photo by CJ Mingolelli
Frankie Cocktail

FIQnews: Wow. Tell us about that.

FC: I always tell the story like this. I went in to become straight. Five hundred Navy guys and twenty five hundred Marines, and all they did was work out. And this is going to make me straight. And no women around. It's funnier when I tell the story in drag, because I tell people I had to leave the Navy because my hair got so big it didn't fit under the sailor cap. It's funnier when you have the big hair on.

FIQnews: What did you do after you left the Navy?

FC: I became a bartender, and I've been a bartender ever since. My mother used to watch late night television, and they would have these bartender commercials on. "Become a bartender in forty hours or whatever," and she thought that I had the personality of a bartender. Why she didn't think I had the personality of a doctor... she didn't set her goals very high. I became a bartender because of that.

FIQnews: You seem to enjoy it.

FC: I do.

FIQnews: How did the character Frankie Cocktail come about?

Frankie and Frankie Cocktail

When I started doing drag, I decided it wasn't girly enough, so I picked the name Bev Nap, which is short for Beverly Napkin. Beverly Napkin is a brand name of bar napkins.

The character started with one of the drag queens at Lips (a bar/restaurant in the West Village), which is where I started doing drag. Someone painted two pinkies nails black or something, and it just grew from there, like a fungus. Then we painted all the nails, and it just developed from there.

FIQnews: How long ago was this?

FC: About three and a half years ago. I didn't know if I wanted to be a bartender anymore, so I went to culinary school. While I was at culinary school, I got the job at Lips, and was introduced to drag.

Before that, I was really afraid of drag. My lover at the time and I used to do drag twice a year, and he looked really pretty, so I used to get really jealous. I thought we couldn't ever do drag in Manhattan, and look what I became. We've since broken up.

So, I finished culinary school, and didn't like that, but I finished. I was working at Lips, so I started bartending as a woman, and it made the job different.

FIQnews: You've learned to look really good.

FC: You can see how I started out, if you look at this picture. (Frankie displays a picture of a very different Frankie Cocktail.) The hat started the whole thing. It's a gigantic cocktail sitting on my head, with a lime, a straw and a big bev nap. People started putting tips in it, so that's how the look started. And then I added more and more, and then the hair.

FIQnews: When did you start with the big wigs?

FC: About two and a half years ago.

FIQnews: So you're at Lips during the week, and out here at Top of the Bay on the weekends, right?

FC: Right.
And I also added performing, too, because people that work at Lips perform as well. At first I didn't perform. I was nervous about performing at first, because you aren't on a stage, you're very close to people while they're eating. Performing was scary at first, and was a challenge. Now, I do a lot of Dolly Parton lip-synching, and on Thursdays I look like her.

FIQnews: How has life changed since you developed the Frankie Cocktail character?

FC: Well, you know in some ways it's much better. I feel like I've found an outlet for creativity. I think everyone has something artistic inside them, like painting, singing, whatever, and I have neither of those. But, I'm expressing myself artistically, and I love it. For the most part, it's phenomenal.

Meeting guys, and I'm single now, is a different trip. I'll go out with a guy, and he'll like me, until he finds out what I do for a living, and then it's over. Or, a guy will see me in drag, and he'll like me, and want me to look like that all the time. And I don't do that at home. I'm not wearing a housedress.

FIQnews: So, it can be kind of a double-edged sword.

FC: Right.

FIQnews: How long does it take you to get ready?

FC: It takes a good, solid hour. But the wig is already done, and I know what I'm wearing, so it is just the makeup and getting dressed.

Besides the make up and the wig, I'm creating an illusion with my underclothes. I wear a corset, a girdle, and big tits, so I create a shape, too. So that takes some time, too.

Also, I found this girl who makes dresses, too, and they're not all that expensive, so I've upgraded my look. I used to go to Fourteenth St. and buy stretch dresses that look like they're made for you.

FIQnews: Who takes care of your wigs?

