CHRISTEENE

Christeene Brings Vile Shamelessness to Los Angeles
Mike Ciriaco
7/5/2012

West Hollywood is accustomed to outrageous drag queens. Our own local divas are notorious for having delightfully filthy mouths that counterbalance their flawless beat and six-inch heels. It's their strong dedication to glamour that excuses the baser aspects of these career cross-dressers. But what happens when this glamour element is removed from the equation?



On July 13, self-proclaimed 'drag terrorist' CHRISTEENE hits up TrannyShack at Los Globos to promote the release of her first full album, Waste Up, Knees Down. Falling on Friday the 13, the ominous timing of the event reflects the darker attributes of this Austin-based performance artist. She has been described as "a sexually infused sewer of live rap and vile shamelessness." While other drag artists aim for high aesthetics, CHRISTEENE sports a raw look. Her black wig is stringy, and her makeup consists of red and blue smears across her mouth and eyelids. The resulting effect is a hybrid of crystal meth addict and libidinous zombie.

CHRISTEENE's "vile shamelessness" permeates into her stage act. According to the artist's Facebook page, "Reports from live shows describe scenes involving butt plugs tied to bouquets of balloons released into the air from CHRISTEENE's arse, intimate and bizarre confessionals over tea, backup boys in handmade Panda masks urinating on canvas sacks containing the singer and a DIY anti-fashion wardrobe styled from the forgotten scraps of society." This month's performance at TrannyShack is expected to be equally depraved.


"Whut diz nay nay is brangin is da stankest thank u gift to dat town I could ever give," promises CHRISTEENE in her whiskey tango vernacular. "L.A. is gonna get for da first time a fully choreographed arsenal of da CHRISTEENE macheeeeeeene in alll its fugggin stank glory."

Songs included in this 'stankest gift' bare titles such as "Fix My Dick," "Tropical Abortion" and "Tears From My Pussy." The humor is both warped and conscious, as can be easily gleaned from CHRISTEENE's unapologetic music videos. In "Tears From My Pussy," she plays an introspective crack whore, waxing poetic under a trash-strewn overpass. "Fix My Dick," with its gratuitous sexuality, functions as a twisted satire of traditional hip-hop videos.

But her crowning achievement by far is "African Mayonnaise." Shot guerrilla-style, CHISTEENE sashays through stores and restaurants like a pseudo-pop princess while her cinematographer captures the reactions of unexpecting patrons. Most entertaining is witnessing Scientology Center representatives physically repel the artist when she attempted to enter their building. The video ends with two homophobes shouting "You will have to answer for yourselves! You will have to answer to the lord, our god!" CHRISTEENE merely laughs. To her, targeting these small-minded bigots is necessary.

"Verrrry necessarrrry. Iz all about remindin them fuckers dat we alll sharin dis place an aint nobody gonna keep us down. Too many of our people are always readjustin themselves and tryin ta make themselves presentable ferr dis fake ass world full a' sugar coated shit. Iz what my friend Jayne County calls Wreckin....git tha fuck out derr an wreck da shit outta derrr space and make them know dat we here an we brangin a new world to da table."

Other songs embrace a more scatological theme. In the video for "Bustin' Brown," CHRISTEENE, clad in brown hues, crawls through what appears to be a giant colon. She defends her anal fixation as natural.

"Da buh hole I would say iz da first place da shit talk comes from of course. But iz really about celebratin all da hot zones of da body and luvin all da places that da love is goin an cummin from."


CHRISTEENE stands in stark contrast to the considerably more prim and polished drag royalty of West Hollywood. The differing drag ideologies reflect the climate of their origins. While a flashy city like Los Angeles produces flashy drag queens, earthier cities like Austin produce—well, CHRISTEENE, apparently.

"L.A. is full of some cray cray stealth hitting slick mutha-fuggas, see?" says CHRISTEENE, describing the difference between the two cities in her own words. "Austin is some wild wood climbing, hippie drankin stank wild ones, but L.A. got that super strange magic kingdom shit goin on dat make me an my boyz feel like we in sum under da rainbow fashioned faggotry. Izz hot an it rubs da cool riyeet way in L.A."

Indeed. Yet in spite of their differences, CHRISTEENE feels a connection exists between all these diverse drag personas.

"We all in da same family, an when we git together in each others towns iz like when u go home ferr Christmass an meet all ur fucked up relatives. Everybody brings somethin to da room, and i just happen tooo be brangin some strange hot mess that's live and raw into da space. I wanna be up on dat stage and I wanna deliver a message in a buh hole to you an wake da world da fuck UP. Some of tha gurls do it on da TV or on da computer machine...i do it with a mic an a boot in ya fuggin face."



Catch CHRISTEENE at Trannyshack on Friday, July 13, showtime 11:30 p.m., Los Globos, 3040 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. You can also see Christeene in the film Fourplay, screening at Outfest on Sunday, July 15. - FRONTIERS LA

Christeene comes from a far stranger drag universe than the world of perfectly tucked pageant divas. Hers is a world of haz-mat glamour, somewhere at the point where Lil Kim and Leigh Bowery might agree on a pair of boots. But it’s more than that. Christeene is the remainder you have after inspiration meets “what the fuck” on a stage show that’s equal parts dance-off, transgressive critique of pop culture, and the fun-loving blasphemy of things coming out of, and going into, buttholes.

Everything about Christeene licks the seams of things that should fit, as she waxes rhapsodic about puppies and man pussy, radiating sweetness and light while looking like a crack whore that barely escaped an arsonist. She’s a free-for-all of influences, stitching blaxploitation femininity to the kind of d.i.y. queer celebration that made The Cockettes the toast of San Francisco. But there’s also something openly subversive in the way that performance artist Paul Soileau uses the Christeene persona to mock and seductively finger our cultural discomfort with the tonguing, smearing, staining realities of queer sex. It’s beautiful. The popular conception of a drag queen usually allows them to trade gender ambiguity for the role of the neutered emcee, a dry wit with a starved hole. Christeene ain’t having it.

It’s hard not to melt into pure fan boy grin sitting across from her at Cheer Up Charlie’s looking at the Star Wars shirt dress, underpass bedhead and make up that looks like it was a applied by a bad relationship. Up close, it’s easy to see how much thought it takes to look that effortlessly worked over. Soileau has Patsy Kensit cheekbones and chrysocolla pools for eyes. Clearly, she has to run into a phone booth with Amy Sedaris in order to make this transformation so convincing, as long as you don’t stare behind the grime, the corn pone diction and the voice that sounds like a doll baby huffing Scotchgard. Having just arrived via a nearby alleyway, she makes an offhand remark about the fancy new gentrifiers on the East Side. “I think I scared their children. They moved here for a food truck and a good time and I gave them a little Christeene instead. Heeeey!” She’s riding rightfully high on the release of the long awaited full length, Waste Up, Kneez Down, an onslaught of glitch beat breakdowns and lyrics that hit you in in layers of brilliance, from the gutter graffiti to the astute culture jamming of a song like “African Mayonnaise” that simply takes the backdoor to high brow. Listening to the LP, you begin to understand the booty bumpin’ confrontation at the core of this playful persona, the celebration of people who honestly come as they are, no matter where they come from.

