by RuPaul
The pattern was that I went after men who fit the emotional scenario set up years before by my father. Like well-cast actors, they were perfect candidates to fill the void left by him. The role called for fear of intimacy and emotional distance, and that explained why I was never interested in the men who made themselves available to me. Once Jack turned cold, I was hooked. It felt like home, it must be love. Wrong.
I have always gone after people who are aloof and distant. The more I go for them, the more they back off, as if to say, “No, I can’t have love, ‘cause I don’t love myself.”
And then I perpetuate the lovelessness, because when someone does that to me—comes on strong—I react in the same way by stepping back and going, “Wait a minute! No! I would not want to be in a club that would have me as a member.” It’s a vicious circle I had to escape from. A person can love you, but they can only love you as much as you allow yourself to be loved.
It was not until I forgave my father by resigning myself to the fact that he was incapable of giving me the love that I always wanted from him that I was able to move on and accept love from men who were willing to give love to me. As I look back, there were always men who were interested in me—but I wasn’t interested in them. Because if I let them love me they would threaten my deep conviction that I could not be loved. I would be busted!
Now that I have forgiven my father, I can see that for all that my mother said about him, he was not the loser she portrayed him as. Today he lives in his hometown of Mansfield, Lousiana, where he runs a beauty supply house, of all things. In spite of that, we don’t have much in common. We don’t have the kind of communication where we sit down man-to-man or even human-to-human and really talk about things.
I talked to him recently, and he told me about how a whole vanload of kids pulled up outside his house because there was a rumor that I was going to be there for Thanksgiving. And they were saying, “You RuPaul’s daddy? You RuPaul’s daddy?” He said he was, but they weren’t having it. “You ain’t RuPaul’s daddy. How he so tall?” He said something about my mother and my grandmother being tall, so then they said, “Well, if you is RuPaul’s daddy, dance for us.” He said he could not dance, and they said, “How you can be RuPaul’s daddy if you can’t dance?” So, you see, he’s very charming and usually controls the conversation by laughing, telling jokes, and trying to keep it light. And when you try and steer the conversation in another direction or get serious, he gets very evasive.
He likes to keep things on the surface, and I’m fine with that now. Everyone has their own agenda to work out, in their own time, and if he knew of a better way to deal with his emotions he would do it. I can really forgive him, understanding that he did the best he could with what he knew. If he could have done it better, he would have. As we all would.
As the years have passed, both Christopher and Jack have come to me independently and sincerely apologized for not being emotionally available. They realize that it’s an ongoing problem in their relationships as well, so they are growing too. And I got to apologize to them too, because I wasn’t perfect then, and I’m still not. None of us are. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to learn and to grow.
The way for me to grow is by listening to my gut. Any question you may have you can answer by listening to your gut. That’s where your knowledge is. In your gut. That’s the part of you that’s real. That’s you.
For my part, I still haven’t totally broken through, and I have a lot to learn. But I feel I’m beginning to understand my own power and I’m ready to reclaim the love that I have put on the back burner
I used to base so much of my life on what other people thought of me. I have a sense of myself and a security in knowing that I am my greatest asset.
Whatever happens, I’m going to be fine. I have no fear. So I can actually go on and live my life and be myself; be the man that I am, be the woman that I am, the everything that I am.
Afterword
I was cruising at 33,000 feet, and wondering if I could get any higher than this.
I have been a world traveler for eighteen years. I’ve been on every kind of transportation: planes, trains, automobiles, tractors, cars with flat tires, bicycles with one wheel. You name it, I’ve ridden it. But there I was returning from a whirlwind tour of Europe—Frankfurt, Paris, Rome—about to make a connection to catch the Concorde.
Unless you’re taking the space shuttle, it don’t get no classier than that.
Looking out of the window, I saw the Matterhorn below -a rock of ages fierce in its mantle of snow. And I thought, “I am that mountain. I am the Matterhorn.” All right, I admit it, I was on monkey time. In fact, it was worse than monkey time, I was on gorilla time. First stop Germany was where I turned out the Wiener schnitzel yet again, the next stop was Paris, where I performed at Club Queen; and then, with hardly any sleep, it was on to Italy for another gig. By the time I made it to the airport lounge you had to scrape me off the floor to get me on the plane.
It was all such a mad rush because I had to get back to the States to shoot my role as Miss Rachel Tensions in the Spielberg drag flick, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything... With Love, Julie Newmar. The script called for me to be lowered on a swing onto a runway in a New York nightclub to crown one of many hopeful drag queens as the new Queen of New York. The three drag queens vying for the crown were to be played by big Hollywood stars. This movie had been the talk of the biz for some time, because agents were worried about their superstar clients letting their hair down as drag queens. After much toing and froing, it was decided that Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo would play the three leads.
