Gilroy – Jaklyn Aguilar tugs impatiently on her silver
stilettos, elbowing an office chair piled with wigs. Beside her,
leaning over a stack of files, Violeta Mundos stripes her cheeks
violently with rouge, then fans her eyeliner dry.
Gilroy – Jaklyn Aguilar tugs impatiently on her silver stilettos, elbowing an office chair piled with wigs. Beside her, leaning over a stack of files, Violeta Mundos stripes her cheeks violently with rouge, then fans her eyeliner dry. With seconds to spare, the drag queens primp backstage at the Rio Nilo bar in downtown Gilroy, tucking what needs tucking, plumping what needs plumping in a pint-sized office that doubles as a dressing room. Outside, an announcer booms, “Marisela’s Travesti Show!”
Travesti: the Spanish word for transvestite, cross-dresser or drag queen. As if called to attention, the dancers line up, poised under towering black feathered headdresses. Just before she walks out the door, Violeta exclaims “Mijo!” and stuffs a foam breast under her sequins, barely in time. Under a mirrorball and neon music-notes, speakers amplify the opening strains of “Besame Mucho,” and the queens step onstage, every eye locked onto their glittering torsos and mile-long legs.
“When you walk out the door, you have to be prepared for a lot of things,” said Marisela Monet, whose professional drag show regales the mostly-Mexican bar on Sunday nights. Drunks sometimes leer, or try to stuff tips into her cleavage. Fortunately, she said, they’re the exception, not the rule. “If you do it professionally, you have to do it right.”
Marisela doesn’t work for tips. She doesn’t even need a day job. Bars pay up to $3,000 a night for her shows, affording her a cozy San Jose home where her performers rehearse, lip-synching to Gloria Trevi, Rocio Durcal and Thalîa. By day, she shops for new costumes, at $300 to $1,000 a pop, and dozens of new wigs, chasing the latest styles of the Latin stars she emulates. Marisela’s performers do spot-on imitations of the celebrities her fans crave; she herself takes her stage name from a Mexican-American singer whose 11 albums have climbed the Spanish-language charts.
Drag is serious business. But when Violeta emcees the show en Español, laughter rolls over the salt-encrusted lips of margaritas, white and black cowboy hats bobbing in the Gilroy crowd. When she burps, she doesn’t miss a beat: “I’m sorry, but better it comes from my mouth than my behind, right?” Nobody bothers to heckle. They don’t stand a chance. At some shows, Violeta even performs a comic number in zebra-print pants, playing a stereotypical gay man. She sings, “Maricon tu, maricon yo” – Faggot you, faggot me – beating the homophobes to their own jokes.
Not all drag performers are gay men, cautions Marisela. Some aren’t gay, and some aren’t men, though their birth certificates might say otherwise. Romy, who cleans homes by day and lip-synchs by night, has been living full-time as a woman for years. Dressed like a Russian ice-dancer, with slender arms and pouting lips, she regularly inspires come-ons from her audiences, both gay and straight. Onstage, she is adored; offstage, she hasn’t always been.
“I lived apart from my family,” she says quietly backstage, between songs, “but now, they accept me. I’m over 40. It’s time for them to respect my decisions.”
Marisela herself hid her drag performance from her family for years, sneaking off in lipstick and heels at night after long days waiting tables in San Jose. A televised interview at a drag show blew her cover, but her family wasn’t angry: They said she looked pretty. Painted and plucked, Marisela’s performers beguile the crowds with natural and purchased wiles – not unlike the stars they mimic.
“Almost everyone has had something done,” Marisela said matter-of-factly, patting her own silicon-enhanced hips. “It’s a much faster way to have a nice body.” Fast but not cheap, at $1,000 a silicon session, or $25 per hormone shot. Marisela has considered breast implants, but that could mean crossing the blurred line between male and female for good. Today, she still spends her days dressed as a man, under her birth name, Juan.
Male, female, or just fabulous – it doesn’t make a difference to the crowds who flock to Rio Nilo’s Sunday night show, dozens filling the tables that circle the dance floor. For more than a decade, the Gilroy bar has hosted Spanish-speaking drag queens; Marisela’s troupe is only the latest to grace the stage. As curvy Jaklyn lip-syncs to Shakira, her hips oscillating in the spotlight, couples kiss. Waitresses pluck emptied glasses from the tables. Here, Marisela’s sparkling show is both ordinary and extraordinary.
“What do I like about the show?” Over booming music, Jose Calderon strains to answer. For five years, Calderon has driven north from Salinas to catch the Sunday shows. He considers the question, then grins. “Todo!” Everything.
