BENJAMIN KELLY
I found myself having to escape from a persona I had created
Okay, I’m being a little facetious there. Adolescence, wherein the homosexual faces their Herculean labours. It starts with pursuing girls, only to realise that you are pursuing them to replicate a scene from James Cameron’s Titanic, not for any sexual gratification, but to romanticise the dramaturgical perspective of true love. Next on the docket, study ‘the craft’ to state your desires of becoming a thespian but become disheartened when realising you are the only flamboyant individual in the class. Quite a stereotypical allegory, right? There’s more, lots more, and this whole wild, pubescent journey ends somewhere between telling a boy, “I fancy you” and playing tongue wars with said boy. After sexual enlightenment, what could possibly be the next thing a young man explores? Gender. Drag. Let’s begin. With bits and pieces of makeup from a friend at your disposal, the first heavy mask of smeared lipstick, congealing mascara and powdery eyes is only a taste of the transformation which drag can offer. It begins physi-
M
cally, somewhere between throwing on a cheap wig and smoking another cigarette, something happens where you are injected with the charac-
asculinity dictated my childhood and
teristics of said mask. Impassioned with this reve-
contradicted my adolescence, and now, as I enter
lation, I became Demi Gorgon; a living, breathing
the gender miasma of young adulthood, the bina-
‘F*ck you’ to any memory of masculine normalcy
ry spirit of manhood has begun to diffuse within
I had retained. Now, I had gone against the algo-
a body fed on glitter and rainbows. My childhood
rithm that was dictated by the world around me.
stands as one no different from many other queer
Lost in the noisy glamour of clubs, but with bright
men, I’m sure. There were limitations with cloth-
hair and sequin armour; I felt invincible.
ing, toys and behaviour. To this day, I consider
In a place like Cardiff, where drag is paved by
the cliché of how different my childhood would
a history of cabaret and pantomime, it can prove
have been had I interacted with a Barbie instead of
difficult to break a mould decided by glitzy fore-
an Action Man. Such reflections awaken me from
bearers. My desire became to express an uncon-
slumber at some god-forsaken hour, riddled with
ventional face of the art form, one which isn’t
guilt over a boyhood deprived of pretty things.
afraid to expose the fact that you’re a man in heels,
