My First Lady of Drag: Mabel West

Oh. My. God. I'm my mother.

When I was in Jr. High I made a friend that my Mom wasn't happy about... His name was Jeremy West and he was a "trouble kid". We met in special ed class and were instantly bonded simply because neither of us had ever had a real friend of our own before.

There were many adventures that the two of us shared much to my parents dismay, but there was one that will always be front and center in my mind because I was 11 and it was my first time in drag. 

After the infamous "police escort home" from Jeremy's house, my mom was hesitant to let me continue hanging out with Jeremy. She was torn because while Jeremy had a reputation at the school, told to her by teachers whom she actively disliked, she personally never witnessed him doing anything wrong. And she understood that his single mother was doing the best she could and that softened my mom's opinion of him. 

She also knew that I had no friends other than my brother. Special ed kids had to move with the program every year, and there were different kids in the class each year, so it wasn't easy to keep in touch and make friends. Josh never had any problems making friends. He went to the same school most years while I moved around. So he developed friends from school and he had made friends with a couple kids in our town that he would go hang out with every now and again without me. 

Mom was torn between keeping me away from bad influences and letting me have my first friend. So, she relented and let me keep hanging out with Jeremy. She met his mom and knew where he lived and with those things being established, the day eventually came that we asked our parents for a sleepover. 

It was near the end of summer break before 8th grade. For the first time that I could remember I was going to be starting the school year at the same school from the year prior. And I had at least one friend going into it. That was another factor that convinced my mom to let me go.

The weekend came and Saturday morning I packed up my overnight bag with all the essentials that an 11 year old considers valuable, which somehow included my favorite dress of my mom's and the Prince Valiant wig she had bought me for Halloween the year prior that I had never worn. Every year I would inevitably dress up as Dracula since mom had a really cool cape. 

While the wig and dress were easy to ball up and stuff in my bag, the cape was bigger and mom saw me packing it and said no. She didn't know about the dress or she would have objected to that as well. Now mind you, I was a special kid. I had been playing dress up in mom's clothes in secret a couple of years by this point. One time, she surprised me by coming home early and finding me parading around in her hippy dress (my favorite because it was pretty and had volume and flowed well when I spun around in it.)

Unlike most parents, mine were actual hippies who met in a band. Hippies who operated under the code of live and let live and if it's causing no harm, let it be. So when she walked in on me twirling non-stop in her dress, I gasped and froze. She looked me up and down, sighed and said "that had better get back on the hanger when you're done. If I find it at the bottom of the closet all bunched up, THEN, you will be in trouble." Then she put her stuff down and went and started making dinner. 

Since I had "permission" to wear that dress I didn't think mom would care that I took it with me, but still, I didn't tell her. So away we went to Jeremy's house. We hung out and played with toys and watched tv and at night we played a little bit of ding dong ditch, though we had to be careful who's house we hit because the neighbors knew Jeremy too and they would walk right over and knock back if they suspected us. Honestly, it was just fun to play outside in the dark using nothing but our imagination. Ahh, the good old days. 

The next morning Jeremy's mom went to church and we were home alone and I pulled out the dress and wig to show Jeremy. He laughed and suggested we try to fool people into thinking I'm a real girl. so I put them on and we raided his mom's make up and turned me into Mable West, his cousin. 

I had been really into pirates that summer because mom and I had a tradition of watching movie musicals and that summer I saw both "Pirates of Penzance" and "The Pirate Movie" and oh my god I wanted nothing more than to be as cool and pretty as Kristy McNichols, and have the boy from "The Blue Lagoon" moon over me, he's just so dreamy!!

Thus, Mable West was born. Mable because that was Kristy's name in the movie and West because I was pretending to be Jeremy's cousin. Today I wouldn't say I was a pretty girl, but I was a pre-pubescent boy with a slight lisp, so at the time I thought I was a pretty convincing girl. Though I may have overdone it with the blue eyeshadow. WHAT, I thought that's what women wore!! I was fashionable enough to wear a light pink lip though, so I thought I looked gorgeous and convincing. 

