The Bunny of our dreams. You have heard of him, and the stories make you want to be part of his life… or at least at the same party. Well this may be the closest you’ll get to his party: a snack about how the fuck he ended up as the legendary Blue Bunny.
Written by: Amanda Sandström Beijer
We enter his apartment and it is big. His bedroom is the size of my entire apartment, but with less stuff. It is spacious, but you can tell there is an artist living there. His own art hangs on the walls: a series he photographed of gay and lesbian performers holding the pink triangle symbol from the Holocaust, a reference to history protesting ongoing violent homophobia (www.lovegaypeople.com). The toilet seat is glittery, there is a disco ball outside his door and the wardrobe is filled with glamorous bunny suits in different styles, sewn by hand by the Bunny himself.
“When I first moved to Berlin seven years ago, I had never been here before and I looked down from the plane at the TV tower and I thought, ‘What the hell is a giant mosque doing in the middle of the city?’ That’s how much I knew about Berlin.”
He is raised in Queens, New York and has a college degree that he’s never used. Scotty the Blue Bunny is famous for having one of the wittiest brains in Berlin. Spreading love and sharp irony about those who surround him as regularly as he spreads his self-deprecating humor both on and off the stage at the beautiful burlesque bar Zum Starken August.
His life abroad did not start in Germany, but in Sweden, with his heart in his throat and an idea of living the 15th century dream. Being the star guest at the Hootchy Kootchy Club at Södra Teatern, Stockholm, he was filled with expectations. Already a big name, he started touring with rap artist Mapei throughout Sweden. But things did not go as imagined.
“The response on the tour was not what one could expect as a star. And for a person who every day is waiting for Madonna to call, I had a lot of anxiety around the project and needed to heal after this disaster.”
Though he did have some moments of glory in the North, like the time he partied so hard at Berns Hotel he found himself being carried naked from the dance floor by some guards who were afraid he would get glass in his feet.
“Going back to New York I probably should have gone to recover at my parent’s but ended up going to San Francisco instead. Even though I would get gigs in Stockholm and went back often. Since having the dream as an American, to live abroad, this was the adventure.”
One day after hosting the Helsinki Burlesque Festival, he realized he did not have the energy to sit on a plane for 18 hours back to California. Back at the hotel, his friend Erochica Bamboo (Miss Exotic World 2003) told him to just move to Berlin instead.
“Her friend was a Buddhist monk and he got a visa, so she said, ‘You are a blue bunny, you could also get a visa.’”
“I wondered how, and she said that I could get a visa. Her friend was a Buddhist monk and he had got a visa. So she said, ‘You are a blue bunny, you could also get a visa.’”
After some research and with money in the bank, he decided to make the move. Shortly after, the city started becoming more popular, he started getting gigs and it suddenly was cheaper to fly from New York to Berlin than from New York to San Francisco.
“So, making friends and going to a new city sounds good, but I came in October. There was one sunny weekend and then the lights went off for half a year. But I recommend anyone thinking of moving here to come in the wintertime so they can use that dark, cold period to print papers and fill out forms and be free when the summer comes.”
Then he stayed. Not necessarily because it was Berlin, but simply because he had left:
“I got rid of everything. I left my family I left my friends; I left my culture and my country and then did all the troubles of getting the visa. I don’t think back about it as moving to Berlin. I think back on it as leaving America."
Scotty has an undergraduate degree in applied science in mathematics and a bachelor’s in art history. A degree he never did anything with.
“Without criticizing my parents or society at large, I went to college because you are supposed to. But I basically smoked weed and cheated most of my way through because I am a genius. I have been a sneak my whole life. I am a magician. I steal and I lie. But now I am a Buddhist, so it is okay. Well, that’s not exactly true, even though I have started meditating.”
Since I have personally been caught any time I’ve tried to steal anything, and probably every time I’ve lied too, my curiosity is piqued. What’s the secret behind being good at it?
“Lie to yourself and everyone will believe what you say.
So instead of using his university education, he started doing drag.
“When I got out of college, I moved to the East Village, started sucking cock and got a boyfriend who was a theatre director. So, I was around all these people who were actors and actresses and I became a poet. I wrote and read a piece in drag about masculinity that developed into a larger performance. Then I started working at the Pyramid Club and others in drag.”
But if you want to be a drag queen in New York there is a certain level of female impersonation you have to achieve.
“As much as I look like a real rabbit to you now, that is how good my drag was”
“As much as I look like a real rabbit to you now, that is how good my drag was. Hairy arms, hairy eyebrows. It was a double life that started to cause issues.”
