Drag Queens Were My Fairy Godparents

Feat. Trixie Mattel and The Trixie Motel

Part Seven in the PRIDE series

I was very young when I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor. The only people I knew were my agents who were kind and took good care of me—but the nights were lonely.

I never felt safe going to straight bars where girls like me were targets for spiked drinks, but I loved to dance; so like many a Hollywood ingenue in the 1980s, I found my way to clubs like RAGE in West Hollywood. They’d have drag queen contests, celebrity look-a-like lip syncing (Dolly Parton, Cher, Madonna); it was fabulous.

That’s when I discovered The Queen Mary, a club in Studio City, a place for drag queens to perform and a place I felt safe going to. The front area was a stage surrounded by curved red booths and tables. The queens would see me hanging outside alone waiting for the show to start; and they’d let me come in, sit in a booth, and write in my journal, while the performers got ready for their cabaret performances. When I was hungry, they fed me. When I didn’t have money, they let me in anyway. When it was my birthday, they celebrated me; and I had a party there. I was the one who cheered the loudest and clapped the hardest. In the back there was a dance area—that’s a story all its own for another time—but all of it was fun! The point is that it was drag queens who watched over and protected me and made me feel safe—not a church, not a temple, not a school, but drag queens!

When I found out about The Trixie Motel, I wanted to visit, share some pictures and support this fabulous drag queen. The next time you read or see something in the news about drag queens, remember to add my story to the mix. Don’t buy into the hate or bigotry, it’s based on lies; and you are being manipulated if you do. I have faith that you are smarter than that

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Thanks for reading and supporting The Sage Words substack. For more articles related to being queer, please see my full seven-piece PRIDE collection (most are only one to three minute reads):

Part 1: What Does it Mean to Be Queer? The Q in LGBTQIA+

Part 2: What the Bible Actually Says About Homosexuality—How Scripture is Misinterpreted to Judge, Condemn and Create Division.

Part 3: Queer Animals, How Homosexuality Keeps the Straight Population Thriving.

Part 4: In the Closet and How to Come Out

Part 5: Camping with my Girl How Gender Roles are Social Constructs

Part 6: Indoctrinated to Hate: The Power of the Media to Hurt and to Heal

Part 7: Drag Queens Were My Fairy Godparents—Feat. Trixie Mattel and The Trixie Motel

Sage Justice is achingly sincere. Balancing wisdom and humor she most often writes deeply personal solution based pieces about the enduring virtues that connect us all: love and healing. She is an award-winning playwright and critically acclaimed performing artist who has appeared on stages from Madison Square Garden in New York City, to The Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. Ms. Justice is the author of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, an activist, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and an alumna Artist-In-Residence of Chateau Orquevaux, France. She is a co-founder of The Unity Project which fuses activism with art, to educate and inspire, with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness. She has a series of short reels about living with the rare genetic disorder, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that you can find in a highlight reel on her Instagram page @SageWords2027. (Photo by Gracie Justice)

Sage Justice is the author of “Sage Words FREEDOM Book One.” This series on PRIDE contains excerpts from “Sage Words LEGACY Book Seven.”

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