But, alas, he’s only the drag persona of Mia Campbell, emcee and genderqueer weirdo (their words, not mine!).
So, instead of flirting wildly we sat down to discuss Kiss, a lesbian and bi women only night that ran for about 10 years through the Naughties in various venues (but predominantly the Tivoli on Francis Street) in Dublin, Ireland.
Make sure you find out more about Phil on Instagram.
TranscriptPhil T Gorgeous 00:00
Because I wouldn’t be as opposed to statically considered to be a butch woman. Back in the day that was as almost a dirty thing, like women looked on Butch women as like not appreciating their own femininity or you wanted to be a man or whatever it was. And that was it was all very dirty. There was no tolerance for bullishness, there was no kind of non binary there was no space for different you were either a semi girl and into other Femi girls or you were just this like discarded, you know, vessel of which
K Anderson 00:36
I am K Anderson and you are listening to lost spaces, a podcast that mourns the death of queer nightlife. Every episode I talk to a different person about a venue from their past, the memories they created there, and the people that they used to know. Failed to go gorgeous is my latest crush. He’s also the persona of Mia Campbell, drag King MC and genderqueer weirdo. We could have to discuss kiss her lesbian and by woman night that ran for about 10 years through the naughties in various venues in Dublin, Ireland. First of all, can you say your name because I really want to hear it in an Irish accent?
Phil T Gorgeous 01:47
Yeah, so my stage name is filthy gorgeous, which is obviously a moniker that was derived from something else. So I got named by my friend Johnny when I was in college. And it came from the city’s history so filthy, gorgeous, which was at the time, and we loved their music. And he was like that sign that would make rage stage name. And I was like, I can’t call myself filthy, gorgeous. Like, that’s ridiculous. like back then. There was no old, like queer club kid scene type thing where that would have been a fairly, you know, understandable name to give to yourself for Performance Base. And so we turned it into more of a drag King friendly version, which was filthy, gorgeous. But originally, actually, you’re the first person I’ve told this. And originally, he put a real kind of country Irish accent on it, which made it sound like communism mock, which is really funny because I was 50 guard just which was a lovely way to put it together. But unfortunately, it didn’t really read on an international platform. So we ended up changing it to the slightly more appetising version.
K Anderson 03:01
I was See I always really struggle with drug names, because I never kind of get the joke until it’s five. And I was thinking it’s like the I think this this name in particular, really benefits from having that thick Irish accent behind it.
Phil T Gorgeous 03:20
Nice. Yeah, I like that. It adds a certain charm to it too, though, because I imagine it doesn’t necessarily read every accent, but the Irish accent is definitely its own lilting joy.
K Anderson 03:33
Yeah, yeah. Cuz he’s thinking of Courtney act on someone explained that one. Yeah. It makes total sense in an Australian accent when you’re like Courtney act. But in every other accent, it’s like, what Why do you call that?
Phil T Gorgeous 03:51
In the act? Especially if you enunciate really quickly. You know, it’s like that now I don’t have it. saved for me and Sharon needles like someone that explained Sharon Natal serious like, like, wow, I just assumed it was a real like, Oh, this is my witchy name. No, no.
K Anderson 04:10
Oh, okay. So maybe I’m not that bad after Oh,
Phil T Gorgeous 04:13
no, no, no, I don’t think it’s just you. Or thought or I’m just incredibly slow. It’s quite possible. That’s the thing too.
K Anderson 04:22
So, we are here to talk about kiss. Indeed we are. Where is it kiss or is it kiss? No, no, it’s okay. exactly what it says in the tin because I found I found something where it was stylised with full stops in between every letter
Phil T Gorgeous 04:38
now. Someone took a notion and did a graphic design course or something.
K Anderson 04:46
So, which was a lesbian and by women only was it women only night? Yes, it was him to Evelyn. So before we get into that, can you tell me about what the lesbian and gay And by women scene in Dublin is like,
Phil T Gorgeous 05:04
Wow. Well, it has certainly evolved over the years, I think it’s safe to say, when I came out, which was eight pounds ago, at the stage by, I would have come out when I was 19, which swept 20 years ago. So the queer scene in Dublin was very, very different. It was still very small, it was very, not underground is the wrong word, but it certainly wasn’t a prominent feature on the night, same nightclub scene, everyone would obviously have known the George. But beyond that there really wasn’t anywhere to go do you know they the other primary night clubs that are in Dublin now like the likes of panty bar, and didn’t exist yet. The dragon didn’t exist, although that has since closed. And so really, you had the George and then you had the bar that was there before panty bar, which is called booboo. And, and other than that, it was just select kind of niche, nightclub nights that would happen once a month. And for lesbians in particular, it was kind of like it was the only Night of the month that you could be an out lesbian and have a space to go to do you know, and I don’t even mean that in a facetious way. It’s just, you know, gay bars were very heavily populated by gay men with a small group of women who would gather in the corner known as dike corner, Judo, and
K Anderson 06:33
would usually be didn’t have a pool table.
Phil T Gorgeous 06:37
Although Gugu had a pool. And needless to say, that is exactly where the lesbians walk. But yeah, it was very much like the George had, I’d say maybe an 80% gay male population, and then 20% gay women, and then it would have been been Kiss Kiss, or Well, its predecessor was luigia, which is possibly the worst name of an I’ve ever heard in my life,
K Anderson 07:05
or the best,
Phil T Gorgeous 07:07
or the best. Now, it would be the best because now it would be like, ironically shift, you know, whereas back then it was just no some 40 something year old lesbian who was gagging for the ride basically was like, I want to put an eye on, so we can meet other women. And this is what I’m going to do. And it was in the basement of like, I don’t know, was it a hotel space or something? Like, I feel like it was some kind of hotel or hostel building that had a dance stairs. And they allowed you into this grim, dingy basement space. And they had like a security guy who looked like he would rather murder you than that. Yeah. And he did not seem pleased that this had been the night that he was put in charge of, you know, and it was just, it was the most baffling eclectic mix of women you could ever imagine meeting that would have gone to the beta. And then levita, when it finally shows, which I sure it didn’t last more than six months, it became case or at least the only main night became kiss, run by different people, I believe but and kiss knocked around for years, they managed to keep that going. Because again, there was no real space for women to go to and whatever way that crew had marketed this new night, it seemed to inspire some younger women to come to it. And that then I suppose allowed for the momentum together. And for I suppose that’s overtime, that’s how it became a more prominent feature on the queer scene. But you know, as is the case with any of these things, eventually, I don’t know if it was the the organisers grew tired of it, or the clientele and the demographic that were showing all pitch shifted significantly, but ultimately, it started to develop quite a reputation for being rough. Like you would go there and you would likely see a fist fight at some point, which is just yeah, I mean, batshit crazy.