“Ain’t never seen so much bullshit on your TV screen
y’all’s magazines got
stupid people pushin on them twitter dreams and money schemes
y’all try to roll with it
and fuck that hole with it
it takes its toll”
-African Mayonnaise

What is Christeene’s fashion philosophy?

My philosophy is that I can’t afford it, so I have to make it myself, so it’s gonna look good. We dream. Me and the boys sit down and we have our dream palette, we dream about what we would love to wear. Then we realize that we cannot afford that, so we create our version of what we would love to wear. Most of the clothing is the d.i.y, as the kids call it. I have never stolen or bought a pair of boots, they have all been given to me by people.

Bob Dylan stole records from people.

Really? Well, I don’t steal. Well, I steal souls from people. . . and kisses.

Let’s talk about the new LP, Waste Up, Kneez Down. Were you excited to have everyone involved in helping to put it out?

Wow, that was really crazee. PJ Raval always shows me the smart stuff and the business stuff. We didn’t think we were gonna make that kind of money, but we knew we needed it. We put it out there and people from everywhere gave us so much. It made us really excited that people are listening to this shit and liking it. It made us really horny to go out see these people, to leave this town, only to tour.

What do you think people identify with in Christeene? Where is the love coming from?

I don’t lie to people. They like what we do on stage because we crazy. We’re not what the magazines tell you to be. We’re not what the teevee machine tells you you’re supposed to be. We don’t have nobody representing us and putting us out there; we’re just shoveling this shit ourselves. We’re writing this from the butthole and from the heart. It’s real. I don’t think many people get real these days and we deliver at least on stage. When I walk up on that box, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but something happens.

I’m glad you brought up the butthole. Do you think the butthole is a neglected source of artistic inspiration?

I think it needs celebration. I mean, the butthole is such a demon to people. It’s so private. If people do it up the butt, it’s dirty and macabre. The butthole is beautiful, it’s the man pussy. Everybody celebrates the titty on the lady. What’s wrong with the butthole!? It’s so much fun. It never gets tired. I mean, sure it might be a little dirtier, but you clean your car, you can clean your butthole too. Everyone knows what to do with it and everyone’s doing it, that’s what I like. It’s a secret dirty thing. But you know the straight people be putting it in the butthole. And the religious people do it. The virgins can have sex in the butthole and still be a virgin. That’s how they get away with it. My friend Stephanie told me that. She told me she’s been doing it up the butt for years, but she’s still a virgin, so she’ll go to heaven. . . maybe.

What’s going on in the song “In Remembrance of Me”?

That’s just a reminder to all those stupid fucks who think that they know all this shit they be talking about. If you’re all gonna worship this shit and fuck my world up with it, y’all better remember what it’s saying to you. I die on that stage every night. Put me on a fucking cross and nail it in. I hurt more than the cross hurt that man. He got away with it and now he’s floating around in some cloud with Mary, rollin’ rocks. I gotta keep livin.

What about "Tropical Abortion"? Is it a recipe?

A recipe for destruction. It’s the sister song to “Tears from My Pussy.” "Tropical Abortion" for me is when you shit out that man, somebody that’s been treating you bad. "Tropical Abortion" is like, I dropped that toast in the ocean. You know, how when you put toast in the water it gets nasty, then it dissolves, then the fish eat it. It’s for all my boys and girls out there that’s overqualified for this job. That motherfucker’s a ball and chain on your leg, keeping you down. Fuck it. Drop that toast in the ocean and celebrate your life. Get rid of it and watch the fish eat that shit up. I like that song, it’s a happy song, but the title scares people.

Does Christeene have time for love?

I love time for play. I love my boys, the music and people in the crowd who make faces at me.

What’s your vision of the good life?

Lots of mayonnaise that doesn’t go bad when you put it on the shelf. Cuz you know it will kill you if you leave mayonnaise on the shelf? I wanna go meet all these people who found us. I don’t know how the fuck they found us, but they did. So for me the good life would be to find those people and give them all that I got, over and over. Cuz I’ll give it to them and I know it’s good.

When did you realize you were a superstar?

I’m not a superstar. You know when I realize it’s good, it’s when I look out at the crowd and there’s somebody, one person in the crowd, that’s mean. They’re looking at me like who is this fool. And they’re all angry. I see them immediately and I’m like, I’m just going to give it to you. I don’t spit on those people. I see those mean people and they’re positively angry, but then after the third song and I look at that mean person again and they’ve got that little bit of a poo poo grin on their mouth and they’re trying to fight it. And then I look at them after the fourth song and the poo poo spreads on both sides of their mouth. Then they’re laughing and they’re dancing and they’re having a good time and talking to me after the show. And that’s when I know that there’s something going on. There’s no attitude. We’re not there to judge you. Our pain is free. Well, you got to pay a door cover cuz we gots to eat. But my pain is free. That’s when it means the most, when those meanies start to smile. And anyone whose ever been really mean, they get shoved the fuck out. . . quick. Not by me, but by the crowd. The crowd protects us.

So from hater to groupie in three songs?

Yeah, bringing it. - The Austinist

CHRISTEENE at the Garrison, Saturday, June 30. Rating: NNN

Thanks to the reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, the public is now much more aware of what goes into being a drag queen: the wigs, the concealer, the bitchiness. The show has essentially codified certain basic rules around the cross-dressing tradition, all of which Austin-based “drag terrorist” Christeene mercilessly upends by looking and sounding like Beyoncé on bath salts.

The headlining act for the Christmas-themed Pride edition of neo-drag party Hotnuts, Christeene appeared onstage as a grimy blur of gender confusion, smeared lipstick and butt grease – basically the drag act for anyone who feels Pride (and gay culture in general) has become too corporate and sanitized.

Christeene’s lyrics are aggressively repugnant (song titles include Fix My Dick, Bustin’ Brown and Tears From My Pussy), yet the songs are surprisingly polished rap/R&B productions. “This one is about dropping toast in the ocean,” she said in a raspy Southern drawl before launching into Tropical Abortion.

The set lacked any memorable gross-out moments, but Christeene’s tongue-in-ass-cheek songs are as fun and fully realized as her cracked-out image.

KEVIN RITCHIE - Now Magazine

With Toronto Pride already in full swing, we're thrilled to bring you a special Q&A between singer/songwriter/performance artist/force of nature CHRISTEENE and diva duo Produzentin (below left) and Mary Messhausen (below right), proprietresses of the iconic queer party Hotnuts, where CHRISTEENE's summer tour will kick off tomorrow night!

If you don't already know CHRISTEENE:

CHRISTEENE is a sexually infused sewer of live rap and vile shamelessness, capable of adapting amazingly well to all styles of music. It is noted that CHRISTEENE commands a stage presence of furious intensity accompanied by a strict regiment of hardcore dance and destructive choreography.

