Dorriene Diggs, 70, whose 40-year relationship with her domestic partner, Diane until Diane’s passing in 2020, the couple’s tense relationship with their respective parents, and Dorriene’s current living arrangement with her straight sister Jo, were the focus of a final season episode of the popular TV series “Queer Eye.”

In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Diggs told of how her appearance on the show has impacted her life. She elaborated on the many aspects of her life experiences that she told to the five “Queer Eye” co-hosts who interviewed her and her sister in their D.C. home. 

Although her parents and her partner’s parents, who have since passed away, were not accepting of their relationship, Diggs has said most of her family members at this time reacted positively to her appearance on the show.

“They loved it,” she told the Blade. “Yes, everybody that saw the show called me and said they loved the show, they really enjoyed themselves watching it.”

Through an arrangement with D.C.’s Rainbow History Project, the “Queer Eye” show featuring Diggs and her sister was presented in a special screening on a large video screen at the D.C. History Center in January.

“Dorriene, a 70-year-old Black lesbian living in Washington, D.C., had spent decades building a life with her partner while navigating silence within her own family,” a “Queer Eye” statement announcing the episode on Diggs states. 

“The Fab Five did not arrive to introduce Dorriene to herself, but to help ensure her story was finally heard in full,” the statement says.  

Blade: Can you tell us how your appearance on the “Queer Eye” program came about? How did they find out about you?

Diggs: You know, I still don’t have all the details. I think it was my niece, Missy. And she knows somebody there from “Queer Eye.”

Blade: So, did you first learn about it when someone from “Queer Eye” contacted you?

Diggs: No, the “Queer Eye” guy knocked on my bedroom door and started talking. I was in my bedroom watching television and the next thing I know my door opened up and there was Karamo [Karamo Brown, one of the “Queer Eye” co-hosts] with his big black cowboy hat on, opening the door grinning. … They contacted Jo first. And when they came here, they realized there was a gay woman in the house, too. Because my name was not mentioned at first. After they came here, they learned about me, because when Missy reached out to them, she reached out to them about Jo. But that doesn’t bother me. This was all about Jo in the beginning, and not me. … They started talking to me and Jo. And he said, Dorriene, ‘you’ve done so much for so many people, it’s time for someone to do something for you.’ That’s what they said. He said, ‘this is the day we’re doing it for you.’

And so,  they put me and my sister up in a hotel for a week. They gave us a personal driver to take us anywhere we wanted to go. And then they took us to a bunch of places. We didn’t know why they were doing all of this. We had no idea that they were renovating the house and renovating our bedrooms. We had no  idea.

Blade: What was your reaction when you saw the home renovation?

Diggs: It was amazing. And they bought us all new complete wardrobes – clothes, shoes. But most of the stuff they got me I gave away to a women’s shelter. But it was so nice. Actually, to meet the guys. I’ve been watching the show for 10 years. I have watched it from the beginning. And actually, it brought me and my sister closer – really. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been. She’s my baby sister – not the baby, but next to the baby. She’s the younger one.

Blade: What has been the reaction to your appearance on the show? Do more people now recognize you?

Diggs: Yes, yes. I’m getting phone calls and it’s almost like I’m a celebrity. And I don’t want people to make a fuss over me. All the things I did I did from the heart. I really did. And I don’t want people to think I’m more than I am. I’m just a good Christian woman that believes in giving back.

And I do. God gives me help giving. That’s what I do. And I don’t want anything in return from anyone. You know, because I know what it means to not to have. I know what it means to go to bed hungry, with no food. Going to school with holes in your shoes. I know that. I know that feeling. I’ve been there. And I promised myself as a kid I would never live like this again. And when I got bold enough to leave home, I left home at 14, and I moved in with a drag queen. Damen was his name.

Blade: Did your appearance on the show change your life and your relationship with your sister?

Diggs: Yeah, yeah, it actually did. We are actually closer now than we’ve ever been. Because, like I said, I moved away from home early and I never went back. My parents had a problem with my lifestyle. They really did. My mom looked at me with such hatred. When I was old enough to say goodbye, I never looked back. And to come back around now in the last few years after Diane died, that’s when I came back here.

