Drag: A Force of Resistance

Whatever the actual etymology of "drag" when used to describe cross-dressing cabaret rooted in the theater of the gay community, the operative origin for me will always lie in the idea of resistance, like the wing flaps that slow a jet plane or, in my case, the need to resist the crushing force of the dominant straight culture that simultaneously surrounds and marginalizes LGBT people.
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Straight people are wary of drag, as though they sense that it somehow undermines them without quite knowing why. To them, a drag show is cheaper Streisand tickets. What their reduced admission is actually buying them is a seat before a two-way mirror where they are trapped in a fun house they neither control nor understand. I am talking about real drag now as opposed to talented illusionists who offer a believable Diana Ross or Marlene Deitrich for pennies on the dollar.
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In these popular shows, men expertly made up and practised in every facial expression, posture, gesture, or other nuance of their idol's bearing can be thrilling mimics in an art form aimed at destroying the barrier between reality and artifice. Often as not, the transvestites who perform these Wal-Mart label star reviews are not gay. They are brilliant stage actors whose talent happens to require an evening gown, wig, and the ability to lip synch an entire canon of professional work. Think of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage and you have the gist of the thing--albeit at the very high end of the lot. Such queens of lesser lights than Mr. Humphries typically play to houses packed with bingo players bussed in from a church in Moline and eager to experience the "real" San Francisco by having the safest possible artificial experience.
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No, no. I am talking about the drag I see in small piano bars and movable clubs that occupy whatever warehouse, bar, or makeshift theater can be rented for an evening or weekend. This is, to me, true drag; of my people, by my people, and for my people as opposed to working for the Yankee (or, as the case may be, tourist) dollar. Here, the Judy, Cher, or Charo you see is more attitude than illusion as evidenced by my favorite drag queen name of the moment: Liza With a P, loosely translated as "I'm gonna stick it in your face whether you like it or not."
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Straight people do not typically see such reviews and, I surmise, would spurn the offer were it to be made as this drag--intended for a gay audience rather than a bus load of day trippers--falls so beautifully under the banner of "blatant," a gay trait straight people have made clear they do not care for, as in: "I'm okay with gay people and several of my friends are gay. I just take exception to those who are so blatant about it." Straight people say this with such heartfelt sincerity I can only assume they do not know they are making fools of themselves with such idiotic palaver.
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And I am not referring to oafs in overalls and gimme caps who can spit a stream of brown tabbacky juice as far as a tree frog in the Amazon can flick its tongue to snap up a bug. No, I refer to people like . . . well, like my co-worker, a lovely woman of staggering intelligence and empathy for all who descends from a patrician family educated for generations at the leading universities in the country. Let's call her Maeve for no other reason than it bears not the remotest resemblance to her real name.
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I shared with Maeve a chapter from a novel I was writing at the time. It included a lesbian sex scene of such decorous modesty that no one under the age of 50 would even recognize it as a sex scene had it not taken place in a bed and referred to a "tangle of arms and legs" from which two women had to recapture their autonomous selves.
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Maeve enjoyed the chapter; how witty it was, how droll, how acutely observed and rendered in language so vivid that she could see the scene in her mind's eye. And therein lay the trouble (I might have said "rub" but judged it too blatant and self-censored) because the very next phrase that fell from her lips was the lumbering dreadnought of the dominant straight majority pushing gay people down and out and into place: "I'm not a prude when it comes to sex scenes. I just don't appreciate it when gay people are so blatant about their sexuality." Oh, really? You don't care for blatant sexuality?
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But let's leave Maeve now because she is dear and in every way a kind and loving soul who would be genuinely horrified to learn she'd given any offense whatsoever, and return to the larger straight culture she unwittingly represents.
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Any admonishment about blatant sexuality aimed at gay people by straight people is as laughably ignorant as it is insulting and, ultimately, enraging. Anyone who has seen a movie, read a book, watched TV, flipped through a magazine, ridden a train, sung along to a tune on the radio, attended a concert, been to the beach on a hot day, looked at a billboard, shopped for clothes, or, to put it succinctly, anyone who has left the house cannot fail to miss that the one rule our standard, straight operating culture uses to advertise who we are, is rampant, vulgar sexuality--hetero, blatant as hell and completely over the top.
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Straight people seem not to notice this at the same time they participate in it vigorously--walking down the street holding hands and tonguing each other to pass the time away until their destination is reached. Many are even pushing their blatant baby carriages as if to advertise they've had sex at least once about 10 months ago. Or, perhaps they are aware but don't care because they are at the top of the cultural food chain and do not give a shit what anyone else may think. It can, in fact, be argued that runaway heterosexuality--particularly the use of women's bodies to sell consumer products--is a major part of the force marginalizing LGBT people and that, patient reader, brings me back to drag a a force of resistance.
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African slaves in the American South used everything at their disposal to subvert the authority of the white "master." They used christianity and separate, inferior churches to plan escape and pass down coded language and signs intended to communicate with each other in field songs and hymns. "Follow the Drinking Gourd," a slave song, clued waiting runaways to the Big Dipper and its orientation to North. "Wade in the Water," a song the overseer assumed was about baptism, told runaways to walk in the river where the tracking dogs could not pick up human scent; quilts depicting life on the plantation and handed down through generations were secretly maps to the underground railway and freedom. But as a gay person in racist, sexist, gay-baiting America, my favorite subversion was the Cake Walk.
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The Cake Walk is a knee wobbling, elbow bending, eye popping, high stepping, ass wiggling, nonsensical dance routinely performed by black slaves on plantations. The white folk enjoyed watching the savage Negro's hilarious dancing never understanding that the slaves were actually mimicking European dances they saw at parties where they were servants. The slaves were making fun of their owners without the southern elite understanding they were being ridiculed. Welcome to drag, my straight friends, welcome to drag.
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When straight people see this kind of drag, they may smirk at the outrageous makeup and insane wigs or laugh at the farcical camp that spares nothing and no one, but an uncomfortable nagging voice welling up from the subconscious warns, en garde, as it should. Marginalized people who have been pushed down as hard as gay people have in the U.S. are going to pop up somewhere and it won't be pretty. This drag, unlike illusion, is not pretty. It is hideous in its portrayal of women--vicious, abusive, sea hags and crones in fright wigs and makeup like razor slashes are telling you something you don't want to know: that's how the straight world appears to us when we are confronted with the viciousness of a society that hounds and stalks and kills us with no remorse. We are holding a mirror up to the society that devalues and dehumanizes us and punishes us so savagely for an accident of birth.
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The last weekend in June is, in San Francisco, a major celebration of LGBT culture. I will be joining several of my queen friends at drag shows where we will laugh at the straight idiots who hate us because we refuse to cry.