Chapter 7
After a few years back in Hanna, Colin felt it was time to give the city another try and moved back to Edmonton in 1977 to study Advertising and Public Relations at Grant MacEwan Community College. He made friends quickly and ran successfully for Vice President of Cromdale Student Council.
The following year he ran for Student Representative to the GMCC Board of Governors. Colin heard there was a fellow spreading a rumor that Colin was gay and could not be trusted to be student rep to the board. This news angered Colin so much so that he went on a four-campus speaking tour during lunch hours and made impromptu speeches in the cafeterias. He won the election hands down and held the position for a year. During that time, he was exposed to the running of a large organization and he learned many lessons that would carry him with confidence into similar rooms in the future.
That summer Colin bought a big metallic green Chrysler Newport car and got a job with the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Newspaper selling advertising. He loved the thrill of doing a cold call to prospective customers and then working on advertising copy and graphics with them. He was on his way to becoming an account executive.
Except his paycheck was late, every ones check was late and the whole newspaper staff were getting nervous. And sure enough, a few weeks later the Editor disappeared along with their dreams of paying rent and bills and food.
With only three weeks left until school started back up and short of money rather than having savings to spend on school Colin desperately took a job that paid well but would not have been a first choice. He went to work at a local funeral home. There he washed cars, cleaned the Chapel, and sometimes made pickups of bodies from various morgues.
Late one day a young couple came in to the morgue and Colin overheard a conversation:
Young man: I’m sorry, we have very little money so we wish to have our baby cremated.
Salesman: We can work this out so you can give your little one a decent burial. This is the last thing you will ever do for her. You’ll want it to be respectful and nice for her, of course.
Young woman: We just can’t afford it.
Young man: We’ll just go with the cremation please.
Colin confronted the salesman and accused him of putting pressure on a grieving young couple and the salesman laughed at him.
The next morning Colin could smell the sourness of burning gases of the crematorium in the air as he walked in to work. One of the guys said: “Do you want to see the inside of the crematorium before they put the body in it?”
Colin said yes and they walked over to a large electric door that made a dull grinding sound as it inched upwards. The co-worker urged Colin to put his head down and take a look and as the door opened about a foot high Colin saw the tiny lifeless child laying naked on a piece of cardboard. He felt a rush of cool air draw past his head and the baby exploded in flames.
He bolted upright ears curdling with sarcastic laughter. They sure got him alright. He grabbed his suit jacket and marched out the front door, staggering a bit down the street in shock and horror. He found himself a few blocks away in the Switchboard Lounge in the basement of the Alberta Government Telephones Tower and drank a belly full of whiskey. His Dad gave him money and sent him back to school at Grant MacEwan for a second year of studies.
He was out to everyone and celebrating his new found gayness. One Saturday night he found the name of a gay night club in the Yellow Pages phone book. Flashback was hidden downstairs in a basement on Jasper Avenue in the Oliver neighbourhood. The club was a frenetic disco with a huge glitter ball and scores of young people crammed in and gyrating to the latest disco anthems. Lots of booze and lots of drugs made it one of the hottest nightclubs in town.
By this time Colin had switched his major to Graphic Design and began to discover a love of painting that would stick for the rest of his life. One month before graduation he dropped out of MacEwan to work on the next iteration of the club – Flashback 2. Colin could swing a hammer and he eagerly pitched in to help build the club.
He got a job as their janitor by day and was a party boy by night. He moved in with a friend he’d met at the club. Gary was as much of a screaming nellie as Colin and they loved to party at “Flash”. They rented a house on 75th avenue and 75th street and settled in like a young married couple. And like some couples they fought about the stupidest little things, kissed and made up, and did it again.
Gary and Colin were inseparable and they went everywhere together. At the Dolly Parton concert they heard her start the show with the joke: “Hey everybody, Great to see you, You have no idea how much money it takes to make me look this cheap!” And when they went to the Anita Bryant concert Gary was so angry at her fundamentalist Christian homophobic hatred that they stormed out early and Gary violently ripped the concert program in half.
Colin soon became friends with the Flashback’s young drag queens and they encouraged him to do drag at the Imperial Court of the Wild Rose Ball held downtown in the Chateau Lacombe ballroom. The hotel had a top floor restaurant that rotated while you dined offering a great panoramic view of the city.
The Court Ball marked the stepping down of Empress One, Millicent, or as she was known far and wide: Millie. And she was the first Indigenous Empress of the Court.
Millie: Well, look at you all dressed up pretty as a picture. What's your name girlfriend?
Colin: Colin.
Millie: No. Your drag name. What's your drag name?
Colin: I don't have one.
Millie: You gotta have a name, dear. What'll I call you?
Colin: Dunno.
Millie: Grace! We'll call you Grace and you can call me Empress One Millie. Now buy me a drink girlfriend it's my step-down party. You got a joint? I need a toke.
And so it was on that first heady night of adventure into the distinctly queer world of drag queens, that Colin was named by Millie – the first Empress of the Imperial Court of the Wild Rose of Edmonton, the first Indigenous Empress, Empress One. From then on Colin would be known as Grace. First as Miss Grace and later as Mz. Flashback 5 Grace.
Around this time things went sideways between Gary and Colin and Grace moved out from 75th and 75th into a five-bedroom house across the street from Norwood United Church. She moved in with four other drag queens who all worked at Flashback: Tina, Mrs K, Vera, and Doris. They were a happy reckless household of party girls, club queens.