K Anderson 09:08
We were talking about kiss at the moment. Yes, yes. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So so just just so I’m clear in my mind to the beador, which is, you know, the best club ever, and that, that kiss kind of opened up in response to that no longer existing, because there was there was a gap in the market, but there’s no overlap in terms of who was running them or anything. Now, that’s, that’s right. Okay. Okay. And then so kiss when when did that start?
Phil T Gorgeous 09:41
Oh, I want to say 17 or 18 years ago,
K Anderson 09:47
okay.
Phil T Gorgeous 09:49
Yeah, it must have been because it couldn’t have been levied at any more than and the reason I know and the reason I’m tracking it back, is because I base it on the length of time I’ve been doing it Because case kind of surfaced, and round about the time that I started doing drag, which is 16 years ago. So I imagine it couldn’t have been, it can’t be more than 1617 years ago that it kicked off.
K Anderson 10:15
Okay, so I want to find out about these fistfights. But before we do, let’s talk about drag, since you’ve just brought that up. Did you ever perform in drag at case,
Phil T Gorgeous 10:26
not at case because it wasn’t that kind of format, it was very much put together with the intention of being a club night, or just uphold it never had any kind of performance or performative aspect to it? And but there would have been been, you know, select things throughout a year where I would perform for queer female audiences in drag. Yeah, but not a kiss?
K Anderson 10:52
Well, let’s just bend the rules a little bit, because I kind of want to hear about getting into getting into drugs. Let’s just suspend and pretend that it was that case, or, you know, let’s just go off on this direction. So I mean, I guess, you know, we’ve talked about the lesbian scene, being the, these, in my words, the poor cousin of the gay male scene. Child and for Gabriel. And, for, you know, for me, as an outsider, it seems as though that’s on a whole other level, when you’re looking at drag kings and drag queens. And it’s, it’s come a long way in the last five or six years. But do you think like, 2003 2004, when you started doing it, what was that? Like?
Phil T Gorgeous 11:44
I mean, drag King, on any level in Ireland was always an incredibly obscure thing, if not entirely invisible, I only kind of came to be aware of it. And in 2003, and because I would have been going to club nights around pride, and one year, they had a drag King performing at pride. And I thought he was great. And I thought no more of it after the fact, because it was just a fun little pop up moment. But he didn’t really do much do you know, it was an odd little number, kind of disjointed Lee placed in an otherwise kind of club night night. And it was a fun little distraction. But it wasn’t that, you know, extensive, like I’m being assumptive life has come from the heavens and sun on me and made me suddenly want to do drag, you know, so cut to 2004. And I went to, there’s this thing called the lesbian lines conference. And they basically had, I think, like, a three day period where you could attend, you know, queer female lectures and workshops, and there was a performance, anything and everything. And back then I think there was a stronger sense of community and the lesbian scene. And I think back then the age dynamic would have been a bit different as well, like, young queer women were not hugely populating queer spaces. But the older women had obviously long since figured out a way to socialise. So this, this whole thing of like the lesbian lives conference and stuff was a nice way to meet people who weren’t just like part of a meat market or whatever Do you know this there was a performance evening, and there was a drinking troupe called the Sham Cox. And they did a number to Emma Bunton, maybe. And I sat in the audience wrapped, I was absolutely captivated by what was going on on stage. And I sat there going Holy fuck, I finally understand how to feed that need that I have in me to be on the stage performing, because I always knew I wanted to perform. And I always knew there was something in me that needed to be on a stage, you know, demanding that attention, but I didn’t see myself as having any discernible talents that would warrant it. Oh, sounds like what the fuck have I got to offer the world? That would be like, yeah, pay attention to me. And then I discovered it’s the fact that I inherently look like a mandate today. Because I have like, I’m 63. I’m a very tall woman. And I obviously have a short Butch haircut. So I get mistaken for a man on a daily basis. So I had been misgendered almost daily for my entire adult life. So sitting there watching these women pretending to be men. I was like, holy crap, I can do this for an actual living. Exciting. So I went and chatted to them. They asked if I wanted to join And the true friend, that’s where it all kicked off.
K Anderson 15:04
So okay, so I’m not gonna labour on this, but they were performing a song sung by female.
Phil T Gorgeous 15:10
Yeah, that is something to this day, that’s still funny with me. Because I I’m one of the the purist type drags where I’m like, I feel weird performing a drag number to a female vocal. And I know that drag is very broad as a definition. And I know that all forms of drag are valid. But for me, as a performer myself, I don’t choose to lip sync to drag numbers that have a female vocal, because it doesn’t sit with me, it doesn’t sit right with me for what I’m trying to do in terms of performance. So yes, I always find it interesting. Who queries that? Because it is it’s an interesting topic for debate amongst drag performers, I imagine,
K Anderson 15:53
oh, here’s me bringing all my ignorant judgement sorry.
Phil T Gorgeous 15:57
No, not in the slightest. It’s very, it’s a very valid question. You know, because I suppose it took me a long time to get to the stage where I accepted that I’m just not doing straight up female to male and male to female drag performance to a male vocal was should be considered drag. I thought it was a strict kind of cut and dry, you know, yeah, if you are a biological female, you can’t be a drag queen. Do you know, but that view has very much evolved over the years. And, you know, I got to I was asked to be a judge of a university drag competition. It’s actually one of the biggest square competitions in the country. And they do it annually. And I was one of the judges on the panel for it. And I sat there Now granted, they were ploughing drunk into me. So I was encouraged for the end of it. But I was practically in tears. By the end, just how beautifully joyful the whole thing was like, this is a collection of queer kids of every possible iteration of gender expression, live in their best little queer lives on stage, and I sat there going, I wish I’d figure this shit out sooner. Like I just wish I’d known from a younger age, or grown open a period of time where you know, you could be that free and embrace that wonderful otherness, you know? But yeah, it’s it’s fun to see people doing different things. And you know, you can learn a lot from the generations that come after you. I used to be so steadfast in my belief that it had to be a certain way, but that’s definitely it’s moving along. I’m trying to evolve.
