There are people in my life who have monumentally changed the course of my direction by their presence. It so happens by strange coincidence that all of them happened to have been drag queens. Much like my dual brain operating as Hansel AND Gretel, I have been following my path by finding drag queen crumbs to my destiny (to which Im hoping is more about success rather than about pushing a witch into an oven)
Back in 2000 I had met two men in Richmond Virginia on my travels from the South to the North. I had just left my apartment in Atlanta, and on the way to my new home in Philadelphia I had lost my place. I decided to travel around the Carolina’s and Virginia that entire Summer and happened to run into these two guys in one my random travels. They happened to be living in Richmond for the Summer but were returning back to school to their home in Santa Cruz, California.
Throughout our friendship on the East Coast, they kept on telling me that I was meant for the West Coast, and kept on trying to convince me to get out to San Francisco as thats where they thought that I belonged.
Doubtful, but curious, I eventually bought a ticket for Halloween. They were going to take me to this mountain town North of San Francisco called Guerneville (otherwise known as Russian River) for this event called Russian River Massacre. And sure enough I arrived in San Jose and we drove for hours up past San Francisco and Sebastapol, through the vineyards at night and up the thin winding mountain roads of Northern California to this small, barely inhabitable town of Guerneville.
As we arrived into the main strip, music was blaring from the local resorts, while men in gothic drag giggled and drunkenly clicked and clacked their heels on the asphalt in front of our car at the street intersection. I was taken out of the car and walked with my friends along this gravel road up to a massive bonfire filled with strangers that looked like me. In the thick of them was this towering glittering glamazon in a gorgeous outfit, high heeled boots, and massive black hair laughing hysterically with the crowd and creating this infectious laughter among other people.