Now onto the "INNERVIEW"...

christeeneOMGggs.jpg

CHRISTEENE: Merry Chrizzmusss, Bonjourrrr! Comment ça va?

Mary Messhausen: Tres Bien, Merci!

C: Wuz goin on? Im at uh friendz house and she let me talk on dis machine, yall. Dis is crazy.

M: You're talking into the crazy box.

After the jump you will find the full interview, the kinda NSFW video for "African Mayonnaise," summer tour dates and album purchase information!


In "African Mayonnaise," the 6th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, Celebrity gets Fucked. It's a raw statement about the shit you're being served up on the celebrity social platter. Eat it tha fuck up.

Produzentin: Can we start by chatting about your song "African Mayonnaise," which is available as a freebie from !! omg blog !!?

C: African Mayonnaise iz always da one dat kick people hardest. Izz da one dat will make you want tooo hit da puss. Just shove it up in there. Everyone likes da Mayonnaise. It will kick your shit out. It will fuck you up.

M: That's what we need.

C: Yea I need it. Everrbody need it right now. People gettin lazy.

M: In the African Mayonnaise video, there is that great scene with the security lez on the Segway. She tells you to get out of the mall. Did you become friends with her afterwards?

C: Oh no, they didnt like us. Derr was not only one lez - derr were about 5 of them lezzes. We were runnin around da food court when they came out. They chased us an built uh wall around us. They told us we had to shut up and get out so we took our time and finished our song and then we got da fuck out. When we got down da escalator there wuz more security waitin and dey rolled us out da front door.

P: Like a reverse red carpet?

C: It wuz tragic.

M: A brown carpet.

C: Derr was this boy who wurked at Chick-Fil-A. He left his post at Chick-Fil-A and chased us to da front door. I think he got fired. We have it on camera but we didn't put it in da video. Da security guy looked at him and yelled: "Chick-Fil-A, Chick-Fil-A - get back to work." We fuggin loved it.

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P: One of the songs on the album is called "Tropical Abortion" where you sing: "Sailing that coast / Going to drop some toast in the ocean / It's a tropical abortion". What's up with that toast?

C: I been talkin ta friendz and people in da street a lot. You know when you buy tooo much bread? When you buy a loaf uh bread and you don't realize you got two loafs in ur box at home? Da temperature in da house makes them warm and moldy. An you brang morrre toast home and you git lots uh toast.

Well some people have da toast on da inside. Da song is about when you need to git rid of da toast. Dis toast in da song is some person that iz bad ferr you. They are not doing you riyeet. You over qualified for taking care of that toast. So you gonna drop dat toast in da water and git back to whoo you are. When da toast hits da water, it go soft and gets eaten by da fish, it feed da babies. I want u tooo forget all about da crap an the nasty toast in yerr box at home. Izz a freedom song.

P: Will "Tropical Abortion" get a video?

C: Yes it will. PJ Raval is da director of all the videos and we're going to do videos for all the songs on the album. Recently I went on a trip to tha Caribbean with PJ and some friends. They told me too go swimmin. PJ and crew shot me under water with the fish while they put pieces of toast in the ocean. The fish almost ate off my face. Tha water was blue and clear and these tropical fish tried to eat me.

M: Everyone wants to eat you, honey.

C: Yeah I know - I need to get a dental dam.

P: That must feel nice when all the tiny fish nibble on you.

C: Oh noooo - it scared da shit out of me.

christeene-trio.jpg

M: PJ mentioned that you might shoot something in Toronto. Any plans for that?

C: Yes, whenever we travel, PJ likes to take his camera and we just walk around and get to know y'alls place. When we were in Paris, we walked around all day and night and we got to know the city very well. I wanna do that in Toronto.

P: We can show you all the hot corners.

M: The back alleys.

C: I wanna see everything. I wanna go too where da families are, where they hidin the babies in the strollers. I wanna go wrecking all up in that shit.

P: Dem babies need to be taught early.

C: They need to be spanked early. No body spanks therr babies any more. All them babies are rotten.

P: You have already shot videos for your songs "Tears from my Pussy" and "Fix My Dick". Do you have both?

C: I sang about everybodys business. I think we all got business. Y'all got pussies in your butthole. For some people their mouth is their pussy. They all talk to me and I like to get them some time to speak.

P: All the organs talk to you?

C: Everything, da buh hole, da pussaay, Oprah Angelz, puppies. I luv puppies.

P: Speaking of the "Oprah Angelz", which is an almost prayer like a cappella song on your album. Has Oprah been in touch since it got released?

C: I sing out to her sometimes on da shows, she make me feel good. She's having trouble I hear, she loosin a lotta money. So she dont have time ferr CHRISTEENE riyeet now.

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P: What's your favourite position?

C: Mmmmh? What you mean?

M: In your bedroom.

C: I don't have a bedroom.

M: In the gutter, under the bridge?

C: I don't know - dats crazy talk. I don't know what da fuck you talkin about.

M: Is this your first time in Canada?

C: Yes.

M: Oh shit CHRISTEENE! We'll give you an extra special Canadian treatment then.

C: I want da full high colonic queer-core enema.

M: Laced with maple syrup.

C: Y'all got nuggets up in yerr stew dat is crazy. I'm goin to cum in and tap in on your dirty, dark crystal. I'm gonna plug my nay nay up in your crazy shit. Y'all got history in that dirty hole.

P: Have you ever had the French-Canadian delicacy Poutine?

C: Pooootine? Wuz Poooootine?

M: French fries with cheese curds and gravy on top.

C: Mmh! Can we have dat when I cum tooo Toronto?

M: We will have it every day.

C: I might write a song called Poootine! I might start callin somethin my Pooootine. I wanna a Poootine. I bet I git in some kind of position if you get me some Poootine. I be laying on the floor with da Poootine between my toes.

P: You never know what Santa is going to bring for Christmas. He might just bring a big sack full of Poutine.

C: You don't know whut CHRISTEENE is going to brang ferr Chrissmuzz! If I can bring dat surprise on the airplane I'm brangin it.

M: It sounds like you're just as excited as we are for Christmas! What can we expect?

C: Yez, I am, y'all are crazy. Chrissmuzz is my favourite. I am born on Chrissmuzz Day. I like when people are ready for everything. I like to brang it raw. You gonna get real raw shit from Austin, Texas. Y'all gunna git a big azz fuggin BBQ from Austin, Texas on da stank fuggin Canada grill. Brang some bips, napkins and a towel.
I'm excited tooo see yall proper.

M & P: We're excited to have you!

