- Monica West takes the stage and address
ready to fringe fuck your conservative relatives
into an 80s bathhouse.
(audience laughing)
Her wig, jet black, a dance of crow feathers,
back alley glamor sexed auntie in a pair of six-inch heels
disco ball bastard slut in the blood moon
she snaps her fingers and all my dollar bills
fly from my hand.
(audience laughing)
My rent, my next three meals,
all at the foot of her patent leather mercy.
I don't believe in psychiatrists.
I don't believe in the church of therapy,
but I do believe, I guess in healing.
I believe in my friends
who tell me they are sad or scared
but still need to get out of the house just for the night,
just for tonight.
I believe there is no shame
in showing up to the club in sweatpants.
(audience laughing)
I believe that every Saturday at 10:00 PM,
a drag queen streaks a beam of light
across the high points of her cheeks
and transports me to a new world.
Danez and I aren't amateurs.
We know better.
We make reservations.
(audience laughing)
We show up early to claim the good seat,
straights and rookie queers stand in the back.
We all our friends that Lush,
a bougie nightclub for homosexuals,
has the best fried chicken in Minneapolis.
(audience laughing)
Which doesn't really mean much,
considering the white people this far north
either under spice or over spice their food
like they're overcompensating for history.
(audience laughing)
For their ancestors' long legacy
of trying to eradicate flavor
from the entire fucking planet.
(audience laughing)
Believe it to these faggots to get it right.
Spice just right, cook just right and look just right.
Lips, eyeliners, tights, just right.
But we don't come here for the fried chicken.
We don't come here because the white people are better here
than they are in the real world 'cause after all,
after last call, they will all walk
into the world where their clean faces
have been the destination and the path of art I'm making
'cause after all, no blacks, no Asians,
no spice, no rice, no fats, no fems.
They pushed my friends and say,
"I'm sorry, I don't see you,
didn't see you standing there."
We don't come here to fight though we will fight.
Listen, when we show up to the party,
to the club, to our jobs at our worst,
know that we are always ready to be our best show out.
Show up, show the fuck up to a country
that uninvites you to the parade.
Show up anyways.
Monica West announces she moving to Omaha, Nebraska.
My first thought, why?
(audience laughing)
And then I think about Saturday,
the one after the election.
Or the one after the shootings.
Or the one the night before.
Or the one the night of.
I think about every inevitable Saturday that will follow,
every inevitable tragedy.
I think about the world on fire
and the music we choose to play anyway.
I wonder if I will ever be brave enough to leave one day.
If one day I will ever get out of this town,
this country, this world.
Sanctuary is not a place for the people we love
standing under the same impossible and temporary light.
How can I convince anyone to stay?
God, damn it.
How can I stop people from leaving?
We don't come here for sanctuary.
We know better.
We come here for Monica West,
for Victoria DeVille, for Kamaree Williams
for the way Kyle's ass looks tonight.
We come here because I think Danez
will make a great drag queen.
- [Woman] Yeah.
- Because I see a world where the people I love
sing their favorite songs.
I see a world where the crowd cheers
for their brown and perfect bodies.
I see a world where I stay
and I stand at the foot of the stage and watch them
and wait for them to reach down and take my money,
my hand, my fear of a world
that refuses to know their glory.
- [Woman] Woo!
(audience cheering and applauding)
- [Man] Damn!