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What does it mean to be part of the drag community?

When I first started doing drag in Memphis in 1990 or 1991 being part of the drag community was a lot different than what that means today. Then there was no internet and the subculture art form of drag (which consisted of men dressing as women and lip syncing onstage as a performance) was nowhere near as close to being as mainstream as it is today-due in no small part to the giant success of the reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race.

There were maybe a couple of dozen working queens in Memphis in the early 90s. There would be the very rare guest booking of a queen from Little Rock like Sookie Simone but mostly it was just the same few queens week in and week out.

There was a Reba McIntyre impersonator named Misty McIntyre who is still living and working in West Tennessee. There was the late Tenisha Cassadine who went on to become very popular, famous even, as a performer on the drag pageant circuit. There was Vanessa Vogue who went on to transition into living life as a woman full time.

The late Sofaonda Peters was a morbidly obese “woman” who was known for frequently lip syncing to a recording of Vestal Goodman singing “Looking For A City” who also often attempted to tap dance onstage to “Rocky Top” wearing off-brand men’s loafers. Sofonda was hilarious. She was a florist in her daytime work life and often made funerary floral arrangements. She entertained us all in the dressing room as we were all getting in drag by telling us about an unfortunate event she witnessed once after a funeral. There had been a misunderstanding and the pallbearers actually got into the hearse to ride to the cemetery with the casket.

There was a young, beautiful bi-sexual guy named Brian who transformed into the exotic beauty onstage named Vanity Fair. He once attempted to seduce me by suggestively reading excerpts from a heterosexual romance novel.

We all worked together at the posh gay bar in town. It was called G. Bellington Rumples. It closed to relocate after having been open only a few years.

Those queens were my drag community in the early 90s.

There was another bar in town at that time called Reflections. There was such an intense rivalry between Reflections and Rumples that Reflections did not even want Rumples employees to come into their bar. I remember at least once when unknown to each other Vanity Fair and I both wore disguises to go to Reflections.

The late Vonna Vaentino was a queen who worked there. She impressed me because she had figured out how to lip sync in time to her music while she was very deaf. Vonna was thin and small and had enough of her own hair to hot roll it and wear it in womanly looking hairstyles. She was also highly skilled at making and wearing very realistic and curvaceous hip pads. That really complemented her thin frame.

The late Summer Holiday also worked at Reflections and she recognized something in me when I was a budding young drag queen. She made encouraging remarks to me on numerous occasions. Summer was a very big, tall, barrel chested person who was known for a spot on impersonation of Bette Midler lip-syncing to her recording of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

Even though I never actually worked in the same show as those queens I do feel we were definitely part of the same community.

I worked from the time I was hired at Rumples in the very early 90s until I was mugged at gunpoint outside my apartment in Memphis. I was deeply traumatized by that event and decided to leave Memphis and move back to middle Tennessee.

I stayed in Nashville from 1993 until 1997. I did attempt to make drag happen for myself in Nashville but I like to describe that experience by saying that my drag credits didn’t transfer from Memphis to Nashville. I performed at the Connection twice in those years. At that time the Connection was the largest gay bar in the United States. My efforts proved fruitless.

During the mid 90s while I was living in Nashville I did return to Memphis frequently to visit old friends and perform at a club called Amnesia. Which was the subsequent gay bar owned by the same guys who ran Rumples.

After I visited Memphis again in 1997 I received such a warm welcome at my performance that I decided to move back to Memphis.

It took a few months but after word got around town that I had returned to live there, both of the big gay bars in town (Amnesia and Backstreet) wanted me to perform in and emcee their drag shows.

Amnesia was a very pretentious atmosphere and no matter what they did to try to boost their business nothing really worked. Performing there was such a drag because the audiences there grew smaller and smaller and more and more disinterested in the shows.

Then Backstreet swept in and wooed me away from Amnesia by offering me more money than I was making at the time. I quickly decided to take them up on their offer and it turned out to be a great decision.

Their crowds were bigger and by far more appreciative . The atmosphere was fun and lively and I was the belle of the ball.

Meanwhile the owners of Amnesia were very disappointed that their drag discovery (little ol’ me) was now working for the competition. They contacted me and offered me even more money to come back to Amnesia. I stupidly agreed and soon deeply regretted my decision. No sooner than I left Backstreet and returned to Amnesia they closed the bar for months and months of renovations. They believed slapping a new coat of paint on the place would solve all their problems but it inevitably did not and on top of it all they did not end up actually paying me what they told me they would if I returned to work there.

The only good thing that came out of that experience was that when they finally had their “grand” re-opening week, they had booked my favorite American drag legend since Divine, the “Lady” Bunny, to work 2 nights with me and additionally the phenomenally talented singer, Grace Jones.

As I watched Grace Jones performing her hit “Pull Up To My Bumper” right in front of my face she pulled me up onstage with her and shoved the mic in my face. When I picked up where she left off singing the song she was visibly astonished and remarked, “Ah! This one can really sing!”

I had been following Bunny’s career the only place I could at that time: the backs of magazines like Interview where photos of nightlife events in NYC were frequently featured wherein she and her cohorts were performing and cavorting.

In the very early 90s I had a very generous friend from Memphis College of Art named Ritea who got me airfare, hotel accommodations and spending money to go to NYC. I think she thought if I went there I would make a connection and make it big. That kind of energy was definitely bubbling up in NYC at that time but it was not meant for me then. It was a once in a lifetime trip and I did have a very wonderful time.

The first night I was there I went to the now infamous club known as The Limelight to see Lady Bunny’s drag variety show called Disco 2000.