And at one point I stayed with my nephew Todd and his wife – but he got killed in a car accident. I couldn’t stay at his house anymore. So, then I called Jo and told her I need to get out of here. And without hesitating she came and picked me up and brought me to her home. And I’ve been here ever since.

Blade: Can you tell a little about when it came about and how you met your partner?

Diggs: We lived on 18^th Avenue in condos. I just bought one. Hers was above mine. I bought the bottom one. When my brother came over, she was getting out of her car. She was driving a Vega. And I turned to my brother and I said – this is the God’s honest truth – I said Keith, that’s the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. Just like that. And he started laughing. He said, girl you’re crazy. I said I know I’m crazy, Keith, but I’m telling you that woman right there is who I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.

Blade: And when was that?

Diggs: It was 1980 actually. And then I started going to the laundry room to do my laundry. So I started talking to her. She said, ‘I’m not speaking to you.’ Isaid ‘why not?’  She said ‘because you’re nothing but a female gigolo.’ And I said I’m not dating anymore. I’m waiting for you. ‘No, you’re too fast for me.’ I said, ‘well, I’m not giving up.’

And I didn’t give up. So, I was playing an album one day and she knocked on the door and asked what I was playing, I think. I said you liked that. She said yeah. I said OK, I’ll bring it upstairs and we can listen to it together. So, when I went up there to her apartment that day and whenever I went up there, I never left.

Blade: So, your partner’s name was Diane?

Diggs: Yes, Ruth Diane Robinson. But she hated the name Ruth. So, the only people who called her Ruth were at work, the people she worked with. Everybody else called her Diane.

Blade: And how many years were you together?

Diggs: Forty. Forty years together

Blade: And where were you living with her most of the time?

Diggs: We lived in Hagerstown the longest, Hagerstown, Md. And so, if Diane hadn’t died I probably still would have been in our house in Hagerstown.

Blade: Can you tell me a little about what you were doing career wise during those years?

Diggs: I do computers. I used to do computers. And before that I cooked. I love to cook like my mom. And then I wanted to do something else. So, I taught myself computers. I taught myself how to build computers and stuff. So, then I got my own computer business called Ida One Computer Consulting. And so, we helped build computers for people.

Blade: Around when was this, in the 1980a or 1990s?

Diggs:  Yes, in the 1980s. I think I stopped I would say around ’96, when I stopped. Because we both said we were going to retire at 55. And we did. We both retired at 55. And then she started diabetes. Every day I had to give her an injection because she was afraid of needles. She couldn’t give it to herself. So, I had to give her an injection every day One time, I don’t remember when, she had a mild stroke. And I had to take care of her. I’ve always taken care of her. And I don’t regret it. I never regretted it. It’s taking care of the one you love.

Blade: When was it that she passed away?

Diggs: In 2020. I found her on the kitchen floor.

Blade: How did your family and your extended family react to your relationship  with Diane?

Diggs: Well, her family, oh my God, they hated me – her mother the worst. Because I put a stop to them treating her really bad. I told her mother – I said never in my life – my mother raised me well. Never disrespect someone’s mother. I said but this time I’m going to disrespect you because you are going to start treating Diane like you ought to. This is a wonderful woman and you and your son and you it’s always about your son. You never, ever say anything good about your daughter. 

I said it isn’t going to happen again. You’re never going to disrespect her again. I said you take a damn good look at her because you’ll never see her again. I meant that. I grabbed Diane. I said it’s time to go. They don’t care about you.

Blade: Can you tell a little about your family?

Diggs: Yeah, I’m a triplet sister. So, it’s Dorriene, Chorine, and Chrissy — we are the triplets. So, my mom had a set of twins and a set of triplets within nine months. One of the twins died at birth. So, the other twin is Margaret.

Blade: So then how did your family react to you and Jo being on “Queer Eye”?

Diggs: Most of my family really had no problem with it.

