For reasons that are impossible to pinpoint with any accuracy, Felicia Fahr's growing disenchantment with the local gay scene was, by the mid-'90s, a mutual burgeoning antipathy.
Felicia does Dolly in a 307 production number.
Felicia displays the fruits of her 30-year infatuation with female hormones.
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Dismissed from her longtime 307 gig over what she claims was a trumped-up charge of unapproved absences (the club's owners could not be reached for comment), Felicia subsequently performed at The Park and Wink's, two other popular drag venues. But those gigs were relatively short-lived; like the 307, they too ended over a series of foggy "misunderstandings."
Essentially diva non grata on the local gay circuit, the once ubiquitous performer virtually disappeared from sight, spawning widespread rumors of drug use. At the memorial service of fellow performer Tish Tanner last year, Felicia unwittingly lent fuel to those tales when she appeared rail-thin and haggard.
"If I was on crack like everyone says I was, I'd have never been at the 307 and held that damn place together for as long as I did," she says. "I don't have to defend myself to anyone! I've been through the mill. I'm sick."
No one had heard that Felicia was suffering from breast cancer until October.
That's when, without Felicia's knowledge, a friend arranged a series of benefits at three local gay bars. Because of the seemingly haphazard nature of the fund raisers (asked for details about the fund raisers prior to the event, bar employees could barely supply even the sketchiest of details) and rampant rumors of Felicia's alleged drug abuse, more than a few colleagues smelled a rat. It probably didn't help that the friend (who could not be reached for comment) grossly overstated the imminence of her demise.
"Shit, she was telling people I had a week and a half," sputters Felicia, who has since severed her relations with the pal. "Hell, I don't want to be known as a charity case. I've always been independent and I've always paid my own way. It bothered me a lot that [the friend who arranged the benefits] pulled all this shit without telling me first."
That said, Felicia reports that the sparsely attended benefits did help out financially; she and her boyfriend subsist on his pay from his job in the kitchen at a retirement home.
Still, Felicia wound up giving half the proceeds (several hundred dollars, to the best of her recollection) to the friend who arranged the event. With the benefit of hindsight, even Felicia admits that wasn't the most felicitous tactic. "This was supposed to be a benefit for me and people see someone else digging through the tip jar? I'd wonder what was going on, myself."
Still, she has trouble fathoming the apparent "show me" attitude toward her disease exhibited by the community to which she once devoted so much time and energy.
Apprised of Felicia's cancer, one fellow performer issues the cryptic appraisal "odd." Elaborating slightly, "Let's just say I think this situation is very odd." Others, meanwhile, are more openly skeptical. "Breast cancer?!" asks another female impersonator. "If Felicia's ill, I'm truly sorry to hear it -- but I won't believe it until I see a biopsy report."
In the event that such a report does exist, Felicia Fahr has no intention of giving her detractors the satisfaction of making it public. Nor would she share her medical records with New Times or let a writer talk to her doctors.
Instead, she bares her breasts and invites a visitor to feel a mass of lumps that run across her bosom, from one armpit to the other. (While this cluster of lumps doesn't prove the existence of cancer, the presence of these knots cannot be healthy, either.)
It's hard to conceive of a situation fraught with more irony: A biological man spends the better part of his life in quest of cosmetic femininity, only to be stricken with one of the worst diseases a woman can possibly contract. Refusing all treatment, he suddenly comes to peace with himself and, finally, decides to let nature take its course.
But any similarities between the failing entertainer and the heroine of a very dark O. Henry tale appear to be lost on Felicia Fahr.
Her days as one of the Valley's most unique celebrities clearly over, she instead ponders her place in the cosmic limelight where she'll one day headline unto eternity.
"Here," she says, "this says it best." Rummaging through a battered cardboard box filled with old snapshots, dog-eared awards and yellowing fliers for 307 shows, she finds a third-generation photocopy of "I'm Free," an "Author Anonymous" poem about dying you might see on a Hallmark plaque.
While digging through the carton, she also runs across a certificate she earned in a bygone Miss Gay Pride contest.
"After all those fucking people calling me a fucking bitch and everything," she laughs, fighting back a cough. "Can you imagine me being named Miss Congeniality?"
