Pendleton Jimenez, Karleen

English

SJSU ScholarWorks

San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksNational Association for Chicana and ChicanoStudies Annual Conference2001: 28th Annual: Beginning a New Millennium -Tucson, AZApr 1st, 8:00 PMFrom Tomboy to Drag : Las Notas de un Rey inTorontoKarleen Pendleton JimenezYork University, kpendletonjimenez@trentu.caFollow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/naccsThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in NationalAssociation for Chicana and Chicano Studies Annual Conference by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, pleasecontact scholarworks@sjsu.edu.Karleen Pendleton Jimenez, "From Tomboy to Drag : Las Notas de un Rey in Toronto" (April 1, 2001). National Association forChicana and Chicano Studies Annual Conference. Paper 20.http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/naccs/2001/Proceedings/20Each drag king you ask will provide you very different answers as to whythey have decided to jump on stage.  As well, kings emerge from all kindsof offstage identities- there are femmes and fags, straight girls, trannyboysand butches.  I identify as a butch.  My butch identity offers me everydaycomfortable clothes, my cologne and dildos, and my lady. I have alsosought out communities of relative safety to surround my butchness.  The move from butch to my moments of drag kinging heightens myexpression of masculinity. I take the stage I think primarily because fortwo thirds of my life, I was convinced that it was a humiliating thing forme to be comfortable in men’s clothing.  The spectacle of the lights andthe cheers and the loud booming music celebrating a woman’s body or atrans body transformed into a man’s for a few minutes, is powerful, and,turns me on.  I want to look like a boy. I want to look like a woman.  I want to look like a queer, a person who appears to move between thetwo.  I enjoy watching this happen across someone’s eyes, when theyglimpse a masculine gesture fall from a feminine limb or vice versa.C H A P T E RE I G H T E E N257Karle en Pendleton JimenezFro m  To m b o y  t o  D rag :  L a s  N o t a s  d e  u n  R e y  i n  To ro n t oTo pull off a good show requires preparation:Here is a list of the things I carry1 with me when kinging:I carry breasts.  I’ve got big breasts.  Huge for the size of my body.  I once made a sex video and saw them attached to my body.  It shockedme.  I looked unreal, like a cartoon or something.  It didn’t seem fairfor someone who liked passing as a boy now and then.  I don’t wantthem to go away.  Lovers tell me they like them.  And they arereflections of the ones my mom had, same shape and nipple design.  I like having my mom’s breasts still with me.  Duct tape and my girlfriends hands are needed to push them down forthe show.  An important note: wear a sports bra underneath, nothingsmaller or lacier, or you will lose skin and silk at the end of the night.Don’t put the tape on too early, or you could lose your breath.  I startedhaving a panic attack one night, and another king told me she haspuked on occasion when putting the tape on too soon.  The effect is a hard chest no further out than my stomach.  I admire itin the mirror, the shape I could never get quite right since junior highwhen they started growing.I carry some bad memories from elementary school.  They keep me surethat I deserve this.February 14th, 1983. Rosemead, California (I was 11 years old) “I was very mad at David W. for saying that my sweatshirt was made fora boy and that I was a tomboy.”As much as my mom loved me, and as much as her lenience around myclothing choices provided me a lot of room to wear my brother’s hand-me-downs, we had our battles.  There were Sunday church wars withhigh drama screaming and crying…and laughter, my brother’s laughterat how red-faced and awkward-bodied I looked in frills.  Once a week I was convinced by force that my humiliation was necessary forcommunity events.258Later force wasn’t needed.  Laughter alone worked wonders.  I trieddesperately to look more like a girl and failed horribly at it.  To theother kids at my school, to even some of my friends this was a grandjoke - a girl who didn’t know how to be a girl.  Kids wagered bets on my gender, and voted me forward as a beauty contestant nominee.  I wanted people to stop thinking I was weird, and I wanted to kiss and makeout.  I thought that if I could look more like a girl I wouldaccomplish both.  I grew my hair out.  I bought pink pants.  It didn’tstop the laughter.  But moving to Berkeley for college, finding aChicana community, butch mentors and a beautiful girlfriend, made me not care so much any more about it.I carry good memories of coming out and establishing a Chicana butch pride for myself. Chicago.1992. August (I was 20 years old)  “Aconference of beautiful Latinas from all over the country.  The Dance.I had to prepare for the dance.  Dressing is half of it you know. It’smeditation.  Laying my slacks out, pressing the iron down to make ahard crease.  