Benjamin Kelly

BENJAMIN KELLY

Masculinity dictated my childhood and contradicted my adolescence, and now, as I enter the gender miasma of young adulthood, the binary spirit of manhood has begun to diffuse within a body fed on glitter and rainbows. My childhood stands as one no different from many other queer men, I’m sure. There were limitations with clothing, toys and behaviour. To this day, I consider the cliché of how different my childhood would have been had I interacted with a Barbie instead of an Action Man. Such reflections awaken me from slumber at some god-forsaken hour, riddled with guilt over a boyhood deprived of pretty things. Okay, I’m being a little facetious there.

Danielle Goodland

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.

I found myself having to escape from a persona I had created

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 physically, somewhere between throwing on a cheap wig and smoking another cigarette, something happens where you are injected with the characteristics of said mask. Impassioned with this revelation, I became Demi Gorgon; a living, breathing ‘F*ck you’ to any memory of masculine normalcy I had retained. Now, I had gone against the algorithm that was dictated by the world around me. Lost in the noisy glamour of clubs, but with bright hair and sequin armour; I felt invincible.

Danielle Goodland

In a place like Cardiff, where drag is paved by a history of cabaret and pantomime, it can prove difficult to break a mould decided by glitzy forebearers. My desire became to express an unconventional face of the art form, one which isn’t afraid to expose the fact that you’re a man in heels, where you’re able to grace the stage with body hair, ripped tights and an untucked penis. Fortunately, a masculine edge proves exciting to audiences in a culture which is slowly uplifting the talents of alternative queens and drag kings. That’s what they call you when you don’t shave: ‘alternative’.

Despite the applause for cutting humour, and all-around grotesquery, the crowds didn’t care about the boy behind the drag, I knew that much. They were just seeking the thrills of a crude act to entice their imaginations of what was possible. And, as with all successes, time passes and after a while it became apparent that life valued the Demi Gorgon more than Benjamin. I found myself having to escape from a persona I had created, fleeing to nourish a boy I had abandoned for loud nights and free booze. Nowadays, I realise that drag wasn’t bad, but my relationship with drag is what enabled a sour imbalance. Drag offered me permission to interpret my personal journey through the deconstruction of gender, and to understand that femininity doesn’t inhibit masculinity.

Danielle Goodland

With the conclusion of my teenage years, a whole new stage of experimentation came to the foreground: everyday androgyny. Within the male form I inhabit, I exaggerate feminine qualities, such as hair, to contrast the parts of myself deemed inherently masculine. The sense of play is what activates my gender identity, exuding an odd equilibrium for the standards of Western society. Manhood has led me to a place of accepting both masculine and feminine energies, akin to the native American term ‘two-spirit’. I’ve embraced a responsibility to cultivate these twin forces. All I can say right now is that I know people in blue places and people in red places; but I’m just floating around in a genderf*ck vortex called purple.