Just when you thought an already terrifying and cryptically weird show couldn’t get any stranger, Lady Gaga’s addition to the American Horror Story: Hotel cast seems to have taken that flaming torch of insanity and gone full supernova.
On Wednesday night’s edition of AHS, we delve deeper into the background of the "Liz Taylor" character that is in all of the episodes so far is a tall, older man who dresses in drag and works the bar at the hotel and hangs out with Cathy Bates' character, Iris.
We learn that he is not gay, but married with a kid, but married his wife because "she was his same dress size." He has always traveled for his work, and he and his colleagues would frequent the AHS: Hotel where, alone at night, he had his freedom to dress up in women's furs and nightgowns and prance around in front of the hotel mirror in secrecy.
Except, we learn that the "Countess" (Lady Gaga) has been watching him. Since she is herself a vampire, her perceptions of people are a bit tweaked, and she lets him know that though he "looks like a man and walks like a man, he 'smells' like a woman." "Not your skin" she says "your blood." To which he breaks down and cries as if a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
"Become who you were born to be" she says to him. Then they have a strange girly braiding-each-others-hair-and-doing-each-other's-makeup scene where Gaga shaves his head, renounces his real man name (Nick) and christens him with his new female name, Liz Taylor.
He/She is feeling pretty awesome until he runs into his macho coworkers in the hallway:
**WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE**
Co-worker #1: What in the holy hell? What is this, Nicky? Are you a fag? Holy sh*t! I took a sip of his Sprite on the plane. What if he has AIDS? How could you let me do that?
Nick/Liz Taylor: I'm... I'm not gay.
Co-worker #: You are so toast at the office, man. And if you think Janet isn't going to tell Tracy... Do you have AIDS? I need to know. Tell me, you god*amn faggot!
Nick/Liz Taylor: I'm not gay!
After Gaga appears and slices the throats of the bullies, she compares the plight of Trans cross dressers to vampires as she says, "We have two selves. One the world needs us to be. Compliant and a shadow. Ignore it and life is forever suffering."
Later, as Liz Taylor relays the story, Iris regurgitates the favorite line of all LGBT lines: "You're so brave."
Of course, the idea that coming out as trans ends your “world of suffering,” is kind of silly. Considering, that the suicide rates for trans people who go through reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the general population. And the rate for those who don’t have the surgery is still significantly higher.
But hey, by all means, let’s continue telling people they can solve their problems by having their anatomy removed. Seems like a winning idea.