Blade: Were  you out to them?

Diggs: Oh yeah. I was never in the closet. I didn’t give a damn what people felt about me, sweetheart. I really didn’t. I didn’t care. Because I was going to be me. And for people who didn’t like it, I wasn’t living for them, I was living for me. I’ve always been out. I had a brother who was also gay, Marvin. God rest his soul, too. But he stayed in the closet. He was in the closet until he was about 55 years old.

But everything I said on the show was the truth – my account. The things that I went through with family … You can’t tell me how I felt. If they try to make mom and dad out as perfect, they weren’t perfect. They were the worst parents. That’s my account of it.  

So yes, everything I said on that interview was the truth. That’s one thing people who know me know – I do not lie.

Blade: What are some of the things you like to do these days?

Diggs: I’m a sports lover. I love sports. So, my baseball season is getting ready to get started. Baseball is my favorite sport. Yes, I love baseball. I like the statistics of it. And watching the guys. I wish they had a women’s professional baseball team, honestly. … I’m a D.C. sports fan. The Wizards, the Nationals, the Mystics, the Caps. … And see, I’m a diehard Redskins fan and I refuse to call them the Commanders. They’re the Redskins. They will always be the Redskins to me. I love my sports teams.

Blade: Can you tell a little about the history of the house where you and Jo now live and where they did the filming of the “Queer Eye” show?

Diggs: Jo had a house on 17^th Street, I think it was Northeast because it was over there by H Street, N.E. And I think somebody wanted to buy her house. I don’t know why she moved. So, she found this house. Because she wanted to buy something where she could buy a house straight out. She didn’t want a mortgage on another house.

Blade: What are your thoughts on being on the last season of “Queer Eye?”

Diggs: Yeah, we were the last ones. We took it out with a bang, me and Jo. That was it. 

Blade: Can you say how you and Jo appearing on the show impacted your life?

Diggs: I don’t know. I’m the same person. I’ve been getting calls from people saying I saw you on the show. And friends who I haven’t seen in years have been calling. … So yeah, the show, people I haven’t seen and talked to in years have been calling. I think that’s a good thing.

Highball Productions held performances of a drag musical, ‘Defrosted,’ at JR.’s on Friday and Saturday. 

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Once upon a time in the 1940s, a teenager named Roland Loomis, who lived with his devout Lutheran parents in Aberdeen, S.D., received a hand-me-down camera from his uncle. It was a gift that would change his life.

Small and effeminate, he didn’t exactly fit with the “in” crowd of his small rural town; but he had an inner life more thrilling than anything they had to offer, anyway, and that camera became the key with which it could finally be unlocked. Waiting patiently for those precious hours when he was alone in the house, he used it to capture images of himself that expressed an identity he had only begun to explore, through furtive experiments in body manipulation that incorporated exotic costuming, erotic nudity, gender ambiguity, and what many of us might call (though he would not) self-mutilation, including the piercing of his skin and other extreme forms of physical modification.

Young Roland would go on to become famous (or perhaps, notorious) in the decades to come, but it would be under a different name: Fakir Musafar, the focal figure of filmmaker Angelo Madsen’s documentary “A Body to Live In,” which opened in Los Angeles on Feb. 27 and expands to New York this weekend. 

Like Musafar himself, who died of lung cancer at 87 in 2018, it’s a documentary that doesn’t quite follow the expected rules. Eschewing “talking head” commentators and traditional narration, Madsen spins his movie from his subject’s extensive archives and allows the information to come through the voices of those who were close to him: collaborator and life partner Cléo Dubois, performance artists Ron Athey and Annie Sprinkle, and underground publisher V. Vale are among the many who contribute their memories and impressions of him, while evocative photos and film footage create a hazy “slide show” effect to provide a guided tour of his life, his art, and his legacy. Less a biography than a chronicle of profoundly unorthodox self-discovery, it details his development from those early days of clandestine self-photography through a continual evolution that would see him become a performance artist, a central figure in the burgeoning BDSM culture, a seeker who espoused eroticism as a spiritual practice, the founder of a “Radical Faeries” offshoot for the kink/fetish community, and ultimately an elder and mentor for a new generation for whom his once-taboo ideas and explorations had essentially become mainstream – thanks in no small part to his own pioneering efforts.

