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SECONDS JAYNE
COUNTY Shock-rock she-devil JAYNE COUNTY Who now knows of JAYNE COUNTY, nee Wayne County, or of her life? Forbidden in the 60s, flagrant in the 70s, fabulous in the 80s, forgotten in the 90s, Jayne was all things to all people, and was emulated or ripped off by some of the respective era's most commercially viable rebels. Andy Warhol, David Bowie, the punk rockers, and many more would never have been able to do quite what they did if it hadn't been for Wayne/Jayne County. It was a different world back then, and Jayne put her heart — and her head — on the line. You can talk all you want about how tough you have it today — how you are discriminated against, how the rednecks beat you up, etc. But, honey, you don't know how easy you got it. When Wayne County started out, it was total oppression. There were no organized queers exploiting the 'civil rights' scene, no group of fags fighting back against the cops, and no gay politicians. Nobody gave a fuck. If you were a homosexual, you lived an underground existence that would make today's P.C. prima donnas cringe. For Wayne to walk the sordid streets of the 60s, clad in women's clothes and made-up to kill, took balls. It took balls to be a woman, especially in backwater Georgia, U.S.A. When Wayne came onto the NYC scene, which was full of sick psychedelia, communist-funded folk-rock, ostentatious outrage, occasional genius, and drugs, the question had become: How far could you go? Wayne could go all the way. He was, among other things, a hard rockin' truck driver trapped inside a transvestite's body. This was not somebody to fuck with. Armed with an outrageous floor show, killer pre-punk persona, and a band called Queen Elizabeth, he assaulted his audiences, and very often had to defend himself from them. Free love? This was a free-for-all fist-fuck-fest, garage-style; guitar, bass, drums, period. Wayne county, drag bitch, fell into Warhol's crowd, appeared in movies and plays, and lent his/her personae to Andy's appropriated fame. But County was smart enough to avoid becoming a satellite, and kept a critical distance from the Factory experience. So many great talents were stereotyped by Warhol's unforgiving hand, and most remain saddled with that legacy. County was the most outrageous, and by far the most genuine, of the Warhol legions, and as such influenced everyone around him. He, or she, or whoever, was the real McCoy. Wayne had to be Jayne, inside and out, and rode that obsession to hallucinatory heights, far further out than a mere desire for fame or frustration could ever propel ordinary mortals. When Bowie came along, Wayne County was already a Moonage Daydream, a glittery goose-bumped gash with a big dick, shock-rockin' Max's and CBGB with his second band, Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys. County was rude; there were fights; the crowd loved it, and it seemed as if Bowie's hard-won fame would help County and other space oddities, transvestites, and glam-rockers get their day in the sun. However, according to Jayne's account, Ziggy Stardust stole her ideas, especially the idea for a British Invasion tribute album (which Jayne insists became the basis of Pin-Ups), and Ziggy essentially used Jayne's contract with MainMan to suppress and steal his/her concepts. Who knows? Throughout it all, County continued to perform and record. But the big moment for a sociologically liberating sex star had passed. Glitter and glam and bisexuality had come and gone, and Bowie hit the Borscht Belt. Too many straight guys, in experimental fits of Quaalude-laden open-mindedness, woke up with their buddys' dicks in their mouths and the glitter still in their eyes, and they got sick of the fake fags and the bi bitches. The fashions got tired, and the homophobia reestablished itself. Sex rock was over with. But for Wayne, life was just beginning. He/she moved closer and closer to completely assuming the role of Jayne, jettisoning Wayne, and fulfilling his/her role as a transsexual. For years, Wayne had been the psychic anchor keeping Jayne down, and besides, County was too hot-looking as a bitch to be satisfied as just some dude in a band. Luckily, there were body modification techniques available that made a complete transformation from gender to gender, from male to female, possible. Transsexuals are people whose gender identity is in conflict with their sexual anatomy. They experience 'gender dysphoria,' which is discomfort or dissatisfaction with being male or female. They can totally transform themselves through sex reassignment surgery, by which, for men, the penis becomes a neo-clitoris (chitoriplasty) and a vagina is constructed out of muscle and skin and nerves (vaginoplasty). Transformation also involves intensive hormonal therapy, breast augmentation, grafts of mucous membranes, and fabrication of a neourethra. Some men celebrate their femininity but retain their penis, and various non-surgical processes can make their bodies closer to the female ideal. For example, they can tuck their penis down and back between their legs, securing it in an apparatus resembling a chastity belt, so that their groins are nice and smooth, and it becomes impossible to attain an erection. Sometimes, their penis is actually sewn into place. And then there are the individuals who avail themselves of the technologies relating to the creation of both male and female anatomies. They are the clever ones who become transsexual hermaphrodites, and live happily ever after. Sexual transformation represents the cutting edge of medical science, sexual liberation, and social readjustment. It is a dangerous, costly, and protracted process which only the most daring and ambitious will endure, and it takes several difficult years. Jayne's immersion in the process has been emotionally difficult but richly rewarding. You could write a book about Jayne County, about her influences and her impact, and about her loves and lusts. But for now, we'll just have to be satisfied with a brief rundown of her past, abbreviated for you here, in her own words.
