Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret

Leila J. Rupp, Verta Taylor

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780226336459
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

It's Saturday night in Key West and the Girlie Show is about to begin at the 801 Cabaret. The girls have been outside on the sidewalk all evening, seducing passersby into coming in for the show. The club itself is packed tonight and smoke has filled the room. When the lights finally go down, statuesque blonds and stunning brunettes sporting black leather miniskirts, stiletto heels, and see-through lingerie take the stage. En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" blares on the house stereo. The crowd roars in approval.In this lively book, Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor take us on an entertaining tour through one of America's most overlooked subcultures: the world of the drag queen. They offer a penetrating glimpse into the lives of the 801 Girls, the troupe of queens who perform nightly at the 801 Cabaret for tourists and locals. Weaving together their fascinating life stories, their lavish costumes and eclectic music, their flamboyance and bitchiness, and their bawdy exchanges with one another and their audiences, the authors explore how drag queens smash the boundaries between gay and straight, man and woman, to make people think more deeply and realistically about sex and gender in America today. They also consider how the queens create a space that encourages camaraderie and acceptance among everyday people, no matter what their sexual preferences might be.Based on countless interviews with more than a dozen drag queens, more than three years of attendance at their outrageous performances, and even the authors' participation in the shows themselves, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret is a witty and poignant portrait of gay life and culture. When they said life is a cabaret, they clearly meant the 801.

ONE

INTRODUCTION

“What Makes a Man a Man?”

It’s Saturday night in Key West and the “Girlie Show” is about to begin at the 801 Cabaret. The 801 Girls have been outside on the sidewalk, in drag, handing out flyers and inviting everyone who walks or drives by to come see the show. The room is packed, the house music is loud, and it’s getting smoky. At the top of the stairs is a throng of gay men. If you push through, it is possible to get up in front of the bar, which fills the center of the room, but all the tables and chairs in front of the stage are taken. The crowd there includes women, some with other women, some with men. We scoot over to the windows, which remain resolutely shut against the tropical evening air because of a city noise ordinance. People say “hi” and reach out to pat Emma, our Maltese who always comes along and who performs an occasional number with Milla. We settle in on bar stools at the counter that runs along the wall. Kylie’s voice booms over the sound system, telling the audience the show will begin in just five more minutes.

And then the house music goes down, the spots illuminate the stage, and En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” fills the room. Inga, Kylie, Sushi, and Milla come out from behind the curtain one by one. Inga, a statuesque blond, wears a black leather minidress, high boots, and dark glasses. Kylie has on a red satin bustier. Sushi sports a black bra and miniskirt with red fringe. Milla is wearing a long-sleeved, floor-length, black see-through garment over hot pants. They perform a choreographed routine, the product of Inga’s expertise, as they lip-synch the words: “Free your mind, the rest will follow. Be color-blind, don’t be so shallow.” The show has begun.

At the end of the show, R.V. Beaumont performs “What Makes a Man a Man?”—a plaintive ballad about the difficult life of a drag queen. R.V. comes out of drag onstage, removing her wig, makeup, and falsies, stripping off her dress, and pulling on jeans and a T-shirt. It is a performance that visually questions the meaning of gender, making explicit what is central to drag shows.

This is the story of an evening at the 801 Cabaret, the story of drag and what it means in contemporary American society. At the turn of the twentieth century, it seemed as if everywhere one turned in the world of popular culture, men were donning women’s clothes: basketball star Dennis Rodman, off court; RuPaul on television’s Hollywood Squares; Lady Chablis playing herself on the silver screen in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; Hedwig and the Angry Inch rocking Broadway. Public fascination with the meaning of gender-crossing has its counterpart in the world of scholarship, where feminist and queer theorists contemplate the instability of the categories “woman” and “man,” “feminine” and “masculine,” “heterosexual” and “homosexual.” Drag and other forms of gender transgression inspire intense public and scholarly interest, yet not since Esther Newton’s classic 1972 book, Mother Camp, has anyone written the kind of in-depth exploration of the world of drag queens that we present here.¹ Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret clothes the theoretical bones of the scholarship on gender and sexuality in the finery of actual drag queen life.

Perhaps the central question that drag elicits is whether the spectacle of men dressing in women’s clothes (or women impersonating men, as in the case of contemporary drag kings²) challenges the concept of female and male as distinct, opposite, and nonoverlapping categories. There are those—especially gender theorists, who are drawn to drag because they see precisely this phenomenon—who would say yes. But there are others, also believers in the project of breaking down the rigid barriers between our ideas of “men” and “women,” who see drag as confirming traditional notions of femininity and masculinity. And of course there are those who see both phenomena at work at the same time.

It is in this context that we came to study the drag queens at the 801 Cabaret. We knew that drag has a long and rich history in American communities of people with same-sex desires, and we knew as well that drag shows in tourist destinations such as New Orleans, San Francisco, Provincetown, and Key West have long served as a unique window through which straight women and men can view gay life. So we asked not just what meaning we might see in the drag queens’ performances, but what the drag queens intend and what impact drag performances have on audience members, both gay and straight. We suggest that drag as performed at the 801 should be understood not only as a commercial performance but as a political event in which identity is used to contest conventional thinking about gender and sexuality.³ The drag queens intentionally throw out this challenge, and their performances both create solidarity among gay audience members and draw straight viewers into a world they seldom experience.

