not grief. I can't sleep. I'm a little bit irritable. I really, really don't want to go to any of the gigs that I used to go to anymore. Uh, you know my mood is a little low. I'm really depressed. Maybe you could give me a bit of Prozac. But it's not grief."

And he said, "You know, why don't you just go and check this out." And I did. And Andrew Johnson, who is now the director of AIDS Vancouver, was the person who facilitated that group, and we sat around at Friends for Life, which is one of the type of ASOs in Vancouver (I'm not sure if they'd want to be called an ASO, but to me they were), and I sat around with this group of people who were just like me and you: His mother had died of cancer, his partner had died of AIDS, her dog and cat had both died in the same week, and his mother and father had both died in a car crash. There were people who had died of cancer, people who had died of heart attacks, all kinds of people, and then there was me, and I sat there, we introduced ourselves, we went around, and I said, "You know, I really don't think I need to be here. You know, you've lost your mother, you lost your partner, that's awful. Oh, and you lost your son, I feel so terrible. I just lost a few friends; it's not that bad." Andrew called me at home after that first night and he said, "You know what? I hope you're going to come back." I said, "Well, I was kind of thinking not, cuz you know those guys are really bad off, you know, but I am not bad off. I mean, let's face it: nothing a good stiff drink couldn't handle." He said, "No, please come back."

About 10 weeks later I had finished it and Andrew said to me he was so worried because I was experiencing that kind of compound grief thing you know, you never really recover from the first one and then you're on to the second one, and then you never really recover from that one and you're on to the next one? it was that kind of a thing. And you know what? That process of recovering from that or whatever that is, is ongoing. You never ever ever stop. And you know what I've learned, though? Is that I can celebrate the lives of my friends because I've introduced you to all of them, to those four, you know who they are, they're here. C.J. is here. Kevin is here. Vampyra is here. And Zola is here. Because I'm here. They're always here. I take those people with me everywhere I go. It is my job to keep them alive. That is my job. And many other things.

So what happens then? I still haven't got you to this point: That was the motivation behind what I was doing. One of the things that we had to do was we had to take back a little of our own power, that's what Andrew Johnson told me. You gotta take back a little bit. So I started this little box, and inside that box I put a pair of earrings that Zola had given me, and I put a newspaper clipping about Vampyra, and I put a photograph of C.J., and I put a card that Kevin had made for me. And then as other people tested positive I put things about them in there. And then as other people died I put their obituaries in there. And I kept that box in my living room and anybody who came over could go through it and I would gladly tell them all about it, if you wanted to. It was there, it was my own memorial to these people. And then I got to thinking about what Andrew said.

So I was at the show one night, and I was working with this young drag queen you ever worked with a young drag queen? Mission Impossible you know, I said when they showed me this room, I said, "I don't think this room is going to be big enough. Do you realize who I am? Do you know who I am? I am Sister C from Vancouver! Every single seat will be filled. You're gonna have to grease people along the sides just to get them in the door!" That's the way a young drag queen thinks: "They're all looking at me; it's my world, it's so wonderful!" And then this guy walked over and he was kind of a handsome stud, and he said to her, "Hey, what are you doing after the show?" And she said, "I'm yoooouuuurrrrsss!!!" Something just like that. And I had a couple of condoms in my purse. And it was the simplest thing in the world that I could do, and it was the words of Andrew Johnson that came through into my head. I pulled the condoms out of my purse and I put them into her purse. That's all I had to do. And I said, "Have a good night, sweetie. Have a really good night." And I went home feeling a little bit better. It was all about me; it really was. Nothing to do with her.

So there I was, feeling a little bit better about myself, and you know, I got to thinking, "Well, I like that Carlotta. I wonder if she ever actually goes out and buys a box of condoms?" You know what I mean? And then there's Vivien I know Vivien don't have no money. And I wonder if they've ever been up to the Gay & Lesbian Centre where you can get free condoms? So the next day I went up to the Gay & Lesbian Centre, and I stole 144 condoms. And that night we went out to do a show, and I handed out most of them! Those girls were eating those things up like they had never seen a condom in their lives! They were sucking them up like it was a double rum & coke! So I ran out of condoms. Backstage! Never made it out to the front. The next day, up to the Gay & Lesbian Centre I went, and stole another box of condoms (they were so nice back in those days, they would just put them on the coffee table underneath and think nobody'll ever see them there). Well the third day when I went up to the Gay & Lesbian Centre to steal yet another box of condoms, there was a little sign: "These condoms are for personal use only." Well I felt like I was personally using them! I mean how were they to know that I don't sleep with 144 men in one evening?

