When I was 19, I went to my first drag night. Growing up in a mid-sized, middle-class English town never gave me much of an opportunity for experimenting with my gender expression. Cheltenham was straight-laced and, well, insufferably straight in every other way. Any deviation from a strict gender binary was greeted with hushed judgment and pointed stares. I jumped, then, at the chance to put on a dress, wobble around in heels I’d not yet learned to operate, and present en femme in public for the first time.
This wasn’t a drag night as we might understand them in the era of mainstream drag. This was a drag night in Stroud, the sleepy, artsy, quasi-bohemian town in Gloucestershire where I was at college finishing up a year-long arts foundation degree in 2014. I’d come out to some of my college friends as trans a month or two prior, though this felt more like a coming out in theory than in practice: I was a year or two away from any kind of transition, whether social or medical, but had reached the point at which I could no longer stand the loneliness of the painful, miserable closet. This event felt like an opportunity to be myself—or rather, to explore what being myself might feel like, something that was then new to me.
We got ready at one of my friend’s houses, them laughing and drinking, in the throes of excitement before a night out; me terrified, dressing alone upstairs, sipping cheap wine from a shaking glass, meticulously doing my makeup, hair, padding my bra and triple-checking my entire outfit.
Looking back, the night was doomed to fail from the start. It never could have contained all that I longed for and imagined, the validation and acceptance I was seeking. Most others were trying out gender experimentation for one night, playing with crossdressing and cheap thrills. For me, it was the most important night of my life thus far.
Even now, certain memories remain vivid in my mind: the gentle encouragement from my friends when they took in my wide, fearful eyes; the kindness of strangers who saw right through me; one couple whose supportive compliments bolstered my falling spirits. The night was fun enough: We got drunk, danced, and had the kind of conversations you’ll only find in smoking areas when you’re an armful of drinks deep. The mood was different—freer and more exciting—than other small-town nights in local community spaces with average music.
Still, I left feeling confused. This was supposed to be an event where I could feel safe, comfortable, and relieved from years of pretense. So why didn’t I fit in?
As a trans person, I’ve moved through life feeling like a round peg being forced through a square hole. In retrospect, that drag night was just the case of being a round peg in a triangular hole. Though it was an event where tolerance and gender variance were a given, I wasn’t—and still am not—a drag queen. A night for mostly cis people to indulge in camp and the pastiche of gender roles was not a night at which a young, frightened trans woman could feel completely welcomed, or safe.
I think about this otherness a lot. I still feel like an “other” in my relationship, in my family, in almost all of my friend circles, and in my work and professional life. I fear I talk about it too much, though, in reality, I don’t talk about it much at all. I may owe my career to my otherness. My first published piece of writing was about my experiences as a queer trans woman in an exceedingly heteronormative and cisgender industry. My brewing project, Queer Brewing, is predicated on queerness being at odds with the majority of the beer scene.
This always pervades: I complain to my patient editor of being afraid that what I write is repetitive, boring, and in some way contributes to my otherness. By pointing out my differences in order to examine the relationships in my life, I fear that I continue to paint myself—and other people like me—into a corner.
I often talk to my therapist about my irreconcilable fears of being perceived as different. On the street, glances feel like daggers, and my hackles might as well be permanently raised for how often I feel strangers’ eyes boring into me. I am afraid that, despite the fact I look absolutely nothing like the terrified 20-year-old boy I left behind, people will pick up on some trace of masculinity, on a remnant of someone I never was, yet was forced to be.
As such, I am rarely wholly comfortable in public. I am always aware of my body, my clothing, my expression, my mannerisms, and how all of that might be perceived in a passing glance—even by someone who is likely not paying any attention to me. In response to my feelings of hyper-visibility, I either shrink, commanding as little space as possible and hoping to sneak by unnoticed, or I throw up shields of confidence, gregariousness, and intensity, upping my volume, laughter, and wit. How could anyone so sure of themselves be cripplingly insecure?
