Get ready to Drag!

Wow, it’s crazy to think that in living memory, being gay was illegal! A person’s love was once deemed such a dangerous thing that it was best kept behind bars – the sole preserve of criminals.

And it’s hard not to think of that now, now that I’m in the room with such wondrous creatures, each so fabulous, poised and lithe, and whilst the TV cameras are hurrying them up, they seem to be slightly offset from the whole process. As if it doesn’t touch them.

Perhaps because they’re doing something that others still consider amoral and beyond the pale, and even though they’re the stars of the show, there’s something transgressive and liberating about it all.

Transformations

Because it’s not just the physical, it’s the mental too, to quote my old mate Johnny.

And the ones whose first time it is, veer from giddy excitement to gallows humour about its transgressive nature.

But it’s so reassuring to know that putting on some eyeshadow can’t turn you into a monster. It’s a miracle to realise that the blood red feathers and gold tinsel can’t corrode your soul. And those high heels – they’ll only blister your feet, whilst leaving your mind untouched.

Whose permission should we seek?

The fella who painted his beard, or the grandmother wearing a show girls dress – how does this work?

What are the qualifications needed to tell someone else how to look or live? Is relying on a loved one to validate your personhood just another kind of submission? Who should the author of my own stories be?

The Get Down

The joy that I saw, the growth and the freedom, seemed to me to be down to people taking in hand their own responsibility. They were able to say, ‘This is me’, without recourse or arbitration. ‘This is me, because I say it is.’

This is me, full stop.