A man finds a home—in Bushwick—for his untethered second identity
J. Howard had kept the secret from his wife for 11 years and now he was afraid that she might finally learn the truth. It was the peak of 2009’s economic recession and he was using the fickle financial market as an excuse to sneak away from his family to spend a weekend in New York. When he left home, his paranoid streak flared up. He was convinced his wife knew exactly what he was really up to.
Throughout his ride to the city that evening, he was haunted by flashbacks of his slipup two weeks earlier, when he gave his wife unsolicited makeup advice. After seeing her eyeliner running, he had suggested that she coat her liner with a dark powder to set it in place. He thought of all the suspicions she must have had after witnessing his inexplicable knowledge about eyeliner. Perhaps she chalked up his familiarity with eye makeup to a quick magazine read in a women’s monthly while he waited at the dentist, or maybe she thought he was cheating.
Either option was fine, in his mind, so long as she did not know the truth: Howard is a drag artist who, every now and then, sneaks out to New York to express the exaggerated feminine side of his fluid gender, by dressing up in women’s clothing and performing hip-hop dance routines while lip-syncing to Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and, occasionally, Tina Turner.
Now, six years later, his wife is none the wiser and he still makes sporadic trips to Bushwick—the place his twerk-loving drag alter ego calls home.
When it comes to the drag scene, Howard is hardly alone. Within two hours of his suburban primary residence, there are eleven different places he could visit to channel his femininity, where he could find men like him. Or kind of like him. Despite having several communities to choose from, Howard can be seen as a minority within the drag community, since he identifies as a heterosexual male. In theory, it’s simple: You are who you are and you like whom you like. But in the real world, Howard has struggled with society’s expectations of his gender and sexuality as a man who enjoys drag—even within the seemingly progressive LGBTQ community.
This internal and social battle is what prevents him from telling his wife the truth, and it is also what made Bushwick the current home to his drag identity. After 17 years of marriage, after countless conversations in which he tested his wife’s views, and after battling with his guilt, Howard has come to believe that his wife would be supportive if she knew, but he does not think she could fully understand him. At the end of the day, he says, his wife would doubt his sexuality or think he wants to be a full-time woman.
Her confusion would be understandable, especially if she ever got the opportunity to see her husband in his element. Out of drag, Howard is a tall, lean man with a commanding posture and semi-athletic build. A lawyer by day, he is sharply dressed, well groomed, and has an alpha-male demeanor when he speaks and interacts with people. In drag, he’s unrecognizable. The exaggerated makeup and false eyelashes hide his masculine features and he has a penchant for bandage dresses, which he pairs with five-inch heels that surprisingly do not hinder his abilities on stage. The $800 wig that falls naturally on his face only further enhances his femininity. But the biggest difference is his bubbly, giddy persona, which emerges from within.
For a long time his plan was to gradually tell his wife the full story. “Once upon a time, I gave myself a deadline,” said Howard. “I told myself that I would wean my wife so she can learn the truth. But then Transparent happened and Caitlyn Jenner made headlines, and I realized that she would just think I’m a trans-in-progress—that five years down the line I would tell her I want gender reassignment surgery.”
“It’s funny,” he added. “The more prominent the trans scene becomes, the more difficult it becomes for me to admit the truth.”
For drag artists, the lines for gender and sexuality are often blurred. Many who partake in the drag scene are transgender and many are homosexuals. But there are those, like Howard, who do not fit in to such constructs. While most drag queens are generally gay men, not all are.
The idea that all drag artists are gay is so prevalent that it got Howard questioning his own sexuality when he was in college. He admits to having tried to date men, to see if he could bring forth any dormant feelings, but he says he would get in trouble with his dates for checking out women. When in drag, Howard finds himself consumed with the performance and feels no sexual inclination. In fact, he believes the reason he has been able to compartmentalize his drag life from his non-drag life—where he is the father of three—is because, for him, his drag world has nothing to do with sex.
