UNTIDY by Dennis Doph

because why? 37

Whilst cleaning out my cultural Augean stabes
Find myself considering these husky babes
Whose talents and whose pipes informed my lot
Since I was just a tiny touselled tot
And in the company of WAACS and WAVES
became a star
Propping up each untidy Lesbian bar
Not for the sake of having unlikely kicks
But so my Aunt could pick up some new tricks

Early in life I found myself totally sold
By the thespic talent of one Hermione Gingold
Knowing she'd by knights and bluebloods
been frequently showered
With praises; and a few roles of Noel Coward
Fell to her velvety dulcet ear
But no woman ever made a punk boy feel more queer
Than the epochal eventful day
When (to the words of Sondheim) I heard her say
Untidy; what's become of 'em? Some of 'em
Hardly pay their shoddy way

Then I harked back to events both profound
and silly
When my Aunt introduced me to her fave
Bea Lillie
No lyric could be a more emphatic hipness screener
Than the pungent phrases of Piccolo Marina.
Saw in one of her few star movie turns
A brassy performance which forever burns
In the memory of this impressionable tot
Burning in my perfervid brain and like as not
Nothing could qualify for unremitting
trash removal
Than her campy performance in On Approval.
But in my lexicon nothing comes off as
anything but cute
Than the moment in Modern Millie when she
turns to James Fox and queries:
"Frrrrrrrrrrrrrruit?"

Then as a very young child I watched
my lesbo Aunt go through tears of woe
Upon the cancelling of something called
the Big Show
The target of Aunt Doris' maundering and rue
Was the pussy-flashin' actriz named Tallu
Nothing more compromising could ever
have been said
Than Meredith Willson's weekly comeback:
Yes, SIR, Miss Bankhead!
Or more bestir a nascent faggot's monkey glands
Than Tallu's deep-dish rendering of
Time On My Hands
Many were wondering when this butch bitch
might release her clutch
Or whether anyone on earth could possibly be more
butch

The King and I debuted one fateful Fifties day
As if Rodgers and Hammerstein might have
something more significant to say
But my lesbo-oriented sap rose up in torrents
Exposed to the actriz known as Gertrude Lawrence
Even though she was a somewhat sallow
unappetizing bitch
Knew this famous filly could seldom stay on pitch
But since she had been temptress to too many
famous men
For her, Noel Coward had written
I"ll See You Again
Then, like a gauntlet thrown into all our faces
like a harsh "I'll show you"
She butchly intoned the verses of
Getting to Know You
But the lesbo community had their final say
when they revealed she was the main squeeze
of Daphne du Maurier

No butch chick put a bigger crimp
in my tot muscle
Than the low-toned Hollywood actriz
Rosalind Russell
No one more capable of spawning
verve and vimmin'
Than her action-packed Goddard-slapping
performance in the Women
But the vocal perf that turned Roz from beige
to darkest brown
Was her turn in Lenny Bernstein's
Wonderful Town
And what made this wench turn a permanent
shade of tan
Is her rendition of
A Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man
Later, when spouse Lance Brisson caused
the Merm to shoo it
From the lead in Gypsy, we all had to admit
Roz blew it

No one was a more accomplished
Commedia-dell-arter
Than the dusky diva known as Betty Carter
Though divas like O'Day and Sarah were known
for splitting their infinites
No one else could stretch out
I'll Never See Maggie Alone to six minutes
And in the presence of that other butch
diva Carmen McRae
Betty and Carmen would have more than the final say
Though what they sang seemed to be such a lark
There's only one word to use for this combo:
DARK

Of course most of these divas had one main
precursor
The operetta-trained Butchesse named
Mabel Mercer
No Butchesse could muster up
more insouciant pleadins
Than Mabel singing Alec Wilder's rueful
Did You Ever Cross Over from Sneadin's?
But Mabel was always quite prepared
to play the Man
For delerious delicious Lynn Fontanne

In all this world there has never been a Diva
more of a reality-strainer
Than the blond krautische temptress
known as Marlene
Even though I saw the glitter in her golden
curly hair
Knew a fag designer had conspired to put it there
When she scooped low to examine
The Boys in the Back Room
Knew this deep-voiced yodeler had flown in
on the nearest broom
But what delights me in each and every one
of her performance
Is the lesbian obviousness which almost
amounts to enormance
Especially in Blond Venus when Marlene
finally displays her shape
By peeling off the costume of an ape

No endangered female specie ever made me
feel more cheery
Than tiny-voiced cabaret songstress
Blossom Dearie
No one "on the nose" could ever be more
positively true
Than her rendition of
Rhode Island Is Famous for You
But what she did more than anything
to spill the beans
Is insisting on doing her act in oversized
Levi's 501s jeans

The woman who could pull me right out
of my chair
Like the dusky songstress yclept
Josephine Bakhair
The hair Parisians saw -- ruddy as Albanian
--sturdy as Rus
Was the thick lez-heart-pounding fur
of her St Louis puss
She warmed up and warmed over both
my hot potatoes
With her rendition of
Mister, Don't Touch Me Tomatoes

What I realized before I graduated
from my tricycle to Schwinn bikes
Is that all these ladies were unquestionably
Dykes