This leads us to the broader question of what makes a cultural performance such as drag serve as social protest, a question that has vexed scholars of social movements, if not so much scholars of cultural studies, who tend to find the connection between culture and politics unsurprising. To answer this question, we draw upon three bodies of scholarship. The research on gender and sexuality has pointed to the role of external markers such as dress, gestures, and other behaviors, as well as language and interaction, in creating a polarized and hierarchical gender and sexual system consisting of male/female and heterosexual/homosexual.⁴ This rigid binary system of gender creates cultural barriers to social acceptance of homosexuality and to self-acceptance among lesbians and gay men. Scholars have acknowledged the significance of transgressive tactics such as cross-dressing, drag performances, and the adoption of transgendered identities for disrupting those divides because they highlight the social basis of gender and sexuality.⁵ Most of this work, however, fails to consider the extent to which cross-dressing both emerges from and contributes to the ideas and collective identities of the lesbian and gay movement.

Social movement theory adds the missing element by providing insight into the varied forms of protest or collective strategic action that groups use to challenge stigmatized identities and to create new forms of identity and community.⁶ If social movement scholars have tended to separate political from cultural repertoires of action and to treat cultural events as inconsequential, research in performance studies questions the conventional distinction between commercial entertainment and politics.⁷ This body of research allows us to understand drag shows as political events that are capable of winning a hearing for serious political purposes precisely because of their entertainment value. Applying these three perspectives to the study of the 801 Cabaret, we offer a framework that allows us to understand when and how cultural performances are political.

In order to understand the complexity of drag, we collected a wide variety of data. We did intensive interviews with twelve drag queens, and we also interviewed the owner and manager of the 801, the boyfriends of two drag queens, and the mothers of two others. We attended rehearsals, weekly drag queen meetings, and various social events, and we taped and transcribed fifty shows. We also analyzed publicity in the local weekly Key West media. Finally, in order to explore what audience members take away from drag shows, we held focus groups, recruiting participants at the shows and facilitating group conversations the next afternoon about their reactions to what they had seen. We also talked more informally with other audience members. We began our study in 1998 and continued to add new information until the summer of 2001, but we did our most intensive research from 1998 to 1999. For those who are interested, we describe the methods in more detail in the appendix.

We see the 801 Girls as unusual, since they perform in a gay tourist destination also known as a drag queen mecca, but we are also convinced that what happens on the stage at the 801 Cabaret has something to tell us about contemporary American drag performances in general. It is clear from our own observations and from those of audience members that there is a national drag queen repertoire of songs and talk exchanged from place to place. Focus group members who had attended numerous drag shows in different places tended to comment that what was different about this show was the extent of audience interaction. So this is both a story about a drag show in a very particular place and a broader analysis of drag in contemporary American society.

The 801 Girls are full-time drag queens who perform every night of the year to mixed audiences of men and women, gay or bisexual people and straight people, tourists and locals. The roster has changed somewhat over time, and there are almost always some occasional performers who may or may not eventually join the troupe. Our cast of major characters includes eight core performers. Six (Sushi, Milla, Kylie, Margo, R.V., and Scabola) have remained part of the show since we began the study in 1998 (although Milla left Key West late in 2001). Two (Inga and Gugi) left to perform in another venue (and then Gugi returned just as the book went into production). We also include Desiray, a performer who came on after 1998, because she took over Gugi’s role in the show and also plays an especially interesting part in our research, as you will see. Many other Key West drag queens—including Lady V, Destiny, Mama Crass, Mama, Ma Evans, Miss Q, Nikki, Baby Drag, LaLa Belle, Krystal Klear, Ms. D, Vogue, Mr. Randy Roberts, Christopher Peterson, BellaDonna, Charlena D. Sugarbaker, the Bitch Sisters, D.D.T., Hellen Bed, Raven, Ice, Gina Masseretti, Angelica Duval, Mona Celeste, and Colby Kincaid—make guest appearances in the story.

Perhaps we should add a word here about our use of names and pronouns. The vast majority of the time, the girls call each other by their drag names and use the pronouns “she” and “her.” But not always. And there is almost no consistency, in contrast to the common practice in the transgender movement, between appearance and linguistic gender. As a result, in both life and this book, we use pronouns and names somewhat randomly. Some of the girls have preferences about their names, and we have honored that. Dean, Matthew, and Roger seemed to want us to use their boy names, at least when they were out of drag, and we have always moved back and forth for them. Gugi, on the other hand, never uses “Rov,” so we don’t either. We have always called Sushi “Sushi,” because that just seems like who she is, and we always call Kylie “Kylie” and R.V. “R.V.” because they seem androgynous names that fit them as both drag queens and men. David/Margo, because of his role as columnist for the local gay newspaper as well as drag queen, is the only one with a public persona in both names, so we move back and forth too.

