How You Get Famous

A "funny, poignant, dishy, and even enlightening" adventure through a tight-knit world of drag performers making art, mayhem, and dreaming of making it big, this book is "the story of America now" (Alexander Chee, The New York Times).

Autorentext
Nicole Pasulka writes about gender, activism, and criminal justice for publications such as New York magazine, Harper's Magazine, Mother Jones, VICE, and The Believer. The recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships, her writing has been anthologized in the Best American series and featured on NPR's All Things Considered. How You Get Famous is her first book.

Klappentext

A “funny, poignant, dishy, and even enlightening” adventure through a tight-knit world of drag performers making art, mayhem, and dreaming of making it big, this book is “the story of America now” (Alexander Chee, The New York Times).
 

Zusammenfassung
A funny, poignant, dishy, and even enlightening adventure through a tight-knit world of drag performers making art, mayhem, and dreaming of making it big, this book is the story of America now (Alexander Chee, The New York Times).

Leseprobe
Chapter One: Welcome to New York City

CHAPTER ONE Welcome to New York City

“Don’t you fall,” Aja warned, rushing Esai Andino toward the J train, their high heels scraping along the pavement. Putting Esai in the shoes had been a risk. Even in sneakers, the fourteen-year-old boy tripped—over curbs, steps, nothing at all—pretty much every day. The fat cans of Four Loko they’d polished off while getting ready in Aja’s room hadn’t helped Esai’s composure. As soon as their makeup was dry, seventeen-year-old Aja had rushed Esai out the door and into the cold night: two Brooklyn teenagers in search of attention, cash, and adventure in the big city.

Then the pair turned a corner and, sure enough, Esai’s ankle rolled. He screeched and keeled over. Fall 2011 had been mild, but in the evening chill his breath was visible in small puffs. Esai leaned on Aja as they hobbled into the station and up the stairs.

It was their first night out in Manhattan as drag queens. Their first night trying the thing they’d been talking about for months. Earlier that day, Aja had earned fifteen dollars reading a woman’s tarot cards and used the money to buy Esai a pair of gold sparkly heels. Esai paced on the train platform, shivering and limping slightly. He had on black tights and a star-print skirt over a polka-dot bathing suit. Aja, who had been raised as a boy but prefers the pronouns “she” or “they,” was wearing a floral shirt she’d made for a class project at the High School of Fashion Industries.

They arrived at Bar-Tini on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen early, to avoid getting carded. A drag queen named Holly Dae, who’d recently changed her name from Holly Caust, was hosting a competition for newcomers called Beat That Face! In the drag world, “beat” could be a noun or a verb meaning a face of makeup or the act of applying makeup. Esai had chosen a drag name: Naya Kimora, because he loved Kimora Lee Simmons, the fashion designer and former wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. Aja’s name came from the chorus of a catchy Bollywood song. The other queens there had on long dresses and shiny, blond, expensive-looking wigs. Aja and Esai should have felt out of place—conspicuously underage and unpolished—but alcohol had steadied their nerves.

The bar filled up. When it was Esai’s turn to perform, he collected himself at the center of the stage and waited for the DJ to cue his music. The drums began, and Esai started swinging his hips, turning slowly in a circle.

Esai lip-synched as JLo sang, “Let all the heat pour doooown.”

The shoes chewed into Esai’s feet. The beat hit. He ignored the throbbing in his ankle, kicked his leg in front of him, pivoted, and began to twerk. People in the room tittered and politely cheered.

“Dance for your man,” JLo commanded. “Put your hands up in the air-air-air—whoa oh-oh-oh,” she sang. It was a good thing the words were simple, because he had not practiced. Esai left the stage panting and joined Aja, who had performed “Judas” by Lady Gaga, a song about toxic love, with dark synths and a wailing chorus.

Brave and foolish, these two New York City children had done something many older, wiser, and more experienced queers would never dare attempt. They’d gotten into drag, walked into a bar, and jumped onstage, without hesitation and with very little concern for the consequences. They were new, and they were rough around the edges, but even in this utterly amateur moment they had the priceless combination of guts and hunger that helped seemingly small people do big, scary things. Kicking and twirling while lip-synching in front of an audience felt like flying.

Aja lived with her mom on Hopkins and Throop in Brooklyn, where hipster Williamsburg met working-class Bushwick. She was adopted and her father had moved out when she was young. “I was wild,” she would later say about her childhood. At seven, she ran away from the babysitter, and when the police found her on the playground, Aja lied and told the cops her mother had left her there. Later, when Aja locked the door to her bedroom, her mom kicked it in. As a teenager, she dyed the family pug, Gizmo, blue with a spray bottle full of Kool-Aid and once threw an ice cube into a deep fryer in a manic desire to see what would happen. What happened was third-degree burns on her face that healed into bumpy pink scars.

People were always coming for Aja over her scars, her asthmatic wheezing, her swishy walk. Even old ladies on the street would offer unsolicited recommendations for clearer skin. “It’s not acne,” Aja would try to explain, and then sigh, “Oh, never mind.” But Aja could give as good as she got. Bigger boys threw punches and skateboards, Aja threw them back.

Aja was a pariah but talented. By twelve she was hanging out on the East River piers, where queer kids from across the borough gathered to listen to music, trade insults, and dance. Aja was a natural, quickly learning to vogue, kick, and duck-walk as the other kids cheered her on. When Aja wasn’t running the streets, she’d stay up all night perfecting sketches of Pokémon and Mortal Kombat characters. She could read a bitch to tears.

Aja met Esai, whose family occupied a crowded one-bedroom apartment a few blocks away, about a year before that first night out in drag. All the gay boys from the neighborhood crossed paths eventually. At the time, Esai was dating Timothy, a kid Aja knew from Fashion Industries. It wasn’t really Aja’s business, but she liked Esai and she couldn’t stand the thought of him going out with someone with a boxy face, bad skin, and terrible breath. When Timothy heard Aja had been talking shit and threatened to fight her, Aja’s response was a cool “Bitch, you’re nothing more than gum on the street to me.” Aja was not faking. Anyone who’d spent sixteen years disobeying a no-bullshit, always-yelling Puerto Rican mother wouldn’t be scared of much either.

After a few months, Aja’s dogged campaign against Timothy paid off. Esai showed up at Aja’s house to talk about his “boy troubles” (some kid had sent Esai a Facebook message saying he’d been sleeping with Timothy, too) and they bonded over their disgust for Esai’s—now ex—boyfriend. Aja felt protective of Esai. No one seemed to be looking out for him. Some of his close family members were…