Once we were all dressed up and ready, we went outside and walked around to see if anyone noticed or said anything. We walked around for a little bit and realized that since he lived in the middle of nowhere in a tiny mountain town there wasn't really anyone who was seeing us. So Jeremy came up with a better idea. 

There was a kid that lived just up the street that Jeremy knew that went to our school. I didn't know this kid from Adam, so Jeremy thought that would be a great person to trick. We would convince this kid that I was a girl and was visiting my cousin and our secret goal was to get him to kiss me. So we could laugh at the fact that we made him kiss a boy. Remember I was 11. Ooooooooh kissing boys...ooooooh. 

We walked up to this kids house and Jeremy told me to wait at the gate while he went up to the door and asked if the kid could come out and play. They came out and met me at the gate and Jeremy introduced me as his cousin. I said hi and curtseyed. 

This kid looked at me, then back at Jeremy, then back and forth between us a few times. Then he said the words that destroyed the game.

"Why do you look like that weird kid from the Special Ed classes?"

I feigned ignorance and said "Who?"

"That kid that was trying to buy friends with candy last year. What was his name, Shane, I think?"

"I wouldn't know I don't go to your school" I said desperately. 

He looked back and forth at us for a few more minutes then eventually said "I'm going back inside to watch tv." And he turned and did just that. 

Jeremy and I walked back to his house, me in shock, Jeremy barely holding in giggles. We agreed that when school started that we would pretend that this never happened and hope that that kid didn't tell everyone that I was dressed up in girls clothes. If he did, Jeremy promised that he would die telling everyone that it really was his cousin Mable. And true to his word, no one ever mentioned it and I never got teased for it. 

I didn't do drag publicly again until High School, when in Choir class me and two girl friends got assigned to do a song from the King and I, and I dressed up in a big ball gown and sang "Getting to know you" as a kitschy camp song.

Then not again until after the Navy when I moved to SF and joined the Queer Chorus of SF and my friend Andrew (Coby) convinced me to do "You're timeless to me" from Hairspray with him and then later I stunned as the titular "Big Boned Gal" by kd lang at Grace Cathedral of all places. 

You're Timeless to Me

Big Boned Gal

Since then I have dabbled in drag a few more times, though it has almost exclusively been for shows that I was doing. Either with the chorus or with local theatre groups. 

For your amused example, here are a few more:

I did drag in Yoga for a 48Film festival film

I did a play called "Snip" where I played a former marine drill sergeant post op trans woman lawyer

Then after I moved to LA I was in a production of Wayne Self's "Upstairs" musical where I played Marcy Goodman local drag legend of New Orleans

And of course, last Halloween I dressed as my all time favorite Disney villain, the incomparable Ursula!

After all this time and all these experiences in drag I can say it is something that is truly a joyous, ridiculous expression, and that yes, I've come up with a much better drag name in my adulthood than Mable West. Today, if I dress in drag, my name is:

 

My first police ride

I was a special kid.

No, seriously, I was a special ed kid. I was put in the special education classes from the first grade onward. I was emotional and wacky and noisy and all the things that make adults say "well, isn't he... special."

Because of this I moved schools a lot. Like, every year a lot. So it was really hard for me to make and keep any friends because we wouldn't be at the same school from year to year, sometimes even semester to semester. So I was left to my own imagination often and I had a talent for running wild. 

Being that my brother was the only consistent kid my age that I hung out with it was really hard for me to make friends. I was too much for many, too weird for others, too gay for the cool kids and way to much to handle for the teachers. The only other consistent friend I had in childhood was Joey, my moms' best friends kid and while the three of us hung out often it was nowhere near enough for a kid with an overactive imagination. 

Also, being in the special ed classes kept me pretty segregated from the regular kids in school. They all knew who the special ed kids were, and they treated us all as kids do. With cruelty. When Josh and I reached Junior High it was the first time we were ever in the same school at the same time and to say that made things harder at home with my only friend would be a major understatement. 

