MJ said this was when he first knew he was gay, when he was fantasizing about that man at the bar in Monte Carlo.
In high school, MJ gravitated towards drama, and later musical theatre. When he started doing these activities outside school, it allowed him to be louder, more confident, better at expressing himself. MJ thought these interests defined what he went on to do later: radio, producing plays and musicals. The first time MJ did drag he was twenty-three. It happened by accident. ‘One of my drag sisters, Raja, dressed me up for Halloween one year and I loved it. “Drag is just like musical theatre,” she said. Then after she’d done my make-up: “You look really pretty.”’ MJ liked feeling pretty. His first paid performance was later that year at a club called Ozz in Buena Park. His natural look recreated the ‘female illusion’, as he put it – but not to mock or caricature women, like a lot of other queens did. He didn’t have any particular aspirations about turning drag into a full-on career back then: ‘It’s funny, performing on stage, I didn’t think, “I’m here to fill a gap in the market,” I just love performing. And one of my things was that I loved seeing the audience smile. Especially when the kids knew the song and would sing it with me.’
Politically, it felt freeing. Drag was in your face, a way of defying everything MJ had been taught about being male. ‘It’s this notion of going against the grain, doing something that people tell you no, you shouldn’t do,’ said MJ. ‘Because we are told no all the time. Gay boys are always chastised for being feminine. But the drag has taken that to another level. You think I’m feminine? I’m gonna put on a dress, I’m gonna put on a wig, I’m gonna put on boots. Drag queens are like’ – he paused – ‘the personification of gay oppression.’ He stopped again: ‘Ooh! That was good!’ he cackled. ‘Write that down!’
From the minute I had walked in the door at MJ’s house, I’d felt instantly at home, because MJ was so accommodating. The house itself was a hoarder’s paradise, with belongings stacked floor to ceiling. It was one room wide, with first a reception room leading open plan into a small kitchen, and then behind that a small bathroom and a bedroom. Dotted about the front room were at least ten mannequin heads with wigs on top; long black hair, styled reddish-brown updos, and even a blonde bob.
‘It’s like Silence of the Lambs in here,’ I told MJ, and he pretended to stroke my head.
‘What nice hair you have . . . it’s so long.’ On his dressing table was a jewellery box with tiny cut-out pictures of Madonna glued onto it, and a little sign emblazoned with the mantra: BE BOLD – BE KIND – BE TRUE – BE YOU.
Over breakfast, I talked to MJ about my own life. When I told him I was gay he let out a gasp. ‘Did you think I’d be writing a whole book about queer culture if I was straight?’ I asked incredulously. We laughed and went back to our eggs and sausages.
After we’d finished eating, MJ led me into the bedroom to show me something. It was a dirty zebra-print suitcase, stashed at the back of his wardrobe. As he stood looking at it, he told me he’d used it when he was homeless.
At first, doing drag on the club circuit felt as though it was giving him a voice, and saved him from isolation, allowing him to express himself. He was getting booked, and he wasn’t like the other drag queens – he was more authentically feminine, he was black, and he was what he called ‘hefty’. But the line between representing a minority and being a minority felt thin. MJ would see all these groups of friends – he called them ‘tribes’ – laughing, and he felt disposable. ‘They’d come to you and say, “You’re so great,” but one of them of course has to put me in my place, so they’d say something catty or racist, then they’d all laugh and walk away. That’s when I started becoming very isolated, very lonely.’
Hurtful too was the fact that drag was a turn-off to a lot of gay men. It wasn’t accepted or attractive to be feminine or trans. MJ didn’t yet know whether or not he was trans (the term ‘gender non-conforming’ didn’t come along until a few years later), but he knew he didn’t fit in. ‘I guess I’m like a natural femme. A lot of the queens think you have to put on all the make-up, contour . . . I don’t want to do any of that stuff. My drag was different, but a lot of guys were like: “You’re not like the other ones, so what’s wrong with you?”’
