The Queen and I — Part IV

Linda is recalling her experiences at the Queen Mary nightclub in Los Angeles. In its day the Queen Mary was the destination of choice for crossdressers from across America and around the world. This month Linda recalls the late Sandi Hart, a person who had been a great influence on Linda’s early development.

I recently spent a little time cleaning out some old files in my storage locker. I was making good progress until I came across a little slip of paper with a name, address and phone number on it. The information was so old it pre-dated the existence of e-mail addresses. When I read the contents I chose to pause my tasks and think back to a very exciting time in my life. It was a time when I was fitting short trips to Los Angeles in between work obligations. The work obligations made me money. Los Angeles made me happy as ‘Linda.’

The name on the paper was Sandi Hart: Sandi with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’ and the ‘i’ dotted in the shape of a heart. Sandi was one of the first and dearest friends I met at the Queen Mary. Our occasional friendship spread over close to a decade. When she became too ill to work or to get to the Queen Mary our mutual friend Jim Bridges would take messages and small gifts to her whenever I visited Los Angeles.

Sandi and I first met one Friday evening at the Queen Mary. It was one of those “hi, how are you . . . fine . . . that’s a lovely outfit . . . do you come here often . . . where are you from . . . oh what brings you here . . . oh,   there’s my friend, perhaps we’ll chat more late . . .” type of conversations.

I’m not sure what happened to her the rest of the evening but I stayed at the club until about 1 a.m. before making my way back to the Sherman Oaks Motel for some sleep. The next morning, probably around 10 a.m., in drab, I had breakfast at a nearby restaurant before returning to the motel. In those days the two-storey U-shaped motel had a swimming pool in a courtyard with direct access from most of the rooms. No fences separated the rooms from the pool or the deck furniture at one end.  Sitting at a table near my unit door was the person I immediately recognized as my friend Sandi from the night before. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize me. I sat at the next table to finish the last of my take-out coffee and to read the morning paper. No, really I wanted to unobtrusively observe the beautiful Sandi.

She was beautiful, perhaps 5’10” tall, slim, gorgeous complexion requiring little make-up and beautiful long flowing hair that looked so natural but that I was later to discover was an always carefully applied wig. I never knew Sandi to wear bulky breast or hip pads but she didn’t need them. She had the look of a runway model.

In time we struck up a conversation, first talking about the beautiful day, then where we were from and what brought us to LA. I was pretty free with information about my male self, my real name, hometown, occupation and family status. I was so sure that Sandi would not recognize me as having been Linda from the night before. I thought she would see me as just some other ‘joe’ trying to get her in to bed.

Sandi played along but eventually dropped a bit of a bombshell my way, “So did you have a good time at the club last night?”

I tensed and blushed noticeably. ”Excuse me?”

“I’m pretty sure we were talking to each other last night,” said Sandi. “Weren’t you wearing a black and mauve dress and a brunette wig?”

“Well yes. But how did you know?”

“A few things, your accent for one. You can change your voice but you don’t change the way you pronounce certain words. You are staying at the Sherman Oaks, which is where a lot of us who go to the Queen Mary stay on weekends, and your eyes.”

“Oh yes, people tell me I have very distinctive blue eyes.”

“That too, but I was thinking of the trace of eyeliner you still have around your eyelid.”

I blushed some more and instinctively rubbed my eyes.

“Don’t worry it is not something anyone would notice unless they were looking for it,” Sandi said reassuringly.

For the rest of the day Sandi and I stayed together, chatting and sharing stories from our past, mostly from her past. I put aside my plans to spend the afternoon shopping en femme. At one point I took her to lunch as I learned of her troubled and fascinating past leading to a successful and glamorous present and promising future.

Sandi and I were about the same age. She might have been a year or two older but I thought she looked several years younger.  We had grown up in parallel lives, me as a ‘military brat’ in Canada and she as the child of a stable home in the Philadelphia area. After normal childhoods we both found ourselves going awkwardly through puberty. Our developing secondary sex characteristics had a definite feminine twinge to them. We both grew tall slim and without significant muscle development. Our voices stayed in a higher pitch much longer than normal. We each noticed our differences from the other guys and what is worse: so did the other guys. We were each the target of some teasing and bullying in the years entering high school.

That is where our lives seemed to take different paths. I rejected my femininity. I took up weight lifting to build my strength. I picked up the jock lifestyle, playing football and hockey. I fought my way through the bullying. Yes, I loved putting on my mother’s and sisters’ lingerie but that was another and private matter that just made me work harder to be one of the guys.

