Going out is always an arduous and time-consuming an endeavour. You must invest so much time and energy before you even step through the front doors of the club. As a drag queen, you must vest that much more energy in creating the illusion. This past Saturday, my friend Sabrina was having a birthday celebration at Edge Nightclubinside the Peppermill. In terms of high-end dance clubs in Reno it is probably the best. I could have gone out as a guy, but it is just so much more to go out as a girl. As Ginger, I bypass the line into Edge, get drinks bought for me all night, and attract the attention of more than one gentlemen caller throughout the night.

So there we were living it up on the dance floor when this guy sauntered up our circle of dancing ladies and began to dance with me. All of a sudden, he begins to get all up in my business and rubbing his hands all over my curvy and vivacious body. This is all fine and dandy until he starts fondeling my better half - the half that makes me a drag queen and not a for real real woman. Now I when I am doing a show, I make certain that my package is not going to pop out during a performance and my shit is stuffed, tucked, strapped, and tied down. However, a night out at Edge didn't seem to warrant such excessive precautions and therefore - for a lack of a better term - kind of let it hang semi-loose. So I am not quite sure what this guy thought when he started rubbing my junk - I have never felt up a vagina before but I am pretty sure they do not protrude from a women's body and get hard. However, he didn't seem to mind or pull away so I sort of rolled with it. Eventually, I left the dance floor and my first gentlemen caller, in order to get myself another drink - he was cute but his hair was a solid mass of gel and gave me bruises just touching it.

I had barely stepped back onto the dance floor when gentlemen caller # 2 entered, who was taller, cuter, and bald (I have a thing for bald guys). Everything was going great and then it happened. You hear stories from your girlfriends or witness such travesties yourself but you never think it is going to happen to you. I fell on the dance floor. Not a slip or a stumble but a straight up land on my ass and back kind of fall. The guy started laughing at me and I knew at the moment that I was drunken falling girl. The only problem was that I wasn't drunk, just wearing the worst possible boots to dance in and the dance floor had mixers, water, alcohol, and ice everywhere and was extremely slippery. When I recovered from my devastating fall, we continued to dance, and once again gentleman caller # 2 decided to get frisky with me and got introduced to my other half. Once again no real reaction thus begging the question; did these guys know that I was a man who transformed himself into a devastatingly beautiful woman?

I'm sorry, I know I look amazing - you wouldn't believe that power inherent in fake eyelashes and corsets - but is it really that hard to tell the difference between what is fake and what is reality. Furthermore, what does it say when all it takes is a wig, some eyelashes, and a little bit of makeup to create the illusion?

I must ask myself the question of "do they know?" every time I go out into public as Ginger. Do they know that I am a drag queen? Do they know what a drag queen is? Do they like big old queens? Unfortunately, some of these questions can have potentially terrible and unsafe answers. Transphobia and homophobia are still very much realities that we must face. Throw in alcohol, drugs, and flashing lights who knows how someone might respond when they realize that they have just been making out with a guy for the past hour. However, I am not giving these men enough credit? In a world of diversifying sexual interests and tastes, these men could have very well figured out my secret identity and not cared. At the end of the day though, my mama didn't raise no fool, and therefore and not going to willfully put myself in an unsafe situation.

At the end of the night my feet were numb, my organs had re-shifted from being in a corset for too long, and one of my fake eyelashes was holding for dear life - only held there with a little bit of glue and some hope. In other words I was a hot mess. All in a day's work as a drag queen ;) Until the next outing.