Full tilt boogie to the wind

Sons and mothers, drag fab and ‘Kinky Boots’

This story begins with a young boy in a pair of heels.

This story is shared by Lola, the drag queen star of smash-hit Broadway musical “Kinky Boots” by J. Harrison Ghee, the man cast as Lola in its touring production sashaying to Tulsa Feb. 2-7, and by my 15 year-old son.

All three sneaked into their mother’s closet to strut in pumps when no one was around. All three are gay. All three are drag queens.

In the Tony Award-winning “Kinky Boots,” with the original book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Cyndi Lauper, we first see Lola as a little boy. He dances, ecstatic, in high-heeled boots.

Until his father sees him. “Take those things off your feet and get inside here, stupid boy!”

From shame to celebration, “Kinky Boots” takes us on a warm-hearted romp from a failing gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton, England to the glamorous catwalks of Milan. Charlie Price, heir to his father’s failing business, searches for a way to keep the factory alive.

He finds his answer in Lola, fabulous despite her flimsy women’s boots not built for a man’s weight. Charlie concocts a plan to save the family business by delving into a niche market his father never imagined. Together, Charlie and Lola create sturdy stilettos made for transgender women and drag queens.

Shoes Make the Woman

Ghee is inspired by powerhouse Billy Porter, the actor who originated Lola on Broadway. “He’s been a big inspiration for my career in general,” Ghee says. Other stars who hold his heart include Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Felicia Rashad, and “of course, like most drag queens, my mother,” he says.

Ghee sees himself in Lola. “My story is very similar to Lola’s in a lot of ways,” he says. “It’s uncanny how similar the stories are.”

Growing up in North Carolina, Ghee made sure his parents were out of the house when he raided mom’s closet. “I was young Lola in my mom’s closet, wearing her heels,” he says. They “just made me happy.”

My son sneaked into my closet when he was younger, too, he admits now. “I think I was about eight,” he says, when he first dug through my shoes and slipped into simple black pumps.

“I felt feminine,” he says, “And fierce. I would pose with them on in front of your full-body mirror.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

“Well, I wasn’t out. I didn’t want to disappoint everyone. All of you were married and liked the opposite sex,” he says.

Ghee came out to his parents at 21, but only his mother knew about Crystal Demure, his drag queen alter ego. “Until I got this show, the rest of my family didn’t know I was doing drag,” he says.

Like Charlie Price, he yearned for his father’s acceptance. Ghee’s father, a southern pastor, was thrilled when his son landed a big-deal gig in a touring Broadway production, but he warned Ghee, “Don’t bring any wigs home!”

To which Ghee confessed, “Well, actually …”

So began a conversation where Ghee opened up to his father about his successful five-year drag career. The musical allowed him to reveal himself in a way his father could understand and accept. “He sees our story in the show and now you can’t shut him up,” Ghee says.

When fans approached Ghee and his family after the “Kinky Boots” premiere in Ghee’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, his father shouted, “I’m Lola’s proud father!”

Blazing Kilowatt Realness

According to the musical and my son, shoes are the most beautiful thing in the world. My son is a huge fan of the boots. “I would wear them everywhere,” he says.

“Like where?” I ask.

“You know, like, family gatherings. School, of course. Drag shows. Panera. Barnes & Noble,” he says. “And obviously to a gig, even though I haven’t done any. Yet.”

My son and Ghee discovered drag the same way: through “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The reality TV phenomenon, formerly on VH1 and now at home as the highest-rated show on Logo, features talented drag queens as whole people, in and out of drag.

My son began watching the show a few months after coming out. “After I watched ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ it helped me realize that I’m here, I’m queer and get used to it,” he says.

Ghee watched the first season as a study in “being more feminine and owning it,” he says. Though he had fun posing in his mom’s heels, he never imagined doing drag, he says. Until he saw the show and learned more about drag as an artistic, creative outlet.

“And then,” Ghee says, “I went full tilt boogie to the wind.”

Enter Crystal Demure. Finding her has “very much affected my life as J., as a boy,” he says. “I’ve gotten back to a childhood innocence, to who I am innately, and what I like to give: my boldness.”

“Drag Race” and “Kinky Boots” work the same kind of magic on audiences. In each, they give LGBT kids – and any weird kid, no matter the “kink” – a playful, confident language to express and explore complex gender issues.

“The message [of ‘Kinky Boots’] is to just be who you wanna be,” Ghee says. “Because you really do change the world when you change your mind.”

Whatever makes you different, unusual, whatever that thing is that makes you afraid to tell others: “Be that and own it,” Ghee says. “No one can dim your light.”

Out and Proud

My son is serving blazing kilowatt realness these days. No longer a frightened 11-year-old, he talks freely about his experiences as a gay teen, about gender fluidity, about the difference between drag and trans women.

Still, he is bullied daily in high school. There is the boy in first period who sneers a gay slur in his direction after roll call every morning; the girl in second period who rallies the kids around her to laugh while she insults him.

He can’t wait to get home from school to re-watch episodes of “Drag Race;” he is ecstatic about “Kinky Boots” coming to town. For my son and for Ghee, these shows are an oasis of acceptance in an unkind world.

Buoyed by these shows, a weekly LGBT group, and his family’s encouragement, my son is unafraid to wear eyeliner, light powder and pale pink lipstick to school every day. Despite the bullying and the misunderstandings among his peers, he is out and proud.

Now, I am too: I am the proud mother of a gay son and aspiring drag queen. As my son would say, “Get used to it.”

He borrows my heels openly nowadays, and stomps around the house like a pony. He lives for a pair of shiny pink and black five-inch platform pumps I spent too much on and wore only once.

Last summer, he dug them out from the back of my closet and tried them on. As I watched him pose in front of the full-length mirror in my most glamorous pumps, well, how do I put this? I gagged at his eleganza: He rocks those pumps harder than I ever could.

The heels are his now, until he out grows them. Then we’ll be on the hunt for properly made shoes for fully-grown queens. 

From the back of a closet to center stage, shoes make the woman.

This story ends with a young man in a pair of sickening heels for all to see. “Sickening,” in drag patois, is a high compliment meaning fabulous, on-point fierceness.

To my son: You raise me up, live wire. You are my hero, sickening and brave. I can’t wait to see you on stage someday. Until then, I’ve got our tickets to “Kinky Boots.”

Kinky Boots
Feb. 2-7
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsapac.com | 918.596.7111
Ticket prices range from $20 to $55
Recommended for ages 12 and up

For more from Jennie, read her article about the My God, My Body, My Rights Reproductive Justice Forum.