Hedwig

I had tried singing once back in Berlin. They threw tomatoes. After the show, I had a nice salad.

adies and gentlemen, do you like the pelt? Be honest, because some bitch stopped me on the way in. "What poor and unfortunate creature had to die for you to wear that?"

My Aunt Trudy, I replied. Walked away, ladies and gentlemen, walked away!

It is clear that I must find my other half. But is it a he or a she? What does this person look like? Identical to me? Or somehow complementary? Does my other half have what I don't? Did he get the looks? The luck? The love? Were we really separated forceably or did he just run off with the good stuff? Or did I? Will this person embarrass me? What about sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again? Or can two people actually become one again?

It's my first day as a woman, already it's that time of the month.

After my divorce from Luther I scraped by with baby-sitting gigs and odd jobs - mostly the jobs we call blow. I had lost my job at the base PX, and I had lost my gag reflex. You do the math.

One day in the late mid-eighties, I was in my early late-twenties. I had just been dismissed from University after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock 'n' roll entitled 'You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.' At 26, my academic career was over, I had never kissed a boy, and I was still sleeping with mom. Such were the thoughts flooding my tiny head on the day that I was sunning myself… in an old bomb crater I had discovered near the Wall. I am naked. Face down, on a broken piece of church, inhaling a fragrant westerly breeze.

My God, I deserve a break today.

Our apartment was so small that Mother made me play in the oven. Late at night I would listen to the voices of the American masters, Tony Tennille, Debby Boone, Anne Murray who was actually a Canadian working in the American idiom. And then there were the crypto-homo rockers: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie who was actually an idiom working in America and Canada. These artists, they left as deep an impression on me as that oven rack did on my face. To be an American in muskrat love, soft as an easy chair not even the chair, I am I said, have I never been mellow? And the colored girls sing… doo do doo do doo do doo… but never with the melody. How could I do it better than Tony or Lou… HEY BOY, TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE!

How did some slip of a girly boy from communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?

My sex change operation got botched; my guardian angel fell asleep on the watch; now all I got is a Barbie doll crotch; I've got an angry inch!

So if any of you out there are looking for the song that's going to be your big hit, you should pay attention, because we are talking to Phil Collins' people. But then again… aren't we all?

The road is my home, and my home, the road. And when I think of all the people I have come upon in my travels, I cannot help but think of the people who have come upon me. Tommy, can you hear me? From this milkless tit you have sucked the very business we call show!

I have been having the most wonderful time with - do you remember that 45-year-old divorcee with the hair and the mean look? She came up to me after the show and I thought, "This lady wants a piece of me." So I didn't know what to do. I was alone, I had nothing in my hand, I was going to go for the eyes. She came at me from both sides, somehow, and she just gave me a fucking hug. She gave me a fucking hug. Can you figure? Can you fucking beat that? She gave me - also got a few drinks from it, as well.

It's a car wash, ladies and gentlemen!

How many times do I have to tell you? You don't put a bra in a dryer! It warps!

Stop. You come in here crying, and you want to recreate with me.Stop. You come in here crying, and you want to recreate with me.