Monika: Your personal archive contains so many extraordinary photographs, from the clubs of New York to the stages, runways and celebrations that followed. When did you first realize that photographs could become a kind of autobiography?
Rosalyne: In clinical practice we say, “If it is not documented, it didn’t happen” [laughs]. When I was moving from NYC to California, I left a bucket of photographs at my aunt’s house in VA. I don’t know why I thought this would lighten my load, but I did. I went back there twice, started rifling through the pictures, and threw many of them out. It felt like throwing out memories. I have friends here in Cally who lost everything to the fires, and all their pictures were gone, not saved on the cloud. I look back at pics sometimes and am taken through a variety of emotions.
At one point I was secretly hoping that I would experience a fire to be able to LET GO of all these material things and just be free. But on a whole other level, material things (whether they are currently worth anything to anyone else) mean so much to me. They are the vein of my existence at times. Pictures remind me of life experiences, and because my childhood family life was cut short, I am glad I have other memories to review through my photographs.
Monika: One photograph in your archive shows you at seventeen at the Times Square bar when it was still the Deuce. Looking at it today, I cannot help wondering whether seventeen was perhaps a little too young for a girl to be frequenting clubs like that.
Rosalyne: I was involved in the club scene at 14 and remember sleeping with the bartender of the Ipanema, a Latin club in Manhattan. He was 34. I also remember sleeping with a bodybuilder from a club called the Broadway in Brooklyn. I was 14, and he was in his 30s. No, it is absolutely not a place for a young adult, or an adolescent, to be. But there was nowhere else for me to really find my authentic self in those years.
Monika: Lynda Roberts, who took you in when you were seventeen and even made the famous silver corset you wore onstage, seems to have played a very special role in your life. What did Lynda give you that went beyond teaching you how to survive?
Rosalyne: Motherly love and guidance. She celebrated my core talents and tried to nourish them in the best way possible. However, back then, that included Quaaludes, Tuinals, black beauties (and I don’t mean Iman), coke, etc. At her funeral, with her family who had disowned her, I spoke. And I played Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings.” I also set them straight with regard to what they missed out on when they disowned her. She had so much potential, so many talents!
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| “There was nowhere else for me to really find my authentic self in those years.” |
Monika: I realize I somehow never asked you this question in our first interview. When you came out, did your mother embrace you as her daughter? And do you feel any connection to her in the way you look, carry yourself, or even in your style and mannerisms?
Rosalyne: I was 13 when my mom died. As the years went on, my mom’s best friends and family told me that she knew something was up but never knew how or what to do with that something. I remember that at summer camp my mom had to speak with the counselors to make sure I had my own place to change, as I was deeply uncomfortable changing where others were. And now, even at the ripe age of 66, I will run around naked wherever and with whomever. I love being naked (at least in a certain flattering light… like purple) [smiles].
Monika: There is a photograph of you dancing with your father at your stepsister’s wedding, accompanied by the memory that he eventually opened his doors to you again. How would you describe your relationship with your father today?
Rosalyne: Well, since he is dead too, it is great LOL! Actually, I moved back in with my dad after my time on the streets in my late teens. When I got clean in ’87, he attended three of my “clean” anniversaries. I will always be grateful to him. He did not have an easy life either, and I added to his misery.
He died when I first started attending college. He did get to see me in a loving relationship with a man who cared greatly for me. But he never got to experience all the amazing things I have accomplished in life, and for that I feel a loss. I truly believe that his allowing me back home saved my life!
Monika: Your archive also preserves memories of friends such as Sugar Belane and Soy, people whose lives ended far too early. How has your relationship with grief and remembering changed over the years?
Rosalyne: My dear Monika. I grew up in a time when the AIDS pandemic took so many people. I got clean in 1987 and saw AIDS ravage families. I was in the club scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s and saw AIDS wipe out the queer communities. My mom died by suicide when I was 13. I have experienced too much grief, and that is why I laugh as much as I can. I worked in hospice care for 15 years, and in the past three years I have lost the closest people in my life. Grief is a mthrfkr. But somehow I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and I celebrate life at moments as if there is not a care in the world. And I don’t drown my sorrows or losses in alcohol, substances or food. So now I have three cats to carry me when the days of life get the best of me.