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CHRISTEENE Tour Dates


Buy CHRISTEENE's debut album 'Waste Up, Kneez Down' on iTunes Canada, iTunes US, and CD Baby

- OMG Blog/OMG Social Club

During my brief trip to Texas, I went to the video premiere for Christeene’s ”African Mayonnaise” at Cheer Up Charlie’s. I was pretty excited to see the final product, as I knew it was a tense shoot. I also heard it was Christeene’s best video to date. I can vouch for it. Given Christeene’s impressive videography, that’s saying something. It is an exhilarating video. It has dense, beautiful imagery that requires multiple viewings to unpack all the stuff that’s going on. It demands you watch it more than once. It’s a statement video, one that I might place alongside Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. But it’s a lot more fun to watch than most statement videos, particularly since they tend to be overlong yet short on ideas, Artistically Significant yet ultimately shallow, and include dialogue. Get to the hook already!

Still from "African Mayonnaise" video; image courtesy of tumblr.com

The song is about celebrity–the mutual dependence between star and fan, the malleability of image, the tricky business of turning a person into a constellation of symbols, the star’s contentious relationship with the camera, the acrid deliciousness of scandal. The video mirrors that concept in its attempts to create iconographic imagery and reveal that those images are made possible through surveillance. In addition to what PJ Raval and his crew shot and edited, the video also includes footage–mostly taken from smart phones–from fans and onlookers.

One of the major themes of the video–perhaps Christeene’s entire M.O.–is invasion. The video shows Christeene and her back-up dancers shimmying in front of the Austin Motel and sashaying through a food court, a supermarket, a barber shop, a hair salon, a gym, a patio bar, the UT South Mall, Starbucks, a Scientology center. Christeene also poses in front of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe and is displayed on a television monitor placed in a chicken coop apparently belonging to the artist. I don’t see malevolence behind these moments of invasion, though some of the men do look uncomfortable about receiving dances from Christeene and her minions. I even think there’s potential moments for community formation. Certainly the dance party at the end of the video celebrates Austin’s queer scene. But I see such gestures of good will and inclusion in Christeene high-fiving a woman at the gym and waving to a young girl at the grocery store. I think the collaborative nature of the video’s shoot reflects this spirit as well. In taking a piece of Christeene, many people are part of the process of constructing her.

But the charged moments–what made the film infamous in friend circles before its premiere–were the scuffles with authority. Police officers escorted Christeene and the crew off the premises during the shoot at various locations. In particular, staff members at the Church of Scientology of Texas locked their doors and confiscated equipment. Folks also harassed the star and crew with hate speech. At least one person cried godless and I like that this moment is reframed as a joke about the stupidity and destructiveness of queerphobia. I think such moments of brutality and intolerance, and the willingness to share them and package them as part of a music video, are what’s so powerful about this clip. Celebrity may have power over us, but it’s useless without people using that platform to challenge larger social and institutional problems. It’s thrilling to watch a queer artist, dressed in unconvincing drag, confront such phobia in public. Christeene does it through humor and an invitation of inclusion, but the stakes are fucking high in the war against individual freedom. Cops might rough you up. People might yell at you because you tucked in your dick and flaunted your ass in public. Cult practitioners may take your stuff and make threats. It happens off-camera.

Christeene also reclaims space as a star. Stars often accommodate the context they’re in, particularly at red carpet events and photo shoots. Teams of people make them into whatever they need to be for a film premiere, magazine interview, or concert. Even stars photographed without makeup is a construction no different from a band breaking out an acoustic guitar to do an “unplugged” performance. Stripping down is as much an act as wearing a safe Armani gown. I don’t know if many would label Christeene a star. She’s not starring in an action movie based on a board game, though I’d love her to play Queen Frosteene in Candyland: The Reckoning. She’s not performing for a televised award show, though she’d show up in an outfit at least as eye-catching as Björk’s swan dress. She doesn’t have a hit album, though I think that might come. Have you heard her music? The production’s really good and the singles are ready for the clubs.

But Christeene is a star to me, perhaps in the way that Courtney Love and Sinéad O’Connor insisted upon their own fame and found an audience with their outsize talent and personality. Christeene wasn’t groomed for celebrity. Quite frankly, I don’t think she has interest in grooming of any kind. Yet she has become a star for some on the basis of her formidable imagination and her total ownership of this invented persona. It continues to blow my mind that Christeene and Rebecca Havemeyer share Paul Soileau’s body. Frankly, I’m intimidated by the kind of creative person who can breathe these beings into existence even if I’m thrilled that such a person can take pop iconography and make something truly punk out of it. That’s probably why I write about it instead.

But actually, the challenge to write about Christeene is also exciting for me. Lokeilani Kaimana might attest that it’s hard to do. A friend of mine at school recently did a job talk about sketch comedy and used Funny or Die as a case study. I wondered how a figure like Christeene, who used the site as a distribution platform, might disrupt how we conceptualize FoD’s viewership and comedy more broadly. I attempted to explain Christeene to the speaker and the audience, grasping at words like “bad drag,” “gold tooth,” and “rectum.”

She’s especially difficult to talk about in terms of race. I believe this is deliberate on the part of the artist, but no less dicey in execution. “African Mayonnaise” refers to the mixture of cum and fecal matter on a spent penis after anal sex. The use of the term “African” to connote darkness and shit is … yikes. Many might say it’s outright racist, and I’m not sure I have an argument against such an appraisal. In a lot of ways, Christeene’s dangerous play with race as a white drag performer reminds me of Nitsuh Abebe’s excellent piece on CocoRosie and artistic risk. There are certainly perils and limits to playing with race, not the least of which is alienating an audience.

I don’t want to applaud these artists and call them brave or misunderstood simply for making people angry or uncomfortable. I know their work might play into rather than challenge other people’s racist assumptions. But I think there’s something valuable to not only acknowledging that such assumptions exist in the culture, but that they must be confronted, mutated, and roughed up in the process (working with a gay filmmaker of color who was a cinematographer on Trouble the Water doesn’t hurt either). Anyone can make millions from an anthem about individuality and perseverance that makes vague claims toward and cynically leaches off of a queer audience. But it takes something more to position yourself as a star and base such fame on the abjection of stardom.

Some may make comparisons between Lady Gaga’s crutches and Christeene becoming someone else’s (or her own) santorum. For one, what an uninspired comparison. For another, celebrating one’s own abjection, framing it as explicitly queer, and making angry, giddy, political, participatory art out it feels a lot more transgressive to me than some of the music passing as such these days. She may never win a Grammy, but I’m no less challenged, outraged, and awestruck. Sounds like pop to me. - Alyx Vesey/ Feminist Music Geek

Dispatches from Austin: South by Southwest Express, Day 4
By Reverb Staff | March 20th, 2011 | 2 comments

Team Reverb is on the scene at the South by Southwest Music Festival this week. Here’s what a few of us saw on Day 4.

Best musical moment: What was the most memorable music I heard/saw on Saturday, the final day of the SXSW music festival? There is no question in my mind: It was Christeene.

Christeene is a drag queen from Austin who raps like Mickey Avalon –- amateurish and dirty –- over big electro beats. There’s dancing, too, with booty-based choreography and two man-servant back-up dancers. And there’s also the spectacle, which is the kind of shocking thing you won’t ever forget.

