NYC Drag Queen Of The Week- Lady Havokk
There is no shortage of drag queens in NYC. You can’t throw a rock without hitting some twink in a dress thinking he’s got what it takes to shantay down the runway just because he’s seen every season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race while practicing YouTube makeup tutorials. There’s a difference, though, between learning how to just paint your face and turning that face into a work of fucking art. This weekly series highlights the queens who stand out from the crowd and rock those heels til they bleed.
Meet Lady Havokk.
You call yourself NYC’s Premiere Asperger Drag Queen. How does having Asperger’s affect your drag?
It actually has helped me a lot in my drag career. I have definitely seen myself evolve not just as a drag queen but as a general human being. I feel like my Asperger’s is still there, but it doesn’t affect me as much anymore.
How did Asperger’s affect you before?
I was much more anxious, more paranoid. I would freak out in public spaces for absolutely no reason.
What inspired you to start drag?
I’ve always had drag inside my heart. I wanted to be a performer since I was little. It was finding my medium and my medium, I guess, was drag.
There is now female drag queens and trans drag queens. Drag is constantly evolving. What defines drag today?
The only thing that defines drag today is literally putting on face, body, make-up going out and doing a performance. You don’t have to be a man, you don’t have to be a woman, you don’t have to be gay- it doesn’t matter who you are as long as you want to do drag and you want to go out there, that’s really what drag is.
Photo Credit – Maro Hagopian
Is getting on Drag Race a goal for you?
I’ve been auditioning because I want people to experience my side of drag, which is the autistic spectrum Asperger’s side of drag, which not a lot of people really know about. There are people out there with disabilities that want to do things that people expect that they can’t do.
With the success of Drag Race has it caused drag queens to raise the bar?
I definitely think the influence of Drag Race has made people come out and try more experimental things and realize that just being a pageant queen or a comedy queen isn’t the only thing. The difference from ten years ago is it was such a small tight-knit family where everything we did was brand-fucking-new and now I feel like we’ve seen it all. Now, it’s about trying to find that little bit that nobody has ever done and creating that shock value.
What’s been your worst night in drag?
Two years ago I was performing and I was live singing for the first time and I grabbed a rafter in a bar, thinking it would support my weight, and the rafter collapsed and I fell, hitting a table but I kept performing.
How has the NYC drag scene changed since you started performing?
Over the years New York has definitely changed. Brooklyn used to be very grungy and dive-y and nobody gave a shit about coming out and getting paid. Everybody just wanted to go party and now it’s very bougie and there’s two thousand drag queens that show up in a look and they’re like “Where’s my fucking money?”
Is it expensive to be a drag queen?
All I have to say is “good luck” because you’re going to be poor.
Follow Lady Havokk on Facebook. You can see her the third Thursday of the month at 9pm at the Metropolitan Bar, the first Saturday of the month at Disco Risqué and on June 26th at Rock Bar.
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