It’s a fascinating, hypnotic trip into a culture which might feel disturbingly transgressive to those who have never been a part of it – yet will almost certainly feel like being “seen” to those who have. It opens a window into a lifestyle where leather, kink, BDSM, gender play, and non-monogamous “situationships” are not just accepted but viewed as natural variations on the spectrum of human sexuality; and in the middle of it all is Musafar, on a deeply personal quest to connect with the deepest part of his essence through the intense and ritualistic pursuit of an inner drive that keeps pushing him further. As one reminiscing cohort remarks during the film, it’s as if he is “trying to find an answer to a question that” he “cannot form.”

Indeed, it might be said that Madsen’s movie is an exercise in forming that question; bringing his own “transness” into the mix as he examines the various aspects of Musafar’s ever-evolving relationship with self, identity, and presentation, he evokes a timely resonance in which the imperative to make physical form match psychic self-perception becomes an irresistible force, and draws a direct line between his subject’s fluid ambiguity and the plight faced by modern trans people over the bigotry of those who think gender is strictly about genitalia. Perhaps the question has to do with whether we are defined by our identities or by our physical form – or if both are malleable, adaptable, and in a constant state of flux.

In any case, with regard to Musafar, “A Body to Live In” is unquestionably a film about transformation, not just of physical manifestation but of consciousness itself. In his journey from being little Roland, the outcast schoolboy with a secret fetish, to Fakir, the spiritual psychonaut for whom sex and gender are only walls that separate us from a true and eternal essence, he is embodied by Madsen’s reverent documentary as a being in the process of breaking free from the restrictions of physical existence, of transcending all such distinctions by letting go of life itself – something underscored not only by the section of the movie dealing with the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Musafar’s deeply-bonded community, but by his own words, spoken in a deathbed interview that serves as a connecting thread throughout the film. We are kept unavoidably aware of the mortality which – for Musafar at least – seems little more than a prison that keeps us from the unfettered joy of our true nature.

But while Madsen honors his subject as a pillar – and an under-sung hero – of contemporary queer culture, he also addresses the aspects that made him a “problematic” figure; in his life, he drew criticism over perceived cultural appropriation from the indigenous American tribes whose sacred rituals inspired the kink-flavored practices which facilitated his own spiritual odyssey, and which he popularized among his own acolytes to give rise to the still-controversial “Modern Primitive” movement that has been criticized by some for turning meaningful cultural traditions into an excuse for trendy fashion accessories. Even Musafar’s survivors, whose love for him exudes palpably from the stories and memories they share of him throughout the film, make observations that point to his flaws; yet at the same time, Madsen’s documentary makes clear that Musafar himself never saw himself as perfect, either – just as someone willing to endure the kind of suffering that most of us might find unbearable in order to get closer to perfection.

Of course, it probably helped that he enjoyed that so-called “suffering,” but that’s perhaps too glib an observation in the face of a film that so clearly makes a case for the deep and sincere commitment he held for his quest for transcendence; but it’s also a helpful reminder that his practices – which might seem macabre and twisted to the uninitiated – were also an experience of joy, an exercise in rising above pain and making it a vehicle toward enlightenment, and in achieving a deeper understanding of one’s own place in this confusing place we call the universe.

Full disclosure: “A Body to Live In” is an intense experience, replete with candid sexual conversation, frequent nudity, and graphic scenes of extreme fetish practices – like suspension by metal hooks through the skin – which might be hard to handle for those who are unprepared to be confronted by them. Even so, as dark and menacing as it might be for the squeamish outsider, the world revealed in Madsen’s eloquent portrait is full of treasures and steeped in dark beauty, and it’s hard to imagine a more fitting way than that to portray a queer pioneer like the former Roland Loomis.