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I thought about that while I filled three glasses with ice and soda, and Emory said, “Maybe it’s a copout, but I don’t tell everyone I’m a drag queen. I just don’t want to field a bunch of awkward questions or explain why I do it. Riley knows because that’s how we met. About a year ago, I saw him doing makeup for another performer and asked him to do mine, because he was absolutely killing it.” I put their drinks in front of them, and Gabriel and Emory clinked their glasses together in a toast.
They both took a drink, and Emory continued, “The one person I wish I could explain it to is my dad, but he’d never understand why I do drag.” His hand brushed over his forehead and his very short hair, as if he was smoothing back locks that weren’t there, and he said, “We might as well be from different planets. Just to give you an idea, he’s a former defensive tackle who now works as a trainer for the Oakland Raiders. His whole world is about super macho men doing super macho shit. We already had nothing in common before I started doing drag, and now—honestly, I just don’t even have the energy to try to make him understand.” He sighed and shook his head.
“My mom will never understand me either,” Gabriel said, “but I decided I’m okay with that. Well, not okay, exactly.”
“But you’re resigned to it.” Gabriel nodded, and Emory turned to me and asked, “Are you close with your parents?”
“No. I haven’t seen my mom since I was sixteen, and I never met my dad. He took off before I was born.” While I was talking, I busied myself by taking a pasta salad from the refrigerator, then grabbing some sandwich rolls.
Emory asked, “Do you ever think about going to visit your mom?”
“Definitely not. In fact, I don’t even know where she’s living these days. All I ever heard from her was how she never wanted me and how worthless I was. It’s taken seven years to undo some of the damage she did to me, so never seeing her again is a form of self-care.”
I took some dishes from the cupboard, and when I turned to face Gabriel and Emory, they both looked upset. Gabriel said, “I’m so fucking sorry you had to go through that.”
“You don’t have to feel bad,” I said. “I got out, and I learned to take care of myself. I’m going to be okay.” I would have liked to say I was okay, but that wasn’t entirely true. I was still a work in progress, since pain that deep took a long time to fade.
I tried to lighten the mood after that, and the three of us chatted about some of our favorite drag performers over lunch. When we finished eating, I invited Emory to join us while I applied Gabriel’s fantasy merman makeup for the photoshoot we planned to do that afternoon. “Um, hell yes,” my friend said. “I’d love to watch you work your magic.”
All my materials were arranged on the balcony table. After Gabriel changed into a pair of gym shorts and tied his hair back, the three of us got comfortable and I went to work. Emory watched closely and asked a lot of questions as I glued several prosthetic pieces to Gabriel’s skin, adding sharpness and definition to his brow line, cheekbones, and collarbones. Delicate, translucent pieces flared out and back from the sides of his face and from his shoulders, almost but not quite like fins, because I wanted this look to be above and beyond anything I’d seen before.
The next step was to airbrush all of him from the waist-up. I used a machine to spray on a sheer, iridescent white base, then went back in and strategically added shades of blue and green to create depth and shadow. Finally, we sat knee-to-knee as I applied the details, including sensual eyes and lips, and a scale effect just around the edges of his face and shoulders.
In all, the transformation took almost three hours. The three of us chatted while I worked, and Gabriel displayed the patience of a saint by sitting still for me.
Once I was finished, Emory teased his white wig with a comb so it would look wild and unkempt, and then he helped Gabriel put it on, carefully tucking it behind the extensions on the sides of his face. I snapped a test photo and finetuned the makeup a bit, and then I handed Gabriel a mirror and asked, “What do you think?”
He held the mirror close, then at arm’s length and murmured, “Oh wow! This is just incredible. I look like I stepped out of a movie.”
Emory said, “I’m already thinking about how to do a version of this look for drag. It’d knock the audience on its ass!”