The biggest shock in Howard’s journey came when he was the target of the same generalizations from the drag and LGBTQ communities as he did from those who were foreigners to them. He can rattle off the names of friends and acquaintances in the drag scene that would accuse him of being a closeted homosexual or transgender.
“The fluidity of gender and sexuality is hard for many in the LGBTQ community to grasp, let alone those outside of it,” said Howard. “I think humans inherently want to categorize things. You have to be a man or a woman and if not, then you have to identify as a transgender man or woman. That’s not even mentioning the general confusion about the differences between transgender, gay, and cross dressers.”
To say a drag queen is a cross dresser or transgender oversimplifies the complex world of gender and to understand where Howard stands, it is vital to know what makes each distinct from the other. As a drag queen, Howard dresses up as a woman but has no desire to live full-time as a woman, does not want to change his biological sex, and does not misidentify with his natural gender. These three factors separate him from a transgender individual, who feel trapped in the body of a wrong gender, according to the Intersex Society of North America. A huge part of Howard’s lifestyle is also related to performing and this element is what distinguishes him from crossdressers, who dress up as the opposite gender but do not partake in stage performances.
The misperception Howard speaks of is further muddled by pre-conceived ideas of an individual’s sex, gender, gender expression, and sexual orientation. According to GLAAD, a person’s sex is their biological classification determined by chromosomes, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, and secondary sex characteristics, while their gender is the internal gender they identify with. Gender expression, on the other hand, is how someone externally manifests their gender via pronouns, behavior, voice, and body language. Putting this information in context with Howard’s life, his sex is male, his gender is male, but he enjoys dabbling in female gender expression.
And then there is sexuality—a separate entity on its own and is determined an individuals romantic inclinations. Any individual, regardless of their gender identity or expression, can be gay, straight, or bi. In Howard’s case, he is exclusively attracted to women.
He had previously explored the drag scene in the East Village, and Howard’s introduction to Bushwick was a sheer accident. His friend was throwing a party and all the popular Manhattan venues were booked for bachelorette parties and birthdays so he opted for a venue near Williamsburg’s budding drag scene. What initially drew him in to Bushwick was the strong sense of community he noticed there. Unlike the East Village, which has become a tourist attraction for LGBTQ landmarks and icons, Bushwick had the privacy Howard wanted without the ostentatious showmanship. In fact, Bushwick is currently considered to be the hub for New York’s drag scene—it hosts the annual Bushwig drag festival, has a monthly DRAGnet competition, and is the home to private parties exclusively for members of the drag community.
Being among like-minded people is the major driving force behind Howard’s decision to call Bushwick his drag home. So much so that he overlooks the fact that Bushwick was not (and arguably is still not) the safest place for the drag scene.
“The simple fact is that so many people mix up transgender with drag,” said Howard. “Not that it matters. Regardless of whether it’s the confusion or their own prejudice, many areas are unsafe and there are so many conservatives in Bushwick. There was a time where I’d come to parties and hear stories of local kids kicked out from home for being gay or getting beaten up due to similar allegations.”
There’s not a lot of clear data available on discrimination and violence specifically against the drag community. But should the statistics available about transgender individuals be applicable to the drag population—or, at the very least, shed some insight—then the numbers are staggering. A recent study by The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program found that 72 percent of crime against LGBTQ individuals targeted transgender women, and this demographic also constituted 67 percent of LGBTQ homicide victims.
Over the past few years, the views towards the drag community in Bushwick have been evolving. While the northern Brooklyn neighborhood is not immune to violence and it still has its share of intolerant people, the local residents are relatively more understanding and open to the drag community. The reason for this shift could be evolving views or the rapidly changing demographic of the area. In either case, it was not a factor in Howard’s decision and he would still be coming to Bushwick regardless.
“I’m ecstatic with how the neighborhood is changing,” said Howard. “But I would have still been coming here even if that wasn’t the case. The drag community here gets me and I don’t have to be gay or straight or trans. Plus, home is where your family is and when I am in drag, my family are my drag friends in Bushwick. Safe or unsafe, this is my home.”
Photo: Flickr/pirhan