Friday, May 14, 2004

Kind of a Drag

In the depths of sleep deprivation, I attended the Sociology 1 drag show put on by the drag queens of the 801 Cabaret in Key West, Florida. I had been excited about this show for weeks, and seeing the queens, Miss Sushi, Miss Kylie Jean Louise, and Miss Gugi Gomez parade out onstage in a variety of interesting vinyls, boas, furs, laces, and silks, I was instantly awake again. They were absolutely stellar. Each had a particular style of song she liked to perform and a particular style of dress to go along with it. Gugi capitalized on her Latin roots, wearing outrageous cominations of dominatrix couture with the styles popular on Latin American teenage girls. She wore bondage gear, gypsy skirts, and a denim jumpsuit complete with denim hat for her J. Lo number. She chose music that would allow her to come into the audience and give kisses, lap dances, an simulated blowjobs to as many people as possible. Kylie was like a Vegas showgirl. She showed off as much of her fantastic legs as humanly possible, generally exposing just a little bit of her ass in the process. She did lighter pop numbers that were generally uptempo . . . and she even stripped naked in one to remind everyone that drag culture is all about questioning assigned gender roles and sexual identity. My favorite of the three was Miss Sushi. She was tall and thin and by far the most graceful of the three queens. She wore a 50's rockabilly style short wig for most of the show, and eventually went onstage in just her natural hair, which was about the same length, but not nearly as perfectly curled. Sushi chose numbers that vacillated between fast and slow, mostly based on dancefloor and lounge favorites from the 40's and 50's. She wore a long sheer gown with asian fans hanging from it for one number, a glittering white gown with an ostrich feather coat for another, and a Japanese wedding kimono (cut short in front to expose her long legs) for her final number as a nod to her Japanese-American heritige. All of her numbers allowed her to move gracefully and dance exceptionally well. She even showed off her acrobatics in "Take Me or Leave Me," which she performed with Gugi. Sushi played Maureen's part in a cute, short vinyl skirt (nobody wears vinyl better than Miss Sushi) and a tied up oxford button down shirt. She did a couple of cartwheels and jumped into the arms of Gugi, who played Maureen's lover Joanne as a true "control freak:" a dominatrix. These ladies were fucking fabulous. And I want to go to drag shows all the time. I was so happy to see how into the performances the audience was--especially the group of (presumably straight) guys right in the front, who were the first to tuck dollars into Kylie's ass (and later to place one right between her dick and her balls), the first to ask Gugi for lap dances, and the first to want to touch Miss Sushi's graceful thighs. Sushi later said in an interview that straight men respond well to drag culture because it's all about femininity. They wish straight women would be as outrageous and glamorous as drag queens are--and as sexually overt. I think that if this were true, more straight men would like musicals. (Which would be awesome. Seriously.)

On another note related to gay culture, Jen and I visited Dani's room today. She lated told us that her roommate thought we were lovers, Jen and I. When I asked Dani to inquire about her roommate's evidence for this theory, she sited that we "could finish each other's sentences" and that we "were talking about cute girls and hot girls all the time." Wow. It was then that I realized that she must have obviously thought me the "bulldyke" in the relationship, you know, considering I was wearing pants and I have short hair. So I've decided that, while this girl has impeccable taste in literature (I inspected her bookshelves after she left because I had spotted Beloved from half the room away), she is obviously too superficial to comprehend anything she reads. If she honestly thought that just because Jen and I are willing to admit that Brody Dalle of the Distillers and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt are infinitely hotter than we are--and infinitely more attractive than anyone we've ever met in our lives--then we must logically be lesbians. And because we are good enough friends to have inside jokes and know what one other is thinking then we logically must be a couple. Because that makes complete sense.

Note the biting irony.

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