LGBT

Lou Read

Still here folks!!

There was an item on News Night here which started 'how many cross gender people do you know?' and the article went on to discuss Bruce Jenner.

Well I have known and know quite a few; you see I lived in Hollywood which attracted all sorts. When I lived in Hollywood first, there were quite a few cross gender people in the building and some prostitutes, drag artists and strippers. They were all very gentle people and I never feared being robbed or mugged in the street but since moving out of that building I did hear that someone fired a gun through a ceiling because there was too much noise upstairs!

That building was every thing that Lou Read would sing about but I never saw a Candy Darling.

Candy Darling and Andy Warhol

The next building with the wonderful view of Runyon Canyon and the sweeping palm trees against the expansive blue sky was also rife with the, shall we say, the darker side of life.

Our parking lot (Car park) was under the building and we would access it with a remote control and one day I met a trumpet player (he told me he was a trumpet player, he wasn't playing it) who was having a little problem with his car. He was under the hood (the bonnet) fiddling with it and I kind of gave him a hand. He got to know me and called me Chris and I knew his name too.

Another day I was standing by the lift (the elevator) and he came and stood by me and he was in a woman's dress, high heels and the rest of it, with someone who lived on the floor below us – 'Hi Chris' he said and I said hi back. No explanation and none needed.

I felt kind of good when he went (he was a 'he' as he was a cross dresser) because we both genuinely felt that no explanation was needed.

The person he was with was also, at the time, a man; but he was cross gender. He had been a married man with three children but felt he was a woman and the last time I saw him he was waiting for the operation to change sex – just like Bruce Jenner.

In a really messed up place, his children, who were quite grown up, were the nicest and most well balanced people for their age that one could wish for.

His wife too met a man on the Internet and the last thing I knew they had moved in to the two bedroom apartment (flat) too.

Okay I'll forget all the brackets and Anglo/American translations – oh one more, which I get asked all the time is the difference between an apartment and a condo – a condominium; they are the same only a condo is what you own and an apartment is what you rent. Apart from in New York where they are all apartments.

But when the man on the TV asked how many cross gender people do we know he was right to assume that not many people in the boonies and the burbs know any, so maybe it's a bit too early to have them campaigning for political contenders – but they're quite harmless I can assure you,

The one thing you will notice in most buildings in Hollywood, if you keep your eyes peeled, is the daily visit or visits, of the drug dealer. I saw a few and they were all the same; youngish white men and the ones I saw had red faces.

In a place dominated by the sun the only people you might see with red faces would be tourists and, I have to say, the drug dealers who came to the buildings I lived in.

On the same floor as us, just two doors away, lived a minor movie star.

A really good actor and he would take all kinds of drugs – heroin mainly and he was out of control most of the time.

One time the cops were called because he was threatening to throw his girl friend over the balcony – we were on the fifth floor – but when the cops arrived through the front door, he was nonchalantly going out the back.

His explanation? He was rehearsing for a scene he had in a move! Go figure.

By the way – I had most of Lou Read's albums till CDs took over.