Gender-Bending Rock&Roll

My early experiences with gender were, I suppose by conventional standards, somewhat confusing. I spent a great deal of time with my father’s younger sisters, who were in high school at the time. When they would paint their fingernails, for example, I would often demand mine be done in pink (my favorite color at the time, as I am told). Because of my family’s appreciation for the film, I was shown The Rocky Horror Picture Show at an inappropriately young age. By the time I reached the first grade, I knew the words to all the songs. I used to (and still do, actually) idolize the characters, especially Dr. Frank. There was something so cool about him; I seemed to know this fact instinctually, even before knowing what “cool” was. I remember thinking how neat it was that he did not have to be either a boy or a girl. He demonstrated that a person could be either or both or even something completely different in between. I envied that. I wanted to be that. And at the end of the film, he would always tell me, “Don’t dream it; be it.” Ultimately, I sort of did. Later in life I began playing in rock and roll bands, the most recent of which performed in drag (or a kind of half-drag). Those performances, being in public as an androgynous persona, are some of the few times that I have felt like the truest version of myself.