So, I stole another box of condoms, but, I then went down the hallway and I saw this guy sitting there and he had no hair, and I thought he was really cute when I first saw him, and I still think he's kind of cute today, and his name is Steve Martindale many of you know him. And I had, tucked under my arm, like Robin Hood, a box of condoms, and he said to me, "Oy! Where are you going?" And I said, "Oh....home." And he said, "Uhm, what are you doing with those condoms?" And I said, "Oh, gonna hand them out." And he said, "To who?" And I said, "Just, you know, to my friends." And he said, "Who are your friends?" I thought he wanted a date, you know? I really did. He probably did. I said to him, "These condoms are for my friends."

Well, that started a beautiful marriage. Steve Martindale and I became very good friends. Steve Martindale is like Vampyra. He thinks there's a use for everybody. And that's magic. If you've got that, you've got it going on. He doesn't think that this is a dress rehearsal; he know this is the main event. And Steve would look at me and he would think, "You know, we can do things together." So, without knowing it, and I didn't really realize what was going on at the time, people started to become aware that I had these condoms with me, and people started to ask me for them. And I can recall quite vividly the day I was at a big big nightclub in Vancouver called Celebrities. It was packed. It was a Friday night, we were doing a show, and this person came backstage. He was adorable. And he came up to me and he said, "I hear that you have condoms. Is it true?" And I said, "Maybe. Who are you wanting to do it with?" (Thinking that it might be me.) And he said, "Well, my boyfriend." I said, "Oh. Huh. Well all right." And I gave him a couple of condoms.

Well, then I got an idea. Maybe before we do the show I could give out a few more condoms. So I started to stock up with the help of Steve Martindale, and before the show I would go and hand out condoms to all of the people in the club, or as many as I could get to. And it didn't matter to me whether you were gay or straight or whether you were male or female or black or white I didn't care. Because I knew that this is not a prejudiced virus, and it will go the path of least resistance, and if you are the one who is the least resistant, it will find you. And so I thought everybody needed to be protected. And I had been to the fundraisers and the cut-athons and the fuck-athons, remember?I knew that there were going to be these people sitting at tables at all of these events who had little bowls of condoms, and you could, if you wanted to, go over there and pick up a couple of condoms and slip them into your pocket, and everybody would know that you were going to go get fucked that night. And how many people are going to do that? I thought none. I wouldn't do it. So, I went through the nightclub and this is my own personal little thrill I put them in people's pockets. Or I put them between their boobs. Or I shoved them right down their pants. Wherever I could. And people started to recognize that I was coming through the crowd and I had condoms. Well, my purses started to get bigger. No longer could I carry a smart little clutch. It now had to be a lunch kit. And then beyond that, they started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So it looked liked I was a nun on my way to a bingo parlour. It would have been the safest bingo in the world!

Eventually I started to have more fun with the audience than I ever had up on stage. While I was up on stage exploring all these issues about the Church and religion and all of that sort of thing, I was having infinitely more fun with the audiences. People would come up to me and ask me the most astounding questions. Things that I know every clinic in the world wants them to walk through the door and ask them. But they wouldn't. They won't. They asked me. And believe me, I didn't know the answers to a lot of those questions.

"Would you come over here for a second, Sister? I just want to show you a little something." That worked once. I never looked at another one again. I just said, "I don't know what it is, but I think you should get a cigarette and burn it off." I hope he didn't listen to me, wherever he is today. You wouldn't believe what people will ask you in the middle of a nightclub!

"My boyfriend says he's got exotic pets, Sister. What is that?" It's something that crawls on your body and requires Kwellada, that's what that is.

