You can’t spell “drag” without RuPaul Charles.
Well, you can, but who would want to? The queen of drag has left a marvelous, majestic mark on the entertainment world – from his breakout ’90s single “Supermodel (You Better Work)” to his long-running, Emmy-winning reality TV competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to now a new online book marketplace Allstora.
But when you read his memoir, “The House of Hidden Meanings” (Dey Street Books, 239 pp., out now), you find more than the gorgeous Glamazon. You find a little boy whose mother reeled after his father left, a struggling teenager in search of identity, a determined man who faced addiction and got sober: All the pieces that make up the flawed, fabulous man you know today.
“There’s so much more to life and to our existence and to consciousness than we can put into words,” Charles, 63, says over the phone during a whimsical, wide-ranging conversation from Los Angeles. “That’s why ‘the house of hidden meanings’ really resonates with me because I’m always interested in what lies beneath.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Question: In the book, you write about a psychic who told your mother while she was pregnant that she would have a boy who would be famous. Are you someone who goes to psychics, or do you believe in astrology?
Answer: I believe in everything. Here’s the thing: We are energy. And what happens is a medium is someone who can read both high frequencies and lower frequencies. So we carry with us different frequencies. And so what they’re reading is the energy frequencies that you carry in your body.
You write a lot about your early performances before you made it big, like on “The American Music Show” in Atlanta. What do you remember as the most ridiculous thing you did, or something you can’t believe you got away with from that time?
It was all pretty ridiculous, and that was the point. The point was to be irreverent, and to be different from the typical facade that our culture forced us to accept. So we wanted to create another reality or an absurd reality that felt more real than the reality society wanted us to accept.
I grew up loving “Monty Python.” As a kid, it used to come on PBS, and I realized that’s my tribe, those are my people, because they didn’t take life too seriously. They love to laugh and nothing was off the table in terms of poking fun at it. So when I found “The American Music Show,” I knew that these were my people, because they had that same sense of humor, that same sense of what the world is, and what the world could be. So it was all pretty ridiculous.
Your drag started as more punk and has changed over the years. There’s a part in the book where you mention that as you became more femme in your drag, you became more desirable to men. I’m curious about that transition.
Drag sort of fell onto me. It wasn’t something I set out to do. It was something that I realized could work for me. Obviously first (I was) more punk and more political in that it was poking fun at the plastic ideal of what femininity is. It sort of challenged all of that. And then I realized from there that it was very effective, even as raggedy as it was, somehow it got people’s attention in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
When I moved to New York, and really needed to make money and needed to get the attention of the club promoters to allow me to go-go dance at their club for $50 bucks and then make tips, I made it more sexy. I started dressing like a “Soul Train” dancer.
And then, when I hit the big time, I changed the image to Glamazon, which is not sexy. It actually took the sex out of it and made it more caricature, more Disney, more couture. Caricature and couture.
You lived in so many places including San Diego, Atlanta, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Where do you feel most like yourself?
I carry me wherever I go. And this is something that life teaches you: No matter where you go, there you are, and you have to be present in that moment. And if you can master that, being in the moment, you can feel at home anywhere.
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That’s a message that a lot of people try to keep in mind.
It takes work, though. You don’t get this stuff overnight. It takes a lifetime sometimes, to be able to sit in your own feelings. What would happen is if most people allow themselves to be in the moment, the first thing that would come up is how much pain they’re in, how much residual pain from childhood and all that. So to be able to live in the moment, be in the moment and to be comfortable in the moment, you have to work through a lot of past hurt, which is why most people don’t, which is why most people are looking for distractions, like a cellphone or drugs or alcohol or shopping or anything to not be in the moment.
You talked about addiction to drugs and alcohol in your book, between (husband) Georges (LeBar) and you as well. What has your sobriety journey been like and how do you maintain it?
The sobriety journey is really about reparenting yourself. It’s about learning how to process feelings. Because drugs and alcohol are a symptom of a much deeper issue. Getting over the alcohol or getting over addiction, that’s the easy part. It’s then what do you do with those feelings? How do you process those feelings, because for lack of the ability to process those feelings, you reach for the easiest thing, which is to try to drown them out with food or drugs or sex or alcohol or whatever you can get your hands on. So the big issue is day to day, how do you process these feelings?
One of the things that’s a constant is I stretch. I pray. I meditate. I try to keep an equilibrium. And one of the other things that I’ve added to my sobriety journey is keeping a relationship with that 5-year-old kid who lives inside of me who I sort of shushed up, or quieted through my drug use. But creating that relationship with him – in fact, I have a picture of myself at 5 years old on my phone, so every time I look at my phone, I see that 5-year-old – and I’m able to say: “Hey, hey kiddo. Hi. I’m here for you.”
If you could talk to your mom right now, what would you want to say to her?
I would say: “You were right. You were absolutely right. And everything that you had hoped that would come true for me absolutely has and more.” She could have never predicted that I’d have a second bite of the apple. She got to see the very beginning of “Supermodel” and all that kind of stuff, the song I had, she got to see the very beginning of that taking off.
What do you think the future of drag is?
I don’t know what the future of drag is (laughs). I don’t know. I really don’t. I do know that I have so much fun with it. I have fun. I think drag has always been so much fun. Have you ever done drag, David?
I’ve worn a wig and heels, but haven’t done the full makeup. It’s fun, that part at least.
Well, I recommend that you do it and maybe David, maybe you are the future of drag.
To hear you say that is very special. Back to the book, there’s a bit story about you shooting a gun out of curiosity. You write the power of it was temporary. And I’m wondering, do you think a big reason why we fight about so much in this country has to do with a fear of losing power?
There are only two emotions, love and fear. And every other emotion after that are subcategories of love or fear. And I think that we have had 40 years of undereducation in this country. So when you have people who are undereducated, (they) tend to seek power in superficial ways. And of course, superficial power is just temporary. Real power comes from within. It comes from knowing yourself, learning what you are, and what the world is. We have so much fighting because we have so (many) people involved in trying to get temporary power. That’s really a lose-lose situation for all of us.
Would there ever be a world where you see “Drag Race” ending or you stepping down as host?
All things end. It’s all good (laughs). And yes, there will be a day when it will stop and I will stop.
Back to the power thing. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” And that is a quote from a very learned person. And it’s simple as that.
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Relationships play a very big part in the book. What’s your best advice for someone who is unsure of whether someone is a good fit for them in their life?
You put the focus on, not if someone else is a good fit for them, it’s putting the focus on making sure that you are whole, that you’re not using this other person as a way to complete yourself or as a way to find someone to babysit the child that lives inside of you. When you become the guardian or the parent to that child who lives inside of you, the person who you should be with will naturally gravitate toward you.
What do you encourage anyone who’s on their own journey to find their own house of hidden meanings?
First, you look inside. The calls are coming from inside the house. You needn’t look further than your own consciousness. That’s where you start. The yellow brick road. You don’t need to go to Oz. You start inside with that child who lives inside of you.
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