I toyed with music loops (prerecorded beats and melodies). I reached for my notepad and scribbled out the lyrics to my first number-one smash: “Fat-Ass Bitch.”
Incredible how creations mimic the emotional intelligence of their creators. I knew that by making a joke of my work, I couldn’t/wouldn’t be forced to be taken seriously. This has been a defense mechanism my whole life, to keep judgment at arm’s length. If I truly show my honest vulnerability in my work, I will be fully visible. At twenty-one, I was not yet ready to do such a thing.
It’s frustrating, this complete dedication to self-preservation. I am a pretend person. I am a laughing Band-Aid.
I became obsessed with writing and producing music, and I decided I wanted to perform as my pop-star alter ego, JbDubs. J for James. B for Bruce. Dubs for the W in Whiteside. My friends and I frequented a club in Boston called Machine, and on one belligerent evening out, I handed DJ Susan my homemade mixtape. She begrudgingly accepted it. Handing your mixtape to a DJ named Susan is probably not the best course of action. What’s next? DJ Ethel? DJ Muriel? In my mind, this is how it all played out:
Damn, I looked good. I was wearing my whisker-marked, sand-blasted, boot-cut H&M jeans over my puffiest Marshalls-bought, ambiguously branded sneakers. I had scissored a secondhand Urban Outfitters tee to veritable nipple pasties, and my twink-like, emaciated horse frame shone in the almost-chic Boston nightclub disco lights. I clutched my burned disc, packed in a slim neon case in my right hand, my fingernails bitten to uneven and jagged nubs. I confidently leaned over the DJ deck and shouted over the pulsating throb of “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls. “Hey, DJ Susan!” I screamed. “Here’s that mixtape you’ve been spamming my Myspace for.”
The following week, I returned and asked if she’d listened to it. She said that she had and that she’d enjoyed it, so she’d ask the promoter if I could perform at any of his clubs. The promoter’s name was Rafael, and he was a corpulent gentleman with a cheery disposition, at complete odds with the title club promoter. He decided I needed to do an out-of-town audition for the chance to perform in any Boston clubs. As it is known across the globe, Boston is the absolute pinnacle of the clubbing experience.
That is how my best friends and I ended up in Manchester, New Hampshire, a small city with a population of around one hundred thousand. I rented a car and forced my friends to be my backup dancers. This is something I would become infamous for: getting my friends to do embarrassing things for absolutely zero money. By this point, I had been dating Dan (aka Milk) for over a year, and he had transformed from a reticent femme to a full-blown drag queen. I enlisted him to be my drag-queen-in-residence and essentially hand me props while I sang and danced.
When we arrived in Manchester, we checked in to the scuzzy Econo Lodge off the highway. All costs were paid out of pocket, as this was MY BIG BREAK! We fastidiously rehearsed our choreography as if we were doing solos in the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony. Milk was getting into makeup in the bathroom, ensuring that he would look like Mrs. Potato Head, when there was a horrifying, violent pounding on the door. I opened it to find a large man standing there, brandishing an ax.
“I’m a firefighter. Stay in your room. There’s a hostage situation in the room next door. They could be violent. We’re going in.”
We gay-gasped in terror and shut the door. “But what do we do if nobody is caught or dead by the time we need to leave for the club?!” I asked in a panicked whisper.
Fortunately, the suspect was neutralized, and our very first JbDubs show went swimmingly. We shimmied around the houseplants littering the triangular, foot-high mezzanine that constituted a stage. We danced with vigor and gusto, and I sang with my usual rhythmically atonal, slightly deaf-sounding zeal. A rousing success indeed.
When I finally got the opportunity to perform in Boston, it was bittersweet. The young gays did not come out to hear me “sing”; they came out to dance, drink, and hook up with strangers. Every time I’d appear onstage, it was to break up a night of dancing.
Performing for an audience who wanted nothing to do with me had no deterring effect on me, though. I’d have been happy performing my music to a beach full of seagulls. I’d much rather create something no one wants anything to do with than not create anything at all.