At that point, though he was a year ahead of me, Josh failed and had to repeat 7th grade. Which put us in the same grade, at the same school. This was the first time he got to see up close how the "special ed" kids were treated. That just made things worse. Josh was already having issues at school and was struggling to keep his head afloat, seeing me get bullied every day only made things worse for him.

I didn't make it easier by trying way too hard. I really wanted to be liked, and normal. I remember stealing money from my parents several times that first year of junior high so that I could go to the general store near the bus stop before school and buy a bunch of candy that I could give out at school to bride people to be my friend. Obviously that didn't work as intended as kids would come up to me all nice and ask for a piece of candy and when I would give it to them they would call me fag, or retard or other fun childhood nicknames. 

This was the way of things during that year and a half that I went to Evergreen Jr. High. 

I only ever made one friend that I remember during those rough years. And boy did that make my mom mad. Not that I made a friend, but the friend that I made. His name was Jeremy West and he was in the special ed classes with me. This was back in the days when if you weren't 100% normal, you probably belonged in special ed. I had an imagination and was gay, therefore emotionally challenged. Jeremy was the first kid I met that had a reputation so he was there too. 

He was a troublemaker, an agitator, a wild card and I was taken in immediately. I had a wild imagination and he had a wild sense of adventure and was down for anything. We spent every lunch together and hung out together waiting for the busses after school. 

One afternoon he and I had gotten out of class a little early and for some reason I don't think Josh was in school that day. I think that because I had no qualms missing my school bus with Jeremy and walking the three or so miles to his house in Evergreen. I don't remember where exactly it was, but I remember it took us about an hour to walk there from school. 

My mom and dad worked during the day in Denver, around a 45 min drive from home and they wouldn't be home until after 5pm anyway, so I figured I had a couple hours to kill before I needed to be home. So, to Jeremy's we went. His mom also worked so we just hung out by ourselves watching tv, playing games, him showing me his collection of toys stuff that would only fascinate young boys. 

There wasn't anything special about that day, or what we did. We just went to his place to hang out. Well, by the time I thought to look out the window it was full dark out. Hours had passed and it was already almost 7pm and I hadn't even called home yet. I freaked out a little bit about how much trouble I was going to be in as I picked up the phone to call home. 

Mom answered on the first ring and she sounded panicked. I was four hours past due and she had no idea where I was or if I was living or dead. She had started to worry at 4pm when I should have been home 30 minutes prior and called her, but didn't. She waited until 4:30 before telling her boss she had to go because her youngest was no where to be found.

She came home, called the school who told her I had been in school all day. She called the local police to see if I had been picked up. She called the closest hospital to see if I had been hurt. With every call coming up with zero she was getting more and more panicked by the minute. By the time I called she was in full blown emergency mode and was fluctuating between extreme relief and flaming anger for making her worry like I did. 

I told her sorry and that I just walked over to my friends house after school and lost track of time while playing at his place. She tried to calm down while asking for Jeremy's address so she could come get me. We gave it to her and she said she'd be there within 30 minutes to pick me up. So after I hung up Jeremy and I went back to playing. 

A little while later Jeremy went to the window and looked outside with a questioning look. I joined him at the window to try and see what he was looking at. It was pitch dark outside but we could hear someone making a commotion somewhere nearby. Remember, this was in the mountains so while you could still see the house nextdoor there was a good bit of distance between the houses. So we could see that someone was knocking at his neighbors door, we couldn't see who it was.

We looked at each other and Jeremy said "looks like someones girlfriend is pissed". I nodded and looked down Jeremy's driveway wondering how long it would take my mom to get there. Eventually the neighbors visitor left and we went back to playing whatever we were playing. And I continued waiting for my mom to arrive. 

Around 8:15 there comes a knock on Jeremy's front door. I jump up thinking my mom finally found the place and start gathering my backpack. Jeremy goes to the front door and opens it up only to be met with a full grown armed and intimidating police officer. 

