Andrew in Drag: My (limited) experience as a Drag King

Performing in drag was probably one of my favourite things that I’ve ever done. I’d had the idea in my head for a while now: a campy gender caricature of a typical Dostoevsky protagonist- gloomy, dark-eyed, sexy despite his internal conflict. I’d already had a name - Dykestoevsky - for a while now too, so when my best friend announced he was running a drag show to promote his magazine (who I am still working for!) I knew I had to perform. Originally performing just to support him, I knew drag was just a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I’m glad I persevered, and with the help of a few (free!) double vodka lemonades, I performed. 

He just can't fight it... he's gonna kill someone!

Me and my axe I made from cardboard the night before.

Feat. A very badly-made fag. Oh, and a cigarette. 

    That was back in November. Now, I’m hoping to make drag a habit for me, and I’ve got another show lined up on the 20th January (if you’re Oxford-based, come see me!). There’s something quite comforting about dressing up, and being able to be a caricature for a night. It’s expressive, it’s freeing, it’s drunken and sexy and all things in between. 

    My act is as follows: I begin lying on a couch, and a quote from Dostoevsky plays. “To love is to suffer, and there can be no love otherwise.” Dark is the night (an old Soviet war song) begins to play. I pretend to smoke a cigarette, and take a swig from my flask and I crawl towards a table where I take a (unfortunately very real) shot of vodka, and continue to dance, slowly stripping, revealing that I have had an axe hidden under my coat the entire time. I act surprised, before dancing, almost with the axe. This song ends with me, pretending to murder someone, and a scream plays. And then, Rasputin begins to play, and I end the act by drunkenly Russian dancing on stage. 

    The show wasn’t perfect, and I’d fucked up the audio, so I had to improvise and read the Bible to the audience while my bestie, god bless his soul, sorted the audio. Afterwards, I got a message from one of the full-time drag kings that was at the event letting me know he’s doing another show on the 20th, and that I was very welcome to perform. It was from that point that I knew drag was for me.

    I am not a trans man, although I do want top surgery. My gender is complicated but very simple at the same time: I view myself as, you know, just nothing. I don’t think about my gender, it’s not even there. I suppose agender would be the closest label I could give myself, though in terms of gender presentation, I oscillate wildly between hyper-feminine and super masculine, though most days, I settle for an inbetween, a privilege that my piercings and mullet let me do. The thing that gives me dysphoria, though, is when people try to force me one way or another, or even in between: I really, really hate people telling me what to do. So it’s nice to parody that caricature of masculinity through drag. For that night, I can be a man, I can cross-dress. It’s really such a blessing in my life. 

    The thing about top surgery is I think I would look so hot with it, especially because being non-binary, I aim for a sort-of non-human look anyway, and I feel like lack of tits would complete that somewhat. I have a gorgeous ribcage tattoo which I feel would look so hot. But alas, I have to think about this some more, as my parents do not yet know I’m trans, and I acknowledge my privilege with being able to hide it from them. I’m just glad I went down the route of being openly out and non-binary at university, because I don’t think I could’ve lived several more years, or lifetimes, of being someone I’m not. 

    When I first got to university, I had intense imposter syndrome  with my gender. I’d known I was trans since 2021, but still felt like I was not a real part of the community, and was seriously considering going back in the closet. I was presenting quite feminine at the time, and felt everyone knew there was something wrong with me, that I was faking it. And there was one thing worse than being perceived as non-binary for me, and that was being viewed as a fake. Though, in freshers week, I found myself gravitating to trans people, and even went to a few trans events. I threw on a beanie and a masculine outfit, and I said to one of my close friends - “I feel like I’m cosplaying as a trans person.” That was a horrible thing to say about myself, and I see that now. But it felt so real at the time. 

    I’m glad I stuck with my gender though, because I feel more authentically myself than ever. Hell, I’m a drag king! I write for a queer magazine, I make queer art, I’m dating a queer woman. Everything about me is so fucking queer and trans, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s what drag is to me. It's a protest, it’s fun, and it’s queer joy. And I won’t give that up for anything.

On routine

On seeing this post on Tumblr today, it made me start thinking about whether I have my life together. My instinct is to say no, although I feel a bit guilty about this. I have many hobbies and interests, and I love to create, but I often struggle to eat three meals a day and enjoy cigarettes and weed far too much to feel as if I could feasibly live any kind of healthy life right now. 

