Electric Boobs or RuPaul's Drag Race Battle of the Seasons

Saturday night Amy and I went to see RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons at the Gramercy Theater on East 23^rd Street. The queens performing were Pandora Boxx, Jinkx Monsoon, Carmen Carrera, Ivy Winters, Alaska Thunderfuck, and Mimi Imfurst. I did that thing I always do. I was super excited when we ordered the tickets and then when the show was about a week away I balked. Out of the six queens we were only really excited to see Pandora Boxx. Based on the show we didn’t really like Jinkx all that much (although as Amy recently pointed out I had conflated her personality with Jade’s) and we HATED Mimi. But the day of I rallied, despite having a migraine and lying in a dark room for several hours feeling like I was going to ralph. Amy rallied too despite having worked an eight hour shift on her feet all day. WE WERE DOING THIS.

Hitting minimal traffic I was able to spirit us over to the parking garage in about an hour’s time. I remember asking Amy to NOT TELL ME what time it was, thinking we were running late and were going to get stuck standing in the way back. But I was so very wrong and we ended up getting in the general admission line at 8:30. It wrapped around the outside of the theater and up the next block or so. Amy and I had decided not to drinking that night because we had both drank in excess the last several nights and after having a migraine all day I thought it would be a terrible idea. But when the theater guy came by waving the wristbands we would need if we were drinking in our face I felt weird sending him away. Despite avidly watching the show and being relatively familiar with drag, Amy and I didn’t really know ~exactly~ what we were walking into. The fact that it was at a theater and not a club comforted me somewhat. But I’m the kind of person who does a shot before showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. Usually having a drink or two will get me out of my own head and allow me to relax and enjoy myself more. So, watching the pointy-haired boy disappear with the ~magical drinking wristsbands~ was kind of the no turning back moment. I really was DOING THIS. We were going to have fun GOD DAMN IT. 

 Finally the line started moving and we made our way into the theater. The surprisingly innocent looking ticket-ripper directed me to the men’s room but Amy and I were able to find the women’s room and shockingly there was NOT A BITCH IN THERE. We were able to pee and discuss our discerning underwear preferences in a matter of sixty seconds. We entered the standing room area and claimed THE PERFECT SPOT along the left side, up against the railing. There was an adorable little straight couple standing next to us and a couple my parents’ age behind us and we felt ~secure~ and settled in. The tickets kind of buried the lead w/r/t the actual time of the show. Doors were at nine, the show was at ten, and Amy and I officially felt old as we stood there, her with her dogs barking and me hoping the Excedrin I took would get me through. It gave Amy and I plenty of time to people watch. And this was the ~perfect~ crowd for people watching. It probably broke down to 40% gay men, 35% straight women, 15% lesbians. The straight men were an afterthought. Although, to their credit the straight guys all kind of seemed metrosexual and like they knew kind of what was going on and weren’t neanderthals, etc, etc, etc, et al. The railing I was standing next to separated us from a raised area of premium seating with cocktail tables and a host of insanely attractive gay men and a few of their straight girl besties. Amy thought one of the beautiful gay boys looked like Draco Malfoy and really, I couldn’t disagree. What if Draco had been in love with Harry all those years and the reason he was such a twat was just because he was sexually frustrated? The crowd seemed like it was mostly locals, which made sense based on the smaller size of the theater and the neighborhood it’s in. Most of the city’s straight women would seem like lipstick lesbians anywhere else but in Manhattan that’s just how the ladies are. Of course the actual lesbians there were of little to no interest to me. As per always. I had eyes for a straight black hottie all night. As per always, etc, etc. I think what I'll remember most about the crowd, which was probably a little less than half straight people, is that none of the straight people I saw acted like disrespectful weirdos at any point. None of them acted like they were looking at animals in a zoo. They seemed like they knew what was going on and were LOVING what was going on and that made them super cool. 

The show started with Michelle Visage talking for way too long and the crowd getting kind of antsy since we’d all been standing there for over an hour already and no one was there for her. Going in I honestly thought it was going to be a bunch of lip sync performances, maybe with queens lip syncing for their lives against each other and the crowd voting by applause. It was SO MUCH BETTER. 

