Reindeer Games
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Growing up in Hammond in the late 60s, Cerda knew how it felt to be out of step. The son of a steelworker, he was more artistic than athletic. “I was a failure in Little League,” he recalls. “I joined to please my dad, but I was so bad even he said, ‘No, you don’t have to play.’ I was one of the kids people knew were gay. I did my best to fit in, and a lot of people didn’t care. But it would take just one or two assholes who would say something or mock me, and people had to laugh and support them. People would try to pick fights with me, make me fight in front of my little brothers and sisters. That was the most demoralizing, degrading thing to happen, especially if you’re the older brother, and your little brothers and sisters watch you get beaten. Kids are mean, really mean. I still shudder when I see a group of them walking down the street.”
He began hanging out at Kelly’s Our Way, a gay bar in Calumet City, where he met a drag queen called Tamara. “She saw me and said, ‘Girl, I want to paint your face.’ I barely knew her. But I said yes.” Tamara taught him how to dress and make himself up, but he was more interested in expressing himself than in passing for a woman. He began performing at Kelly’s on Sunday nights, and even among the drag queens he loved to shake things up: while others sang tunes by Donna Summer or the Pointer Sisters, Cerda performed punk-rock numbers dressed as Nina Hagen or Deborah Harry.
Cerda isn’t surprised by the show’s continued success. “It was such a popular TV special,” he says. “It has a good message, and it fits the needs of a lot of people I know–people who felt like misfits but really had a place in the world.”
