Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  When I returned to my room, clean, shaved, and “proper,” I got some welcome news: I’d gotten lucky in the roommate department. I had signed up for a random roommate and was paired with a really sweet guy named Radu. Rather than the basketball-obsessed jock from New Jersey I’d feared he’d be, Radu was a nerdy, kind, athletics-agnostic guy from Romania who was studying engineering and Japanese. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my first roommate had been some frat-star sports dude. I think I would’ve dropped out. But this was perfect; or at least, this was totally doable.

  To add to my sense of security, my immediate neighbor was Patrick, a fellow Southern powerqueer from Texas who ended up becoming a lifelong friend, despite the fact that we spent a significant portion of our time being political rivals in student government. My anxiety slid down another notch.

  Then I took a look down the hall. To my shock, the three freshman basketball players—Josh Hairston, Tyler Thornton, and Kyrie Fucking Irving—were only three doors down from me.

  Duke Basketball* was the one thing I was trying to avoid. Contrary to seemingly everyone else on campus, it was my least favorite thing about the school. I am one of those feminists who dislikes the gender politics of commercial athletics, but cares deeply for the players. I loathe the National Football League—partly because football culture is garbage toward women, but also because it is not okay to make money off people getting concussions. I hate the fact that male athletes make three thousand times more than female athletes, the fact that NBA teams get 4 million times more sponsorship than WNBA teams, the fact that most men who like sports act like women’s teams don’t exist. I hate most organized sports because, as a child, they were an excuse for abuse, shame, and trauma. And while I’m not totally against the idea of reclaiming organized sports in my life, I certainly don’t give enough fucks to actually do it.*

  All my angry feminist thoughts about mainstream athletics made the prospect of living right next door to the basketball players daunting. The one thing I was most trying to avoid about Duke was just down the hall.

  The fan culture was immediately weird. People would leave love notes and roses and presents outside of the players’ doors. They got so much free gear from sponsors that they would leave stuff they didn’t want outside in the hall. And people would swarm for it. News of a fresh gear deposit would spread like wildfire by text, Facebook, and email, and would be gone within minutes. One time, because I happened to be walking by when he was putting them out, I got a pair of shorts one of the players didn’t want. He was so tall that they looked like capris on me, despite the fact that I am six feet even. I could basically wear them as a dress, and did so on a number of occasions.*

  Other than the daily reminder of structural inequality, living down the hall from the b-ballers didn’t end up being as weird as I had expected. There were even some perks. Living near the basketball players made me seem, I dunno, cooler? And it made for a convenient talking point whenever I encountered butch dudes—my relatives, my neighbors, my dad’s coworkers, you name it—who wanted to talk about Duke Basketball. They’d ask how I thought the team was doing this season, something I never had any knowledge of, and I could always defer that conversation by bragging about how I lived in the same dorm as Kyrie Irving.

  But the biggest perk came on my third day in the dorm. It was a Saturday morning, and I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing my teeth. In the distance, I heard the rumbling of giant footsteps. Like in Jurassic Park, the water in the sink began rippling as the footsteps drew nearer. I tried to act natural. I tried to play it cool. I put my toothbrush in my mouth like normal, and just as I began to brush, all three freshman basketball players burst in wearing nothing but towels. It was an erotic tempest, a whirlwind of yum, a veritable monsoon of delicious arms and muscly backs. I’d never seen so many sculpted abs in person.

  In the heat of the moment, I struggled to remember both my feminist qualms about men’s basketball—What were they? What was I so angry about, again? Think, Jacob, think!—and my feminist qualms about objectifying other people’s bodies (even men’s bodies). Attempts at jogging my memory were to no avail. In the face of so much pure sexy, all the feminist training in the world proved useless.

  I tried to do that thing confident people do where they talk effortlessly to fancy people. But I also had a toothbrush in my mouth, and wanted to give the impression that I wasn’t so starstruck as to stop brushing my teeth. So I settled on talking and brushing my teeth at the same time. As if they’d think to themselves afterward, Wow, that Jacob is so cool. They didn’t stop brushing their teeth when we came in, but they still talked to us. So effortless! So confident!

  “What’s-shup?” I sputtered, spraying toothpaste on the mirror. Well, this isn’t working out.

  “Hey,” they replied as a chorus.

  I took the toothbrush out of my mouth momentarily.

  “Are y’all going to that party at the Nasher tonight?” I inquired. The Nasher is the art museum on campus, and they throw the fanciest parties, complete with hors d’oeuvres, photo booths, and mocktails. Everyone dresses up. It’s very chic.

  “Nah, man, we’re not classy enough for that party,” Josh responded jokingly.

  “Cool, cool,” I replied and returned to brushing my teeth. “Cool, cool”? That’s ALL YOU CAN SAY? That sounds so stupid Jacob you sound like an idiot good job blowing your cover.

  Before I could beat myself up any further, it happened. Like clockwork, all three of them dropped their towels at the same time, standing buck-naked for a moment, locker room style, before stepping into the private shower stalls. I didn’t even have to spy. They just did it right in front of me. Like it was no big deal. Like they weren’t showing off their perfectly sculpted butts in front of a very sexually frustrated queen. Like it was something I was prepared to handle.

