I think my real problem in life is that I\’ve never really had the desire to be anything other than an illusion artist, a performer, a drag queen.
My greatest aspiration has been to be a performer. Wear the tight little dress, the glossy make-up, the beehive wigs, and just look damn good like no biological woman has ever looked. Maybe occasionally get up on stage and prance around, but mostly, exist to be a living piece of visual art. A creative person, surely, but entirely a personality of my own morphing creation. Questionable talent, but pure personality — a Tallullah Bankhead, a Leigh Bowery, a Divine.
This problem was first realized at 14, when I had no desire to leave the house except when wearing platform boots, micro-minis, push-up bras, matching blue eye shadow and lipstick, and more glitter than the little girls\’ aisles in a toy store. My mother said, \”Why do you want to look like a street walker?\” My father said, \”Maybe you would get along better with the other kids if you didn\’t dress so ostentatiously.\” My teachers said, \”You look like you\’re advertising the wrong thing.\”
But like all teen angst, the parents just didn\’t understand — it wasn\’t the wrong thing, unless the wrong thing was ME. Was I wrong? To want to perform beauty? To only feel comfortable when characturizing the femininity and personality that I felt bereft of without the paint? How could I be wrong?
Clearly, there was a misunderstanding, and it wasn\’t on my end — I aspired to be a man who aspired to look like a charicature of a woman. Not to BE a woman. To be a cartoon. Like Jessica Rabbit.
