RAMBLE ON: "5 dollars" by Christine and the Queens

I have a strangely large number of trans friends and acquaintances – more than a straight man as asocial and boring as me should be expected to have, at least. I don’t claim to be educated about trans issues beyond whatever I glance at online, but I do probably think about it more than the average cis person. I actually only just learned that Heloise “Chris” Letessier, lead singer of the now-possibly-misnamed Christine and the Queens, came out as genderqueer last year. (Her pronouns didn’t change, which must be how I missed it.) But even without that knowledge there’s a line in her song “5 Dollars” that I immediately clocked as about being trans: “Some of us just had to fight/For even being looked at right.” It’s a tiny bit clunky, grammatically – I’m told the version in her native French flows better – and it could apply to many things, especially for the subject of the song, a sex worker scraping out a paltry five dollars a trick. But needing to fight for the so-very-basic privilege of “being looked at right”… that’s something I can only associate with dysphoria.

I may not have known about Chris’s fluid gender identity, but it wasn’t exactly hard to guess either. Upon its release in 2018, the video for “5 Dollars” announced a radical shift in image – long hair and dark blazers swapped for men’s ties and a butch haircut accentuating a prominent jawline – and fans had already begun speculating. Before this, she had been an out pansexual, but her look had never been this androgynous. She’s not the only member of her elite club of alt-pop stars who’ve worked their queerness into their art and their image, but Janelle Monae, who has a face like a work of art, probably never had to “fight for even being looked at right,” at least not like Chris does here. Being trans, as I have come to understand it, is work.

To be clear: Chris looks fantastic in this video. In it, she prepares for an upcoming sexual encounter -- she cranks up the music, gets in a workout, grabs a shower, does her skin routine. There are marks on her neck and back. She picks out her outfit – dom-gear leather underwear with a sharp men’s suit over it. She checks herself out one last time and leaves for the night. She’s dancing during all this, in the mirror and while she dresses; she looks great, and like she’s in a great mood. There’s a good chance Chris could have a future in acting, because even with as much fun as she seems to be having, the expressions on her face are clear: This is not a date. This is a job. It’s another day at the office, and she’s going to go out there and crush it, but it’s not something she’s doing out of pleasure. This was a fight; she fought to look like she does, as good as she does.

The video’s mostly realistic and literal, but there is one little bit of music video stylization; shots of Chris’s shadow, dancing against a blank wall. Perhaps that part is happening in her head; or, perhaps that silhouette is the “real” Chris and everything else is happening in her head. After all, the person we see lives in a fancy apartment, with a wardrobe full of well-tailored clothes; whoever this character is, she’ll probably be making more than five dollars. The song’s lyrics aren’t the easiest to parse, since English is not Chris’s first language, but it’s definitely about a much more difficult life than what the video is selling: “I grieve by dying every day,” “kneeling down for all they cared” and of course the comically meagre sum of money in the title. Maybe this high-priced gigolo is a safe fantasy, a way to imagine oneself to maintain their dignity and get through the day.

The definitive song about sex work is probably “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner; that song’s not unglamorous – no ‘80s song with a saxophone could ever be entirely – but the glamour’s only for the johns, and Tina won’t be sharing it. “5 Dollars” could easily have become something similar, a song about the dehumanizing grind and life in the gutter, but Chris has entirely different intentions. It’s arguably a dark song, but I don’t feel darkness listening to it. “Baby blue” could be a crib from Dylan; she says she was more inspired by Springsteen and his many bittersweet story songs about desperate beautiful losers. Chris’s tone is almost maternally comforting: “It’s still five dollars, baby blue/It’s five dollars, baby.” Five dollars is what only the most desperate hookers charge (or so I understand), but in “5 Dollars” it sounds (and looks) like money hard-fought and well-earned. All the emphasis is on the triumph of just moving forward; pockets full and eyes dried.” “Prove them wrong when you get five dollars.” Another day, another pay; five whole dollars, fuck yes. I hear this song and it doesn’t remind me at all of Tina Turner’s dead-inside stripper, mechanically going through the motions for yet more faceless clients. The character I think of instead is the aging ex-junkie of Against Me!’s “Thrash Unreal” (another song by a trans artist – perhaps coincidence, perhaps not). That song is about addiction, about dreams that won’t come true, but most of all it’s about survival; the subject of the song knows that most people around her won’t understand her trauma, but that’s okay, it’s her story, not theirs. If she wants to dance and drink all night, there’s nothing that can stop her. I don’t know what happens to Mx. 5 Dollars in the future; they probably don’t either. “You let them pay and went ahead” – sometimes you just keep going and that’s all that matters.