"Where do I go to get an abortion?" I've been asked that question a couple of times. So you know what I said to the woman who asked me that? I said, "Well I can tell you where to go get an abortion, but what really upsets me, is that you didn't practise safe sex. Is that you don't care about yourself enough to make sure that he's got a condom on. And that really upsets me. I will tell you that there are a lot of people here who will say: Go have an abortion, it's the right thing to do. And there are a lot of people who will say: Don't go have an abortion, it's the wrong thing to do. I don't care what you do, but for now, and from now on, wear a condom. Because there are a lot more things to protect yourself from than just an unwanted baby. It's your life." And she got that message, I hope. I don't know. There's 600 people in a crowded nightclub. I don't know if she got that message or not. And you only get 15 or 20 seconds as you're going by, that's all you get.

But, I started to read, and I started to become a little bit more aware. And Steve started sending me out on these conventions, and all these kinds of things, and I got to come to great places like this, and meet all of you, and hear your statistics, and what wonderful statistics they are! I'm so moved by them! I can't tell you how moved I am by them. In the same way that Ex-Lax moves me, I am moved by statistics. I'm so glad you all made a break from those numbers. But I will give you a couple of numbers: Most condoms are 37/100th of a millimetre thick that's not very thick! It's not, you know? It's a little thicker than my last boyfriend's brain. I used to call him Deep and Wide. My spiritual advisor: Deep and Wide. He knew.

I've got to sing you a song. This was a song that was the very very first song that Sister C ever ever sang. It was performed that night at the Gandydancer when we did the show called Christian Women in the Church of the Poison Mind.

Come on in - don't be shy. Come on in!

It's a song that I rather love because it's a song from the movie "The Colour Purple" that was sung from one woman to another woman, and it's actually about being a lesbian. But I now think of that song as being a song about my love that I have for my friends that are gone, and also about the effect that each and every single one of us Oh, time for a flip chart see that? That's the truth. You're the role model. Every single one of you is the role model. And this song that I'm going to sing to you, it's about that. It's about being a role model. You don't even know it, and I don't even know it, and sometimes when I'm skateboarding down Granville Street, and I just whip in for a slice of pizza, you know and I usually have this habit on when I'm doing it somebody will see me, and it'll be years later that they'll come to me and say, "It was because I saw you that I thought it was okay to come out." It's amazing when people say that to you! And you don't know when you are being a role model, and I mean every single one of you. You don't know what you're doing that actually is going to encourage somebody to take control of their life, and that's the most amazing thing that you can do, because that is much thicker than 37/100th of a millimetre of latex. It's much thicker.

(sings) "Sister, you been on my mind. Sister, we're two of a kind. Sister, I'm keepin' my eyes on you. I'll bet you think I don't know nothin' but singin' the blues. Oh sister, have I got news for you: I'm something. I hope you think that you're something too. Oh, shufflin' I been up that lonesome road and I seen a lot of friends goin' down. Oh, but trust me, no low-life's gonna rush me around. So let me tell you somethin' sister. Remember your name. No twister can ever steal your stuff away, my sister, we sure ain't got a whole lot of time. Get out and shake your shimmy, sister, cuz honey your love, it just feels fine." Yeah!

(applause)

I got to tell you a few things about what's happened to Sister C since the journey began. One of the things is I decided I needed a vacation, so I went to Mexico. I wasn't going to go to Mexico; I had fallen in love with this guy in Europe and I wanted to go to Europe, but he called me up and said that they were demolishing his house and building a train track right through it, and I just figured that that was not going to be very good and peace and quiet, so I decided to go to Mexico.

So there I was, in Mexico, on the beach, and of course we're like magnets, are we not? we find every other fag within a hundred miles. You know, we find them. I don't know what it is; it's like some kind of an odor that Speedo gives off or something. So I went to the beach, and I'm sitting there and I'm writing postcards, you know, and feeling quite lovely about it all, you know. And I looked around on the beach and there were these beautiful, beautiful young Mexican men, maybe 15, maybe 14, maybe 12 some of them? The 12-year olds were a little bit in the background. And there were all these North American men from Vancouver, where I was from, from Montreal, from San Francisco, from Chicago most of whom were college-educated and 32, or older, and they were having fun with these Mexican boys. I think that that's perfectly okay, except that I know for a fact that there was an awful lot of unsafe sex going on, and I know for a fact that a lot of those people had gone there to die. And I knew that the virus had found the path of least resistance. I knew it. I was sitting there watching it happen.

