#DragHerStory: At 93, Tish Says She’s NOT NYC’s Oldest Drag Queen

A recent profile by Daniel Penny in the New Yorker, titled The Last Queen of Greenwich Village, profiled Joseph Touchette, aka Tish who is 93. It’s a great read.

“Tish may be the oldest drag queen in New York City, he knew he wanted to be an entertainer from an early age. He grew up in Dayville, Connecticut, the eldest of seven children in a French Catholic, blue-collar family. Following his marriage to Norman, whom he met one night at an underground gay bar, Tish worked factory jobs and took dance and singing lessons at a prominent music academy in Providence; on weekends, he played the local clubs…”

Tish feels there’s a distinction between a drag queen and a female impersonator…

“A drag queen is an amateur—a female impersonator is a professional.”

At the end of their sets, most female impersonators would change back into men’s clothing, but Tish sometimes went out in costume. “I made my living as a girl—except horizontally,” he said with a wink. “It was very easy to do, especially when I was in demand.” Tish never performed at the higher-end clubs, like Club 82, which had a ritzier atmosphere than the Moroccan Village and a larger celebrity following.

Adrian, an old friend of Tish’s and a fellow-performer, tried to explain why. “They thought Tish was too trashy,” he said. “He was too crazy,” Adrian went on, “He was too outrageous.” Tish was arrested once during the raid of a gay bar, but the police let him go, assuming he was a woman. In 1969, Tish missed the Stonewall riots because he was performing at a night club in upstate New York; he has never marched in a Gay Pride parade.”

It was a different world for the LGBTQ community in the 50s and 60s

“‘They would book us for a week and pa-pa-pa-pa, we’d stay for six months.’ He remembers his audition at the Moroccan Village, a popular club on West Eighth Street during the nineteen-fifties, for which he sang “You’ll Never Know How Much I Love You”.

By the nineteen-seventies, club culture was shifting away from dinner theatre and toward disco. Tish’s cohort of performers had passed into middle age, and the next generation was beginning to cross-dress as part of everyday life. During this period, one of Tish’s boyfriends, Peter, transitioned to become Eve. Tish wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but he took care of Eve because, he said, “that’s when she needed me most.” Like many of Tish’s contemporaries, Eve was a sex worker and died during the aids crisis. Now an urn containing her ashes sits in Tish’s living room.”

Tish is a fixture in the West Village for nearly 7 decades…

“Since 1956, Tish has lived in a one-bedroom railroad apartment on the corner of Bank and West Fourth streets, across from a former travel agency that was later a Taoist decor shop, then a Little Marc Jacobs, and is now shuttered. He pays two hundred and fifty-six dollars a month in rent, and relies on food stamps, social security, and the nominal fee he charges an aspiring actor and chef, Derek, who sleeps on a pullout couch in the living room.

Above the couch is a wall of framed photographs of Tish—you can recognize him by his nose, which is shaped like a teardrop—wearing blond wigs, long gowns, and feather boas. In other images, he is dressed as a man and wears his bleached hair in a pompadour. Beneath these photos is a small framed poster from a nineteen-sixties travelling act, “The French Box Revue,” in which the female impersonators are arranged in a grid, labelled with men’s names: Mr. Dayzee Dee, Mr. Jackie King, Mr. Bobby Dell, Mr. Tony St. Cyr, and Mr. Tish.

Recently, Derek has gone from Tish’s roommate to his caretaker. He is hoping to inherit the apartment through a “nontraditional family arrangement” provision from New York’s Office of Rent Administration. For Tish, it’s a symbiotic relationship: he has somebody to look after him, and what does he care if Derek wants the apartment after he’s dead? He won’t be needing it.”

It’s a culture shock for Tish to see a drag show in 2017, but the author and Tish’s friends head out one Sunday afternoon…

“The men had decided on a matinee at Boots and Saddle, a former leather bar turned drag den, located just a few blocks from Tish’s apartment. As the group descended the dark staircase and entered the bar, a drag queen was reading off bingo numbers to a crowd of revellers. Some of the clientele, mostly gay men and straight girls, were dressed for brunch; others were in clothes from the night before. Two patrons beckoned for the group to take empty seats at their table. Tish told them about his years as a female impersonator, shouting over the music to be heard. The younger of the two, who wore a tight T-shirt and barely looked eighteen, nodded enthusiastically. “It’s so important to know our history,” he said.

The lights dimmed and Fifi Dubois began her set by dancing frantically around the bar, lip-synching to an upbeat eighties number, and then taking the stage to introduce herself. Her face was heavily contoured, which made her look like an alien, but she knew how to work the crowd. Later, Fifi began singing along to a mélange of telephone-themed songs interspersed with deranged monologues, one of which featured a woman screaming, “My pussy is burning, my pussy is burning.”

“Who gives a shit?” Tish said. “If we were to say ‘pussy’ in the clubs I worked in, they would have broken your legs.” Fifi lowered herself into a split and then somersaulted on the sticky floor. Adrian looked aghast, but Tish seemed unimpressed. “She’s good, but she’s lip-synching.” There was no getting around this fact for Tish and Adrian: the art of female impersonation had gone downhill. Sipping their Cokes, they began to muse on the past and the long arcs of their careers. “You can’t grow old in this business, darling,” Adrian said. “I’ll never get old,” Tish replied.”

You can read the full story here.