It Was A Sin

         There were no gay people in South Wales when I was growing up. 

Or should I say, there were no out gay people. South Wales was not a safe space for anyone different back then, and especially not for a filthy abomination on the sanctity of God’s Holy Methodist Order of Excruciatingly Dull Things. Methodists do not share their Catholic brothers’ enthusiasm for campy bling, cherub-faced altar-boys, heady incense nor men swathed in long, lavishly embroidered gowns, with kitschy golden accessories. My Methodist history teacher actually thought playing cards were the Devil’s work, poor dear.

There were gay people, of course. In fact, my mother was convinced I was one, and swooned in utter relief when I finally brought home the gorgeous, soccer-playing stud, Steve when I was almost 17 - my first “proper” boyfriend. Mother had enjoyed several years of fervid whispering about my imagined lesbian tendencies to my wildly popular, big-haired and large-breasted older sister.  Fact was, I was scrawny, knock-kneed, wore thick National Health glasses and did my homework, whilst occasionally writing really sad poetry about The Great War (I won a pen!) and listening to Ziggy Stardust. Not exactly a femme fatale, was I. Although later, I came to play one in B Movies, which really was the ultimate irony and delicious revenge on the beautiful skinny Welsh boys that wouldn’t                   dance with me at the school disco. But they all got paunchy early from too much booze and         marital boredom, and they bald-ed young. Mother Nature has a way of working                             these things out, doesn’t she? 

Mummy, a beautiful lifelong Daily Mail reader and rather a vacuous woman, liked to date cops. My father and she had split before I was born, and he’d run off to LA with an uber glamorous American fashion model, so one could in retrospect have some empathy. But I couldn’t ever forgive her the cop-dating. There were three of them in total, but her fave was in Vice, and he got his jollies by raiding public toilets (the only place where queer
men could meet in our dank, provincial town) and arresting them after giving them a vicious - Vice-ous beating and subsequently outing them to their horrified wives and families. Such terrible times were these, and not so long ago, either. The Goddess Ru Paul had not yet been invented. 

I realize now that I did have two queer friends growing up, although neither one was out as a teen. Johnny was a camp yet butch Punk who wore eyeliner and introduced me to Ian Dury, Blondie, Jayne County and Elvis Costello. He was eternally  “tortured” and it may very well have been a pose, but he did have valid reason. The other was brilliant Alison, now an accomplished and happily married doctor. We were a rag-tag group of pseudo poets and the eternal outsiders. We loved Punk Rock, The Anti-Nazi League and we did really well on our exams; a combo which was of course, crushingly un-sexy.  But as teens, poor Johnny and Alison both had to put up the constant pretense of liking, snogging and “getting off with” spotty members of the opposite sex.  I wish I’d understood better what they were going through; it must have been horribly exhausting, but being an out gay teen was simply not an option at our violently unforgiving comprehensive school. 

I had met some out queer men in California with my dad and the model, and they were the most vibrant and beautiful creatures. Actors and artists, they were all extraordinarily stylish, flawless dancers, clear of complexion and unfailingly kind to me. I first visited LA in the summer of ’77 and their light had shone incandescently down upon this skinny Welsh mouse. And with their encouragement and some serious zhuzh-ing, I was outwardly transformed and given the confidence to leave school, flee wet, grey Wales and to become a model myself, at the start of the coolest decade, in the hottest city on the planet - London, fucking England!

               London 1980

I was introduced to my first model agent, Don by my Dad, who’d recently produced a film with him. Owning a model agency was just one of Don’s many business concerns, and he was entirely unscrupulous in all. We’d spent the summer on the tiny Greek Island of Monemvasia, where Dad and Don had co-produced a very schlocky horror film starring James Earl Jones (who really should have known better, but obviously fancied a paid sojourn on a sunny Greek Isle).  Dad, of course did all the actual producing work, while Don drank Chablis (never retsina, darling!)  on the rented yacht and tirelessly chased around the film’s pretty American actresses as well as select local teenaged beauties, much to their Orthodox mothers’ beady-eyed chagrin.

It was a halcyon time. I, who had suddenly blossomed and finally budded tiny breast-lets, almost lost my virginity to a creepy, fake-tanned American TV actor who was twice my age, and I thought, just

        gorgeous. My father managed to drag me              out of said thespian’s hotel room before                  the deed was done, and it was all a soul-                destroying embarrassment. I was very                    impressionable at 16, but in my defense I              ’d never previously seen a man that                       muscly, that tanned or with such perfect                  highlights. I cringe every time I see him                  now on TV, and somehow he still is on TV,              although markedly craggier, and I’m not                  going to tell you his name, dear reader. It’s            WAY too mortifying. He was practically                  orange, for fuck’s sake.