  I was not prepared. I could, by no means, handle seeing Kyrie Irving’s butt on my third day of college. My body was not ready. My mind was not ready. No part of me was ready. I was not worthy. It felt like a middle school church retreat all over again, the supposed “safe space” of a gender-segregated bathroom becoming immediately, unapologetically, aggressively sexual; the typical shame rising alongside arousal.

  Instead of playing it cool, my body decided the best thing to do at that moment was to inhale some toothpaste and spend the next three minutes choking on it. Thankfully, they were all three in the shower, so they didn’t realize that their sudden nudity had caused the biggest queen on campus to have a three-minute coughing fit. I still haven’t recovered from that moment. I don’t think I ever will. Sorry, Kyrie.

  Which is how my complicated relationship with Duke Athletics began. For the duration of my freshman year, Josh, Tyler, and Kyrie were nothing but kind to me—even when I was wearing heels, even when I had on lipstick—as I went to and fro around the dorm.

  But I struggled with the feeling that, even if they were nice to me in person, their very presence, the power they held over the student body, was also making it harder for me to find my way. As people, they were kind. I can’t (and don’t) put the blame on them as individuals. But they were also embodiments of a larger institution that did not treat me with that same kindness. How can you explain to someone that the foundation of their livelihood creates obstacles for you? How can you explain to someone that something innocuous to them feels awful to you? How can you explain to people who take their power for granted that their power has consequences for your life?

  At a bare minimum, my proximity to the basketball players reinforced a message that became louder and louder as college wore on, one that other members of Duke Athletics would drive home repeatedly during my first year:

  Masculinity has some serious value.

  I thought all this over that night as I began to unpack. I hung my shirts, ties, and dress pants in my closet. I assembled the cheap bookshelf that I’d purchased at Targ
et. I put up pictures of my high school friends, a few posters, some artwork. I strung Christmas lights on top of my bed.

  And then, hidden beneath layers of T-shirts and cargo shorts, I pulled out a plastic bag full of my grandmother’s old jewelry, all the pieces I’d been able to squirrel away without anyone noticing. I dumped her jewelry, my secret, precious, ancestral collection, on my desk. I fiddled with each piece—faux gold necklaces, rhinestone floral clip-ons, crystal pendants, pink rosettes—holding them up to a lamp, watching the rhinestones dance in the light.

  I was comforted because they’d belonged to my grandmother and were infused with her love.

  I was afraid because they now belonged to me, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the next four years.

  * * *

  —

  The first few weeks of school were a major letdown. I’d seen on our backpacking trip how much better the people I spent every day with could be. But as soon as the architecture was back, as soon as everyone moved into gendered dorms on a campus, where fraternities and sororities held the lion’s share of social power, I saw my peers jump immediately back into the gender molds prescribed for them.

  It happened quickly. The second night we were on campus, my hiking crew decided to go to a party thrown by Wayne Manor, an all-male selective-living group that was basically a fraternity. It was our first time together again after a day of reacclimating and moving in.

  The party was like any college party you’d imagine: a hallway of individual dorm rooms, with drinks flowing, lights low, people drunkenly dancing, grinding close, leaving together. I tried to have fun but couldn’t, as I watched this community I’d built dissolve back into mediocrity. People went right back to their roles. The boys did what boys were supposed to do. The girls did what girls were supposed to do. They were still perfectly nice, but the moral courage was gone, the leave-no-person-behind mentality forgotten. Everyone returned to the script.

  The problem is that there are generally no lines written for people like me. There was no role for a gender nonconforming person at Duke, hardly even a role for a gay boy. Without realizing it, just by doing what they were used to, by following the rules suggested by the structures around them, my classmates had erased me, had made my experience and contributions feel irrelevant.

  By the end of the first weekend, the massive, twelve-by-six-foot benches out front of three freshman dorms were graffittied with the slogans “Drunk Bitches Love Cock,” “TITS,” and “HERMAPHRODITE.”

  In the vacuum that was left, I did what came most naturally: I started hanging out with the queers, joined an a cappella group, signed up for a million clubs, and tried to figure out what role, if any, existed for me on campus.

  * * *

  —

  Within about a month, I’d cemented myself as the first-year activist queer: attending every meeting of Blue Devils United, our undergrad LGBT student organization; becoming a regular at the campus LGBT Center; and coordinating a campaign that distributed hundreds of rainbow flags to first year students. It was only natural that when the time came around for the November Drag Show Fund-raiser, I was extended an invitation not just to perform, but to be the Mistress of Ceremonies.

  Enthusiastically, naively, I agreed, not realizing I was setting myself up for some very public exploration of my fledgling identity.

  Before I proceed with this story, it’s important to have some context. When I was a first year in college in 2010, RuPaul’s Drag Race had been on the air for a total of two seasons and had a grand prize of only $25,000. It was still a relatively obscure/underproduced show, and while drag has been a venerable art form for centuries, drag culture hadn’t become the global phenomenon it is today. This went down in the days before RuPaul, Lady Bunny, Logo, et al. transformed drag into a national commodity supported by mainstream makeup companies and media outlets alike.