K Anderson 17:42
I will try to do that to sounded so begrudging. Sorry, I didn’t guess I’ll think about it. Like myself into believing that no, no, no. Okay, so I’m coming over to ignore it now. That’s no, I like I’m totally I am totally on that. And I and I totally agree that that drag can be anything and any gender or any you know, any gender, any gender that you’re assigned at birth shouldn’t limit you to what gender you’re performing in. But if I was gonna do em abandons maybe I’d want to be hive and I’d want you know, like something slinky and Lidl I wouldn’t want to be like dressed as a man. Anyway, obvious questions to follow up about this. What was your first drag performance? And what was this? Oh,
Phil T Gorgeous 18:39
my god Wow. Now the irony of this is my first dragon performance was a female vote, man. Oh, I’ve got a shit the bed on that fucking continuity. Now the reason being and I tried to convince okay, but let me start from from the start to get, you know, a nice, actual chronological line here. And so the reason case is actually weirdly kind of intertwined. And all of this is I met the woman who convinced me to do drag and and introduce me to the drag scene at kiss. So it was my staff Christmas party is my first job after college. And as my staff Christmas party and she was the waitress at the staff Christmas party, and we clocked each other across the room instantaneously, you know, another queer it’s like, you know, your gaydar just goes wild, like that. Geiger counters going off. And I was like, Oh, I sent another laser beam in the room. Sure enough, we gave each other that kind of nod of knowing that nod of understanding and and that was highly entertaining course all the straight people at the table were none the wiser. And then I starboard I was having a miserable time because it was the equivalent of the most basic Pitch caravan of parties do you know it was not? It was not for me. And kiss was on that night. And I was like, I would much rather be surrounded by my kind. And so I fucked off from the Christmas party and I went off to kiss because again, it was only once a month. And if you were going out and you wanted to potentially meet people, you went out. One chance. Yeah, you’re one fucking chance. So am I swanned along in the hopes that a few of my mates might actually be out. I haven’t actually made plans because it was, you know, my Christmas party. I didn’t know for sure if I was going to stand in the queue outside and up behind me wanders my waitress from my Christmas party, even she’s standing behind me. So we get to chat. And when we get into the club, she kind of came up to me and was like I she really liked my style was I’ve never been approached with anything ever. Because I’m sure I looked like a fucking twat. I was dressed like Justin Timberlake practically of the time. This is when he first came out as a solo act. I thought I looked at this year, and I obviously just looked shit. But she loved what I had going on. Because they looked different from the other women room. And she signs up to me. It’s like, I like your style. We should be friends. I was like, wow, I never encountered a human interact with other humans like that. But I love how you do it. And why not? Let’s be friends. And an owner was her name una said, I’m going to this lesbian lives conference. There’s a gig on there, Dr. King performing, you should come and I said, Okay. And along we went. And that’s how I discovered drag through meeting at kiss. And Aaron and I decided we both wanted to drive together. And we decided to put a number together because we were told we should audition to be a part of this troupe. And the only way to do that would be to perform in front of these complete strangers. And I was quite nervous about this concept. And I had suggested a bunch of different songs, and I didn’t like any of them. And all the ones I was suggesting had a male vocal. And she wanted something decidedly more queer. Like I was going into very generic drag King obvious like blokey kind of material and genuine pony. Whereas she wanted something camp and clear and old, do you know, so I found a song called lesbian love story. And it’s a very tongue in cheek pond filled song about having, you know, two hands in the bush and all the rest of it. And we thought this was gas crack. And the delightful story. I’ll try and nutshell this, because I’m conscious that this story could go on forever.
K Anderson 22:53
No, no, keep going. Okay, cool.
Phil T Gorgeous 22:56
But this, this is the weirdest story I told us in an interview a couple of weeks ago, and the interviewer was a friend of mine, but she was crying laughing because the end result is quite amusing. We were going to perform a stage show like a variety show that was being hosted in the university. And she had a friend in the drama programme there, who was running a variety show. Now, this is the part where I’m not sure how much of this is true. And this circles back to this concept of me being really gullible and believing everything told. But the guy who was running it was apparently part of the royal family of a country, a principality that I’d never heard of. And to this day, I’ve never heard of it since, like, I don’t know, this country actually existed. Or if this was just some batshit crazy story that someone was telling me just to wind me up. I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. All I knew was she knew this bloke. He claimed to be a prince. And he wanted to raise funds from this variety show to send back to his nation. Like this thing, like, you know, the president of nigeria has 33 million in an account that you’d like to send to you. We’re on this kind of terror. And I don’t like I mean, this doesn’t say dry. Are you sure about this lad? And she’s like, No, no, no, he’s fine. He’s totally cool. He’s really nice guy. I was like, Alright, well fuck it. So we invited two of the cast members from the drag King troupe to come along and watch this show. And we did warn them that we weren’t really sure what the content of the show would be, but that we would be doing a number in it. So they’re grand, they’re going to come along. So we arrive in and it turns out that this Prince guy is also teaching like 910 11 year old girls. Hip Hop Dance as you do, and I was like, Okay, I mean this, this doesn’t sound weird at all. But I mean, this seems to fit perfectly into the oddness of every aspect of this entire situation that we’re in. And sure enough, there was just like a mob of 910 11 year old girls scurrying around in this theatre space. And the audience was almost entirely comprised of their parents. And I am here dressed as a man about to do a song called lesbian love story that talks about visiting and hands in devotion, you know, I’m like, Holy Mother of God, what have you done to a sound like, what have you gotten us into, um, back then, there were no YouTube tutorials to teach you how to be a drag King, there was nothing there to teach you how to do a beard and you know how to bind your tips or anything like that. So we had asked the, the dragging from the to prove who was coming to watch this perform for a couple of tips. And he had just said, you, you get hair, you cut it up, you stick it in your face, it’s spherical, nonsense, relatively straightforward. So owner gone to a costume shop and she had picked up hair. But she had not picked up hair, she had picked up a nylon braid, like it was one of those style bits of plastic wig. And she picked up spirit gum. And we didn’t know that obviously, nylon hair is just gonna be brutal to stick onto your face. And we also didn’t have any scissors, we have one of those tiny little sewing kits, you know, the like the little things that you get in Christmas crackers, a teeny tiny scissors that you can barely fit your fingers into the hole. And that’s not going to cut nylon for shit. So we’re there in the bathroom of theatre surrounded by nine year olds trying to cut nylon pigtails with a teeny tiny scissors. And we didn’t know you’re supposed to cut it really small. So we were just cutting lumps of herrell, which was it was a nylon braid. It came off looking like pubes. So we just had loads of bits of plastic hair, that we were then sticking to our faces. And it looks like have you ever seen Team America the movie on no? Well, there’s a scene where one of the characters is put in disguise as basically a terrorist. And they do this makeover of him. And it’s basically just like patches of hair stuck all over his face, like pubes. So we looked like that. We looked like someone had mangled us. And it was just shockingly bad. And we go and we do this show. And we got a standing ovation from the roomful of straight parents. I have never laughed so hard at the size of this entire room full of people not a clue what we were, but they didn’t care. And that was the bit that mattered to me. So yeah, so that’s how I got into drag. Initially, I was introduced to it by una. And then the Kings came along and saw us audition at the show. And we we did lesbian Love Story by cold wild party, I believe.