Not only did I want to perform, I also wanted to make albums and music videos. For the lead single on my sophomore album, Oink, I dreamed up a “Single Ladies”–esque music video starring myself and my two best friends, Mack and Lola, as disgruntled gay office workers. We covered the back of Boston Ballet’s basement studio in white photo paper on a lazy Sunday morning and dressed ourselves in five-dollar white H&M button-downs, black ties, black booty shorts, and cherry-red high heels. We filmed the video in a few exhausting hours and titled it “I Hate My Job.”
When it was finished, I scheduled a release party at our favorite bar and invited all my friends. It went live on YouTube that night and rapidly made its way onto Facebook profiles all over the world. The thing I had dreamed up and executed had been deemed a viral hit by the masses! Overnight, I had gone from a fantasy pop singer to someone the public believed was a real, live pop singer.
* * *
—
Upon scrolling through the comments on the YouTube video for “I Hate My Job” one day, I discovered the following words: hate speech, slur, transphobic, bigot. Here are the lyrics they were referring to:
As I walk by, I get a pat on the fanny
Don’t look at me like I’m a two-dollar tranny
A word I had been using with jovial delight was being called out as hate speech. I was shaken by the negative attention and didn’t know what to do. Even though I didn’t consider myself transphobic, I had still been using the t-word willy-nilly for years, with ignorance as my only defense. But one can plead ignorance for only so long.
I, as a sensible human being, wish solely to support and uplift the queer community, so I quickly issued a Twitter apology. A Twitter apology does not negate one’s error. The song remains in its original state containing the offensive lyric. It is a reminder that I mustn’t relinquish my mind to comfort, to perpetual sameness.
I have learned from my missteps, and I continue to educate myself. My awakenings were a direct result of people informing me when I shared insensitive creations. I have gained wisdom from my shame.
I once went to a cute Brooklyn garden party at which I met someone from New York City Ballet. He was waxing on in a nasal baritone about the films he’d seen lately and how they were all laden with inherent homophobia and misogyny. Afterward, I giggled about it with my boyfriend and commented that the people at the party were the most pretentious I’d ever met. The truth was, the nasal NYCB dancer was probably right; I just didn’t have enough perspective to hear his words properly. The ignorant find a way to revel in their ignorance, to celebrate it and defend it to the idiotic end. While I pride myself on avoiding pretentiousness, at which point am I an imbecile with my hands clapped over my ears in blatant refusal to hear honest truths? I strive to someday find the balance.
I’m grateful to have learned a lot since the writing of “I Hate My Job,” which remains my most popular song to date. Ignorance is not bliss, it’s hell. Knowledge is bliss.
Making music has allowed me to live a fantasy life alongside my real life. I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing and producing. I don’t yet have a therapist, so when something shakes me or I need to expel a feeling, it goes into a song, simple as that. If I’m lonely, or full of rage, or confused, or jealous, or silly, or incredulous, it finds its way into my microphone and out of my head. Creativity and expression are catharsis. If I were to shut myself up and silence my voice, I’d wither. I wouldn’t die, but I’d languish till I was indistinguishable from anybody else. Who you are is how you think and what you choose to do with those thoughts. No one has the power to tell you who you are, but you have the ch
oice to give yourself the freedom to explore who you are through expression. What do you want to say?
ÜHU BETCH: A DRAG QUEEN ORIGIN STORY
Let’s go back in time. My first forays into drag took place around the same time I bought that first iMac G5. While I happily danced my way up through the ranks of Boston Ballet, I made some unbelievable friends who shaped the way I thought about self-expression. Everyone was always making things and sharing them with each other. This was before Instagram, so people were doing things they wanted without worrying about garnering Likes. I lived with my friends in what could surely be called a gay frat house. Because we were and still are all raging homosexuals, we called it “the Homosexuals’ Home,” which was later abbreviated to “the Homes’ Home,” and then simply “the Homes.” It’s not at all ironic that it sounds like some sort of halfway house.
My friend Lucas, a Vietnamese American ballet dancer from California, had already been showing up in drag at company house parties as a provocative prostitute named Vixie. As Vixie, Lucas was a hilariously clumsy parody of a woman. It was an honest representation of a gay man’s obsession with all things woman.
