Long before queer theory had become an established means of making a career in academia, I started serving an apprenticeship to a way of being that helped me survive the minor catastrophe and miracle of having been born a girl who was supposed to transform into a woman. I don’t know what else to call it but drag. The label now seems rather opportunistic because of recent developments in politics and the media, but at that time, drag was about a constant celebration of the powers of excess and imagination. Drag let me live the dream of feminine omnipotence. In drag, girls could keep their eyes on the prize. Drag allowed us to feel rich when we were poor. It was about the power of the moment. It was about useless expenditure and wasting time. Queens would put on their drag for one night and looked fabulous, but their riches would turn to rags the next day and they would have to start all over again. Drag took every expectation that this meant that and turned it upside down and spun it around, demonstrating that there was no way to keep anything, especially when it was in language, straight. When someone said, oh, that was grand, it was never certain whether grand was an insult or a compliment. Grand, let it be both. It was all about style and delivery. Work was a heavy word in this dialect. You could work someone in and you could work someone out. You could work a piece and you could work a party. You could work together or you could work alone. Drag let us live outside the logic of capitalist accumulation, the logic of success and failure. Everyone could be a queen for a day. Drag became a way of protecting myself from the deadly seriousness of my youth.
2087
titsay
areudirty
stormborns