It makes me think about routine, and how important it is. Recently, the idea of "leaving a treat for future you" has come into my consciousness, and it's something that I'll start to practise when I'm at university again in four days: things like putting clothes away, leaving the plates you need for breakfast tomorrow on your table, making your bed, things that make it easier for future you. And I do care about myself and my body, despite what I may do to it. I may be fucking up my lungs, but I do appreciate a good meal, and always thank myself for when I can keep to a solid routine. 

Another important thing is being kind to yourself, too. Executive disfunction is very real, and though it often can become easy to confuse "self care" with slipping back into depressive habits, it is also important to know when the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to let yourself rest, even if future you has to pick up the pieces a little bit. Be kind to future you, and they'll be kind back. Take care of yourself. 

And lastly, we have boredom. I believe it's so important to let yourself be bored, because you can always find something to do. Some days will be more difficult than others, but it gets easier. The more time you spend alone with yourself, the easier it will become to be in your own company, to be in conversation with yourself. This is still something I struggle with a lot, learning to be alone. Last term, on the other hand, I was alone too much, due to me smoking weed every day. What I viewed as protecting my peace was in fact isolating myself, so this term it's all about that balance. Not burning myself out, but not isolating myself either. 

It's difficult. All of it is. Making a routine, sticking to it, finding the energy to balance schoolwork and jobs and family dynamics and relationships and friends, and being neurodivergent, it's tough to bring it all together. But I'm staying afloat. It'll be okay.

I fell asleep during the day today, and I woke up discombobulated like I always do after an evening nap. I know uni will be difficult, as I have coursework and my dissertation due. I don't mind, though. This is what I'm here for after all. Ignore my disjointed thoughts, it's 1am and I can't sleep. 

One last thing, I have no clue why, when I follow people, it comes up as my legal (ish) name, so if you get followed by Sasha, that's me! Ignore that. Pffft. 

The Postman: Collateral damage, the trolley problem and violent protests

Before I start this post properly, I would like to take a moment to complain about my morning. My family are super Christian, so we went to church today, and it was the occasion where the priest blesses Holy Water and everyone gets to take some home. On the way there, I was carrying a bottle of holy water and then proceeded to slip and fall on ice, breaking the glass bottle. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. 

    Anyway, complaint over. I wanted to talk today about a guy I used to work with, which, I realise, does come under the realm of complaining as well. But ah well. We were taking a break, and I was having a cigarette while sitting on the wall outside my university, who I work for, over the holidays. I was smoking and talking about Luigi Mangione for some reason, and the topic of violent protests came up. 

    “Name one violent protest in history that has been successful,” he says, dangling his feet. 

    Off the top of my head, I give the first answer that comes to mind. “The suffragettes,” I say. 

    He thinks for a moment. He asks me for a cigarette, and then changes his mind. He’s been telling me to quit earlier today, trying to tell me to replace smoking with eating Haribos. 

    He pauses. “Did you know a postman was killed as collateral damage in that protest? What makes the death of an innocent person justified in terms of political action?”

    I say, “The result. Women, without the vote, aren’t able to have a say in topics that affect their day to day life. Women died in abusive relationships, they died because they didn’t have access to medical care or abortions. Hundreds of thousands of innocent women would die if they didn’t have the vote.”

    “I don’t think the loss of an innocent life as collateral damage is ever worth it. I wouldn’t want women to have the vote if it meant that the postman had lived.” 

    Hello? 

    Silence from me at this point. We eventually hop down from the wall, and begin packing up some chairs in another room. He then proceeds to ask me, “What’s a modern cause you would feel equally towards as to votes for women?” I think, then say, “Trans rights.” 

    He then says, “So, would you kill an innocent person if it meant trans people would have rights?” This catches me off guard, and I say, “I don’t know. Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a dumb question.” 

    He stares at me in horror. “That’s fucked, you know. That’s really fucked. I’m judging you right now.” I look at him angrily. He continues talking, “That’s fucked, you know.”

    We continue packing up chairs in silence. I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is that innocent trans people die every day, that he wasn’t being as clever as he thinks, that he was just asking me a moral question rather than a political one, one that completely wasn’t relevant at all. I just say to him, “no hard feelings,” and he says, “yeah. And I hope you don’t judge me for not wanting to murder innocent people.”

