i want to fall in love

This blog will probably be as long-winded as they ever are, but I really do have a point here. Read it or don’t. It will not matter to all of you. And that’s okay. (Isn’t it nice when the Queen reigns in her tyranny to allow her subjects some “free” time?) There is, however, one of my readers that will personally identify with this blog and it is dedicated to her. She’s been a big supporter of mine for quite some time and I’d never want to cause her hurt. (Just follow my crappy logic through and then make a decision, m’kay?)

I know that I am going to offend someone (or twelve) by even touching this topic with a ten foot pole (pardon me as I untuck) but since when did I give a good rat’s ass about all of that? (Well…aside from the above-mentioned reader, that is.)

The following topic is one that is highly sensitive to those who live it, and I want everybody to understand that I appreciate the desire for delicacy in such a matter. For example, it would probably be insensitive for me to write the way that I tend to do on a topic such as…oh, let’s say…CANCER. Cancer isn’t exactly something that Jay Leno’s team of over-payed writers sit around a Burbank conference room table and try to bang out a one-liner over. But that’s where I’m different. As someone (trying to quit smoking) whose majority of deceased family members attribute their deaths to cancer, and as someone who knows she’ll meet the same fate if she lives long enough, I don’t mind finding a chuckle at cancer’s expense. It’s a necessity, really.

Funny, right? See, here’s the thing: Cancer isn’t funny. It hurts, it kills and it destroys families. But cancer is one of those things that I don’t mind taking a laugh from. Jackie Beat is spot on here. The joke isn’t cancer’s effect on the juvenile population of the planet. The joke here is the exploitation of it…even while at its most well-meaning. Starvation isn’t funny either, but look at the ironic comic fodder that the leather backed-Sally Struthers has provided us over the decades! Who wants some overweight hack-tress pleading for pocket change to feed foreign tots? So while cancer may not be funny, there’s a power that comes from looking at death and guffawing. My Mama always used to say, “Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.” Trust me kids, these are wise words. Please don’t be surprised if you someday find them on my epitaph.

Fuck-damn that was a long exposition! The point is that I am probably going to be highly inappropriate here. Sorry, kids. That’s what I do. It’s my niche. Suck it or spit it out. The good news is that I promise the segue will be as abrupt and rocky as a tumor during a breast self-exam.

Let’s talk TRANNIES!

You can’t say “Tranny” anymore without ruffling some gal’s stubble. I don’t know if it’s because it sounds too much like “granny” or conjures up imagery of torch-wielding Transylvanian vampire hunters or what. I just know that it has become taboo. Why? Because the Transgendered community (previously the Transgender
community) are stepping up full force as a “fully armed and operational” civil rights movement. The ole’ girls have had enough of being discriminated in employment, housing and an entire host of other liberties afforded to the rest of us. But the word “tranny” has become a precursor to a fight involving an unaware fag and the business end of a Payless pump. And like a hot young thing brought home by some old couple in marital distress, I find myself in the middle and shabbily trying to appease them all.

I’m a Drag Queen. This riles the usual straight people, but over the years I have learned that by avoiding terminology such as “Female Impersonator” and “Gender Illusionist” while holding proudly to “Drag Queen”, how I label MYSELF offends a great many people. All KINDS of people. Even the Tranny people. Fuck ‘em. Fuck all of these people, and here’s why:

FEMALE IMPERSONATOR- I’m no Milton Berle. I’m no Rich Little either kids. So while I do, in fact, impersonate a female when I am impersonating a celebrity of the womanly sex, I otherwise don’t want my audiences to forget that there’s a dude underneath the nine inches of paint and the previously mentioned ten feet of pole.

GENDER ILLUSIONIST- Who the fuck are you expecting? David Blaine? There’s no more illusion in my act than a used car salesman trying to pass an old Pinto off as a Bentley. Unless my audience is as drunk, stoned, coked-up or cracked-out as I generally hope them to be, there’s nothing that I do that would require flash paper, a levitating stripper and a white tiger dragging me off of the stage by my throat. I am not an illusionist. (I can however pull flowers and doves from unexpected locale.)

Tranny is short for Transgender. Just like Homo is short for Homosexual and Fag is short for Faggot and Skank is short for Amy Whinehouse. As someone who has spent the majority of the seventeen years I have been alive being called a fag and a homo, I embrace the terminology. Drag Queen doesn’t bother me, people. It’s concise and it’s regal. Eat it up, YUM! Fag doesn’t have the same bite as Faggot used to. (Because why bother with the extra syllable? Get to the point already!)…(Look who’s talking!) And PLEASE, people; I am a HOMO. Do not refer to me as a “Homosexual” because it is no longer the fifties! The McCarthy trials are over and I’m never going to give some laboratory psychoanalyst pause. I’m a Drag Queen who’s so faggy that there’s no doubt she’s a Homo. I’d label myself as a pervy butt-fucker, but that box never seems to exist on the questionnaires I fill out.

The community is now referred to as the “Trans Community”. Transgendered was too laborious and sounded afflicted, so it became the “Transgender Community”. “Tranny” was disrespectful so we just say “Trans Community” now. To a dumb-downed Drag Queen like myself, it’s like going from “Homosexual” to “Homo” to just plain “Home”. I say, if the shoe fits…poorly…and your five o’ clock shadow is showing through your Walgreen’s clearance foundation, it’s probably a duck. (And you’re probably a Tranny.)

I can’t be bothered with the whole “sticks and stones” analogy, because names will ALWAYS hurt some people. (You understand, don’t you, Fucktard?) But here’s the hateful Divine opinion: If you’re not called a tranny, you’re going to be called something else. (And probably worse.) OWN it before they do. That’s all.

I’m a Drag Queen, a Faggot, a Loser, Disgusting, a Cunt, a Redneck,, a Hillbilly, Weird, a Freak, a Pervert, a Son, a Brother, a Husband, and a mother-fucking DIVA. Why? Because I have been told so by you, those around you, and those closest to me. But most of all, because I agree and approve.

I pray that while the Trans community struggles to find their place under the collective and societal blanket that people seem so determined to swaddle themselves in, they will discover that… well…honey, the only person you really have to face in the mirror every day is YOU. If you are okay with YOU (and fr many of us, our Higher Power) that’s all you need to start your way.

I often get these surveys asking me, “If you were a crayon, what color would you be?”

I always respond, “FLESH!…OH SHIT!, I mean, PEACH!”

Having said that, I will fight the good fight for Trans persons wherever they see me fit.

If ever.

Again.

In the course of humanity.

I love you, girls.

Your Favorite Demi-Blonde,

The Divine Grace