Anyway, I digress. September, 1980 and my father and I walked into my future model agency, which was well past it’s sell-by date but tucked alluringly behind High Street Kensington, which seemed to me the very height of mod London cachet. The agency’s claim to fame was having once repped Kelly LeBrock who was a raving beauty, a frequent Vogue cover girl, an utter nutcase and now a major Hollywood star. She had evidently moved on by this point but it was this juicy bait that lured us both in.

However, it was Gabriella that made us stay. Glamorous Gabriella was the receptionist and the most shocking vision of pulchritude that ether of us had ever laid eyes upon  Her head swathed in diaphanous scarves, lids daubed in exotic Cleopatra makeup and wearing a thousand jangling bracelets, my poor Dad fell irrevocably in love on the spot. I was just astonished to see someone like this in the flesh. A Real Life New Romantic!! And she was smiling at us. I’d read all about this latest fashion sub-culture in Honey and 19 and I desperately wanted in. Happily, Gabs was approachable and brilliant and we quickly became fast friends. Not only a stunning beauty with a tiny Monroe-esque figure, she had an astonishing head for business and a mind like a steel trap. At 18, she had seen a gap in this fuddy-duddy agency, and had created her own boutique department, known rather rudely as Freaks.

Gabriella repped Boy George and Marilyn along with the dazzlingly handsome, James Lebon, who would later become one of the great loves of my life. Gabriella’s boyfriend was a well known bass player in the coolest band on the charts, and together they knew Malcolm Mclaren and all of Vivienne Westwood’s models. It was a far cry from Llanelli, and I immediately became obsessed with dressing New Romantically and lusting after Adam Ant and most of Spandau Ballet. All the friends I made then, I hold dear to this day. Everyone was a peacock, a fledgling pop star or a designer,  and it was an incredibly fecund time in both fashion and music. Boys dressing as girls, boys wearing makeup, straight boys kissing other straight boys….it endowed me with a lifelong love of androgynous men along with an unrequited passion for drag queens. 

By early 1981, I was working fairly steadily for low level clients, as this agency (apart from La Gabriella) was simply not au courant with the fashionistas who ran the magazines. But I met and fell madly in love with the genius hair stylist, Sam McKnight on a Freemans Catalogue shoot as we shared a very Celtic sense of the ridiculous. Sam would tong my long, lank hair into a huge mass of teased ringlets, which was totally fab in 1981. I used to sleep in pipe cleaners in order to replicate the look, but by 11 am on the damp streets of London it always looked pathetic and flat. I painted my eyes purple and gold like Gabs’, and bought a mulberry taffeta pantaloon and bolero suit (probably from Miss Selfridge)  which I wore to my second cousin’s wedding in Mold, North Wales. My mother literally shunned me for that transgression and I was not included in any of the wedding photos. So there is no evidence of this sartorial monstrosity, but I assure you, it existed and I loved it so. I also bought a white puffy shirt with a huge Elizabethan collar which I wore to death, and in which I did some misguided test shots for my burgeoning portfolio. (see below, left)

After a year of tacky jobs and constant financial struggle, both Gabriella and I moved on to a new agency, which suddenly made us the coolest girls on the  London scene. Editors and designers were dying to dress me now, and luckily I had a year’s worth of invaluable experience learning my trade. I was ready, I knew exactly what I was doing and I was just eighteen. My career sky-rocketed overnight and I was constantly on a plane going somewhere.

I was also being zhuzh-ed by the greatest artists in London and in Paris, Milan and New York too. 90% of all the men in hair and makeup were gay, and I loved every one of them. Paul Gobel, Regis, Alistair, Howard, Ray Allington and Sam of course…working with them was exciting and creative and they brought real artistry to bear. Plus, they were all utterly hilarious, and we’d fall apart screaming on every shoot. Early ’80’s hair and makeup tended towards the extreme but I loved it. I adored being their baby drag queen and I watched and learned and asked for more, more, more! I wanted to eradicate that shy Welsh mouse and be fierce, just like them. My hedonistic new tribe had all experienced similar hardship and bullying growing up in small, provincial places and so our mutual bond and protective sense of humor were iron-clad. We saw each other, we understood and as a group we rejoiced in our newly minted freedom.