    Typing this out has made me realise the ridiculousness of the situation, almost like arguing with a right-winger online. I guess in the workplace different people are shoved together with different outlooks and personalities. The idea of the hypothetical postman fascinated me, though: a right-wing strawman. They’d much rather talk hypotheticals than take any kind of political action. At the end of the day, if you’re cishet and white, you can afford to care about the hypothetical postman, because you’re blind to the millions and millions of “postmen” dying every day. The trans people who never make it to the top of their waiting lists. The victims of hate crimes. Those who've lost trans siblings, parents, friends. Those who were denied healthcare for their bodies simply because those bodies are trans, and othered.

    It is easy to be comfortable. It is easy to complain about workers on strike, if it means you’re late to work or have to wait an extra half an hour in the queue. It’s easy to complain about the death of CEOs and to mourn Charlie Kirk because at the end of the day, “he’s a man with a family and kids!” It’s much easier to mourn the postman, or the hypothetical postman you’d have to shoot to achieve world peace, because he doesn’t exist. Or he’s just one guy, and this simple hypothetical stops the violent protesters from being heard. 

    When you make it a trolley problem, you distract from the issue at hand. You silence those speaking about real problems with fake problems of morality. Similarly, like how Rishi Sunak stated that “a man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense”, all this has proved is that we cannot rely on “common sense” anymore. Killing someone is bad, that’s just common sense. But it’s not, is it? The lines begin to blur, when there are thousands of indirect bodies behind that one person, like the Healthcare CEO. You can ignore indirect deaths in favour of shooting the postman. Is one worse than the other? That’s the trolley problem, and I refuse to answer the question. I would much rather support my trans friends and siblings. 

    To finish this post up and to not end it on a negative note, here’s a drawing I did last night of Hobbes in a bunch of different poses! Love this silly little guy.

The many faces of Hobbes.

    I hope you're having a wonderful day so far! Talk to you guys soon.

Favourite songs I’ve discovered this year (so far)

The assertion that you lose interest in music in your 20s is something that I have, unbelievably, heard a few times now. Once in a Tumblr posts with several thousand notes, and other times from my mum. At first, I thought this was true - I was just depressed, and not discovering new music - and now, I am back and ready to be annoying about my favourite songs. Here we go. 

1. Most Undo Tomorrow - Headache 

Favourite lyric: I want you to need me so much the world ends / I want to leave a mark / I just need you to be nicer to me / I’d like you to be nicer to me

Link: https://youtu.be/nsulEnvkKVc?si=QjUbsWFHVqi19PVe

Headache is one of my favourite music projects ever. Created by the artist Vegyn, Headache is a poetry project voiced by a text to speech, speaking over melancholic electronic music with some of the most relatable and devastating lyrics I’ve ever heard. If you’re looking to get into them, I’d recommend That Thing with a Rabbit. 

On the 21st of November, I went to his signing event in London. It was located in a Supreme store. I had fallen asleep at 4pm the day before, and woken up at 11am, so I was feeling out of it. It was a bad day, and when I looked at my phone to see that I was one of the few people that had gained access to this small, exclusive event, I wasn’t going to go. My uni is a couple hours away from London, and I was short on money. But, for some reason, I went. And it was perhaps one of the most Kafkaesque experiences of my life. 

I won’t go into details, but I met someone who used to go to my university before. We had never met before, but afterwards, we went out drinking, and drank a little too much. He randomly got interviewed for a Tiktok on why Soho pubs should stay open later. We wandered around, and ended up getting high in an alleyway and he told me how he had cheated on his last girlfriend, and how he was never going to date anyone again. I felt disgusted, but I sat with him, smoked, and talked. I ended up back at uni at around 3am. 

I got my copy of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs signed by Vegyn, which was strange but nice. The event itself was small, but I made friends there, and still speak to the girl I met in the queue outside while I was having a fag, waiting for the doors to open. 

Here are some photos from that day:

My signed copy of Burroughs.

Me on the way back.

A cheeky mirror selfie. I think it was strictly no filming. 

2. MUD - Slow Pulp 

Favourite lyric: Can’t be alone and this alone and stay so clear / Wanna be an astronaut and get out of here / Cos I miss you, dear

Link: https://youtu.be/7qs6-Qi-zPc?si=JVQjANPZ92uMso06

    For some reason, I’ve taken a while to come round to Slow Pulp. Their name always sounded a bit too much like Slowdive to me. Recently, though, this song came up on Shuffle and I was entranced. A haunting melody with gorgeous guitars and vocals, this song crawls into my brain and has its fingers in all its crevices. 

