I'm currently in the midst of another pointless Physics lecture on topics most likely unrelated to material covered on the final exam, and I'm thinking that there's no better time for a frustrated premed student to write about putting on fake facial hair and prancing around on a stage in schoolboy shorts and barely anything else. Yes, I know it's been a few weeks, but I'm finally going to write about the Drag Show.
As I recall (to use a phrase that has become so trite that it has lost almost all meaning), that Thursday began with hellfire and fury, rape-saucing me to the brink of exhaustion with two major midterm exams and an annoying homework assignment for a Neuroscience class taught by a senile old man who has a plaid fetish. Anyway, I somehow made it through that day alive, though drowsy and in deep desire of some solid slumber. I let my mind wander throughout my last class of the day, which would not have been the last class had it been any ordinary Thursday, allowing it to pursue its grandest confabulations of how the evening would unfold, and I'm sure there were moments during that span in which one would have caught me smiling and spurting sighs of satisfaction for seemingly no reason. I remember that I dressed like a girl that day, wearing a waist-fitted shirt whose message contained a minute irony understood only in the context of the events that were to come, and a pair of my best girl pants, hoping to shock, stun, slam, flatten, and floor friends and strangers with the transformation that had taken place.
Kelly and I were the only people in the Kurtzman room for the first hour or so, and while she was pining about the pangs of womanhood, I was gathering up all the masculine energy I could muster, and I was getting antsier, angstier--getting into the role, if you will. It was a snowball of a process, really, kicked off by the kicking-off of the monopoly shoes and the shedding of those girl pants. Red high-top chucks and little black schoolboy shorts, reminiscent of the attire of a 1950s adolescent boy who thinks he's way cooler than he actually is, became a part of me, and from these objects I drew more energy. I wasn't sleepy anymore. I was wide awake and with these shoes I just had to jump right out of them, it seems, so I ran around the room a few times and starting kicking at the air. Isn't it weird how things can change when you change what you wear?
Half-dressed at the time, I shifted my mind. Attend to the faces, we both agreed, and we knew the place we needed to be. It wasn't the door to the left but to the right, at least for tonight. So I stood there as she becoming he pasted hair on me becoming me, and when it was through, nobody knew that I wouldn't have belonged there in a week or two.
I needed to run, just a little bit more, and time was winding down, and people started coming in, getting ready to come out in a whole new gender. I ran through a crowd of well-dressed young people back into the sanctuary that was the Kurtzman room. Boys becoming girls and girls becoming boys and maybe a few people like me all gathered together for their transformations. There was tape, tape, and more tape. Goodbye penis! Get an ace bandage and goodbye titties. Is it really as much an illusion as we try to tell ourselves? And what about me? No. No ace bandage here, but I had a sock in pants, and that night, maybe I didn't even need that.
The line wrapped around the building, and as more human energy filled the William Pitt Union, we the performers, sponges for life that we are, absorbed what we could. The anxiety began to hit. The doors opened. People filed in. Sanity filed out, and Joseph, dressed in his best butler attire, introduced the first performer of the evening, the King of Wishful Thinking, Christopher Crash. I was watching him and watching the door, waiting for my skanks to arrive. We had practiced the night before for several hours, and that's when I knew without a doubt that it'd work out. I absolutely knew what we could do. The numbers flew by, and shortly they arrived, practiced for a bit then wanted to sit. Dominique absolutely ruled. Let's go see what Dylan can do.
The two of them on that stage, in the time between the double D's, collecting money and making jokes, seemed to take an amount of time exponentially longer than any other span of time between numbers that evening. Part of that was true, as they ran around the audience collecting tips from those too small and shy to approach the stage. "I swear this kid's been a drag king all his life. It's just that nobody thought to put a stage under him before. Dylan Dickhersoon."
Then the music started and I ran, and the light was bright--brighter than I remembered--and there was screaming and laughing at my attire and ma' prance. The rest was a blur pieced together much later, only by stringing together a series of pictures taken from various angles and by various audience members. I rubbed my body with dollar bills and threw my tie to the hills. I did a white boy strut and duck-walked without fucking it up. Then the breakdown, build-up, and off comes the shirt--into the darkness a strip of white and my chest is exposed. "WTF" they say, and I don't know if they're reading or not. Screaming so loud the music was drowned out, but I knew the music in time, so I kept with it, confident. I took a walk back, with my arms outstretched as the cue for my girls rang through the hall, and they joined me to dance and to flaunt. A few seconds left, I made my way back, and I struck my bad-boy pose that showed off my back.
And that was it, and I could barely breathe. It all seemed like a dream. It was as if I had just emerged from a panic attack minus the panic and full of way more attack. The rush was ridic, and it took me a bit to come all the way down. I walked back into our sanctuary and changed into street clothes, grabbed a can of root beer and a fake cigarette, and I emerged with that little plastic guitar slung over my shoulder and with that cocky smile on my face, knowing in my head that I, yes I, totally owned that place.
Then I don't know when it was, but he walked onto the stage, guitar slung over his back. He approached the microphone and began to speak, and tears welled up in my eyes. The song began, and I fought my way to the aisle and took a seat beneath the light that had to be killing his eyes, and when he was done, I rose and placed a dollar in his hand. A high five sealed the deal because, you know, that's what guys do. And then I walked back to the corner for the rest of the show.
We ended up at Fuel and Fuddle. But we were definitely in way more places that night, even if we never had a chance to leave Oakland.
So, that's what happened. How do I feel? That may be more or less complicated, depending on who you are. I felt like me. I wasn't really acting in the role of a stereotypical male. You're right when you say that drag is not pretending to be someone else. For me, drag is getting to show the rest of the world another part of myself. For me, this other part of myself is the part that isn't nervous around people. This is the part of myself that knows he's funny and smart and good at so many things. He exudes confidence, and you can see that. What else is in me? There's a lot left mixing around. There's a lot of anxiety and awkwardness and uncertainty, and for one night, in front of a crowd that would have made the other part of my huddle in a corner and cry and beg to be spared, the Dylan part of me emerged triumphant. Cory came up to me immediately after the show. He didn't say anything at first. Then he spoke: So you can do THAT...but you can't play drums in front of people?!? Is this the same girl who couldn't play legatos without freaking out? No. But Yes. What have I learned from this experience? Everyone has always told me that I need to be more confident--that I know what I'm doing, even if it's tough, and that I should trust myself and just do what I know how. But no one has ever told me that I already had this confidence somewhere inside of me. No one has ever been able to show me where it is or how to find it and channel it. But I think I've got it now.
And you know that Dylan part of me? Well, there's the Elise part of me too, right? And do you remember how in high school chemistry, they taught you about emergent properties? I am not just Dylan, and I am not just Elise, just as water is not just hydrogen and oxygen sitting down next to one another. I am these things, yes. But I am so much more than that.