COUNTY: Well, the major influence of Warhol with me was a freedom of expression thing. When I was just a little teenager in Georgia, I used to get magazines and read about Andy Warhol. I wanted to go to New York and meet Andy Warhol, and people would say to me, "You don't want to meet those horrible people, they're awful, they're like vampires," but I wanted to meet those people ... I did a play in the New York underground scene. It was called World: The Birth Of A Nation. It was about interchanging sexual roles. It had characters like John Wayne and he gave birth to a three-headed baby out of his asshole; that gives you the run of the play, it was totally outrageous. This was early 70s. Warhol came to see that, and flipped out. At one point I saw him standing up, he was screaming so much because some of the scenes were so over-the-top and outrageous. That was the play that convinced him to do Pork, his play, and to use me to play Vulva Lips, who was based on Viva. SECONDS: So that's how you hooked up with him initially? COUNTY: There were drugs going around and everything at Max's Kansas City. I ran into him, but I didn't really know him that well. I didn't really know him until he came to see World, and was impressed with that, and then he wanted me to be in his play, Andy Warhol's Pork. He'd come to rehearsals to see how we were doing. One of the funniest memories of all was when we opened up in London at The Roundhouse. We had a big party and everyone kept asking where Andy was, no one knew. I had to go to the bathroom, so I went to the bathroom and he was standing in there with his tape machine, waiting for people to come up and pee, and then running up and putting the microphone in front of their faces and asking them questions. He was just up to no good, but I thought it was very funny. I went back and said, "Do you want to know where he is? He's in the men's room interviewing people." SECONDS: What impact did he have on the music scene? COUNTY: Well, of course, the Velvet Underground was one of the most influential bands. New York bands looked up to them. SECONDS: How much of that was him and his doing? COUNTY: Actually, he didn't really contribute to the music. It was the whole atmosphere that surrounded him, the whole decadence thing, all of the sub-culture, the whole New York trip, which basically was vampires and witches. SECONDS: What kind of person was he? COUNTY: To me, he was just — I mean this in a good way — a troublemaker. He loved to cause trouble, he loved to stir it. He never missed an opportunity to stir up trouble. SECONDS: He liked to sit back and watch it? COUNTY: Oooh, he loved it. He loved to just mix it up good. He'd just laugh. He loved it. He loved seeing people getting mad and upset, he just found that very amusing. It was entertainment to him. SECONDS: Did that rub off on you? "There were other famous trans-gender
SECONDS: Why did you stop working with Warhol? COUNTY: I was more into the real music scene. When The New York Dolls came along, I was really floored by them. I really liked Alice Cooper. He was the art part of it. I went up to The Factory every once in a while, for an opening or something, but I didn't go up there all the time and hang out because I was really more into the music. I really wanted to make music and play clubs and do that whole number. I wasn't really a party type of person. Plus, I didn't want to get tagged with the Warhol thing. I didn't want to be tagged as some kind of Warhol superstar freak that's here today, gone tomorrow. I really wanted to establish myself more. A lot of the Warhol people were known for a little while by doing a couple of little things, and then it was over. SECONDS: If was like a mixed blessing for them. COUNTY: Yeah, if you got tagged, people expected that. You couldn't do anything else. I didn't want to do that. So I cut myself off from that. My friend, Lee Childers, went to dinner with Warhol, all this kind of stuff. Andy would ask him why I never came up to The Factory to visit. Now, I'm glad I didn't. When I did Andy Warhol's Park, that was really my heaviest involvement with him. I just did a few more little things and then I wanted to cut myself off and start concentrating on my music. I got really involved with The New York Dolls thing, that glitter/punk scene. SECONDS: Tell me about the transition between the Warhol scene and the punk scene. COUNTY: I didn't get heavily involved with the Warhol thing. I did the play, I did parties, I knew Candy Darling but didn't get heavily involved. People think Patti Smith was the first person to play CBGB, but it's not true. I played CBGB while it was still having folk acts like Joan Baez imitators. SECONDS: Didn't you DJ at that time? COUNTY: I did Max's Kansas City for a