WHEN I FOUND MY TRUE TRIBE, WHAT WE HAD IN COMMON WAS THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. WE WERE BOHEMIANS WHO RECOGNIZED THAT THE EMPEROR WASN’T WEARING ANY CLOTHES. OUR CREED WAS ‘DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE SUPERFICIAL, GET TO THE REALNESS.’
RuPaul is the world’s most famous drag queen, with a reality competition queendom beloved by millions of viewers internationally. But his first and most important audience, as he reminds himself during his dressing-room rituals, was a party of one.
“My mother loved it every time I performed for her,” RuPaul writes in his new memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, which recounted how his first stage was in his childhood living room with impersonations of Tina Turner and Carol Burnett. “When I go onstage now, I remind myself, like a little mantra before the cameras roll or the curtain lifts: It’s just Mama’s living room.”
Mantras are part of the gospel of RuPaul, pearls of wisdom mopped from others as well as his own lived experience. They hold up a middle finger (“If they ain’t paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind”); provide perspective (“Don’t take life too seriously”); and sometimes, they near divine revelation (“We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag”). He calls them “the universe’s stage directions” that helped him stay alive, a guide he passes on in his own memoir.
“I’ve always loved biographies and memoirs,” RuPaul says. “Even at 10 years old I didn’t read young adult [books], I went to memoirs and biographies because I wanted a road map about Katharine Hepburn; I was so moved by how courageous she was. I thought if I lived long enough to give interesting and useful advice to young people looking for that kind of direction, I would do it.”