I saw onstage that night a sky-high budding black performer wearing a neon chartreuse beehive with a half white/half black strapless swimsuit with a clear pvc peekaboo circle at center breast under a clear pvc trench coat and black tulip heeled 60s pumps singing her song called “Star booty.” It was RuPaul. Deee-Lite were in the crowd near me close enough to touch. I got to see a whole host of NYC drag queens of that era perform including my first time seeing a queen lip sync to the First Choice disco hit “Dr. Love.”

By the end of the 90s my drinking and cocaine use were out of control. After a 24-hour bender where I showed up to Amnesia in the same drag I left it in the night before looking all the worse for wear the manager of the bar decided to fire me.

I probably could have returned to work at Backstreet (AKA Crackstreet) after that but I didn’t dare because I thought I had burned that bridge behind me.

Solvent that it is alcohol dissolved everything in my life. I had no job, no car, no money, no home and no prospects. I lingered on in Memphis until 2002 or 2003 then returned to Nashville where my sister let me stay with her until I could find a job and get my own place, which I did within a month or two.

I tried to make drag happen for myself in Nashville again but it just wasn’t meant to be.

I entered a sort of joke drag pageant put on by Nashville drag legend, Rita Ross at the now defunct Chute gay bar on 8th Avenue. I did not win but I placed and the others who came in above me were unable to fulfill their responsibilities and as a result I got to do a few shows at the Chute with Rita and another drag legend of Nashville, the late Bianca Paige but that was it. I never got asked to be on a cast again after that.

Around that time I had access to the Internet for the first time. The first thing I did was Google Lady Bunny and her address and phone number were on the Internet. I called her and asked her if she remembered me from Memphis. Not only did she remember me but she had posted a photo of the two of us together in Memphis on her website after we met.

We stayed in touch by phone over the years after that and I even visited her in NYC a couple of times in the following decade.

There was a period of time during which Bunny had injuries to an arm and a leg and she was really struggling. She was in need of friends for support during her struggles. At that same time I was struggling with pretty deep depression myself and as a result I was unavailable to her and that damaged our friendship.

Regardless of that Bunny is the best American drag star since Divine. She is one of the funniest people on the planet right up there with Don Rickles and Joan Rivers and Bunny was beloved to Joan River

In spite of my inability to be a friend to her when she needed me most, Bunny still makes time for me sometimes like earlier this year when we talked on the phone for at least an hour, maybe 2 hours but I do feel terrible that I let her down and wasn’t there for her when she needed me.

I went to NYC on 2 separate occasions several years ago now and visited Bunny on both trips.

I took my first and only NYC taxi with Bunny.

Once I mailed her a VHS cassette I put together with some of my drag foolishness including a video of me lip-syncing to a more obscure Deee-Lite song called “Call Me.”

Then many years later on one of my visits to NYC Bunny and I walked to a movie theater to see “Children of Men” and we stood outside a while waiting to meet someone although she would not tell me who. Then all of a sudden, a cute little woman came charging up to me with a huge smile beaming from her face with both arms outstretched to embrace me, which she did exuberantly. It was none other than the lead singer of Deee-Lite, Lady Miss Kier.

Today the drag community is very different. In fact I do not feel any sense of community from other queens I come into contact with on Facebook, which is the only place I come into contact with others like myself today.

I am not a working queen in a drag show at a gay bar today and there are conflicting stories about this but some people who are in a position to know about such things have told me that I would not want to be a local drag queen today because now gay bars only pay well for former Drag Race contestants and that queens who used to be able to make a living touring based solely on their reputations are struggling to do that today because of the demand for Drag Race queens. I did post something about that on fb one time and a queen in Atlanta disputed it and told me that it is absolutely not true and that lots of queens who have never been on drag race make their livings touring. I really do not know from personal experience after having been out of the game since the late 90s.

These days I will buy a fabulous new wig every once in a while from a highly skilled wig designer in Italy named Marco then pose for photographer friends in Nashville and post the photos on social media. That is the extent of my involvement with drag today although I have always felt more like a woman in between my ears. I feel like I am always who I was in drag even though I do not dress like a woman very often today.

I have a few drag queen friends on Fb but they aren’t people I have any personal history with in real life. I just saw and liked their pics or they liked something I posted and I sent them a friend request. One such queen I will refer to as Sassie described herself as a premiere drag queen of NYC. When I complemented her on her fabulous look I called her girl or miss woman or something like that and she scolded me and told me she is non-binary then later as I read her posts and comments to other queens on fb she routinely referred to them as girl and other decidedly feminine words. That little exchange is very indicative to me of what the so-called drag community is today.

I am in a lot of fb groups for drag queens and trans women because I do identify a lot with people we now call trans women. I have posted my pics in all of those groups but that is about as far as that ever went. Maybe my posts got a few likes but not even any comments and no sense of bonding or family or even camaraderie.

I get the impression now that if you are not associated with RuPaul’s Drag Race in some way whether you auditioned or were actually on it or if you aspire to be on it then no one gives a shit.

I had dreams of auditioning for that show but I have heard a lot of negative things in recent times about the show, its creator, how he has treated the people who helped make him the success he is today and also about the way past contestants have been mistreated by the people who are supposed to represent them. All that totally put me off of the idea of even attempting to participate. Additionally that show does not actually allow those contestants to show off their performance art skills very much. Instead they focus on contrived and inane “challenges” that do not showcase any real talent that the participants might actually possess.

I loved RuPaul in the 90s when she still appeared to love doing drag but now I get the distinct impression that he prefers his Dr. Phil/Steve Urkel persona he is now known for and that is not what initially won me over with him. I will admit RuPaul can be very sweet. Once in the early 2000s when he was blogging every day he did email me a very warm message in response to my electronic admiration for him.

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