This story wasn’t unfamiliar. My friends who do drag told me it was acceptable to dress as a woman, to look ‘fishy’ (a questionable word meaning convincingly feminine), but only if you took the make-up off afterwards, and had a beard and muscles underneath. RuPaul had made headlines for being what some considered transphobic or misogynistic. He had been called out for using the term ‘tranny’, and in an interview with the Guardian he claimed that drag is most effective when men are doing it, because that’s when ‘it’s a real fuck-you to male-dominated culture’, a statement that seemed to ignore all female and non-binary drag queens’ ability to subvert gender stereotypes. In the same interview, he also talked about the ‘dichotomy of the trans movement versus the drag movement’, as though there could be no overlap.
Feeling isolated by the femmephobia in the industry, MJ began drinking, not for the confidence to perform (‘because I am a performer’), but for the confidence to perform to a bunch of drunk gay people who heckled and shit-talked him. ‘It takes balls. Even if we’re not meant to have any on stage. You know how catty the gay scene can be – get them drunk in a group, they feel they can say and touch and do whatever. I’m not gonna blame them cause it’s not their fault. They’ve been told that they’re nothing, they’re gonna die of AIDS or something. The oppressed always end up being the oppressors, even if they don’t mean to.’ It was about having a sense of entitlement, said MJ. ‘“I went through being in the closet, I went through whatever else, so I have the right to say and do what I want to now,” which is bullshit.’ But complaining wasn’t allowed: ‘It was always this weird thing of like, “Oh, I guess I have to put up with it because I’m a drag queen.”’
The drag scene MJ had found himself a part of didn’t take this seriously, because it didn’t take much seriously: ‘You’re there to look pretty, perform and do a death drop, and you can’t talk about your politics because you’re not that smart.’ Still, he empathized: ‘Gay people have to struggle to come out, and they finally accept who they are, then get into the party scene, then there comes a moment when we become mature, we start realizing we need to be activists, and we start going through gay power and rainbow rings. But drag queens, we seem to be stuck in the party time.’
Looking back – right from those Danielle Steel books and wanting a man to buy him a drink, through to the drag bars and clubs – he realized now that every situation he’d put himself in, imaginary or otherwise, had involved a bar. But it was always like that for LGBTQ+ communities, wasn’t it, he said. ‘Take away the bar and what do we have?’
Addicted to substances like alcohol, meth and cocaine, as well as dabbling with ecstasy, MJ slept in bathhouses and parks, and rode the bus up and down Santa Monica Boulevard. There was one bus that went to the beach, then downtown, then back again. That was the one he’d ride. He’d also party and hang out at people’s houses, go to his dealer’s and stay there, sleep on people’s couches. He was sexually assaulted, held at knifepoint and gunpoint. He stared down at the zebra-print suitcase, which served as his drag bag and his entire life at that time. ‘Drag was the only thing I had to hold on to. I would ask people, “Hey, I have a show tonight, I need a place to get dressed at.” Because if a drag queen asks you if they can put on make-up and get glamorous at your house then people are like, “Yeah, that sounds awesome!”’
He’d stay in people’s houses and smoke meth out of their bathroom window secretly, or overstay his welcome. I found it hard to imagine MJ this way, not just because he was so together now but also because he was so caring towards me that it seemed strange he wouldn’t have shown himself the same sort of affection. ‘There’s a saying in the homeless community – when you stay at someone’s house you can only stay three days before
it starts to go bad,’ he told me solemnly.
The final straw came when MJ was staying with a friend, Zackary Drucker, one of the producers of the TV show Transparent. It was 2014 and Drucker had an exhibit at the Whitney biennial. ‘I was like, “Wow, yeah, I wanna do something at the Whitney, that sounds amazing,”’ remembered MJ. ‘She looked at me and said: “No girl, you won’t be doing anything like that. You can’t be an addict and an artist.” It was the first time someone ever called me an artist. Not a drag queen. Not a clown. She said: “You’re a performance artist, you know that, right? You’re an artist and you’re squandering your talent.”’
After that MJ enrolled in rehab, where he was told to put his drag away. It was an all-male facility, but that wasn’t why. The doctor said: ‘Your recovery comes first . . . if you don’t stay sober you’re not going to be able to do your drag.’ MJ was affronted. He’d fought long and hard to be Miss Barbie-Q. But he had no choice. ‘I put my wigs in a bag under my bed. I’d take it out once in a while just to brush them.’ After the first year, when he did occasionally check out of rehab for a night to do a gig, drugs were always put under his nose within the first five minutes. And so he’d do his number, get on a bus and go right back to rehab again, where things felt safe for the first time in a long time.