"Hello Jeremy, and you must be Shane." he said. "Your mom is pretty worried about you. Is there any reason you didn't want to go home?"

"No" I said "I'm just waiting for my mom to get here and pick me up." I said

"Then why didn't you answer when she came and knocked?" He asked.

"What are you talking about, she hasn't shown up yet, we've been sitting here waiting for her."

"She said she came and knocked on the door and shouted for you and you just hid in the dark ignoring her. She went home and called us and asked us to come and get you."

Jeremy and I looked at each other confused and simultaneously we both realized that the person banging on his neighbors door had been my mother. Our eyes widened as we both realized and the police officer registered this and asked us about it. We explained that we had seen someone knocking at the neighbors but didn't realize it was my mom. Remember, this is in the mountains where streetlights don't exist. 

He told me to gather up my belongings and that he would take me home now. I did and said goodbye to Jeremy, told him I'd see him in school tomorrow. The officer and I walked out to his patrol jeep and he asked me if I wanted to ride up front. Obviously I said yes, so we got it and started off home. He asked me a bunch of questions on the drive, only in retrospect did I realize he was trying to ascertain if I had run away from home or if there were problems at home that I was avoiding.

Me being the oblivious kid I was, just happily answered while asking what all the buttons did. This was when he let me run the lights and siren and I laughed so much I think he realized I was just a kid who forgot to call home.

When I got home, oh man was I in trouble. Mom had been out of her mind with worry and was trying to keep herself calm. She was so mad but also trying to understand that sometimes kids are forgetful and don't pay attention. So she grounded me and said I don't get any of the pizza that she ordered for dinner. Instead I would get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a glass of water and I was to be sent to my room.

I was upset as pepperoni pizza was one of my favorite foods and I didn't do anything bad, just forgot to call home. But I sucked it up because I could see how mom was barely keeping her upset in check. So I got all huffy and stomped off to my room. She brought me my sandwich and I pretended like I was all upset by laying in bed facing away from her when she did. 

As soon as she set it down and left I got up grabbed my sandwich and pulled out a bunch of toys and played until I fell asleep. By the next morning Mom had calmed down and before she left for work she sat me down and explained that she worries about me, and that we live in the woods where anything could happen to me. She said she has to be at work and can't watch me all the time so I have to be responsible and do what's expected of me. 

From then on I think she had Josh keep an extra close eye on my and make sure I get on the bus every day. That led to him getting sucker punched while getting on the bus defending me and getting a broken nose later that year, but that's another story...

The last walk for a good dog

 My last walk with Jinx

I love dogs. I've always loved them. We grew up having dogs as pets since mom was allergic to cats. Our first dog that I remember was an Samoyed named Keeta that my mom drew a pastel drawing of that hung in our house throughout our childhood. 

The first dog that was ever mine was Sage. He was a black lab husky mix with a fluffy white curved tail that looked like a cross between a question mark and a spiral and he "followed me home" one day in a red rider wagon that I pulled him in. Our old neighbors dog had puppies and they let me have one if my parents said it was ok. 

I convinced my mom to let me keep him by pretending to be asleep with him when they came to give me an answer on whether we could keep him. He was a great mountain dog that went with Josh and I on our adventures and had a few of his own. 

The last adventure I remember was when he went missing for a week and Mom and Chuck started preparing us for the inevitable let down of losing a dog. I remember crying so hard when we thought he was gone, I was 11. Josh and I looked for him everywhere. We lived in a tiny little mountain town so there weren't many places we could look, but our back yard was a mountain so my parents assumed he had run away and gotten lost and possibly met with a mountain lion that lived in the area. 

Then one day Josh and I were playing in the front yard and he stopped and stood up and looked to the distance. He looked down South End road and saw an animal slowly limping up the street towards us and he immediately took off running. We were both screaming and crying tears of joy as we realized that it was Sage, still alive and coming home. 