I was looking forward to meeting this famous trio— especially on equal ground in wigs and heels. Beneath all the gloss, glamour, and stardom, I am just a regular Joe who is a major fan of almost every star in the galaxy. That’s one of the best things about being just slightly famous—it’s like having an all-access backstage pass. I can get to meet all the people I have been fans of all these years. And although I’ve met many of them — from Mariah Carey to Barbara DeAngelis, from Janet Jackson to Latoya Jackson—in the firmament of stars, there is really only one person I have always been dying to meet.
When I entered the Concorde lounge, I idly wondered to myself what star I was going to meet that day: Would it be Linda, Naomi, Christy?
Then all of a sudden I heard a voice so dear to me and so familiar, that on hearing it my hands started shaking and my eyes welled up with tears.
No! It’s not! It can’t be!
I was frozen to the spot, unable to turn round. I could neither bear the disappointment if it wasn’t who I thought it was, or face her if it was. I simply was not ready to meet—the ultimate star!
“I would like to be in the front row,” said the voice.
That voice! It had to be! It couldn’t be!
“Can you make my seat number 1A, please?”
It was! It was! I knew it was her.
Finally I could trust myself to look up without fainting away. She was sitting directly across from me, by herself, wearing a brown pant suit, hair down, no makeup, and sunglasses. She was reading Marie Claire.
It was all I could do to stop myself from screaming out loud.
After about ten minutes I felt strong enough to walk, so I got up and went to the bathroom, where I prepared myself to take the plunge.
On the way back to my seat, I stopped to say hello.
“Hi Diana, I’m RuPaul. How are you doing?”
“Oh my God! I thought you looked familiar.”
“I would have come over earlier, but I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Oh, don’t be so silly, sit down, sit down.”
Immediately, we started chatting like girlfriends. I told her about the film.
“If it’s Steven, you know it’s going to be good.”
I told her about how I had met her daughter Tracee on an audition for a Keenan Ivory Wayans movie, and she told me that she was
working for Mirabella: “I wish they would be doctors and lawyers, but there they are, in the business.”
“I tried to catch Rhonda at Tatou, but I missed her,” I said. Her daughter had a singing engagement at the famed Manhattan nightspot.
“That’s right—she’s not playing there anymore.”
Then we talked about her other daughter, Chudney, who is at Georgetown and into rowing.
We chatted away, but I could tell that she wanted to ask me something. When she did, it was about my wigs and how I got them to look so realistic. I told her that I shave my head and have a collection of lace-front wigs.
“Oh, of course!”
We both laughed and then talked about her music and recording, and I asked her why she wasn’t doing a whole album with Luther Vandross.
“Oh, I want to, but it hasn’t worked out due to scheduling.”
After about ten minutes of this a little girl walked up and asked her for an autograph. I could not resist.
“While you’re at it, can I have one too?”
“Of course you can. But what shall I sign it on?”
I tore a page out of my Filofax. I also had my Polaroid with me and suggested we take a picture together.
“Oh, but I look awful.”
Lies! She looked great!
“Write your address down for me and I’ll send you one.”
I dug into my Filofax and found a Polaroid of me, scribbled down my address, and handed it over.
“Wow!” she said, “You look beautiful—your teeth are gorgeous.”
At that point, Vernon Jordan of the NAACP walked by, and they started talking.
Diana introduced me and he said, “I’d never have recognized you.” At that point I decided to excuse myself— Style with Elsa Klensch was on CNN.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to leave,” she said with a smile. I was on Cloud Nine.
And then Robert De Niro walked over.
Diana began to introduce me, but he said, “I know Ru, we met at a Luther Vandross concert”—as we did.
He was on his way back from vacation in Bali. We chatted about film, and I asked him how you ever forget about the camera with it right there in your face. He said it was the director’s job to make you forget about the camera and your job to keep your focus. Here I was getting acting tips from Robert De Niro. He asked me if I was into doing anything out of drag, and I explained that I fully intended to work the man and the woman in me. He got a kick out of that.
Then it was time to board. The plane itself is quite ordinary—small and narrow, and the food no better than regular first class. But the glamour is wall to wall, and everyone was dripping with diamonds, making it the twenty-first century version of the Orient Express. As DeNiro walked past me — he was in the seat beside me — he patted me on the shoulder, and the person sitting next to me said, “Gee! you must be famous.”
