Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir (36 page)

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Cyn

PSSST . . . sorry I didn’t respond sooner.

Well, she didn’t come. But she still seems like a good kid.

Even if Britney didn’t perform that night, my sister, Elen, did. She came and played guitar with us on “Money Changes Everything.” Like I said, when I was little, I was in my first band with Elen. And there we were on the stage of the Greek Theatre, sans the mops for guitars, Mom’s old wigs, and her high-heeled boots. And that happened because Rosie suggested that Elen play guitar with me on her cruise.

In 2008, we got the “True Colors” tour up and going again. The lineup was awesome, from Joan Jett and the Blackhearts to the B-52s to Sarah McLachlan to Joan Armatrading, and Rosie came back. I got to meet Wanda Sykes, who is as awesome as you think she is. The MC this time was Carson Kressley, who is a complete doll. We had a few different young groups go in and out. The Cliks only did a few dates, and Hunter Valentine did a date or two. Then I got to meet Tegan and Sara. We were able to get some good momentum and to give a lot of people money. After one show where we did an after-party fund-raiser for PFLAG, Wanda and I hung out and she said to me, “You’re a soldier.” Then she told me she would always help the cause, that she was inspired. Coming from her, that was humbling. She’s funny and smart and committed to the cause. Bless her. I love her. And last year, when I presented her with an award at the New York City LGBT Community Center, she told me that it was her experience on tour that began her decision to come out of the closet.

I’ve always believed in “Power to the People” (that’s the song I’d sing at the end of my set on the “True Colors” tour). I’m glad straight people like Madonna finally spoke up for this community that has worshipped her for so long, and Gaga was right there, too. My feeling is, do what’s right. Nobody is asking for more than the other guy—just fairness. Why is that so wrong? I love when Republican politicians say that we shouldn’t legalize gay marriage and somehow
connect it with pedophilia. Statistically, it’s straight people who are usually the pedophiles!

On the tour I also handed out cards that instructed people on how to vote, because a while back, I didn’t know myself. I voted for Clinton, but I didn’t vote in the Bush election, and look what happened. I don’t tell people who to vote for, just how to vote. Because if you want inclusion in the world, you better start with including yourself. You need to participate, otherwise you can’t complain. I was very disappointed about the sexist things that were said about Hillary Clinton when she was campaigning. Once in an airport I saw a Hillary Clinton leg nutcracker. And of course the racism that President Obama faced was awful. Republicans pretend they’re on the side of the people, but they certainly don’t think like poor people because they ain’t poor. Sarah Palin got a million for her reality show. And senators get their health care paid for. They should have the same shit as us because then they’d vote in favor of their own selfish asses. I don’t know how they do it, but I cannot turn a blind eye to the people standing next to me.

While we were still on tour, Lisa, my agent Jonny, and I started to talk with gay activist Gregory Lewis, who we brought on the road with us to handle the charity part of the tour after working with him at HRC and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. We saw the people at each show energized by the music, by the comedy, and most importantly by the message of equality. We realized that if we could have this sort of impact doing a tour, maybe we could do even more year-round on issues that needed attention. It was then that the True Colors Fund was born. I knew right away that I wanted to continue to get straight people involved in supporting the community.

So then we started the Give a Damn campaign in 2010, with the goal to educate and engage the straight community in the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality. The reason
the Give a Damn campaign went in the direction it went was because Jonny got a lot of grief about us being straight and doing a gay tour. I said, “But we’re straight people advocating for gay people, and why not? This is a civil rights movement. We need to get
everyone
involved.” We should come out as gay for straight, straight for gay. It’s especially good for straight people to become informed and involved about all kinds of issues affecting gays (which in turn affect all of us): from gay marriage to suicide to discrimination at work and school. Then, to help the cause, I thought we should make it sexy to be an advocate for equal rights for everyone, including LGBTs. So we produced over thirty public service announcements that included people like Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Elton John, Jason Mraz, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne, and so many other people. I can’t even thank them enough. (I can’t remember them all but you can look it up for yourself and see them, and it’s really fun and visually interesting:
www.wegiveadamn.org
.)