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| With her best friend Maria. |
Monika: Choosing a name is such a deeply personal decision, one that can hold layers of significance and meaning. How did you come to choose your name? Does it carry a special resonance for you, perhaps representing a part of your journey or embodying a particular feeling or aspiration?
Rosalyne: There is no real attachment to my name. My original name was Roe, but because I have an essential tremor, folx would not always say it correctly. Yes, I am caviar, the original ROE. When I got clean, people said it is all about change, so I made it Rosalyne [smiles]. It is still hard for people to hear in a crowd. I was with two close friends a few years ago, and we passed the most beautiful woman. I told her how absolutely beautiful she was and asked her name. She said, “Vania.” Since then I tell people to call me Vania [smiles]. When I am in a salsa club and guys ask my name, I say BROOK, as it is easily heard [smiles]. Plus then they can’t google me!
Monika: Do you remember the first time you met a woman of transgender experience in person? What was that experience like, and how did it make you feel?
Rosalyne: When I first met a woman of trans experience, that was not what we called them. I wrote about her in BRANDED T: my experience seeing her at 14 and then at 33, when I was doing social work and social justice work. I remember how beautiful she was and what became of her. It broke my heart then, and it still does right now. Thanks a lot for making me depressed while answering these damn questions [laughs].
Monika: Recovery became another major chapter of your life, and your photographs include one from the Narcotics Anonymous World Convention in New Orleans in 1987. What did recovery teach you about yourself that nothing else could have taught you?
Rosalyne: My dear, life offers lessons every day. Recovery is still the foundation for my life, and in recovery I just learn about life differently. I have a clear head. I look at my side and what I can do to be a better person. I try to stay in the moment, not to dwell in the past or worry about the future. I achieved academic excellence in school, whereas before recovery, and even in the first seven years of recovery, all I thought I had to offer the world was my shell, my looks, my fantasy!
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| “I hope people will say I made them laugh.” |
Monika: Looking back, do you think the woman who survived addiction and the woman who later became a therapist are more closely connected than people might imagine?
Rosalyne: I am always one step away from being locked up in a psych ward [laughs]. So I truly know the importance of therapy, the importance of check-ins, the importance of introspection.
Monika: An extraordinary collection of awards and certificates for social justice work has accumulated over the years. Do those objects still mean something to you, or are the people whose lives you touched far more important than the trophies?
Rosalyne: I am truly humbled by this question, and actually by what you wrote about me before this newest interview. I hope people will say I made them laugh. I hope people will remember me and say I touched their hearts or that I assisted them through hard times. My awards and trophies look good behind me on Zoom. They make people think I am smart… smoke and mirrors [laughs]. I had trophies when I was young and threw them all out. I wish I had them today. Again, material things mean a lot to me. But I think I will have my memorial before I die, so I can hear what people really think about me.
Monika: The Courage Award from New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir and Mayor David Dinkins must have been a particularly interesting recognition. What did it mean to receive an award from an institution like the NYPD after spending so much of your life challenging institutions?
Rosalyne: Back then I was receiving awards left and right, and only because I was a public figure. That time of my life made me feel relevant. But it also fed an ego that needed to be humbled. I am glad I have lived long enough to sometimes feel irrelevant, but also to sometimes feel deeply grounded in not being on the front line any longer.
Monika: There is also that wonderful photograph of you as Grand Marshal of the Brooklyn Pride Parade in 2000. What do you remember about that day, and what did being welcomed back to Brooklyn in that way mean to you?
Rosalyne: Lynda made me that outfit. When I was Grand Marshal of Brooklyn, I thought, “Wow, why am I not Grand Marshal of Manhattan?” When I was leaving my last substantial non-substantial ex, he told me, as I was walking out the door, “You will never be satisfied, you will never be happy.” And I said, “Well, it’s a great journey looking for it!” When I received my baccalaureate degree, I thought, “It’s not a master’s,” and when I received my master’s, I thought, “It’s not a PsyD!”
Monika: Around the same period, you completed your MSW while already an established activist and leader. What did returning to formal education give you personally, beyond the degree itself?
Rosalyne: Diarrhea [laughs]. I know I had to get an advanced degree in order for folx to take me seriously, especially since I still wanted to dress like a hoochy momma… and still do!
