Leave It to Shivelva to Put Camp Back in Campaign

“You won’t have any trouble finding her. Him. Her. Him . . . “

I am in pursuit of a fairly large drag queen, who is somewhere among the hordes surging out of a theater at the Directors Guild. The event is the opening night of the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The quarry is the insouciant Shivelva Kennedy-Sinatra, a night-life habitue who is lately given to chiffon and shiny wigs the color of banana splits. The guide is Kim Garfield, a film festival publicist, who is pointing me toward the queen in question.

“She has a terrible makeup job,” Garfield sniffs. “Her lipstick’s on her teeth.”

Indeed. I think I can say with some confidence that Shivelva is the only person at the event with dental lipstick.

“Hello, dahling,” Shivelva purrs through great chunky mounds of Love That Red. She is communicating in glamour-speak--which favors the letter H over the letter R--the lingua franca of cross-dressers everywhere. She is wearing a rhinestone choker, a floral formal of green chiffon and black patent-leather Capezios. Dangling from her wrist is a gold lame handbag.

“It’s a pocketbook,” Shivelva corrects.

For all her lightheartedness, tonight isn’t all fun and games for Shivelva. Like eight out of 10 Americans these days--or so it seems--she is riding the campaign trail. This will be a night for pressing the flesh and kissing the air. But unlike virtually 10 out of 10 Americans, Shivelva is running for First Lady.

“I want everyone to be fabulous ,” she says, “sort of like Shivelva.”

It is a couple of days earlier. Shivelva and I are huddled on a bench near the La Brea tar pits. Shivelva is chewing a hot dog and waxing rhapsodic.

“I love the tahpit,” she trills. “The dinosaurs here in the tah remind me of so many of my close friends.”

Shivelva is the trashy alter ego of eminent Advocate night life writer J. V. McAuley, who dons dresses for the sheer sport of it--to make sport of it, for that matter. Shivelva sprang full-grown from McAuley’s forehead in February and immediately leaped onto the cover of the Advocate. Imagine. Cover girl extraordinaire--at 42 yet. (McAuley is a few steps behind her at 33.)

Despite the summer heat, Shivelva is resplendent in a zillion-color pantsuit and politically incorrect bunny parka. “I’m wearing this fur wrap and no need to throw ketchup on it,” she says. “I’ve already got lipstick all over it.”

Shivelva’s claim to being a leader of men began with her informal title as the queen of night life. Accordingly, she likes to cut to the front of nightclub lines, declare herself a Kennedy and demand immediate entrance.

“I can’t think what I would stand in line for,” snips Shivelva, named to immortalize a brand of synthetic fleece.

Now Shivelva is throwing her fishnet across the country. Another Angeleno, performance artist and actual woman Beth Lapides, is also duking it out for First Lady. It’s a pretty flimsy face-off, though. There are the trappings of a real, live campaign--posters, appearances and the like--but the race isn’t even to the swift: Neither dame is on any ballot.

Call it recreational politics.

Shivelva joined the presidential ticket that is sponsored by gay activists and Queer Nation and is headed by Chicago drag queen Joan Jett Blakk, who told the Advocate magazine: “We’re puttin’ the camp back in campaign --takin’ out the pain , puttin’ in the camp. I’m the only candidate who can successfully skirt all the issues.”

Which is precisely what Blakk did at the Democratic Convention. She came sublimely garbed in an American flag dress, seven-inch platform heels and a tricolored hair bow. Needless to say, she made off with that most coveted convention commodity--the press interview. “I told them I was going to make it America the Beautiful again,” she says in her husky, Joan Crawford-est voice.

While Blakk chatted up the Democrats, Shivelva courted the West Coast and dreamed about a possible foray into the Republican Convention, which begins Monday. “Shivelva may be there elbowing Barbara Bush out of the way. Pearls are out, don’t you think?” Shivelva says, stroking her pocketbook. “I’m so tired of pearls.”

Drag experts agree that the Blakk-Kennedy-Sinatra ticket is the first cross-dressing campaign for the Oval Office. And while the art of drag receives a mixed reception in the gay community, you could look at it as a playful outgrowth of the gay activism of recent years, otherwise motivated by much grimmer reality.

“There’s nothing wrong with drag queens, you know,” Shivelva says primly. “Once somebody said to me, ‘Why? Why do you do this?’ And I said, ‘For fun. It’s just for fun. That’s all there is to it.’ ”

Shivelva has fun campaigning at nightclubs--although she might be accused of preaching to the converted. Her technique involves getting on stage, where there is one, and waving.

“Glamour is my platform,” she says. “Glamour can solve all the world’s problems, I believe. Don’t you?”

On the question of aid to the former Soviet Union, for example, Shivelva proffers the glamour analysis. “It’s awfully cold over there, and I think really what we should do is buy them all furs.”

Despite her great will to be chic, Shivelva says she spends mere minutes gussying herself up for campaign appearances. “Put a little lipstick on my teeth and I’m out the door.”

We are cruising back to Shivelva’s West Hollywood residence, Hyannispit. Even in motion, she is relentlessly, as she likes to say, stumping.

“Vote for me and I’ll set you free,” she yips out the car window to some unsuspecting pedestrian. For all her determination, Shivelva is mindful of the tenuousness of things, including, well, Shivelva. At the film festival fete, Bill Jones, a filmmaker, noted that the campaign would end in November and with it, Shivelva. “You’ll have to come up with a new persona,” he said.

Shivelva gave him a toss of her wig.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Have you ever heard of Joan Blondetaine?”