Eventually, MJ was discharged, but when he went back to the clubs he got scared. Things were different now. It had been almost four years since he was on the circuit and he could visibly see how drag had changed: ‘I don’t do ass jokes, I don’t do too much flesh, I don’t do a lot of dirty stuff. Sure, I can laugh about it but I don’t do vulgarity. The LGBT community expects drag queens to be vulgar. I’m like, actually, the bathhouses are the place to be vulgar. I want my drag to have a certain level of integrity and class.’
Suddenly, MJ found himself chastised for that. People would say, you’re not pushing yourself, you’re not rolling with the times, you’re stuck in the old-school way of thinking. ‘I do sometimes feel that, especially when I see the younger girls. Every song they’re performing is a mix – mash-ups – and it’s nice but I realized, “Wow, I stand out even more. Am I relevant? Are people gonna like me still?” Drag queens are seen as youthful, just like models, or any profession in entertainment . . . but I was older.’ He was also three and a half years sober, meaning the armour was off; he’d have to deal with the world of drag without drugs and alcohol, or leave it behind forever. He decided to persevere. And because of that, I’d wound up in his home, asking him his life story, and questioning him about the threat RuPaul’s Drag Race presented to the queens that came before it.
The way MJ talked about RuPaul’s Drag Race reminded me of the testimonies of defectors from Scientology. He was angry, like the cult of RuPaul had taken something from him; yet he seemed cautious, edgy even, when he criticized it. When Drag Race started, MJ watched it with pride – a lot of his friends were on the show, and he could see how it was going to take their drag to the next level – but then he noticed the editing, and he noticed that his friends didn’t seem the same as they did in person. ‘Think of any reality TV show,’ he said. We were sitting on the front steps of his porch now, smoking cigarettes in the midday sun. I was getting sunburned but I didn’t want to interrupt him. ‘Like The Real World, Survivor, Top Chef – you need a bitch, you need a slut, you need a this, you need a that, you always need these characters. It’s funny, you’re asking drag queens, who are already characters, to be characters.’
MJ was honest about the fact he once auditioned for Drag Race, something he felt conflicted about. He did it because his friends encouraged him: ‘People would ask me all the time if I wanna be on the show and I’m like, hmm, it’s good business sense.’
He recalled a conversation he’d had with a Drag Race casting person. They asked him, ‘What character would you be? Would you be the nice one, the bitch or the mama?’
MJ said: ‘Well, I’d just be me,’ and the casting person said, ‘That doesn’t make good TV.’
Drag Race billed itself as a show about authenticity and individuality and giving marginalized people a voice – or at least, this was the dialogue that had been constructed around it. But MJ believed it was all fake. ‘You know when they do that mass casting, “we got ten thousand entries” thing?’ said MJ. ‘You know damn well they can’t go through ten thousand entries, so they cast it. Yeah, they pluck girls from Dallas, Miami, New York, London, and for good TV they cast people who will have conflicts. It’s taking it, packaging it, putting it in front of our faces, and telling us we have to accept it because if we don’t, we’re assholes and we’re not being inclusive.’
MJ presented this information to me as a big conspiracy. But I wasn’t surprised. Isn’t that how all reality TV works? I thought. Besides, I knew that after queens come off the show, they also sign the next two years of their life away doing promo tours and events like DragCon – it’s part of the Faustian pact of being a ‘drag success’. I put this to MJ and he nodded furiously: ‘They pay them well, but after the show you should be able to do whatever you want,’ he said, sceptical that it was all worth it. ‘I hate to say it, but on RuPaul’s Drag Race, have you seen any winner do anything really big after? No. It’s like: “You’re the Drag Queen Superstar! OK, next season!”’
And then there was the content of the show itself: like on America’s Next Top Model, the contestants have to do ridiculous challenges to prove their worth. ‘If you want to have a show about drag queens, have a challenge where her song skips or her wig falls off or her heel breaks on stage, and then what does she do? That’s happened. Don’t make me jump into a vat of water or have wind blown on me or fuckin’ make me jump on a trampoline. I don’t know any queen in any country who does that as part of their act. And personally it feels like it’s RuPaul and the people that run Drag Race going: “I’m gonna make you do some monkey-ass challenge to show you you’re on my show.”’ He put on a voice: ‘“How bad do you want this?”’ Then, in his own: ‘Not that bad!’