Covering each inch on a white men’s shirt as steam poursout over my fingers.  Dressing is ritual.”I carry shiny black shoes and dark black and brown checkered slacks,with a freshly ironed crease.  Under my pants I carry one black leatherharness and brown realistic rubber cock stuffed into those soft stretchykind of boxers.  The boxers need to be tight enough to hold the dildodown on my thigh under my pants.  I like packing because I catch mygirlfriend’s eyes on it.  I like it because it means that I am ready to fuckat a moment’s notice.  I like it because it feels like I’m getting awaywith something, and because the dick in my brain matches what I findpushing against my pants.  On the way to the bar, I get terrified thateverybody on the street will see it and attack me or something.  As faras I can tell nobody has noticed it yet besides me or my girlfriend.There is one danger though, I find myself drawn to playing with itwhen I’m suppose to be concentrating on other things like driving. 259I carry adrenaline.  It makes me shake and keeps me moving.  I amterrified of performing.  I’ve never been good at memorizing lyrics.  I’mnot a good enough dancer to do it on stage for people.  My theater skillsare so-so - so I start there.  Can I find a gag or a sexy thing to act out asong?  Can I find a story for people to follow, so that they’re not followingme so much?  What can I find to offer drag in return for what it offers me?People are paying money, what can I make worthwhile for a show?  I carry arrogance.  I need a little bit of arrogance too.  I carry my chinup a little too high.  It is also my oldest brother’s look and a proudChicana style gesture that I have always done unconsciously for officialphotos and for hellos to my buddies.I carry a mess of politics in and around me.  Feminist politics. DragKing acts got a lot of dick by in large.  Entertainment is derived fromdrawing attention to it, to be outrageously sexist and animal with it.On one level, by virtue of women performing this, there are definitefeminist subversive strategies.  On another, it doesn’t appear to be toodifferent from what men just do, and embodied at times in sexist butchbodies.  I wonder how much subversion is really accomplished.  I try tofind ways to subvert it further - ok here is my dick, but how many wayscan I play it and layer it with different meanings: giving it to someoneelse, changing it from body part to dildo and back again, sucking,fucking, etc.  I attempt taboos with it.  I carry a closeted fag within me, read butch who desires other butches.At the academy awards, Steve Martin mentioned the fact that mostpeople around the world believe that everyone in show business is a fag.In Toronto, one drag king was overheard noting what a lot of peoplewhisper, that he was the only “straight” man of the whole drag kingtroupe.  Coincidence, I don’t think so.  What exactly is the connectionbetween fags, femininity and masculine stage performers?  None ofthose Hollywood butch role models, Marlon Brando, James Dean,Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro are straight men.  I for one have apretty clean record of only messing around with femmes, but on stage,the first thing I think of doing is choreographing some butch on butch260play.  Maybe because it feels taboo, maybe because offstage it getscomplicated in a way that I can’t sort through, maybe because showbusiness just attracts fags…and fag audiences, after the last number Iperformed, a pretty explicit love affair between two Italian men fromthe 1930’s, I was greeted by another straight-man butch in the audienceexpressing how hard she was in her jeans.Trans politics: I can’t tell you how many people I know personally aretaking dosages of testosterone.  I can’t tell you how many workshopsI’ve attended, how many books I’ve read on the topic to figure outwhere my body and gender lie.  I have gone from playing with the ideaof changing my female body to feeling certain that I need my femalebody.  But drag shows give me the possibility to make slighttransformations for a few moments rather than for a lifetime.  I like thistype of flexibility. I carry a male name.  “What’s your name?” the MC asks only secondsbefore my first show.  Karleen.  No, I mean your male name.  Oh uh,hmm, I hadn’t thought of that.  Xavier, Xavier is what my buddies in SanDiego sometimes called me for fun.  My mom, who feared the thought ofme being like a man, had even liked it because she said I could be XavierXimenez then, both beginning with X’s. “You get it, DosEquis,” sheannounced smiling, with my buddies busting up beside us.  “Xavier,” I tell the MC. “Haviwhat?” she asks irritated.  That’s not going to work.  “El Chicano,” I say instead.  “El Chicaano?”  All right, close enough.  Renaming has become tricky business in the last couple of years.  A good half of my butch friends have renamed themselves with guy’snames and the corresponding pronoun.  Women frequently approachmy girlfriend and ask her what pronoun I go by.  They sometimes giveher a hard time for continuing to call me she.  