‘Tis the season to express all of humankind’s sentiments. Especially a couple that, for too long, have been given short shrift.

The IU dorm I lived in during college also housed the National Championship Swim Team. Mark Spitz lived one floor below. One of the also rans on the squad, who’d have been a starter at any other school, was George from Boston who lived across the hall from me.

His obnoxious braggadocio was compounded by a thick accent and thunderous laugh. No one cared for him. His saving grace was gorgeous looks. Tall, blond and delicious, he was constantly smuggling girls into the dorm. And it was rumored outside of the dormitory there were boys too. He didn’t seem to care what anyone said about him.

While the other swimmers blustered about getting laid, George the Swimmer left no doubt. Several nights a month after a successful trip to pound town, he’d dismiss the girl, throw a towel over his shoulder then parade to the showers completely nude. His perfect swimmer’s build trailed by almost a foot the head of his still erect penis.

I had an affection for George because he was so universally despised and resented. And despite all of his conquests he seemed lonely. I helped him write his papers and even took a history final for him once.

He was always teasing me to just be who I was without clarifying what that meant. He tried to persuade me to accompany him to “special” parties he said I would love (he didn’t call them gay so I was afraid they would be orgies which I was not prepared for). I resisted.

Oddly enough, I wanted no part of George physically. The stakes were too high. In an environment of jocks, there was always the possibility it was a set-up to ridicule me.

When he coaxed me to go with him to a bar in Indianapolis I finally relented. He thought it was one of the sickest, most hilarious places he’d ever been. Again, he insisted I would really dig it.

In the late 1960’s not all driver’s licenses included photos. If you were underage all you had to remember was the particulars of your fake persona. The ersatz id George provided me was of Czech lineage. The last name was a polysyllabic doozie that contained every consonant imaginable. The sly bouncer challenged me, “spell it.”

After a rapid-fire recitation, the guy looked like he didn’t know what hit him. “OK, you’re in.”

Once inside there was a sense of danger because the place had a history of police raids. Amidst this tension, everyone was packed into tables surrounding a small stage waiting for the show to begin. What the nature of the performance would be I hadn’t a clue. My imagination was leaning towards donkey acts in Tijuana.

Then it started. Men in way too much makeup, wigs, jewels and dresses. Each one lip synched songs from yesteryear with the predominate theme being the man who done them wrong. The tunes also included a hefty helping of overwrought self-affirmation.

The performers were nasty, aggressive, and fat. Some of them were so big they couldn’t fit into a dress. Their gowns appeared to be fashioned out of bedsheets. It was both fascinating and flabbergasting. Like discovering an ancient, unknown civilization.

A few years before the night of awakening, in the same week Pope John XXIII died, I’d been jumping on my bed and broke a couple of slats. (The two events were not related.) My Dad decided to teach me a lesson and refused to fix the bed until he had time over the weekend. For the next couple of nights I slept on an incline.

I watched the Pope’s funeral and noticed the angle of his bier was the same as my bed. So I wrapped myself in a sheet and assumed the deceased Papa’s position. My brothers and neighborhood kids filed past the catafalque to pay homage.

That night at The Famous Door I knew exactly what these guys were doing on stage. They were just harmless kids pretending.

George the Swimmer left Bloomington after one year. I only saw him once again, in a Boston Disco about five years later. In our brief encounter he greeted me with the same smile that simultaneously laughed at me and with me. To this was added a look of wonder that I’d actually come out.

And whether Pope John XXIII was my first drag, it was for purposes of this post. The exact chronology escapes me, but at the same point in my childhood there were basement performances for my family as Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Not to mention a Halloween as the Beverly Hillbillies’ Miss Jane. At the door I mimicked her veiny neck, fussy neurosis and cooed “Oh, Mr. Drysdale.” It made the adults laugh.

Then to humor the kids after we piled back into the bed of the pickup, I sat nonchalantly with my knees spread so that everyone could see up my skirt. I couldn’t believe such a simple gesture could elicit such howls of glee.

In addition to childish make believe, there was one other takeaway from that first show. To me the controlling emotions of The Famous Door’s Queens were vengeance and wrath. A drag observation that has held true for most of my life.

I wish Queens of all genres, as well as everyone else, a Happy Christmas.

Detail from the portal to where I dream.