Baroness Leoness von Cleef aka Rafiq Isaacs aka Leo Best, and most elegantly known, as ‘the Leoness”, was cremated on August 23, after committing suicide by gassing himself the previous Sunday night.
She/he was only 30 when she/he decided to end her/his life. In gay parlance the Leoness was addressed only as ‘she”, but the confusion about how to refer to, or address, a drag (heterosexually known as a drag queen) is echoed in his untimely death.
Most puzzling is the fact that Leo’s career, something he had worked hard for, was at a high point. It’s no easy road for drag performers in South Africa. They mostly play clubs and bars, suffer the indignity of poky, makeshift dressing rooms, shoddy managements and sometimes indifferent audiences more intent on finding a date than watching a performance. Bluntly put, they are generally treated like shit.
The Leoness, however, was about to open a fashion show for haute couture designer Marianne Fassler’s collection at Fashion Week and was planning a nationwide tour of an autobiographical drag extravaganza that had been a long time in the planning.
He had apparently told a close friend and colleague of his suicide plans a week before. As the inimitable Rochelle, her dramatic eyes sad under widow’s veil, told me: ‘I said to him: ‘You can’t, you’ve got the big Fassler job’, and he said, ‘I suppose I can’t.’ I thought if he was busy he wouldn’t do it. But I was wrong.”
And as it turns out, we were all wrong. From the outside Leo’s life was full and fabulous but his suicide note, read at the funeral, spoke most strongly of a terrible, painful, loneliness. His death reflects an urban reality; of lives that appear so full, vibrant and successful, but are often most successful at hiding this loneliness. This is the real tragedy and the reason his death has touched so many — we all recognise that state of being.
This reality cuts across the board, not being exclusive to the gay community. Drags, however, are a symbol of defiance and courage that stands out within the gay world. Generally gay lifestyles have become mainstream. But drags still throw a huge challenge to the straight world: ‘This is me and I am different, very different. Take it or leave it.” Most definitely a lonelier road than most and Leo’s rejection by his religious and conservative family, who wanted nothing to do with the funeral, bears witness to this.
Whenever I think about Leo the tune Cabaret, one of his staples, gets stuck in my head. ‘What good is sitting all alone in your room, come to the cabaret.” The cabaret was no longer enough for the Leoness.
Suicide leaves all kinds of unanswered questions and gives rise to theories, conjecture and gossip. The mystery behind Leo’s death was, however, put to rest by a close friend: ‘My sister has made a decision and I must respect that and let her go.”