It’s time for Sue Gilbert to come clean. At least, that’s what she told me in an email leading up to this interview. Gilbert played a supporting role in the growth of Iowa City’s drag and Gay Pride scene in the ’70s — and, thanks to a bizarre and surely predestined string of circumstances, planted the seed for a now-global community of queer nuns.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I had to open my big mouth.”
Gilbert partied, performed and organized with some of Iowa City’s first out and proud LGBTQ+ activists, including Ken Bunch and Tracy Bjorgum who, in 1976, became the first men in the state of Iowa to apply for a same-sex marriage license; Fred Brungard, who co-chaired the University of Iowa’s Gay Liberation Front with Bunch, hosting Pride conferences and participating in UI homecoming; and the late Rick Graf, co-founder of the Iowa Center for AIDS Resources (ICARE).
As a straight woman during a time when queer identity was often ignored or condemned, Gilbert knew when to let her gay friends lead the way. But her decades-long allyship with, and contributions to, Iowa City’s LGBTQ community cannot be overlooked. Nor can her crucial role in helping outfit the original Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded 45 years ago by Bunch and other queer activists seeking self-expression, spiritual healing and a community of lifelong sisters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you first come into contact with [Sisters co-founder] Ken Bunch?
Everybody kept running into each other over and over again until it all kind of coalesced. I was 15 and dating this wonderful guy named Scott who came out to me when we were 15. It didn’t throw me at all because I had been raised Catholic, and nobody had ever discussed that with us. So I didn’t know anything about homosexuality, didn’t know anything about gay guys or gay women or anything, and Scotty was somebody I loved dearly. So we just kind of ignored that and continued our relationship. And we got tired of all the two bars in Cedar Rapids, so we decided to go to the bars in Iowa City, where we met all the gay guys in Iowa City. [Scott and I] stayed friends, and we had a wonderful time.
Scott and I met a bunch of good folk, and we started hanging out and choreographing dances for the bar. Kenny [Bunch] said, “You realize, of course, we have a drag team here. We have the start of a drag show.”
And I said, “Oh, how nice! What am I going to do?”
And he said, “Well, I need a costumer, and you’ve worked your whole life in the theater, and you can do choreography. So you’re in.”
Who was in that initial troupe [the Sugar Plum Fairies]?
We had [future theater critic and journalist] Michael Salinas, Michael Lisa, Tracy Bjorgum and Kenny Bunch.
Could you tell us more about the shows you put on?
So we put this group together, and I made costumes. We choreographed a whole bunch of ridiculous numbers. Our thing was, though, we didn’t perform to recorded music. Everybody in the group had theater experience, and Kenny knew some place where he could get music without the lyrics in it. So we just performed ourselves, and it was real successful. We were having a wonderful time, we toured the show all around our area, and when we ran out of places to go, Kenny decided we needed to put a whole new show together and take it to Des Moines, a whole 211 wild miles away from home.
Kenny had recently gotten addicted to Lou Reed, and so the show became the Lou Reed Wouldn’t Do This Show Revue. It was quite successful. We got booked into this brand new gay bar in Des Moines, and Kenny decided we had to do the opening song to Cabaret to open the show, but that led to an enormous problem because none of those idiots wanted to play the [male] emcee. They wanted to play the skanky chorus girls.
Well, yeah of course, that’s the fun part!
Right! So I end up coming into rehearsal one day and get slammed into a chair. They’re trying clothes on me and slamming makeup on me and informing me that they needed me to be the emcee. And it made sense since they were all guys being girls, so I could be a girl being a guy.
By the time they got done with me, I did not look like Joel Grey. I looked frighteningly like John Aston from The Addams Family [the original Gomez Addams]. I told them I would do it, but that I would dress myself, thank you. So I threw together this kind of Blue Angel weird thing with tap pants and a tuxedo and a corset.
How did the show do?
For reasons I’ve never quite understood, the show was a monster hit. We were just flabbergasted that we kept getting called to take the show to other places. But the thing that cracked me up was there was something about my character that when I wasn’t actually introducing numbers for the show, I was being dragged all over the audience and sitting on people’s laps and mooching drinks and cigarettes.
It finally dawned on everyone that I didn’t have a drag name. So I had to have a drag name.
What did your drag name end up being?
I became Freddie J. Foxfire in honor of my ex-husband. One night, Michael [Salinas] came up and said, “Don’t freak and don’t hit me, but I’ve got a really great way to introduce you.” And so we get out on stage, I introduce them, he turns around to introduce me: “Our glorious emcee Freddie J. Foxfire, the Flaming Fish, the Only Real Pair of Tits in the Show,” and that’s what it became forever and ever.
There’s still people out there in Minneapolis and Chicago and stuff who only know me as “Freddy Foxfire.” It was tremendous fun, those days … but politically, it was getting hot.
In what way?
Tracy [Bjorgum] and Kenny [Bunch] decided to push the state a little bit in the belly and applied for a wedding license [in 1976].
Were you there for that?
I was not allowed to go with them because this was supposed to be a strictly gay thing. He didn’t want people being able to say, “Oh there’s this crazy cis woman doing this, there’s this married couple that are friends of theirs, blah blah blah.” So I didn’t get to be there, but it was fun to hang around and watch outside all the hysteria.
