Culture

Elvira Just Came Out, and Has Been in a 19-Year Romance With a Hot Butch


 

The Mistress of the Dark has stepped into the light.

Actress Cassandra Peterson, best known for embodying Elvira, the hyper-femme queen of late-night horror, revealed in a memoir released this week that she has been in a relationship with a woman for nearly 20 years.

“At this point in my life, I’ve got to be truthful about who I am,” Peterson writes in Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memories of the Mistress of the Dark, as The Advocate reported.

Although the couple was out to family and friends, the book marks Peterson’s first public acknowledgement of her relationship. “I’m happy and relieved to finally allow our secret to see the light of day,” Peterson writes in the book.

As Peterson tells it, she first met Teresa “T” Wierson at a Hollywood gym, where she “couldn’t help noticing one particular trainer — tan, tattooed, and muscular” who “gave off such intense energy” that “the waters parted and people stopped in their tracks to stare” when Wierson stalked across the enormous gym floor.

The two became close friends. Peterson describes the rainy night Weirson showed up at her door, in need of support and a place to stay following a breakup and a stint in rehab. Peterson herself was recently separated from musician Mark Pierson at the time. The two women moved in together, offering each other mutual support.

The attraction that developed took Peterson by surprise, she writes. “I was stunned that I’d been friends with her for so many years and never noticed our chemistry,” Peterson recalls. “I soon discovered that we connected sexually in a way I’d never experienced.”

Peterson admits she hesitated to reveal the relationship for many years for fear of alienating or disappointing fans of Elvira.

The character she created in the early 1980s became instantly recognizable for her low-cut black dress and Dolly Parton-esque cleavage. Beginning at live shows in Los Angeles, and eventually culminating in the 1988 horror-comedy feature film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Elvira cheekily embodied the male fantasy of a hyper-sexual, high-femme mistress of horror, often pointing out and relishing in the attention she received from men.

“I worried that if I announced I was no longer living the ‘straight life,’ my fans would feel lied to, call me a hypocrite, and abandon me,” Peterson writes.

“Would my fans hate me for not being what they expected me to be?” she continues, adding, “I’m very aware that there will be some who will be disappointed and maybe even angry, but I have to live with myself.”

To the contrary, queer fans online have already been quick to celebrate the news, giddily claiming the camp icon as one of their own. Coming out this close to Halloween? It’s like a blood-curdling scream that says, “Gay rights!!!”

It turns out Troye Sivan was ahead of the curve at this year’s Met Gala; listen carefully and you can already hear the growing stampede on a certain costume with a plunging neckline.

Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memories of the Mistress of the Dark is out now from Hachette.

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