"Marilyn Monroe’s suicide made headlines when I was twenty-two years old and struggling to find my place in the world. We were both working class in background, but there any comparison ended. While I was a doctor’s assistant by day and a pariah dyke wearing boys’ clothes by night, Marilyn was the most heterosexual, “most beautiful” and most desired in the public world. She was a star, she kept company with America’s biggest male stars—Mickey Mantle of baseball, Arthur Miller of literature, John F. Kennedy of politics. And at what seemed the height of a gloriously successful career, she killed herself. Or that was the story. then. Since, it has changed, from a conspiracy that she was murdered, to the more plausible reason: the accidental overdose of an addict. I was upset by her death; if she could not succeed in life, how on earth could I? And yet, her image did not fade; she continues to hold a position as an icon of sexual power."