Drag Lessons

My husband loves Thai food.  What does this have to do with my quest for a new life, you ask?  Hang in there, I'm going somewhere with this....  So my husband loves Thai food.  His birthday was last weekend, and I decided to take him out to a new Thai place for dinner.  New to us, anyway - we always go to the same two or three places.  I searched online for best/favorite Thai places in our city, and one restaurant came up that I've driven by countless times, so I figured that was a good sign.  I perused their online menu and decided that this was where we'd go. 

We show up on a Friday evening, and the restaurant has quite a few tables filled, but some open tables in the back room.  Our hostess approaches and we ask for a table in the back.  That's when I realize (hopefully without doing an obvious double-take) that our hostess is in drag.  Nothing over the top, but definitely a man in drag.  I am thrilled.  As we sit down, I say to my husband, "I have a new favorite restaurant!".  He chuckles.  Turns out all the waitresses here are in drag!  I am so excited by this, I am practically giddy.  I don't remember reading anything on the website about this.  There is no "show", no singing, no sequins or feathers, just hardworking waitresses who happen to be fabulous.  We have our (fantastic) mojitos and enjoy our dinner.  I barely resist the urge to take my husband's picture with our waitresses.

After we leave, over a nightcap, he asks me why I was so darned excited that our waitresses were in drag.  I didn't know what the answer was until he asked, and then it was so clear.  Yes, drag queens are fabulous and fun and sassy and all of that.  But there are real people under all that makeup and that's what made me so happy.  Here were two souls, so confident in who they are on the inside that they are unafraid to express it on the outside.  Every day they must risk persecution, rudeness, loss of business, perhaps even physical violence.  Yet they let their true selves shine.  I wish I were that brave.

Yes, it took courage to quit my job, my career, with no prospects in sight (bravery or stupidity - one or the other...)  But it took me a very long time to work up that courage, and I am now trying to remain brave in the face of unemployment.  I am trying to look inside and figure out who I am.  Once I have that answer, I hope to shine it out to the world with every ounce of the bravery I witnessed Friday night.    I'd settle for one-tenth of the fabulousness.