Lil Sal and Elxa and Peter Mona

Little Sal, I don’t think I did him justice by writing a little blurb about someone who I should have fallen for. He was Italian, rude, annoying, big-hearted, and sweet and every other adjective that “butch” gay men avoided. What was it he said to me when asking me out on a date, oh yeah-“You know I might ask you out on a date if you weren’t so girlie, but I have a reputation?” Yes, compliments just spit out of Lil Sal’s mouth like sonnets from Shakespeare. Yet, whenever I went out to after hour clubs he was right there, dumping the person he was with to drive me home. I was never allowed to date anyone. I got a job in Feathers coatroom after the summer of fun and finding myself. Hank told me that I could not keep the tips because the tip money was what the bar owner used to pay the electric bill for the parking lot lights. Without that money the bar would close because they couldn’t afford the light bill. I believed Hank, Lil Sal knew better. He would take some of the tips and slip them in my coat pocket. I would get home and find one hundred dollars or more! Imagine what I was really making…How do you spell fool?
Sal also had a condo in Florida that he would let me vacation in. It was on the water and he had a boat. Good times. He showed up when I was down there once, claiming he didn’t know I was there; mind you he gave me the key. I wrote a play about my whole Johnny era and it is funny, in the play my character ended up with Lil Sal.
Oh, if we could only write our lives before we lived them.
There were so many characters like Little Sal that made Feathers what it is today. All the old timers call Feathers a “gay Cheers”, the problem is that the customers that go to the club now have probably never seen an episode of “Cheers”…lol.
Time references age us all. It's like ordering a 7 and 7. Well today's drinkers came out after 7-up died and sprite took it's place. That is how I knew the ages of my customers, if they ordered a vodka 7 I knew they were over thirty...It they ordered a vodka sprite they were under thirty. Think about it.
I like to think of Feathers as a gay High School. Everything that the straight kids did in high school we do in Feathers. Our first crush, our first freedom to be ourselves without judgment…Did I just type that with a straight face? Imagine a gay bar without judgment? Can’t, can you? I remember I didn’t know what gossip was, I think it was a bar character named Peter Mona who introduced the phase, “Got any dish?” I had no idea what “dish” was never mind gossip.
When I was in the coatroom Lil Sal would never let me “dish”. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble if you talk about people?” “And what should I talk about?” I would inquire. “ME” he would say with a wink.
He was so funny. At Christmas time he would wave his mistletoe around me, chanting “I’ve got a piece of mistletoe! I’ve got a piece of mistletoe!” to which I would reply, “I got herpes.” “I’ll take my chances” he would seductively whisper as he came in for the prize. I would pull a “Sandra Dee” and throw him my forehead and keep it clean. Guys like Lil Sal didn’t want clean, they wanted tongue.
Peter Mona, a name from the past. There are some people you meet and you don’t realize the impression they have made in your life until twenty years later when you revisit the pictures in your mind and they are in them, not necessarily in the fore-front, but smiling away. That was Peter Mona. He was there for all my zany adventures and giving his all. He was the blond Casper and when Casper was kicked out of the bar Peter filled the void. He was in the “We Are The World” bar video,Gary Cosgrove,the Christmas shows, Fire Island and part of the skid row gang. Peter and Dominick were two of a kind. Both of them were strictly out for the guys and when they set their target- they usually hit a bull’s-eye.
But I am rushing the stories. We still have to get to Rodger , Elxa Rodgers, the mother of all drag queens, well all Feathers Drag queens. Rodger was a Carol Burnett impersonator-you are showing your age if you know who Carol Burnett is…lol. He impersonated the most obscure people ever,Barbara Mandrell, Shriley Jones, Petula Clark and Charro! When I had returned from my laundry mat experience with Terry, I had stumbled into Rodger. Rodger was a guy who should have been a girl but liked fighting for gay rights. Rodger was a great impersonator and had a strange following..I remember once he couldn’t find a song for a show so he did an overture. AN OVERTURE! He dressed as a woman to parade around to an overture and Kenny Alton and I peeked through the curtain and could not believe that they were tipping him to parade around to an overture! When he came backstage we laughed and congratulated him on his success with the overture. As he reapplied his lipstick he said “And you are surprised? A star can make opening an envelope an event if they have talent. You’re up next knock’em dead, star” Rodger was a lot of things, but most importantly he was a person’s greatest cheerleader.
Till Tomorrow Be kind