I have another secret to confess...I've always wanted to do drag.
Yup. Total over-the-top, fabulously-appointed, sequined, feathered and quaffed, rip-roarin' in-your-face faux femme fatale.
To borrow a phrase from "Project Runway" season 4's winner Christian, I would be a FIERCE bitch!
As a kid, I used to use bedspreads and sheets to drape and knot around my body to create an impromtu ball gown. I'd actually do this quite frequently. I even got caught by my Dad once playing with my mother's costume jewelery. Thankfully I was only eight so I could excuse it by telling him I was pretending it was "pirate treasure". Ya right. So why were the diamond-esque earrings dangling from both my earlobes?
Ever since my first exposure to gay clubs, I'd been fascinated by drag queens. Their look, their mannerisms and especially the adoration of their fans intrigued me. I was in awe. I secretly wanted to be one of them. Imagine...perfectly strange men falling over themselves to gingerly approach you and hand you dollar bills and all you had to do is look stunning in tight polyester, a thick coat of make-up and a well-overworked and much-shellacked cheap wig.
As I posted a few months ago, I had gotten all done up in full drag for the first time as an adult back in '93, but I never left the house. I was too chicken.
When I moved here to Central Florida, I quickly discovered that Orlando was the shining capital of the drag queen circuit. If you could make it here, you could make it anywhere. My ex-BF Justin tried to join the ranks of the Belles of the Stage at the now-closed Southern Nights club, but they soon tired of his awkward looks and un-refined gait. Alas, he'd started too late at the old age of 23. Here, drag queens start well before they can legally enter a club. Well before. Then they practice, practice, practice and do whatever it takes to win contests, gain a large coterie of alliances and devoted fans, and claw, kick and bite their way to the top of the heap.
My stays in the Big Easy also exposed me to a vastly more risque and raw drag queen culture. And during the days of Southern Decadence, the Quarter is rife with bountiful boas, buoyant bouffants and all-manner of badoinkadoink, boobies and bling bling, real and fake!
I've succumbed to a more middle-aged low-key nightlife now, but I still try to make it out once in a while to places like the world-famous gay resort club here in Orlando, The Parliament House (yes Walter, it's a plug so better give me at least a free drink next time I'm down there, bitch!) and bask in the glow of the greasepaint, glitter, glitz and glam that is the drag scene.