Dale Guy Madison was born on March 22, 1958 at a naval base in Great Lakes, Illinois. His father was a naval officer who was often away from home. In 1962, his family moved to Portsmouth, Virginia to a neighborhood with a strong Black community. 

While Dale’s mother was loving and supportive, Dale felt he wouldn’t gain the independent living skills he wanted if he stayed in Portsmouth. He moved in with his father in Baltimore, where he fell in love with another gay guy at his high school. When he came out at age 18, his father gave him 7 days to leave the house, so Dale started working full time at McDonald’s and moved into a basement apartment. 

A year later, while working as a phone operator, Dale had a weed-induced flashback at work one day. His father used this as an excuse to institutionalize Dale for a year in the Sheppard Pratt hospital, unsuccessfully trying to convince the doctors that Dale needed conversion therapy. His mother continued to visit him regularly and told him that she wanted him to live freely. 

Upon his release, as a young adult in 1980s Baltimore, Dale started working as a nude art model and met an artist, Judy, whom he married from 1987-1991. Following a messy divorce, Dale began creating theater around HIV prevention. He had actors act out different scenarios to tell audiences to take better care of themselves, to get tested, and to lead healthier lives.

Dale then went on to host the fashion channel at QVC. Through his show, he got invited to an AIDS benefit where he auctioned African dolls he made for very high prices. Thanks to this success, he created another show centered around African products for QVC called “Destination Africa” that aired during Black History Month. 

Dale then pivoted to acting. On a whim, he traveled to LA to act as an extra in a To Wong Foo… restaurant scene. He had so much fun that he took on another role in a film about Stonewall, as a drag queen who unlocked the other queens’ handcuffs while chanting, “Free the slaves!” The director said Dale’s drag name should be “free da slave,” and drag persona Freeda Slave was born. Dale went on to work with playwright Darryl Lemont Wharton to write the play FREE da Slave, which ran for 4 months at the Hudson Backstage Theater in LA. 

Dale also worked at Paramount Pictures for two years, learning business and marketing behind the scenes. He then earned his teaching degree and worked for 5 years as a health HIV educator at the LA LGBT Center, using creative methods to inspire higher risk POC young men to practice safer sex.

Dale then penned his memoir Dreamboy: My Life as a QVC Host. On his book tour across the country, he became inspired to turn his book into the live show My Life In Three Easy Payments, which had multiple runs in LA and New York.

Now, Dale works as an arts educator in the LA Department of Cultural Affairs. He leaves his closet doors open at all times – physically, because he has so many clothes; and symbolically, because he cannot live without expressing his joy and his pain all at once.

Bio Author: Helen Tian