The Morthouse

Here’s one of my favorite segments from the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, which was filmed between the mid- and late 1980s in New York City.

After I saw it for the first time a couple of months ago (I’m not sure what took me so long), I started Googling the people featured in the film, only to find that many of the most memorable characters are dead. For instance, Venus Xtravaganza (“What is wrong with you, Pedro? Are you going through it?”) was found strangled under a bed in a hotel room in 1988.

Dorian Corey’s story is much, much stranger, though better documented. She’s the red-haired old-timer dropping knowledge in this clip. After her death in 1993, a half-mummified body—wrapped in Naugahyde, shot in the head, and believed to have been dead since the late 1960s or early 1970s—was found in a closet in her cluttered Harlem apartment. In 1994, New York Magazine published an article about it: “The Drag Queen Had a Mummy in Her Closet.”

I won’t spoil the story (go read the article), but here’s some wisdom from Raul Figueroa, a detective in the New York City medical examiner’s office:

People just wrap a body in whatever’s available. It’s just spontaneous. You wrap it up. Then you put it in a suitcase. Then you put it in the closet. Then you just look at it periodically and wish it would go away.