long time. The Dolls came up with their acetate and handed it to me. I was the first person to ever play the Dolls. I was the first person in America to play "Anarchy In The U.K" by The Sex Pistols. I got the first copy of that and played it. I was the first person to play The Damned. In fact, when I played The Damned, Dee Dee Ramone ran over to the booth and was outraged. He said, "Who is this? They're copying us!" I said they were The Damned from England. He said, "Those fucking English bands are copying us!" He got really upset and didn't want me to play The Sex Pistols or The Damned. He said, "Don't play them. Play us. Play New York people. Don't play those stupid English bands." Dee Dee did not like those English bands copping their sound. "I go out of my way to shock people." SECONDS: What characterized the bands that were around then? COUNTY: A lot of the bands were very amateurish, but they had something special about them. They weren't really professional, some of them were like seeing a bad high school band. It was like flashing back to the days of teenage garage bands that really couldn't play that well. SECONDS: You were a noted fan of The Dave Clark Five. With your old band Queen Elizabeth, were you covering Dave Clark Five stuff? COUNTY: No we weren't, really. I used to introduced some of my songs on stage as songs dedicated to The Dave Clark Five. I've always covered a song by The Barbarians called "Are You A Boy? Are You A Girl?" That was a minor hit in the 1960s. The Barbarians were a California band, and the drummer played with a hook. I tie that song into what happened to me when I was growing my hair long in Georgia and people screamed at me, "Are you a boy or girl?" SECONDS: What did you answer? COUNTY: We didn't have time because we were too busy running away. We didn't know if they were going pull a gun on us. We got shot at one day walking along the street. These rednecks came along on a truck and started shooting at us. The bullets were whizzing past my ears. SECONDS: How was sexuality and transvestitism received by the audience in those days? I'm sure you didn't do that in Georgia. COUNTY: I did very early shows down here, like in '65-66, I did some shows in bars. Believe or not, I used to do a Dusty Springfield imitation, a Janis Joplin imitation, and a Cher imitation. The Dusty was very good. SECONDS: So you were one of the first people who did what might be called sex rock. COUNTY: Not really, I was more or less taking a piss. Laughing at sex, because sex upsets people so much, and I found that so laughable. I used to try to upset people. I like to upset people. I used to really love to shock people. I'll go out of my way to shock people. A lot of the time, I got into really bad trouble. SECONDS: What kind of trouble? COUNTY: Like getting shot at because of the way we dressed that day, totally over-the-top. Getting shot at or having fights, many times we had to run down the street and hide. People would get out of their cars and start chasing us. SECONDS: Let's just hope we don't have a recurrence of that. COUNTY: I hope we don't go back that far. SECONDS: When you did consolidate sex and transvestitism into your act later on, what scene was your big influence? Was it cabaret, or old film noir? Or Lenny Bruce? COUNTY: A lot of everything, and I loved Lenny Bruce. I even have a song I never recorded: "There's No Such Thing As A Dirty Word." To me, how can language be bad? That you can't sing obscenities or say them on record is so stupid. People can stand off-stage and say 'fuck' to each other, but you if say 'fuck' onstage, you can be arrested or banned. It's totally incredible. It's amazing the attitude in America now towards what I call trans-gender. There are so many forms of trans-gender, like transvestism, cross-dressing, drag queens, transsexuals. SECONDS: Transvestitism occurred before sex reassignment was popular. COUNTY: The Dolls would come out in old thrift-shop women's dresses. Later on, they toned it down. A lot of people were upset that they toned it down. They used to come out wearing women's shoes, but when they got signed, they start dressing really glammy with lamé pants. I liked them better when they came out in little second-hand women's clothes. SECONDS: Did they take any cues from the Mothers Of Invention? COUNTY: I don't know. David Johansen was very aware of everything going on. SECONDS: On We're Only It For The Money, they wore dresses. COUNTY: I understand. Also, the back of Alice Cooper's Easy Action, where they've got their backs turned. I remember people used to get upset about that! All it was, was the backs of their heads and their hair hanging out. How could anyone get upset over that? SECONDS: With that kind of thing, it was a transvestite