BRIGHT SPARK SET WELLINGTON ALIGHT
Thirty-five years ago, Wellington came face-to-face with Libidinous Excess for the first time – and liked it - in the ostensibly innocuous form of Carmen’s International Coffee Lounge. Carmen has just died at the age of 75.
Her death has led to an outpouring of grief and a celebration of her many kindnesses and her diva role as a breaker of taboos and challenger of prejudices. She has been variously described as a ‘transgender goddess’, a ‘legend’, ‘the showgirl of all showgirls’ and a ‘GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] icon’.
She was a pioneer and a role model for many – and also a bizarre but effective flag-bearer for Maori pride: “Moe mai ra e te kahurangi, moe mai ra”.
In a strange link back to her origins as the son of a Maori farmer from Taumarunui, where she grew up under the name Trevor Rupe, she had been able to open the ‘coffee lounge’ with money inherited from her grandfather.
She had returned to Wellington in 1968 from Sydney’s King’s Cross where she had become a notorious drag queen and sex worker facing increasing persecution by the NSW Police.
The coffee lounge was located at 86 Vivian Street – next door to the Salvation Army HQ – in a disused clothing factory that had a four-bedroom flat on the upper floor. Apparently, the establishment stayed open until 3 a.m. – a fact that was enough to scandalize 1970s Wellington in its own right.
The menu was straightforward but adequate: coffee, tea, soft drinks and a great variety of toasted sandwiches, cakes, pastries and scones. The difference was in the décor, the staff and the availability of sex.
Carmen referred to her waitresses as hostesses: “that is what they were, and with the exception of the lesbians, all my girls were boys or had been boys at some time. They had to be beautiful. That was the mark of my establishment” - "I was paid well. I was paid well under the table," she claimed later.
The hostesses were encouraged to sit and talk with customers to make them feel comfortable. Customers played the "teacups", leaving them a certain way to signal their sexual preference. Although homosexuality was illegal, various types of sexual liaison were available.
Patrons arranged their coffee cups in particular ways to indicate whether they were after a heterosexual, gay, transsexual, or drag queen encounter. Regular customers were also able to liven up their coffee by purchasing a nip of brandy.
Carmen never dressed down. She flaunted what man had given her in the form of enormous silicate breasts, pressing her beauties into sumptuous satin and heaving velvet. "I dressed up as a madam, you know, a classy madam, tits hanging out and split dresses. And all the drag queens I had working for me were very, very stunning and beautiful. They used to wear a lot of wigs, a lot of makeup and lovely miniskirts or split dresses and low-top dresses - because a lot of my girls had to have their busts done in Cairo, Egypt."
As for her personal sense of style and colour, it appears to have owed much to her namesake Carmen Miranda (Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha) the Portuguese-born Brazilian, samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s, who was noted for her signature fruit bowl hat.
Carmen's other Wellington business ventures included striptease club The Balcony, an Egyptian tearoom in Cuba Street (’I had the walls sprayed with golden sand which sparkled … a large wooden elephant from Egypt stood by the doorway’), a curio shop, a massage parlour, and a brothel in a big old house in Hataitai.
Her unsuccessful 1977 bid for the Wellington mayoralty - backed by businessman Bob Jones, under the slogan ‘Get in behind’ - saw her rise to national prominence.
When she ran for mayor, Carmen campaigned for hotel bars to be open till midnight or even 2am; the drinking age to be lowered to 18; prostitution to be made legal; abortion to be decriminalised; homosexual acts to be decriminalised; sex education in schools for 14-year-olds; and nudity on some beaches.
"Bob Jones was so good to me. He was lovely when I decided to go for mayor. He gave me a big white limousine to run around in."
All the reforms she had been hoping to put through back then had finally happened, she said. "I might have psychic abilities or maybe I was just ahead of my time. I wanted gay marriage to be legalised, brothels and casinos. It's all here now."
"I enjoyed doing the campaign. I haven't seen Bob in years. He's probably better looking than me now,” she said in a 2009 interview.
Carmen died in Sydney – her home since she returned there in 1979.
As Sean Plunkett comments ‘in [Wellington] a place that was for a long time grey and conservative, Carmen was a bright flower pushing up through a crack in the pavement. Maybe it wasn't meant to be there and it disrupted the perfect order of things but she certainly helped make our world a lot brighter’.
I never knew Carmen but I did have some acquaintance with Sydney's King’s Cross in the 1960s when the mafia ran the show and the players were hustlers, pimps, hoons, queens, US Servicemen on R& R from ‘Nam’ and the odd wide-eyed innocent student like me. Oh Texas Tavern and Starlight Bar!
As Carmen once explained: "You had flower people, you had the bohemians, you had voodoo, witchcraft, and black magic. It was just the most wonderful, interesting era."
Once I was having a beer while watching a dancing troupe consisting of a man and two women. One of the girls, a leggy blonde, was absolutely stunning and we exchanged glances while she danced. However, I recoiled when she came off the stage and it became apparent that her g-string was more of a he-string. On reflection, I chided myself for being 'ungentlemanly' in my reaction.
Were men back then naive? "Naive," Carmen agreed. But it takes two to samba and the personal liberties that were taken and eventually secured led on to the tolerance and openness that we now all take so much for granted.
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