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| “My patients used to tell me to never grow old.” |
Monika: Your photographs also place you beside Professor David Valentine, whose later work Imagining Transgender became an important contribution to the history and anthropology of gender. What do you remember about the conversations you had with him when he was working around you?
Rosalyne: David was a blast. Here I was, the director of a program, and I did not have an advanced degree as yet. He was a PsyD intern, so I thought my shit didn’t stink. However, he had to meet with Dr. Barbara Warren (a leader in trans progressive health care) in order to get his paperwork signed. David was an amazing man to work with. I have a five-minute educational video where we are all naked (I can’t help myself).
Monika: There was also that televised interview with Barbara Walters alongside people connected to the Gender Identity Project, and your archive recalls that experience rather vividly. When you watch old television coverage of trans people today, what do you notice that journalists have learned, and what have they still not learned?
Rosalyne: Laverne Cox has done so much for the world around trans issues. I adore her on so many levels, and we have a beautiful connection from before her celebrity existence. She changed the dynamics surrounding what you can ask a person of trans experience with regard to medical interventions and/or surgery and genital appearance. When I was educating health care workers, especially about housing opportunities for the homeless, they would ask how to place women if they had outies, or men if they had openings (my language). And they would ask how we find out what they have. I would ask them what they had, how long it was, what the girth was, or whether they had inner and outer lips, and they would be insulted… I rest my case.
Monika: Working alongside and presenting with people such as Dr. Harry Benjamin and others involved in the early development of transgender medicine must have given you a unique perspective. How did those encounters shape your understanding of the relationship between medicine and trans people’s lived experiences?
Rosalyne: It was very uncomfortable for me at the time, in the early ’90s and up until I left NYC. I knew the work was important, but it made me feel that I was not being seen for how I saw (and see) myself, with the visibility of being a poster child for a neo-movement. And the health care industry was uncomfortable with those of us who were out. It was Dr. Barbara Warren’s power that changed medical care for people with a trans history or journey from pathology to empowerment. I still had so much internal work to do that it was an uncomfortable time while also being groundbreaking.
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| Photo: Annie Cabrera. |
Monika: Years after leaving New York, hospice work became part of your professional life. What did spending time with people at the end of their lives teach you about what really matters?
Rosalyne: Balance, balance, balance. My patients used to tell me to never grow old, and I would tell them, “Don’t worry, I am not planning on it!” Everything is important and nothing is important. Life is life is life is life. I truly hope I don’t have to come back, although I believe there are angels watching over me!
Monika: Your archive describes salsa as becoming a kind of “drug of choice” for you. What does dancing give you that words, therapy, activism or even sex never could?
Rosalyne: It is not a this or that. I truly believe in meditative practice, and when you are on a dance floor with a great lead, it is like gliding through life. In addition, I get to dress up like a hoochy momma and celebrate my femininity. Sometimes I get ready to go out and I think, “Girl, do you know how old (mature) you are? Are you really going out in those shorty shorts?” I turn to myself and say, “FK IT… go.” And I do. What a celebration of life and of the fk its. The music is amazing, as are the hugs and the superficial engagements. It is perfect for the heart and the soul.
Activism was about fighting and being placed in a box, a box that I don’t totally fit in. So my activism now is about supporting those on the front line, educating, counseling, engaging! And sex, Monika, sex. I always had a hypersexual appetite, and that has changed in the past year. The only person I have fornicated with has been my masseur, and I am tired of him. I think I need another masseur!
Monika: Dancing, traveling, dressing up, walking runways and appearing in front of cameras have all remained sources of joy. Has pleasure itself become a form of resistance for you?
Rosalyne: Resilience… Laugh until you’re dead… Find joy somewhere, somehow… I am not scared of dying. I definitely do not and will not allow for suffering. But for the most part I am nowhere near ready to go. I still have some hopes and dreams, and I want to be able to collect my Social Security and use that money to make life more comfortable.
I surely do know that money doesn’t bring one happiness, but it sure does change security, financial security, that is. I laugh at everything and I cry at everything as well. Feelings can sometimes be overwhelming, but I am also so grateful that I can still feel. I am not numb. And though the “bitter” bug crawls into my spirit at times, I know it won’t last, because my gratitude for this amazing, authentic life I have led has been a true gift!
END OF PART 2
All photos: courtesy of Rosalyne Blumenstein.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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