Floridian: Chablis by the bay

Chablis by the bay

From Savannah to a southeast St. Petersburg neighborhood, The Lady Chablis of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame is all about keeping it real.

By MARY JANE PARK, Times Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG -- Her voice is warm honey. Her dark cocoa eyes beam straight into yours, and a mischievous smile creeps across her face. With a balletic sweep of one arm, she welcomes you into the house.

Would you care for a drink? A glass of water? Something stronger?

"Do y'all mind if I smoke?" she asks, then lights a Virginia Slims menthol.

She leads you to the living room and gestures toward a plush sofa. Though she was was born Benjamin Edward Knox, it has been a long time since she went by Benji. She changed her name years ago.

"My first name is The; my middle name is Lady; and my last name is Chablis. If you're Southern, you can call me "The,' " she says. That playful smile again.

She lives as a woman and makes her living as a female impersonator. She gets hormone injections to enhance her breasts but has stopped short of undergoing sex-change surgery.

"God gave me a man's toolbox, honey," Chablis tells you, referring to its contents as "my T, my truth," and "my candy."

Flirtatious, coquettish, bawdy and raucous, Chablis left an indelible impression in John Berendt's best-selling 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and in the subsequent movie, directed by Clint Eastwood. She has toured with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: The Concert, and she wrote an as-told-to autobiography, Hiding My Candy. She has a Web site, http://www.theladychablis.com, and sells merchandise bearing her image.

Those endeavors have brought Chablis fortune and fame, although perhaps too little of the former and too much of the latter. Savannah (the setting for Midnight) and Columbia, S.C., where she later lived, offered her little privacy; she became a stop on everyone's celebrity tour.

So when she came to St. Petersburg to visit a friend last March, she decided to stay. The Sunshine City, best known for its low-flying pelicans, art museums and baseball, may seem an improbable home for someone whose image is all glitz and glamour. But Chablis likes it here. She's a Pisces, and she loves being near water.

Besides, she can't imagine herself living in the bright lights of New York or Los Angeles or Hollywood: "I'm not that kind of girl."

She has settled into a bright, airy house in the Tropical Shores neighborhood of southeast St. Petersburg, a priority evacuation area during a hurricane.

"Ooh, child," she purrs. "I thought, "Let me get some insurance on my wardrobe.' "

* * *

Chablis lives with a roommate; he also is her personal assistant during performances. Between them they have a cat, Whiskers ("We've lived here since May, and I've only seen it twice"), and two dogs, Totsie and Dalton.

Dalton is "a damn yard dog, child," Chablis says, building a riff that reflects her performance style. "Dalton is a mixed breed. Half-breed. Biracial. Dalton's biracial. That's what that dog is, a biracial dog. He's white and gray."

Hair closely cropped, she wears a sleeveless white tunic and flowing white slacks. She has just returned from buying nesting tables at Goodwill. At home, she passes the time watching old movies on TV and reading what she calls inspirational literature by Maya Angelou and other writers.

"During the day," she says, "I'm so basic that I blend in with people so that I can relax. I really can relax. My neighbors know who I am, but they do not bother me.

"I've been to one gay bar since I've been here. I've been to one movie since I've been here. If I go out to dinner, it's going to be in some little old black people restaurant up here on Fourth Street, where they have no idea who I am, that sort of thing.

"We went out to Denny's once, and I used my credit card to pay for the bill, and of course my credit card says "Lady Chablis.' The girl had no idea until she went up there, and she gave the credit card to the cashier, and the cashier said, "What?! You're kidding. That's not. . . . And she came back over, and the next thing I know, here come the cook, here come the salad prep person, here they all come.

"So stuff like that happens, which is great. It's a compliment. It's a good compliment."

In St. Petersburg, she says, "My favorite thing is the water. Being close to the water, being able to rain every other day, walking outside and seeing those wild parrots or canaries. What are those green birds? And the cranes in my front yard, those tall birds? I love that. . . . It's so soothing.