Alaska Thunderfuck came out and sang a rendition of ‘My Girl’ with some of the lyrics changed. It was funny and great and Amy and I were bursting at the seams because YAY DRAG QUEENS. But it was relatively tame a little old-timey because of the song and I was kind of like ~so, this is what a drag show is like~! And mmm gurl, no. It’s not. 

So, Mimi Imfurst came out next and did a very funny cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” with all the lyrics revolving around penis size and being a size queen. She’ll never be a favorite of mine but she was a lot better than Amy or I expected. PANDYBEAR aka Pandora Boxx came out and did a funny routine of Carol Channing (her character from the Snatch Game on the show) singing all of today’s hits. It was funny and Amy and I were excited to be seeing Pandora live in front of our eyeballs. Then Ivy Winters (Ivvvvvyyyy Winnterrsssss) came out and lip synced to Ella Fitzgerald’s Airmail Special and it was WONDERFUL and the best performance of the night so far. I mean, holy shit, is there a harder song to lip sync to? And she NAILED IT. And her costume looked like it was straight out of the 1950s and it was WONDERFUL. I can’t even. So, Amy and I were like HOW COULD ANYONE POSSIBLY TOP THAT. 

And then Carmen Carrera came out. Carmen Carrera was different from the other performers in two ways. One, she isn’t a drag queen, she’s a transgender woman. And two, she doesn’t sing or dance or have any of the specific talents of the other queens. Her talent is that she drips sex. So, she came crawling out onto the stage lip syncing to a sultry Tony Braxton song. She was wearing a body suit covered with a gazillion strategically placed rhinestones. It was hot and I was standing on my tiptoes to get ~a good view~ of her. Little did I know. So, she walked/glided/slinked/levitated over to the railing and kissed one of Draco Malfoy’s gay boy friends. And I was like SO THIS IS WHAT A DRAG SHOW IS LIKE.

Then Carmen started working the railing and making her way into the crowd aka towards us. And as we were about 1/3 of the way back I really didn’t think she’d get all the way to us. I WAS WRONG. She did indeed come out until she was even with us and more or less on top of me as I had been leaning up against the railing she was now on. So she was dancing and I was feasting my eyeballs on the best pair of tits that will probably ever been in my face in my life and just generally loving her hair (her hairrrrrr) in my face and all around me and she smelled so intoxicating and OH GOD. Patty was out. Okay. You know that moment in maybe the third Harry Potter movie when Hagrid asks for a volunteer from the crowd to ride Buckbeak and everyone takes a step backwards to make it look like Harry stepped forward? I guess everyone in the crowd stepped back to give her room but I was so entranced that I failed to...so I finally looked around and realized Amy and everyone around us was suddenly considerably further away from me than they had been so I begrudgingly took a step back away from Carmen even though I wanted her to continue DANCING UPON ME. She made eye contact with me and I just remember having the biggest damn grin on my face, I must have looked like the little lesbian in her hoodie who was LOVING THIS. So, she turned around so she was facing the crowd and held the railing behind her and leaned into the crowd and DIRECTLY INTO AMY’S STUNNED FACE and then the GREATEST THING in the entire world that I have ever witnessed happened. Carmen does this thing where she touches foreheads with ~a lady~ and she does this really endearing little headbob thing with them. So, she leaned in to the point where her and Amy’s foreheads were touching or almost touching and did that thing. And then Amy made the face she makes when she is LOVING something. It’s this exaggerated, super animated expression that is very silly and completely wonderful. And Carmen copied it. She made the same expression. I know this because their faces were almost touching and I was standing MAYBE a foot away. And it was incredible and kind of disarming in an amazing way. And THEN Carmen went from being completely adorable with Amy to motorboating her. It was crazy. AND THEN THE DAMN SONG ENDED and Carmen slinked away back to the stage.

At this point they played some video of Sharon Needles who is terrifying in my book and Amy and I were both like WE CAN’T FOCUS ON THIS RIGHT NOW CARMEN CARRERA JUST RUBBED HER BOOBS ON US AND LOOKED INTO OUR SOULS, ETC, ETC. So, we continued to thank God/Cher/RuPaul for our great good fortune. Michelle talked for a while which was fine this time cause it gave us time to recover from almost blacking out FROM JOY.