So while I was sitting there writing my postcards this guy came over to me, his name was Carlos, and he said, "How come you're not like everybody else down here?" I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, for one thing, you haven't picked up a single hustler, and for another thing you're not drinking anything." And I said, "Well, I just want to enjoy the sun, I just need to get away and, you know, that's all, that sort of thing." And then somebody from Vancouver walked over it always happens and said, "Sister! How are ya?" Now Carlos was like 30-something, and so cute, and from Mexico City, and I was trying to shmooze him a little, you know? I didn't need to be called "Oh Sister! How are ya?" It was just not going to happen with me and Carlos after that. Anyway the person went away and Carlos says, "What the hell is 'Oh, Sister'?" So I told him what Sister was, and he said, "Well, you know what? I know the bar owner here who owns the big bar in town, and, you know, maybe he can help, maybe you can do a show for him or something like that."

So anyway, we went and met him. To make a long story short, we went to meet him, and another fabulous friendship started. All you have to do, people, is announce to the world what you need, and the world will provide it. It's taken me a long time to learn that lesson. You just announce what you need, and the world will provide it. So there I was, talking to this Mexican bar owner, and before I knew it fast-forward the clocks three or four years he had paid four times for me to go to Mexico. Four flights, four hotels, four times all the food, four times all the taxis he picked up the tab for everything. And all I had to do was smuggle 2000 condoms into the country, a whole bunch of nun's drag, and do eight or nine shows for him in a couple of weeks. And that's what we did.

I want to tell you about what happens at the Mexican border, when they find out that you have condoms on your person. I arrived, of course, like every other drag queen, with 12 pieces of luggage. You would have thought that Fergie was actually with me in one of those pieces. One piece for me, she's in one, and the other 10 are hers. So, of course, you go I don't know if any of you have been you go and there's a red light and green light and you press the button and it it's red, they search your luggage, and if it's green, you go on and get your cab. Well, first time, I hit the red light. My luggage was packed thusly: on the top there were two tank tops, two pairs of shorts, and a pair of sandals. Just underneath there, there was five nun's habits, about 40 CDs, probably about 50 crosses and crucifixes, a set of pylons (because I was doing Madonna back in those days), and I think that there might have been one or two Bibles, and these boots. Then, underneath that, there were 2000 condoms. And then, underneath that, there were 50 books that Little Sister's had given me, to donate to the very, very fledgling gay and lesbian library. If they had found the books, I would not be here today. I would be in some prison. It is illegal to be gay in Mexico. And it is certainly illegal to bring those books on safer sex into the country.

But I did stand-by, and you should have seen the look on this poor little Catholic Mexican fellow's face as he pulled out one crucifix, and a rosary, and then one that was actually hand-made in Mexico, which he recognized. And then he pulled out the nun's habit, and you know, he pulled it all out and he was looking rather contrite, and then suddenly, he got to the condoms, and he pulled out one condom, and I don't know what happened, but I could see this little giggle, and I'm sure that it started somewhere right around here, and it slowly creeped up, and it slowly creeped up, and when he saw how many condoms there were, by the time it got to his mouth, he was burst out laughing, he was busting a gut, calling over his friends, "Come, look, loco, loco loco! Loco, loco! Hee hee heeahh!" Oh, they gathered in, they came from behind the courtesy desk, the girl who was doing the cash exchange came over, the people in the taxi stalls came in, they were staring in my luggage at 2000 condoms. And of course, I laughed with them. And then, over came some "oficional" and he said "bla bla bla." And I said the only two Mexican words that I knew: "Cruz roja. Cruz roja." Red Cross. I want you to know, if there is one thing that Mexicans can do, it's pack luggage. That it was packed better than I had I could not possibly have packed it up that good. There was room for Fergie in there afterwards! (That's before the Weight Watchers program, too!) So, anyway, I got in with my 2000 condoms and we distributed them and started on a whole bunch more.

