In 1996 I was working on a play in New Orleans, and they needed a drag queen. I offered to play the role. That led to guest appearances at bars, which led to regular appearances at bars, which led to hosting. I eventually started working six days a week in bars before moving to N.Y.C.

I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don't believe that we're supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God's blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that's how God leads us.

Realness is something in such short supply; you can't believe anything anyone is saying when you turn on the television, and then during the commercials, they are lying to you there also. You can't believe anything, but when you go see a drag show, something real is happening on stage.

Finding animals that make light in the ocean is easy. Just drag a net through the water anywhere in the upper 3000 feet, and as many as 80-90% of the animals you catch can make light. The biomimetic lure that I developed imitates one of these - a common deep sea jellyfish called Atolla.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn't drink, they didn't smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

I remember when I started performing, I thought, 'Why is this something that we do after hours, underground?' I was waiting on the world to change and the idea of this art to become mainstream, and I think that's what 'RuPaul's Drag Race' has really accomplished in such an eloquent way.

My wife turns me onto shows. I do end up watching them. She has to drag me in there, and when she does, I enjoy it. 'Glee' was one of those things for the first year, especially - I got into that. I would sit down with a glass of wine and get into that. I even have a 'Glee' CD in my car.

I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me.

I have a lot of female fans, and I feel like in this day and age, as a drag queen who is a female impersonator, I need to show my love and respect to all those female fans out there, especially my young ones who are learning about how to love themselves and love who they are in every way.

I was like, 18 and it was in West Virginia because I was allowed to get into the clubs in West Virginia, not Pennsylvania where I was growing up. And we went in and there was a drag queen on stage and she was huge and beautiful, but she was lip syncing to a song. I was legitimately stunned.

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing.

A lot of people still have the idea that drag goes from one end of the gender spectrum to the other end of the gender spectrum, and they expect drag queens to be masculine out of drag and hyper-feminine in drag. I think that portrays a lot of binary thinking and, ultimately, a lot of misogyny.

I watched 'Drag Race Thailand' without any subtitles or voiceovers or anything; I don't speak Thai but I do speak drag, so I felt like I understood exactly what was going on, even though I couldn't speak Thai. I didn't understand anything they were saying but I knew exactly what was happening.

Listen, there's an expiration date for everything, but I mean, we're not burning out on 'Top Models,' are we? We're not burning out on making things in a 'Runway' room, are we? We're not getting enough 'Got Talent,' right? We'll never run out of talent. So, how could there be a 'Drag' burnout?

We shouldn't just consider the desire of government to do what it wants to do. We should always consider the resistance of people. The culture of Iranian people doesn't let the government drag people into deep trouble or backlash. Maybe government wants it, but the culture doesn't let it go on.

I think my favourite thing about doing conventions is the parents taking their kids to see their favourite drag idols, because open-minded, progressive parents are making such a change in the world right now. The more open-minded these kids are being raised, the more hope I have for the future.

When I'm doing an exaggerated character, I hope it's clear I don't think this is how women do, or should, act. There's aspects of Looney Tunes in drag. But there's something poignant about a man dressed as a woman, talking about gender. It can make you realize how similar the genders really are.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

If I go out in the open ocean environment, virtually anywhere in the world, and I drag a net from 3,000 feet to the surface, most of the animals - in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent of the animals that I bring up in that net - make light. This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.

I want to do something that is not just a pastiche of drag that's come before but is really authentically me. I try to tune out all the drag that's out there and tap into the drag that I was doing when I was a little kid - when I didn't even know the word 'queer' or that gay people were out there.

I grew up playing guitar and writing music, and I always wanted to be a songwriter and a singer and play the guitar. But while I was finishing college, my drag became lucrative, so I had to pursue what was going to pay the bills - and doing comedy as Trixie was something that I was able to market.

I want make sure I'm showing up for the people I'm really close to and my family, and so finding a balance is really important. But I don't want to quit drag at all. I want to be 90 years old and I want them to prop me up in the doorway and have hot dudes dance around me like Mae West. I really do!

The truth is I do take drag really seriously, and I think that there's kind of a place for that - to see it as this political and historical art form, and to want to continue pushing it in new directions. And also honor the old directions as well. So I'm sort of like a drag intellectual/drag queen.

We will have to make a decision, as we go into new environments outside of earth, whether we want to drag along with us all our pathogens. We can, or we can't - it's up to us - but I consider that part of genome engineering is how we interact with the huge part of our genome which is our microbiome.

I guess drag queens, by nature, have to do everything. When you start being a drag queen, you're grabbing the microphone, hosting the shows. Then, you're setting the microphone down and doing the number. You're spending the day before doing your wigs and sewing your costumes. You're doing everything.

Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Rihanna, all of these artists that we do love - you see so much of what we do, the personas, makeup, hair, fashion - like, all of is now incorporated in pop culture, and a lot of it has to do with drag, because we over-exaggerate everything, right? We take it out to the next level.

I agree with Ru that it'll never be mainstream, because mainstream means everybody knows it, everybody loves it, everybody accepts it. That's never gonna happen with drag, but it's definitely become more mainstreamed for people that never knew anything about it, being opened up to it as a form of art.

My biggest style inspirations come from the '90s. I'm really inspired by TLC, Janet Jackson, and designers like Jeremy Scott. I'm hugely inspired by Club Kids from New York back in the '90s. I'm inspired by the drag queen scene. Combat boots and the torn off jeans and a baggy shirt - I love that look.

