Loving Scott: A Memoir

Loving Scott is a collage-part biography and part memoir. Graphic tales are set in Paris, Berlin, Minneapolis, and New York. It is romantic, with love and beauty. It is tragic, with alcoholism and drug addiction. Yet there is hope.

Story after story follows the author's journey from young motherhood through her struggles-and those of her children-to live on their own terms. At first, she attempts to raise her son and daughter in an open and progressive atmosphere while living in the conservative Midwest of the sixties. As a child, her son Scott puts on plays and dresses in drag while his mother begins art school. When she succumbs to alcoholism, Scott becomes addicted to heroin.

Through the gender issues, recoveries, AIDS crisis, and family dramas of mother and son, they bond over mutual ties in the drag, photography, and fashion worlds of New York and Paris. Shared travels in Europe eventually enable them to overcome insecurities to find acceptance, love, and spirit.

Loving Scott is a testimony to Scott's brilliant accomplishments throughout two careers, beginning with his formative years as a drag queen in New York's East Village scene in the early nineties. Performing alternately as Miss Demeanor or Misty, he meets Ru Paul, Linda Simpson, and Nan Goldin. When the Millennium ushers in a second successful career as a celebrated makeup artist, Scott heightens the beauty of a procession of international supermodels and superstars-including Liza Minelli, Hilary Swank, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Ultimately, a loving long-term relationship and financial success give Scott the life he longed for-but sadly-only up until his tragic return to drugs and alcohol.