Roski Mag

Roski Mag is a student run publication at the University of Southern California. We showcase student art and design work.

[roskimag]

Diary Entry 0 by Rachel Lee

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Musicmusicmusi by Lauryn Jones

I am really particular about my music. I’m one of those people you will not catch without either my AirPods or headphones, nodding my head or tapping to the beat of whatever song I’ve decided is the best backing track for the situation at hand. The amount of music I listen to in a day can almost seem absurd. From mumble rap to country music to original broadway cast recordings, I listen to it all. Because of this constant consumption of content, however, I find myself overwhelmed with choice when it comes to playing music for an utterly uninteresting task like getting ready in the morning, walking down the street to work, or taking a break in class. I used to find myself spending 20+ minutes frantically sifting through my recently played and liked songs, trying to find just the right track. It was in my desperate attempts to remedy this problem of wasting time that Top 10 was born. Top 10 is a weekly playlist curated by me of 10 songs (in no particular order) that I play when I don’t know what to listen to. These tracks have no rules. 

These are some of the types of tracks that tend to make it on the playlist--

A song I obsessed over in middle school that I completely forgot about until this very moment

A song that’s been stuck in my head for the past few days

Something my friend told me I would “fuck with to the highest degree” 

My favorite track from an anticipated album that just dropped 

A song with a verse I want to commit to memory

The cool part about Top 10’s is that I make the playlists public. This means my friends, family, enemies, stalkers, ex-partners, and any other cool people who like music and want to see what I’m doing can check out my playlists and see what I’m listening to this week. Even cooler, my friends have also started making their own Top 10’s. For example, one of my friends updates weekly like me, another one updates whenever they have time, and another one does 10 albums rather than songs (updated every month or so). 

Honestly, it’s a really cool way to get into new music, get reintroduced to tracks you used to really like, or, at the very least, do something fun and creative with and for yourself every now and then. If you try it out, DM me on Instagram or Twitter (@suplauryn on both platforms) and I’ll give it a listen! 

This Week’s Top 10 (On Apple Music: @suplauryn & Spotify: @joneslauryn) -- 

Warm Enough by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment feat. Noname and JCole

Drop the Game by Flume feat. Chet Faker 

SOMETHINGSIHATE by Malik Elijah

Thank You by Dido

Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett feat. The Crypt Kickers and Bobby Pickett

NEMO! by JPEGMAFIA

Self Love by MAVI

SWEETBABYRAE by stoop lee

Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd 

Thriller - Single Version by Michael Jackson

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If heaven is a bureaucracy then I will kill a Congressperson by Rachel Lee

I knelt by the window out of which I took the screen.

Bugs can fly in now.

I blew out smokes and watched them drift out like ghosts into the black.

Breathing death. I sighed and watched the ghosts dissolve.

There’s no more no less water than there used to be. There are definitely more ghosts.

Most are happy, probably. The silent majority.

I thought about praying. I thought about God and how I compulsively commit the cardinal sin whenever I think seriously about the odds of my being accepted a spot in heaven.

Would He be that arbitrary? Does it matter if God is good?

The Old Testament God got deposed, I hear. Violent coup, except violence looks different since everyone’s dead. Just hurt. Ghosts hold elections for God every 6 years. Last year they elected Whitney Houston. She’s doing an okay job.

My knees hurt.

I climbed onto the empty windowsill and spat out some tobacco, watched it hit the ground.

Don’t think too much about that.

I know what I’m waiting for and I know it won’t end the waiting but I savor the wait regardless.

For now this is everything. The universe is finite and also expanding. It won’t stop for a while. And then it will shrink. And then grow. Or maybe It will grow like a tree and drop fruit of smaller, more ephemeral universes seeding the ground for larger potential universes. Some universe animal species will eat most of the fruit, though.

Government-sanctioned coke in heaven, yeah. That sounds nice.

[roskimag]

Dogs on the Grass by Maurielle McGarvey

The smell of ground meat and hydrangea oil. My face pressed into unvacuumed carpet. It is only recently that I moved to this corner room. The aches and pains of uprooting still linger.