Christeene wears a long stringy wig and a gold front tooth –- and little else. She has underwear made of floss, and her outfit (or lack there of) matches that of her dancers. If it sounds like trash, it is. Christeene might have been the trashiest musician at SXSW. And that’s the point.

All of the songs are frantic, often grotesque sex fantasies, and most of their titles aren’t all that printable here. But what was most impressive about Christeene -– even more than how shocking the whole experience was –- was how viable her performance was. The music alternated between hip-hop grime and house-tinged electro, and it was legitimate club music. Her rapping is hardly expert, but she knows a good hook -– and she’s not afraid … well, of anything. –Ricardo Baca - Reverb Magazine

Christeene
Chelsea Weathers

Photo by Leigh-Anne Brown

Rather than “drag queen” or simply “drag performer,” Austin based performance artist Paul Soileau calls Christeene, his trashy, endearing, slightly frightening and ambiguously gendered persona, a “drag terrorist.” This term is reminiscent of José Esteban Muñoz’ discussion of Vaginal Creme Davis in the book Disidentifications, in which he characterizes the African-American performer’s shows in whiteface as “terrorist drag,” a strategy for acting outside dominant discourses about the politics of identity in order to exact radicalsocial critique. Covered in bruises and smeared lipstick, Christeene wears an unkempt black wig and dresses that are often recycled pillowcases, dirty lace or simply knotted lengths of pantyhose. In the course of a performance, Christeene will show you her balls and reveal her gold tooth while spitting on you, barking lyrics about her dick and her pussy. In other words, she is a far cry from what most audiences have come to expect from a drag show. And yet, after a show in front of an audience filled with go-go-dancer-ogling, Chelsea Boy types in the Los Angeles gay bar Fubar—a venue where Soileau initially read the audience as wary of Christeene’s aesthetic—one of those muscle men approached her and said, “You really just changed the way I think.”

At another Christeene performance, Soileau recalls seeing a more traditional-looking drag performer in blonde wig, flawless theatrical makeup and evening gown, standing near the stage with arms crossed, an expression of predetermined consternation on her face. This drag queen was determined to hate Christeene—and yet by the end of the show, she was dancing along with the rest of the audience, her seeming contempt replaced by giddy enthusiasm. It is possible to read this reaction as symbolic of Soileau’s own battle against a category that Muñoz identifies as “commercial drag”—the presentation of a “sanitized and desexualized queer subject for mass consumption.” This stereotypical drag queen, dressed in the trappings that, thanks to corporate-sponsored television programs like “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and Hollywood films such as The Birdcage, read as standard, is a stand-in for mainstream conceptions of drag performance as a nonthreatening form of transvestitism or genderqueerness. Soileau’s disidentificatory strategy is not intended to alienate that mainstream contingent or reject the image it perpetuates but, rather, to hold a mirror up to it. And the reflection Christeene offers includes the necessarily unsanitized underbelly of queer experience—the ambiguity of identifying as queer and the anger and humor that is part and parcel of that experience. Similarly, Christeene was exposing that Chelsea Boy audience to another side of queer—a side that at least one member of the audience was tempted to contemplate. The radical social critique in Christeene’s performance ultimately addresses the same hegemonic system that sterilized perceptions of drag culture and queerness in the first place—the indiscriminate consumption of mass culture that Christeene, a sort of collective Picture of Dorian Gray, emerges from and also lays to waste.

After the initial shock or discomfort of seeing Christeene on stage, reactions shift from laughter to envelopment in the energy of the music and dancing. Like the blonde drag queen, the crowds inevitably default to cheering her on. If Christeene’s performances were any less deliberate—if her bear truck drivers moonlighting as backup dancers seemed a little more self-aware of their ironic presence, if the synchronized dance moves weren’t choreographed down to the beat, if the sound and lighting seemed half-assed, if the rouge applied between Christeene’s butt cheeks (to simulate chafing) were applied less subtly—then the effect of the show would be not only haphazard but ultimately boring. The calculated quality of Christeene’s execution convinces audience members that she respects them; she is not playing a trick on them or insulting their intelligence by choosing to play a character who seems to have the speech development of a fourth grader. Her Cajun-inflected, guttural baby-doll voice is speaking their language, or at least a language that they can recognize, though some may not wish to admit it, because her vocabulary is honed from the basest of popular culture—the mass media at its celebrity-obsessed, scandal-addicted, reality-TV-laden worst. Her angriest song, which she usually reserves for the closing number, is “African Mayonnaise.” It conveys Soileau’s sentiments most explicitly:

I am your new celebrity

I am your new america

I am the piece of filthy meat

that you take home and treat to yourself

Ain’t never seen so much bullshit on your tv screen

y’all’s magazines got

stupid people pushin on them twitter dreams and money schemes

y’all try to roll with it

and fuck that hole with it

it takes its toll

get it

now worship on my skank troll

Though the lyrics to this New Orleans, fast-rap inspired anthem are raunchy, and Christeene delivers them with substantial rage, she is not demanding that we as her audience hold ourselves accountable for this, our national zeitgeist. Just as Christeene rips the mask off of commercial drag, she also takes on the grotesque personification of those celebrities famous for being famous and little else yet continually followed by mass media and paparazzi, recording their quotidian habits and personal scandals and hocking them as news. Christeene is a reminder that these people, underneath the hype of overwrought publicity and rampant conspicuous consumption, are not the source of our redemption and do not hold any secrets that will save us. We must do that for ourselves.

There is a reason that Soileau made Christeene stupid: if the artist’s persona is an ignorant vacuum then audience members become the torchbearers of meaning and import for the artwork. Often what we end up seeing in a performance or a work of visual art has a lot to do with the projection of our own subjectivity into our experience of the work. This idea has been more or less commonplace since Andy Warhol started answering all interview questions simply with “yes” or “no,” and critics and viewers began to interpret his artworks as avenues of self-reflection rather than as objects embodying the artist’s intent. And what does Christeene mirror back at us? That we are angry, that we are able to laugh at ourselves, that laughing does not mean that we are insensitive and that we still care.

Chelsea Weathers is a freelance writer and a PhD Candidate in art history at The University of Texas at Austin.
- Art Lies

Meet Christeene Vale, one of the hottest drag artists in the US right now, and the weirdest thing to come out of Austin this week. If you think the Odd Future gang are shocking, then get a load of this chick. Sure, Tyler and Earl may feature blood and puke in their videos, but would they ever actually set a video inside somebody’s asshole? And as much as I like their beats, I don’t think they could make a dubstep track as downright nasty as “Slowly/Easy”. Still, they’re only teenagers and they’ve got a lot to learn about sex and sexuality. Maybe Christeene is the MC to teach them?

Christeene is the alter-ego of the artist Paul Soileau (who also performs as Rebecca Havemeyer) and since her debut in 2009 with the “Fix My Dick” clip, she has been making waves on both the gay and straight performance scenes. Although Soileau refuses to define Christeene or her “message”, others, like Skip The Make Up, have this to say:

[Even] though Soileau is of Cajun background, the way Chrsteene speaks/sings is clearly supposed to sound non-white. Therefore… the act is really him portraying a trans hooker of color who is massively fucked up and screwing to survive. You may now laugh.

