Long Live the Queens

When I moved to the city that I now call my home, the only people I knew who lived here was a gay couple. I hung out with them, and they introduced me to their gay friends, one of which was Steve (aka Steph). More about Steve in a bit...

(Perhaps some time I'll write about the blind double date they set me up on. lol)

Because most of my friends were gay, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the local gay night club. It was really a lot of fun, and it's quite amusing to see those boys get all worked up when I'd kick their asses at pool. Hey, I grew up with a pool table in my basement. They didn't like some "miss fish" beating them, but I thought it was a gas. In a lot of ways, going to this club was more fun than the regular night clubs. You could be yourself, relax and have a good time rather than worrying about how you size up to the other steaks on display at the meat market. Ug.

Back to Steve - he was a drag queen, and she/he and I spent a lot of time together as we had become good friends. Since I had a considerable amount of experience in hair and makeup from my theater days, he recruited my help when he decided to participate in a local beauty pageant. You see, something went wrong when Steve was born. He should have been a female. Honestly, he was not a remarkable looking man at all, but when he dressed up as Steph, he was drop-dead gorgeous. He could do himself up and go out on the town and the men would be tripping over themselves to get to her. Little did they know! lol He really seemed to enjoy life more as a female than he did as "himself."

Through my friendship with Steve/Steph, I got to know a lot of other drag queens. They are an interesting lot, let me tell you. They take their pageants and their "alternate personas" very seriously.

In preparation for the pageant, Steph managed to get a hold of an Oleg Cassini original sequined gown - it was fabulous. She obtained some really great falsies, too - the kind they provide for breast cancer patients that you put into a bra, very natural look, feel and movement. You'd see anything from bras stuffed with toilet paper to these.

These pageants were very much like any other theater production - lots of behind-the-scenes action, costume changes, makeup touch-ups and emergency sewing of buttons and such. This pageant had a few extra twists, though, as you might expect - especially for me. I had the privilege of being in the dressing room and watching the transformation of many from ordinary looking man, to beauty queen divas. Holy cow, what an experience. The pageants had the evening gown competitions, and talent competitions mostly. Their talent was usually lip-synching to something along the lines of Donna Summer or Barbara Streisand. There was some really bad lip-synching and others who pull it off quite well.

I'll never forget being stopped in the dressing room with "Honey, could you zip me up?" as well as "Girlfriend, are these on straight?" (yes, the boobs. heh). A lot of comments were made as to how jealous they were of my "natural assets." hee hee

There is such a thing as a decent drag queen:

Ripping off Marilyn. Typical.

There is such a thing (all too often) as a tawdry drag queen:

Yikes.

Then there are the REALLY bad drag queens.

Oh, come on! He/she didn't even try (or, rather, shouldn't have).

Then there are the amazing ones that make it REALLY hard to tell that they're a man:

Yes, this is a man. That's got to be a latex chest plate as you can't pull that off with falsies!


The crowned beauties you see here (if I remember correctly) are Miss Gay Cedar Rapids, Miss Gay Iowa and Miss Gay USA 2004.

Really, if you get a chance to attend a drag queen show or pageant, do it. You'll need to have an open mind, of course, but they're quite amusing, very interesting and rather amazing at times.

- Miss Thang (Yes, that's what they called me. lol)