Insurance company employee wants to perform in
Night and day
By Dionne Searcey
Senior Editor
During the day Michael looks like any
other 22-year-old male. He has short
brown hair and wears a turtleneck, blue
jeans and black boots.
Stains of foundation makeup around
his collar are the only clues of a lifestyle
that few of his friends know about.
Michael wants to be a drag queen.
“I always thought female impersonating
was interesting when I was younger,” Mi
chael says.
Drag queens are female impersonators
— entertainers who imitate women in
dance performances, he says.
Michael won’t tell his last name be- ,
cause he doesn’t want to be harassed for
his choice to lead a gay lifestyle.
For Michael, an Omahan, drag is auite
a contrast from day life. He works full e
lime at an insurance company.
“I wear ties everyday."
But it’s not daytime. It’s night and Mi
chael and his friends have just finished
posing for pictures. He’s wearing a
platinum wig, a sheer black tank top, tight
red leather pants that lace up the sides,
panty hose underneath and nigh-heeled
1970s clogs.
Although he’s wearing women’s
clothes, Michael says his outfit tonight
isn’t drag. These are just his going-out
clothes.
Michael is picky about the distinction
between dressing in drag and in his night
attire. Drag is a totally different look —
it’s more real, he says.
When Michael dresses in drag, he
wears foam fanny pads, hip pads to give
him an hourglass figure and artificial
breasts equipped with nipples.
“I’ve gone to buy cigarettes and have
had guys say, ‘Hey, baby,’ and Stuff like
that. It’s amusing when you get reactions
like that. . . . You know that you’ve
fooled them.”
Drag queens are different from cross
dressers, too, he says.
Cross dressers “don’t look as real as the
drag queens do. They don’t look all glam
orous, you know, all put together.
“They just dress that way because — I
really don’t know why. I mean, person
ally, I don’t like it. It’s nothing I would
do."
Michael talks as he undresses in a
friend’s house. There, he changes out of
his night outfit. He throws down his
clothes next to a pile of wigs. A black bra
is pinned to the bedroom wall. Pictures of
men in women’s clothing clutter the
room.
The tools of Michael’s physical transfor
mation lie about the room, but, Michael
says, dressing in drag is much more than
a change in outward appearance.
“I’ve noticed a lot of drag queens are
different people when they get in the ma
keup and the wig and the little outfit.
“They become their drag name. They
become this female."
But Michael doesn’t wish he were a
woman.
“I like being a boy too much,” he says
as he wipes foundation from his face.
“Once I take these clothes off, I am a boy.
I have a dick."
Michael says he dresses in drag only
when he’s performing.
He’s preparing for his first public drag
queen performance May 3 in “Closet Ball,”
a show for beginners sponsored by an
Omaha bar.
“It’s to give you your start. Your first
chance to perform,” Michael says.
Michael talks about his upcoming
debut as he takes off his tank top, reveal
ing his artificial tan. He pulls a white
turtleneck over his head.
Michael says he’s anxious for his first
chance to perform. He enjoys imitating
women, he says.
“I’m friends with a lot of the drag
queens and, you know, they like it,” he
says. “They think it’s fun. I think it looks
really fun.”
Michael says that at Closet Ball he will
walk out on stage in “regular attire” —
dress pants, blazer and a lie in front of
mostly homosexual spectators. He will
leave the stage as a man.
“They’ll see my appearance as a boy,”
he says.
But the next time he comes back on
stage, the crowd will see Michael dressed
as a woman.
“I’m going to be dancing and moving
and lip-synching,” he says, taking off his
wig and revealing his own short, brown,
almost yuppie hairstyle.
It takes a lot of guts to perform as a
drag queen, he says. Michael describes
himself as anything but inhibited.
“Nothing really bothers me," Michael
says as he rubs a washcloth over his face.
“I’ll do anything. I really don’t give a shit."
But still, Michael says he’s nervous
about the performance.
“As it gets closer, I start thinking a little
Photos by Al Schaben
Clockwise from top: Michael displays
his tattoo that he says is a homosexual
symbol.
Michael, dressed as a drag queen, shows
a little attitude. Even though he wears
women’s clothing to the bars, Michael
says dressing in drag is different. Drag is
more glamorous, he says.
Michael stands on a men’s bathroom
urinal while Zach makes last minute
additions to his wardrobe in the back
ground before posing for photographs.
