Sex Geek

Okay, so here’s where I drop all semblance of dignity and admit to raving, slavering, obsessive fandom. Regarding what, you ask?

Drag kings.

Oh gods. They’re slick. They’re sexy. They get up on stage in suits and ties and they do any number of things that on their own might not necessarily be the be-all and end-all of modern entertainment, but when a hot girl dresses up like a hot guy to do them, something hits me in the lizard brain and I get that spiral-eyed hypnotized thing goin’ on, and I scream like an Elvis fan and very nearly wet myself with delight at every coordinated hip thrust and practiced grin.

Blame it on the Mambo Drag Kings. They took my drag king virginity (quite oblivious to my existence, of course) at the very first Le Boudoir I ever attended, which would have been… oh… back in 2000 or 2001, I suppose. I don’t remember what they did on stage, exactly; I don’t even quite remember their outfits. I just remember that it finally occurred to me to breathe again when they took their final bow, and they’ve held me in a sort of breathless fascination ever since.

Yeah, I managed to miss the famous kd lang cover of Vanity Fair (August 1993), but I since then I’ve more than made up for that by eating up every single instance of gals in drag I could get my hot little hands on, starting with a lasting crush on the entire MDK that to this day has never quite been equalled by any others, despite my happy experiences with such wonders as…

- Flare of the Scandelles (who once confessed to me, while in full drag, that s/he found nothing hotter than a hard cock in lace panties - good lord, but that’s some deeply queer desire!)…

- Deb Dirk Pearce, also a Scandelle, who sings like an angel and is just so damned sweet’n'charming I want to bring him home and introduce him to my parents (and that, folks, is saying something - though I might ask him to lose his three topless companions first)…

- Christopher Noel, who appeared on a Montreal stage stark nekkid once - an experience which, despite all very visible evidence to the contrary, did not prevent me from seeing him as a guy…

- Ivan Aycock, the drag king character from season 1 of The L Word, who was jaw-droppingly sexy and single-handedly caused me to develop a minor fetish for Leonard Cohen’s tune "I’m Your Man"…

- and numerous other hot kings in various places over the years.

The latest intalment in my obsessive fandom, though, was when the Mirror agreed to let me do a piece this week - a full page, no less! - on the meteoric rise of Montreal’s latest drag king troupe, King Size. They’re performing a free show this Saturday at Café Cleopatra (1230 St-Laurent) in honour of the Trans Day of Pride, and you can bet your ass I’ll be in the front row. Woo-hoo!

Now, the fan thing is a little different for me with these guys. One of the King Size members is an ex of mine; several others are friends and acquaintances. Somehow, having met them and gotten to know them out of drag, they don’t have quite the same mystical aura as the kings I first saw en homme on stage. But am I any less a fan? Not at all. It’s just a particular sort of fandom. Rather than a must-tear-their-clothes-off kind of thing (or maybe leave-them-on-for-the-thrill-of-it-and-make-out-with-them-anyway), it’s more like a conceptual fandom, and a personal/friendly/supportive fandom, where I’m completely stoked at how they’re taking Montreal by storm and thrilled to bits every time I see them don their gear and hit the stage.

Among other things, I read in nouveau*queer that they performed at Mado not long ago… I am so disappointed I missed it! Picture it: Mado and her drag queens dressed up as drag kings for the occasion. How mind-boggling is that? According to n*q, "Mado explained to the audience the drag gender-fuck that was about to take place: gay men dressed as straight women dressed as lesbians dressed as drag kings… who then dressed as gay men!" Oh my goodness. My genderfuckloving lizard brain is totally overheating. I’m so brokenhearted I wasn’t there to see it. (Thanks to n*q, from whom I pilfered this photo.)

Gary Dickinson, King Size frontman extraordinaire, tells me that King Size is hoping to get to Vancouver this fall for the International Drag KingCommunity Extravaganza, or IDKE (which is almost, but not quite, as unpronounceable as LGBT). The last IDKE was in Austin, Texas; I don’t know if it’s ever happened in Canada before. But hoo boy, you can bet your butt I’m hoping to get there… I’ll be high for weeks!

Now, all of that being said about my more "friendly" fandom with regard to King Size… still, I must say, Billy King’s awful cute when he wears his pinstriped shirt and fedora. What can I say, I like classy guys. And Little Bighorn… oh, the arms… yum.

Oh, all right, so the Mambo Drag Kings stole my heart years ago, but maybe I have a crush on King Size too. Just a little one.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.