act. At what point did androgyny become the scene? COUNTY: I never thought of that. I just tied it all together. To me, it was blurring the sexes. I think people like Bowie and Marc Bolan commercialized it. Androgyny was more a commercialization of the scene. SECONDS: Who would you credit as the first glam rocker? Would it be The Dolls, or did they have a precedent? COUNTY: I know David Johansen was very much influenced by The Theater of the Ridiculous. Iggy went to see them and everyone in the whole play was covered with glitter. He went back that night and did a big show at the Electric Circus, and came out totally covered in glitter. He was directly influenced that night by the Theater Of The Ridiculous. They'd have people in the play, playing different characters. Loads of what became gender-bending was going on in the underground theater at that time. That influenced me. The Dolls beat me by two weeks on debuting in the New York scene. SECONDS: Were the Dolls your peers or your competition? COUNTY: A little of both. SECONDS: Did you have a good relationship with them? COUNTY: A very good relationship with them. They loved me. They'd come and see our shows, and we'd go and see all theirs. I even played with the Dolls at the Mercer Art Center. SECONDS: Did you like New York in those days? COUNTY: Yes, I loved it, it was great. It was very exciting. SECONDS: How about these days? COUNTY: It's okay. I love New York. I like what's happening in New York now, because New York has become so transgender oriented, at the moment, with RuPaul and the current drag queen scene. They all look at me as a Grandma. They introduce me as, "Here she is, the mother of us all." SECONDS: How do you feel about that? COUNTY: Very strange. SECONDS: Is it flattering? COUNTY: Yes, I am flattered. I did a big show in London, which is really trans-gender oriented. RuPaul's played there, Amanda Leer, and they introduced me as "The Mother Of Us All" and I was like "Oh My God." I like it, but there were other famous trans-gender people before me. But I was the first one to do it with rock. I was actually coming out with a band and playing in regular straight rock n' roll places. No one was doing what I was doing, know what I mean? SECONDS: How was the drug scene back then? COUNTY: When I went to London in '77 and did the first 100 Days at The Roxy, everyone was doing speed and that awful English sulfate. That's one reason the music was so fast, everyone was doing speed. That stuff would make your nose fall off. In the 60s, it was all love children doing psychedelic drugs: LSD, mescaline, THC. I was never into the heavy junk scene. I never did any of that, I hated it. I did do lots of acid. The early 70s scene was just down into seconals and valium. SECONDS: How did you start working with David Bowie? COUNTY: When we were doing Andy Warhol's Park, Lee Childers was stage-managing, and we got moved to The Roundhouse in London. We had read about Bowie in a magazine, and we said we should go see him. We thought we were the only ones at the time doing anything like that. So me and Sherry and Tony Zinetta, who went on to become vice-president of MainMan, we all went to check out Bowie. We were enjoying what he was doing, but we were a little disappointed, because what he was doing at that point was so laid back. It was very folky. He had long hair like Lauren Bacall and baggy trousers, and he was doing that stuff from Changes and Hunky Dory. I was expected it to be a little more outrageous, but it was really subtle. SECONDS: He wound up signing you to MainMan. COUNTY: Tony DeFries, his manager, did. As I found out later, that was only to keep me from doing anything. After one of his shows, me and Bowie were chatting. I had just signed to MainMan at the time and had all these great ideas kicking around, and I told David I had the best idea in the world. I told him I wanted to do a whole album of all British Invasion hits. Six months later he comes out with Pin-Ups. I was flabbergasted! When I would say anything to anyone, they would just laugh and say I was paranoid. I said, "Something's up here." They took me into the studio to record. I recorded "Wonder Woman," "Mexican City," "Are You Boy Or Are You A Girl?," "Queen Age Baby," all these incredible lyrics I had come up with. So I sent him all of my tapes and not long after that, Sherry is sitting at the house in Connecticut. Bowie called her up and said that he wrote this great song called "Rebel Rebel" and plays her this demo. She listened to it and said, "This sounds like one of Wayne's songs." Basically, "Queen Age Baby" is the mother of "Rebel Rebel." If he had never heard "Queen Age Baby," he would have never written "Rebel Rebel." SECONDS: Did you ever say anything to him about it?