While commenter TheWarholEffect defends her in the comments to the same post:

The patois you speak of is found in a variety of representations of impoverished ethnicities (incl those at least nominally labeled as white - but as you know in Louisianna whiteness ain’t monolithic, Cajuns being perhaps the best example) ... more productive, I think, would be to put Christeene alongside a performer such as Vaginal Creme Davis, whose brand of drag cultural critic Jose Esteban Munoz has branded “terrorist” drag.



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Well, despite what you may think of her, you can’t deny that she’s pretty damn talented, with a lyrical flow that puts her beyond the realm of being a mere novelty act. Next weekend she will make her live debut as a showcase artist at the SXSW festival, where her video “Bustin’ Brown” will be shown as part of the Midnight Shorts schedule. Yes, “Bustin Brown” is the butt-set video. The director PJ Raval has this to say about it:

In “Bustin’ Brown”, the fourth installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, CHRISTEENE confronts the ever-present bastardization of anal sex from mainstream bourgeois heterosexuals by returning “da buh-hole” to its rightful owners.

Just when you thought drag was becoming safe and respectable! Christeene has been known to wear a butt-plug attached to helium balloons in her performance, and to set it free to sail up into the sky at the end of her shows. If you’re lucky, she might do that at SXSW. Now THAT"S something I would like to see on Jimmy Fallon! - Dangerous Minds

When we heard that Christeene Vale was going to be performing at Mark Nelson and Michael Formika Jones' F Word party at Splash Friday night, we were gagging! We caught her performing at Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco last summer and loved every raunchy, gross shocking minute of it. Christeene brings something different: Hailing from Austin, Texas, she's got a strong country twang with a tinge of full retard. (Think Jodie Foster in Nell.) And her look couldn't be mistaken for glamorous: Gold tooth, smeared lipstick, greasy hair, baggy eyes, and grooming habits like she just stepped out of a 100-man bukkake video. On this night, the performance started with Christeene being swapped between her back-up dancers, who were sporting deer antlers and furry leggings. After wiping her backside with toilet papper and tossing it into the crowd, the Texas rose performed "Fix My Dick" and "Slowly/Easy," dropping hardcore dubstep beats and lyrics so filthy we can't repeat them in a family-friendly blog like this. Seen bouncing to the beat were Doug Repetti, Brian Mills, Go-Go Harder, Francis Legge, Demanda Dahling, Herra-C, Devin Stone, Thorgy Thor, Amanda Lepore, Shane Mercado, Johnny Sanford and Cazwell.

We cornered Formika to thank him for bringing this nasty Lone Star bitch to New Yawk—but how the hell did he know about her? "Christeene first came to me when The F Word was at Santos Party House and I fell in love," he says "She was just a newbie to the stage and it was her first New York appearance. This time the show was even raunchier and nastier than before! I love that dirty southern whore! I'm a huge fan!"

Christeene took a minute to sit down with us, and with her slow Cajun back-swamp drawl she filled us in on her band's current plans. "We not on uh official tour, we just makin' hard-hard hits wherrr people will have us. Formika be a sweet friend who set us up wit da F Wurd. We played da F wurd last year at Santoz house an it wuz damn good! Next stop is South by Southwest in Austin," she slurred. "Our video for "Bustin' Brown" got into da midnight shorts of the SXSW film fest, and we also made it into the music festival. Gunna be hawt gurl, haaay!" We highly recommend you watch 'Bustin' Brown.' While she may shock you, she's a brilliant artist—who else would set a music video inside of an asshole? Thank you Christeene for challenging us and bringing us your amazing music. New York loves ya durlin'! —Matt Humphrey - NEXT Magazine NYC

If you don’t know CHRISTEENE, you soon will. A drag queen who takes the term 'drag-tastic,' spins it on its head, beats it with a stick, drags it through the mud—and comes through the ordeal with fabulous performance art in tow. This is one girl you’ve got to see to believe. CHRISTEENE has been characterized as being “a sexually infused sewer of live rap and vile shamelessness, capable of adapting amazingly well to all styles of music.” And with each performance, she delivers that description.

Reports from live shows describe scenes involving butt plugs tied to bouquets of balloons being released into the air from CHRISTEENE's arse; intimate and bizarre confessionals over tea; backup boys urinating on canvas bags containing the singer; and a wardrobe and nursery-like stage design styled from the scraps of society—classifiable as 'Dumpster Couture.' The singer's impressive sound arsenal includes a wide range of musical appreciation and mastery, ranging from electro to R&B, hip-hop to dubstep, with titles including "Fix My Dick," "Tears From My Pussy" and "African Mayonnaise." All songs are written by CHRISTEENE and present an intimate and fascinating glimpse into the personal experiences of this talented nightmare.

Frontiers sat down with CHRISTEENE to discuss her hailed talents, controversial style and the future of her character-turned-creature!

Your work is wild and all over the map. So how would you define CHRISTEENE—drag queen, comedian, performance artist, all of the above of none of them?

A drag terrorist. A creature.

Drag is hard business to get into these days—so why did you go this route?

Drag is the most natural and enjoyable way I can find to express what's going on in my brain.

How long have you been doing it?

A pretty long time. Since I was in high school, on and off.

Why did you get started?

I've always found women to be much more interesting to watch than men. There's nothing more enjoyable than trying to serve up your favorite dish.

Is CHRISTEENE an act—or is she actually you?!

CHRISTEENE is CHRISTEENE.

Is CHRISTEENE a “single lady”?

I like to think that CHRISTEENE is widowed and doesn't have a clue as to what "single" really means. CHRISTEENE's an engine that keeps running hard for the thrill of it—on everything.

Some drag queens lip-sync but you actually sing your own stuff. What are your thoughts on lip-syncing vs. actually singing?

They're both fantastic when they're done with heart. You can lip-sync or sing it, fine by me, but you better tear it up. I'm constantly amazed when I visit San Francisco and see what's coming out of that fuckin' factory, and Los Angeles is friggin' sick. There are a lot of amazing people putting new, original work out there involving singing or sync right now and it's really exciting. I just happen to sing.

You have a song—“Fix My Dick." The title alone turns a lot of heads. Now what’s the story behind that one?

Sometimes your sexual needs don't get fulfilled enough. Sometimes you need to express how frustrated you are with your lack of good, hard, rough, filthy physical contact.

Many people consider your performances “controversial." I watched one of your performances on YouTube and my jaw hit the floor—and I’m not easily shocked: Watch a live performance of "Fix My Dick" here. How do you feel about that?

I welcome all opinions concerning the performances and personalities. So long as there's a group of people who are really getting it, I'm happy. When people turn from it or attack it, I'm thrilled to know why.