There are a pair of small windows that provide cold, intermittent light. The brightness bounces off cream walls, exposing the negative. Artificial heaps of stuff, of unread books, of dust. The weight of my own body feels all wrong. No surprise- but this is excessive. The angles of everything seem to have tilted downwards, expanding to fill larger frames of vision. The door hangs on a slant. Maybe the entire room is sloping away from me and I have yet to notice until now. I find myself not knowing what to do with my hands and feet. These limbs are hunched and disproportionate. My hairy belly drags on the floor. 

With great effort, I raise myself to the mirror and am amazed. For all the perpetual transformations that life offers, here is a metamorphosis I did not expect. I turn in a circle. A pink tongue pants back, mocking. I try to squint, to blur the animal semblance spreading out across the glass. Eyes like bulbous periscopes. Breakable claws on smooth hands. There’s the old joke, about the narcissist and the dyslexic. 

Am I a dog? 

The clock beats a reminder, ticking and prodding at the day’s responsibilities. His hand dangles from the bed. The fingers trail air, challenging a touch. This hand presents both a question and a solution. Do I wake him? Will he read through the illusion and recognize me? Unknown or beloved. Most likely neither. I sit on my haunches, considering his serious and measurable proximity. My position is...embarrassing. Maybe if I behave as I normally do, this waking dream will slip away to something more suited for my skin. I head along to university. 

The hot morning surrounds me. This city, this same city with it’s slow and exhausting heat. I have not lived here for some time, but little has changed. I plod past flat and wide houses, all on the tip of an earthquake. Lottery tickets, enormous advertisements, calcified faces bone hardened into a constant expression of urgency. Meetings. Blue tooth. 

 I can’t tell if it’s amusing or sad to speak on behalf of this place and the people I encounter here. I turn a corner, sniffing out my way. Here is where I stop. Here is where I go. I walk with the calm and rapid motion of something human. Color returns to the day. The neighbor’s pitbulls roll with ease behind their chain link fence.

Perhaps they can explain what is happening to me? 

I try to stretch my canine face into an expression of approachable happiness. How do I speak? How do I act? This is all so unfamiliar. 

 Heads swivel on powerful shoulders, a flicker of a gaze, and they sink back into their sandy lot. Pitbull wisdom puts me away into an empty and nonthreatening corner. They can innately sense that I am not one of them. 

Still, I would rather be barked at than ignored. Amble on.

The neighborhood moves around me in a labyrinth. Hyacinths and corner stores. Striated roofs, stucco. I pass an elementary school. The children of the yard run crazy in blue satin and creased pants. Laughter against the edges of sunbathed earth, surrounded by another chain link fence. Pitbulls and children. 

I am envious of these creatures. Not one thing, not another. They are honest and simple. 

Smelling sweet sweat and a bad imitation of eucalyptus. Nauseous. All this nervous fatigue from extended public engagement. I feel so deeply inhuman, my echo recitations of people motions, of dog breath. 

I know I cannot make it to my 10 am class.

I find my way beneath the branches of a pine tree. Long shadows make curtains from which I can hide behind. The ground beneath me is damp and flexible, low and dry. I am a master of all the dark places. Students keep passing. People walking hand in hand. I wonder if he is still resting. 

I can hear the children playing, the dogs barking.

Turn in a circle. Settle, unreachable and fetal. What a capacity I have developed for becoming invisible. In this form. In any. 

When I wake, I walk home. Still haired and fanged, now with indomitable sluggishness and dragging paws. Maybe this is the final fusion of the discomfort I have felt for so long, the rough routine of life in relation to others. 

I am hoping he can help me make some sense of this transformation. 

That man is still in my home, languidly stretched over my space like the master of the house. I cannot help but feel some kind of terrible joy at the sight, so much so that I shake all over. People shouldn’t move like this. Not at the voice of another. From the center of the bed, he calls out my name. He summons me, like all the other times, as if I look no different. He takes that hand and pats me on the head. Gentle, between the ears. Man’s most ancient and powerful tool. For someone else this could be called comfort. 