There have been a few rifts along the way, and I'd like to tell you about one. I did land up in court once. The Sister has been to court. And I'm here to tell you, if you ever go to court I don't know if any of you have ever been to court if you ever go to court, go hysterical! Go crazy! Go ballistic! Get up there on that stand and fight for all you've got! Tell it exactly the way that it happened and embellish it even a little bit if you have to. Wear the most outrageous thing that you've got. Send out press releases, get all of the reporters in there, and I'm not kidding you pack the place with your friends and have them cheer every time you open your mouth! I did not do that, but I wish I had!

We had done a show, me and another drag queen, at a place called the Denman Station, which is in Vancouver, and in the middle of the show we did the safe sex demonstration, that's what usually went on. We'd blitz the crowd with condoms, and then come out and do a couple of performances, you know, a couple of drag numbers, and then do a condom demonstration, and then we were exhausted. And so we decided that we would go for lemonade. Now, the West End of Vancouver is a gay ghetto I don't know if any of you know I call it "Fags and Hags deVille, which is the village. It's all old women and gay men that's it: Fags and Hags. Now we have this Eastern European population which has moved in, and I just love that a bit more culture. So, so (my boyfriend is from the Balkans, God love his heart), so anyway, there we were sitting at this place, I can't what was it called the Bread Garden, on Denman Street. Me, I was wearing my fabulous, brand-new, gold-sequined habit, and Ms. Adrien was wearing something equally as ravishing, trying to hide the fact that she's a few pounds overweight. And she goes up to the counter she was and she orders, you know, the usual whatever it was, a burrito with extra sour cream or something, and I ordered, you know, a lemonade, so then we're outside, we're sitting on the terrace, and we're talking over the show, and we're talking over tomorrow "Oh, you want to go to Value Village, girl? We haven't been there in weeks." all of a sudden this guy walks up to me, and he says, "Why are you dressed like a nun?" Hmhh. I said, "I'm Sister C. So pleased to make your acquaintance. And what was your name? I didn't catch it." And he looked at my hand, and scoffed, "Pfuhh!" he didn't spit at me, but he kind of scoffed at me and he said, "I wanna know why you're dressed like a nun!" And I said, "Well as a matter of fact, we just did a show down the street." Now, I work in mental health when I'm not dressed like a nun, and there are a few things I have learned working in mental health. One of them is: how to tell when someone's angry. This fellow's eyes oh my dear, I have seen erections smaller! I have. He had veins coming out of his neck. They were just protruding, like this. And his voice was quickly approaching soprano. You know what I mean? I'm thinking: rage. Any minute now, black eye. So I kind of got up from my chair, you know, ever so delicate like the creature that I am, and I backed away just a little bit, and before you knew it, he swung. And I ducked, and my glasses went flying. And I looked at my friend, Adrien, and I said, "Call the police." And she went running inside to call the police. Uhm, I have to tell you, suddenly I became aware of something...

[FIRST SIDE OF TAPE ENDS]

...five feet eight, and probably about, hmmmm, 150 pounds? I thought that maybe the scales were tipped a little in my direction. So I did what any normal, God-fearing nun would do: I jumped him. Now, I want you to know that the world is not without its comedy quite naturally, there was a woman we were on a patio there was a woman out on the street with her husband, and as if it had happened today I remember the words: "Marvin, do you think that's a wo-man?" [laughter] "Marvin, that nun is beating up that man!" I had him down on the ground, I had my hands around his throat, and I was quite envisualizing the revenge of all of the gay people of all the generations that had ever gone on before me, when suddenly another patron yanked me off of him. It was over before it even began, you know, it was one of those things. But, as the judge clearly said, in his summation, "If there is one thing that people don't forget, it's who threw the first punch." And he threw the first punch. Well, I still don't know why he did that, I don't know what upset him about that, I can tell you that, years later, the man still stalks me, he has attempted to discredit me and destroy parts of my life. I have been ostracized from organizations and from my church because of him; it's not been an easy road.

