Fleming, who was raised in (and, perhaps, by) Brooklyn, possessed art school aspirations early on. Only, the reroutes of her pilgrimage would lead the multi-disciplinary artist to a destiny far beyond her sketchbook.

“I applied to Parsons for fashion illustration, but my portfolio was not nearly built out enough, nor ‘fine art’ enough for them. So, I took night classes at FIT, and needed money to go to art school. I found a job at Antique Boutique, a vintage store on Broadway, where I worked alongside David,” Connie reveals, referencing her early friendship with David Glamamore, a.k.a Glamamore, a.k.a Mr. David. Connie recounts, “We didn’t like each other; it was too much sameness. We circled each other like cats.

One day, a customer was browsing through fifties dresses, and the label read ‘Mr. Blackwell’. She wondered if it was the Mr. Blackwell, who preceded Joan Rivers as a pioneer of fashion criticism. In unison, we turned and assured her, ‘Yes, it was.’ In that moment we realized, ‘Oh, maybe you aren’t as horrifying as I thought you were.’ After that, we became fast friends.”

David Glamamore was ultimately the first individual to showcase Connie’s myriad talents, on display in couture drag at Boy Bar.

“We would go out to Limelight and Area. One night, we had sort of a pregame at this spot, Boy Bar. We never ended up going to either of those former clubs, because David met with an old friend at Boy Bar, Matthew. All night, the three of us discussed this show David was looking to design for and bring to the club. As we rode the subway home that night— or morning, really— I told him I couldn’t wait to see the act debut. The subway doors were closing as I exited and David said, ‘You won’t be watching the show. You are going to be in it!’ I was left speechless on the platform.”

In the Boy Bar spectacle, Connie’s first foray into the spotlight where she endemically belonged, she donned Glamamore’s handmade creations, unlocking a sacred part of her identity she hadn’t yet explored.

“I was literally pushed onto the stage. The spotlight was blinding as I stumbled on. I couldn’t see the audience in front of me, and it clicked. This wash of relief came over me, and I went for it. Months went by, and by the time I looked up, we were famous below 14th Street.

It was very damaging to my psyche and my spirit, growing up being trans and being feminine-presenting. Working myself back to a strength and a confidence was very difficult. Art had always been my saving grace throughout my childhood— a positive reinforcement and an escape into a world that was welcoming and did not tear me down. I found that strength lost to trauma onstage. I didn’t have anything to lose.”

With Connie’s expanding sense of identity came a necessary education, one offered by the likes of the fairy drag parents who initially revealed this open-armed community before her.

“I was so cloistered, I didn’t know the connotation that drag held in either the straight or gay community at the time. It was a very pejorative view.

Between David and Matthew, I was taught about our community. I would see Marsha P. Johnson around town. I knew she was homeless, but there was a light around her. There was so much respect and reverence for her. One day, I asked David, and he went down the line of credits, of the impact she’s made within the community.”

Queer spaces, ever a safe port for an individual identifying with any letter of the LGBTQIA alphabet, not only embodied Fleming in her true essence, launching a crusade of self- and community discovery— these forums also served to illustrate a rainbow of possibilities of existence in every form, harvesting hope as these divergent paths were laid before Connie’s eyes.

“This new avenue of expression not only rebuilt me as a person, but gave me a view of an existence that I knew within me, but did not know how to grapple with. In this community that encouraged and saw within me what I was not able to see within myself, there is a rainbow in which I found myself. There are options. You do not have to implode and disappear.”

Trans icons, like Connie herself would soon become, were a constant influence on Fleming’s journey, emblematic of the tight-knit asylum forged within the Lower East Side’s artistic, queer communities.

“International Chrysis was in town. She was teaching choreography for a new show. It was really beautiful. Throughout her time with us, I learned kernels of her story. After the show ended, she and I were in conversation with Matthew, and she leaned into Matthew and said, ‘You were right.’ I wondered aloud what she was right about, and she said, ‘When you are ready, come to me and we’ll talk.’

Once I realized what she meant, and I was strong enough to be honest with myself, I went over to her apartment and she schooled me. She schooled me on transness, the world I would have to negotiate, and choosing how to go forward. That started my journey into carving out my way as a trans woman.

The East Village at that point was a concentrated community. I was roommates with Victoria Bartlett a.k.a Sticky Vicky. Down the street was Jimmy Paul, who I had walked for at the Fields Ball, to become a Field. At that ball, the judges were Malcolm McLaren, Diane Brill, Deborah Harry, Mary McFadden, Steven Meisel, and Andre Leon Talley. Jimmy Paul was assisting Oribe. Steven Meisel asked Jimmy, ‘Who was that girl in Patricia’s ball?’ Jimmy called me, and that week was the first time I shot with Steven Meisel. Down the street was a photographer, a stylist, hair, makeup. We all pulled from each other to push the envelope of fashion, music, and art.”

Though, the unity of this hamlet was critically vital, plagued dually by profound ignorance hurled as vitriol and a far more physical, fiercely fatal threat.

“It was a heavy time. During the mid-to-late-80s the AIDs epidemic was running hard. You would see someone on Monday, you’d ask about them Wednesday, and Friday you would find out they had passed. There was an immediacy of ‘tomorrow is not promised, so today it has to be done. It has be expressed.’”

The psychological and emotional impact of the ruinous AIDs epidemic and its aftershock of ostracization irrevocably stirred the already-galvanized community in their mourning, vowing remembrance and a tradition of endowment of opportunity for following generations.