Taking off on the Concorde is very much like any other plane, except that when you hit cruising altitude, the sky outside is deep, deep blue.
Looking out of the window, you can see the curvature of the earth, and so, although you can’t feel that you are going faster, you get this interplanetary rush, the feeling that you are traveling to outer space. After a while, I had to use the ladies’ room, which was just forward of the front row. It was in use so I had to stand outside for a minute—right by Diana. She was looking in her bag to see if she had any Alka-Seltzer for a passenger who was feeling air sick, but she couldn’t find any. As I walked by she said, “Uh-uh, I’m next!”
We chatted for a minute, talked about her latest projects, and I suggested that she should do an updated version of Auntie Mame with all new songs.
“Not only are you gorgeous but you are very talented too,” she sparkled.
I was already God knows how many feet off the ground, but this just sent me into orbit. As she said this she whipped out the Polaroid I had given her and showed it to the passenger sitting next to her. He whistled quietly and said, “You are so beautiful!”
“Honey,” I said, “you ain’t seen nothing yet—just wait until you see my legs.”
In the end, she let me go first because she said I was so tall. It was just as well since the person who had been in there before me had made kind of a mess. I wiped down the seat and basin for her. Honey, I would have scrubbed that place spotless so she did not think that I had made that mess.
In no time at all we were in New York. Diana went to change currency and walked into baggage claim all by herself, with just a skycap in tow. All the while I was watching and thinking how organized and how self-sufficient she seemed.
And then it was time for our farewells.
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye, honey.”
Walking on air, I headed straight to the set.
Finally, my dreams had been eclipsed by my reality.
RuPaul U.S. Discography
-RuPaul: “Sex Freak”—Vinyl/LP—Funtone, 1985-(Freak 23)
- RuPaul: “Starrbooty-Motion Picture Sountrack”—Vinyl/CD—Funtone 1986 (Every 23)
- RuPaul: “Ping Ting Ting”—Vinyl 12” single—Funtone 1987 (DV 23)
- RuPaul: “Starrbooty’s Revenge”—CD/Casette—5 Years of Funtone Compilation 1990 (Fun23)
- RuPaul: “I’ve Got That Feeling”—Vinyl 12” single—Cardiac 1991 (3-4011-0-DJ)
- RuPaul: “Supermodel/House of Love”—Vinyl/CD/Cassette and 12” maxi-single—Tommy Boy 1992 (TB 542)
- RuPaul: “Back to My Roots/Strudel Model”—Vinyl/CD/Cassette and 12” single—Tommy Boy 1993 (TB 565)
- RuPaul: “Supermodel of the World”—Vinyl/CD/Cassette LP—Tommy Boy 1993 (TB 1058)
- RuPaul: “A Shade Shadey (Now Prance)”—Vinyl/CD/Cassette 12” single—Tommy Boy 1993 (TB 578)
- RuPaul: “Little Drummer Boy”—Vinyl/CD/Cassette 7” single—Tommy Boy 1993 (TB 7593)
- RuPaul/Elton John: “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” Duets— Vinyl/CD/Cassette LP maxi-single—MCA 1994 (MCAD/MCAM 54796)
- RuPaul: “What You See Is What You Get,” Addams Family Values Soundtrack—CD/Cassette—Atlas 1994 (295920025- 2cd/295920025-4cassette)
RuPaul Music Videography and Videos That Feature RuPaul
- Love Shack: B-52’s
- Some Robert Palmer video—can’t remember the name
- Good Stuff: B-52’s
- Supermodel (You Better Work):RuPaul
- Back to My Roots:RuPaul
- A Shade Shadey (Now Prance):RuPaul
- Little Drummer Boy:RuPaul
- Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart: Elton John and RuPaul
RuPaulFilmography
-Starrbooty: Jon Witherspoon
- Starrbooty II: Jon Witherspoon
- Starrbooty III: Jon Witherspoon
- Trilogy of Terror: Jon Witherspoon
- Terror 3D: Jon Witherspoon
- Wild Thing: Tom Zarilli
- Connie Francis Story: Wayne Hollowell
- Mahogany II: Wayne Hollowell
- American Porn Star: Wayne Hollowell
- Psycho Bitch: Wayne Hollowell
- Voyeur: Wayne Hollowell
- Police Lady: Wayne Hollowell
- Police Lady II: Wayne Hollowell
- In Ferno: Ellen Von Untwerth
- Just Between Girlfriends: Jon Witherspoon
- Crooklyn: Spike Lee
- To Wong Foo ... :Beeban Kidron
- Brady Bunch: Betty Thomas
- Shantay: Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey
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