And what happened in court was that he went in and was hysterical. And he yelled and screamed. At one point he was standing up in the courtroom pointing at me and yelling, "He is a fucking faggot freak!" Twice he yelled that! And I looked at the judge, thinking, "Surely you will stop this, your Honour, good Sir." No. When the judge released his report, the judge basically said that it was a tie. Even though he threw the first punch! The judge acknowledged that he threw the first punch. "It was a tie." Uhm, and, basically it's called a draw I don't know what the legal term is, but we were both kind of nicely shown to the door. A lawyer, unbeknownst to me, ended up writing that judge up for being homophobic. So that judge will be prevented from ever sitting in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, for that case. So, at least there was some retribution against the judge. And that man I haven't actually heard tale of that man for a couple of years, and I still don't know why he did what he did. I suppose I do offend a few people...(laughs)...Too bad.

I'm quickly coming to an end. I want you to know that one of the most effective things that I do is I get attention. And the reason that I get attention is because I dress outrageously and I do outrageous things. And sometimes that takes a lot of courage. And I know that what each and every single one of you do can also require that level of courage. I especially know that some of you people who are not working in Canada, who are not working in the comforts of all of this First World, have got courageous struggles that you have to undertake, and I actually pay tribute to you for that, because it cannot be easy what you have to do in the trenches that you are working in which are vastly different than the ones we work in.

I just want to say a little bit about the "Angel" program, which is up here. The Angel program was a program that we ran last summer. Now, I don't know how many of you work for AIDS service organizations out there, but pretty much with the exception of the British Columbia Persons With AIDS Society and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the AIDS service organizations in Vancouver and I have had a fairly estranged relationship. I don't know what that's about either. I tend to ignore it. I think that it's better just to go and do the work. I don't understand sometimes that level of conflict, and I would rather not give it any energy. The Sister C's Angels program was run last summer, and here was the idea: I go out to these nightclubs and I give condoms to people, and at the end of the night, you know, I'm walking home and I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I'm thinking, "You know, you did a good thing tonight." And even if one of those people uses a condom, that's an okay thing. But maybe more will. So, I got to thinking, "Maybe other people would like to feel this way."

Now, I recruited people to do the same kind of thing that I do, to just hand out condoms and I know sometimes I've even been criticized, somebody said to me once, "That's such an eighties approach to AIDS." I loved the '80s! "Ninety-nine luftballoons, floating" I loved that '80s! Anyway, there we were I recruited these people, again: men, women, gay, straight, black, white, purple, yellow, it didn't make any difference to me, we needed to reach everybody and I wanted everybody to have that experience. Now these people thought that what they were doing was outreach, but in fact they were the experiment. They didn't realize that. So it was a little bit different than usual. What we wanted to do, and this was working with the BC Centre, was we wanted to effect change in people, and by effecting change in people, we wanted to do that by making them accountable. So if you have to hand somebody a condom, you have to have some level of accountability within yourself.

So, we, for 12 weekends in a row, in the summer of 1998, recruited a group of about 35 volunteers. We targeted our groups; sometimes we took all leathermen, sometimes I took all lesbians, most of the time I took a mixed crowd, and we would go into the clubs. We met, we had the support of a number of the restaurants in Vancouver, we would meet at a restaurant, and we usually ran with a group of about six people per night. Each person was given a lunch kit, each lunch kit was full of these: condom packs. The condom packs were graciously donated by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and also from the Bad Boys Line, which is a sex line. I have safer sex messages on that phone line, and people can access those safer sex messages all the time. They're a free service. My attitude has always been: wherever there's sex, you should have a Sister. And so they're having sex on the net, we'll go on the net. Wherever people are having sex, that's where we are. I've actually been in print media, radio, television and on the phone lines. And always the same thing, just tell people it's okay to have sex. They still need to hear that message.

So, we would get these groups of people together, we would meet somewhere, there was always a topic of discussion at the beginning of the night. Sometimes we talked about condoms, sometimes we talked about lube, sometimes we talked about at that time there was a bit of an outbreak of syphilis in the area, we talked about that hepatitis one night...we just talked about different things. So, and the message that we gave to people was, "This information that you're getting, you have to pass that on to somebody tonight. It doesn't matter where. If we go to the Royal, you can pass it on to somebody there, if we go to the" wherever, you know? And people did. And suddenly people started to become accountable. Now, I can't I don't have any way to measure whether or not that made a difference in those 35 people's lives, but I think it did. I think it made a big difference. Because those people are still in contact with me today. Those people have gone on to do other great things and now volunteer at various AIDS service organizations. I think it does make a difference when you make people accountable for what they do. It really does make a difference.

