Why I Became a Drag Queen…
I started doing drag….
I started doing drag the week of my 46th birthday in February of 2020, about a month before the pandemic lock-down. I attended a fundraiser for the Providence-made scary-movie Death Drop Gorgeous, held at Barnaby Castle on Broadway in Providence with my brother and my roommate at-the-time - it was an exciting, glamourous event and perfect for my Pisces-birthday!
Prior to this, I’d been binging RuPaul’s Drag Race OBSESSIVELY starting in October 2019, after the same roommate, who has a family connection to RuPaul himself, introduced me to the show.
How had I missed Drag Race???! It’s simple - my life was focused on other things. I am, before all else, an ecological activist. Certified in Permaculture Design and a Rhode Island Master-Gardener, my life was entirely devoted to creating and optimizing green-spaces in Providence where I lived - and I did this while supporting myself through various social work jobs. I was not a TV watcher! - nor had I been since 2009 when the show was first introduced. For me, TV included Game of Thrones, The Magicians, Shadow-Hunters and that’s about it…..
One chilly Autumn evening, Roommate and I started Drag Race on Season 5 - at her suggestion - and as soon as Detox walked onto my screen, I kinda fell in love and it all started there…. I hyper-binged every season 2-times over beginning that very night…
DETOX
‘s Entrance look on Season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race
So when the Death Drop Gorgeous gala was announced for the week of my birthday, every cell in my body was ready to try drag!! My brother bought a me blonde wig in New York City, I found an outfit on the discount rack at Nordstroms, and I scheduled an appointment at MAC to have my make-up done - Voilà!
Cartier the Queen’s first night with cast of the Death Drop Gorgeous fundraiser murder-mystery at Barnaby Castle in Providence, Rhode Island, February 23, 2020.
As I posted my first photos on social media, all my friends who knew me as the “garden-girl” were stunned.
“WTF?! Is this what a mid-life crisis looks like??”
Well…maybe. But here’s the thing - all those years of facing the true crisis of our planet - the global demise of our life-supporting ecosystems - had left me feeling bitter and depressed. I felt hopeless and lost because other people’s bad decisions stare me down at every turn. Every time I see a healthy lot of trees cut down to build a luxury home (which is happening all over the place around here) I feel my guts get all twisted up inside….
I was an angry, bitter person trying with all her might to preserve what is genuinely life-giving on this planet - trees, open fields of grass, biodiversity, animal habitat, clean air & clean water…..
Drag offers me an opportunity to forget all that for a little while, to step outside of that carefully coifed identity and become someone much more exciting. And that’s who Cartier the Queen really is - she is my make-up loving, pop-music thriving, theater-nerd, fashionista high-school self who grew up oblivious to life’s tragedies. And she has saved me from becoming the most bitter queen of all….
Faces of Cartier the Queen
