Interview with Gary Christmas, by Irin Carmon

Gary Christmas may have lost his twin, but at least he has the keys to every house in the neighborhood. Seventy-two years old, with a shaved white Mohawk and a penchant for yellow sweaters and late night partying, the American-born ex-showbiz star spends most of his days chilling outside his store Backstage in Amsterdam’s central canal ring. That is, when he isn’t giving psychic readings, or posing in Dutch Playboy surrounded by topless models. When I arrive, there are young Euros in ribbed tanks and stubbly facial hair, smoking cigarettes; there’s a baby; there’s someone on crutches; and there’s the unlikely ringleader, Christmas himself, sitting at a table and barking orders. He barely stops for breath between stories littered with expletives and philosophical declarations. He’ll happily tell any visitor his life story or give a tour of the store, a cartoon-psychedelic collection of gay porn, memorabilia, and the garish dresses, bras and hats Gary crochets himself—despite having only nine fingers.

Gary: If anyone knows where West Medford is, that’s where we were from. Our originality is that we’re Blackfoot Indian and Mickmack from Digbee, Nova Scotia. My brother was Gregory, and I’m Gary. That’s not our original names, but I’m not going to divulge those names, because they weren’t glamorous.

And Christmas was not your real name.

Christmas is our real name. And I was born on New Year’s Eve, right before 12. And my mother kept her pace, and at 5 after 12, my brother came. So I was born in the old year and my brother was born in the New Year. And Mary Christmas had twins on New Year’s. So that was the project.

Your mother’s name was Mary.

Mary. Yeah. We had quite an exciting life. Of course, my father didn’t approve of the type of life we were going to go into, but after that we got permission to go into show business.

How old were you?

Oh, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Why did you want to go into show business?

I thought it would be nice. I thought we had talent. And being twins, we had the most successful chance of being well-known, with a name like that. My brother had a great voice, I was a better dancer, so it was great. He could appeal to one side of the audience and I could appeal to the other side. I was funny, he was dramatic. We made South Pacific, a couple of Calypso movies in America. We did some Indian movies.

Indian movies?

You know, subjects like that. And we were horrible.

What do you mean, you were horrible?

Well, I couldn’t ride a horse. We had the Indian look, but I was scared of horses. But to get a long story short, what was interesting was that we were twins, we had a little bit of talent, and we got along. We did a lot of things theatrically. Everybody recognized us with a name like that.

So what would you do in your act?

We would do a duet. If you hit them hard [sings] “Christmas twins USA!” [sings more] – we would come out and do that. In one of the numbers we did, “Forget your troubles, hallelujah’ – that was the religious part of the show.

We would put wigs on, pull people onstage, jump on the girls, jump on the guys. And then we would say, “Oh shit, that’s our freak show.” And everybody would come onstage and dance. People like to be included. Being artists, we had to smell our audiences and say, this evening we do this number, that number.

We did movies. We did a movie in Spain, we did a movie in Portugal, we did another movie, short things in France. We did everything. And I was even just in a porno magazine. In Playboy.

Yeah, you showed me the Playboy. Let’s do it in order. We’ll get there.

So we worked all around the world. But our biggest dream was to have a shop somewhere in the world. So we came to Holland one day.

What day was this?

We left America when we were on Broadway with Cab Calloway. We sailed on the Independence…. And I don’t know what the year was, but it was at least before Columbus. Make it funny.

And then we got off at Tangiers. And the whole tour was picked from people all across the US – two from there, three from there. We were the pick from Boston, because we could sing, we could dance. And we worked our ass off because we were twins.

Can you imagine two Americans getting off at Tangiers at six o’clock in the morning, and seeing all these camels, and black people in white things, and all the painted beautiful buildings? We really thought we were in Ali Baba days, you know? We thought we would be raped and taken off into the desert and made to live in a harem and do odd things. Something like that. But it was quite nice.
During this interview, my girlfriend, which is Cindy here, which is my lifesaver, my soul keeper, my thing—I’ll tell you a little bit more information about her later. She just walked in with two scoops of strawberry ice cream, and we’re sitting here eating like pigs. And I really appreciate it. Where’s my spoon?

Let me get to the point. We were very talented and very commercial, and we were very lucky and blessed to be able to work in those countries around the world. But I don’t want to sit here and say, Oh, we knew this one when we knew that one. We knew Johnny Mathis, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder – all those people we’ve known in our show business, you know? But I don’t want to sit here and list people, because that sounds so “ego tripper.” We’ve met friends in show business, okay?

If I sit here and jump to the end of the story, I enjoyed my life. I missed the passing of my brother, because we were very close.

Why did you choose Holland?

You’re free here. There’s no segregation. They’re tolerant. You can be yourself. You can be whoever you want to do. If you’re a little clever, you can have a nice life here. And we have a nice life here, living over the shop, designing dresses and making clothes. Doing interviews and being in different magazines. Doing shows ourselves. We’re doing a small film on the life of my brother and I [with Dutch filmmaker Hugo Metsers].

