To be successful, you have to learn the art of transformation. When Kierra Darshell walks out from his daily job as a computer analyst to cook dinner or play cards with friends, he is a boy. “I love being a boy. I don’t pluck my eyebrows. My ears aren’t pierced.” But on several nights a month, he is a female impersonator with more than 18 years in the business. This is one man that knows how to be a woman.
Dressed in pink with designer pumps, jewels, and a voice that soars over the crowd, Kierra the drag queen is more glamorous than most women. “Anyone can just throw on a pair of jeans,” she says. “Being a queen requires finding the music, learning your song, finding an outfit, doing your hair, getting make-up and accessories, finding the right shoes and the right jewelry. Then taking the stage.” Kierra walks onto the stage in a long pink tightly fitted low-cut piece with wavy black hair. “I think it’s amazing that a man can transform into glitz and glamour: the epitome of a female.” she says. “I made a conscious decision not to alter my body because I felt it took away from the illusion I was trying to create.”
The crowd at Pegasus stands all around the stage, some are grasping the cage walls while others are hanging on her every word.
The drag queen scene is picking up steam here in Pittsburgh. While there are few men in the city who have been in the biz for as long as Kierra, there are more than a few young people just getting started. Kierra works with drag queens from around Pittsburgh and many from around the country. She is the beauty and the brains behind the Tri-State All-Star Pageant for drag kings and queens. The show hosts 300 people at the Holiday Inn Ballroom. “I’ve been blessed with so many milestones.” Her pageant started as a small affair at the Radisson Hotel in Pittsburgh 15 years ago, then moved into a half-ballroom at the Holiday Inn. Now the entire ballroom sells out every year to queens & kings around the country and the men and women that love to see them.
Pegasus is a bar downtown that is open to 18 and older. Kierra does a show here on the second Friday of every month for over eight years, as well as one the second Saturday of every month at the Eagle on the North Side, for over five years. She smiles “My motto is: let’s work together to keep drag alive.” She looks around her, and everywhere are gay men and women, straight fans and other performers.
She has worked with so many different people over the years and still believes in the fundamentals of entertainment. She still gets nervous before getting on stage, and says everyone can have a bad night. It’s an artform like going to a gallery or a Broadway show, people expect to be entertained. Kierra wants to be able to put a smile on their face.
“Being in drag you have to go beyond what a normal woman would do,” wearing those pumps that make most women’s mouths drop open; or wearing that daring dress in pink and eyelashes with glitter. Not even many celebrities are as flashy or glitzy as this drag queen. The few icons that do such as Diana Ross, Janet Jackson, Bette Midler or Patti LaBelle are the icons that are Kierra’s role models.
People tend to have many misconceptions about the life of a drag queen and what they are about Like any stage it only takes a push to get the curtain open and look behind the scenes. Drag queens are gay men who impersonate women. “It’s a show business,” says Kierra, “Like any other show business, the girls have to learn how to do what needs to be done.”
“My shows have a purpose” says Kierra. She uses her character to spread messages of the importance of loving yourself, believing in yourself, one show was about Walking Out on Faith, about AIDS, another about coming out. Kierra won Miss Pittsburgh in 1991 and has been organizing shows at places like Pegasus ever since. But it was a friend 18 years ago that invited her to attend an AIDS benefit as a performer at a club called Travelers that got this girl started. She got stage struck, and a star was born. As a little boy Kierra grew up with three sisters and they were all close, so she was always in tune with her feminine side. Playing dress up with them didn’t hurt either. Now it only takes this fabulous creature a half an hour to transform before a show. “I know my face and what works.” she says.
“At the end oftheday my character and myself are the same.” She walks off the stage after the show and disappears behind the stage door…
Enter Mahogany
…and another star—Mahogany—walks into the bar ready for the crowd to hear her voice and for the lights to shine on her.
“I’m transgender” and professionally she’s done drag for 11 years. Mahogany is someone everybody wants to be seen with. She is 5’11” long legs, long black hair and dark creamy skin. “I was very young and 17” she recollects, “I wanted very badly to do a show, any show.” Her eyes gloss over as she thinks back…”My first friend, Audara Belle, said you can do a show with me,” so Mahogany went to buy clothes on a “ghetto Negley” street in the city. When she got there, Audara’s “drag mama” told Mahogany she couldn’t be in the show. Mahogany recounts the words of the woman telling her to get out of the lime light. So, “it was not my first show, but my first debut as Mahogany.”
An Easter Tale
The doors open at P-Town. A shadow walks through the crowd of over 200 friends, supporters and fans are waiting to see what’s behind the curtain. No one saw Sam Badger, the gorgeous bartenderfrom P-town on Penn Avenue through the curtains.Once they did a star was hatched straight from heaven.
Since 10:30pm Sam was getting make-up done by his friends Sharon Needles and Veruca La Pirahna. Not till he walked behind the curtain were accessories and the final pieces draped over him by Jimmy his stage mom. At 7:30pm he showered, started getting ready and forgot something: “I forgot to shave my arm pits!” he admits. So he started showering again and got the basics ready.
“Don’t forget, this is a bible carrying Easter Extravaganza with an Easter Bonnet Contest” he smiles. “I’m just a boy in a dress.”
This is where the story begins…
Picture this, a young Elizabeth Taylor kneeling atthe altar after hanging from a golden cross. Does she take communion? “Yah I did” he laughs, “And then I spit out.” It all started with a drink from the cross and the dress. Picture black tule on her ass 40 yards in purple and a tight fitted tulip skirt, you know like a mini skirt that snakes down the legs but stops short of the knees. A drink from the cross and Marsha Mellow, Eda Bagel, Kierra Darshell as inspirations of his.
This year he is running for Miss Pegasus, “I’m not in it to win, but I want people to remember what I did. I was nervous but once the music started I just went with it.” He had to make sure the “boobs were right.” And he looked better as a woman than as a man,” said Cowboy Paul. So Sam Badger, we all want to know…what’s next? “For everybody to gain more respect in the community. I inched my way in.” he explains. Since talking with PrideMag, Sam Badger’s drag alter-ego was named Bunny Bixler and crowned Miss Pegasus on April 24th.
