Life's a Drag!

 

They said my head was led astray
that people shouldn't really feel this way
and deep beyond this grief and strife
I had the makings of a 'lovely wife!'
'Just pimp and preen...go on fuss yerself!
Buy yourself some clothes
Could I just mention, pay some attention
Your feet! You can't step out in those!'   

 

They tried to coach me, had to coax me
to be their kind of girl
fit in the current format and join that social whirl
But the smell of leather lured me home
to the glitzy bars and sleeze
frequenting tacky plastic parties
where wayward women tease

And when in home, do as the homos do...
So I learned to strut my stuff
the shrinks said I was a 'classic case'
and that they'd had enough
they told me then that I was doomed
my future would be bleak
with social isolation, gay suicides each week

'People like you can't be content
with so much public scorn,
give up your gender-bending turn to God...or just conform!'
Yes! There's methodist in my madness
But I'm looking to the Pope
Kissing airports wearing frocks
Cross-dressing...he's my only hope!

 

 

The piece is in three short scenes introducing three characters that together create Hairy O’Mara, the failed drag queen. The central character, Hairy O'Mara was dreamed up after a scurrilous reviewer in the Gay press described Julie as: 'The Mary O'Hara of the Lesbian and Gay circuit!' Resisting that image of the squeaky-clean torch singer, she turned it on its head and Hairy O’Mara was born. Hairy is an angst-ridden female impersonator whose looks are beginning to fade. Life is cheap on the drag circuit and queens are two-a-penny. Hairy is on a desperate search for a new turn to lift his/her flagging career.