The campaign made a big splash out of the gate when actress Anna Paquin identified as bisexual for the very first time in one of our PSAs. The news was covered by everyone and anyone. The website was so inundated it crashed in the first fifteen minutes the campaign went live. And I was so happy Ricky Martin did one, too. It was the first “gay” thing he did after he came out of the closet, and it was a huge deal. I do kind of wish that a straight Hispanic male would step forward to say, “It’s okay to be whoever you are,” because a large portion of gay kids on the street are Hispanic.

I remember being really struck by something when I was promoting the first “True Colors” tour. I did a photo shoot for
Interview
magazine, and I wanted to include LGBT youth. What I had in mind was the work of a photographer named Diane Arbus, who in the 1950s and 1960s took pictures of marginalized people. I thought, “If I could
do a picture and show young transgender kids, how many there are, the faces of them—the old, the young, the kids—then maybe people could really see a community, yet it would be art, too.”

So I scouted for different locations and people to incorporate in the photo. I went down to the Christopher Street Pier in NYC and met so many youth who shared their stories of being thrown out on the street for being gay or transgender. And then I met Colleen Jackson from the West End Residences on the Upper West Side, which Lisa is really involved in. I performed at one of their benefits, and then when Colleen came to the Radio City Music Hall stop of the “True Colors” tour in 2007, I asked if there was something that could be done to help. Colleen came back with the idea of housing for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. She wanted to call it the True Colors Residence and use my name and I said, “Go ahead, and whatever we can do, I’ll do.” I had already started advocating for homeless LGBT youth and there is no national organization that solely addresses the issue, so we decided that the True Colors Fund would develop that organization.

An extraordinary circle in my life is the building of the True Colors Residence in Harlem. It’s New York State’s first permanent housing for this group. Many homeless LGBT kids face violence in mainstream shelters, so the True Colors Residence provides young people between eighteen and twenty-four with low-income housing while helping them get back on their feet. The True Colors Fund is a partner on the project and provides funding and support as it grows, and I’m the honorary chairman.

At the True Colors Residence, they teach life skills that these kids may not have gotten growing up—like that you can’t get that spangled scarf that you want because you have to pay the rent. So they teach budgeting. (Although some artists will opt for the spangled scarf and
not eat, which is what I did.) And they don’t throw you out—you can stay as long as you need to get back on your feet.

There’s only thirty beds there, so I’m only scratching the surface of everyone who needs help, but if this is my one contribution, then it’s okay. But I didn’t want to be just a stupid celebrity shooting my big mouth off. I figured if I was going to shoot my mouth off, it might as well be constructive.

For me, it goes all the way back to my friend Gregory, it goes back to the pier and working with the drag performers on the “Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)” video and my great friend and a wonderful artist, Chris Tanner. When I committed to doing the True Colors Residence, they came to me and said they wanted to put a plaque for Gregory on the cornerstone of the house. Colleen had heard Gregory’s story. I sometimes told it in concert. So now not only did he get a song, but there’s also a plaque for him at a place that should have been around when he was thrown out as a twelve-year-old on the street. The plaque says, “Gregory Natale, Boy Blue,” and some of the chorus of the song “True Colors.” If you look at your life, everything is connected, and we keep going round and round sometimes.

I was so happy when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act was signed into law in 2009 by President Barack Obama. Lisa and I went to the celebration ceremony at the White House. Lady Gaga had performed at the Human Rights Campaign dinner the night before, and the president joked, “It’s a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady Gaga . . . I’ve made it.” So when I met him I said, “I heard you opened for Lady Gaga,” and he started laughing and said, “She took all your moves! You’re the original.”

I’ll never forget going to perform at his presidential inauguration. I had to get up for it at five thirty
A.M
. I met Rufus Wainwright, Thelma
Houston, Lisa Barbaris, and Gregory Lewis, who would eventually be the executive director of the True Colors Fund, downstairs in the lobby of our hotel. I really should have been wearing running shoes instead of heels, but I was so worried about how the bottom of my pants would look that I forgot about how my feet would feel. They reminded me after a mile or so though.

