I remember reading Drag Queen sometime in the early 00s, freshly out of the closet; it was a cute little satire that vaguely resembled real life at the time. Re-reading it as a queer adult, one who is now comfortable in who and what he is, I found this both a refreshing reminder of the fun of my early gay days and a more sobering reminder of the inherent danger we all felt back then. Not that there isn't some level of inherent danger today, especially given the current political climate in the country, but I do like to think we've come some way since Drag Queen was originally published, and I generally don't think twice about holding my boyfriend's hand out in public.

Drag Queen is a comedy of errors as Mitchell Sayer, an attorney at an established law firm, discovers he has a long lost twin brother. However, Donald is everything that Mitchell is not: he's flamboyant, in-your-face, and a drag queen. As each brother tries to reconcile their feelings about the other, circumstances bring them to an unexpected finale that challenges each brother's very core and brings them ever closer together.

Rodi captures each brother's personalities perfectly; Mitchell is so scared of being too gay, Donald is terrified of being normal. These may be read more as stereotypes now, but there is some definite truth in what each brother is feeling - and this is where Rodi shines as a writer. He gives an honest voice to the fears that many gay men, then and now, feel about who and what they are, and while he covers everything in the laughable shine of satire so that it doesn't seem so terribly bad, these are truths we have all at one time or another faced or are currently facing now. The fear of being found out, the fear of being harassed both physically and emotionally; these are all things that have been at the root of so many men not coming to terms with who they are or letting their friends or family get too close.

After I re-read Drag Queen, I discovered that Rodi wrote several novels chronicling the trials and tribulations of being gay in the 90s and I'm going to go back and start at the beginning of these stories and read my way thru them, both for a chuckle but also as a reminder of how far we've come and how far we still have to go. ( )

There’s an old writing rule attributed to Chekhov: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don’t put it there.”

This concept deals with foreshadowing, and the fact that all details, however small, are significant and should be integral parts of the story. Well in Robert Rodi’s “Drag Queen”, the gun (in this case Blossom Dearie) isn’t fired until twenty pages before the end. (If you don’t know who Blossom is, honey, google it.)

As I read, I envisaged a few ways ‘the gun” might be fired, but didn’t predict the way it was in the end. That unpredictability, for me, is always a plus.

Written in 1995, “Drag Queen” explores the world of chicks with dicks, in the purest sense of the phrase.

Underneath the humor, the book explores a few serious themes, and has some classic quotes:

“Elizabeth the First, She’s been my real obsession. Probably the first great drag-queen role model in history.”

This dialogue came after a long section where the concept that men have had heroes to model themselves on ever since the time of Homer, while it's been different for women:

“I was determined to find a forgotten iconic tradition for women, and hon, it was just not there....The few women who did achieve any real influence or power over the years had to invent themselves from scratch.”

The words were spoken by Kitten Kaboodle who just happens to be the long lost identical twin brother of Mitchell Sayer an uptight, anal retentive lawyer who specialises in real estate cases.

As you can imagine, the sparks fly. From the time poor Mitchell tracks down Donald and discovers to his horror he is a drag queen, he ends up in all sorts of dire predicaments, including sucking a few cocks in a leathermen orgy, something he’d never have dreamed of doing beforehand, and tries desperately to forget afterwards.* Not that that was Kitten’s fault, more Simon an ex-boyfriend who is heavily into the scene. No Kitten was too busy chasing after one of Mitchell's college pals or trying to avoid being upstaged by another drag queen who, God forbid, mimed her songs.

I really enjoyed the story. Campy, irreverent, sarcastic and over the top, just like the people it’s talking about. Underneath there is a worthwhile message. Mitchell's adoptive mother sums it up best:

"Maybe he's someone desperately trying to find a corner of the world where he can fit...Someone who shows more courage every time he walks down a street than you or I have ever had to show in our lives.

Especially as Donald says about himself:

"I'm just this ordinary nothing of a man. Someone you'd never look at twice if you saw him on the street. A big gray absence of a person."

*And Kate, I read this after I sent you my synopsis of "Joe Blow"!!! ( )

What would you do if you discovered a) your mother decides, after burying her third husband, to enter a Buddhist nunnery, b) but she's not your real mother after all since you're adopted and c) you had an identical twin, you successful Guppie mainstreamer you? You're barely out to yourself, still less the world, even though you've told people you're gay...you act like the OCD-ridden killjoy you are! And your twin? A macho jock, a father-of-five Ozzie clone, a fellow Guppie?

A drag queen.

Horrors!

And that's just the first thirty pages. The book follows the formula: Hero screws up his life, makes everyone around him wretched, finds the right man and drives him away, finds redemption by embracing all he rejected before, and all beds are filled with the right parties of the second part. But that isn't a bad thing, because the outcome might not be in doubt but the scenery gettin' there's mighty nice. Just like a really good date. ( )