My other drag queen roommates were Tony as Nicoteena Patch, aka Teena, and Mack as Fefe. My ex-boyfriend Dan, as Giselle Peacock, was a later addition. Nicoteena prided herself on how much she looked like an adorable little girl, and Fefe satisfied herself by being the group’s resident “messy queen” (though in my opinion, Fefe’s antics almost always outshone everyone else’s). I liked the idea of not having a real proper-noun kind of name, so I decided upon That Girl, after the 1960s sitcom starring Marlo Thomas.
Vixie was the ringleader of our burgeoning drag fascination, so when she glided down the stairs in her floor-length chiffon robe lined with ostrich feathers and Lucite heels and squeaked, “OK, girls! Ten Minute T*****! You have ten minutes to get into your gear!” we had no choice but to oblige. (In our minds, the t-word was just another word for drag queen, which we now know is not the case. To my shame, we remained ignorant for approximately five more years.)
Ten Minute T***** was a living room lip-synch series that we filmed using my mother’s JVC handheld camcorder (which I borrowed . . . forever) and uploaded to a still-youthful YouTube. (Our videos predated even the infamous “Shoes” video, in which a drag queen farcically decides which shoes to buy.) This is, to this date, some of the most fun I’ve ever had. It wasn’t for anything other than the extreme desire to be silly, to shed the masculine constraints we found ourselves under daily. I was liberated in a way I had never known. Our living room drag performances parodied everything it was to be a twenty-something homosexual in a classical ballet company. It felt good. If you’ve never done anything as someone else, you’re missing out. Shedding yourself to inhabit a new persona is truly illuminating.
I eventually removed all the videos from YouTube upon discovering how hideous our ignorant use of the t-word was. The annihilation of our ignorance marked the end of TMT’s heyday. Our group scattered, time passed, and That Girl all but perished.
* * *
—
Though the days of living room drag shows had ended, our forays into drag continued; a common activity for our Boston friend group was to get into the most absurd drag imaginable and go to a restaurant for dinner. We didn’t necessarily go out as women; we went out as subverters, challenging the self-congratulating, faux-liberal inhabitants of Boston. One evening, we went to the Cheesecake Factory. As we sat in a booth at the center of the restaurant, cackling and generally causing a scene, we decided we needed new names that would reflect our evolution. Giselle Peacock had metamorphosed into an exquisite drag queen and changed her name to Milk to reflect the near-white paleness she exhibits at all times. “Why don’t we all do dairy names?” Milk said, and we giggled. Thus, the Dairy Queens were born. Mack became Juggz Au Lait, Chip became Butter, and Matt, my drag daughter with Milk, became Skim. We were always the Dairy Queens, but now we had the names to match the mood.
Skim had moved to New York City to go to New York University at the same time I had joined ABT. The Dairy Queens NYC chapter consisted of Milk, Skim, and myself under my new moniker, YooHoo, after the chocolate milk–flavored beverage, which I later learned ironically contains no liquid milk. When a product is labeled as drink, one might as well stay away.
One balmy summer night in New York City, we bedecked ourselves in our most aggressive drag to go to a party at the Standard Hotel. The party was called ON TOP and it was a celebration of the final vestiges of New York’s Club Kid era. We wore all manner of prints—striped, polka-dotted, leopard, zebra—and called ourselves “Printcesses” for an evening. When we arrived, we skipped past the line, as costumed partygoers needed not pay nor wait in line, and took the elevator up to the faux grass rooftop. There were drag queens everywhere. There were goths in full Victorian regalia. There were dinosaurs, witches, poodles, monsters, strippers, go-go dancers, and a slew of completely nude guests. The partiers reveled under a full city moon, basking like Poe-esque cats in a hedonistic glow.
We behaved like maniacs, drunk on liquor and attention. We pole danced, we did splits in the grass, we posed for photos unbegrudgingly. Our antics were a hit, and we received complimentary drink tickets from the party’s hosts, who wanted to encourage us to return.