Sit, stay, stay awhile. 

Dogs on the grass. Whimpering on the bed. 

Eat out of my hand. 

Slinking and slobbering. 

Roll over.

Nothing unfolds. We transfigure, twist, take on the same shapes and same roles in new bodies. 

Lay on your back. 

Where do I go from here?

[roskimag]

Finding Yourself in the Pigments, Making Yourself in the Colors

By Karla T.

“Painting really helped me learn to love myself.”

From charcoal and graphite drawings to portraits dripping in acrylic multicolor - junior Alexia Sambrano details their artistic journey over the past eight years, sharing how art has provided a canvas to chronicle their experiences of love, family, and identity.

Alexia Sambrano is a third year undergraduate student at USC studying neuroscience and cognitive science with a minor in LGBTQ studies. Their art is heavily focused on their identities as a queer, genderfluid person and as a first generation Mexican-American. 

Much of Alexia’s work deals with themes of how they are perceived by the world versus how they perceive themselves in regard to their gender and sexuality, body image, and mental health. They talk about painting “...things that have to do with my cultural upbringing as a Mexican American with immigrant parents. These are themes I try to incorporate into my art both unconsciously and also consciously.” One motif in their art is flowers, largely due to Alexia’s father’s occupation as a florist. To Alexia, flowers are “a really big symbol for healing and growth.” Alexia’s paintings are bright and pigmented due to their preference for acrylic paint, detailing that a large part of the choice to use acrylic over oil paints is its accessibility and ease of experimentation. Every aspect of Alexia’s art has clear intentions that serve to make beautiful work flowing with personal meaning.

Alexia details the way they have progressed in their lives across the paintings they have made. In moments of pain, they created pieces such as Impending Doom and La Ansiedad. Here, they used the colors and the textures to honestly depict the vulnerability and emotion they felt in its making. As they grow older, their perception of what they paint also changes, being able to look back and see the paintings as moments in a longer life story. “Painting really helped me learn to love myself.” 

Alexia describes their latest painting Enter the Garden as a demonstration of their acceptance, pride, and confidence in their sexuality and self. This personal accomplishment has been much due to inspiration they’ve had from other Latinx creatives, who share the expectations that come with being a Latinx youth in American society. “I feel like there's a big pressure, especially in Latinx families to get into a career to get into a career where you will be making a lot of money”. Alexia emphasizes that these expectations make it difficult for many Latine artists to tap into the full potential of their creativity. Though through another medium, Latinx musicians like Ambar Lucid, Kali Uchis, and Omar Apollo have had a huge impact on Alexia’s own understanding of their “being and personhood” - despite cultural and societal pressures they have faced. As Alexia has tackled these same expectations - they find comfort in an artistic community that shares some of their same lived experiences and show pride in their upbringings.

In melting together these ideas about self-identity and personal growth, Alexia Sambrano’s Mal de Mil Ojos carries spiritual and cultural elements of the Mexican cultural concept of “mal de ojo”, which is a symbol of the “evil eye” that is worn or artistically depicted to protect people from jealousy and malice. As time goes on, Alexia plans to continue to do commissioned work to help pay for school as well as working on multiple projects to improve their skills as an artist - always carrying this symbol of protection with them. Alexia Sambrano reminds us of how we both see ourselves and make ourselves in the art that we create - finding solace in the finished products and motivation in the works in progress.

You can find more of Alexia’s work on their Instagram: @alexiasambranoart

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The Art of Being Alone

By Phoebe Zheng

a journal entry from me to you

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I Pinned You From Across the Zoom

By Tori Frank

When you have them pinned, that’s how you know it’s real. The anonymous owners of @usc.missedconnections on Instagram discussed zoom romance and the seductive mystery of having an admirer behind the screen.