Turning himself into Brenda was not going to happen. Then he started noticing that a lot of his friends that were very successful at drag were really, really, really, really great monsters.
“Like, nightclub-raver, LED-glow-in-the-dark drag monsters with yellow hair and green eyes; orange fingertips you know. Or they were just naturally slender, hairless boys, which really was not such a double life from being Brenda.”
Scotty never wanted to do that. He always wore blue and he did not change his name. He was always Scotty.
“Some people asked me why I was always wearing blue and I said, ‘Because blue is for boys.’”
“Some people asked me why I was always wearing blue, and I said, ‘Because blue is for boys.’
”My use of color in my drag was a statement on masculinity and gender roles.
The crisis of dressing as a woman continued once he started touring with Bindlestiff Family Cirkus as a blue clown and as a drag queen. But it was there that The Bunny emerged.
“I had this faux-fur cave-man drag Playboy Bunny costume and my friend Baby Dee asked “Why don’t you be the bunny”? And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a bunny’. But she said, ‘Not a bunny, The Bunny.. The Bunny in the circus’. And I was like, ‘Done’ ,” Scotty says as he laughs.
He knew a fellow performer, Combustible Kiva from Coney Island was also costume maker. He went to her house and watched her every step, transforming pieces of textile into the most amazing bunny suit.
“I watched her sew and measure like a hawk,, and bought my own sewing machine right after. Then I was Scotty the Blue Bunny: half man, half wild animal. This was in April 1996.”
Even if Scotty does not agree that Berlin is the New York of Europe, the city has this relaxed side that makes both him and everyone else feel attached to it.
“When people ask me what they should do when they get here, I joke, ‘Go to this club, lick MDMA out of the hand of a stranger and disappear for three days, that's what we do.’"
“When people ask me what they should do when they get here, I joke, ‘Go to this club, lick MDMA out of the hand of a stranger, and disappear for three days - that's what we do’. It can be incredibly relaxed. Like, ‘Is that drugs on the floor?’ That’s alright,” he says, laughing, and continues, “It’s not only about drugs, but in the streets there is enough space to be free here, compared to London or New York where people are really up against each other and you really have to build up your senses; your barriers and shields. But when you are here, like, look how big my sidewalk is! We could walk six people across. My attitude here is also, like, if someone has a party, I put the earplugs in and close the window and go to bed. Mind your own business.”
Some say that Wedding - the area of Berlin where Scotty lives - is like the Wild West. But The Bunny does not agree:
“I’m from New York. I lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I shared an apartment with a family of mice. There were guys with guns on the fire escape above my apartment waiting for their rival gang to come while I’m in bed with my boyfriend one open window below. I’m used to seeing washing machines being thrown out of windows. Wedding is not the Wild West. It’s just this strange isolated Kiez for some reason, even though it borders Mitte."
His favorite club is Kater Blau but most recently had some sweet times at the fetish club Insomnia, performing on Easter.
“It had a little older crowd than I imagined, which was a great relief! Normally when I work a club I’m like, ‘Fuck everyone here is half my age’. Like when I did the festival Putte i Parken in Sweden.”
But Scotty is also just human after all. He likes getting home, eating Ben and Jerry’s, watching porn, sucking on his vape and slowing down from his high-paced work.
“I let the ADD go wild in my apartment. Fingering myself, going to the supermarket or whatever.”
Now he is looking for love, and what really gets him going is the idea of lying on a chaise lounge and reading out loud to each other.
“I have been #singleforlife, which is crazy since I know one-legged, cross-eyed weirdos who get fucked. But I pay my bills, have my own place, dress like a rabbit, play the violin and I am vegan. But whatever, I am getting in to it. I have made a new decision and I am going to be more slutty. Maybe try to fuck my friends, even if that is gross,” he says, and continues; “ ‘Come home, I made you a bath’ or ‘I made you dinner’, you know? That is what I want.”
But growing up as a gay man in the 80s has its consequences.
“I am traumatized. My generation was told to put a condom on a penis to get oral sex. Before you put a condom on a person you would ask, like, ‘And your mother lives where, did you say?’ Foreplay needed to be an interview process.”
This brilliant man, however, is all different kinds of genius. He doesn’t have any STDs, not even herpes.
“I hooked up and I got out with one case of Gonorrhea, and one time I thought I had herpes, but I didn’t.”
Which got me wondering: is this really an interview or is this just a way for The Bunny (who admits to hating dating apps) to get his ad out? We can never know - he would only lie if I asked him. But I at least feel the need to end this article with the following text:
Want us to hook you up with Scotty? Email us at: hello@playfulmag.com and we will have a look at your profile