    The lyrics haunt me with their simplicity - “getting older but I still play pretend / I don’t want this to end”, the childish statements contrasted with the devastating accusations - “I can tell there’s someone else / C’mon, tell me, I can take it well”, the lyrics spilling over with unspoken hurt. 

    The lyrics about the astronaut especially stuck out to me as someone who has always wanted to go to space. Every so often I ask my girlfriend if she’d rather go to space or explore the deep sea, and she always answers, “neither”. But I’d love to go to space. I’d bring her back a piece of moonrock that I’d turn into earrings for her. 

Something about the haunting tune and the simple lyrics really squeezes my heart in all the right places. “I don’t want this to end”, indeed. 

3. Nightmares - NewDad 

Favourite lyric: I wish you were everything I hate in the world / Not the best person in it 

Link: https://youtu.be/ebbsPo1PKTg?si=RtEOSxVWQyNFJbLb

    I’d loved NewDad for a while now, when one of their songs (Angel, I believe) came into my YouTube recommendations, and I was like a lot of people, charmed by the album cover. I think this album cover redraw trend on Tumblr for a while too? Cool concept, I’d love to do one sometime soon. Possibly Aradia Megido, she fits the theme. Anyway, I’m off track. 

    This is a sick track! The tune gets stuck in my head all the time, and I find myself spinning this album while I read, as its soft vocals and catchy melodies are perfect to listen to while trying to read my way through Anna Karenina. (It’s great so far, I’m doing my dissertation on George Eliot and Tolstoy, but that’s a topic for another time.)

    This is a very catchy song, with a dance-y sound to it but with haunting lyrics. (I know that’s the fifth time I’ve used the word haunting in this blog post. I’m new to this, sue me.) God bless NewDad. 

    That’s it for now! I’ll probably do more music stuff at some point. One of my projects for the new year is to convert my monthly playlists into CDs, with album covers I design, which I’m looking forward to doing at the end of the month. Anyways, see ya!

A ladybug infestation and an identity mix-up

Contrary to what the title may suggest, the identity mix-up is not with the ladybugs, though the variation they show is pretty damn fascinating. Being home for uni has proved to be hell on earth, an exaggeration only slight since I’m sure there are swarms of ladybugs in hell. 

    Typing this out, I have realised this is possibly factually incorrect (or as close to factually as I can get on this blog, I don’t claim to be Wikipedia), since the Russian translation of ladybug is божья коровка, directly translating to “God’s little cow”. However, right now I don’t feel kindly towards these little creatures, so I am more inclined to call them the devil’s little shits. 

    Doing a few minutes of actual research, I have discovered that invasions of Harlequin ladybugs are very common over here in the UK. They tend to crowd around windowsills for an escape from the cold winter weather, and can squeeze through cracks on loosely fitting windows. They’ve come from the East, like Russia and China - thanks Russia, for sending your “little cows” over here. At this point, I’d much prefer an infestation of actual cows. 

God's little cows.

    My favourite hypothetical question to ask my sister is what she would do if a hundred horses were sent to her home right now. It’s supposed to be a would you rather, but I couldn’t think of an alternative that would be better/worse than that. I also just enjoy the image of one hundred horses turning up in your back garden and house. What would you do? Sell them? Call the police? The fuck are the feds gonna do about a horse infestation? They would barely know what to do about my Little Cow infestation. 

    Anyway, I also discovered that apparently, ladybirds carry STIs now, one that manifests as a fungus on their shell. Max Barclay, when asked whether humans can get this STI, stated: “That’s ridiculous. It is a fungus that grows on the exoskeleton and we don’t have one of those, and we don’t have sex with ladybugs.” Speak for yourself, Max. 

    Other than ladybirds with STIs invading my home, I have also fallen victim to an identity mix-up, in which I have been attempting to cancel my gym membership for months now. New year does not mean a new me, apparently, and I would much prefer to swim or to go climbing than to lift weights. Unfortunately for me, the gym I go to decided to very sneakily continue to take money from me, month after month. Three, to be exact. No wonder I had no bloody money at uni, I was being drained of thirty quid every month! So, I emailed them about it. Very polite, I thought. Even called them up on the phone at one point, so you know the situation is dire. 

    They were very polite. Ah yes, Sasha, we’ll get it sorted for you as quickly as possible! We’ll refund the money right now! It’ll be here in seven days, babes.

