How I performed as a drag queen for the first time - and found myself as a man
Reportage in which the author appears for the first time as a drag queen in a queer club
Hello, hello, kiss, kiss, hug. Everyone in the Monster Ronson's Ichiban karaoke bar is looking at me. I'm a man, but today I'm wearing 15-centimetre heels. And three layers of make-up. Four layers of tights. Foam on my thighs and bum. A blonde wig that Dolly Parton couldn't have chosen better.
But you are big
My shoes slip off my feet and I become unsteady for a moment. Don't fall, keep walking, wiggle my bum. People I don't know tell me that I look great. As a man, that rarely happens to me. Everyone turns round to look at me. "You're really tall," they say. Just under 2.07 metres, I think. My work colleagues and friends who are supporting me that evening still overlook me. It's only when I say hello and stand in front of them that they realise who the tall blonde is.
Today I'm performing as a drag queen for the first time. I invented "Dicki Minarsch", my drag alter ego, for the occasion. She and Sebastian, my male name, don't have much in common. For this evening, it was time to get out of Sebastian's Ralph Lauren shirt and into Dicki's sequinned fumble, which almost exposes her bum. Mission completed, I'd say.
Until a while ago, I condemned men who performed as drag queens. That was too gay for me. I didn't want to be associated with people like that. I thought, I am a different kind of gay. I didn't want to go to the CSD because it was too gay for me. What I actually meant by that: I was too gay for myself.
I had a problem with my own sexual identity - and I never realised it because it's so normal in our society to be ashamed of yourself as a gay man. I realised that when my last relationship ended. I chose men who were ashamed of their sexuality - and then decided that something had to change.
At the latest since RuPaul's Drag Race, a kind of casting show for drag queens that has been broadcast since 2009, the art of drag queens has arrived in the mainstream (also thanks to formats such as Queer Eye). It makes it tangible to the masses why guys wear dresses. Small spoiler: It's a lot of fun. And so men in women's clothes dancing to music and moving their mouths suddenly became cool. Bands like Hurts made music videos with drag queens, RuPaul's Drag Race contestants became famous and very successful, Miss Fame, for example, landed an advertising deal with L'Oréal, and even the heterosexual Heidi Klum gets a new ProSieben format with drag queens.
I started reading gay literature. Coming to terms with my true desires, my identity. And: to accept myself for who I am. It's very exhausting to think about who you should be all the time and not be who you actually are.
At some point I thought that perhaps I could understand myself better if I played with my own identity - if I became someone else. Or rather: another.
Two weeks before I'm due to perform as Dicki Minarsch, I climb to the fifth floor of a 1960s building and feel like I'm doing something forbidden. As if I'm part of a secret pact. A conspiracy. And it is a bit like that. Today we're rehearsing the make-up for my drag performance for the first time. We, that's me and my drag mother Morgæn Wood Callisto. We've been friends for a few months. I think it would be fun if I performed in drag. So I ask Morgæn to help me transform myself from a man into a drag queen - and, ideally, to perform. At the time, I had no idea how deeply this performance would affect me. Morgæn, whose real name I'm not allowed to mention here, is willing to help me. And she actually got a spot in the "Monster Ronson's Ichiban" karaoke bar a few weeks later. Drag queens perform there every Tuesday. She asks me if we want to do it together, she shared her spot with me.
No wonder I feel like I'm doing something forbidden in the stairwell on the way to her house. Homosexuals are still hiding 25 years after the abolition of the Paragraph 175 yet. When we hold hands, when we kiss, when we put on drag queen make-up - everything is tainted with shame, no matter how tolerant our trendy neighbourhoods are or society is because men are now finally allowed to marry each other. There is a world outside these feel-good oases: the real world. Where homophobia is still omnipresent today, where they stare at us or even hit us.
As my drag mother, Morgæn will look after me from now on. That's quite normal among drag queens, it's a kind of generational contract: every drag queen had a drag mother who helped her to find herself. Morgæn has Vanessa Jupiter and now I have Morgæn.
While she does my make-up and picks at me, I think about my own development. As a person. As Sebastian, who I am sitting here today. Today I slip into a bra, a dress, put on a wig and, days later, wear high heels and suddenly realise that I'm doing what I did as a child: wearing my sister's clothes, putting on my mother's shoes, playing with make-up, doing Barbie's hair. That's just how I was as a child. I also always liked cars and still pee myself a little when I hear a V8 engine roaring.
But I also think that I probably like V8 engines because I have to. Because others expect it of me and it's manly to be into cars. But not being into Barbies, pretty dresses and high heels. As a child, I still went to carnival as a strawberry, in red tights and a red tutu - it was a lot of fun. It was completely natural for me.
But relatives told me not to wiggle my bum like that, it wasn't proper. Kindergarten and school did the rest and I adapted. The bright red strawberry I was as a child disappeared.