I encounter shocked261faces when I have sat down in a room full of butches and have had theonly girl name.  I feel like my name is under attack.  It is the name mymom gave me and I think it’s beautiful and a piece of her love.  Andbesides, my girlfriend has always had a fetish for butches with girlynames.  So these MC’s asking me for something else is complicated.  I get why it’s good for the show, but I don’t want to give the queercommunity something to rename me.Latino politics in Toronto: In a country not dependent on Latino labor, but never-the-less barraged with the same racist US media depictions,Latino stage identity is strange.  Stereotypes of hot sexy Latinos reign,and Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Carlos Santanaall get frequent radio play.  But who can play a Latino?  The Torontobased Venezuelan-Canadian Rey, “El Papito,” performs regularly as partof Latino Drag Queen shows with great reception from white audiencesexpecting hot sexy Latinos.  Also, I have performed with him at a localVenezuelan restaurant to very warm responses from Latino audiences.While pulling off a masculine performance that has caused more than afew comments of awe, she identifies offstage as femme and has beentrained professionally as an actor.  He delivers highly polished, carefullychoreographed shows, well-memorized lyrics, great dancing and cockrubbing.  But last month when he performed to a crowd ofpredominantly white lesbians, expecting white lesbian performers, hewas provided with a lukewarm response.  It was unclear whether hereceived this because it was announced that she was femme offstage,not meeting a Toronto expectation of butch kings, or because theaudience felt that his Latinoness did not catch their culturalexpectations for a drag king show.  Also TTDK, or the Toronto DragKings, the only widely recognized king performances in Toronto, havenever invited him into their troupe despite his clear talent andvocalized interest.  TTDK have come to name themselves over the pastcouple years as being a highly professionalized group.  They strictlymonitor the quality of their performers and are relatively closed to theidea of including drag performances that they deem mediocre.  In otherwords, there are no karaoke nights.  If you want to perform drag for fun,262do it on your own.  While this troupe includes people of color, allperformers seem to speak English like native speakers.  And the onlyLatino performances have been carried out by the drag king “Stu” who“looks Latino” but is actually of I believe mixed Indian and Britishbackground and does not speak Spanish.  He has been warmly receivedby white lesbians.  I performed as a Latino, as part of TTDK, two years ago when they didnot think of themselves as highly.  I have performed as Julio Iglesias,Richy Valens, Marc Anthony, Manu Ciao, and as an Italian boyfriendsidekick outside of TTDK.  I don’t look Latino enough for audiences tounderstand what I’m doing, but I don’t really have a desire to portraywhite men.  Latino singers were my mom’s passion, and I want to bethem for her and for me, and well, I’m not particularly concerned aboutthe lack of white male representation.  I carry Guadalupe in gold around my neck.  I carry thick cool gel toslick my hair. I carry broken Spanish becoming smooth all of a suddenin lipsynching.  I carry my mom and her Placido, my grandma and herstories of my great grandpa who had a sweet voice and guitar that gothim an invitation to play at every party in Camargo, and of my greatgreat grandpa who always had a line of girlfriends into his eighties,who, according to my grandma, was adored for being a tiny man.March, 2000, Toronto. (I was 28 years old)  The audience clapped andsmiled at my drag king debut. My first earned money in Canada. I was"El Chicano” for five minutes and fifty clapping hands. I checked theNAFTA list for earnings as a male impersonator but couldn't find it, so Ihave to keep this event quiet.  If I was in LA, I would’ve been a fake,too mixed and pale to even pull off a Spaniard.  But in Canada, they’renot even sure what a Chicano or a Spaniard is.  Whisked away, I couldbe my earliest fantasy - the man my mom was in love with my entirechildhood - Julio Iglesias.  His was the  first concert that I ever went to.And I would’ve been embarrassed about it, except that I saw how mymom’s eyes watered when she hummed along with his suave Latino self.I watched how my mom only got these watery eyes for her Latino singers263and boyfriends.  So these were my butch role models, not my white Dad,who I never saw her show affection for.  Breasts strapped down, myfreshly dry-cleaned tux, my shiny CD, I thought of my mom out there in the audience with her heart moving to my voice and I sang wildly. Fo o t n o t e s1 The idea of the frame for this piece of the essay is based on Tim O’Brien’s The Thing’sThey Carried.  New York: Penguin.264T H EE N D

From Tomboy to Drag : Las Notas de un Rey in Toronto

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From Tomboy to Drag : Las Notas de un Rey in Toronto

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