While other drag performers spend thousands of dollars on make-up and costumes, you take another route. You’re not afraid to let it all hang out and play up the raunchy. And your fans love it! Tell us more about that approach.

The outfits are fantastic to find because they're basically crap I have in strange places of the house, or fashioned from articles of clothing that don't belong where they're being worn. They're layered, they're dirty—literally very dirty. I don't like to clean a lot of the outfits, ever. As for playing the raunchy, here's how I see it. We're fed big sugar-coated turds everyday on television and in the news and the magazines and we greedily eat it up like dirty babies. CHRISTEENE is giving you that stank turd without the diamond sugar on it. It's the same thing. It's the real thing. Eat it.

If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing with your life?

Dreaming about doing this.

Ideally, where would you like to see CHRISTEENE end up? What’s in the future for you?

I really enjoy seeing CHRISTEENE traveling and meeting new people right now. It's important, and it really plays such a vital role in the evolution of a new mess you've made. For 2011, CHRISTEENE and the boyz will be traveling to perform in Paris in February, New York in March and at SXSW's 25th year here in Austin. The first album, Waste Up Kneez Down, will be heading out around February as well. It's an exciting time.

What’s the best way for a fan to 'reach out and touch' you?

If you see me, talk to me and be nice—or naughty. Just don't be a dick. Email me at christeene.org, and if CHRISTEENE is in your town, go see the show.

Anything else you’d like us to know?

I was watching Who's that Girl? for the first time while I was answering these questions. I wonder what Madonna feels like when she watches it now—if she watches it now.

So do we, CHRISTEENE. So do we! And we can’t wait for your next L.A. performance!
The debut album from CHRISTEENE, Waste Up, Kneez Down, is set to be released in 2011, fresh off the heels of the EP Soldier of Pleasure, which is currently on sale at christeene.org. - FRONTIERS L.A.

I would have never expected to say this, but last night I witnessed what has to be the queerest event I’ve ever come across… and it just so happened to be in Texas.  A good three or four hundred queer folks and their friends gathered in a backyard in East Austin yesterday for the annual “Gay Bi Gay Gay” event that goes down the last sunday of SXSW.  Performers took the stage as onlookers drank $2 beers and ate vegan calzones well into the night.  Neighbours of the people that put on the event didn’t seem to mind either…  predominately a lower class African-American community, many families took to their front lawns to sell hamburgers and hot dogs, or wandered into the backyard to take advantage of the cheap beer and festivities.  I’ve got to say the result was pretty much as joyous and inclusive as it gets…
The performance highlight most definitely was Christeene, obviously a considerable cult figure in these parts… Singing songs like “Fix My Dick” and “Tears From My Pussy,” the audience sang along to the lyrics and ducked their heads when Christeene removed a butt plug from her anus and threw it into the crowd.  It was quite the scene, and I highly recommend checking out Christeene’s music videos. - Indiewire

I was happy to have scored a seat at the SXSW Midnight Shorts screening at the Lamar late Monday night. It had started to rain and, once again, the theater sidewalk was packed with moviegoers.
A dozen weird, whimsical, raunchy and freaky shorts made the cut, and almost all of them were engaging and, often, hilarious.
Jim Owen’s “Can We Talk?” sits with a man and a woman going through the motions of breaking up only to take the conversation into some unexpectedly intimate areas. The music video “Fix My Dick,” by PJ Raval, fits neatly into that category of things you desperately wish you could unsee. D.W. Young’s “Not Interested” sets up the tension-filled premise of a clueless knife salesman ringing the doorbell of a woman who’s got some unwanted company.
- The Hollywood Reporter

Forget Project Runway, Drag U and Ru Paul's Drag Race. The next big drag star will be Christeene, an unwashed broke-ass Atlanta hoochie who drops filthy rhymes about "Bustin' Brown" and "African mayonnaise." She's the drag persona of Austin-based performer Paul Soileau and she's bringing whiskey, buttsex and celebu-trauma to a queer bar near you. (NOTE: Video very NSFW.)
The last two years had taken a big dump on Paul Soileau's dreams. He had moved to New Orleans with hopes of collaborating with other artists and filmmakers, but then Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home and he fled to Atlanta to perform in Piedmont Park with other refugees while waiting for FEMA to cough up emergency funds. He eventually landed in Austin working at a drive-thru coffeeshop where he entertained his co-workers by singing filthy rap lyrics like "I'll let you chew on my crab cakes; to hell with the first date, just slide me the beef steak." But deep down Soileau felt a residual trauma and anger boiling inside of him.
His drag career hadn't gotten off the ground and a recent P-town talent performance in his seasoned drag persona, the unsinkable old-monied Rebecca Havemeyer, had fallen flat with the rowdy crowd. Rebecca usually had an entire show to ingratiate herself to the audience with song spoofs like "Your Son Will Come Out Tomorrow" and "You Give Me Beaver." But Paul needed an act that was quick, destructive and fun — something to leave his audience speechless in less than five-minutes.
So he threw on a mangy wig from the trunk of his car, a waist-length hooker coat, shit heels, smeared some lipstick across his gold tooth, slipped on a pair of shades and entered Austin's Camp Camp — a queer open mic show. He walked up incognito among his own friends and proceeded to have the filthiest sex he could with the microphone stand while occasionally moaning to a Pizzicato 5 song. After the song ended, he disappeared into the night leaving the horrified audience to wonder what the fuck they had just seen.
That night, Christeene was born.
 Soileau had already performed for several years as Rebecca Havemeyer, a drag character that he created while waiting tables at a Manhattan bistro. He discovered the name Havemeyer from a Brooklyn street and thought it sounded like Vanderbilt, Rockerfeller and other 1920's robber barons. History revealed that the Havemeyers had made their fortune in sugar and so Soileau imagined a burnt-out Brooklyn socialite whose great great grandmother had an affair with the sugar king.
Rebecca grew up taken care of and remains decked out in 1930's platinums and powders (dresses Soileau picks up from secondhand shops), charmingly ignorant of her own shortcomings. During one Christmas show, Rebecca asked the bacon-eating, wish-granting Child of Prague to make Santa come a week early. When a half-formed Santa came down her chimney gibbering like a mutant, Ms. Havemeyer concluded the show and spent the night carousing with audience members still dressed in her wig and gown.
In his small East Austin home, hidden behind a canopy of drooping magnolias, Soileau pulls out one of Havemeyer's gowns near the hatstand where he keeps her and Christeene's wigs. The elegantly simple gown has smudges of makeup, street food, and dirt on it. "A lot of the dresses have tp be dry cleaned," Soileau laughs. "And I'm broke." He then pulls out Christeene's costumes — scraps like her pillowcase dresses, the belts she wears as bras, a denim garter ("she thinks denim is like diamonds") and a pair of panties that haven't been washed since last September. Christeene throws them into the crowd every show and they always somehow get back to her.