 
    Seven days go by. No money to be seen. I email again, after waiting a generous ten days. 

    “We can confirm the money has been sent to the account it was taken from, Rochelle [My Very Common Last Name].” 

    Girl, who the fuck is Rochelle? Why is she taking my money? Yeah, yeah, I get it, this stuff happens. I’ll get it sorted. Maybe Rochelle is one of my Harlequin ladybugs, quite comfortably lavishing in the money she STOLE from me. I hope you’re happy, God’s cow. See you in hell.

Home is where the [?????] is: Nostalgia for the old internet

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Why is everyone so damn performative?

 In the unfortunate stage of my approaching adulthood where I am forced to apply for internships, I began building a portfolio of creative writing. The company I was applying to (who I will not name, as I am still waiting for a response from them), claimed they wanted to see any kinds of writing, from Notes app ramblings to finished pieces. It was the former that made me somewhat curious. I, of course, did not submit any of my Notes app thoughts in a professional portfolio, but I did include a few pieces that I was quite proud of that I think gave them a better look into my brain than any tear-soaked phone screen could possibly give.

     It makes me wonder, is that really what they want to see? There is a scene in Dork Diaries (a childhood favourite) where she claims that no one really has a diary anymore, and her ideal scenario would be publishing her juicy secrets on an online blog that everyone wants to read. That is, of course, implying that she has an audience. Nikki Maxwell, however, is fictional, and in universe she is only writing for herself, and not for any kind of audience: except, in one book, where Mackenzie Hollister steals her diary and reveals she has actually been jealous of Nikki's dorky, perfect life! Gasp! Anyway, I digress. Dork Diaries still takes up a large part of my brain, and if the characters were mine (and, you know, not fourteen), Mackenzie and Nikki would be kissing.

 

Unfortunately, I realised I could never be an aesthetic girl (and, at a similar age, realised I wasn't a girl), at about fourteen (Nikki Maxwell age!). This was in the dreaded era of lockdown, where aesthetics like "cottagecore" and "dark academia" permeated my young, impressionable brain. I was desperate to be like the gorgeous girls on my screen, with their homemade blackberry jam. Eventually, I realised I couldn't fit myself into that box, and for a while, I didn't have a sense of identity, and I lost interest in the thing I used to love. 

 

     These days, I have tried to pick up as many hobbies that have made me happy, and I have realised that while I may not be, you know, "good" at anything in particular (except maybe writing), I still have something I made at the end of it. I like to paint, I like to make air-dry clay models, I love love love collage, I like to sing and dance badly: I am a mosaic of everyone I have loved, and I am just that, a mosaic. I have two tattoos, one of a blackberry vine on my ribcage, and the other of Calvin and Hobbes on my shoulder. I can't pick a theme, and so, I remain a patchwork of sewn together interests and thoughts.

     Of course, there's an element of performativity to everything. A discussion with an ex (of two weeks... yikes), in which I asked, "if you could be an object, what would you be?", revealed far too much about me. We were sat in the park near our university drinking a bottle of wine, and I proudly stated that I would be a tamagotchi. They asked me if I was going off an aesthetic basis, or what basis to go off of, and then a long discussion ensued where we both questioned whether we have any sense of self, and what to base it on.  

 

    These days, I don't think it matters that I don't really know who I am, and I don't mind that I'm a bit performative. I am trying to build up myself again, and this is through my art. I am trying to sit alone with my thoughts. To bring it back to my Notes App, when my internship ask for my Notes App ramblings they don't know it, but they are asking for myself in my purest form, myself when there is no audience. Which, to be clear, is way too much to ask from a simple internship. But I believe that no one can really write like no one's reading. Even a diary has an invisible reader. Even Nikki Maxwell's diaries were read eventually. (Okay, enough about Nikki.)

 

    People are performative (as am I) because they wish to be witnessed. I write in my Notes app, but when I can, I edit it to be able to post on my private Instagram. When I write, I send my work to someone to read over, in a subconscious means of getting praise. When I made my Wattpad account at thirteen, all I really wanted was for my work to be read. In a sense, I crave romance because I wish to be witnessed through someone else's eyes. Is that unhealthy? I don't know. Probably. But aren't we all. 

     

 Well, that's what this blog is. Not quite a Notes App, not quite the cottagecore experience of your dreams. Here, we have the inbetween. Enjoy your stay.