In past conversations with my therapist, we discussed how much happier I might be with a quiet, simple life, one devoid of conversations about queerness and transness, one in which I could shut out the horrible treatment of trans people in the U.K., and not have to convince people that, actually, I don’t use female toilets so I can harass vulnerable women and girls. If, by some stroke of luck, I were to live stealth, I’d be much happier.
This is true, even as I trudge further away from that quiet, unopinionated existence. I see myself as obligated to work to be visible in the knowledge that visibility provides representation, which in turn may be of use to others. I don’t feel like I can retreat yet. In the meantime, in response to my discomfort, I’ve made beer spaces safer for myself by becoming visible in the things I am so insecure about. Since people in these spaces already know I’m trans, my fear that they’re staring at me because of that is lessened.
And yet, even in spaces designed to assuage those discomforts, I’m often ill at ease. At a trans Pride event some years ago, I felt out of place and ducked out. I’ve left gay bars after a single drink, and at every “women in beer” event I’ve been to, I’ve felt like the odd one out. Is it because I’m used to being the only person like me in the room, and have grown accustomed to the discomfort? Meeting other people like me still feels like a wonderful novelty, but when you put too many of us in one place, I feel boxed in.
Even though I’m out, and live as authentic—whatever that word means—a life as I could have ever dreamed possible, I imagine I’ll still always feel out of place, or uncomfortable, in most social situations. I don’t know what it’s like to see someone’s admiring or simply innocuous gaze for what it is. I don’t know if that will change.
Recently, though, I’ve found a space that feels comfortable, and easy. Perhaps it’s because of the lessened pressure of not being in a loud, busy public space, or perhaps it’s because I feel less visible and exposed within my own home—Zoom has suddenly become an oasis of recognition and community.
I know, I know—I’m surprised, too. Since the start of this pandemic, I’ve hated Zoom, like most people. Because I can see my own face turned back at me like some taunting mirror, I am constantly aware of my expression, where my limbs are, and how many chins I have. There are the uncomfortable silences, the lags meaning six people speak over each other at once, and the way I find myself shouting at the screen in excitement, or nervousness—we’ve all forgotten how to interact properly with other humans by now.
But I’ve also found a tiny corner of the internet where this doesn’t matter. I have a few queer friends I met in the real, physical world (remember that?), with whom I started a sporadic Zoom call. I thought the first one would last an hour or so, but five hours and a number of poor drink choices later, we called it a night.
For me, that call had the same effect as a real night out with new people, during which friendships are cemented over stupid jokes and stupider drinks. We’ve recently opened the Zoom call up to other LGBTQ+ people within beer, and it’s a similar feeling: At a time when I see few people other than my partner and fellow dog walkers, these Friday nights are my chance to feel validated, normal, and whole. It won’t always be the same faces tuning in, and every time won’t always be that special. But the space is there—and I hope it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
That unlikely place has made me reevaluate my perception of community, too. For some time, “community” felt abstract and monolithic. It was something I understood conceptually but had not felt: I heard people referencing the beer community, but what did that mean, beyond knowing people and having some shared interests? What even is the LGBTQ+ community, and, more importantly, how could something so far-reaching and so diverse function as a single entity?
We use the word far too liberally. To reduce millions of people to one apparently cohesive body ignores incredible differences and multitudes, and the intersections of such. I’m not part of the queer community any more than I am part of the beer community—no such single entity exists.
But the feeling behind the word is different now. It feels like comfort, love, and understanding. It’s a quickness to laughter, a common knowledge of a similar pain, and a sense of protection both given and sought. It’s rejuvenating, healing. It is not a cheap descriptor used to clunkily identify a group at odds with the default. It’s family, though chosen as opposed to inherited.
I often think about what I would say to younger me, in order to offer words of resilience or encouragement—like in those often-cheesy, always-emotional “Open Letter to Myself” exercises. Normally I run through platitudes in my head, dredging up tired cliches and useless bullshit, faltering before I stop the exercise in embarrassment. But now, if I could, I’d simply let the young, petrified, and perpetually lonely 19-year-old girl know that there are more people like her, and that at some point, she’d find a place to fit in. Even if it were in what seemed to be the most unlikely place.