Imagine Gossip Girl, but make it all horny college students deprived of casual touch. That is the drama of @usc.missedconnections. If you don’t avidly stalk their account, you either have an unheard of self-confidence that doesn’t require any external validation, you deleted your Instagram in a fit of quarantine frenzy, or you haven’t heard of them yet, and you’re very curious about the previously stated analogy.

See the bio of the @usc.missedconnections page: “Have a message for the person whose zoom you always pin or saw from 6 ft away? Anonymously send your missed connection below!” Below sits the google form where all the virtual action happens: the flirts, the cat calls, the compliments, and the subtle roasts. It really is a good time, somewhat making up for the lack of classroom banter that would normally occur.

I sat down with the students who began the account, and we chatted about the new sensation that is dominating everyone’s feed.

Tori: My roommates and I have been following your page pretty actively, as I think a lot of people have been recently.

@usc.missedconnections just surpassed 3000 followers in the few months since their origin on September 30th, 2020

T: It’s definitely very entertaining, especially with Zoom making everything a little bit more boring and separated. It’s been really fun to follow @usc.missedconnections and see what’s the tea! To begin, how did you come up with the idea of creating this account?

Connector 1: I was between USC and another school out on the East coast. Some good friends that I went out and visited there showed me the [Instagram] page at that school, and I was like, “Hey that's a cool idea, that looks like a lot of fun.’ I texted _(Connector 2)_. I was like, “Hey here’s some dumb idea, we’ll get 50 people, we’ll get 2 responses a day. It will be kind of fun to just post them,” and we just grew from there.

T: So how many posts do you guys get a day now?

Connector 2: It’s actually ticked up a lot in what, the past like 2 weeks-ish? For a long time we had a solid 100 just in the bank, and then we slowly [opened them], but it's been 200 plus starting just recently, which is weird. We started posting more frequently to catch up.

Connector 1: Yeah I presume we get about 30-ish on average a day.

Are you intrigued yet? About 30 lucky students across the online campus are being called out for some reason another, be it their sexy voice, their mustache, their wall decorations, or the way they eat their oranges. And on the flip side, about 30 people a day are shooting their anonymous shot through the account. With anonymity of course comes a certain audacity to get real freaky over the submission form. I wondered how freaky it could get.

T: Do you post all of the ones that come, or is there some sort of filtering process?

Connector 1: We’ve had a couple instances where people have been mentioned or certain organizations that have been mentioned have requested for us to take the post down, so we’ve always just respected that if we’re ever asked to take the post down for whatever reason.

Connector 2: I periodically will go through, and I’ll be like, “This one’s weird, I don't think we need to post that,” and then I'll delete it.

_(connector 1)_ idk if you know that I do that, but um…

Connector 1: Oh probably. I mean, I’ve deleted one before.

Connector 2: Yeah, when I’m doing them sometimes I’ll be like ‘this is a little weird how can we phrase this in a way that's not exactly… yeah.

T: Yeah, what’s like the line? Because I think a lot of the time some of the things can be kind of… creepy… I mean the whole thing is like…

Connector 1: (cuts in, chuckling) Kinda creepy 

T: (agreeing) Kinda creepy, right!

There have been submissions such as:

“To ____, Did you know if you rearrange the letters of Coronavirus you get “carnivorous”? Which makes sense because I want to spend the next 14 days of quarantine eating you”

and

“____ in BUAD 497, my only motivation for coming to class is being able to pin your video and look at your beautiful face for two hours”

Connector 1: It’s interesting, um, when we first started it, we talked, and the thing we were worried most about was like cyber bullying, and I personally haven't seen many posts. You get the offhand sarcastic comments, um, which are pretty funny sometimes, but I don’t know if we... we don't really have a set filter. If we feel like something’s over the bar, then we’ll kinda edit it out. Of course a lot of the time too if we’re iffy on something we’ll text the other person and be like ‘hey what do you think of this’ so, it's no distinct line, but our goal is never to make anyone uncomfortable.

T: Yeah, I think generally it's been pretty positive, a lot of affirming things. Even sometimes not romantic, like just positive comments which is pretty cool, and it's good to see that that's been going on. 

