*69: Justin Bond

Audiences are probably used to seeing Bond gussied up as the boozy Chantoosie Kiki Durane, one half of the punk cabaret duo Kiki & Herb. But La Bond is quite a character in his own right. He frequently performs with his band the Freudian Slippers, and coming this fall, he's going to be on the big screen again (Kiki & Herb had a cameo in the movie Imaginary Heroes) in John Cameron Mitchell's sextastic Shortbus as...Justin Bond.

In an interview with Paul Hagen in the latest issue of Metrosource Bond reveals just how he wound up aboard the shortbus.

"In the mid- to late '90s there were places where there was a lot more public sex in New York. When we did Foxy on Saturday Nights at The Cock, there were these huge competitions where people would do all these crazy sexual things on stage. And then there was a back room, where people were having, you know, all kinds of crazy sex, and I really liked that," says Justin Bond - the performer who gained renown as Kiki of the legendary duo Kiki & Herb. "I enjoyed the vibe there because it was kind of funny and it was light. It wasn't this really agro kind of like, you know, crystal meth, squeezing your nipples, 'Pick me! Pick me!' kind of vibe," he adds.

Bond oversees quite a bit of public sex in the latest cinematic tour de force from John Cameron Mitchell, Shortbus. Mitchell raised a few eyebrows when he announced that he'd make a movie in which the actors participated in actual sex acts. Nevertheless, he set out on an improvisation-based process, featuring a cast of relative unknowns, who would be willing to be totally free with their sexuality on camera.

So it's a little surprising when Bond saunters onscreen and introduces himself as "Justin Bond." But Mitchell had written the part of the "Mistress" of Shortbus - the artistically and sexually freewheeling salon around which the film's events revolve - specifically for him. "I didn't have to use the name," Bond explains. "But in the script, the character was Justin Bond. And in my real life, I've been identified so strongly with the character of Kiki for so long that it became a nice thing for me to establish an identity outside of Kiki for myself."

Read the rest of the interview after the jump.

Justin Bond ;Kiki and Herb ;Shortbus


KIKI & HEDWIG
"In the old days that sort of rock 'n' roll thing was thought of as a very head-banging, kind of straight guy thing. It's somehow interesting that two fags brought these rock 'n' roll shows to the stage," says Bond.

"It has a lot to do with this club Squeezebox that happened in the '90s," he continues, mentioning the party that once regularly rocked Don Hill's. "They had a house band and all these drag queens, and they were singing rock 'n' roll. John was really inspired by all that, and that's what got the character of Hedwig started," Bond explains. "I used to host these trashy club nights in the East Village in the '90s. And he was a big fan of Kiki, and he is a big fan of mine."

Even though Mitchell had known him for years, Justin's character still evolved over the course of the process. "Initially the part of my boyfriend was written into the movie, and he was the DJ at Shortbus. But the other characters were workshopping for like a year or two before the film was made, and they developed their storylines. I was either on tour or in college in London, so I wasn't able to really workshop a big narrative structure for myself," Bond says. Then he lets loose one of his glorious, volcanic laughs. "By then the boy who was my boyfriend who was a real DJ and I had broken up, so it was probably for the best."

And that may be how Justin Bond ended up kissing a girl. "The make-out scene felt really awkward," he says of the uproarious sequence in which he swaps spit with the charachter of Sofia, while being frequently interrupted by the remote-controlled vibrating egg in her vagina. "I kept thinking, 'God, this woman is really uptight!'" Bond says of his costar, Sook-Yin Lee. "Then once filming wrapped and we were hanging out in Cannes, I realized she's a really hot, very kind of sensual person," he explains. "I think that's testimony to her really being in the character."

Yet in a movie where the audience sees most of the main characters participating in actual sex, this touch of tongue tango is as risqué as Justin Bond gets. "The thing was, I could have, I guess, been sexual," he explains. "I was more interested in being a voyeur than actually splashing my, you know, tiddly bits on the mean screen."

Tiddly bits or no, Bond points out that being a queer artist is always a risky proposition. "I was talking to some reporter who said, 'Do you think that what you're doing is dangerous? I mean, you're in New York after all.' And I had to say, 'Well, yeah, we're in New York, aren't we? And Kevin Aviance just had his jaw broken," Bond says, referencing the well-publicized gay-bashing. "It's still a dangerous city, and it's still a culture where they're trying to make laws that prohibit gay and lesbian people from having the same civil rights as everyone else. So until the culture changes, there's still gonna be the trickle-down of these arrogant straight people who think that they can just come and fuck up your shit."

SUR LE PLAGE
However unlikely, what began with the friendship of two edgy performance artists ended up amidst the glamour of the Cannes Film Festival. "I've known Paul and PJ for years," Bond says of Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy, who play the film's central gay couple. "So it was really fun to be in a film with them. And it was great when we were all in Cannes, we all just kept pinching ourselves. We couldn't believe that we had all been sitting in Paul's living room 10 years ago, just sitting around, playing guitars and singing and smoking pot and just being friends, and then, 10 years later, we were on the beach at Cannes doing the same thing, only in front of a thousand people."

"We had a big concert the night after the premiere in Cannes," where he performed "We All Get It in the End," the anthem he sings in Shortbus, says Bond. "It was so nice of John to give me that big number at the end. I guess a lot of people had seen the film, either at the screenings or at the actual premiere at the Grand Palais. But we did that song at the finale of the show and the audience was singing along. Fantastic!"

"I'm really curious to see how people respond to it because I think it is an important film," Bond says. "I don't know if you were in New York during the blackout, but it was so unbelievable. It was the most magical night, and [Mitchell] tapped into that," he adds. "It recaptures this period in my life - the absolute joy and innocence."

BOND AMBITION
Justin Bond and I are in a quandary. It's time to talk about what comes next, but as we speak, he has not yet opened on Broadway in the latest incarnation of Kiki & Herb. "I'm sure it went beautifully. See you at the Tonys!" Bond quips, releasing another roar of laughter. He continues: "I'll be doing a lot of touring with Kiki & Herb, and I'm just going to play it by ear. I've never had a plan; I've just been lucky that things worked out the way that they have, and we'll just see what happens. I don't really want to make films for the sake of making films, and I don't want to do shows for the sake of doing shows." But he does get a bit wistful as he considers the films and shows that have led him here. "For me, even before it opens on Broadway, it's so exciting that Kenny [Mellman, aka Herb] and I, who started out playing in this restaurant that seats 50 people in San Francisco 14 years ago, ended up playing on Broadway." And after one last fiery blast of laughter, Bond neatly brings to a close a conversation that, like his career thus far, has been sexy, surprising, politically charged and often outrageous. He ends with a rousing statement of his raison d'être, and it's a damn fine one, if I do say so myself: "If any sort of trashy, messed-up, crazy queen out there wonders if it can happen, and starts to think that it can, then that's all that matters to me."