Acapella: Judy Squires - I'm Not A Fucking Drag Queen
Instrumental: Ciara ft. Justin Timberlake - Love Sex Magic
It's Pride Weekend here in San Francisco, so I'm feeling lots of emotions! I've been performing in gay clubs most of my adult life, often on the same bill as drag queens, who are mostly gay cisgender males dressing up as women. But I am neither gay nor cis. I put the 'B' and 'T' in LGBT, but because of that, I've often felt a bit tokenized within the gay scene, having to explain that I'm ACTUALLY NOT a drag queen -- this isn't some costume I take off at the end of the night, like all the other queens I perform with. What you see on the stage is ALSO what you get out on the streets (and in the sheets). My femme identity is NOT performative -- it's who I am.
And straight people might be surprised to find what a struggle it's been to be accepted within the gay scene. It's certainly better now, but when I first started performing in the '90s, it was definitely a THING. So when I first heard the song "I'm Not A Fucking Drag Queen," from the 1999 queer indie film "Better Than Chocolate," it resonated immediately with me. (Though I was quite disappointed to find that the actor playing the role of the transwoman character singing this lament was -- yup, you guessed it -- a cisgender male. Le sigh.)
Anyway, the soundtrack is near impossible to find, but thanks to the glories of mvsep.com, I was able to finally extract an acapella from the movie clip and turn this into a number that I could perform at my own Bootie Mashup party. We cultivate a pretty mixed crowd, but it being Pride Weekend, we did our LGBooTie Pride party at a (mostly) drag venue last night, so this mashup seemed quite apropos. Happy Pride!