"Now this month is kind of hot. But . . . because it's so hot, a lot of men are walking around with their shirts off. I really like that! Everywhere you go, winter, spring, summer or fall, you can find a man with his shirt off. That's what I like about down here."

* * *

The Lady Chablis still performs as a female impersonator for packed houses at Club One Jefferson in Savannah. She makes appearances at colleges and emcees events.

"I get hired for a lot of parties just to show up," she says, "just to show up and be pretty. I have an eeeasy job."

At Club One on Labor Day weekend, she sells out two performances, at $25 a ticket. In the audience are two women celebrating a birthday and their seventh anniversary as a couple; a group of special-education teachers from Atlanta; a guy from Kansas; a fellow from Dallas; a man and woman in the back, gray-haired, wrinkled and slightly stooped.

They loved her in the book, especially in the scene where she crashes a debutante ball. They loved her in the movie. They have come to Savannah just to see her perform.

The Lady Chablis takes the stage in a short, curly wig and a form-fitting gown covered with metallic paillettes, slit up one side to reveal shapely legs. She lip-synchs L-O-V-E by Nat "King" Cole and This Will Be (Oleta Adams), vamping, hugging men and women who come up to give her cash.

Her remarks make people blush.

"Your hair's good, honey, but you're cheap as hell," she tells one guest.

"I'm a straight lady," a woman tells her.

"I'm a straight lady too," Chablis says. "We're all straight, honey. Straight to the next drink."

After a costume change, Chablis appears in a sparkling orange gown, silver high heels, her wig a Veronica Lake cascade. A stream of people line up with more bills as the Doll (another of her stage personas) lip-synchs Get Here (Natalie Cole) and Whitney Houston's hits The Greatest Love of All and I Will Always Love You. She dashes offstage to unload a fistful of dollars, then returns to lower her dress straps, giving her fans a glimpse of skin.

She eases into a red gown for her finale. Then she changes into a short leather tube dress and a dark spiral-perm wig to greet fans who buy merchandise -- photographs, refrigerator magnets, T-shirts -- get her autograph, have their pictures taken with her.

She guesses her audiences are 70 percent straight, 30 percent gay.

"I don't know if I would be paying no $25 to go see no damned female impersonator," she says, and laughs.

* * *

The Lady Chablis grew up in Quincy, a North Florida area notorious even today for its poverty and racism. It is an understatement to say that her childhood was unsettling; she bounced around among relatives and neighbors. Ostracized in school and beaten at home because of her effeminate ways, she began living as a girl when she was in junior high school.

"I started dressing the way that I did because I did not like people to label me, you know what I mean? I would have people call me "sissy' or "punk.' "Punk' is a black people word for gay.

"I would have people call me that, especially guys that really wanted me, honey. They would call me stuff like that, and I just did not like that, and in my book I wrote about when I was in the sixth grade, and I was a member of the Future Farmers of America. . . . My instructor called me a homosexual.

"I didn't know what that was, but it didn't sound right. . . . It was just like calling me "n---,' you know what I mean? It hurt me just like that, and that's when I made my decision. . . . I was just like, "Well, let me decide on what I'm going to do, because ain't nobody going to be calling me no sissy and no punk. I'm not having that.' And that's when I made my decision to live like I am."

She first performed in the early '80s, in a talent show in a gay bar that had opened in a rehabbed convenience store in Tallahassee.

Friends encouraged her. "And they paid to have a little dress made for me. This one lady went and she took me to her hairdresser, and I had my hair done and put the baby's breath in it and everything. And my first song I ever did was called Flowers by the Emotions. . . . And I won the talent contest. As soon as I won the contest, I was like, "Oh, this is my career.' "

She loathes being called a drag queen.

" "Drag queen' is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," she says. "Wesley Snipes in a blond wig. That's drag queen.

"I impersonate the female. And no female don't go around wearing all them big old feathers and all that kind of stuff. They're glamorous and they're classy.

"I'm like the Diahann Carroll kind of girl, you know what I mean? Like a Tina Turner kind of girl. There's a sexiness about it, but not too forward. I do not wear elaborate costumes. But I wear beautiful clothes."