Aw so sweet, fellow Trojans getting along so well. But this is a juicy topic. Playing the role as the reporter, I had to get the inside scoop.

T: Do you ever get messages about yourself?

Connector 1: I’ve had 2

Connecter 2: Yeah he’s had 2, I haven’t had any and I’m mad about it. I want one

Connector 1: I gave you one

Connector 2: You gave me one but I knew it was from you so it didn’t mean anything.

T: So you’re not only the owners of the account. You’re sort of participating in the game as well.

Connector 1: Oh, it’s always a blast when like you’re reading through and you know the person who it's getting written about and you’re just waiting. Yeah, that’s like my favorite part of it, and also the guessing games sometimes are a lot of fun too.

Connector 2: For a long time people were scared to tag people that it was about in the comments, but now there’s no hesitation. People will just tag everyone, which I think is really fun.

Its also fun that we don’t give the full last name because then its kinda funny when you get a really generic “Sam B” or “Lucy J” and 6 different Lucy’s get tagged and half the time we know who it really is because we saw the last name and then edited it out.

T: Why don’t you include the full name?

Connector 2: I think it’s more fun. (shyly shrugs) It’s about keeping the mystery, you know? Who could it possibly be about? 

Connector 1: We do get a lot of requests though because of that, where people are like, “Hey, is this me? Can you tell me who sent this in?” and we're like “I don't know.”

Connector 2: Yeah people DM us every day asking for things, and also sometimes people don't understand that we have a forum in our bio and they send it in thru DM, their missed connections, which sort of ruins the anonymity and its sort of embarrassing for them bc we have to be like, “please submit it in our bio,” and they have to be like “oh god now they know”

T: It’s almost like a masquerade. 

Again, I am imagining Jenny Humphrey wearing her golden mask at the Constance Billard School for Girls Masquerade Ball, prancing around Nate Archibald without him having the faintest idea of who he will be kissing. Maybe this is a little different, but the spirit is there!

T: Looking through your posts of course, a lot of them are, “Oh, I have your screen pinned, I watch you all the time in class” Do you guys do that? Do you think that that's like, Zoom behavior now, or is that still cringe?

Connector 2: Idk if I’d pin for a whole class, but I’ve been known to take a look, and based on all the things we’ve gotten sent it I guess people do. If you’re in a lecture thats boring, fair enough. I can't fault you for that. It’s so weird right now, so who knows?

Connector 1: I think it's really fun also, like, people get really creative too. A lot of them are really general but we just posted one today that had a Kanye reference. We get poetry sometimes. I love the poets. It’s a lot of fun for us and I think other people get to read the more fun posts then, like “hey I saw you”, when saying “hey I saw you” does make it, I guess, easier to match, but it’s less exciting for everybody else

T: To match... going off of that, have you heard of any success stores?

Connector 2: I have not but I desperately want to know. I think if people get married we legally have to officiate the wedding. We’ll go public to officiate the wedding. We’ll break anonymity for that.

T: Do a little daft punk moment

Connector 1: Yeah exactly. The [ones] behind the mask.

T: Do you think you want to continue it next year or post COVID in general?

Connector 1: Yeah, I mean I want to.

They talked about potential future: color schemes, contemplating a purple theme or the classic USC colors. I can tell that the account is only growing from here. It’s not like there is any shortage of desperate college students!

T: That’s exciting. I’m excited to see where the account goes!

Connector 1: Us too

T: I’m also looking forward to hopefully getting a post about myself. I have not yet. I know you guys are hiding it

Connector 1: Oh yeah, well with the 200 post back log I’m sure it’ll come out soon...

