Sharing her little bed one night, I remember talking until we fell asleep, our conversation continuing seamlessly as we both began to dream.Ten years ago, Flawless and I went to London together for an esoteric performance festival.
Diana Tourjee, a fellow granddaughter of Sabrina’s, observed to me recently that speaking to Flawless was like speaking with a house full of spirits.
I would smoke her More menthol cigarettes and get lost in her brilliant stream of consciousness, her shrewd, irreverent, banter. Her space was a constantly evolving assemblage of ephemera, art, and collage, with notes on lampshades and piles of notebooks on her desk — a hermetically sealed time capsule.I should mention that Flawless had no preference for pronouns or names, and even I have called her different things at different points in my life: Grandma, Flawless, Sabrina, Jack. And she must have felt that a thousand times more, to leave all her loved ones behind knowing what we would have to face ahead. She had pasted tinfoil to the ceiling in the early 70s, and over the years it had turned gold from cigarette smoke. Sitting at her bedside, I told her that we were going to take care of each other, continue to make her proud, and use all the tools she gave us for our survival.Her psychic realm was broader than ever, expanding until the very end. The next morning, I walked into my kitchen & stepped into a puddle muddled with shattered glass; a bottle of champagne had spontaneously combusted in the middle of the night. This is the time travel of being human — we bring our predecessors and influences into the future with us and pass their secrets to a new generation, just in time for us to be ushered out, too.It will happen in a moment, as quickly as these words will be lost.I became one of the regular young people who clung close to Grandma, gleaning wisdom while breathless with laughter. He, she, they, it was all okay. I stood outside the gates to photograph performers and festival goers as they left, which felt as awkward as it sounds, until I laid eyes on Mother Flawless Sabrina. Subconsciously, I manifested her as a leading touchstone in my life.I started seeing Flawless in the hottest downtown clubs of the moment; in her 60s, she was a generation or two older than the club kids and reigning divas there. If she didn’t exist, we would’ve had to invent her.I made my way up to her legendary salon apartment on East 73rd street one night, as she hosted an opening for a photographer whose portraits of Brazilian trans women hung on her brown ultra-suede-encased walls. Flawless Sabrina was a pioneer for transgender people and drag queens not only in the mainstream, heterosexual society, but within the gay society as well, where transgender people remained heavily stigmatized. Last Saturday, March 18, a memorial service was held for Jack Doroshow, better known as Mother Flawless Sabrina, who passed away on November 18, 2017. A prolific drag queen and activist, Flawless Sabrina was a queer icon without parallel, whose work and mentorship has profoundly influenced (and continues to influence) generations of LGBTQ+ people. She had shared her life with people who are a part of our lineage — Sylvia Rivera, Crystal Lebeija, Dorian Corey, International Chrysis, and countless others whose names we may never know. She gave tarot readings while I laid naked on a table, inviting participants to pluck out my body hair. She would move between profound wisdom and preposterous humor, from the subjective to universal, dip in and out of her deeply anti-capitalist, anti-establishment values. Her outfits were elaborately designed performance pieces, a cavalcade of eccentric personalities and statements, always wildly different and masterfully executed. We are ancient, magical survivors, and we are infinite.While I moved to LA in 2005, I made frequent trips back to New York City to visit. Flawless had a discerning and spontaneous sense of style, putting her unique stamp on every moment like a punk-rock gender-fuck Diana Vreeland. She wanted us to trust that we were part of a larger struggle towards gender liberation that stretches back to the earliest civilizations. By then I had rented a VHS tape of the 1968 verité documentary about her pre-Stonewall drag contests, Flawless had lived in her nook off Central Park since 1967. I didn’t want to let her go. She self-identified as a gender clown.I can see her floating through Spa nightclub, a resplendent vision of homemade couture — taped together household items, elaborately constructed wigs, and kabuki rodeo-clown make-up. Flawless had become a master survivor, a veteran of loss.