The girls gathered at home to sort out the bills, drink to their successes, celebrate their arrivals and exits, plan social espionage, and revel shamelessly in each other’s company.
They were drag queens.
Girls of the highest order.
They surveyed their world from great heights.
Free from binary cisgender identity.
They loved their girlfriends with all their hearts.
Grace now belonged to the notorious club of drag queens – socially dangerous men, entertainers, who donned wigs, dressed themselves like women and performed lip sync shows for crowds in smoke filled night clubs. They drank like fish and consumed copious quantities of assorted drugs. Mostly young people, they shared the dream of peace, love, and understanding. Their anthems were 70’s and 80's disco and they danced like liberated free spirits till the sun came up.
Grace loved acid. She loved to hallucinate and party hearty. For a while, hardly a weekend went by that she didn't score a hit or two, get all dolled up in resplendent disco drag, drop a hit of her favourite little helper and party till the club closed somewhere around 3:00 am. She would stay till the last of the clubs’ tipsy patrons poured themselves out the large wooden entrance and then she began to clean like a frenetic stoned drag queen stabilized with frequent scotch and tokes. And miraculously within a few hours, give or take, the job was done. Grab a cab, head for home, pass out in a tub of hot water.
Grace loved to sleep in the old claw footed cast iron tub, where she routinely swilled scotch and smoked dope, then hooked her head over the back of the tub and closed her eyes, drifting, floating in silent bliss. Not bothering to get out of drag, she often just slipped in, clothes, makeup and all, much to the chagrin of her housemates. After a lengthy soak in the tub her Tammy Faye Baker eyelashes looked like drowned spiders bleeding sparkly black blood.
Grace thought she was precious when she did drag. Not likely, but the delusion was precious to her. Near the end of her run as an Edmonton Drag Queen, Grace tackled the role of Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood glamour sex kitten. She stole a record from the Downtown library and practiced many songs in her small bedroom. But when the time came to deliver, Grace was humbled by the experience, drank and smoked too much and flubbed a lot of her performances. But in her own mind, she had triumphed over obscurity, she was somebody and that could never be revoked. Sadly, she was struggling with the withering effects of severe addiction to drugs and alcohol.
After the club closed in the wee morning hours men would gather on the street between McDougall United Church and the Chateau Lacombe and wait for others cruising by in cars and trucks. They would drive to a back alley and have sex. The queens called that strip of road The Hill. Grace was no stranger to The Hill and one night she was invited to a party by a fellow called Drew. They had sex and Grace stuck around for more of the seemingly endless house party.
The party went on for days and finally Drew told her: “Grace these parties don’t just happen for free. You’re going to have to pull your own weight and kick in for the cost of booze, drugs, and food.” The next day the party was raided by the police and Grace was questioned by two city cops at the downtown station. At one point one of the officers said:
Officer: Your boyfriend the pimp…
Grace: What did you say? He’s a what?
Officer: Pimp.
Grace’s mind racing and then calm said: “When we’re done here can we go back there so I can pick up my jean jacket please?”
Grace knew there were girls and guys who worked the street at the party and they seemed to be decent fun people. In fact, they were a lot of fun and had wicked senses of humour. Grace loved getting to know them but had no idea she was being groomed for the sex trade.
Naively, Grace thought prostitution was just fine but she had no desire to do that sort of work and she loved her job at Flashback.
After three years of working as janitor by day and drag queen by night Grace won the annual popularity contest called the Miss Flashback competition. On the night of her crowning as Miss Flashback, the long weekend of May 1983, Grace changed her name to Mz. Flashback 5 Grace.
And after three years of doing shows sometimes five nights a week Grace concluded she and the other queens should be paid for doing shows. They were the star attractions at the club. In fact, they were the animals in the zooish spectacle that was infamous near and far.
She spent a lot of energy championing her cause to have drag queens paid for doing shows but in the end, Grace never saw a fruitful outcome, as far as she knew the queens were never going to be respected, they were just there to be used.
One afternoon at her boss’s 30th birthday party Grace confronted him again:
Grace: C'mon Boss, the girls are the main draw in this club. We're a drag club. It's all about drag, man. Sometimes we do shows five nights a week and twice a night on Saturday.
Boss: You're dreaming in technicolour Grace. Go get another scotch.
Grace: Seriously Boss. You run a freakshow and we're the freaks. You pay us with free drinks. Pay us the wages we're due man.
Boss: Bullshit. You drink more than what I could pay you. Do you really want to go down that road?
Grace: Yeah, for sure man.
Previously, Grace had a falling out with her room mates and moved out of the house across from Norwood United to live a few blocks away in the basement of her boss’s house. And here she was arguing with him in front of everyone at his 30th birthday party. He blew his top and pushed her to the kitchen floor and screamed: “You fucking Myrna fish cunt. You’re fired. Get out of my house now.”
Publicly humiliated and homeless Grace reached out to a lesbian couple who had day jobs. Grace started selling MDA or as they call it now, Ecstasy, at Flashback. She was also doing the drug every day and after a few weeks she began to hallucinate and lose touch with reality.
She heard voices tormenting her and severe paranoia took a deep hold on her. Deep depression sunk in and was then countered by bouts of manic ecstatic high.
A few weeks earlier she’d seen a news report that gay men in New York and San Francisco were dying from a mysterious illness. She thought God was going to “get her” for having too much fun and she fled to the baffled arms of her parents in Hanna.
She arrived disheveled and psychotic and her parents had no idea about what to do so they put her to work in the butcher shop and that seemed to help. At least on the surface.