K Anderson 28:11
But and so that means that you passed your audition.
Phil T Gorgeous 28:14
Yes. And he did amazing. They loved it, actually. And they were crying laughing because you know, there were some inappropriate moves in it and everything and lots of bending over and quirky facial expressions. And the kids were giggling because you know, kids when they don’t really understand why they’re laughing just everyone else’s laughing so they laugh too. Yeah. So it’s a very surreal moment. And but actually in this is a really fun little twist. One of the like nine year olds who was in the bathroom with us while we were getting ready, was standing there fascinated watching what we were doing and asked us to explain. I was like, Well, I think that’s the conversation for your mommy. I was like, we’re just we’re going to pretend to be boys for the show that we’re doing, right? Like, Oh, well, you do a beard on me too. And we’re like, Go ask your parents for permission, which they did. And they came back and told that they would. So we ended up dragging up like four or five of these little kids in the bathroom with us. And then I did an interview 10 years ago with a student who she was obviously just looking into drag in Ireland and all the rest. And we were in my apartment, and she was asking me the same kind of questions you are and I was giving her my origin story. And it got to the point in the bathroom with the little kid asking to be dragged up. She’s like, Holy fuck, I was like, Wow, it was one of those children. Full circle that the child that I stuck a beard on to then came out as by like, 10 years later or whatever. I was like, wow, this is a mad world. Grace. I love this shift. I love when things like that happen.
K Anderson 29:51
I mean, I deny these lesbians recruiting these young lady This is the gay agenda. in action. Yeah.
Phil T Gorgeous 30:00
I love a good circuitous route to get to the goods didn’t quite as well make it a really like a labour of love.
K Anderson 30:09
And then so so I’m, I’m fascinated by the idea of drag families and drag troops. What does being in a dragging troop mean?
Phil T Gorgeous 30:23
Well, it means never getting consensus on anything. Certainly one of the most complicated things about doing things with a group of lesbian women is that someone is always offended by. And it’s almost impossible to get people to agree on things. Now, back then, you know, it was very much approached, as you can all brand that is it. So the true pads, I think, 14 people in total at one point, but there was the main core troop of nine dragging. And then, you know, there was a stage I think, maybe six months later, where every second lesbian you met, claimed to be a member of a tree. This is weird. But yeah, I think at one point, there were upwards on 1415 folks in the whole trip together. But the problem with that, then is people then started having opinions on, you know, what nights should we be doing? And what festivals should we be a part
K Anderson 31:24
of a message?
Phil T Gorgeous 31:26
Yeah, exactly. What’s our mission statement? You know, and it’s like, oh, Lord, can this not just be a bit of fun, you know, and then people were like, well, should we be charging for what we’re doing? And some people just wanted to do it for fun, and some people wanted to do it for monetary gain. And that became a whole fucking debate and buzz we Yeah, we travelled around we performed in America, we performed to Canada with it. And it was great fun, like it was just a really, I suppose inspirational period for drag performance in Ireland at the time and then once the drag King trip, and kind of folded everything tanked for a while. But then there was a whole evolution of more alternative performance, the kind of sprung from that. And then, you know, there’s a troupe that came after that, called doppelgänger, and then doppelgänger evolved to become a different troupe called undercurrent. And like that you had all these like pop up tropes. So there would have been like a huge swathe of individual drag queen performers around Dublin. But then there were these really cool kind of performance groups that were like little families, you know, and they, they would spend a huge amount of time together performing and rehearsing and, you know, yes, squabbling? Well, this is the thing, the doppelgänger and undercurrent because they were all friends. And they were a mix of gaming, and by women and gay women. There was a more balanced dynamic, I think it was easier to kind of reach core mission visa. But yet the lesbians basically kind of imploded on themselves because they had different visions for what should be done with the troop. And why what their motivations were for doing it, you know?
