The Cockettes – A Mini Movie Review

I don’t want to define who The Cockettes were, but The Cockettes is the name of a documentary by David Weissman and Bill Weber. The film covers the years 1969 to 1972, when I was 16 to 19 years old.

I watch the movie and think, “Yeah, I knew that was going on. Why didn’t I move to San Francisco and do that scene?” Then I remember the trouble I was getting into in Pompano: Hitchhiking to Greynolds park to score, skipping school to go to parties, watching friends inject.

I was never really made to be a successful drinker. It was always one more, one more. If I was lucky I puked in the toilet, but more likely I only made it to the sink or somewhere in a car (real tough to clean). I had a certain ideology about using drug to expand my consciousness, but wound up just getting high, some of it fun, some of it scary as hell, most of it just boring in retrospect.

Being a teenage kid on the streets in San Francisco would not have been a pretty scene. So I’m grateful for the people who were able to be the Cockettes and grateful to those who put it on film and help me remember the idealism of the late 60’s and early 70’s without having to have been exploited, hooked up, or cracked up. (That came a little later in my life anyway. So did the dresses, heels, blue eye liner, and just a bit of glitter.)

For more on the Cockettes than I could ever tell you see the link:

http://www.grandelusion.com/index.html