Divine, 1973
Photography and commentary by Michael Zagaris

“Divine is a male actress in the John Waters’ movie, and Divine was in three John Waters’ movies, and the most famous was the first one. In the end of the movie, Divine is in an alley with a poodle. The poodle takes a shit and Divine—and this is no cuts—Divine gets down and starts eating it. And I remember this was at the Palace Theatre, the midnight show, and the audience went nuts. ‘Cause there was a lot of the Coquettes, a lot of Queens, and people just erupted. Some people were just laughing and other people were like ‘Fuck you, you bitch,’ and throwing stuff at the screen and walking out. And that was like, you know, the most notorious movie, and you know Divine was vaulted into stardom after that.

“This shoot was at Spreckels Mansion, near Buena Vista Park [in San Francisco]—it was some kid that was a queen of one of the Spreckels heirs, or I think that was the story. I did these pictures for After Dark magazine. I remember I brought in my own lights and everything. It was a great session… Divine was just, Divine. We kind of hit it off and Divine started calling me, like at midnight, 2am (doing Divine impression), ‘Michael, where are you?’ Sort of like the one guy in high school who would keep calling you and you’d think, ‘Man, I’d rather go to a nunnery than be out with this guy.’ I ended up going back for another shoot and Divine is at the end of this room that was totally stripped out, and Divine’s sitting on this caftan—it’s all leopard [print]. I’m trying to start setting up the umbrellas and everything, and she’s like [Divine voice, patting sofa] ‘Come on and visit…’ And I’m like, ‘You know I really like you, but, you know, let’s get these pictures.’ And she’s like ‘Well I want to suck your cock.’ And I’m like (clears throat), ‘Can we uh—let’s, let’s just take care of this first; we got a little session to do here.’

And I’m thinking, ‘God, how am I going to get out of this?’ I remember that I drank a lot of coffee that morning, so I was nervous anyway. So I started to shoot the pictures and Divine is really coming on and now I have to use the bathroom, so I said, ‘Hey, where is the bathroom here?’ ‘It’s right down the hall, honey.’ So I go into the bathroom but it doesn’t have a lock on it; it’s got one of those little eyelets where it clicks. So I’m thinking, ‘You know, I don’t need another role of film, but first I gotta pack my stuff up, and then I’ll say I’ll come back except I won’t.’ And so now there’s pounding at the door, and I didn’t know who it was, so I say ‘hey, somebody’s in here.’ And then came more pounding and I’m like [clears throat] ‘bathroom’s in use,’ and all of a sudden I’m like ‘fuck,’ and the door splinters at the top, and I turn around—it’s Divine, who pins me up against the wall, starts to go down on me, and I’m like ‘fuck.’ All of a sudden another girl shows up, and she says [haughtily], ‘Well. Excuse me…’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no… it’s okay.’ I basically wrestled him away, and I grabbed my camera gear, left my umbrella, my stands, and got out of there.”

See more photography by Michael Zagaris