And this was still Iowa City?
Oh yes, Iowa City.
What happened after that?
It went from talking politics to getting very, very political, and you know Rick Graf, the name?
Yes.
He started ICARE [Iowa Center for AIDS Resources & Education]. He and his partner, Don Engstrom, became kind of like the center of a group of highly political gay guys that got together to try to figure out how to make things better, particularly with AIDS flaming in those days like nobody’s business.
So Rick organized ICARE, and it gave everybody a place to go and work and help, and it became a big deal around here. And Kenny decided that since there was a huge influx of people coming in to talk to Don and Rick and the others about ICARE and all this other political stuff, they’d organize the first Pride gathering.
Did you help with the event at all?
Because of the lesbians not wanting to have to deal with the gay guys, I wound up getting dragged into the thing a great deal more than I ever expected to.
Megan Terry and the Omaha Magic Theatre were booked to come to the Pride event to perform, and they were delighted to come, thrilled to death, didn’t want anything to do with Kenny or any of the boys. So I got assigned as the Magic Theatre’s guide dog. I took them places, I helped them shop, I helped them get checked into their hotel, and I wound up spending most of the event with them.
And it was a fascinating experience! I’d spent most of my life hanging out with gay guys; I didn’t know much about the lesbian world at all. And when they found out about that, all of a sudden I was like this little orphan they needed to take care of and educate. So that was one of the weirder weekends of my life.
Do you still attend drag shows?
Oh, I love it! It’s tremendous fun, the people are a riot, and I’ve been fascinated watching the development from our days.
What has that been like?
In a weird kind of way, I always compare it to watching the styles of tattoos change. Every generation seems to have their own version. Drag shows are the same way. Everybody wants a drag show … but they always up the ante every 10 years or so. And the fact that women have gotten drag king shows going that are really excellent is cool.
I’m [an] ordained minister for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I do weddings a lot. I did a wedding for a pair of drag kings that was just brilliant. They and their entire wedding party were so cool.
But anyway, the nuns’ habits, which is particularly what Kenny wants everybody to know about. He hates me, I think.
Nuns’ habits? Like for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?
It’s my fault; I had to open my big mouth. I was flipping through magazines one day trying to get ideas for stuff I could destroy and make costumes out of. And there was this old LIFE magazine. And the center foldout was this amazing black-and-white photo of a tall, skinny young man with a beard, dressed completely head-to-toe in a 16th-century nun’s habit. And I mean dead-on right correct. Pinned correctly, veil correct. The whole thing was gorgeous. And rollerskates.
And the picture was of this young man skating around the fountain in this circular courtyard in France. And the picture just tickled me to death. I thought that was so cool!
And Kenny Bunch in those days lived on rollerskates. I can’t remember a time he didn’t have rollerskates on. So one day, I took this photo to rehearsal and [showed Kenny]. He went, “Isn’t this illegal?”
And I said, “To who? The Vatican? I can’t remember the last time anyone got arrested by the Vatican.” So we talked about it and talked about, and he said, “Yeah, it might be fun. Let me think about it a little bit.”
In the meantime, having been raised Catholic, I took off for the high school I graduated from and went up to the door and talked to one of the nuns I used to get taught by and explained that we were doing a show and asked if it was possible to borrow some nuns’ habits.
She said, “Well, usually we don’t have spare nuns’ habits … But there’s some stuff in the attic that’s been retired that no one will wear ever again. Let me check up there and see what we’ve got.”
She came back down a little while later and handed me a box with four nuns’ habits in it. And I’m not talking about fake ones. I’m talking 1940s Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary-style nuns’ habits. I gave her a big kiss and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
And she said, “Well you and your friends have a wonderful time with your production of The Sound of Music!”
A drag version of The Sound of Music does sound wonderful.
Doesn’t it? I think it’d be fabulous! I’d direct the damn thing. So anyway, I took off with the nuns’ habits, and they never got returned, and if I’m ever going to go to Hell for anything, that’s probably the one thing that will do it.
I took them to rehearsal and dumped them on the ground, and Kenny looked at them and picked one up and said, “Hmm! This one has possibilities.” And everybody else found a nun’s habit.
Did you ever wear a habit?
That’s the other thing. I’m responsible for the nuns’ habits, but I’ve never worn them. I was never one of the nuns for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Because at the time they established it, women weren’t allowed. They are now.
And to make it up to me, Kenny had me declared a saint. I have a plaque on my wall.
Was it common knowledge that you provided the nuns’ habits?
I had always thought Kenny had always told the story of where the habits came from, and I never thought it was a big secret. So I always told the story when it came up and didn’t when it seemed like nobody was interested. I didn’t think much about it.
And then all of this stuff starts coming up in Little Village and other papers about the Iowa City anniversary for Pride, and I start getting mail from friends here in town saying, “Well, why isn’t your name with the list of the folks that were tap-dancing on the street corners during Pride?” and I didn’t know.
So I asked Ken about it, and he said, “Well, I don’t talk about it much because I didn’t know how you felt about being outed.”
And I said, “Are you out of your mind? We got chased down by fag haters and all kinds of stuff. I’m still here, dude.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2024 issue.