[roskimag]

Fiona Apple’s Beautiful Disarray

By Lily Riccio

I first discovered Fiona Apple about 2 years ago when I heard her 1996 hit song, Criminal. On the surface, her music seemed to be filled with overwhelming rage as her deep voice competed with idiosyncratic ballads, but after listening to her for some time, I began to appreciate her extraordinary view of the world. Amidst a snarl of prose carried by her baritone vocals, Apple delivers sensitive observations through symphonies of eccentric sound. These observations are uniquely self-aware and retrospective, ranging from insecurity and heartbreak to rage and eventual self-acceptance. Each line suggests intent, placed carefully among multilayers of noise— a rush of piano keys, a clang of an unidentifiable drum, or an unexpected choral interlude. This experimentation creates a collection of beautifully disheveled songs which are each unforgettable in their own right. To me, her unparalleled lyrical writing is best introduced through the following 4 songs:

EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (2012): In her characteristically poetic way, Apple tackles the overwhelming nature of anxiety. She illustrates this through sound, beginning with a delicate melody and then rising into a swell of desperate shouts.

WEREWOLF (2012): Perhaps Fiona Apple at her finest, ‘Werewolf’ speaks of an all-consuming relationship, ultimately built on denial and repressed rage.

WALTZ, BETTER THAN FINE (2005): Through an uncharacteristic melody of playful piano chords, Apple muses on being content with doing absolutely nothing.

FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS (2020): Heightened by a symphony of clanging, Apple celebrates breaking free from a self-made prison. This latest track resembles closure, serving as an antithesis from her previous songs.

[roskimag]

The Good, the Drag, and the Ugly

By Ambika Nuggihalli

“Why don’t you start by telling me how you got into drag?” 

“This is a weird story. Lots and twists and turns. Not really. I was born in Chicago proper, specifically in what is essentially the West Hollywood of Chicago. It’s called Boystown,” Ren begins. 

I’m interviewing Ren Ye, a junior at USC. Ren grew up in one of the largest midwestern LGBTQ communities during the legalization of same-sex marriage and the commercialization of LGBTQ identity.

“I lived in an apartment on top of the queerest Target in Chicago,” they tell me.

“There are queer Targets?” I ask.

“Well, it’s ‘cause it’s right next to Boystown! It’s the only Target near there. By default there’s always just a rainbow section.” Ren’s apartment above Chicago’s Queerest Target was a different story. “My parents are pretty homophobic, which is ironic, because they chose to live half a block away from dyke central. I don’t know what they were trying to instill in their kids,” they joke.

Ren didn’t let their parents stop them from growing up alongside 30-year-old drag queens and sneaking out with their best friend Henry. 

“I would do my makeup with Henry in the room and then immediately have to scrub it off. Or if we were going out and meeting our friends half a block away, we’d have to take our makeup in our backpacks, say, ‘We’re going to a cafe to study,’ go to Target, and do our makeup downstairs. It was honestly really fun. Somehow I think of it as a teenage movie where we had to sneak away from the parents. It’s a queer thing to dramatize things into almost a theater play experience.” 

“It’s the inner theater kid in you,” I offer. There’s a long silence before Ren, ever the drama queen, utters back just one word:

“Die.” 

We laugh to ourselves. Suddenly, we remember this is supposed to be an interview. Ren looks sheepish. I say,

“You mentioned the commercialization of gay people and drag. Talk to me about that.” 

“This is my can. I’m opening it up. There are worms in there.” Ren makes a noise to show me just how many worms. It sounds like a lot of them. “I identify as a… I don’t even know what the right word for it is. But the for-now, kind of problematic term for it is ‘AFAB queen’ (assigned female at birth queen) or ‘Bio queen’ (biologically female queen). I like to consider myself just a drag queen, but a lot of gay men and people from the outside looking in like to categorize what drag is,” Ren explains. “There’s been another resurgence of categorizing people within queer spaces in the hopes that there will be some marketable identity out of it. That sounds very theoretical. Do you know what I mean?”

“I understand.” 

“Bitches like, keep trying to monetize us! Like, hop off my dick,” Ren rephrases. “Drag is an art form created by queer people to express something that wasn’t in the binary,” they lament. “Now that it’s in the binary, what do we have?”

“Do you find there are also divisions in drag as a person of color?” I ask.

