From the monthly archives: April 2010

Madame Lynn

By On April 19, 2010 · In Cremains

SoLost: Madame Lynn’s Golden Slipper from Oxford American on Vimeo.

Born in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and attending grade school in the 1950′s, young Charles Lockhart was never like the other boys. He dressed and acted like a girl. Eventually becoming known as “Madame Lynn,” she left Arkansas in the early 60′s to dance (as a female) in well-known mob-owned nightclubs of Kansas City. After stints with several traveling circuses, Lynn went to dance in New Orleans and later to New York, where she danced at the legendary Club 82, once ground zero of pre-Stonewall American drag culture.

In the late 60′s Lynn returned home briefly for an operation and became the first person in Arkansas history to complete a sex change. Many recipients of these early operations are no longer living, but Madame Lynn is alive today and as irrepressible as ever. No longer sporting the Kim Novak look she was once known for, Lynn lives happily on a lake with her husband of many years.

SoLost caught up with Madame Lynn to hear a little bit about her life.

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Sucking and shopping

By On April 15, 2010 · In As I Am Now

Sheer magicAs I’ve mentioned before, there are days when I want to pack up — pack it all in — and move to Florida. So what if I have to be a retail slut again. So what if I have to buy a car. And drive everywhere. And go without arugula.

So what if we’ll have to have kids just to keep ourselves entertained.

So what if people knock down atheist-themed billboards with (what I presume to be) their giant trucks. Because I’ll be living in a magical land of beaches and sun and unironic beer coozies and tiny lizards and where bad highlights and leathery cleavage don’t matter.

In preparation for this parallel universe move, I spend time on the St. Augustine Craigslist, looking for things. Just things. Nothing in particular.

Thus far, I have found

That last one makes me wonder if I should reconsider the move. I don’t want to deal with hog infestations. Especially with the kids around and all.

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On Facebook today

By On April 9, 2010 · In Cremains

I have been actively rejecting Friend Suggestions, something I’ve never done before. Lately Facebook has been really aggro about it, and they’re beginning to feel like taunts. If I wanted to be reminded about how I should be a friendlier person, I’d call my mother. I just keep x-ing out each suggestion, one after the next, muttering hate hate hate.

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They still make these?

By On April 8, 2010 · In Cremains

Chemist and gang busted for running Quaalude ring out of a Fifth Ave. apartment:

A 65-year-old chemist and his army of baby boomers were busted for running a Quaalude ring out of a posh Fifth Ave. apartment, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dennis Patrick Fairley cooked up more than 100,000 doses of the sedative – which peaked in popularity in the 1960s and ’70s – in his California lab, officials said.

I really thought Quaaludes were a vestige of the 70s, like Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific and Chablis*.

*Something else I was also really surprised to discover still existed.

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