“During the time of Boy Bar, when we started to really get famous, young designers of the East Village would ask me to be in their shows. I started to get a reputation for not only as a performer, but as a model. We were always taught in that community, if that door opens, you walk through it. But, leave it askew, because there are others behind that might not have to bear the same arrows.”

The legacy Connie promised to pave for trans youth sparked from the fire of her entrance into the booming underground ballroom scene that nurtured her and her peers throughout their own transitions. A knitting together of the uptown and downtown balls, coordinated by legendary designer Patricia Field became Ground Zero of both a unified Manhattan ballroom and Fleming’s storied modeling career.

“Pat [Field] was invited by the Extravaganzas uptown to galvanize the two ballroom scenes. That was the purpose of that initial Patricia Field ball, to bring together the Harlem and East Village kids.

When I was well-within my transition, Chrysis told me I’d have to make a decision between performing drag as a trans woman, or putting drag away and pursuing a different career path. Modeling had opened itself up as a lucrative avenue, where there was more of an opportunity for me in Europe.”

“While working for Patricia, I was traveling back and forth to Paris, and it manifested as this exchange of ideas. We got an eye on what was happening in Europe, and then during Parisian fittings, I’d play music and the song would end up in the show.”

“After being in Europe for a few years, I began to see the writing on the wall and experience backlash. I came back to America, just trying to eke out rent, and Pat called to enlist me for production, seating, and casting of her Bryant Park shows. I used everything I had learned so far— I performed, I walked shows, I knew how this worked.”

Fleming’s fated art school ambitions were realized in fabulous fashion as she sketched for one of Patricia Field’s most iconic accomplishments, Sex & The City, during her tenure as the series’ costumer. “My first love came back again. It was a love that had always saved me, that saved me once again.”

“I would love to do another exhibition. My first body of work was produced during the pandemic. I didn’t want to fall down another YouTube rabbit hole. I’d watched everything on Amazon and Netflix. I figured, I have an arts and crafts skill. Let me put some beauty out in the world and post my sketches. A friend from the 90s club scene, who I reconnected with in Montreal through Thierry Mugler, suggested I show my pieces. That’s how the first exhibition came about, put together almost entirely virtually. The work, post-exhibition, was mailed to me.

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As a born New Yorker, Connie has born witness to a seismic shift in the city’s culture, perennially abuzz in constant metamorphosis.

“The 80s was the tail-end of when New York was forgotten and bankrupt. The creative community went in and took all of these spaces and built: hip-hop, New Wave, punk, ballroom, voguing— all of these avenues of art. It was all percolating in these spaces. It was the land that time and financing forgot. By the nineties, when the waves of death had subsided— the ashes were there— but these communities had built themselves, and were now influencing culture. They had their place in the world. Now that there was something to be marketed in ways, the money people came in and started to gentrify. It priced out the new generations that were following, that could have come to that space in the East Village and made art, go-go danced a couple of nights a week, and made your rent. That waned. The energy waned with it. Now, the Lower East Side is more of a pub crawl. That creative drive has moved to Williamsburg and Bushwick. Even that has become priced out.”

Gentrification, while a large sum of the influence, is not solely to blame for the dilution and segregation of today’s visionary minds. The automation, anonymity, and antisocialism of art disseminates as a facsimile of moments that were once shared in tandem.

“Diversity can come and germinate. That basis of creative communities galvanizing and being able to survive has shifted to a digital model, though it is nonetheless alive. There is a disconnect, though, when it comes to in-person, and the ability to fail before an audience. Things can be so tooled with a filter. There is no way to drop the mic, no feedback. Within failure, you learn through immediate reaction. So much beauty comes out of a mistake.”

Undoubtedly, this thread of globalization leads our conversation to musings of our society’s current state, and that the dangers it poses are not dissimilar from those with which Fleming was reared. Connie’s demure tenor remains even, but toughens, as she delivers a closing directive to all those currently fearing for their freedom, for their living, and for their personhood.

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“I am older (laughs), so I have seen this before. I have lived through this before. It can only break you if you let it break you. You can let it chip away at you, or you can fight. You have to really put on your thinking cap and be ready for anything and everything they throw at you. It has always been demonizing and pointing the finger, but we are now able, through our devices and the interweb, to still the tide of dishonesty. You know your heart. You cannot drink the Kool Aid and internalize it, because that is the aim. The aim is to degrade and diminish with a lie. It’s a made up tale for them to grift. Because it is a grift, a magic trick. Look at this hand while the other hand is picking your pocket. Know who you are and know that the crap that they are trying to throw on you does not work. It isn’t real. It cannot whittle you down to their perspective, because it has no basis in fact. ‘Oh, drag queens shouldn’t be reading books to kids because they are predators.’ Meanwhile, it’s the priest, it’s the coach, it’s the uncle. It’s who you are propping up as the all-seeing eye of goodness and virtue who are doing harm. You are the monster. It is built on a want to control. This isn’t the first time at the rodeo, a la Mommy Dearest. And, taking from Mommy Dearest again, ‘Don’t fuck with me fellas!’

The only thread is hope. We came out of a time of modernity, and putting things in place for a better future. It threatened somebody’s view of their own brokenness. You cannot put your brokenness upon me. There is such a wealth of language now from the LGBTQIA+ community that has helped humanity.

Source: https://www.reservedmagazine.com/connie-fleming-the-only-thread/

Credits:

Featuring Connie Fleming| @therealconniegirl

Written by Delaney Willet | @dpwillet

Photographed by Alexander Thompson | @alexanderthompsonphotographer

Styled by Joshua Allyn Brewer | @itsjustjoshallynbabes

Hair by Jason Linkow | @jasonlinkow

Makeup by Dana Arcidy | @danaarcidy