And at night we would dance! The Embassy, The Limelight, The Wag, Heaven, The Camden Palace, Legends…all the clubs were mixed and they were all fabulous. I had just missed The Blitz Club by virtue of being just a little too young, but dressing up was still  de rigueur and going out was a virtual art form. Cocaine, spliff and ecstasy were the party favors of choice, the music was soulful and funky and you had better bring it, every single time. I remember a birthday party for a young actress at the Camden Palace and looking around the VIP room to see members of Wham!, Sade, Generation X, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Boy George, Bananarama, Marilyn, Hayzi Fantazee, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran all in attendance, along with fledgling designers, John Galliano, Stephen Jones, Jasper Conran, David Holah, Stephen Linard and many more all loved up and getting down with every cute fashion stylist on the planet. It was a joyous moment if rather unhealthy, but we were all young, fearless and gorgeous and we could handle it. Until of course, we couldn’t.

       AIDS began to decimate the fashion community. I remember the shameful whisperings,               the sudden fear and the abject prejudice creeping in around 1983. Gay makeup artists                 were now pariahs, and it was cruel. Models feared being touched lest they catch the                     plague. We were all terrified, and some handled it better than others. We lost many

       brilliant talents during this time, and sweet fearless Mitzi           Lorenz should be knighted for her bravery and                           extraordinary kindness in taking care of our beloved                 Ray Petrie. Perhaps the greatest fashion stylist of the               eighties and a bright light that was snuffed out way too           soon. There’s not much that I can say about the AIDS               epidemic that hasn’t been said already and by greater               writers than I. This piece is not about AIDS nor about               death, it’s about love; it’s a love letter to all the funny,               sensitive souls that have held me close and lifted me up            when I needed them the most. 

Once I moved to New York in 1985, overt sexual harassment was a constant part of my day job.  From my greatly feared and revered model agent, who expected her “girls” to attend endless stuffy dinners with bloated old men and to cheerfully put out, or find their go-sees and bookings suddenly dwindle to zero. To the famous photographer who promised me a Cover Girl makeup campaign as long as I spent the weekend with him. He locked me in his studio and tried to ply me with cocaine, frothing at the mouth while telling me he’d make me a movie star. I’m not sure how I got out of there unscathed, but somehow I did, albeit Cover Girl campaign-free. And the fat toad of a photographer’s agent on a trip to Venice, Italy, who virtually smashed in my hotel room door, while panting and promising me the cover of Votre Beaute’, a high-end French magazine. And who could forget my delightful Parisian agent, Jean-Luc who stopped sending me on go-sees after I refused to stay at his house, and whom later served time for statutory rape of underage girls. It was exhausting fighting them off, as they considered our lithe young bodies to be rightful perks of the job and they got downright vicious when spurned. Bottom line, my NY fashion career soon dried up and I quit modeling at the grand old age of 21 to attend drama school in the West Village.

Through all the time I spent in New York dealing with these appalling men, my fabulous gay posse and stylish model girlfriends offered champagne and solace, making me laugh and taking me dancing; always naughty, always funny and always keeping me safe. New York would have been unbearable had it not been for Sam and Paul and Emma et all. I’m certainly not trying to prove my fag-hag bona fides, but you could always find me in a dark corner somewhere at Danceteria or Palladium or Area, having a good old gossip and sharing an illicit substance with at least one of the boys. Straight men just wanted to own/ change/control me. Queer men allowed me to be free and to be truly myself.

Soon I made the inevitable move west to pursue my acting career. Long story short, apart from Dallas, on which I was lucky enough to win a regular part during my second

professional audition; my life with its unabated sexual harassment continued apace. I hope this doesn’t make me sound like I think I’m all that, I was by no means alone in this, as it was widespread and simply how business was done back then, and since movie-making in Hollywood itself began. One producer told me he’d get me an audition for a leading role as long as I “took care of him.” I had no idea what this meant, (a blow job, apparently) and I found out later that most of the famous actresses from that period went helplessly along with this devil’s bargain. I once had an acting agent who told me I “wasn’t a real actress” because I refused to go topless                and  be video-taped at an audition along with hundreds of other ingenues, to be viewed                later by a famous director and his slathering cronies. All the parts I went up for were                      junkie hookers, or femmes fatales or raped nuns, blah blah blah and here all I’d ever                    wanted was to make people laugh. It really wasn’ turning out to be that funny, not at all. 

