I'm so proud to be featured in an interview article that appears in the current Out In Jersey magazine, a journal about Gay arts, culture and community in the Garden State. Being born in New Jersey, I'm so glad to be able to express my views to others in the state. The article by the brilliant, renowned journalist and photographer Alina Oswald also appeared in the mainstream newspaper Newark Examiner. I've received so much great feedback about this interview. Thanks to everyone for hearing my Q & A session. I have the text pasted below:She is the first openly transgender correspondent to appear on a national TV show—Under the Pink Carpet, an LGBT news and entertainment show. She has performed on stage and on screen, in large and small production films. She has her own gossip column—Gossip Girl—and curated art shows like Strike A Pose - Gender Id in 2008, hosted by SoHo’s Leslie-Lohman gallery. She is Lady Clover Honey, a fixture in New York City social and entertainment life and in the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade.
“I think I was born with a feminine spirit,” Lady Clover Honey (a.k.a. Clover Welsh) describes herself. “I have a man’s body, which is fine with me, and I have a female spirit, so that I can express myself sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman.”
Born in Totowa, New Jersey, Lady Clover Honey recalls always being different growing up. “I don’t know what it’s like to be normal,” she comments. As a kid, she never fit in. Other kids used to call her names, but she didn’t care because she was mature enough not to care. She has always been out, never in the closet. She’s also been lucky to have parents who accepted her the way she was.
Right after graduating from college, Clover moved to New York City where she started writing poetry and became involved in a neo-pagan movement that accepted those living on the fringes of normal, and also accepted women as divinity. That’s how Clover discovered the Radical Faeries, a spiritual movement started by Harry Hay in 1979. While most of the members of this spiritual movement are usually gay and feminine, they vary from one region of the country to another. Clover joined the Radical Faeries community in Brooklyn, where she lived at the time. She describes them as wearing beautiful blouses and broaches, not necessarily dressing as women, but starting to create the image of a woman, reaching for God (or Goddess) and the spirit.
“It’s always been my fantasy to be a beautiful woman, like Marilyn Monroe,” Lady Clover Honey confesses. A decade ago, when she started being a drag queen, she got her first wig on sale on 14th street. “I thought anybody can be a blonde or a brunette, but I’d rather be a purple, actually more of a maroon.” When three photographers for the Radical Faeries wanted to take her picture, she was happy to model—the photo appeared in Time Out NY. Today Clover is on the Board of Directors for Fresh Fruit Festival. She believes that drag queens are interesting, and that gender expression makes such a visual art that she decided to put together a show for them in Strike A Pose, celebrating gender identification in our contemporary society.
Recently, Clover had a small, yet poignant role in Lovari’s directorial debut, Shore Thing, a film taking a fresh look at possible shark attacks in the New York waters. In Shore Thing Clover plays a librarian—a woman usually not perceived as good looking. And, with the fine artistry we are used to, by now, Lady Clover Honey shows that all women, even librarians, can be glamorous. As with everything else she does, Lady Clover Honey uses her Shore Thing character to continue breaking taboos.
Today, drag queens are still on the fringe of what society considers “normal.” Drag queens are also different images of God. “I think God is a force,” Clover explains. “It’s important to have a spiritual connection to the universe. It helps us to be strong. [I] hope that the universe, God (or Goddess), loves me as well.”
Lady Clover Honey cherishes her connection with the universe, and also wants to do her part and help others here, on earth. Therefore, she reaches out to the person who is afraid to go out dressed as a woman because people would throw stuff at him. She reaches out to all individuals and encourages them to be who they truly are, to come out of the closets of their lives. While she is very aware that coming out is not always easy or safe, she hopes that “We all have to respect one another, because we’re all children of God, with different ways to express ourselves.”
She’s always been an optimist, especially when it comes to gay rights, when she believes that we make progress every year. “I do have hope,” Lady Clover Honey concludes. “We’ve come a long way in 40 years. We have a long way more to go.”
