Happy Gay Pride, Everyone!

I moved to Seattle in 1993, actually following an ex there.  There seemed to be something about moving up the west coast.  I had started in Laguna Beach, but later moved to San Francisco to live with a friend I had known from Laguna.  Then two friends from Laguna moved to Seattle and eventually, I followed suit.  I had been in  Seattle, I think, less than two months when one night at a bar, a man approached me, literally took my face in his hands and said, "I could make you look just beautiful in drag!"  Um, okay.  At that point, everything I knew about drag had come from Torch Song Trilogy and the Crying Game, not a vast amount of experience considering I was twenty-five and gay and had lived all over California.  There was a huge drag scene in Seattle.  Maybe bigger drag scenes were just popping up in all major cities as drag ventured further away from camp and drag queens were aspiring to, what those I knew referred to as, realness.  Realness.  I was twenty-five, unemployed and there was a competition coming up called Closet Ball. I figured what the hell, what did I have to lose??  I hadn't a clue what I was getting myself into. 

Closet Ball was an event happening the Saturday of Gay Pride weekend at a bar called Neighbours, the title of which would be Under Construction.  Beneath scaffolding, a clever enough set, decorated with hard hats and ladders, the contestants would walk the runway as boys and then an established drag queen would have one hour to transform them into girls, the best transformation winning a crown and bearing the title Closet Queen for the coming year.  The man from the bar already had a contestant, so the search ensued for a suitable drag mother for me.  A drag queen who didn't perform anymore and, in fact, didn't even really do drag anymore stepped forward and offered to take me under his/her wing.  We had less than two weeks to pull our act together.  My drag mother's name was Sassy.  We needed a drag name for me, as well.  It was customary for the mother to name the daughter.  Although I wasn't a fan of the play on words names, I became Sarah Mony, well really I wouldn't become Sarah until the weekend of Pride, but you know what I mean. 

Sassy had a  theory that even if you weren't the prettiest drag queen, you'd have a leg up, so to speak, if you were the most graceful.  A pretty girl that walked like a truck driver would not come out victorious.  I don't think we doubted that I would be pretty.  Not knowing the competition, though, we couldn't tell whether or not I'd be the prettiest, so Sassy wanted to give me another advantage.  I lived in an apartment building, in Seattle, that had several floors and cement steps in the back to get from floor to floor, not unlike what you might find in a hospital.  I was tasked with running up and down these steps, several flights of stairs, in 5 inch heels.  It's an absolute miracle I didn't kill myself, because on top of the running in heels, Sassy felt it would add an edge if I did so after a few shots of tequlia. This began my love affair with high heels that continues to this day, several years after I hung up my corset and panty hose and put the wigs and dresses back in the closet. 

A week before Pride, a guy who I had dated briefly, decided to compete in Closet Ball, as well, pushing my competitive nature into over-drive.  I told Sassy, at that point, that I was willing to do whatever it took to win.  I suppose, melodramatically I was envisioning sleeping with a judge, my imagination never one to fail me.  Many female impersonators use putty to cover up their male eyebrows, so that female ones, thinner and more sculpted, with an arch can be drawn on over.  A few days before the pageant, confident that I had attained a definite grace and carriage in  heels, Sassy and I met to do a makeup run through.  It went like a breeze.  The putty worked and I have to say, I was stunned at how beautiful I was.  I can't even begin to describe the feeling I got when I looked in a mirror for the first time and saw a completely different face staring back at me. 

The night of the pageant, I wore jeans and a flannel shirt to walk the runway as a boy, beneath the jeans I wore dance tights and three pair of pantyhose.  My hands were in my pockets as I walked, hiding the beautiful red press-on nails on my fingers.  Backstage, Sassy was waiting to do my make up and hair.  Another strategy was to distinguish myself, if possible, by being the only one with a certain color hair, so we had red, brown and blonde wigs on hand, waiting to see what the competition would be wearing.  The clock started and Sassy applied the putty to my eye brows.  It was so hot backstage, though, that the putty wouldn't stick to my face.  Without having considered that possibility and with no backup plan, my drag mother reminded me of my comment about doing anything to win.  On the fly, I was being told to make a decision.  I nodded in agreement and Sassy took a disposable razor and completely removed my eyebrows.  To this day, mostly because of that, but also certainly not helped by years of tweezing that followed, I have the most ridiculous looking barely existent eye brows. I don't typically indulge in regrets, but that would most certainly be one.  I wore a  long silvery gold spaghetti strap dress and a blonde wig, very Marilyn Monroe, and five  inch gold heels and with the most impeccable eyebrows, I walked elegantly down the runway to cheers.  I had never before experienced such a rush.  I'm not certain I remembered much of the rest of the competition, but I do remember my heart beating almost through my chest and tears welling up in my eyes when they announced that I had won.  That night, Gay Pride, 21 years ago, Sarah Mony was born.

Thus began, a love/hate relationship between myself and drag.  I never completely took to it, rarely having fun doing it.  I loved the adoration of course, loved the feeling of looking pretty, and I discovered a sense of fashion and style I'd never had before.  A lipsync performance was not part of the pageant, but I quickly started performing in drag shows around Seattle, competitions, benefits, even other pageants.  There was never a shortage of those.  I found a niche and mostly did Country music, at first, although ballads were certainly big, too.  I wasn't then and am still not a dancer, defying that gay stereotype, for sure.  I can be taught though, choreographed, but it is an uphill battle for sure and I've rarely known anyone willing to take it on with me, so I learned a trick.  The more you move around on stage the less the audience really even notices that what you are doing is less dancing, than just walking quickly and decidedly about the stage.  I didn't start out impersonating anyone, just lipsynced, but eventually I came to achieve a few signature numbers and the impersonations followed.  I did Patsy Cline, Judy Garland and perhaps my most signature number was Reba McEntire's Fancy, for which I wore a gorgeous blood red velvet dress.  I continued to do drag steadily, sometimes 4 or 5 nights a week for two years.  There were cable access appearances, shows in Tacoma, Bellingham, and even out of state. 

There are so many memories I have of those years, so many brilliantly talented people, my hobby allowed me to meet.  I have a wealth of stories from those days, but probably the most loved amongst my friends happened a year after my alter-ego was born, Pride weekend this time 1994.  I had petitioned to move Closet Ball to Mother's Day weekend, using the drag mother thing as a gimmick and taking it away from the overshadowing scope of umpteen other shows and events going on over Gay Pride weekend, so I had already stepped down as Closet Queen, almost two months earlier.  I had been living with another female impersonator in the basement of a house. The apartment had windows in the front, though in reality they were in back of the house, half of the window obscured by the rain gutter.  As I said, it was Gay Pride and I had drank quite a bit.  I wore a crown lent to me by another drag queen.  The crown sat about six inches off my head.  I was a blonde that night and, although I hadn't performed, I wore the Fancy red velvet spaghetti strapped, backless, floor length dress with a slit up the left leg.  I also had on, God, probably six inch heels by that time and a floor length faux fur coat. 

I'd taken a taxi home and walked around the house to my front door rummaging in my purse for the apartment keys.  By the time, I reached the door, I still hadn't located my keys.  There was a light on inside and I knew that my roommate had likely passed out in his bed, so I pounded on the door for what seemed forever, periodically attempting again and again to find my damn keys.  I stopped just short of upending my purse on the ground and sifting through its contents.  It had begun to drizzle slightly and I didn't want my hair to get wet, so I literally climbed down into the rain gutter, positioning myself under the shelter of the eaves. 

The next morning my roommate came out to get the paper, walked five or six steps down the sidewalk and turned around to see a crown and a six inch heel pointed to heaven.  I had passed out in a fur and crown, heels still on my feet, in THE GUTTER.  This isn't close to the funniest part.  By the light of day, the very first thing I found in my purse were my keys and guess what.  The door that I had pounded on for what seemed like hours, but probably was more like ten minutes, wasn't even locked.  Many have said, if I ever write my memoirs, this illustration must be the cover.  It wasn't literally the gutter that I had passed out in, but that hasn't diminished the joke of me having done so, now, for twenty years. 

I thought of what that scene must have looked like once or twice yesterday as Pride revelry went on around me, this time in much heavier rain.  I was never popular in school and dropped out before my senior year, but I do love pomp and circumstance and all its trappings.  I would have loved homecoming, the king and queen, prom, high school dances, not one of which I ever attended.  I certainly would have enjoyed popularity had I ever achieved it.  I was instead friends with the other gay kid, the class clown/delinquent, and the pregnant girl who smelled faintly of manure.  I believe my short lived drag career in Seattle represented or harkened back to a time in high school where the pageantry of it all would have thrilled me.  Through drag, I got a do-over and became one of the popular kids and even, dare I say, prom queen.  I stopped doing drag when I started to get sick.  I was losing my eyesight due to something called CMV, an AIDS related illness and it had become increasingly difficult to do my own makeup and even to judge distances, one such distance being the edge of a stage during a performance.  I was mortified that night when I literally walked right off the stage.  Obviously I got better.  Thanks to new HIV medications and a trial through the University of Washington,  the disease was halted, my eyesight improved, and unlike so many of my friends, I lived through the worst of it.  I attempted to reinvent my drag career five years later, after I had moved home to Minnesota, but it never quite took off and for that, I'm actually quite grateful.  As I said, I didn't seem to enjoy it as much as others.  To me, it was a way to make money and a way to bolster popularity and stay in with the popular kids.  Thankfully, I have found other avenues for such a lofty goal. 

It did seem an apropos time to tell the story of my involvement in drag.  The Stonewall riots in New York City, in June of 1969,  inspired a walk a year later, whose commemoration was the first Pride parade ever.  My stepping down as Closet Queen was a couple of months before the 25th anniversary of Stonewall and I chose my theme around that.  It was a drag queen who threw a punch that incited the riots and began a 45 year fight for equality that continues today, as we battle for marriage equality, amongst other things.  I've never understood how some gay men could have less than  the utmost respect for their older counterparts and especially drag queens, people who endured and fought for so many of the things most of the gay community take for granted, sexual freedom, openness, identity, and probably most importantly developments in the fight against AIDS.  All you have to do is watch the movie Stonewall with the brilliant out actor Guillermo Diaz or the much more recent The Normal Heart, both dramatizations of two periods in the gay landscape, not exactly true stories, but certainly representations of hard won battles waged by gay men.  Sometimes a first step is absolutely the hardest, raising a  voice or even throwing a punch are seemingly insurmountable tasks.  I, for one, am exceedingly grateful for those who took the steps for me and fee absolutely blessed to be able to say I was a part of some of the wars, fought and won for us all.