K Anderson 33:18
So I want to know, then, what, what is it that you like about doing drag? Oh, God, sorry. That’s like the most generic question ever. Did you want to rephrase or you probably got a generic answer, because you’ve been asked it so often. So why don’t you go for that? Then I’ll think of finessing
Phil T Gorgeous 33:37
amazing Well, why don’t I tweak it to tailor just to you then so because you’ve caught me at an interesting time in terms of my my drag evolution. I guess when I started drag, I loved the attention. Let’s be perfectly fucking honest about it. Anyone who says that they do any kind of performance who doesn’t like attention is clearly just lying to you. Because if that were the case, we’d all just be radio folk. So it’s, yeah. And but I loved the experience of being able to embody another gender Do you know, because it’s very different, like whatever by being mistaken as a man day to day on the streets. The moment suddenly, someone suddenly realises you’re actually a woman and that awkward fucking interaction, as they either get aggressive with you because they’re embarrassed or they look mortified, and then make it worse by trying to apologise You know, it. It’s a very different dynamic, being an obvious woman who has now embodied a male character who is intentionally doing this and is confusing people in the room because you do very much translate as male on stage. And I have often been doing shows where people come up to me afterwards who didn’t realise that I was a woman. And I then asked the question, What the fuck did you think the point of my act was? I think that was just some random gay man in a suit, like lip synching to these, you know, like, what an underwhelming act that would have been. I always find that fascinating that you know, and I’m like, it’s a huge compliment, obviously, they’re basically saying, I’m very good at what I do, and that, you know, I’m convincingly so male that they genuinely thought I was. And then when I started hosting, obviously, my voice gives it away, like, I don’t exactly have a butch male voice, you know? And yes, people would then go, Well, maybe it’s just a bit queer, a bit of feminine, so they just thought I was a gay man, my fancy gay man. I’m saying, you know, I was like, well, this is amazing. So, I guess my enjoyment factor is definitely from the gender bending perspective. I love that it raises questions for people I love when people tell you that they’re a bit confused that they wonder if they are gay if they find me attractive as a man. What does that mean? You know, and they, you get to encounter so many existential crises. It’s, it’s quite entertaining. And to be the cause of them. That’s Yeah, I feel like that is a life goal fully achieved. I want you to question your gender. I want you to question whether or not you want to stick your dick in it or not like that, to me is like an amazing life goal is to make mine question whether or not he wants to fuck it. Do you know I’m like, Wow. I mean, maybe you guys want to fuck everything? Who knows? But
K Anderson 36:35
yeah, I’d maybe say in terms of life goals, you could raise your bar and raise boys. Yes, I feel that’s a valid point. I don’t need much in this life. And so okay, and again, I’m really sorry, I come off sounding really ignorant. When you hear about sis men who become drag queens, they talk about like, when they were a kid, they would play around with their mom’s makeup or like, put on her shoes and stuff like that. Did you have experiences like that when you were a child
Phil T Gorgeous 37:20
100% like, I am a textbook version. Like I am the exact opposite of us in terms of you know, I am the woman who grew up wanting to be the boy and playing in my brother’s bedroom with his toys and dressing up in my dad’s clouds like it is literally the exact you know, mirror image of that, you know, but I one of my funniest memories of that is one of my best friends was Collin called and lived five doors down. And column was a lovely, gentle, a feminine little boy. And obviously, I had no concept that he was queer because i would i was a child and I didn’t know what gay was, you know. But we would play mommies and daddies. And I would force him to be the mommy because I wanted to be the daddy while playing mommies and daddies. I didn’t fucking know from the I don’t know, like, I don’t know, how I got as far into life as I did without figuring it. I was queer. To be perfectly honest with you, like, I came out when I was 19. And I honestly could track it back to the age of like, three.
K Anderson 38:27
Coming out, like coming out to yourself and 19
Phil T Gorgeous 38:30
Yes, I like I. Yeah, I know. To be fair, I led a very sheltered life, I grew up in a very kind of conservative environment, my grandmother would have been incredibly religious, like we would have gone to church with her every weekend, until I was what 17 or something like, this was just what was done and how I was raised. And gay was not a word that really got used in our household. I was warned of having gay relatives, but it was in like, hushed tones. And this was, you know, almost like a family shame kind of thing. And I’m like, Oh, God, okay. So we just were scared of gays is the message I took home from that, you know, and then it wasn’t till I was 19. And I went to Canada for my first summer away in university, and I had my lesbian relative. Caroline was living over there, and she let me stay there. And she introduced me to all her friends and I waitressed at one of her friend’s 40th birthdays, and I just got completely immersed in her queer family. And they were incredible, wonderful, colourful, loving, welcoming people. As like, holy shit. These people aren’t scary at all. Why have I been told to consider these people like all ad or deviant or whatever? And that’s when I started questions like maybe I’m a bit by. This is the Gay Agenda again. indoctrination. Just how Yeah. I just hadn’t gone to Canada that Yeah. Canada ruined. Canada turn people. Okay. So yeah, so that’s where I figured it all right. But I did the you know, the inevitable I am terrified of the fact that I might be gay. So I might just test the waters by saying I’m by keeping in mind at this stage, I’d never had a boyfriend. I had never slept with anyone. I was still very much like this virginal conservative pristinely naive. Human beings. You know, I was like, yep, I’ve kissed some boys. And that’s all. And yeah, I arrived over and Canada and Canada woke me the fuck up. Yeah, all went downhill from there clearly. So we should probably talk about kiss since I say so. 2003 is kind of when it started, right? Yeah, the ashes of the libido. be next. Oh, that’s my new band name. That can be your first EP the N way, way. Okay, now I’ve gone off topic because I’m like designing recover of this EP. Okay, let’s not get to kiss immediately. Because there’s a question I’d scribbled down before based on something that you’d said, which was back then there was a stronger sense of community. What did you mean by that? I guess, the scene as it stands now. And perhaps this is just because I’m at a later stage in my life, and my perception of the scene has changed as well. I don’t want to be arrogant enough to think that I have a full understanding of what being a queer woman on the scene is like, as it stands today, but from my perspective, the scene back then, because it was driven by the necessity to seek out shared spaces. Because women just didn’t go to the nightclubs. And there were no, like, you know, I didn’t really have anything that was driven towards social Sorry, I say I was like, you should know what that is.
K Anderson 42:24
I mean, I was going with,
Phil T Gorgeous 42:27
like, a queer community space, it’s a building in town where, you know, young queer kids can come along to see, you know, a facilitator or counsellors to chat about queerness. And it has like safe spaces for queer people who are figuring themselves out. And there’s a little coffee shop and stuff, you know, it’s, it’s just a nice little community space. And, but back then, the only things that were really catering towards queer women, were was a group for women who were like, in their 40s and 50s, with her married with two kids who think they might be gay, that kind of thing. So it’s just women who are questioning themselves. So other than just going to a bar and hoping that the 10 women that were there, the 10 women that you’ve already made out with or slept with, you know, you were pretty limited for two weeks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a big game of slim pickins. You know. So things like kiss and libido, obviously, they were the only real opportunity, you had to interact with other queer women in a in a nightclub kind of a way. However, things like the lesbian lives conference, and you know, different little pop up things had a stronger sense of community, because they grew from that limitations that the cuisine would have put on you, you know, so I feel like it did feel like a stronger sense of a bond between women back then, than their merit feels like, because queer women in the queer space are a bit more mainstream, shall we say? There’s more of the like, they probably make up 40% of the room rather than 10% you know, and there is a gravitation more towards socialising the way gay men would you know, like, there’s more sense of, of cruising more than anything else, you know. So yeah, I think it’s just, it’s just evolved quite a bit over the years. Yeah.
K Anderson 44:28
But that’s fascinating, isn’t it? Because I think that the same kind of thing has happened in London like women used to be. It’s probably not the right word, but like, get her wised and like, oh, you’re just a lesbian Ah, I don’t really know what to do and and they would be made to feel really unwelcome in male dominated spaces. And now it doesn’t feel like that at all. And it feels like every one is just whatever our new dislike Just hang out. And I don’t really know what the shift was, why that’s happened?