Sandi, on the other hand, embraced her femininity. She endured all the teasing and bullying that femme boys in the 1950s and ’60s could expect. In effect she said to others ‘if you think I’m gay I’ll be gay: if you think I’m a queen I’ll be a queen.’ While living the high school teenage boy life by day she found her way in to the drag clubs by night, eventually becoming a very pretty young performer and I got the impression an ‘in demand’ escort as well.

Unlike many teenage queens of her time Sandi did not collapse under issues around her self-identity and self-worth.  She was what she was. One of the things she had was a great intellect. She breezed through college and in to law school, largely supporting herself working the club scene as Sandi. In school she flaunted her androgynous appearance and says she ‘dared anyone to make it an issue.’ No one did. To her college and law school classmates Sandi was just Sandi.

She did, however, have some trouble getting established as a lawyer in Philadelphia. So as the old television program theme went she took the advice that ‘California was the place she ought to be. So she packed up her bags and moved to Beverly –Hills that is . . .”

In the Los Angeles area Sandi got established in the world of corporate law, eventually developing an expertise in the growing field of environmental law. That was her Monday to Friday day life. On the evenings and weekends the legal trappings were put aside and a lifestyle of friendship and entertainment at clubs like the Queen Mary, Peanuts and a number of other come-and-go establishments dominated her social life. Sandi didn’t mention ever having a regular boyfriend but she certainly could have had one if she’d wanted. She talked about a number of very close t-girl friends including the well-known publisher Gina Lance.

In truth Sandi shared all this information over time, not in one afternoon. However as that first afternoon drew to a close we parted ways, me to take a nap and then get ready for the evening. As usual, Sandi had an appointment to have her make-up done and hair styled by Jim Bridges, her good friend who ran a boutique next door to the Queen Mary.

That evening we chatted a little but moved in different circles. Near closing time she asked if I would like to join their group for a trip over to Hollywood for breakfast at the Yukon Mining Company, a landmark restaurant. I was tempted to go as I felt it would improve my chances of eventually spending the rest of the night in bed with Sandi. However, I declined in favor of an early golf game. That decision may have saved my life.

As the years went by I continued to visit Los Angeles and the Queen Mary. I always stayed at the Sherman Oaks and more often than not I would share some time with Sandi or get caught up on her life by talking with Jim Bridges. I would like to say that this story has a happy ending but it doesn’t.

After having come so close together for a brief time, our lives were again off in different directions. While my life and personal contentment seemed to get better and better with every visit to Los Angeles things did not go so well for my friend Sandi.  Things were turning for the worse for the successful lawyer. Each time I would see her she would look a little paler and a little more gaunt. She told me that some of her close friends were succumbing to AIDS. She herself claimed to be HIV- but that became hard for me to believe. Vitality seemed to be slipping away from her.

Then came the time Jim Bridges told me Sandi had been in a car accident. She had crashed her brand new, one-day-old, sports car on the 405 Freeway in Orange County. I had to wonder about the reason for the accident but Sandi survived the crash and about a year later I saw her for the last time, limping and a shadow of her former self. She recognized me but didn’t have the inclination to share any stories or jokes. I wished her well. It took me a little while to connect all the dots but thinking back to our first meeting and my desire to sleep with Sandi that may very well have been at the time she was becoming HIV+. That is why I think my ‘golf over breakfast’ decision may have saved my life.

I think it was a year later that Los Angeles’ famous Northridge earthquake caused the closure of the Sherman Oaks Motel. It stayed closed for three years before re-opening as a Days Inn. It wasn’t the same. T-girls going to the Queen Mary had been largely replaced by families visiting Universal City.

I stayed once or twice at the Days Inn but I never again saw Sandi or heard how she was doing. A Web search shows many Sandi Harts but not my Sandi. I can’t find an up-to-date reference to Jim Bridges, either. I did write to Gina Lance but received no reply. Sometimes I hate how the last twelve years have created such a gulf between my life in LA and now. At least I have my memories.
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Some video memories from The Queen Mary. This is no doubt a broadcast profile of the club but there is no credit or year available. And the quality is just awful. Enjoy!

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This video from The Queen Mary is purported to be from the ’80s and features performer Miss Anna E.

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Tags: clubbing, crossdressing, featured, sandi hart

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender History