RuPaul’s Drag Race UK: the Performance of a Lifetime

“You need to write something uplifting”, Gary announced after reading my last blog, after the usual complaints about my Gary bashing.

Uplifting? Gary? I actually went back to him before I started writing to make sure I had remembered that right. It such an unlikely comment from Gary. Obviously my last few blogs have been too miserable even for Gary, and that’s quite an achievement.

Since then my world has simply exploded with enticing, vibrant, exciting, shimmering snippets of life that are being shown to me by the Universe to appease Gary and I’ve been literally fizzing to get started on this. Of course I’ve put it off and put it off, it’s so deeply engrained in my psyche to finish all the chores that could ever be imagined before I do something I enjoy, but today I say ENOUGH! Follow your highest excitement is the guidelines for an amazing life, so here I go.

I know those of you who have worked with me won’t believe that I’m only just learning to have a voice: it’s not that I couldn’t speak up – it’s more that I didn’t even know I wanted to. I didn’t know that what I wanted to say was, “actually, naw” when Gary assumed I’d join him to see the “Star Wars the Force Awakens”. He often says, with the startled-rabbit-in-the-headlights-look when I want to talk about feelings, or clothes, “don’t you have any girlfriends for this?” Yet he was nonplussed and genuinely surprised when I said “don’t you have any male friends for this?” about Star Wars.

I am learning to say no. Not just about big things, but the little things too, like just not going along with things I can’t be bothered with. I’ve always thought being a good sport was so important, but when you realise how one-sided it is, and how deeply rooted it is in wanted to keep everyone happy at the expense of your own happiness, it’s easier to say, fuck that, I don’t have time for Star Wars. And saying no to what I don’t want opens up room for finding things that I do want.

Since my sister-in-law (Gary’s sister) Debs and I realised that we both absolutely LOVED The Circle (“TV for the lowest common denominator”), Debs now delights in recommending programs that Gary will hold in utter contempt. If her son hates it, there’s a good chance Gary will too, and we bond, secretly sniggering over the disapproval of these strange men in our lives.

Debs recommended RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. I really didn’t think it was my kind of thing, but she assured me Gary would absolutely HATE it (not that that wasn’t obvious from the title alone): “TV for the hard of thinking”. Well. I. Am. Blown. Away. It is absolutely riveting!

Of course I don’t ask Gary to watch these programs with me, but it’s taken a lot of courage to even watch these programs in the house and endure the inevitable scathing disapproval about all the shrieking and how stupid all these people are, and how brainless those who watch it are, if he happens to come in the room.

I was at boarding school in Kenya, well not quite boarding school, we lived in a “hostel” on a coffee plantation and rode the rickety bus to our school in the adjacent Del Monte pineapple plantation. One of the girls in my dorm had an older cousin, and I absolutely loved her visits to the dorm with her entourage. These were brash, beautiful and bold black women. I guess I was pretty sheltered, I didn’t have TV and I certainly didn’t get out much and I was absolutely mesmerised by the colourful, sassy women, who said what they thought and laughed in the face of men, and openly flouted their sexuality and femininity. I had never seen anything like it but I knew that I loved it! I loved these women! I was entranced and fascinated by their loud, clever, humour. I don’t know if it was a cultural thing, I didn’t have anything to compare it to, I did know that the white women I knew didn’t act like that. These were girls nobody would mess with, girlfriend, but they were the most entertaining company one could ever wish for. Later in life I would almost certainly be a fag hag if I actually knew any gay men any more: I would dissolve in hysterical delight at the camp banter my first husband’s brother engaged in.  As I’ve got older and since I started mixing with people on retreats and in the artistic community, I realise more and more how I love to be around weird people. Marginalised people. Eccentric people. Opinionated people. Unapologetic people. Funny people. I long to be in the company of drama queens of any gender that shock and entertain. And by drama queen I mean entertainment, not energy vampire drama of people who love a crisis.

One of the books we read in book club recently was Ainslie Macleod’s “The Instruction” in which I discovered that I’m a level 6 soul (unity, social justice, drama, self-questioning) and that (one of) my soul types is a performer type. I loved the idea of this and it sat right, but I couldn’t quite see it. Now it’s suddenly become very apparent and I realise now that is exactly what I am, I just haven’t let myself get into it. When I first started trying to identify what I wanted out of life, my mentor Annie would ask how I would see myself in my ideal future, and I would think of these women from boarding school, and eccentric colourful older women and say I wanted to be one of those cool, confident, loud, funny, exotic women whom I am drawn to. These practical, strong, but dramatic and emotional women who fought for their independence and refused to be intimidated by men or convention.

RuPaul’s Drag Race excited me in so many ways, but mostly just how much fun it is to be around people who perform. I absolutely love the dramatisation of everything for comic effect, the rolling eyes, the every pause for dramatic effect and perfect comic timing. There is SO much more to this program than just the drama queenery: they are incredibly talented ladies (as they call themselves) who create their own fantastical costumes as well as perform all manner of entertainment, and I was bewitched by it. Even more poignant was the admission that most of these self-described queens were bullied as children, and teenagers, by family as well as classmates, and that many of them hide an excruciatingly insecure personality behind their flamboyant brash drag personas. This program has everything, but for me, it lit a fire under me. Having come full circle into the realisation that I love a drama queen, I am a performer, I’m hoping this will nudge me closer to finding out who I want to be. Ru ends every episode with “if you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else” and I thank this beautiful cast of brave, talented, passionate drag queens for inspiring me to step boldly into who I want to be. I’m still not sure who that is, but I am a performer, and I sure as hell know that I can be anyone I want!