I've seen Christeene's show — it's shockingly filthy. She's a man whose not afraid to show her penis in see-through panty hose or eat chocolate pudding out of her backup dancer's ass. Soileau lets me smell the panties — they used to be baby blue. Now they're purple, stiffened with sweat and smudged with the makeup that Soileau bruises onto Christeene's thighs. The twisted panties have a blood stain on the crotch and reek of ball stank — even six inches away, I can still taste the smell.
I first saw Christeene in a video that quickly got yanked from YouTube, a song entitled "Fix My Dick." It features a poop-smeared baby and a douche bulb laying on the floor of a graffiti-covered shack while Christeene and her pantied male dancers butt-hump the camera. The song's fun and raunchier than shit on a dick, but I'm astounded that a version of it still exists on YouTube. It's one of four videos she made with Trinidad director PJ Raval: there's also the heartfelt "Tears from My Pussy", the spastic Panda-sex in "Slowly/Easy", and her latest video "Bustin' Brown", a song that tells straight folks that it's OKto enjoy anal sex. The video features her Vaseline-covered palms groping two hairy asses while they roll around in an enormous colon.
Christeene scares people, even her fans. "Her show's abusive," Soileau says, "I assault myself and the audience." All the pumping, thrashing, and humping in her 30-minute show motivated Soileau to stop smoking, go vegetarian and spend more riding his bike just keep up with her. After each performance, he hangs out in character to see the reactions of the audience members. The scruffy young men at the Akbar club in LA gave her weird looks when she first arrived and remained stand-offish even after the show, but by 2am they bought her more drinks than she could remember and showered her with hugs and praise adding that they felt just as freaky as she.
"I design my characters to be ignorant, naive, and kind because it's so important to me that they're approachable. During the 90s it was very popular [for drag queens] to be mean, to be a bitch, and the meaner the better. That breed of drag I didn't like at all. There's an art to the bitchiness of the 90s, a language that was really amazing. But it was mean." In contrast, Soileau made Christeene what he calls "a baby person." Like Mike Tyson she'll rip your ear off onstage but when she speaks she sounds like a nine-year-old.
Christeene's full-length album Waste Up, Knees Down comes out in November and afterwards she'll go on tour in "every bar in the world." Fleshjack, the producers of "butthole in a can," will sponsor her tour. They're probably the only business in the world who would sponsor her tour. She's been to their plant… it smells like burning dildos.
But Soileau's drag characters aren't just about friendly camp and shock — in all her brutal, unwashed glory Christeene represents actual genderqueers roaming America's streets: the queers you'll never see on The Advocate or primetime TV, the "trannies" who get manhandled, bashed, and ignored or lampooned in newspaper articles. These are the same queers who started the ball culture shown in Paris is Burning, the ones who perfected voguing before Madonna re-appropriated it. Even Havemeyer represents an older generation of queer ally. She's likely pansexual and has eaten a muffin or two in her day, but she's curious, fun-loving, and accepting, like the drunken aunt we all wish we had or Aunt Mame after two drug-addled decades swinging in Harlem.
Rebecca Havemeyer also engages Austin's progressive queer community: she has presented a series of booze-related stretches for an Austin AIDS walk, offers regular comic relief on the local gay radio show (Outcast), serves as mistress of ceremonies at annual fundraiser for a queer theater group, and holds a monthly gay film night at the Ritz Alamo Theater called Celluloid Handbag. This month Ms. Havemeyer will present the film 120 Days of Sodom while downing a pint glass of whiskey and serving chocolate mousse. She hopes you will attend.
"Texas," Havemeyer says, "is such a masculine state; it's butch as they call it. The problem is when you hide your gay bug, put a blanket on it, you end up doing crazy things like cheat on your wife or have strange sex in the hotel. Just because you live where men are men and the women cook the cornbread doesn't mean you can't dance in a pair of heels. I hope I could build bridges to the other side and let people realize there's a great gay smorgasbord and a welcoming community that accepts you as you are."
Outside of Ms. Havemeyer's community efforts, Soileau collaborates often with Austin's queer organizers: he helped organize the Queerbomb gay pride events that stood in opposition to Austin's highly corporatized Pride celebration and stays in regular close contact with local queer artists including the writers for the Austin Chronicle's popular blog The Gay Place.
"For me, a lot of queers, all LGBTQIA," Soileau says, "I think we're really hungry for something different. We're really digging into what we've been through and getting the gold out of it and starting to manufacture a new way of living within our community that recognizes many things that don't get recognized in the popular high school [mentality that rules mainstream culture]. High school is always about sports, prom, and the pretty boy and pretty girl. And I'm tired of football and prom and popularity… there's something really gorgeous about the kids hanging out at the other side of the gym and it doesn't cost money to make something very well and prominent. It's not about breaking away, we want to create our own style while educating the football players and prom queens. We want them to come to the other side of the river with us."
You can order Christeene's EP at Christeene.org.
- queerty.com

AUSTIN -- Filthy, funny and freaky, Christeene (a.k.a Paul Soileau, a.k.a. Rebecca Havemeyer) absolutely killed it at last night's "Solider of Pleasure" EP-release gig at Elysium.
To the garage thumping beats of her new single, "Slowly/Easy," Christeene made a brilliant entrance, carried by her "backup boyz," T-Gravel and C-Baby.
After depositing her on a stage decorated with stained diapers and a fecal-smeared high chair, Chriteene's dancers promptly "urinated" on her.
When she finally stood up, soaking wet, Christeene sang wearing a flappy face-mask right out of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
And immediately, she had the near-capacity crowd in the palms of her disgusting hands.
Amid the crude, nightmarish costumes and hilarious vulgarity was the polish of a superstar: The balance of lights and sound were totally on pointe -- and the onstage energy was electrifying.
Weaving snippets of Anita Bryant-sounding dialogue about rigid gender edicts concerning proper hair length for boys and girls, Christeene's onstage DJ "Jay-Jay" ramped up the assaulting beats of "Fix My Dick."
From there, it was all rear-end floor humping. At one point, Christeene brilliantly fused her vocal performance with anilingus.
When she caught her breath, Christeene delivered a 10-minute baby-voiced monologue: First, informing the audience that she almost swallowed her gold tooth.
Since the evening was a special night, Christeene decided to have a glass of tea — like all the other divas she's seen on television. And then she apologized to the audience, because "Sometimes, I get the clown in my pussy," and started spitting her tea on her appreciative fans.
She gleefully explained, "Dat I only do dat because I love you" -- sounding like a drunk, ghetto-dwelling Carol Channing.
While singing the gorgeous lullaby, "Oprah's Angles," an eight-piece mini-orchestra in black-tie began setting up their instruments and music stands.
Looking at the puny Elysium stage and noticing how horribly cold it was inside the jam-packed club, I thought to myself, "With all those classical instruments, they'll never get it to sound right."
I was wrong.
When Christeene's accompanists launched into "Tears from My Pussy," it was so perfect, Bjork would have seethed with jealousy.
For her encore, Christeene performed "African Mayonnaise," proclaiming that she's America's new celebrity. That might not be far-fetched ... at all.
- Snipers Love Nest