be,” I said. “But mine was.” I waited a beat for him to get it, but he kept watching me all blank-faced. “Betty Don’t?” Still nothing, so I said it slower, sounding out each word. “Bet he don’t?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Anyway. The queens were the real stars. They just let me play in their world for a minute, and it was fun as hell. The way the kids lit up when they saw us, and how they couldn’t take their eyes off us while we were reading to them. It was magical.”
Dean ate his sandwich with polite little bites, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin after each. “Please don’t think badly of me, but I don’t understand the point of drag queens. Are they making fun of women? Do they want to be women?”
“Shit no,” I said. “First, don’t confuse being trans with being a drag queen. They’re definitely not the same. Trans women are women, and trans men are men.”
“I thought so,” Dean said. “But, so then, explain drag.”
This was a bigger conversation than I was expecting over lunch. I figured we’d have a laugh about him getting caught howling at his reflection during the homecoming dance or us both spending that evening hiding in toilet stalls, but I hadn’t expected to be giving him a lesson on the meaning of drag. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was even the right person to be doing it. I knew some queens, and I’d dressed up once, but that didn’t make me an expert.
“You’ve never met a single drag queen?”
Dean shook his head. “They’re not the kind of people who usually vote for my mother.”
“I wonder why.”
“Forget it,” Dean said. “We don’t have to—”
“No wait.” I was fortunate that my parents were the kind of people who’d encouraged me to meet drag queens and organize a read-along with them, but Dean hadn’t grown up with my parents. If he was genuinely interested in learning, and his curiosity did seem sincere, then maybe I could give it a try.
“Look, I can’t speak for all drag queens, but I view drag as performance art. Queens create a character that’s totally separate from who they are when they’re not in drag. Some use it to live out their fantasy of wearing beautiful gowns and jewels, some use it as a way to escape the toxic masculinity that’s been forced on them all their lives, and others use it as a way to blur the lines between the masculine and feminine.
“When I was Betty Don’t, inspired by my mom and by Olivia Newton-John’s leather transformation at the end of Grease, I felt powerful in a way that I never felt as Dre Rosario. It’s the kind of experience that’s tough to explain without cinching your waist and shoving you into a pair of six-inch heels.”
Instead of laughing, Dean was watching me with the same rapt attention the kids at the library had been watching me with while I’d read to them from my favorite book, The Girl Who Drank the Moon.
“I always thought it was nothing more than a bunch of men in dresses.”
“No,” I said. “And that’s kinda the problem with being so sheltered. It’s not even enough for me to explain it to you. What you need is to meet some real queens and get to know them.” I snapped my fingers. “You should do an event with me. We can use my mom’s library, you can dress up and—”
Dean grimaced. “I doubt that would go over well.”
“Because of your mom?”
Dean froze, his shoulders tensed, and he looked away from me, focused intently on his sandwich. “She doesn’t hate gay people,” he said. “We went on Ellen.”
I considered dropping it. I’d already put Dean on the defensive, and we’d been having such a fun day that I didn’t want to ruin it. But I also heard Mel’s voice telling me to stand for something or I was just wasting everyone’s time, and anyone who knows Mel will agree that she’s damned difficult to ignore. “Going on Ellen isn’t the same as believing queer people deserve the same rights as everyone else. Didn’t your mom support amending the state constitution to keep same-sex couples from marrying?”
“Yes, but I’m not my mother.”
“Then what do you believe, Dean?”
Dean seemed to have forgotten his sandwich as he stared across the street at a bunch of empty lots overgrown with weeds. I was sure, after this, he was never gonna want to see me again.