SECONDS: You weren't the only one, right? COUNTY: Oh God, no. I'll tell you another heavy story. I did this big show. The band was on one side of the stage, we had all these incredible props and theatrics for every song. And he comes out with the Diamond Dogs tour, and it's nothing but my show with his songs! He took my whole show. I got no credit for anything. SECONDS: You never confronted him with that? COUNTY: No. I haven't spoken to him in years, and if I did, I don't know if I'd lose it or not. I don't want to bother, because it's been so long. What can I say? What can I do? I should have known better. And they were promising me the moon the whole time. They set me up in an apartment, gave me a check every week, bought me clothes. I was on drugs, not heavy drugs, but enough to keep me down all the time. A lot of my ideas pop up in other albums, too. I was beginning to think that I'm not paranoid at all, I'm getting totally ripped off. And then I heard they were getting ready to shelve me. He made me sign this life-long contract, and it had a suspension clause in it so they could keep me tied up for life. It had a clause in it that said if at any time I offended public morality, I could he suspended. I, like a fool, signed it because they told me it was just him being funny. Kiss's management wanted to sign me. I sent them my tapes and they loved it. When they found out I was under contract to MainMan, they didn't want to know me. I don't want to go on and on about this. I don't want to sound bitter. SECONDS: Did you have any relationship besides a professional one? COUNTY: No, there was no relationship. There were little incidents, but he'd do that with a lot of people. SECONDS: Was he like a tease? COUNTY: Yeah. Sometimes the teasing seemed to get a little out of hand, but for my tastes, I found him physically repulsive. Once I went to see him, and he came into the room coked out of his mind and did a mock-rape on me. He threw me on the floor, pinned me down, dry-humped me, tried to put a hickey on my neck. I didn't like that. I would just say, "Get the fuck off of me." Another time at a hotel, I went to the refrigerator for a Diet Pepsi and he came in and unzipped his trousers and started showing me his pubic hairs, because he shaved his hairs in a heart shape. He waited for me to do something and I didn't. I just went, "That's very nice, David," and walked away. SECONDS: Did he get his way with a lot of people? COUNTY: He got his way with anyone he wanted to. I just found him absolutely repulsive with skinny, knobby knees with veins in them. And that skinny body, ooh. I found him totally unattractive. SECONDS: Not to ask you to kiss and tell, but is there anybody of note with whom you had a sexual liaison? COUNTY: One occasion at Max's, I was doing my makeup in the bathroom, and Dee Dee Ramone came in. He started peeing, and he took his cock out, and he said, "Oh, look at my cock. Look at all the scars on it where my girlfriend tried to stab me. Blah blah blah." Just little things like that. The others I can't tell; I'll get in trouble. SECONDS: Too bad. COUNTY: Y'know who Chris Spedding is? I can't really tell. SECONDS: Oh, go ahead. COUNTY: I went into this transvestite bar one night, and this guy came over and sat down, and really started doing the chat-up on me. He said, come back to my place, we'll play records, I've got all this coke, we'll do all these things, blah blah blah, it'll be fabulous, we'll have a party with champagne. I didn't have anything else to do and I said, "Okay, I'll come over." I didn't realize who it was — It was Chris Spedding. He got me coked out of my mind, wound up throwing me on the bed, and begging me to do the most disgusting things that I won't even mention to you, they were so disgusting. They were disgusting, horrible. Finally, I left. Then, I had to go to the fucking doctor. He gave me something, nothing too heavy. I was so disappointed in Chris Spedding, I never looked at him in the same way. It wasn't a sexual disease, it was one of those things you get, you know what I mean? SECONDS: I see. COUNTY: He was dirty. SECONDS: Really? COUNTY: He was unclean. I don't think he'd had a bath. I was totally turned off; I just wanted to get out of there. He was so coked up, his head kept jerking, his eyes would go off in a weird way. He was totally out of his mind. He was totally fucked up on drugs — I mean totally fucked up. It was scaring me. He didn't know I was Jayne County. About a year later, he came to one of my shows with his band and they were heckling me. They were being very disruptive, and so I said, "This next song is called, 'You're Looking Cool Daddy, But You're Bad In Bed.' And it's dedicated to..." and I pointed right at him, "Chris Spedding." They were quiet after that. "I really don't want to bore