But at night in LA I quickly found my tribe, and I met my best friend Bryan soon after arrival. LA nightlife was white HOT in the late eighties, and we were out every single night, castings be damned. Warehouse parties, after hours’, art openings, Power Tools, Boys & Girls. It was wild and sadly many did not survive, whether it was the plague or the drugs that got them. We clung tightly to our new found friends, but many beautiful men that we adored left the party way too soon. 

The final death knell for my acting career came with the Weinstein incident, about which I have written before and at length but as a work of fiction. Sadly, what happened to me was no fiction, and I was that hopeful (cliche’d) girl who was chased around a French hotel room by the hugely powerful and obese film producer in his underpants. Yes, I made a joke out of it, but it could have ended very badly had I not been quick-witted and drunk-brave. It did however, end my acting career.  Sexual harassment, and that awful implied quid pro quo just never went away, and I found myself exhausted and unable to fight the system alone anymore. I have nothing but respect for the women who have brought this particularly vile man to justice. I simply didn’t have the stomach for reliving it over and over, and it was the icing on the proverbial of 20 years of this abhorrent yet commonplace behavior. I pray that the last few years of the #metoo movement and all the rolling male heads have made it easier now for young girls to work without fear. In my day, it was our word against theirs and they always won. 

Someone smart once said that men fear that women will laugh at them, while we fear that men will kill (or rape) us. Whichever is worse. Our gay friends allow us to open our hearts and to develop trust in men again. Straight men should be eternally grateful to their queer brothers for that.

As 2021 grinds on, and Covid still has our freedom in its insidious clutches, I wanted also to express what Ru Paul and her Drag Stars have done to help me and so many others. It’s God’s work that she does - uplifting us, entertaining us and bringing glamour week after week to our dull, unspontaneous lives. I once had a rather embarrassing run-in with Goddess Ru at the World of Wonder Christmas party where I drunkenly approached her (and I never approach celebrities, as it’s always been a recipe for disaster in my personal experience). Anyway, I gushed my adoration for her like a sweaty trainspotter, and she took one terrified look at me and ran, undoubtedly thinking I was a deranged stalker that might kill her. I cringe openly at this memory,  but I do worship her and value the work she has done, not just in bringing the glitz, but the fact that her very existence is a shining beacon of hope for all the sad, confused little boys that have been rejected by their families and who’ve been thrown out onto the street, often to die                 terrified and alone. Ru Paul has changed our world and brought a cultural shift to pass,               and for that she should be forever exalted.

Last summer I watched in horror as my elegant, brilliant father shriveled to nothing and died a slow, painful death, about which I could do absolutely nothing, Drag Race was the one constant that kept my step mother and I going, offering an effervescent injection of joy and light relief. That kind of inclusivity, filthy humor and vibrant color is what this world needs right now to heal its divisive wounds. It’s God’s work that she does, and I believe it's far more Christian than Christianity itself. Thank you, Ru for everything you do and I promise to behave myself next time we meet. Ish....

This piece is dedicated to Bryan, Daniele, David, Gregory, Jerome, James SJ, Kurt, Matteo, Sam, Paul G, Paul R, Paris, DeObia,  Ian, Stephen H, Jon,  John G, Stephen R, Trevor, Rich R, Carlos, Gianni, Nelson, Neil B, Nick H, Christos, Greg, Joseph, Garry, Magnus, Michael R Shaun, Mark M, Mario, Duggie, Ray A, Ray P,  Regis and to all the beautiful angels living or passed - I love and appreciate you so much. Let’s hold hands and dance together soon beneath the disco ball. I’ve really missed you……x

Written by Annabel Schofield March 2021: Title inspired by the brilliant HBO series, It’s A Sin written by Russel T Davis.

Photo Credits (in order of appearance):

Annabel aged 9 by Sally Marr, Cortina

Annabel aged 16 by Graham Attwood on the set of Blood Tide in Monemvasia

Kelly LeBrock by Bill King for American Vogue

Boy George (photographer unknown)

Annabel aged 17 by Mark Lebon in London

Ray Petrie by Mark Lebon

Annabel & Drummond Murais on the set of Dragonard 1987, South Africa, 

Annabel on the set of Exit in Red 1994, Los Angeles

Ru Paul (photographer unknown)