Phil T Gorgeous 45:05
Yeah, it’s it’s a very good point. And that would certainly have been my experience of it is that there is inherent misogyny in the queer scene, and I think that persists To this day, but in a very, in a far less noticeable way. But certainly, like, back, when I would have first been going to nightclubs, like the queer women that were there were incredibly Butch, were almost sectioned off almost like they were relegated to a lesser space within a shared space, you know, so it’s kind of like sit at the back of the bus kind of thing, you know. And I don’t, I’m not a psychologist, I don’t want to pick apart the psychology behind why. I’m fascinated by the muscle journey in the gay community. I don’t really understand. Like, I don’t hate men, as a queer woman. I know, plenty of queer women who do hate. But equally I know gay men who don’t hate women, but a huge proportion of them seem put off by threatened by I don’t know, I don’t know, the right terminology to put on it. But there’s definitely an unease around lesbians, like they are to be looked down upon, you know?
K Anderson 46:21
Yeah. And do you think it’s just like a, like a pushing down of oppression? Like, okay, so just go with me on this? Yeah. Like, so gay men feel oppressed by the wider society, because they’re a minority within that, and they’re not always accepted. And then in queer spaces, they’re suddenly a group of people that are more of a minority than them. And they can just kind of act out the same kind of behaviours that they would experience in wider society.
Phil T Gorgeous 46:53
That’s a very interesting theory, I imagine. Yeah, I think that. But yeah, I imagine there’s a large amount of truth in that, like, it is a power dynamic at the end of the day, and it’s kind of like, almost, you know, we have chosen lesbians as the subject of our frustrations. Yeah, we can work it out on you, because we don’t feel threatened by you. But at the same time, you know, we have shit, we have damage, we have trauma. And you know, it’s it’s almost like the bully mentality really, isn’t it?
K Anderson 47:32
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Phil T Gorgeous 47:34
Yeah. It’s weird. Like, certainly, especially if you look at the drag King drag queen dynamic, like drag kings are very much treated as lesser than Do you know, and I know that in itself is shifting now. Very slowly, like glacial pace slowly, but it is moving a bit. And but there’s definitely I have found myself in environments where gay men around me who make a career out of trying to embody an empowered female, like basically shit on you from a greatest of heights, because you’re a woman, I was like, the weird dichotomy of this experience. It’s just it’s so bizarre, you know, it’s such an unusual situation you find yourself in is that as the only biological female in the room, I’m still somehow a second class citizen here, you know, and I’m like, how, how is this happening? It’s fascinating. Like, I genuinely want to spend some time, like researching this and looking into this and picking it apart. Because I do find it incredibly fascinating. That dynamic between gay men and gay women, but as you say, like it, it’s definitely been shifting a lot of light, like, you will never walk into any of the main bars in Dublin. And as a women, woman, no one will look twice at you like, oh, there’s a lesbian. Do you know, you’re as much a part of the room as they are? And I really like that shift for sure. And but yeah, I’m gonna say yes, I’m gonna start saying that more, please do, you can quote me on that.
K Anderson 49:16
Sit back tick is failing, failing miserably.
Phil T Gorgeous 49:22
I do this to people, every interview I’ve ever out there. Like, it’s just half an hour, two hours later. We still haven’t talked about the thing. We were there to
K Anderson 49:31
say just What was your name? So, so I mean, yeah. So the thing I wanted to talk about now is that it was once a month. And I remember so many nights that I used to go to that were once a month, and the pressure you’d put on yourself to make sure you were there. And how gutted, you’d be if there was a clash, and you’re
Phil T Gorgeous 49:56
absolutely Oh yeah, you move shit around. Like if there was class, you move to the other thing like on this that was a family funeral or something?
K Anderson 50:05
I mean, he wouldn’t then.
Phil T Gorgeous 50:06
And even then, like, like I can double team is fine.
K Anderson 50:13
But yeah, like you would you would definitely make every effort you could to be in attendance, that’s for sure. Did you ever have an instance where you didn’t go one month? And then one of the people that you’re interested in hooked up with someone else? That’s a very good question. You I don’t like the horror of that happening.
Phil T Gorgeous 50:43
Well, no. And the reason being that this is a very easy one for me to answer because, again, this like info, grandfather time scenario here back then back in my bag. And it was still even though like this is a once a month thing. And it had a broader audience than, you know, just the small pocket of women in the main gay bars, it was still a very incestuous pool of women, you know, it was the same shower faces every time you went. Every now and again, you might be lucky enough to see someone new a bit of fresh meat, but she was almost inevitably there with someone. So I didn’t know that I was a fussy fuck when it came to who I was attracted to. But apparently, I was incredibly discerning in who I gravitated towards. And there was less of that sense of, I’m so desperate for a hookup, I’ll literally take the dregs of anything going. And more of a, if I see someone I’m into, and I want to hook up with them. Great. And if I don’t, so be it, you know, that was kind of where I was at in my life uptime. And
K Anderson 51:50
no, it Okay, so. So, I mean, you’ve just read me there with your response. But the, what I was trying to ask is like, you know, when it’s when you see someone, like once a month, and that’s the only touchpoint you have with them is this night, and you’re slowly building up to something with them. And you’re, you know, getting friendlier and friendlier. And then the one month that you don’t go there, they end up hooking up with someone else. And then that’s it, your chances last,
Phil T Gorgeous 52:18
that’s what I was trying to get out. No, don’t worry, I wasn’t actually trying to read it to kind of how I mean, you’re kind of right, that kind of right problem. And slightly different spin on that from, I don’t know if this is a queer women thing, or just a me thing. But I suppose if I were to have encountered someone that I really liked, and I would have seen month on month, one of two things would have happened. If it was someone I was really into, it probably would have tried to make some kind of encounter happen. And then I would have followed that up like I would have actually been like, texted them or tried to get in touch with them. And you know, I wouldn’t then have relied on the nightclub to be the only interaction if it was the other side of it, which is I liked them but not enough to bother attempting to approach them, then it would have probably become that I’ll just watch you every time I come see you across the room, consider going over, don’t go over regret not having gone over and then repeat that cycle, ad infinitum every single month, and then eventually get to the stage of man, I could really use a little bit of intimacy. And that’s when you pluck up the courage to go and chat them and then a relationship I’m like always have been or whatever. And
K Anderson 53:35
and they were looking at you they just have a lazy eye.
