First-Person: Caleb McMullen Part 2

FROM GOD-CHILD TO DRAG QUEEN: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Creative Freedom | PART 2

by Caleb McMullen

To this day, I don’t know how or why my parents didn’t kick me out of the house. 

I remember one heated moment in my relationship with my father where I thought the dam would break. I had just come home from my first Pride Parade. I was seventeen, in a ‘relationship’ that consisted of fooling around behind the LCBO in Markham, for lack of a better place. Carmelo. I had met him at The Homo Hop. He was too shy to say hello himself. He sent over his friend. I thought that was endearing at the time. I had put up a photo of Carmelo and I kissing as my desktop screen on the family computer; out and proud for the world to see.

I was making tacos at the time, having just come home from the parade; like a young gay debutant who had just been introduced to the world. My father enters the kitchen and demands that the ‘obscene’ photo of Carmelo and I be removed from the family computer. I was given an ultimatum: I remove the photo or I leave. I just so happened to be dicing tomatoes at the time and I just so happened to throw them at my father, point blank. The tomato guts were still dripping down his glasses when I dashed out of the house. Apparently, at seventeen I already knew how to make an exit.

To this day, tacos are still my absolute favourite meal: go figure!

I went and spent some time with Premal in one of the many nearby parks. For Premal and I, parks were like the local clinic where he and I could both unload the stresses we had collected in our rapidly transforming lives. We chatted, I unloaded, and I returned home to find all my prep for taco making wrapped and put back into the refrigerator. So I went back to making tacos, and then I removed the kissing photo from the computer. 

To this day, tacos are still my absolute favourite meal: go figure!

But, I didn’t get kicked out. And I’m thankful for that. The church had sent me on my way, chastising me for my wicked behaviour, but my parents never did. We now have a good relationship, my parents and me. It took about nine years to get our relationship to where it is today, but we got there and we continue to grow in our understanding of each other.

In the meantime, Trinity DiMarco was gaining power; like the bodiless Voldemort in the early Harry Potter movies. But, ever so slowly she began to take form.

My favourite movie (both then and now) was The Little Mermaid. I fashioned Trinity DiMarco off of the character Vanessa. Do you remember her? She’s the beautiful version of Ursula, who she becomes to brainwash Prince Eric into marrying her and forget about poor little Ariel. What a bitch… I love her. 

Then there was university. I went to The University of Windsor for Acting and scouted the city to find where I could get my homosexual expression on. I found the one gay night club, what was then called, The Wellington. And inside The Wellington, I found Derek: the boy who I compare all my current romantic partners to.

Derek and I dated on and off for the entirety of my first year of university and into the second. What amazes me to this day is how broken of a human being I must have been to have dated him in the first place. Within the first two weeks of my knowing Derek, he revealed that he had spent time in Toronto, doing ‘poor boys’ porn… Not the glamorous, high paying porn that every actor contemplates at least once in their early career. No, this was ‘poor boy’ porn where the ‘model’ gets to live in in a shitty condo filled with cameras that watch every move they make; where the ‘models’ have scheduled on line time where they chat with random old men and try to get them to pay for a ‘private chat’ where they will then shake their wieners at a webcam, much to the old man’s delight… Yuck.

But, I didn’t care. I was ‘in love’ with good old Derek.

About three or four months into dating Derek, he introduced me to Eviva Washington: his drag alter-ego. She was terrifying, and stupid, but still Derek; just stupider and drunker and more obnoxious. And through meeting her several times, I learned more and more about how to transform; how to use make-up to create an illusion, to create an identity through a mask and be enraptured by that identity, that character, so fully.

I should explain here that there is something that happens to little gay boys who don the dress, wig and heels. Perhaps it goes along with the drinking throughout the transformative process, but at some point in the transformation: in the application of make-up, strapping on the boobs, zipping up the stiletto boots, something snaps, and all of a sudden the little gay boy sees the image and the image sees him and he becomes the most obnoxious version of himself; a version that has the potential to be either the best party monster in existence, or a complete tranny train-wreck. I experienced both. (cont'd)

And so, there I was looking like the most glamorous tranny prostitute to ever grace Windsor’s fine city. The taxi pulls up to the side of The Tap, the door opens and out steps the God-Child turned Drag-Queen, looking absolutely radiant (if I may say so myself).

I opened the door to the strip club and I stepped into of the world that enraptured my life for the following five months. All eyes were on me as I made my rounds, soaking in the attention, the confusion, the fascination of the freak show that was me. I ascended the stairs to the strippers (and now my) change room.

At the time I had not yet developed into the epitome of masculinity that I am today (totally kidding, I’m still somewhat of a girl-boy), because as I walked into the glaring light of the change-room to meet my ‘co-workers’, their expression changed from giddy to astonished. Apparently, I had been convincing enough to lead the strippers to believe that they were going to be having some sexy ‘female’ stage-sharing that night: a radical thought to be sure, but you can’t blame a straight stripper, working in a gay strip club for dreaming.

“Hello. I’m Trinity DiMarco.” I said to the strippers, one of whom was getting things ‘up and ready’ for his next show. Smiles started to creep across the strippers faces as the reality of the situation began to set in. They would be sharing their stage with a drag-queen. Fortunately, they found my addition to their playground an exciting thing, and since I was the closest person in that place that exuded any level of feminine charisma, they flocked to me. And I relished in it.

And so it began: my five months as a drag queen in a strip club in Windsor, Ontario. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Miss Trinity DiMarco.”

STAY TUNED FOR PART 3 OF ‘FROM GOD-CHILD TO DRAG QUEEN’ AS I DETAIL THE EXCITING, OUTRAGOUS AND SOMETIMES SCARY EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE AS I RULED THE THRONE AS ‘QUEEN OF THE STRIP’.

Sincerely yours,

Caleb McMullen | Artistic Producer | Mnemonic Theatre Productions

THE ULTIMATE ARTIST NETWORKING EVENT

Saturday, May 19th from 10pm-2am | @ La Perla (783 Queens Street West) | Cover $10

COME. DANCE. DRINK. CONNECT. CREATE. Have a project you're craving to produce? Come meet actors, directors, producers and casting directors at a party geared towards the connecting of people for the purposes of new artistic collaborations.

Let's make theatre happen, one drink at a time!

Drag performances (a mere distraction, or perhaps icebreaker) provided by Trinity DiMarco and John Fray.

To view the event commercial, find out more details and confirm your attendance, please visit: www.mnemonictheatre.com/events