Tanqueray – I’ve Always Been Different, Part 2: Podcast 164

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In the first part of my interview with Tanqueray, we heard the striking story of Tanqueray’s early life – long before she became such as viral sensation on social media as a result of her appearances on Humans of New York. She was called Stephanie and she’d had a tough upbringing, raised by a strict single mother in an all-white upstate New York area, and then a teenage pregnancy, an unfortunate relationship, and a desire to start a new life had somehow conspired to land her in jail as a teenager. When she was released, she moved to Manhattan – and worked in a clothing factory, this was back in the days when the city had a garment district, attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, and ended up appearing as a much in-demand go-go dancer in clubs such as the Peppermint Lounge. It was the 1960s, and she enjoyed a varied and exciting existence: she had a short career as an escort, became a seller of stolen goods, mixed with pimps, mobsters and The Temptations – and fell in love with an Italian called Carmine, who she married before discovering his drug addiction.

But as the 1970s dawned, the go-go bars in New York suddenly seemed rather old-fashioned, quaint, and in terms of sexual excitement, tame and unexciting. If you could now see newly-explicit sex films in theaters, well… customers were keen to see something different and more daring in a live environment too. That left Stephanie at a crossroads: there were two options – she could either accept the brave, new world and became more sexual – which she referred to as ‘working dirty’ – or she could revert to being a more old-fashioned burlesque performer, and rely on tease, with a less racy act and props. Stephanie decided to follow the burlesque route and become Tanqueray.

Stephanie and I recorded many of our conversations, and this is the second and concluding part of her story.

This podcast is 40 minutes long.

You can listen to the first part of the Tanqueray story here.

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Ronnie Bell

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