Phil T Gorgeous 53:37
Yeah, exactly. I’m on a complete tangent, I’m sorry for this. But I do have to tell you this. Because I would be supposed to dedicate considered to be a butch woman. And back in the day that was as almost a dirty thing like women looked at on Butch women as like not appreciating their own femininity or you wanted to be a man or whatever it was. And that was it was all very dirty. There was no tolerance for bullishness, there was no kind of non binary there was no space for different you were either a semi girl and into other Femi girls, or you were just this like discarded, you know, vessel of fortune. And
K Anderson 54:23
that’s the next EP I think.
Phil T Gorgeous 54:27
I’m so poetic. But yeah, I remember going up to a woman in a bar. She was sitting on my jacket, which is on the stool where I’d put it. And I went over and I tapped her on the shoulder and I was like, sorry, excuse me. She turned around and like a cartoon character looked me up and down with that kind of sneery judgey face. And guys, sorry, sweetie, I don’t do Butch. Um, I swear to God, I nearly choked. I like I just looked at her and gave her the most withering stare I could manage And I was like, oh please chicken head wants to get over yourself. You’re sitting on my jacket. Can I have it back? And she didn’t even have the decency to look embarrass herself. I was like, onwards but that that’s the kind of thing or you’re like really rainy I don’t do bush do we do we need to be that rude evaders?
K Anderson 55:22
I’m sorry, that’s shit. That’s what I grew up with to know. Yeah.
Phil T Gorgeous 55:26
Oh here look God, we don’t know we can go into a therapy session this is my entire adult life. But I think cases always fascinating because you you had a broader I suppose cross section of what lesbian life looked like you had family girls you had kind of Android girls, you had Butch girls, and they would show up every week and just kind of scour the room in the dark corner. You know, troll the eye over in hopes of seeing, you know, a new face or whatever. And then if there was a new face, there’s almost like a frenzy in the room of someone like, you know, I’m getting there first get a thing. Like, just, I find it kind of sad, if I’m perfectly honest.
K Anderson 56:11
No, that’s amazing. That’s amazing, that kind of vibe. But so you did a very good job of bringing us back to kiss. But I’m just gonna take us back off another segue. Like, just as with everything else that we’ve talked about, do you not feel that that? I mean, you did kind of hint towards it. But you know, I feel like that’s changed. And that there is that there is now more of an appreciation of female masculinity.
Phil T Gorgeous 56:36
Absolutely. Yeah. I obviously I didn’t lean hard enough on to that one, it has completely evolved for sure. I, I don’t know that I’ve really spent a huge amount of time going out as me anymore. Because like I time job, I was doing two, three gigs a week, I was always out in bars. So I guess being in bars, but being in drag, you don’t then feel that urge to be constantly going out on the nightclub scene as well, you know, so I had spent a huge amount of time really just presenting as a man all the time when I was out and about and I’ve been in relationship for the last like, God, 12 years of my life. I know I and I’m single again for the first 712 years. So it’s like, well, I don’t know how to do this. So it’s it’s going to be a weird adjustment for me to try and figure out how to be queer in the space as it exists today. Because, you know, I was always very content in my Well, I have the missus here. So I don’t need like, I was never one to have a roving, I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t window shopping. And never I’d never had any appeal to me because I was perfectly condensed, you know, so. And it’s going to be an interesting new dynamic. Which I do feel that at least things have shifted significantly in terms of, you know, bullishness and that perception of the more androgynous style being attractive and not even accepted attractive. That’s the bit that was always missing for me was you were never made to feel attractive. You were just almost tolerated in your masculinity. And you know, I’m not sure if this makes me feel particularly good about myself. So yeah, it’s an interesting one.
K Anderson 58:24
Yeah, but there’s also this interesting thing as well that you’re expected to play particular roles because oh, yeah, presenting, which is kind of a bit of a head Fuck, isn’t there?
Phil T Gorgeous 58:36
Yeah, cuz I know, I’m sure you’re well aware of all the different terms used to describe the various different gay men from twinks to you know, modders and bears and all the rest. For women, it used to be a really simple like femme and Butch of men. gradients they’re in and if your diesel dikes and your stone cold butchers and your lipstick femmes and your high femmes and all the rest, my friends, were so confounded by who I am versus how I present that they came up with their own term for me, which is a marshmallow Butch, which means on the outside, I probably look like I’ve kicked the head in. But on the inside, I couldn’t be more softer and squish here if you dried you know, so I have, I suppose what would be expected to be more feminine qualities while very much looking like a butch woman do that also. I am a confusion of many things.
K Anderson 59:35
But are we going to try and make that a thing now?
Phil T Gorgeous 59:39
To be a marshmallow which Yeah, absolutely. I fully support this. I think I’m going to petition to have it incorporated into major circulation.
K Anderson 59:49
You tell them before you renew your membership to the dike club that that that’s going to have to go on the ship. glossary the glossary the Bible. I wanted to say Bible, but that’s not what
Phil T Gorgeous 1:00:05
I like the handbook the handbook. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah. We’ll include it in the glossary of the handbook on how to be a dog. Yeah.
K Anderson 1:00:15
And I’ll just drop it into conversation casually from here on out. Yeah, please
Phil T Gorgeous 1:00:19
do the thing. I like that. I would love to just randomly encounter someone somewhere along the way, who, who uses it in conversation idly and you’re just like, oh, what did you hear that? It’s like, Oh, I heard it from this guy. Or from that guy, or that guy. It’s like, Whoa, keep an eye did that we made that.
K Anderson 1:00:36
And then they can tell you how they first discovered drag in the toilets at your campus University. We’re gonna weird I’m sorry. Right kiss let’s let’s just power through this pirate kiss that you talked about, like there being a diversity in the like, type of people that were there? Was there a diversity in age as well?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:01:03
And yes, there would have been. I think libido was probably a better example of the extremities. And like in Libya, you would have like baby dice, just fresh out the closet. And you would have like, 50 year old women there as well, you know, so it was because it was so nice being you know, queer female space, anyone who was trying to find anyone would go and it felt like an odd like, what’s the best analogy? Kind of like if you went to a gay wedding, and like mismatched group of people that just don’t make sense beyond the fact that they all have someone in the room who’s in common? Do you know? And that’s kind of what it felt like, whereas kiss felt more like a community space. It was more like this is what the lesbian community has come together for a cup night of these 20s 30s variety, you know, like it was, I’d say predominantly mid 20s. As far as maybe late 30s. Not really beyond and not. Yeah, I think, yeah, you probably would have gotten the youngest as well, but not hugely. So. So yeah, you’re talking 20s 30s? For sure.