One other caution about language: although we argue that drag queens and drag performances break down the boundaries between woman and man, gay and straight, we continue to use these categories, however flawed they might be, to identify people. In part, the language gives us no choice. But, in addition, this seeming contradiction, as we shall see, mirrors the methods the drag queens use to accomplish their goals. We simply want to acknowledge that we recognize the ambiguity.

Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret takes you through a night at the 801 Cabaret, from the process of getting dressed to the final curtain call. In the process it delves into a whole raft of issues, from what we call “drag-queenness” as a gender category outside femininity or masculinity to the role of drag queens as both celebrities and outcasts in the Key West community to the work life of drag queens to the performance of protest to the complex construction of collective identity to drag as an important strategy of the gay and lesbian movement. We argue that drag does, as gender scholars put it, “trouble” gender and sexuality by making people question the naturalness of what it means to be a man or a woman and what it means to be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Drag embodies ambiguity and ambivalence. When straight women exclaim that they are attracted to the girls and they aren’t even lesbians, when straight men are aroused by gay men in dresses, when lesbians find it erotic to see two drag queens doing the lesbian number “Take Me or Leave Me” from the hit Broadway show Rent, the conventional divisions between female and male, straight and gay, become almost meaningless.

Furthermore, we argue that drag is an important strategy in the gay and lesbian movement’s struggle. Weaving together the fascinating life stories of the drag queens, their costumes and music and talk during their performances, their interactions with each other and their audiences and community, and the reactions of spectators to what they see and hear and feel, we suggest that drag can serve as a catalyst for changes in values, ideas, and identities in twenty-first-century American society.

Drag attracts diverse audiences. At least one of our focus group members, having studied with Esther Newton, a major scholar of sexuality, could discuss the theoretical literature on drag with great sophistication. Others enjoyed the shows with no clue that academics have written about “liminal figures” or “transgressive sexualities” or “the category crisis” or “performing gender.” Like the drag queens, we hope to reach readers where they live. So we trace the scholarly trail in the notes, leave an explicit discussion of theory for the conclusion, and turn now to where the girls are getting dressed for the evening.

SECTION I

“I’M BEAUTIFUL, DAMMIT!”

One of R.V.’s favorite Bette Midler numbers, “I’m Beautiful,” expresses the drag queens’ confidence in the face of challenge. Expressing comfort with her physical appearance, Midler sings of her right to be herself. “Ain’t this my world to be who I choose?” Midler/R.V. asks.

We’re back at the show. Or, rather, we’ve backed up to about eight o’clock, when the girls begin to arrive at the 801 to get ready for the evening. Off to the side of the stage, under the eaves, is a tiny windowless dressing room, no bigger than six by ten feet, and here the four or five performers for the evening, while sipping their cocktails and powdering their noses, somehow manage to get dressed and made up. Each regular girl has a stool, a shelf for makeup and props, and a section of the mirror that runs all around the room. What wall is not taken up by mirrors and the low-sloped ceiling is papered with photographs and flyers and adoring fan letters. It is here that Gary, Dean, Kevin, Roger (replaced by Rov, and later by Joel), David, Matthew, and Timothy transform themselves into Sushi, Milla, Kylie Jean Lucille, Inga (replaced by Gugi Gomez, later by Desiray), Margo, Scabola Feces, and R.V. Beaumont. This section tells the story of how and why this happens.

TWO

GETTING DRESSED

Getting into the dressing room to see the whole process was not so easy. One Saturday night Sushi arranged for us to come, under the condition that we sit quietly and not talk. But when we arrived Sushi wasn’t there, and she hadn’t told the other girls we were coming. Roger threw a fit. He didn’t want anyone watching him get dressed, and that was that. (Apparently Leila threw up her hands in what neither of us had noticed was a characteristic gesture and exclaimed, in a slightly hysterical fashion, “What are we going to do?” Dean later told us that this had become a favorite expression among the girls, and then it became a favorite of ours, as well.) So we didn’t get in that night. Later Roger told us he’d never let us see him get in or out of drag.

Several months later Roger went to work at Diva’s, the club down the street that pays more, although he continued to perform occasionally at 801 and often came around during the shows, both in and out of drag. So finally one Sunday night, Sushi said it would be all right for us to watch. We decided just one of us would go, since the space was so tight. That night Verta was running one of the focus groups with audience members, and then we had to go grab something to eat, so by the time Leila got to the dressing room, they were all in the midst of putting on their faces. They arrive in shorts and T-shirts. All except Margo, who could be their father (or mother!), range in age from late twenties to mid-thirties.

Sushi, whose mother is Japanese and late father was from Texas, has a beautiful tall slender body, with thin but muscled arms and a dancer’s legs. He never really looks totally like a man, even when he is dressed as Gary. One year at Queen Mother, the annual drag queen pageant and fund-raiser, he wore white shorts and two tank tops and put his shoulder-length jet-black hair in a bun wrapped in pink feathers. His dog Aurora sported a matching ruffle of feathers. Other times he appears in tight red plaid capri pants, or overalls cut off at midcalf, wearing thongs, with his hair in pigtails.

The dre...