FC: Luckily enough, my roommate here, Richie, who you might know as "Urban Sprawl." He started coming here maybe three years after me. He was a customer of mine in a bar that I used to work at, and I invited him out here to do my and my lover's hair for the Invasion.

He lives with me here, is a very good friend of mine, and does all my hair.

My other roommate is the guy who cuts my hair when I'm a guy, and he does wigs for me, too. So, I've got two good wig people.

FIQnews: Do you carry your wigs back and forth?

FC: No, I have wigs here and there. They're too big to carry, and it is hard on the wigs, too.

(At this point, we were interrupted when a French Mastiff climbed into Frankie's lap.)

FIQnews: She likes you! You have two Yorkies. What are they like?

FC: They're calm, they follow me around, and they think that I'm their mother. They're lap dogs. They follow me all over the place. Sometimes they can be a pain in the ass.

When I was together with my lover, they were more disciplined, but now, with me as a single mother, they run amok.

FIQnews: Do you act different in and out of drag?

FC: I act and talk the exact same way in drag, but in drag I go beyond myself, because you are allowed to. I can say anything I want to a guy when I'm in drag. Out of drag, it changes the whole situation. Then, it's just two gay guys getting together, and you can't say as much.

FIQnews: Right. In drag, you're performing.

FC: Yes, and I can do anything I want. But, sometimes I have a hard time switching back. I'll say something, and they'll look at me like I'm nuts. I'll think, oops, I shouldn't have said that. But, if I had a wig on, it would have been funny and would have been perfect. So, I remember the line for the next time I'm in drag.

FIQnews: Does the wig give you power?

FC: Yes, I think it does. And from being a bartender for so many years, I learned to develop a rapport with people. In drag, I go beyond, sometimes way beyond, myself.

Lips is a drag restaurant, and draws a different crowd. People go there to have a good time, and people know where they're going. They have a great time, and want to come back, and want to bring their friends to have a good time. It's very positive.

FIQnews: How long have you been coming to the Grove?

FC: I started coming here twenty years ago, at first as a day tripper, or for the weekend or the week. About thirteen or fourteen years ago, my lover and I came out to visit somebody, and we liked it. The next year we rented, and continued to rent for the next ten years, until we broke up.

FIQnews: And you continued to come out?

FC: Yes.

FIQnews: How have you seen people in the Grove change over the years?

FC: Twenty years ago I didn't work here; I was a customer. Then, it was mostly men. It has certainly changed. Now, everyone's here, and I like that. I like to hang out with men and women, gay and straight. Some of the straight people that come here, though, like on certain weekends, come here to make fun at us, not make fun with us. On Saturday nights, I think there's some negativity that way with the straight people, just like how there's some negativity between gay men and gay women. Some gay men don't like gay women, and some gay women don't like gay men, but that's too bad. I mean, we're all gay. And when we start dividing like that, we go nowhere. So, it's changed a lot in twenty years.

FIQnews: On the bad weekends, say for Miss Fire Island, how do you handle the people that come to make fun of us?

FC: The middle of the bar is a good place to work. I've been at the Top of the Bay for four years, and I don't get that negativity there. If you work inside the Ice Palace, it's fine. The outside areas are horrible, by that I mean the boardwalks and the middle of town. That's the people that can't or won't pay to get inside the Ice Palace. If I wasn't working that day, I'd stay home.

At other times, being in drag, I can really tear into them. They get embarrassed. I have this illusion of being a woman. My joke is always that if someone is running a tab at the bar, and if they ask if they need to give me a credit card, I tell them "No. Because if you don't pay me, I'm going to chase you down in heels and kick the crap out of you. And then, I'm going to charge you extra for kicking the crap out of you."

So, that's a negative, but we want the businesses and the clubs, otherwise we become a bedroom community. And some people do want that. They forget what brought them here in the first place, they get older and retire here. And they want everyone else to retire with them. They forget why they came; the freedom to express yourself, and they don't want the young people to enjoy that, too. We need to keep that going on. That's the only thing we have.