K Anderson 1:02:21
And what kind of music would I expect to hear there?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:02:25
Oh, god awful music most of the time. pretty fair. Yeah. Mostly just charge shift. And then depending on who was DJing on the night, you might get someone who really loves a bit of lesbian anthems, you know, so there would have been some obvious bits dropped in but a KD Lang for the older ones in the room.
K Anderson 1:02:44
Okay, girls, I’ll stop. Honestly, I need a Franco in your mind. Oh, my God, I want to be at this night.
Phil T Gorgeous 1:02:53
But yeah, probably just primarily chart music, to be honest with you. Which to be perfectly honest, I fucking loved. I loved the chart music in the 90s. In the early noughties, it was it was some good stuff to dance to. And that’s what I spent a huge portion of my time doing just dancing. are we
K Anderson 1:03:09
heading into another in my day type conversation? Yeah,
Phil T Gorgeous 1:03:12
yeah. philosophical I’m actually staring off into the distance while I say that.
K Anderson 1:03:19
Like Justin Timberlake album anymore. In my day when I walk to school barefoot. Yeah. I do go a bit not I when I when I reminisce about things for sure. These things happen. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, you have permission to do so. So well, thank you. Sorry, if I’m okay. You know, don’t be I deserve it. Do you remember hearing about kiss, closing ceasing to be?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:03:52
I remember it just disappearing. There was no one Nansemond per se. And I think I had gotten to the stage where I wasn’t going every month anymore, because it did have a huge longevity, like it went on for years and years.
K Anderson 1:04:07
And blaming, but hang on. This. This is where long term relationship comes in, isn’t there?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:04:12
Yeah, exactly. So I would have met and then ended up with my partner. So I would have still gone out because it’s still fun, obviously, to go out and party to 10. Yeah, exactly. Playing Scrabble with a company. But no, like, you’d go out and you do the night out and you’d go back to someone’s house for drinks after whatever. And that was, like a fun thing to do. But it didn’t become like the central focus of your socialising anymore. like you’d never built up your group of friends and they were other things that you can do. And, you know, I suppose it became less of a beacon for socialising and more of a just a thing that was happening, you know, over the years. And I know that certainly the clientele started Get rougher and rougher. Yeah, there was a weird, aggressive energy in
K Anderson 1:05:08
the beginning. So why why do you think that heightened?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:05:12
I think, as the scene evolved and as Ireland evolved and as people became more comfortable with their queerness and became a bit more mainstream in life, you know, a more accepting arland afforded more people for more walks of life, that opportunity to embrace their queerness. And whatever
K Anderson 1:05:35
happened to be really aggressive. There was
Phil T Gorgeous 1:05:40
no I didn’t want to do is I think like, certainly if you were from more challenging areas of the city, there was obviously such an inherent to do about queerness. And being a dike that you did not want to draw that attention on yourself. So you weren’t open, you weren’t, whatever. But as time went by, and more and more people kind of got cool with it. You know, I think more people then became more comfortable with being out and they would then start to go out more often and more worried about being seen somewhere. Do you know so? You suddenly had this kind of wave of people who were a little bit rougher and a little bit butcher and a little bit more aggressive? And they played out some fascinating dramas in that nightclub you would like, you would hear a screech across the room and watch one woman lunch for another woman and there’d be bottles mashed and you know, I watched a woman go for another like, try it full on tried to bottle her. I was like, Where the fuck am I like, what the fuck happened to my life? This is how I’m spending my evening. Do you know? And I’m like, Okay, this is not for me. But it took me till I was in my late 20s I’d say before I got comfortable kind of being in spaces that weren’t exclusively gay, because strike hopes were just such hostile environments for queer people, you just didn’t go, I had so many miserable experiences in stray bars as an openly gay woman. And because of the way I look like going to the bathroom was the most anxiety inducing experience that I would try and put it off as long as humanly possible, you know. So it’s definitely, it’s interesting to see how women interact with each other in these lesbian spaces. Because I do feel like the dynamic of gay men and gay women together balances that energy quite a bit. I think it’s a very different space, for sure. And I don’t particularly like all lesbian spaces, to be perfectly honest with you. There’s a weird, weird vibe about them.
K Anderson 1:07:51
So why are we talking about what
Phil T Gorgeous 1:07:56
it’s my experience of the only thing that ever shut down? This is the thing everything is just lasted forever over here. Do you know like, the only place that did shut down was the dragon that would have been like, one of the most prominent places, but I very rarely went there. That was like 90% gay men. And it was just the party place that you went to and everything else closed to know. And wasn’t really my scene. So I just didn’t go to know. So it was it was the only thing I could talk to you about. reminisce about no back in my day.
K Anderson 1:08:31
Okay, so you too. So it was a time of your life and you enjoyed at the time, but you don’t want to go back to that.
Phil T Gorgeous 1:08:39
Now. I far prefer the sane as it stands today, in the sense of it’s far more welcoming. It’s far more diverse. It’s far more open to evolving. And you’re less likely to get bottled by someone who thinks he stole her bird or whatever the fuck, you know, they were arguing about?
K Anderson 1:09:01
Yeah, and then you don’t have anecdotes, do you?
Phil T Gorgeous 1:09:04
I mean, I feel like I can generate a good anecdote. 99 perfectly honest. Yeah, I don’t need aggressive lesbians to find a story of an idea. Always something
K Anderson 1:09:17
Did you ever go to kiss? Well, if you did, I would love to hear from you. Please tell me any stories or anecdotes or share any photos you might have. From that time. You can reach me through most social media channels with the user name and K Anderson music. And you can also find out more about Phil by following him on Instagram instagram.com. Phil t gorgeous. Love spaces is not only a podcast, but a concept record as well. I’ve been writing songs about queer venues and the people who used to live their lives there and we’ll be releasing songs over the coming year. You can hear the first single, well groomed boys, which is also playing underneath my talking right now on all streaming platforms. If you liked this episode I’d really appreciate if you subscribed. left a review on Apple podcasts or just told people who you think might be interested in hearing it too. I am K Anderson and you’ve been listening to lost spaces.