  Which is to say that, back then, hosting the drag show wasn’t really an honor. It didn’t make me cool in the queer community. It was more that no other undergrad wanted to do it, and the Blue Devils United Leadership rightfully guessed that I’d be foolish enough to say yes.

  The first step was to name my drag persona and decide on a character. That part was easy—for years, I’d been perfecting a “Long Island mother” accent reminiscent of Linda from Bob’s Burgers (actually, it was based on the original YouTube videos that John Roberts, the actor who plays Linda, made before he was ever cast in the show). I didn’t work hard for a name, either; I just let it come to me. After meditating for a number of days, it came: Trudi De Vil.

  Elegant name chosen, the second step was finding an outfit. I went to the two stores that I knew were great for putting together a refined, effortlessly feminine look: Charlotte Russe and Goodwill. At Charlotte Russe, I purchased my second pair of high heels ever—black lace booties with black satin laces—and at Goodwill, I managed to find a halfway decent dress and a red tulle skirt. The look was hardly haute couture, but it was enough for an amateur college drag show.

  The last step was choosing what song I wanted to perform. I’m still proud of my choice. It was fierce; poppy, but still a bit niche; from a fabulous diva, but a more obscure, underrated element of her discography; with a rich feminist analysis that still left opportunities to make dick jokes; erotic and Freudian all at the same time. It was a perfect selection for a budding intellectual like me who still wanted to feign that she was in touch with pop culture.

  For my world premiere drag performance,* I chose to perform Ego by Beyoncé. If you don’t know the song, do yourself a favor: put this book down and go listen to it.

  To say that the song was perfect is an understatement. The song opens with Beyoncé singing about how her partner has a “big ego” (i.e., a big dick) but then pivots to Beyoncé singing about how she, too, has a “big ego” (i.e., a big metaphorical dick). In my opinion, it’s the queerest, most transfabulous song ever written; that song enabled me, in one drag routine, to insinuate that I had a big dick while simultaneously claiming my dick as innately feminine. I was able to own the . . . umm . . . fullness of my masculinity without dismissing the fullness of my femininity. I saw my routine as a bold, gender-fucking piece of performance art.

  Which might be a little bit of a stretch in terms of what the audience actually got out of it. Mostly, what they got was a B-minus performance where I attempted to do Beyoncé’s choreography, lost track of said choreography, and flailed around for the remaining two minutes of the song.

  The hosting routine was equally half-baked. I and my cohost, Virginia Slims (a Southern belle–type played by a grad student, who, in retrospect, I probably should’ve dated), opened the show by pretending that I’d forgotten to get ready. I sat onstage in a bathrobe and Virginia gave me a ring. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE SHOW IS STARTING? WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME?” I burst out, screaming into my phone before throwing it into the audience and running out. Moments later, I was back onstage, magically changed into my outfit for the show. Virginia insulted it, I retorted by insulting Southerners in general, she responded by insulting Yankees, and before you knew it, we were knee-deep in regional humor.

  “Do you like barbecue?” Virginia asked.

  “Yeah, I love throwing hot dogs on the grill! Who doesn’t?” I responded.

  “No, not that kind of barbecue, you idiot, I mean real barbecue.”

  “I’m not really sure what you’re getting at here, Virginia. You mean burgers and hot dogs on the grill?”

  “You Yankees are hopeless.”

  “Yeah, well, at least we have public transportation and didn’t elect George Bush president for two terms!”

  And so on.

  At the end of the show, when Virginia and Trudi made up, I was even able to work in a killer Civil War joke: “Aw, Virginia, I’m so glad that we’re making up. It’s like the treaty at Appomattox! Which means I guess it’s time for you to get some
reconstruction!”

  Get it? Reconstruction? As in, plastic surgery? And also as in, the era of American history when the federal government had to essentially impose martial law to stop Southern states from reinstating slavery, even after they’d lost the war?

  Looking back, was it the most sensitive joke I’ve ever made? No. Did it make light of a devastating era of American history? Sure. Am I a bad person for making it? Probably. But most important, was it a brutal dig at the kind of racist assholes who, to this day, fly the Confederate flag and still lament that the South lost the Civil War? Yes. Yes, it was.

  I’d like to think that’s what America needs more of right now: drag queens dragging racists through the dirt with insensitive Civil War jokes. Or perhaps drag queens banding together and tearing down Confederate monuments? I’d like both, please.

  Besides, if you’re going to do drag, it’s important to honor drag tradition. Being an offensive, morally decrepit asshole is a rich part of the whole endeavor. Just ask Lady Bunny—she’s the stinkiest, most offensive asshole in town.*

  By the end of the night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was experiencing drag differently than many of the other performers. When used properly, drag is a radical tool that challenges the gender binary by mocking it, heightening it, exaggerating it, or rejecting it altogether, but that doesn’t mean all performers experience it equally. Some performers consider drag a hobby that doesn’t affect their primary identity. Some performers consider drag a separate, but equally important, identity to their day-to-day selves. Still others, myself included, experience drag as an incremental tool for gender self-exploration and evolution, a beautiful summit along our gender journey.