LGBT Resource Center staff hand out condoms and take donations for its youth organization, Project Q, in a large yellow bucket at the door on Saturday night at 8 p.m. The show isn’t set to start for another 30 minutes, but already the 500 seats are packed. Pop songs from Pink, Britney and Christina entertain them.
“We are grateful that you braved the Wisconsin winter,” says LGBT Resource Center director Jen Murray. Obviously, several inches of snow and poorly plowed roads couldn’t keep them from UW-Milwaukee’s Annual Drag Show.
The event’s charming emcees Jo Mama and Isis kicked off the two-hours show before providing plenty of witty drag smack between each performance. She looks good in orange, Isis commented of queen Jessica Property, “maybe its because she’s round like a pumpkin.” And just like any award show, Isis made no less than four costume changes throughout the show.
The show featured a healthy mix of drag kings and queens, a balance that the emcees mentioned throughout. One notable king was Charlie Walker, whose enigmatic performance of George Michael’s “Faith,” complete with leather jacket and shades, was a crowd pleaser. Some handed him tips, or placed them in the buckets, but one woman held a dollar bill in her mouth, which he happily removed with his.
Two performers, Anastasia and Beija, made long-distance trips just to appear this night, the former from Florida and the latter from Denver. Anastasia came out in a long fur coat performing Sheila E’s “Glamorous Life,” echoing perfectly the song’s first lyric: “She wears a long fur coat of mink.” But she revealed the real surprise when she dropped the coata barely-there leotard and perfect set of legs. The crowd went visibly wild.
The real showstopper of the night in both her performances was the 11-year drag show veteran Lady Gia, whose mostly naked body would make any girl jealous and any boy salivate. Her first outfit consisted of a blue glitter top, and nothing but a carefully placed pasty down below. Later she wore the same style top, this time in rainbow fringe, with a thong and knee-high leg warmers in matching material.
But Lady Gia and Anastasia weren’t the only ones taking their clothes off. Pet It and king Pretty Boy also did some undressing. Equally sexy but fully clothed was king Leo Long, whose suave moves during the O’Kaysions’s “I’m A Girl Watcher” would put any man to shame.
Many of the queens and kings showcased their athletic talents. Tempis Heat did a front flip during her number, Kerry Mizuno, dressed as Ugly Betty this year, leapt of the stage in the opening moments of her performance of Dragonette’s “The Boys” and did a cartwheel later.
The show ended behind schedule and with some technical difficulties in the last performance, a mini-skirt clad Vanity Monroe lip-syncing Jennifer Hudson’s “Spotlight.” But the crowd seemed to love every minute of it and rewarded the performers with frequent trips to the stage, dollar bills in hand.
Despite the crowd’s enthusiasm, I couldn’t help noticing that during the show some of the girls around me were trying to spot hidden girl parts or boy parts. But the very act of drag itself defies gender. The boys look like girls and the girls look like boys. As a result, we are forced to examine male and female, and wrestle with a definition that goes beyond a mark on a birth certificate or driver’s license, and of course, the parts between our legs.