When Josh reached Sage he saw that Sage was completely covered in porcupine quills and was injured and bloody. He gently reached under Sage, picked him up and carried him back to the house where he set him down gently on a towel on the couch. Mom and Chuck took him to the local Vet and after a lot of tweezing and stitching declared that other than being a little thin Sage would be just fine. 

He was fine, recovered and happy as he ever was. He was the best dog for two mountain boys and we loved him like only a boy can. Sage was part of our family for just over four years. In 1989 when Grandma got sick and Mom and Chuck decided that we were moving to California to take care of her we had no choice but to leave Sage with Wayne, my dad's band mate and friend to take care of. Mom said we would try to bring him to California eventually but we couldn't bring him right away because we'd be living with Grandma and she already had a dog and they didn't want to risk them not getting along. 

So we moved and left Sage behind. I never got to see him again. Grandma's dog Romeo was a small Cockapoo that was friendly but not as playful as Sage was. When we were teens and Grandma had passed Romeo came to live with us for a while before our Uncle Dave took him. We had always wondered how old Romeo was since we remembered him from when we were little, but then Mom let slip that technically, this was Romeo IV and that Grandma had just replaced her late dogs with exact copies right down to giving them the same name. Those were the last dogs we had in our childhood. 

While my parents did adopt another dog, KD (Karens Dog) after we had left home, we never bonded like we did with the dogs of our youth. In fact after Romeo I lived half my life before getting another dog. I was 36 the next time I adopted a dog.

I was halfway into my first relationship with Ixa (Danny) when we decided that we wanted a dog to be part of our family. We talked to our roommates at the time and they all agreed to have a dog in the house so we started going to the SPCA and looking at the dogs. We went back and forth about the breeds of dogs that we would love if we found one, for me it was the Great Dane, I'm a giant so of course I would have a giant dog. Ixa loved the smaller breeds though he had been raised in a house of Pitt Bulls so he ok with a bigger dog. 

For a few weekends we went back and forth to the SPCA looking for that special dog that would pick us and one Saturday while we were wandering around my eye was caught by a question mark white tail and I immediately fell in nostalgic love. She had Sages tail and she came up to both of us and wagged it and that was it. We adopted her that day, March 26th 2011. 

After making a long list of potential names on the white board that everyone contributed too, we landed on Jinx, and we signed the paperwork and took her home with us... Well... We tried. She was a very shy nervous pup at about a year old. She had been found out in the country wandering and was brought to the SPCA in San Francisco to be adopted out. So when we left the SPCA with her and tried to walk her home, she was scared about all the sounds and cars and busses and people. She froze and eventually we had to take a cab home with her.

Ixa spent a lot of time training her and acclimating her to life in the big city. The two things he did that I thought were the cleverest things was he wanted to get her used to the sounds of the city so he took a mini tape recorder and went outside near the bus stop and recorded a few hours of city sounds. Then when it was bed time she would go in her crate and he would put the tape on her crate so she could hear it while still feeling safe. 

She was still a little nervous going on the muni so Ixa had the brilliant idea to bring her to Dolores park and wait with her near the Muni train exit so that she got used to the big trains and when it stopped I exited the train right where they were and she was always excited to see me, so by doing that a few times she came to learn that the big loud machine would bring me to her and she stopped being afraid of it after that. 

Jinx was always a cat dog. That is to say a dog that acted more like a cat. She didn't really play or fetch, she didn't need to be next to one of us all the time. She liked to sit in her space and just watch things from a distance and she merely tolerated all the lovin we gave her. I loved cuddling with her even though she just laid there and took it. She was never overly affectionate unless Steph came over. She LOVED Steph. She got up and came to her whenever she came over, put her nuzzle on Steph and generally wanted to be near her. It was then that we realized we had adopted a lesbian dog. 

When Ixa and I lost the house and broke up, Jinx came with me. We stayed in a few different places that weren't the best for her until Steph and Jen had a room free and let us come stay with them. It was while living here that Jinx really started to engage more. She lived with me and Steph and Jen and got to play with other dogs all day, go for long walks with Jen and be around Steph all day and she was very very happy. 