A host in leather and football pads accosted us and said, “Come with me. You have to meet Susanne.”
We had no idea who that was, and told the host so.
“Why you’re at her fete, dears!”
Susanne Bartsch was sitting in a private area settled by only the chicest attendees, wearing nothing but a sheath of black netting and nipple pasties, her wig a series of black balls made of hair and connected by a rope. Her skin was ghostly white and her deep-set eyes were rimmed with winged liner. Her false lashes looked as though they weighed as much as she did. Her petite frame and pert breasts did nothing to betray her age. We found out later that she had been the queen of queer New York City nightlife since the 1980s.
She exclaimed, “Oh, darlings! Who ARE you?” I felt like we were Alice, marooned in Wonderland only to be met by a strange and wonderful querying caterpillar with breast implants.
“You’ve GOT to be at my parties. I throw the ONLY parties worth going to anymore! You’ll be paid, of course.”
We stood dumbstruck and in awe.
“Take my number. Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll talk about coin,” she told us in her thick Swiss accent, as male models swarmed around her.
We began working for Susanne frequently. I performed at her parties as JbDubs as well. We were truly installing ourselves into NYC nightlife in a most glamorous way. We didn’t do any drugs; we’d just get hammered on Jack Daniel’s and ginger ales and perform nonsensical bits, much to the joy of the party-loving tourists.
The Dairy Queens were a theme-heavy group. We went out as nuns, jungle animals, hillbillies, the band Kiss, schoolmarms, opera singers, Instagram profiles, bathing beauties, paper dolls, hobos, the bald Powerpuff Girls, religious deities, cleaning ladies, old ladies, pregnant ladies, and skinny ladies. Once we even went out as life itself. We showed up to Susanne’s enormous party at Marquee as drag queen babies, diapers and all, and installed ourselves on three high podiums throughout the club. As the evening wore on, we changed from babies to sullen drag queen teens, to working professionals, to mothers, to old women, and finally to ghosts. We pulled white sheets with two eyeholes out of our bags and threw them over our bodies as the public cackled and took photographs. “BOO, BITCH!” we screamed over the din.
The photographer Magnus Hastings once photographed the Dairy Queens for his exhibition. When the exhibit debuted, he asked each of us to provide a quote to accompany the photo. As we stood for more photos at the opening party, I inspected the small plaque. It read:
Ühu
“Drag is like controlled schizophrenia. I don’t do drag to be one w
oman, I do drag to be every woman. The pretty, the ugly, the morbid, the fanciful, the geeky, the funny, the ALL-FEMME. I’m every woman, it’s all in meeeeeeeee.”
I thought the way he spelled my name was so strange that I’d keep it and add an umlaut for good measure. Thus, YooHoo evolved into Ühu Betch. Who knows what she’ll transform into next? She’s like a Pokémon that way.
* * *
—
As I look back on my life as a drag queen, I reflect that it has always brought joy, a certain sense of being alive. Milk went on to appear on RuPaul’s Drag Race and then RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars on national television, which would make him a target for online hate speech and bullying as well as moderate fame. Because of that, my view of drag has become slightly jaded, but the way drag feels will never change. To lip-synch and dance in an intimate club, in the company of my fellow queers who scream like no balletomane would ever dare, is a freedom I would never give up, even if it cost me my principal dancer contract. Drag stands for freedom of expression and the opportunity to shed everything you’ve been told to be since the fucking day you were born. I express myself to stay free and in turn feel free enough to express myself in a beautiful self-perpetuating cycle.
When I began performing as these characters, I didn’t care much if anyone wanted to listen; I was just happy to be shedding a bit of the repression I’d felt. JbDubs and Ühu Betch have allowed me to stay in my lane with my ballet career while maintaining the joy of having invisible lanes on either side. Think of it as a multiverse. In each version of the universe, I’m doing something vital to my emotional survival, and each universe exists at the very same time, keeping space-time happy and balanced. I am happiest when I’m able to extend my creative tentacles reaching far and away, to strange and wonderful places. I’m grateful to have JbDubs and Ühu to visit now and again, like old, reliable friends.
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