RuPaul's Drag Race

This blog should've come before the last one but its just popping up now, and when the inspiration is there, I follow it, so here it goes.

As many of you who are regular components of my life know, over the winter I became obsessed with RuPaul's Drag Race. Fell in love with it really, not obsessed. I had never seen a whole season of it before, only catching an episode here and there occasionally.

But on New Year's Day I became sick and stayed at home all day long and what happened to be on Logo but a whole recap of the previous season to create anticipation for the new season beginning in a few short weeks. So I watched it and became endeared.

Then the new season started and I totally watched every episode, even bonded with and became great friends with some other homos in the area who also watched it with the same voracity.

The funny thing is that I began to be inspired by what I was seeing. I was seeing the underdog, Jinkx Monsoon, whom no one believed would make it far, come out with talent and amazing qualities that no one suspected and lo and behold, she won the contest! Amazing!!! (she'll be in town June 30th at Attitudes, I and a few friends are seeing her, so excited)

The inspiration came from that, but also from each contestant and the creativity they enlisted to strive to win the title. And even more from the fact that I used to be an artist, as a child you almost couldn't pull me away from my book and pen and coloring pencils. I created character after character and named them, created super powers or planets for them, whole histories for each one, all sorts of things like that. But also in 1988-9 I did drag.

There I said it for public consumption (many of you I'm close with already knew this), but yes I did drag.

I was a terribly shy young man, and I mean painfully so. It hurt me to think too long of talking in front of people or to people I knew, never people I didn't know, but alsways people I knew. I even created scenarios in my mind about it until I would get sick thinking of the conversation that could happen, but never actually did. So as I was 18, just out of the house and working in "the big city of St. Louis" I met folks who quickly surmised my sexual orientation and took me out to bars and dance clubs that had drag shows at them, and I was fascinated. Not because I wanted to be a woman, but because I could see the creative talent they were employing to become a character, much like the ones I had created for over a decade in my notebooks and sketch pads.

So, when Kathy Klein, a prominent drag queen in town. Really the fiercest one I'd ever seen, and still looks amazing now (even though she lives a small life with her partnerh in Iowa now)when she dresses up. When she came to me and said how pretty I was and had I ever thought of doing drag, then talked me into it and helping me do my makeup and buy the proper gear to stuff, pad and tuck everything into, I was ecstatically thinking of how this was my out. I could become someone else and therefore wouldn't have to deal with myself anymore, someone I was sick and tired of, but really in all truth, someone I didn't know. And so said yes and did it.

It lasted all of 9 months but I learned a lot about myself during that time and decided I was using it to hide and not being me, which I still had no clue who that was anyway, but I knew it wasn't healthy. So I quit and explored other avenues, including drinking heavily to be brave enough to speak to others, but that is another blog waiting to happen lol.

Anyhow, all of this to tell you why I've been changing lately.

Any of you who actually know me in person have noticed I've been more daring lately, with my new hairdo, with clothing, with my toenails (lol) and just trying to embrace more of who I am, maybe some of which that had gotten lost along the way. And enjoying being more expressive, finally! Just because we live a yogic life doesn't mean it can't be filled with color, right?!?

So, expect more, and more, as I embrace each new creative thought that comes up. I'm not sure how much more there will be, but there could be a lot and there could be just a bit more.

Either way folks, I'm embracing me, the inner me, the one only I know fully, but I let you see quite a bit of too. And as this me bubbles to the surface, physical changes may be prevalent, or not, but changes will be coming, be they physical only or mostly internal. So be ready!!!