VueWeekly.com – Luke Foster
Edmonton’s gay scene can be such a drag.
We all know that drag queens are a gentle people. They?re always smiling, tossing ?honey?s and ?fabulous?es all over the place, cracking jokes and coming up with the wittiest of double entendres. And they?re oh so pretty, at least in that Dollywood-is-just-as-good-as-Disneyland sort of way: just as emotionally scarring as the real thing can be, but brighter, trashier and obviously more entertaining.
I?ve never had a bad experience with a drag queen. The first time I encountered a dude that looked sort of like a lady was on my very first trip to the gay bar. With my gal-pal Meghan in tow, we went to the Roost one evening, and before I could plop my terrified shaky ass down on a chair to enjoy the rye and coke I ordered in an attempt to appear masculine, I felt a large hand cupping it firmly, yet ever so gently. I turned around and saw a drag queen, just like d?em ones I?d seen before on the TV box. Dressed to the nines with her hand on my butt, she winked at me and complimented me on my overall ?cuteness.?
Now I?m sure that particular queen would have been doling out similar compliments and appropriate-only-in-a-gay-bar fondles well into the night, but at the time it felt like my burgeoning gayness had been validated.