A sock-filled bra, a swaying walk and a drag queen’s all woman for the night. Mark Gevisser reports
RAQUEL, pouty and golden, masks her jitters with a toss of her beauty-queen mane, and smiles coyly as she enters the grubby little storeroom on the far side of Club Stepping Out’s kitchen.
“What motivated you to join the competition?” inquires one of the judges.
“Elizabeth Taylor,” Raquel replies, not missing a beat. “Of course, I’m not up to her standards yet. But I am a woman. I’m still working on it.” Smile, toss, exit.
Not for nothing did Raquel, who hails from Eersterus, win the Miss Personality prize at Club Stepping Out’s Miss Gay Transvaal 1994 pageant last Saturday night in Ennerdale township south of Johannesburg. It was a good night for her; she was also crowned First Princess, second only to Kirsty from Newclare (real name: Christopher, day-job: Standard Bank clerk), a jejeune willowy creature who paraded in the swimsuit section wearing a one-piece emblazoned with the legend “Mother Earth”.
Raquel is a pro; Kirsty will be one soon, after her prize of a modelling course from Perfect Image in Braamfontein. Most of their co-contestants are not, and that renders them all the more charming. With that wonderful androgyny borne from scant resources and much imagination they apply womanhood sparingly, strategically: what more do you need than a long skirt, a knitwear-top with appliqued flowers, a straightening session at the hairdresser’s and a sock- filled bra to make you a woman for the night?
Chante (real name: Denzil, day-job: Standard Eight pupil) just puts a curl in her hair, slips a flowing red dress over her shoulders and, presto, she is Bette Davis in Jezebel, Newclare teenage style.
They came from Eldos, from Ennerdale, from Klipspruit, from Newclare, from Toekomsrus. Their costumes might have been tacky at times, incomplete at others, but once they started The Walk they were all woman, applauded into femininity by the appreciative crowd.
Antoinette had neglected to stuff her bra; Euna tottered on low-heeled pumps; Eunice flashed toothless smiles all over the place; the evil Nadia hissed that someone had sabotaged her by hiding her outfit. In the few frantic moments before she had to appear, she made one of the club’s female employees strip down. As Nadia walked the ramp the poor woman was left backstage, shivering in her underwear.
As the girls paced their way through their numbers (including a Roman toga scene replete with gladiator in shabby costume-hire), they studiously counted the beats, turning mechanically in unison; a Sun City Xtravaganza with all the self-conscious charm of a school concert. The deejay’s vinyl kept on scratching, the emcee’s mike was filled with static, and the crowd just loved every minute of it.
Despite appearances, Club Stepping Out is straight. The mid-1930s couple jazzing on the dance-floor; the gaggle of teenage girls on the side, jaws dropped in amazement; the skollies on the floor laughing embarrassedly and pretending not to look; the bottle-store owner’s wife effusing: “God, I love these moffies! Gentle — en soet! But when they need to, they can put their tits on the table and fight! “
She introduces me to her husband, the bottle-store owner: pot-bellied and wielding a home videocam as if he were the proud uncle at a family wedding. How does he feel about the moffies? “Ag, I’m used to it by now.”
His wife feels that drag-shows are “good for gay awareness here in Ennerdale. You know this place is so very conservative”. Outside, the club there are the usual drunken Saturday-night brawls; inside, a friendly ease, even in the tiny backstage dressing-room, where the girls, clustered around a mirror, air-kiss each other good luck and button each other’s more inaccessible hooks.
An evening with drag-queens makes you realise like nothing else can that everybody’s playing somebody in this world. In fact, says Raquel, “you don’t know the power there is to being a drag queen. When you know a man’s looking at you in that way and you can saunter up to him and make him lus for you and he thinks you’re a woman, the thrill!”
But what when the clothes come off? “Honey, it’s always a little bit embarrassing. I mean, who wants two things waggling at each other at the critical moment?”
Raquel’s friend and co-contestant, Gaddray, interrupts with a shreik: “Especially when your thing is bigger than his one …”
“Which it usually is,” Raquel finishes the thought, archly, plucked eyebrows raising her chosen identity to impossible levels of irony.