If you look at my fingers, I lost this finger when I was playing football when I was very young. But I had crocheted before then, and I said, “Oh, what am I going to do? My finger’s missing. Can I actually start again?” Well, I got the operation, I picked my needles up, and I could crochet better.

I like to express myself with dresses with wires in them and big hats. You know, then I started doing clothes for the people here, for people in show business. And I’m sort of like a guru. Because I’m a little spiritual, a little psychic. I don’t know if you’re religious or not, whatever is going through your mind, but God has put me in here, in this shop, to help people. I do little healings with people. I sit here day after day helping people and I’m loving doing it, and it gives me satisfaction that I’m here for a reason. It’s a lot of responsibility, takes a lot of energy from me, but the result I get is that people say, “Hey Gary, man, thank you very much.”

So when did you start to have this sort of guru power?

I had it for awhile when I was younger, then it passed away. Then my brother had it quite good. And then back and forth. I always call myself a witch, you know? Witch. And then my brother had it and gave it to me, gave me part of it, then I developed it. [Tries to quiet noise outside.] Hey guys! Hey guys!

Cindy: Oh, shut up.

Gary: I’m doing an interview here!

At least we have fun here. I had to tell my friends outside to keep their goddamn mouths shut, I’m doing an interview. You should see me when I’m angry. I throw things. But this is serious business, and I want to give a good impression …. This can’t be a shit thing. Ask me some more questions.

Anyway, people have troubles in their life. If I look at you, I see the name Martha.

Do you know Martha?

Um… I know one.

You see! You’re not sure about her friendship, at all, because of some sort of problem you had with her. And you should apologize, or she should apologize. But the situation is like this, and I think when you do go back, make an effort to make friends with her again. Because you have it on your conscience. And she has it on her conscience. So just go out for a drink and tell her.

In the Dutch article you showed me, they called you the Indian Healer. Is that because you have Indian blood, or is that just something they…

I sort of heal people. I hate the word … I hate to even be considered a spiritualist or a healer. I’m just someone there who tries to help people. I’m a guy who sits around and like talking to people, and I like to help them, I like to give them something…

I don’t want to be god or anything like that. I just want to inspire people to live their dreams. People don’t live their dreams.

Tell me about how you were in Dutch Playboy.

We had the Ex-Porno Star show. This photo here was from last year. So I made very good friends, because all of the girls in the show—you know, I’m a slut.

What does that mean, you’re a slut?

Well, I mean, I play around, you know. And all these girls were little friends of mine. We used to do bad little kinky things. We used to have fun….I just told you I sleep around! I sleep around.

Even today? At your age?

People ask, “Gary, how do you do it at 72?” I just manage. I pop a pill. And I do it and enjoy it. That’s what life is for, to enjoy yourself! Do what you can. And then they say, “Gary, you’re a slut, you’re a dirty old man, you’re horrible.” And I just enjoy myself.

I’ve had boyfriends, I’ve had girlfriends—I like life. And I’m not ashamed to say I do what I want to do and I have friends and mess around! … I don’t think I could be with one person, girl or boy, for a long time. I get bored too quickly.

Have you ever been in love?

Every day! I’m in love with love. I think that everybody needs a certain kind of love. And I try to give them the kind they need.

How did it get from Ex Porno Star to Playboy?

Because I’m talented. No, really, I’m funny. And I like screwing around. How can I say it without sounding – people love me. I dress crazy. They always want to invite me to the party because I’m a good dancer. I’m special. I’m a character who does a lot of things. I dress very weird. And when my brother was here, there where so many interviews with us where they said, “Well, finally we have some glamour in Holland.”

Because we wore gold. My brother wore headpieces. We gave Holland glamour. I don’t meant to say there’s no glamour here—but we gave it them.

You seem to have a lot of friends who are younger than you.

That’s what keeps me young. But I’m a good dancer, that’s why the girls love me. They say, “Come on, Gary.” Sweetheart, I am a good dancer.

I just had a desa-view. Do you know what that is?

No.

Yes, you do. Desa view, when you see something that already happened.

Oh, déjà vu!

I dreamt this scene. It came back.

Tell me about the sandwiches.

I came up with all the names for the menu. The Gang Bang Sandwich, see that? “Meat, meat and more meat.” Big Bertha is named after the nurse we had. She had tits out to here. She nursed me and Greg at the same time, and I turned to Greg and said, “If I had teeth, I would bite that bitch’s breasts.” Because she wasn’t nice at all! I named the sandwich Big Bertha because she had two big tits. Hi, Edward.

Edward: Oh, I see this is a very serious interview we’re having.

Gary: Yes, it is, Edward. That’s Edward, he’s a ladykiller. All of my girl friends chase him. Anyway, I do a collection of new hats every three months. I have a collection of dresses. It’s just colorful. I have dresses upstairs.

[takes me through the store, from the fractured plastic skyline of New York to the penis-shaped bong to the wall of photos of their showbiz days.]

In our act, we did Ike and Tina Turner. See my brother? My brother’s right there. And I’m Ike with the mustache.

How come he got to be Tina?

My brother? Cause he had better legs than I did. And he looked good in that dress.

-- Irin Carmon