The curtain opens on six figures in white, full-length evening gowns of lace, chiffon, sequins and pearls. They stand with their backs to the audience, then face forward in unison as the audience screams approval and partisan bias.
The audience sees women, but these women are men.
This is the Miss Cosmopolitan Continental USA competition, a beauty and talent pageant for female impersonators, at the Baton Lounge, 436 N. Clark St. It is a drag show, though the phrase ”drag queen” is considered offensive when used by outsiders.
James Thompson stands on stage in his bead-drenched gown and his size 12 white satin pumps. Offstage, he is a 37-year-old hairstylist who lives on the North Side and wears Gap overalls and little eyeglasses that make him look like a bookish Paul McCartney.
On stage, he is all Joan Collins glamor and competitive drive. He has spent two months and more than $1,300 of his own money preparing for this night.
He has hired a choreographer and dancers for his performance in the talent category. He has rented rehearsal space. He has lined up sponsors who have made dresses, jewelry and a swimsuit, in exchange for the chance to be associated with a winner.
He has sewn costumes. He has gotten a friend to build a theatrical set. He has dieted away 18 pounds in two months.
He has spent nearly two hours having makeup applied. He has covered the tatoo of his name on his arm with Dermablend. He has applied duct tape to his chest to push up as much cleavage as he can muster.
The winner of this contest will get $400 and, along with the winners of 37 other preliminary pageants across the nation, will compete at the 14th annual Miss Continental USA contest Sept. 6 and 7 at the Park West in Chicago. Miss Continental will win $4,000 and fees, airfare and hotel expenses to appear at next year`s preliminary pageants.
Thompson is not wearing foam rubber hips and buttocks, six pairs of tights to hide the edges of the foam rubber and one pair of pantyhose for his health. He intends to win.
A race against time
In the dressing room downstairs, Thompson rushes to the mirror and sits down for a wig change.
”First let`s get the hair off, and get the curly hair on,” he says tensely.
Backstage, a pageant is a race against time. Contestants and their dressers, makeup artists and hairstylists rush to make repeated, elaborate costume changes in time for the next event.
The countertops are littered with empty pantyhose packages, foam rubber breasts and three-level makeup cases that look like tool kits.
The lines between the sexes blur beyond recognition. Lovely creatures with painted eyes speak, and men`s voices come out. They call each other
”girl,” ”Miss Thing” or the generically female ”Mary.” Thompson is not James now, but Jamie Rae.
His competitors are all around him, pulling on pantyhose or sitting in front of the mirrors as their stylists fog the air with hairspray.
Competitive disadvantage
Next to Thompson sits Dianna Blackwell, a contestant with spectacular Raquel Welch cheekbones, a tiny waistline and pert breasts that she nonchalantly leaves bare.
Many of this night`s contestants have breasts, acquired through female hormones or silicone implants. Unlike some other pageants, Miss Continental USA contests are open to ”transsexuals in progress” who use chemicals and surgery to alter their bodies and live as women but have not yet taken the irrevocable final step through surgery.
They bare their breasts backstage with the pride of having paid good money for them, and with the nonchalance born of growing up male. They have a woman`s upper body, but not her cultural reluctance to exhibit it.
But Thompson has no breasts; he dresses as a woman only for drag shows. He has had silicone injections in his cheeks, his upper lip and in his chest to enhance his pectoral muscles. He used to take female hormones, but stopped two months ago.
”I didn`t like it,” he says. ”Your body gets all puffy. Your breasts start to develop; it`s like you have chronic PMS.”
He is thus at something of a competitive disadvantage. Only four of the 13 winning Miss Continental USAs have accomplished the feat without chemical or surgical intervention.
But the odds are not insurmountable. ”Talent is the biggest part of the contest,” says Jim Flint, owner of the Baton and of the Continental USA pageant, which is now franchised in 37 other cities. ”Bathing suit is only a 20-point category. Talent is 60 points.”
Thompson entered his first drag contest in the late 1970s, when he was a student living in Ann Arbor, Mich. He moved to Chicago, worked as a bartender in gay bars and entered more contests.
He became a hairstylist and stopped doing drag. Two years ago, however, he and a friend began putting on drag shows to benefit AIDS organizations, raising as much as $10,000 in a night.
Friends urged him to compete again. ”I said, `I`m too old,` ” he recalls. But he entered the Miss Cosmopolitan contest last year and won first runner-up.
”I got the bug again,” he says.
He does it, he says, for the recognition and the applause.
”It`s like an art. It`s an opportunity to be onstage and perform,” he says.
”I like being in drag,” he adds. ”It`s escapism. You`re not yourself;
you can be somebody else. I`m more brazen, not as reserved as I normally am.” Now Thompson sits at the mirror, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, as his hairstylist, Jim Camp, outfits him with a long mass of black curls and a wide headband dripping with silk flowers.
”Hey, girls, you got two minutes,” calls Ginger Grant, a rotund female impersonator in a muumuu who is the emcee, from upstairs.
Tim Dedinsky, a friend who is serving as his dresser, helps Thompson wiggle into a mustard-yellow, one-piece swimsuit. ”Your tape is showing,”
says Dedinsky, yanking the suit up.
Thompson clambers up the stairs in 4-inch heels. When Grant announces
”the lovely Jamie Rae,” he walks onto the stage, where he promenades from one side to another, smiling widely and turning neatly.
Back in the dressing room, he lights another cigarette. Camp aims cool air from a blow-dryer at his face.
”You looked great,” says Dedinsky. Thompson tosses the cigarette butt on the floor.
It is time to go blond. Thompson carefully pulls on a blond wig for his talent number and casts a professional eye at his hairline.
