Dec 01, 2003

VR: Can you tell us all, who is Miss K?
MK: I was the lead guitarist with trashy transgendered punk rockers Six Inch Killaz. We performed riotous, shambolic booze-fuelled gigs to rooms full of appalled, terrified, or adulatory people. Accounts vary as to how good or bad we were. I prefer to remember that we were somehow simultaneously legendary and abysmal.

When the band imploded due to apathy, drugs and creative differences in 2000, I drew down the curtain on my public trannie career. I prefer to think I perform on a virtual stage now (through my website, which remains popular) because really, unlike a lot of your other interviewees, I am not full time and have a very busy "full time" life too with lots of other creative outlets.

VR: Tell us about Miss K's draGnet
MK: draGnet has (inadvertently) become my main avenue of expression as Miss K. It started off almost accidentally back in 1995 when I was learning how to do web design and performing regularly with the band and since then has gradually grown a minor following of devotees, freaks and other beautiful people who have taken a liking to me and my machinations.

As I mentioned earlier, Miss K is very much just one of my creative outputs; as such, the site, the photography, the texts and interactions I have with my audience, these things are all very important aspects of Miss K as a creation. In fact you could probably say that right now, Miss K and the website are one and the same. Weird huh?

VR: Where are you living these days?
MK: Still here in 'the smoke' as they tend to call London (UK) in bad gangster movies.

VR: What is your day to day life like?
MK: Very pleasantly dull! Unless I'm doing a gig with my current band - then it's a blast.

VR: When you were growing up, each morning you would look in the mirror did you see the same person looking back or was there someone else in that mirror?
MK: Uh, yes…

VR: Who was your inspiration growing up?
MK: Tom Baker as Dr Who! Funnily enough, I did identify with a lot of his girl assistants, and also with Bond women from my childhood. I guess I like the idea of being in adventures and being rescued from peril by some nice heroic chap. What a fantasist!

One person who really opened my eyes and got me thinking (and this will sound very clichéd) was Caroline Cossey, the transsexual model who went by her stage name "Tula" at the time. I guess she helped me realize that there could be something more to life. Which is ironic really because that period when she was getting a lot of publicity she was going through an unremitting personal hell. I respect that woman very much. And she was a Bond woman, albeit fleetingly!

Oh, and Deborah Harry from the band Blondie. I still want to be her! And Bowie. How could I forget him

VR: Who do you admire these days?
MK: I think Kylie's got a super bum for someone of her advancing years. Of course, none of your US readers will have a clue what I'm on about.

VR: What has been your biggest accomplishment do you think?
MK: A few of the songs that Six Inch Killaz wrote and performed are among the best trashy punk pop songs I know. A shame they were never more widely appreciated, but I am proud of having had a part in conceiving and performing them.

I'd cite the songs "P.I.G.", "Trashola", "Jackie", "Seventeen", "Straitjacket", "Superstar". What a mini LP that would be!

In fact, I might release that myself…

VR: What really makes you happy?
MK: Cats

VR: What really makes you upset?
MK: Politics with a big P and a little p. You know, people in all walks of life who feel that it's part of their agenda to muck about with others' agendas…

VR: Do you have any pet peeves?
MK: Burnt toast. And moths.

VR: Do you think you are a nice person or do you think you can be a bitch at times?
MK: I try to be nice all the time. I think I get a little too wrapped up in myself though and don't give others enough time and attention. I am not a bitchy person though. Just a little aloof sometimes, you know? I guess it stems from a deep-rooted shyness. I think a lot of performers are very shy at heart.

VR: What do you think makes you stand out above others or do you feel you are just one of the gang?
MK: The gang thing is very interesting. When you are in a rock band, the sense of being in a gang or clique that is better than and distinct from others is very strong. You almost have a mini-tribal sense of things. So you can probably imagine that that feeling was increased many times when we were strutting round as "Six Inch Killaz, transgendered outlaw punks" or whatever, because we felt different to everyone anyway. We might have been quite intimidating as a group of people. Which was funny really as we actually were all so nice. Except Luis. Nutter. Actually even Luis was nice, when he wasn't being impossibly self-absorbed.

