Lettin It All Hang Out by Rupaul

Author:Rupaul [Rupaul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786881659
Publisher: Hyperion Books
Published: 1995-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

I didn't plan to upstage the others, but everyone was so well behaved. I always forget that people get nervous and can't talk on TV. I have never had that problem! Doing The American Music Show every week for years and years and years and years, I already had a TV career before I even came to New York.

And the one thing I have learned is that a camera is a camera is a camera, and they demand a certain performance. It's like feeding a lion. If you go up to the cage shaking and say, "Here's your food, Mr. Lion," the lion will bite your arm off. But if you march right up to that sucker and say, "Here's your meat, now eat it!" the lion can only obey you (kids, do not try this when you go the zoo!). It's really no different with the camera. The camera loves the people who love it.

During the taping of the Geraldo show, I said there was more to clubbing than just kids dressing up. It was a sign of people being free spirits. I said, "These bodies, this flesh and blood, they too are drag, because they are just temporary outfits for our eternal souls, Amen." At another point I yelled out, "Everybody put your hands on your TV set, because this is the most important thing you'll ever hear." It may have been the Ecstasy, but I could feel the whole nation leap up from their sofas and place their hands on top of mine on the television screen.

"Now everybody say love!" I said.

"Love!" everyone roared in the audience.

"Everybody say love!"

"Love!" roared the entire nation with one accord.

And then the kicker...

"'Cause if you can't love yourself—how in the hell you gonna love somebody else—can I get an A-men in here?"

It was fun—but it was also true.

Anyone with a heart who was watching could see that here were young people being free. Instead of seeing life in black and white—and maybe a bit of gray—they were indiscriminately using all the colors of the rainbow in their palette. That's what the club kids are all about: dressing up and having fun. That's what we're here for. In the animal kingdom that's what the male of the species does in his natural state, he struts about like a peacock. So for me to be in drag using all these colors, and for all these kids to be using glitter and what have you, that's what it's all about. The medium is the message, and no matter what moralistic, judgmental frame Geraldo tried to put the whole thing in, I think my point came across. And a lot of people in the audience, on the panel, and at home watching sat up and took notice: "Here's a live one. She's definitely got something else going on." They got to see that I was more than just a fierce drag queen. Something I knew all along!

That show was also the first time my mother saw me in full female drag.

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