Sunday with Jinkx Monsoon: ‘There’s a few hours of physical transformation’

  • 3/30/2020
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What gets you up? Only video games. If I’m not working, I’ll just sit in bed and turn on the PlayStation 4 when my Alexa wakes me up around noon. I play the same song every day: Strange Magic by Electric Light Orchestra. Oh God, hold on a minute, Alexa heard me talking about her. How’s the hangover? A year ago, awful, but I’m eight months not drinking now, so I wake up feeling human. I’m a drag performer who has been touring the world for years, and people love to get drag queens drunk. I just reached a limit. Now I wake up pleasantly rather than with a gasp at 3pm wondering where I am and how I got there, desperate for a cheeseburger. Dragging up or dressing down? If I have a gig, my whole day is about the show. There’s all the mental preparation and a few hours of physical transformation. I’m a workaholic so I say yes to far too much. My goal for 2020 is to find a better balance. The perfect Sunday? If I’m lucky just video games. Sometimes I might head to a show at Oasis, a drag bar run by and for performers. I still live with friends by the beach in San Francisco now, but soon I’m moving back to Portland. Otherwise I’ll just pop to this market nearby for food and cook for the house, I find the zen of chopping vegetables therapeutic. A Sunday that sticks out? My mum and grandma raised me loosely Catholic. We didn’t go to church much, but one Sunday, aged nine, we all went together. They sat silently sobbing through the whole service. When I asked them why, they both said: ‘Guilt!’ Grandma for her divorce; Mum for her two kids born out of wedlock. I looked back at them and said: ‘But why feel sad when those things made you happy?’ From then on I knew Catholicism wasn’t for me. A favourite spot? The Stag in Portland. It’s the best queer, full-nude strip club in the city. Most US cities have strict nudity laws, so performers stop at their underwear, but not here. It’s like an interactive zoo of naked cis and trans men; they’ve even got monkey bars to play on. A bedtime routine? Weed and inane TV. I get into bed and put on a show I’ve seen before or at least have an approximate knowledge of, otherwise I freak out when I’m nodding off that I’m missing something. My boyfriend hates it. Every night he asks why I have to leave the TV on. I was raised white trash, I tell him, and this is how I fall asleep.

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