“Storytime! My stage name is Lil Baby Bokchoy, and that came from my drag mom back in the day being piss drunk coming up to me like, ‘Your name,” and I was like, ‘What?’ and she was like, ‘Little. Baby. Bok. Choy.’ and I was like, ‘What??’ And she was like, ‘That’s your name now!’ and I like it. I think it’s a cute name.” 

Ren exchanges a smile for a grimace. “But once, I had a straight man come up to me and ask me, ‘What’s your name?’ and I was like, ‘Lil Baby Bokchoy,’ and he was like, ‘I would like to eat you up, like… I love Chinese food.’” 

What was cute and familial when spoken by a fellow Asian drag queen became fetishizing, even degrading in that man’s mouth. “I was so mad. I was so mad,” Ren frowns. 

They continue, “Being Asian within drag, it’s hard. If you come from a first-generation or very traditional background, most Asian practices don’t necessarily (a) support queer culture or (b) the arts. And it’s harder for people of color to get their own spots. Luckily, there’s also performance spots that specifically target the API community. There’s Miss Shu Mai--” “Yes! I follow her on Instagram!” I interrupt impolitely. Ren doesn’t seem to mind. “YES! I want her to be my drag mom so bad,” 

“Explain to me the whole drag mom thing.”

“Drag parents aren’t necessarily the age of your mom or your dad or anything like that. My drag mom, she’s 21. I’m 20. When I met her, I was 15 and she was 16. She’s a trans woman, she was kicked out of her house at a younger age. It wasn’t that sad of a story. She got up on her feet, she’s doing amazing things right now.

“She saw the struggle I was in and was like, let me help you. So I stayed with her for a while. She’s amazing. She used to do drag. She doesn’t really do drag anymore. A lot of trans women have problems with drag because of the categorizations within it now. It used to not be like this. It’s only within these last couple years trans people have had visceral responses to the drag community. It used to be a lot to do with race, but now it has a lot to do with gender. I’m not saying it has a lot to do with RuPaul’s Drag Race, buuuuuuuuuut… Yeah.”

I’m about to delve into the image of drag created by media like RuPaul’s Drag Race; an image that overwhelmingly depicts white cisgender gay men at the expense of other identities--especially transgender women of color--when Ren sees someone familiar in the cafe, Claire.

“I call Claire one of my sisters,” Ren says. “I hang out with her outside of drag. She helps me style my wigs because I don’t know how to style my wigs for SHIT,”

“Your wigs?” 

“Wigs. I have three wigs in the back of my closest. Fire hazard. Three of them clumped in a corner.”

“That hurts me, as someone who…” my voice drops and I look around the cafe, hoping no one else I know is in here. “I used to do cosplay,” I cough. Any effort I made to keep the rest of Cafe 84 from knowing about my middle school hobby is wasted as Ren practically screams, 

“YOU DID COSPLAY??” They jump out of their seat. “You never told me!!” “Because I don't do it anymore,” I choke, cheeks pink.

“So you’re a weeb.”

“Not anymore! Ex. Rehabilitated.” 

“You’re a weeb!”

“No I am not! I haven’t seen an anime in 5 years!”

“The fact that you know and you’ve counted how long it’s been means that you have a problem. It’s like when cigarette smokers are really into how long they’ve been off for because they keep thinking every day how long it’s been.” It is around now I realize I will be walking out at the end of this interview without any semblance of my dignity. 

“The point is. I know the wig struggle,” I assert weakly. I am grateful that Ren takes pity on me and lets me change the subject.

“I hate that in order to get volume...” they start, but halfway through, we finish the sentence in unison: 

“...you have to tease the wig!” 

“And it kills the wig! It kills it!” I feel my scalp tingle. 

“The glue has killed the wig. Everything has killed the wig. The last thing it has to kill is me,” they say, before slumping back into their chair with a smile. In my mind, I paint one last picture of an electric green wig strangling Ren in their sleep. It wouldn’t be the worst thing they have had to put up with in drag, not by a long shot.