The other thing that happened was, because Sister C is such a recognizable symbol of AIDS outreach work in Vancouver we uniformed people, and we uniformed them with some cash from one of the local businesses. That's one of the great things about being Sister C: a lot of the local businesses graciously give money, and one of the local businesses sponsored these T-shirts, so we had T-shirts and hats for everybody that made them quite recognizable. And at the end of an evening, at the Odyssey or wherever we were, it made it easy for me to round them up and get them out of the bar. I have to be honest, it was quite a selfish thing on my side. So, who would like a hat? Anybody like a hat? There you go, I saw that hand up first. Okay, I have some shirts too. Anybody want shirts? Ah, here you go. Ah, one more, oh, there you go. Is this where is this one going, tell me where it's going? [Response: Mexico] Cruz roja. Still don't know anything else.

Uhm, and then at the end of the night, too, at two o'clock in the morning or two-thirty in the morning, whenever we were finished, we would sit at another coffee bar which, again, always donated to us, and the people would talk about their experiences. And the experiences were amazing, and I knew that they would be amazing. People did ask them those questions. People did ask them the questions that they asked me. "I have this thing on my...do you want to come and have a look?" Poor Bridget. She's never quite felt the same about cauliflower, you know what I mean? And then there was still time for me to do performances, so sometimes what would happen is we'd go into a nightclub, there'd be a show going on, I'd go up on stage, flip them a cassette or a CD or whatever, go and do a performance, and then the Angels would blitz the crowd, we'd get down off the stage it was orchestrated like some kind of a New York stage show, I tell you and then we'd be out into the parking lot, filling up condoms, filling the bags up again, and off to the next place. We had stops along the way, various coat check people worked in conjunction with us in these nightclubs. All of the nightclubs cooperated with us. We didn't have to wait in line anywhere. We went in, we left supplies of condoms where we were.

Now people ask me, "Where did you get all those condoms?" Because Sister C has no budget. Zero. I don't cost anything. The condoms are donated. I'm telling you right now, I have begged, I have borrowed, and I have stolen. And plenty of weeks I have stolen. I have worked in conjunction with the local health ministry in the province. Sometimes you've got to go through the hurdle rather than over it, and that's okay. I have worked largely in conjunction with St. Paul's Hospital; they have been very generous to me. And also, the local outreach clinics. Those people are amazing those front-line nurses who work there? I think that they know, and so that's why they just give, so generously. It's amazing what those people do. So, that's the kind of response that is required to do what I do, and I know that you don't need to have a big ASO budget to do effective work, because I do effective work, and it doesn't cost any money. It does cost somebody, but not me. Hundred bucks what do you think of this outfit? Paid for out of my own money.

So, I have to tell you though, there is a bit of a swan song going on. I have been doing this work now for 10 years, and come September, I will return to school to study nursing. I currently work as a mental health counselor, and I want to go and become a nurse. And I think it's a good calling for me. I don't know that I want to work in Canada; I haven't made that decision yet. But I come from a long line of nurses, and ambulance drivers and people who wash laundry in hospitals. So, I'm going to carry on a family tradition and do that, which means that the habit has got to be hung up for a while, and I think, actually, probably for good. But, that doesn't mean that I won't be around, and it doesn't mean that the work won't be around. I'm already recruited to help with the vaccine trials going on in Vancouver. I still will be visible. I will be hosting the Gay Pride Parade this year, as Garry Johnson, because it's my talent that they require, not my outfit, they told me. I said, "Yes, but my outfit is so nice!" And, of course, my work and your work is very similar, so that's the kind of work that I will continue to do. I now work, as well as working at a mental health centre, I work at a shelter for the homeless who are drug-addicted in the Downtown Eastside. I just recently started working there about two months ago, and it's a good place for me to be. So I'm ready to take some questions, if you have any. If you don't have any, that's fine. We'll finish with a song and you can go on your way...You'll have to come to the mike, though, I guess...Oh, okay, yes, I can do an Oprah thing. All right. I'm not going to take that literally. I wouldn't really do Oprah. Maybe Geraldo. Oh he's cute; it's that Spanish thing.