”Mary, you can see black there,” he says to Dedinsky, pointing at his dark hair peeking out of the wig. Dedinsky painstakingly glues down stray blond hair with spirit gum.
”Break a leg,” a friend calls as Thompson ascends the stairs.
Thunderous ovation
The five contestants who have preceded him have mainly performed energetic dance numbers while lip-syncing pop music and wearing impressively revealing costumes.
But Thompson does ”Evita,” transformed into an icy blond Evita Peron, his face exuding a touching sweetness and regret as he lip-syncs, ”Don`t cry for me, Argentina,” wearing a white gown with a tulle skirt so thick it looks like a cloud.
And while other competitors have used additional dancers in their acts, Thompson has an entire cast: Four professional dancers, eight friends portraying flag-waving peasants, and another friend in the role of Che.
The performance ends with Evita standing on a balcony, hands thrust high in the air above the flags, and a thunderous ovation.
”Oh, wonderful, girl!” someone in the crowd shouts.
”My hairdresser,” a woman says proudly.
Downstairs, Thompson stands in front of a large fan to cool off.
”Didn`t she look gorgeous up there?” asks Dedinsky.
Thompson goes into the small dressing room of Monica Munro, the reigning Miss Cosmopolitan and Thompson`s makeup artist this night.
”Did you see the talent?” Thompson asks eagerly. ”What did you think?”
Munro rolls her eyes. ”Horror,” she says-an extreme compliment.
She warns Thompson against overconfidence but sends him off with another friend`s words of encouragement. ”Miss Thing, when you came out, I asked Mimi, `What do you think?` ” she says. ”And she said, `That Miss Thing, for being a stone cold dude, she looks marvelous.` ”
A decisive question
Then Thompson is shoehorned into a blue-green evening gown with gold, 50s-style designs, a gold bodice and elaborate matching gloves. He walks onstage holding the huge skirt around his face, then drops his arms.
The audience offers a considerably less enthusiastic response than it has to Mercedes Alexander, a gorgeous and astoundingly voluptuous contestant who threatened to spill out of her strapless gown; or to Victoria Le Paige, who wore a tight green sequined gown and bared her teeth and snarled.
In the last event, each contestant is asked a question of general interest to test the ability to think fast and speak well.
No one knows what the question will be. Everyone wishes he did.
The contestants wait to be called. Tension turns the dressing room silent. Thompson paces the floor, smoking. Le Paige stands and holds hands tightly with the reigning Miss Cosmopolitan Plus, winner of a pageant for large-size female impersonators.
When it is Thompson`s turn, he walks onstage and faces Amber Richards, the reigning Miss Continental USA, wearing her crown and brandishing the question.
”Sponsors and (contest) owners expect you to do your very best and give 100 percent,” Richards reads. ”What do you, Jamie, expect your sponsors and contest owners to do for you?”
”Thank you, Amber,” Thompson says, with a hint of sarcasm that draws appreciative laughs from the audience. He takes the microphone. To buy a few seconds of time, he introduces himself again, and repeats the question.
”I would expect them to give me their utmost support in whatever endeavor I choose to-”
He hesitates.
”-um. Encounter.”
There is a groan from the audience. He resumes the attempt, but after a few more moments he is again struck silent. ”Thank you very much,” he says finally, and walks offstage.
Another chance
Backstage, he paces, agitated. ”I blew it,” he says. ”I froze.” He walks downstairs to change one last time.
The curtain opens on the contestants holding hands.
”They`re all winners,” intones Grant. ”Let`s give them a round of applause.”
Thompson holds hands and his smile as the winners are announced. The second runner-up is Blackwell; the first runner-up is Alexander; the winner is Le Paige. The curtain closes on Thompson and the others as the audience cheers for the winners.
Thompson makes his way toward the exit for some fresh air. ”You were fabulous. Fabulous,” says Patrick Russo, a hairstylist and Thompson`s choreographer.
”I`m so disappointed,” says a young woman, hugging him.
”Don`t be,” says Thompson. ”There`s another one in two weeks. I`m going to be back.”
And two weeks later, he is. Having been told that he got a perfect score for talent but that his evening gown and swimsuit were judged too theatrical, he returns for the Miss Illinois Continental USA pageant, another preliminary bout for Miss Continental USA that was held at the Baton last Monday night, to try again.
This time Thompson is one of only three contestants. He performs
”Evita” again. But he has changed the costumes that the judges didn`t like. Now his swimsuit is black patent leather, and he wears it with a black jacket with lots of zippers, rhinestone glasses and a plain, long black fall. His evening gown is a simple magenta sequinned number.
And he has prepared for the final question. Like a presidential candidate being primed for a debate, he has spent three hours with some friends and a microphone as they threw him every question they could imagine.
Even so, he paces and smokes profusely as he waits to go on.
”It`s just a question,” he murmurs to himself. ”It`s nothing, it`s nothing, it`s nothing.”
He walks onstage, and he aces the question. Asked who he would be if he could be anyone in the world, he says he would not be any specific person.
”I would just be somebody who could make a change in society and do some good in the world,” he says.
And the winner is . . .
Backstage, he sips a pop as he waits for the winners to be announced. ”I want to win so bad,” he whispers.
Then he is standing on stage holding hands with the other contestants. Only this time his name is read last: He is the new Miss Illinois Continental USA and the cheers are for him and his smile is joyful and effortless.
Afterwards, the friends hugging him are careful not to muss the crown.
”Mary, I can`t believe it,” he says to one man hugging him.
He goes downstairs to change into a different evening gown to go out and celebrate. Before he leaves, he performs one last, effortless impersonation of a woman.
”My feet are killing me,” he says, kicking off his high heels.