But as I watched all the people move toward the National Mall I forgot about my feet. I had never seen Washington so alive. Everyone was rushing along, happy to be cold together. I felt like I was in the midst of the people, in the midst of history being made. It was another “power to the people” moment, and I almost cried but I was trying hard to keep up with my friends. If I lost them I’d be crying for a different reason.

Anyway, my admission ticket was purple, and as I looked at it, just for a flash, I wondered if the color meant anything. I remembered how upset Rev. Jerry Falwell got with that purple Teletubby, thinking it was gay because it had a purse and a triangle on its head. Maybe purple was a code? When we actually got to the purple gate, security said to just squeeze in at the front of the line. So we tried. But then a woman on the line said, “The back of the line is way down there! We got here at two
A.M
.!” And then bravely, Lisa said, “The security guy told us to come here and wait. I’m with Cyndi Lauper.” And then another guy yelled, “I thought we’re all supposed to be equal here.” I wanted to point out that I was with Thelma Houston and Rufus Wainwright and say, “Of course we’re equal, just not right now. And, you know, maybe you want to meet Thelma Houston.” But I knew that stuff was only funny on TV, not in real life, so I zipped it and opted not to do my impersonation of Larry David.

Then the gate for the yellow ticket line opened. The gate for the orange ticket line opened. But the gate for the purple ticket line did not. It never did. So I made up my mind to leave. There were so many
folks, though, that we almost couldn’t move at all, but we finally managed to swim through the crowd and go back to the hotel.

We went to breakfast and then to the HRC hangout to watch the inauguration. A lot of folks were crying and I was too. Aretha sang “America the Beautiful” in her glorious hat, and then I realized that she looked as cold as I had been. But I knew she had to be there, because she was there with Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial way back when. I had seen that as a child on TV. Rick Warren giving the invocation really threw me, though. When he began to speak, my head just went to an old TV special I used to watch with my son and husband around Christmastime, called
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
I used to think, “Who the heck wrote this? And why is Santa acting so messed up?” Rudolph and the little elf had been thrown out of Santa’s workshop because they were different. It seems that different always gets everyone all riled up. Then I started to hear my friend Rosie’s words replay in my head. She spoke them to me in our dressing room on tour once: “Cyn, we’re on the Island of Misfit Toys.” That’s where Rudolph and that elf wound up before saving the day for Santa. And I looked around me in the room, at folks watching so hopeful, arm in arm. I couldn’t help thinking that love is love and that maybe, someday, everybody will understand that.

Then Reverend Joe Lowery spoke and I remembered how, when I was a kid, I also saw him with Dr. King on TV. I felt in my heart that this must be the real invocation. This reverend seemed to be the genuine article. He asked his God to “help us choose inclusion, not exclusion . . . tolerance, not intolerance.” I was thankful that a voice of reason had been put into the mix after all. He spoke directly, and I realized that maybe I was supposed to see the contrast—that to speak your truth, you need to come from a very simple place, without posture. Just simple and honest.

I couldn’t believe I was really living this in my lifetime. And I thought, “Maybe ‘The Age of Aquarius’ isn’t just a song somebody made up after all. I guess we just have to never give up on ourselves or stop raising our voices together when we think something is wrong.” We don’t have to agree. We live in America. And here was the proof; because on January 20, 2009, we got to see Dr. King’s words ring true. He said, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” That day was evidence that one day, it will bend with liberty, toward justice for all of us.

So, back to the True Colors Fund. Inspired by the kids I met on the Christopher Street Pier and by Colleen Jackson and the True Colors Residence, we knew that our focus at the True Colors Fund had to turn to doing what we could to bring an end to gay and transgender youth experiencing homelessness. So, we traveled across the country in 2011 and met with shelters, drop-in centers, young people, community leaders, and many others to find out what the true state of affairs was for these kids being kicked out or running away from home because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We are going to work to educate the public about the problem and engage them in the solution, just like we did with the Give a Damn campaign.