I started going out to a party called Kurfew, at Tunnel. The promoters would come to the NYU campus and see us girls sitting on the steps and kinda whisper to us, “Y'all may want to come to this.” Tunnel was one of the largest locations in the city; it was over on the West side. I think it’s a storage facility now, but that whole place used to be a club.
And there were, like, clubs within the club, right? There were separate rooms with different parties inside Tunnel.
Exactly. And in order to get inside Tunnel on Saturday, we had to go through the Kurfew entrance, which was for the gays, bisexuals, lesbians, whatever. Nita already knew a lot of the drag queens performing there, so things escalated quickly because I wasn’t only going to Kurfew now, I had access to the whole club. There was the Kenny Scharf room, filled with all of his neon art that was really instrumental to the way I process color. Then we would go into the green room where I met all the queens. And I started going with them to a place up the street called Twilo. We would leave Tunnel on Saturday nights and —
This was at like 4, 5 AM?
Six, seven. And that’s when it got real. Twilo is where I really started to nuance how I am and what I am, as myself, in New York City. That was where I began interacting with the House of Aviance. I remember the first time I went to Twilo was the first time I saw Kevin. I saw them perform “Home” by Diana Ross from The Wiz. And I started to weep because that was the first time I saw where I come from as a black queen. I called my mother like “Mama, they did ‘Home’.” “Who did?” “Kevin.” “Who’s Kevin?” “Aviance.” “What’s Aviance?” And I didn’t even know what to tell her.
And then I started wanting to become an Aviance. But there were some rules that I wasn’t sure I could follow. Like, one was you could never rewear an outfit. Period, it wasn't allowed. Because Aviance is known for creativity, and if you can always be creative, you better be creative! One time I was with Nita and a few other queens — they split us up into teams of three and gave us all black trash bags with the yellow ties. And we had 10-15 minutes to make looks. Not just outfits, looks. Someone refashioned the yellow tie to make a huge bow. Someone made a tube top. Someone made an asymmetrical dress. And we had to storm the runway and get graded. There were no excuses because everyone had the exact same trash bag. And everyone looked cunty. Period. I love that story because it’s a reminder of how easy it is to be creative. The idea of taking what's around you and making it not just work, but making it fab — that was instilled in me.
From there I started going to Tunnel and Twilo consistently, I never missed it. Junior Vasquez on Saturday nights at Twilo was essential to my identity as a dancer.