BONUS NUMBER 10: ON PALM SUNDAY, SISTER MISSIONARY POSITION EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
Even now, I’m not sure what to make of Sister Missionary Position, one of San Francisco's Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an order of gay male nuns dedicated to the "promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt." Despite her Roman Catholic trappings -- described by George De Stefano in Mandate's June 1983 interview with the sister as "nun haute couture: a large, dramatic headpiece and veil (or 'wimple'), a full flaring skirt gathered at the waist, a shawl, and elbow-high black leather gloves. She's also wearing silver wire-rim glasses and, mirabile dictu, a beard. A full, bushy, gray-streaked beard" -- all of this notwithstanding, Sister MP, or Sister Mish, or Sister Mish Posish (all proper forms of address in this unusual case) and her order operate far from the Vatican. They are, of course, in no way affiliated with the Church of Rome."
When this extraordinary order was founded in 1979, Pope John Paul II was the stern, ultra-conservative Polish pontiff. He would surely have hurled anathemas at Sister Mish and all in her charitable organization. Today, we can almost imagine a discreet twinkle in the eyes of kindly Pope Francis. Would he bestow a blessing? It's more likely that Sister would beat him to the punch.
Sister Mish came to Modernismo for the interview prior to a photo shoot on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. As he -- pronouns he/him/his, we soon learned -- breezed through the corridors of Modernismo, he bestowed benedictions right and left, leaving our young Roman Catholic receptionist startled, along with African American protestant colleagues, Asian Buddhists, and several Jews who claimed to have seen everything — before today. Introduced to our unflappable publisher, George Mavety, Sister praised him for "promoting adoration. I'm sure you keep the faithful on their knees." George's unfailing aplomb resulted in a wide smile and a demi-genuflection. Having met his match in unscripted theatricality, he wisely ceded center stage to Sister.
In my office, De Stefano, Freeman, and I interviewed Sister Mish, after which we were joined by photographer Charles O'Neal -- or Naakkve, his nom de guerre. He was one of our regular and most reliable contributors. Then Naakkve, George De Stefano, Sister, and I took a cab to midtown for the photo shoot outside the cathedral. Such a gender-fuck spectacle was surely never before witnessed on those hallowed steps.
Did Sister Mish tell us this joke in the taxi en route to St. Patrick's, or did I hear it somewhere else? Shortly after Pope John Paul II showed his true colors as an intolerant, homophobic pontiff, St. Peter asks the Lord, "Will there ever be another Polish pope?" To which the Lord answers, "Not in my lifetime!"
De Stefano's article captures our pixieish visitor in -- I almost said her element. Perhaps his or her "ecclesiastical element manqué" says it better? In the shadow of the cathedral, "She capers about, striking a series of reverent (and some not-so-reverent) poses. Soon onlookers intrigued by this singular sight gather and watch. Before long cameras other than Naakkve's are clicking and a buzz of amusement and perplexity spreads through the crowd. A Nikon-bearing Japanese tourist asks, ' Who is she?' "
I don't recall my answer, but according to De Stefano I replied, "She's a gay male nun from San Francisco" as though it were the everyday occurrence at this venerable edifice. He reported that "the Japanese walks away, bemused by the strange ways of these Occidentals." Next "another man, middle-aged, pinch-faced and clearly perturbed, stalks up to Sister and demands in a heavy Irish brogue, 'What're ya doin' in that oufit?'
" ' I'm a nun,' Sister sweetly replies.
" ' Some nun y'are!' the Irishman retorts before storming off."
Chatty and charming, Sister Mish told us at the interview that his order upholds the tradition of camp humor, "which has saved gays over the centuries. So I see the Sisters as being on a mission of holy hilarity, there to deflate the pompous balloons of an arrogant, patriarchal clergy that would have us subject to guilt and their narrow way of looking at the world."
Along with the stated mission of promoting joy and eliminating guilt, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, most of whom take such outrageous names as Sister Homo Fellatio and Sister Mary O'Stop, have practiced -- dare I say it? -- Christian charity from the start. Among their projects have been distribution of condoms to San Francisco bar patrons in the early days of AIDS. Later, at Modernismo in 1983, Sister Mish expatiated on their current war against V.D. "We saw the rest of the world preparing for war," he said, "and we thought, It doesn't make sense to fight people but it does make sense to fight V.D." They wrote and printed a pamphlet that was commended and distributed by V.D. clinics across the country. In those early days, they also raised significant amounts for Kaposi's sarcoma research; for resettlement of gay Cuban refugees; for animal shelters; and some $5,000 for the 1982 gay Olympics.
A flash forward to 2020: Shortly before I began writing this memoir, the U.K.'s Guardian.com ran a feature on the Sisters. I was surprised to read that, after more than forty years, the order is stronger and more populous than ever. The Guardian reported that while members of the order are "best known for their effervescent street drag shows, their ministry is anything but a performance. The Sisters raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for underserved grassroots organizations," among them grants to legal aid clinics serving LGBTQ+ asylum seekers; an alliance empowering deaf queer people; and a community safe house for black and indigenous trans people, "just to name a few." In that annus horribilis 2020 when the gangster Trump and his criminal administration ignored Covid-19 just as Reagan and his malefactors had done forty years earlier in the AIDS pandemic, the Sisters handed out more than 1,000 face masks in San Francisco's Mission Dolores Park.
Long after Sister Missionary Position blessed us at Modernismo, the Guardian's 2020 article reported that from a group of fewer than ten at the outset, "there are today hundreds of Sisters in different orders across four continents."
Hail Sisters, full of grace.
And here’s George De Stefano’s full article from Mandate in June 1983.