people. SECONDS: Why did you leave New York and go to London? COUNTY: My friend Lee Childers was in London managing the Heartbreakers. The Heartbreakers were on The Anarchy Tour. The Sex Pistols dropped off, and The Damned continued. He rang up my manager and said, "We've just got to get Wayne over here, because England's punk scene is incredible; it's a lot more theatrical, and Wayne would fit in very well here." The punk scene in England was more theatrical; it was more visual. The reaction to me was so incredible, that I decided, "I'm just going stay here." SECONDS: Was the London drug scene different from New York? COUNTY: People were all into speed. There was not much acid. It was mostly speed — cheap speed. SECONDS: What is your formula for musical longevity? COUNTY: Just to do what you feel; do what suits you best. What I do best is straight-ahead rock n' roll. Drums, bass, guitar, very simple stuff is exactly what I want to do and exactly what I like. SECONDS: What is the role of what is legally called obscenity — crassness, risqueness — in art, especially in rock music? COUNTY: First of all, let me say that I don't believe anything is a dirty word or a vulgarity, simply because those words are a part of our language. By banning them, essentially, we're banning our language. SECONDS: You're a transsexual. At what point during your transformation from male to female did Wayne County actually become Jayne County? COUNTY: It was the way I was beginning to look with my new figure. I was looking better than ever, more and more like the female gender. Coming out as Wayne just wasn't on anymore. I did it as a career move. Patti Palladin, she told me that there's no way I could come out on stage anymore looking the way I did and calling myself a man. If I was going to have that look, that image, I needed a name to fit. SECONDS: Beyond just the name change, besides your everyday gender dysphoria, when was it that you decided to transform? COUNTY: It really didn't happen like that, it was a gradual thing. I've been like that since an early age. SECONDS: Tell us about sex reassignment. COUNTY: There are different degrees of transsexualism. Because you're a transsexual, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a full sex change. A lot of transsexuals are quite well adapted to just remain in the middle. In fact, it would do a lot of transsexuals harm to do a full sex change. It doesn't have to be black or white; it doesn't have to be a full sex change. If you get to a certain point with your body, from the hormone treatments and all, if you're comfortable there, you should just stay there. There's no point in going all the way if you feel uncomfortable with it. I was on the verge — I was like an inch close to doing it — then I thought, "I feel comfortable now, I don't think I'm going to have to do it." If I had a full sex change, then regretted it, it'd be too late to go back over the bridge and I might commit suicide. SECONDS: Are you a hermaphrodite? COUNTY: Yes. To classify myself is very hard, because it's psychological. I would classify myself, at the moment, as that, because it takes in all forms of transsexuality, transvestism, drag queen, cross-dressing, whatever — I would say that I'm trans-gender. SECONDS: When you began your sex reassignment, how did your friends and associates react to it? COUNTY: One person who acted strange was Patti Smith. I ran into her on the street, and I was just beginning my hormones, and my little titties were just beginning to peek out of my tee shirt. We were talking, and her eyes were fixed down there, and she started getting really nervous. I got a very strange reaction from her. I read where Patti had said things like, she was comfortable around gay men who still acted like men, but not comfortable around people who were considered men who don't really act like men. She was very uncomfortable because she had it in her mind that I was Wayne and I was a guy doing this little transition. She was nervous. I don't know where that comes from with her. Some people got very strange and others, about who you wouldn't dream it, thought it was just fabulous. Some people in the business got really