My father was brought up in an orphanage in the Catskills. He was a factory worker. And because his family wasn't there for him, family was everything. We could disagree inside the house, but outside the house it was us against the world. So when I became a drag actor, he looked sideways but said okay.

The narrative of 'man the hunter' presupposes that men provided the nutrition, invented the tools, and established social organization and communication through the hunt, and that women were just sitting by the fire waiting for evolution to drag them out by the hair in the 1960s in order to participate.

We love trans women; all of us know that drag wouldn't be an art form without trans women. I know that, RuPaul knows that, everybody in the gay community knows that. Trans women have always been a part of and the face of drag. And I can guarantee trans women will always be a part of 'RuPaul's Drag Race.'

I think the reason people are propping up drag queens is because it's popular with the fans that identify with them, so we're great for marketing. We're not allowed to be the Christmas tree, we're just allowed to be the decorations, and I still think we're looked at as clowns by a majority of the society.

When I walked in on 'Drag Race' and saw Katya, I had no idea she was gonna be funny, because she was stunning. She had this perfect red lip, I remember looking into her eyes and being like, 'This is a woman!' Then she was really funny. She kind of presents normal, and it's a one-two punch with the comedy.

My ma and pa are both very artistic, so I suppose it's in my blood. But my ma's the one who was into theater and such. I owe my love of it to her. If she didn't drag me to small community workshops when I was a wee little lad or exposed me to anything artistic for that matter, I wouldn't be who I am today.

What bin Laden had hoped to achieve in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period, which was to drag the United States into a protracted guerrilla war like the one he had fought against the Soviets, never happened. Instead, that protracted guerrilla war is now playing out in Iraq, in the heart of the Middle East.

I think I was scared of the drag thing, as a lot of gay boys are. It's sort of knocked out of you in junior high. I wouldn't find guys who were very feminine attractive. Then, doing 'Hedwig,' I got to be man and woman, really butch and really femme at the same time, and I realized, this is kind of the ideal.

I'd done drag since I was 14, for special occasions, and in 2010 a friend of mine with her own burlesque group was looking for a host. During a party I was just fooling around, taking the microphone, saying stupid, funny things, and she asked me afterward if I wanted to host her burlesque show every Saturday.

Whenever two guys got together, you asked, 'What body part would you like to work?' In my case, it was the arm. Most guys wanted to feed me for that arm drag. We always believed in storytelling, so if I had the arm, the heel would get away for a moment - or heel his way away - and then I would get back to it.

I feel like I am just an entertainer. It does not matter what form I take to perform and entertain. I think I deserve being called a performer because you don't call Tyler Perry a drag queen. You don't call Will Smith a drag queen and all the other mainstream artists who use the aesthetic of drag to entertain.

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it!

I want to literally quit drag and go live in the woods somewhere and write music for my favorite female singers, like Miley Cyrus or Kacey Musgraves. I would love to be able to write music for them and hear these women I admire sing my songs. That would be like doing drag without having to get into drag myself.

For some reason, I find jogging incredibly boring, but yoga is the only thing I've been able to consistently do over the years. I think it's because it also is sort of a mental exercise and calms you and refocuses you. So I find that that's great, and sometimes someone will drag me to a spin class or on a hike.

A lot of men do have a fear of my ultra-femininity. Sometimes people say I look like a drag queen, that I look scary, but I think that's a fear of my confidence. Most women in contemporary culture pare down their femininity, so there's a slight androgyny about them, and I think men have got used to seeing that.

I think it's good for 'Drag Race' to be moving toward the mainstream. I'm grateful for the move to VH1. I'm glad that one million people watched the first episode of Season 9. Our message is one of love and acceptance and truth and strength and perseverance, and I believe it should reach everyone, near and far.

Drag is great way to get people to pay attention to me, but it's a difficult way to get people to take me seriously as a musician. So it's a weird Catch-22. It's like a gimmick that gets them to pay attention, but when they see my image, they're like, 'There's no way this is going to have any legitimacy to it.'

When people see my makeup, they think all types of crazy things that I'm doing to my skin, but it's makeup. It's the weirdest thing. They'll see contouring and think you had surgery on your nose. No. No. No. Look at 'RuPaul's Drag Race' and you'll see... you can make your nose look... what ever shape you want it.

I probably have over a hundred pairs of high-heel shoes. I collect them. Over however-many years, from, like, the mid-'80s on - yes, I'm that old - I've been in drag several times in my life, and I collect a lot of stuff, and I do have a lot of high-heel shoes that I'm sure a lot of people would be jealous about.

I came out to my parents as gay, and then I realized, you know, four or five years later, that I wasn't really happy, no relationships were working, and there was something missing in my life, and you know, I was doing drag, performing and stuff, and I realized through that arc that I was much happier doing that.

People ask me, 'Did you ever want to be a live-action Peter Parker?' Are you kidding me? These actors live in a gym and wear really uncomfortable tights for 14 hours a day. And it's not like you're doing some very fun acting. Shooting is a real drag. Then you do press for five months? I don't think I could get it.

In wrestling, when I was in high school, my coach said you should be able to hit every single move from any position. So, arm drag to double-leg, snap-down to double-leg. You should be able to hit a move from anywhere, so with my armbar, I can essentially hit it from any position because it's my favorite submission.

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