Diary of a Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen

Author:Crystal Rasmussen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473560499
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2018-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

23rd May / le 23 mai

I think about my funeral all the time. Literally all the time. My friends know now, if I’m zoned out and looking a little on the emotional side, I’m probably thinking about my own send-off.

I think of how utterly devastating it would be. I don’t want any of this let’s celebrate their life, let’s all wear yellow and have a shot in their memory shit. No, I want emotional devastation. I want ‘Change’ by the Sugababes, performed by every Sugababe ever. All seven/six(?) of them.

Today we were sat in a read-through of the next issue – which my boss oddly invited me to, even though she evidently likes me less than her husband, who she argues with over the phone on the hour every hour. He sounds like an uncompromising wanker who passes all his fragile masculinity on to her, which she then channels on to her team.

Anyway, I was in the read-through – flicking through page after page of young, white, upper-class playwrights and models and thinking about my funeral because it’s far more interesting than anything in the pages – and at that moment the art director zoomed in on me: ‘You, beauty boy, any thoughts?’

Utterly gobsmacked, and misgendered. I hadn’t been asked to speak since day one, when Gillian – who was now glaring violently my way – banned me from using my voice.

‘I think it’s really pretty. But I think, if I’m not mistaken, almost every single person in the pages is white? Is that not a little irresponsible of us?’

And, there in that boardroom, I no longer had need to plan my funeral, for every editor just buried me alive in their heads. No memorial service. Not a Sugababe in sight.

And so I cleared my desk, swiping a lovely Tom Ford lipstick in the process and a La Mer lip balm. I have been gently dismissed from an internship at Chic. I have been relieved of my moral compromise. I’m aware of the privilege in being able to pick and choose the work you will and will not do, and there at Chic I’d definitely breached various political parameters I thought were set in stone for me when I entered the all-white white office on day one. I’m lucky to have the CV points, but I’m luckier to have been let go.

Turns out your twenties is perhaps about learning that the things you wanted aren’t really ever what you thought they might be.

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