Jinkx came out as her character from the Snatch Game on the show, Little Edie from ‘Grey Gardens,’ and sang ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Mis…as the character…live…and sounded INCREDIBLE. Amy and I instantly fell in love with Jinkx and now we just scour the youtube for videos of the best performer ever, etc, etc. Other things continued to happen, notably Alaska came out as Mariah Carey and lip synced stunningly/perfectly to ‘Hero’ until she revealed Mariah Carey’s biggest secret and briefly turned into an alien creature two thirds of the way through the performance much to the terrified delight of the audience. Amy and I clung to each other and waited for it to happen again (it did, twice) and the entire audience loved it but was on edge. I guess Mimi came out and did some lip sync routine to a mashup of pop songs and clips from reality teevee shows. It was impressive but not really in a way that made us care. Pandybear came out and did a Stepford Wives inspired routine which wasn't the best or the worst of the evening. Then she did some standup which was pretty funny but probs went on a little too long considering the amount of time each performer was given. 

Carmen Carrera’s second routine was more lip syncing while even more naked to another sultry song. She came out in a long fur coat which she soon dropped to reveal her ‘outfit’ for this routine which was basically three strategically placed pasties. She worked the other side of the crowd this time and actually made her way through the standing room crowd up to the seats and writhed around on some audience members. She brought an adorably average woman on stage with her and glided the woman’s hands all over her body (!) before laying down on top of her (!) and then finishing by fake going down on her(!). The audience was all hot and bothered and abuzz about how Carmen Carrera could do anything she wanted to them regardless of their sexual orientation.

And then I think Jinkx came out and did the number from Sweeney Todd where Mrs. Lovett sings about her meat pies. And she brought out what looked like a plate of mini muffins and fed them to audience members and tossed them into the audience. If she had come over by us I would completely have let her feed me one. I’m just saying. It was wonderful and I love how Jinkx uses her musical theater background. Anywho, then Ivy came back out and did some of her circus acts like juggling clubs and twirling scarves and then she JUGGLED KNIVES over Carmen’s beautiful masterpiece of a body. And Carmen did this really cute thing when she stood back up of like checking to make sure all her bits were still there? But she doesn’t have any bits? IDK IT WAS WONDERFUL.

And then Mimi Imfurst came out with two bitches BUT NO ONE CARED.

Four for Ivy Winters and Carmen Carrera. And none for Mimi Imfurst. Bye.

To close the show Alaska and Jinkx sang ‘Cabaret’ and it was awesome and adorable because Jinkx can FUCKING SING but Alaska can only kind of sing but they seemed like BFFs during it and it was really cute. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

Amy and I stumbled out of the theater and into the New Day and after a Brief Moment of Fear we got The Wizard to open the gates and we retrieved Leisha (for only $12!!1!) and skated her home and bonded over ‘EVERYTHING IS DRAG QUEENS AND NOTHING HURTS.’

Battle of the Seasons was incredible. It goes down as, no lie, one of my favorite memories of my entire damn life. It was that entertaining and that much fun and Carmen Carrera was that hot.

ETA: The Monday afternoon after the performance Amy and I were at Target when I reached into my sweatshirt pocket (the one I wore to the show) and found a rhinestone. I am a DUMB WHORE because I thought ‘how the hell did a rhinestone get in here?’ and dropped it on the floor. But later on I realized Carmen Carrera dancing upon me is how it got there. And I really do wish I would have realized it and saved it. But it doesn’t change the fact that one of the rhinestones from Carmen Carrera’s body stocking worked its way into my pocket. AND THAT IS PROOF. 

New beginnings

I stumbled across my old blogs yesterday by accident. And I was struck by the humor of the things I had been writing and the sheer number of photographs I had been posting of all the great things I had been doing.

I would like to say I’ve changed and that I think I’ll want to start consistently updating this space again. I haven’t changed. LBR. (But hey, I did do some of the goals I had made for 2012!) But I did have an experience last weekend that made me want to write it down. It’s a memory I’ll want to have when I’m older. It also felt like it was the beginning of something. We shall see.

I used to be a lot more optimistic in my intention to update a writing blog, and a blog for creative pictures, and a blog for pictures of all things I was doing, and a tumblr of fun graphics I was making. Life has beaten that optimism out of me. So I plan on using this space as a catch-all for all those different things. Just this one space.

And even though I know better, I’m still a little excited.