weird with me. SECONDS: Physiologically speaking, why did Wayne County become Jayne County? COUNTY: It helped me to deal more with myself and basic reality, of what's happening around me. It was harder for me to deal with life in general when I was just Wayne, the little boy who had a big nose and wore too much mascara. People still considered me with an attitude like I'm a real guy. I was thinking I wasn't really a guy at all, I was one of the girls. SECONDS: Do you like the mystique that arose around that? Do you like the question marks over people's heads? COUNTY: Yeah, I guess so, but like or not, that's where I was going anyway. SECONDS: You were proud of what you were, and stood up for that. COUNTY: I'm very proud of being a pioneer in that way, and also being one of the first trans-gender people to go into straight rock places and do what I do. A trans-gender person is a culmination of both sexes. It's one who transposes certain aspects of one's sex and mixes it in with aspects of the other sex. I like that. To me, that's very appealing. I find it totally fascinating. I find it totally political without marching down the street with a sign. SECONDS: What do you think Bowie's reaction to all this would have been? Would he have run out and gotten a sex change if you had gotten one back in the 70s? COUNTY: No. Maybe he should of. I think he was more of a put-on. There were completely straight people coming into Max's Kansas City, and they were totally straight and totally into girls, and they would say they were bi-sexual. Bowie was the king of that. It's very psychological; it goes back to every aspect of your being — what you are and how you got there. It's very heavy, to cop a 1960's expression. SECONDS: It took a lot of nerve. Any medical procedure is inherently dangerous. COUNTY: Someone gave me a book that showed the whole medical procedure. They went into detail, what they had to do. It horrified me. I read about what occurred — you have to have this big round thing up yourself for six months. I don't think I could have handled it psychologically. I think I would have totally freaked out. As someone who's done a lot of LSD in the 60s, I think that might be one of the reasons why I couldn't go on with the whole thing. SECONDS: if you were just coming on the scene now, would you do this all over again? SECONDS: Is your sex reassignment surgery partial or complete? COUNTY: What's happened is, basically, physically I can be classified as a hermaphrodite. I have beautiful, fabulous female breasts, a woman's shape, my face is real feminine and everything, but I'm still what people would classify biologically as male down below. SECONDS: Alright! COUNTY: Basically, I'm a hermaphrodite. SECONDS: I gotcha. COUNTY: I knew a hermaphrodite in England and some hermaphrodites actually do have both sex organs. Others don't; others have maybe like a penis that's small, or actually they have a vagina, but they actually have balls that are up in them, or whatever. Medically, I would be considered a preoperative transsexual. A post-operative, that's who's got a full sex change. A pre-operative transsexual is a transsexual who has the female shape, the breasts and everything, but they haven't had the operation. In general, I just consider myself trans-gender. SECONDS: And are you happy? COUNTY: Yes. SECONDS: Well, that's the important thing. What kind of criticism about your work bothers you the most? COUNTY: Well, I wouldn't want to hear that I was uninteresting. I hate for my music to be called uninteresting. I'd hate to be called boring. I really don't want to bore people. I hate when people miss the point. SECONDS: What's the highest compliment you've ever received? COUNTY: When 16 Magazine called me the Lenny Bruce of rock n' roll. SECONDS: What's the best music to have sex to? COUNTY: The best music to have sex to ... I'd have to think about that because I haven't had sex in over a year. I have no libido. To me, sex is very boring. It's just too much trouble. I'd rather have wet dreams; it's easier. Does the sex have to be good? SECONDS: No. COUNTY: I would say probably if you put on the Velvet Underground, the sex could probably turn out to be, shall we say, interesting. But if you put on something really laid back like — can you imagine having sex with The Mamas And The Papas on? SECONDS: You'd want to get up and eat. COUNTY: I would never think about putting on music anyway; I prefer no music. |
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