Since moving to St. Petersburg, she has not performed in the Tampa Bay area, though she has sent publicity material to various clubs. She says several told her she charges too much.

"Some of the things I got back from the club owners were, "Well, the movie is over now, her 15 minutes are up now. Why does she cost so much?' " Chablis says.

"I don't need that sort of stuff. I would rather them say, "I would be flattered to have her here. I really want her, but I can't afford that.' If (they) say that, then I would go: "Oh, baby, if you can't afford me, tell me what you can afford.' "

Chablis has worked at McDonald's, at Burlington Coat Factory, at Bennigan's, at Houlihan's.

"If you're going to live as a woman, you've got to learn how to work as a woman, you've got to learn how to apply for a job as a woman, you've got to learn how, if they find out you ain't a woman, you're going to keep your job. . . . Once I got the job, and they found out my "T,' then it was a choice of, "Are you firing me because I didn't do my job or because you know my "T'?

"If they knew my "T' and they were firing me for that, "Okay, then, we're going to turn this place out. Because you are not going to do that to me. You are not going to do that to me. You can do that to me, but I'm going to let you know that it is wrong, and you will never do it to anybody else.'

"You know, I remember the time when gay men had to hide the fact that they were gay to get a job at McDonald's. I remember that. Now they don't. Why can't it be that way for me?

"Equal opportunity: Now ain't that what the Bill of Rights is about? The Constitution?"

* * *

Chablis says her style comes from within.

"I'm not the girl that goes out and buys a Harper's Bazaar, the Cosmopolitan, to find out what the new trend is. I definitely believe that red is always going to be a classic lipstick; you can't go wrong. You can go with this fad for this fall, but next fall, baby, you going back to the red.

"But my sense of appearance and attitude, I take from three people.

"One is Whoopi Goldberg, because ugly as that b-- is, she's a millionaire and nobody can change her. She still wears her dreadlocks and . . . lipstick and no eyebrows. And still gets in. Still invited to everything. I love her for not changing for nobody.

"The next person that I admire is Oprah Winfrey, for the mere fact that she came from nothing, and she's at something, and she's trying to share spirituality with everybody, black or white. As boring as her show is sometimes, if you are a female, and you want something out of life, Oprah can offer it to you.

"The third person is Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou, for her strength and her voice, for what she can just say in one line. Intimidate with one line. I love her for that and the fact that she's had lesbian experiences, she's been a prostitute, a drug addict. . . . She's done everything. . . . It's all about life experiences, and I admire her for that."

She's not done.

"And one more person: Hillary Clinton. She can . . . make any man tremble. Now, that's my girl. That's one thing that (she) taught me: Make any man tremble, even the president."

The 43-year-old Chablis, who wears a size 4, has her own admirers.

"The most amazing thing is I get more (compliments) from heterosexual women than I do gay people. "Oh, God, I would give anything to be like you.' Or "What is it that you do? What kind of diet are you on?'

"There's never been anyone like me who played themselves, a black female impersonator in a major movie. There has never been anyone like me who has been the star attraction of a jazz tour surrounded by name-brand stars. . . . I have done something in history. . . . From this day till the world ends, my name will be in the book, Midnight, and my own book. . . . I'm a cult legend in that Midnight movie. That's a cult movie now.

"When I die, I have all of that behind me. All of that. Nobody has ever done that. And none of that did I ask for. It all came to me. . . . And I accept everything that I have . . . I'm so blessed."

She mentions three beaus: A gentleman who is a medical student at the University of South Carolina, a gentleman on the West Coast, a gentleman she calls her fiance in her autobiography.

Her friends in St. Petersburg? "My neighbors over here are a heterosexual couple with a kid, my neighbors here are a married couple that are in their 70s and 80s, and they know who I am and all that, and they are all absolutely wonderful. The guy across the street is a heterosexual single man.

"I would like for everybody to know, my neighbors, or the mayor, or anybody, that I'm for real. I'm for real, inside and out.

"I have nothing to hide, except for my candy."