VR: Do you get nervous when you are asked to speak to a group or perform on stage?
MK: Never. I have always been completely shameless in that respect. I really enjoy and look forward to performing.

VR: Do you perform just in the UK or do you perform all over the world?
MK: We would have, but never got the opportunity. I think there was vague talk of doing a Wigstock once, but it never happened. My current band has played in Spain and Holland. Does that count?

VR: Would you ever get SRS (reassignment surgery)?
MK: I've thought about such things. Not seriously though. You never know about these things until they happen.

VR: What about friends, do you have many or do you pick and choose who you associate with?
MK: I have a small circle of very close friends and outside of them I know a lot of people whom I get on very well with. As you get older you inevitably start picking and choosing and sorting the wheat from the chaff. Oh dear, that sounds awful…

VR: Where do you see yourself in the future?
MK: I'd like to be the first rock and rolling bitch on Mars. Of course, you don't always get what you want.

VR: As a transgendered person do you think you have receive proper respect you deserve in life?
MK: Respect's something you have to go out & earn. I think standing up in front of a hundred hostile people and making them listen to a horrible noise for half an hour will get you some respect. Not making any compromises and trying to live without regrets gets you some respect, I think.

I'll tell you something about transgendered people and respect that pisses me off. As a social group people like to marginalise us. They feel like we threaten them because we call into question one of the key binary oppositions (male and female) through which they define their "normal" worldview.

So they prefer to see us as marginal people. They are reassured that we are work in the shabbier recesses of show business, or in the sex industry, or that we are drug addicts, prostitutes, whatever (I think a recent so-called "scientific" treatise on transgenderism which has caused some controversy seeks to perpetuate this marginalisation).

I think of an example in someone like Jasmine, one of Six Inch Killaz' singers who died in 2000 from a drug overdose, and who was basically a whore most of the time; well the band was pretty much her only way out from her marginalised, fucked up life. Jasmine was a warm, funny person, a friend. I'm not saying that society is to blame for her death, but I am saying that she got pretty much the level of respect from society that our people are used to.

The Internet has been a great thing for us as it's enabled us to form stronger and less breakable networks and communities. To me it's an enfranchising medium and through sites like yours, Vicki, I really believe that it's done much to demarginalise us. To foreground us and give us a voice.

VR: What do you think you have to offer the transgender community, anything at all?
MK: Nothing much really. I hope I've been mildly entertaining.

VR: Do you have a favorite movie and why?
MK: Oh. That's almost impossible to answer. It would be something by David Lynch at the moment, inevitably.

VR: Who is your favorite fiction character(s), in literature or in the movies, and why?
MK: My favourite fictional character is Andy Warhol, the pop artist.

VR: Can you recommend us a motivating or inspirational book that has changed your perception about the world?
MK: No, I like to make my own mind up about the world. Don't mistake the map for the territory, you know?

VR: What words of wisdom would you give a to someone who is reaching out for help?
MK: Let's talk about it. It's always good to talk.

VR: Do you have a final statement, for our readers?
MK: I'm sorry I don't get time to update my site more often. But at least you don't get to see me get older…

Note from Vicki Rene: I can not say Miss K and I talk every other day, more like once a year! If you have been around my with my website, you know this lady is on page 10 of my "Prettiest of the Pretty", so we have know of each other for a bunch of years.

When I first got a computer and decided I wanted the world to see me but I figured I need a lot of pretty ladies to be on my site to get people there, I found Miss K! Said to myself if I can't marry her I should at least have her on my site<smile>!

A couple of months later I got an email from her stating "I hear I am one of your "Bestest Friends", who are you?" Since that email we have been friends, maybe not bestest but I would like to think better than good! I do hope one day to get over to the UK and meet up with this beautiful woman that has eyes as they say "to die for".

Good luck Miss K with the new band and I do hope you get every thing you want out of it!

You can also find more information about Miss K, by visiting her on her WEBSITE