Queen of the Boys

The Sound

After Nellie slaps her on the butt and giddily exclaims, "You get 'em, girl!," Tequila Rose gracefully steps over the piles of dresses strewn across the floor, dodges some dirty looks, darts through the two-foot-wide mirrored hallway and seductively glides onto the stage. The multi-colored house lights expose her toned body, and the 400-person crowd��half gay, half straight--explodes with furious delight. Suddenly, the sharp pain of having her waist tightened by 20 feet of duct tape, the discomfort of having her penis jammed between her legs and into her ass cheeks and the agonizing memories of having performed onstage as a boy in high school plays disappear. The moment is Tequila Rose's, and the music blares.

The Fury

"Can't somebody give me a fucking brush and some All-Sheen, damn it?" yells one of the makeup artists (or so-called "painters") backstage in his frantic attempt to transform his man into a queen.

The heat, quite literally, begins to rise as the increasingly prestigious Queen of the Triangle drag pageant is approaching showtime. The backstage area hardly offers the light-hearted atmosphere one would expect at a drag show--or at least what one would expect at a drag show after watching The Birdcage. Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine are not pounding joyously in the background, grown men are not jabbering pointlessly about the newest Queer as Folk episode and palm leaves are certainly not flowing in the summer breeze. Instead, the dank, wooded dressing room at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh is a 10-by-10-foot claustrophobic heap of mascara kits, wigs, empty Skyy Blue bottles, frantic painters, duct-taped waists, newspaper shutterbugs and industrial fans.

And that's not even mentioning the bitter rivalries flowing between the fellow drag queens.

"Most of the girls in the industry are so catty, it's ridiculous," Tequila says, her short black hair and masculine chest showing as she changes into a new wig and dress.

Tequila's blabby painter Nellie Bottoms cuts her off: "You gotta be purty. You gotta have clean clothes. If you're fat, you're a nobody in this business�Ä. There's so much attitude with some of these redneck drag queens who think their shit don't stink."

The Pain

With full access to the backstage area of a drag pageant, some very natural questions about "proper mechanics" tend to spring up very quickly.

"Oh, you want to know about that? Haha, I'll tell you, honey," Nellie laughs. "Well, you take the balls with one hand, take 'em up inside your legs with two fingers, reach around with the other hand, grab the winkie, pull it up to the butt and into the cheeks, and then you put on the girdles and duct tape."

Watching those who had never undergone the "tuck-and-tape" squirm through his graphic description, Nellie adds, "Trust me, you could drink a liter of Mountain Dew and not have the urge to piss at all when you're in there like that."

The Loathing

Sasha Holiday, who has been dressing up as a girl for 17 years now, could hardly breathe once she finished prancing around onstage. Forty years-old and carrying six-feet, four-inches and 277 pounds (that's a whole lotta woman), Sasha can no longer deal with the physical demands of being a drag queen as she was once capable of doing years ago. Nor can she compete as doggedly as she has in the past--her drag appearance more closely resembles Redd Foxx in a wig than Tina Turner in her prime. Nevertheless, Sasha continues to strut in her red velvet dress and cherry red pumps--and plans on doing so for at least another 10 years thanks to the miraculous powers of makeup--because like almost every other performer backstage tonight, she needs drag like a drug.

During the day Sasha doesn't exist. Instead, he goes by his non-stage name (that he doesn't want divulged for fear of being discriminated against at work) and helps mentally-retarded children develop athletic and physical skills. Dressing in drag allows him to rebel against the stodginess of rural southern life and truly express himself.

Hearing Sasha speak across the crowded dressing room, Tequila, who puts on a suit everyday as a lab technician at a prominent technology firm in Cary, tightens her cleavage and chimes in, "That's right. Doing this is in your blood�Ä. My mom said that I have always been a stickler for an audience, and this is how I get one."

Almost every performer and painter cites this single-minded lust for attention as the main thrust behind dressing up in ridiculously expensive and uncomfortable costumes and jiggling fake tits in front of heated crowds.

"It's a f---ing power rush," Zanus says, opting not to flower up his explanation. "They go out there and get their attention. People are yelling their names, and the power is so huge it makes them feel like they're above everybody else."

And above their everyday selves, it oftentimes seems.

Lots of people, including many homosexuals, crave the glow of stardom, but few willingly cross-dress to achieve that adulation.

"I never felt comfortable dressing up as a boy onstage, but in drag, I'm in camouflage," Tequila confesses. "If the crowd doesn't like me, it's no problem because it's not really me they dislike, it's Tequila. We're two different people."

Standing directly to Tequila's right in the dressing room, Courtney Chambers nods in vigorous agreement. Taller and more muscular, but with a mousier voice than Tequila's, Courtney says, "I hated being a boy onstage too because my voice never changed, and I got picked on for having such a high voice at church and at school. I was a tenor and they moved me to an alto--an uncomfortable transition to make as a boy. Drag has allowed me to be someone else--someone more confident--onstage."

Tequila and Courtney continue to chat about their liberation through drag until Nellie checks her watch and realizes it's time for Tequila to perform. Stumbling in her heels all the way from the packed dressing room to the stage's back entrance, Tequila composes herself and confidently steps into the limelight as Robbie, in full ring-leader form, screams, "And now, the gorgeous, the sophisticated, the exotic... Tequila Rose!"

The Jubilation

"Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics blares from the theater's over-sized speakers, and Tequila has all 400 audience members hanging by the duct-taped girdle. On every one of the song's pounding drumbeats, she smacks her backside heartily and then jets her naughty puppy-dog eyes to the crowd. Then, with the song winding down, Tequila, in complete drag apparel, flips into a cartwheel and lands in a full split. As the maneuver induces the crowd into orgiastic celebration, it is clear which queen will wear the crown at the end of the night.

Offstage, breathless and absolutely beaming, Tequila declares, "Even if I don't win, the crowd was absolutely amazing. I definitely didn't stretch to do the splits, but the crowd definitely needed it."

So did she.