When they decided to make the move to Portland and I started looking for a place to move it became very difficult to find a home that would let me bring Jinx with me. There were at lease three places I looked at that balked when I mentioned having a dog. The closer the move out date the more worried I was getting. Trying to find a place that I could keep her seemed impossible in SF. Eventually Steph and Jen and I sat down to have a conversation.

Jinx was a great barometer for Jen's dog business as she was well trained, good with people and dogs and was great at assessing a new dog client to see if that new dogs temperament would be a good fit for Jens pack walks and dog sitting. The dogs that Jen was taking to Portland with her were both elderly and persnickety and weren't the best advertisement for Jen's new Portland dog walking business. Jinx was. 

So we decided that while I looked for a new permanent home in SF, Jinx would accompany Steph and Jen to Portland and begin their life and business there. We thought that when I finally got settled that she might come back to live with me, but that took longer than we expected. By the time I finally got settled in LA she had been living with Steph and Jen for five years. Longer than she had been with Ixa and I. 

I felt bad from time to time because I made a commitment to Jinx to be her Daddy and to me, that is not something you just walk away from. I had been forced to walk away from Sage and never saw him again and to this day it still makes me sad. I didn't want that for Jinx. It eased my guilt a bit knowing that she was with two people who absolutely loved her and took her on long walks multiple times a day. she had doggy friends and spent the best years of her life joyfully running through nature. I also helped pay for monthly dog insurance so she could see a vet anytime without worry. I promised her that I would be there for her entire life, that she was my dog and I loved her. 

They moved to Portland in November of 2012 and Jinx never lived with me again. I did however go to see her around three times a year for the last thirteen years. Anytime Steph and Jen went somewhere I would fly up and stay with Jinx. The first few times I got the tap dancing happy dance, but eventually she would just notice that I showed up, sniff me, let me pet her head and then go lay back down. Ixa came to visit a bunch of times too and she allowed a bit more cuddling with him than she did with me, but when I wanted cuddles from her I just picked her up. She would just go all limp, arms out and wait for me to finish cuddling her than she would go back to her bed. 

For the last year or two she had been getting slower and slower, she lost her hearing and most of her sight, and she moved like molasses when taking her on her walks. Every now and then she got a burst of energy and she did her loping bouncing walk that I always thought was the cutest thing ever, but they got less and less frequent as time passed.

I went to see her at the beginning of this year and it was the first time I really realized how old she had gotten. She spent most days laying on her bed, didn't ever want cuddles and really only got up to eat, walk or wander aimlessly around the apartment. We all talked about end of life care and what the plan would be when it became time. Jen had several dogs previously and I trusted her to know when the time came. This meant that each visit became the possible last time. 

While this gave us time to prepare mentally, we all hoped that she would live forever. She was such a good dog that it's hard to imagine ever having such a good dog again.

Two weeks ago, Steph and Jen went on a vacation again and asked Ixa and I to come dogsit for the week. We both managed to clear our schedules and went up and stayed with Jinx for a full week. She was weak, had trouble standing and walking up stairs and needed extra assistance which I was happy to give. Hell, I even woke up extra early each morning to take her on her walks. It was a very full circle moment for both Ixa and I as we had been there for her at the beginning together and we were together with her at the end.

On my last walk with her before heading home to LA I took a few pictures of her, I wanted a really good face picture so I put my hand under her chin to get her to look up at me. She did, and then she rested her head on my hand so that I was fully supporting it. It reminded me of how she would put her head on my hand or knee right after we adopted her and it made me cry. 

We both knew the time had come around at last. A week later Steph and Jen let me and Ixa know that it was time and that she was gone. We all had a good cry about it. But she had a great life, surrounded by people who loved her. What more can anyone ask for in life.

I love you Jinx, you'll always be my dog and I'll see you again on the other side of the rainbow bridge.