I didn't dare to do what I actually wanted to do: put high heels on my feet and wear a tutu. And why not? I was a child and I believe that the person we were as a child is the truest and most authentic version of us. That was us, completely unfiltered. The person we are today is a mixture of ourselves and other influences such as society, parents, traumas, experiences and so on.
In Morgæn's living room there are two chairs, several make-up palettes and a few wigs. Morgæn experiments with different foundations, applying powder again and again. It's time for the eyes, the lips. My eyebrows are completely masked off so that she can paint them on a little higher. Everything about me is redone. "What do you want for your performance? How do you want it?" asks Morgæn. "Slutty," I say. Influenced by Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the like, I believe in sexually emancipated women who let Alice Schwarzer roll up her unpainted fingernails. Being sexually emancipated means being as revealing and sexy as you want to be. That's exactly what I want, I think: to be provocative.
But I also think of the child in the strawberry costume, who is having a lot of fun at this moment. Freedom. Breaking the rules, shitting on the opinions of others. Here in this moment, when Morgæn puts the wig on me, I feel like a rebel and give the middle finger to all those who shouted "faggot" at me at school. I'll do what I want, you fuckers.
The make-up is ready. And the song is ready too: "Glam" by Christina Aguilera. A fast pop song that is all about what the title promises. The rest comes with the song: shoes? 15 centimetres! Dress? Short, with glitter and fringes! Queen? Yes, guuurl!
I look at myself in the mirror for the first time and can hardly believe it: I look fucking good. A short blonde wig, a super tight dress and a blue fur jacket emphasise my make-up. Under several pairs of tights, I'm wearing foam that has been cut to size. This ensures that I have curves.
I don't sleep well the night before my performance. I've been exhilarated all day. I go back to Morgæn's flat. There she paints my face to make it look different. I'm going to show myself to the world as Dicki Minarsch for the first time, and the evening will also be a premiere for Morgæn. She will be performing as a drag king, i.e. a man, for the first time. Usually women perform as drag kings. But today it doesn't matter, we're not just shitting on other people's rules - we're making our own.
Five floors down, thirty minutes later. We're waiting for a taxi. I've already heard a few horror stories from drivers, who have homophobically insulted their customers. It sounds cheesy, but I believe that God is looking after us. Nothing can go wrong, we've come too far, I think, getting into the black Toyota and trying to breathe. Today I'm 15 centimetres closer to heaven.
Arrival at the bar. I have to wait for the cars to pass. Excitement. Show time. The blonde mountain of fake hair is probably the first thing people see in front of the bar behind the car. I trudge towards the entrance. It's a bit wobbly in my shoes - so far I've only practised walking in them in my kitchen and bedroom. The Berlin pavements are a different calibre. In the bar, Morgæn leads me past the reception, the cloakroom, the people. Everyone looks at me. We disappear backstage.
You can hardly turn round in the small room. I see naked people, a dressing table, a pole dance pole. The dressing room is actually a karaoke booth. Tiny. Since I'm already all dressed up, we don't have to do anything else. Nothing to distract me, and then everything happens incredibly quickly. After a short intro, it's our turn to stand at the side of the stage. 10.30 pm. I hear my name, not "Sebastian", but "Dicki Minarsch", and it still feels like it's my name.
Stand up, take props, go on stage. Stand up. Back to the audience. Breathe. The first bars. Christina Aguilera's voice rings out. I turn round - applause. Indeed, the people are cheering for me, they like me. I take the first steps - more applause. I swing my hips, I fiddle with myself, I take off my first jacket - applause again.
The 3:39 minutes that our song lasts fly by. In the truest sense of the word: I fly across the stage, Morgæn at my side. To crown it all, she stretches her naked bum towards the audience. I moisten the index finger of my right hand and place it on her right buttock. Our last scene, the crowd roars.
The next day, I realise how exhausted I am from the performance and the preparations. I am tired. My mobile phone keeps vibrating. Friends send me videos and photos, they are proud of me. But when I see the pictures of myself in drag, it makes me sad.
The feeling of happiness and freedom that I felt yesterday is fading. I realise that this is not the norm. Not everyone can be who they are or who they want to be. People are hostile, marginalised, hurt. Yet underneath the wig, all the make-up and the high heels is just a person who wants nothing more or less than to be allowed to be themselves and to be loved for the person they are.
At the end of my performance, the moment I took off the dress and with it Dicki Minarsch, I learnt something: I have to take the freedom to be myself. Nobody will give it to me except myself.
Someone can still tell me not to shake my bum as much as I did as a child. However, today I can resist without feeling dependent. I don't have to bury a part of myself like I did back then with the strawberry costume. Today I know that I have the right to wiggle my bum as much as I want.
I'm glad that I didn't trip and fall during my performance as Dicki Minarsch. But even that would have been OK. Stumbling and falling down is part of life. I may not have fallen during my performance, but I have symbolically fallen many times before in my life. And it was precisely these falls that brought me to where I am today: At my desk, where I am writing this text. In 15-centimetre heels. This text originally appeared on VICE.de.