The way MJ saw it, the whole circus represented a kind of cannibalization. ‘We’re once again capitalizing on our own culture, making money out of it and not giving back. You can do Drag Race all day but they should have an HIV fundraiser, they should be in the forefront of HIV research or whatever it is, homeless LGBT charities. I tell every queen coming out that you should do a benefit for free once a year, if not more. I do it at least once a quarter.’
Instead, Drag Race, said MJ, is trying so hard to be everything to everybody that being political doesn’t always end up being a priority. ‘They don’t touch enough on misogyny, ageism, racism.’ Drag queens had been there fighting for LGBTQ+ rights for decades, he said. ‘We were visible, with the big hair, standing up for our rights, but it’s moved so far into the Disneyland area being political is not cool. Drag Race tells us to go buy wigs, earrings, heels. They say, “Well, drag’s expensive!” I’m like, drag was never that expensive! You’d get a dress, glue some rhinestones on it and call it a day. $1,500 for a fucking silicone breast plate? Are you out of your mind? It’s capitalism.’
‘Does it make you want to stop doing drag?’ I asked tentatively.
MJ shook his head. ‘I keep doing my drag to keep showing other queens you don’t need RuPaul’s Drag Race to be “successful” – you can create, you can sing, you can dance, you can act, you can write, you can produce, you can direct, you can do radio, you can host a big event, you can do spoken word, you can be in charge. I’ve asked other queens, “What’s your goal in doing drag?” and a lot of them are like, “I just wanna do a show at a club.” I say, “OK, well I wanna own the club that does the show. I wanna own many clubs in other cities and countries.”’
‘Like Monte Carlo?’ I asked.
‘Exactly. That’s where my mind goes. My whole thing is, if you think drag queens want attention, I’d turn it on the queen and say if you want attention, what do you have to say? What do you represent? What do you stand for?’
; ‘What do you think you stand for?’ I asked.
‘I stand for integrity, understanding and encouragement to be whoever you wanna be. I stand for bringing back the dignity into the LGBT community.’
On Saturday morning, Alix and I woke up early and set off for DragCon. We arrived at a massive, corporate, glass-walled conference centre to find drag queens of all varieties queuing to enter in the LA heat, towering over their non-dragged-up mates. The staff didn’t bat an eyelid, nor did the guests seem to find this a spectacle. In the cafe, a beautiful older drag queen dressed as a Miss World winner was scoffing fries in a full face of make-up. Drag queens whizzed up and down elevators in saris and leather. There seemed to be an accidental irony to the situation. Alix and I stood in the foyer, agape. Alix went to the bathroom. ‘There’s no gender-neutral toilet,’ she said when she came back.
The main room was carpeted with soft pink runways, and stalls were stacked as far as the eye could see, selling wigs and T-shirts and bondage gear. Around us there was a cornucopia of brightly coloured synthetic materials, but if we looked up there was nothing but a grey ceiling with bright strip lighting. I thought of what MJ had told me about when he went to DragCon: that it was like Disneyland. He was right – drag queens milled around waiting for someone to ask for their photo, people were cramming candy and hot dogs into their mouths, and there was a queue for literally everything except the toilet. ‘Welcome to America,’ said Alix, deadpan, for the first forty minutes, each time we saw something of this nature. I wanted to chat to some guests, but a tannoy sounded, RuPaul’s voice announcing the arrival of someone I couldn’t make out – the sound was muffled in the commotion that ensued.
The crowd parted to reveal a sea of pink, and down the main stretch in a golden carriage came a performer I recognized as Bob the Drag Queen. Everyone had their phones out, thousands of people snapping photos for Instagram and Facebook. It was like the gayest red carpet event of the century. Or the queerest. The crowd was wildly varied: young people, old people, people of all races, people with disabilities, people in drag, not in drag, in half drag, or just wearing drag-related merchandise. The only conspicuous absence was drag kings – I must have seen only two. Maybe that was because they had their own conventions, like Austin International Drag Festival’s Kingfest and King Con in Ohio. Or maybe it was because drag kings had not been represented or supported by RuPaul’s Drag Race, so they felt no desire to come along and support the show back.
Queer Intentions Page 6
