Once upon a time there lived a Golden Age gay icon, who whiled away her pre-waxing years sitting atop a split-rail fence in some dour, nondescript American Midwest landscape. Her dreams of a more outrageously fierce existence in the big city (wearing roller skates and one-foot-diameter afro wigs and dancing to Army of Lovers in between lines of blow) were hemmed in on all sides by rusted farm equipment, NAPA Auto Parts Stores, and a lone, dejected Applebee’s out on the turnpike. Kansas didn’t even have a meth lab yet. Or a Sally Beauty Supply. Her nascent fabulousness was imprisoned by voluminous swaths of gingham, satin ribbons, and fussy lace collars -- none of them, unfortunately, worn ironically, with a lollipop or a pacifier or Harajuku-style -- at the behest of Aunt Em, a woman whose character is explained by the shocking fact that the better part of her non-church wardrobe was purchased at Quality Farm & Fleet. (I know. Couldn’t you just die?) This girl, as yet scarcely old enough to have a couple of cherries or a leaping dolphin tattooed near her cameltoe, was named Dorothy. One day, like so many dreamy-eyed girls, she donned her Skechers and her discount department store jeans and waited for a meteorological disaster to rescue her from her sad, glitterless rural life. As luck would have it, one day, an especially violent cyclone (rated EF4 by the local weather service) carved a bloody path of destruction, misery, and death through central Kansas, carrying Dorothy’s trailer (with her and her dog Toto inside, watching Judge Judy) high into the troposphere. At first, Dorothy mistook the rhythmic vibrations for a circuit party and looked under the bed for her whistle, but soon enough she realized she was airborne. And it felt Fab. U. Lous. She thought she even spotted a cross-country Virgin America flight with Diana Ross sitting in first class refusing a skunky glass of Chardonnay and calling the stewardess an uppity white bitch. (She’ll have Dershowitz on the phone when she gets to LAX.) But maybe Dorothy was unconscious and imagining it all. At any rate, she was immune to the ghastly, soul-rending shrieks, rising from below, of a Kansas mother cradling her dead baby who was impaled by a windswept awl in the cyclone. She was busy listening to “Yahoo!” by Erasure on her iPod. Eventually, after floating around earth’s gaseous atmosphere for a couple of hours, dreaming of Barney’s Co-op Sale, Dorothy landed in some unknown land, flat-ironed her hair, and repositioned her training thong. Outside her trailer a bunch of ghetto midgets were milling around with some old witchy broad. No, it wasn’t that überfem Glinda – like in the movie – it was some tired-ass old mannish thing, looking like Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously. Basically, this bitch is no help at all. She’s supposedly a witch, and you’d think she’d know the way to the Meatpacking District, but all she does is give her some cheap-ass silver shoes (Steve Madden – yuck) and kiss Dorothy on the forehead leaving this “magical” lipmark. Dorothy suspects it’s herpes simplex one and hightails it outta there before the witch gives her boxed wine and has her pose for “art” photographs. (Yes, I remember the very special episode of Diff’rent Strokes with Gordon Jump very well, thank you very much.) Okay, you know the rest of the story (for the most part). Dorothy seeks out the Wizard of Oz by mapquesting Emerald City (or, alternately, the City of Emeralds) and on the way she meets a Scarecrow, a Tin Woodman, and a Lion, who are all needy and want to bask in the glow of her super-hot blinding aura and fierce fantabulousness (and bum a few amphetamines). The Wizard, who likes to mix up his corporeal manifestations, appears to them in his Emerald City throne room (Picture Antwan “Big Boi” Patton’s house on Cribs but with fewer stripper poles and lots more green marble ) in the forms of a giant Little Richard-siz [...]
