Trans Icon ~ Angela Keyes Douglas ~ Passes away…

I just learned the other day that, IMHO, one of the most colorful and interesting trans activists passed away earlier this August.  Several years ago during my research on trans hirstory, I stumbled upon her name on the transhistory.net website and her very colorful and, in an odd-way, empowering legacy. Angela’s biography intrigued me and in free time would search archives that would reference her or her work and either confirm or deny her existence and history. To my extreme pleasure I eventually was able to procure via ebay a copy of one of her early magazines she authored as well as some Berkley Barb papers with her writings and a letter she sent to Playboy magazine.

From what I can glean, Angela appeared on the LA scene in the late 1960’s as an aspiring rock musician, hippie tranny and created a militant trans organization in 1970, TAO, Transvestite/Transsexual Activist Organization. TAO, in Angela’s spirit, was highly confrontational and one of the greatest images I came away with was when she and another trans person blocked the entrance to a theater showing the film Myra Breckinridge to protest the misinformation about, and exploitation of, transsexuals, including the fact they used a non Transsexual actor (Raquel Welch) to play the tranny. Other historical info indicates TAO persuaded the Socialist Workers’ party to call for an end to arrests for crossdressing. Also if you google her name, you come up with some amazing and likely schizophrenic ravings about herself, Hendrix, CIA, and many other conspiracies or musical rantings. At any rate I could go on for ever on things that I learned and amazed me about this lone and iconic trans activist but will simply note some references below and a pasting of the closest thing to be Angela’s obituary. Enjoy and please take a moment of silence in memory of this brave woman who paved the roads of Trans Activism and Advocacy we travel these days!

References:

joanne meyerowitz book “how sex changed: a history of transsexuality in the us” [an excellent tour de force of trans “activism/advocacy” in the US, IMHO]

transhistory.net and after entering click on individuals.

Angela’s informal obituary at http://tallahassee.com/special/blogs/mhinson/2007/08/angelas-ashes-farewell-to-wild-pen-pal.html

Friday, August 24, 2007

Angela’s ashes: Farewell to a wild pen pal

LET’S GO BLOG WILD: My mail box is a lot emptier now that self-described “notorious transsexual,” rock musician, lottery-winner, lottery-squanderer and prolific letter-writer Angela Douglas has died. Douglas, who lived in Sneads in Jackson County, died of complications from heart trouble earlier this month. She was 64. As she said in one of her last communiqués: “I am 64 and Paul McCartney doesn’t care.”

In the above photo are Stuttering John, left, from “The Howard Stern Show” and, right, Angela Douglas. The picture was taken in Panama City Beach, circa 2000.

When I was a young reporter in the ’80s, Douglas used to phone me in the newsroom of the Tallahassee Democrat and launch into wild, rambling monologues that were part performance art and part paranoid fantasy. She was always convinced someone had stolen her life story.

When “Top Gun” became a monster box-office smash in 1986, Douglas wanted to sue Tom Cruise for pilfering her self-published autobiography “Triple Jeopardy” from 1982. (I don’t remember many trannies flying fighter jets in that pic, unless Goose wasn’t telling us something, do you?) Famous musicians such as Warren Zevon, she claimed, had stolen her songs without payment.

Mostly, I just let her vent. As I learned long ago in bartending class, you let the customer talk while you just wipe the bar with a rag and keep saying, “Yep, I know what you mean.”

Getting flaky phone calls in a newsroom is nothing new. For a few months, a caller identifying himself as God would phone up to predict the day’s weather. And, you know, most of the time he was more accurate than the professional meteorologists we paid to do the same job. (God says it’s going to be hot this weekend, by the way.)

I was prepared to write Angela off as just another kook. But then I did a little research and found out she really had worked on the fringes of the music and movies industries in Los Angeles during the ’60s and early ’70s. She’d worked with Arthur Lee before he formed Love and really did know Zevon (in his starving-artist days). Jimi Hendrix may or may not have recorded one promo at her home in L.A. That house was also used as a set for Roger Corman’s 1967 acid-dropping classic “The Trip” with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

Douglas started life as Carl Czinki - and played guitar under the name Doug Delain in the L.A. band called Euphoria - but decided to switch sexes in 1969. The transformation was complete by 1977, when Douglas had become an outspoken writer/journalist for the transgender community. This is the same time period she became convinced television and movie producers were stealing her life story.

I have no idea how or why Douglas ended up in rural Jackson County in the late ’80s.She settled in dinky Grand Ridge near Sneads and lived in impoverished conditions. This made her very bitter and she often lashed out at gays and blacks when she called me with another rant.

When her phone calls from pay phones suddenly stopped, they were replaced by a stream of letters. I still have stacks of the things. Some are coherent, some are funny, some are hand-scrawled screeds that are impossible to read.

Then, in the summer of 1991, Douglas had a rare stroke of good fortune. She won $232,567 in the Fantasy Five lottery game. After taxes, the lottery cut her a check for $186,000.

In a newsletter published by the lottery, Douglas crowed that she was going to buy an electric guitar, a used red Corvette, tell everyone in Grand Ridge to kiss her you-know-what and move to Key West.

And that is exactly what she did.

A few months later, she was back in Jackson County living in poverty. Again. She’d found plenty of friends in Key West who were more than happy to help her spend her free money.
Occasionally, I’d get good news from Douglas. In 1997, she wrote a twisted little novelty song called “Andrew Cunanan” and it end up on Dr. Demento’s nationally syndicated radio show. (She also penned parody tunes with titles such as “Ghost Eunuchs in the Sky.”) In 2003, she released a CD called “Cosmo Alley” under the name Last Drop Douglas. She even played a few live shows at festivals around North Florida and drove to Panama City to meet Stuttering John from Howard Stern’s radio show. Douglas both loved and hated Howard Stern.
Most of the Douglas letters, however, were depressing. Naturally, the FBI was after her. She railed against doctors (many of whom I knew personally in Marianna) who were allegedly conspiring against her by denying her treatment. Her surgery from the ’60s and ’70s had left her with many medical complications, which she discussed at length and I won’t repeat. It wasn’t pretty, I’ll tell you that. I hope sexual-reassingment surgery has gotten a little better since the ’60s.
Earlier this year, Douglas sent me a tape she’d recorded while she was in the hospital. It starts with the chilling intro: “This Angela Douglas and I am dying.” The rest of the message is classic Douglas - nutty accusations, bold claims, too much personal information about her medical conditions, crazy tales of her musical past. All classic Angela.

As I listened to the tape, it suddenly dawned on me: “Hey, her life story really would make for an interesting movie or play. Wonder why anyone hasn’t done it before?”