Dragging Mason County: funny, fabulous and full of hormones

19 Nov 2023 -

"Look, I've always been very fashion forward, Peter," Alan replies. "And if people can't handle it, then that's between them and their god."

"Fashion requires wearing clothing," I say, wiping sweat from my eyes. "Your short-shorts barely count as fabric."

Peter and Alan are best friends in the small town of Mason, set in contemporary times but with Southern accents redolent of Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams. In the sweltering summer before their final year of high school, the BFFs are funny, fabulous and full of hormones. Peter, our narrator, describes them as "not the six-packed gays you see selling supplements while you're scrolling." Aside from being constantly sweaty, Peter is self-conscious about his "li'l floppy tiddies" and bacne. But his biggest problem is, as a character points out, "You know, that thing you  do where you're dead silent until you're not, and then you say something completely devastating and people run away screaming."

Peter may protest, "I'm not, like, this vile hate-spewing-rage machine, you know." but Alan demurs, "Know thyself Peter. You can't ignore the chance to be absolutely sadistic to someone who was asking for it." Within the first few pages of Dragging Mason County, Peter unleashes his vicious tongue on one of the other of the few gays in the village, and becomes an instant pariah. In an attempt to spin his way out of the mess, and to impress the hot new boy in town, Peter becomes the producer of The First Annual Mason County Drag Extravaganza, an event created, to impress the hot new boy in town, by Alan's drag alter-ego Aggie Culture. The always invigorating 'Let's put on a show' plot is then enhanced by wig snatching, closets exploding, gay bashings, internalized (and externalized) homophobia, a lot of social media trolling, and a few fun factoids about the fundamentals of drag. Normally I would avoid quoting as many one-liners as I have, but that is something else that Dragging Mason County is packed with: wit. Specifically gay-speak drollery and drag derived put-downs and pick-me-ups.

One would expect nothing less as Dragging Mason County was written by Curtis Campbell, the director and co-writer of Gay for Pay with Blake and Clay and Blake & Clay's Gay Agenda, two of the funniest theatrical productions of the last century. But of course a relentless string of one-liners and quips, no matter how perfectly timed and brilliantly composed, cannot sustain a work of literature. Fortunately, like the adventures of Blake and Clay, there is also a lot of homo heart lurking in the pages of Dragging Mason County. I defy anyone to not care deeply and intensely about Peter, Alan and their plucky band of amateur dragsters. Campbell is a very benevolent satirist and an equal opportunity dispenser of mockery and vituperative. In fact that may be the one flaw to be found in Dragging Mason County: people who live in small towns and high school students may be basically good people, even though some do vile things, but there are also real villains out there and Campbell's sugar/sequin coating of homophobes, religious zealots, misguided family members, mean girls, and hunky alpaca farmers, stretches credulity at a few crucial moments. 

Some of the pulled punches may be related to Dragging Mason County being considered "Young Adult Fiction," recommended for ages 14 to 18 with a reading level of "Lexile HL860L" (whatever that means). While still probably fated to be shadow banned by moralistic Catholic librarians, Campbell cleverly substitutes drag for sexuality while never denying the sexual and sensual allure of drag. It is a tightrope act in which there are many potential tumbles but no fatal falls. In a post-Drag Race world, lip-synching and creative cross-dressing is apparently as legitimate as Shakespeare. Even Peter's negative assessment of the art form is neutral. "It's not that I hate drag, I just have no opinion on the matter. I consider myself dragnostic. Alan not only loves drag but loves doing drag. But to me, drag is a lot like playing the cello or doing the math with all the triangles. I can respect the amount of skill, craft and determination that goes into it without getting any joy from the result. Not to mention the fact that doing drag just paints another target on your back. This target just happens to be painted with eyeliner."

That 'target' not only drives the plot but becomes thematically central as a metaphor for both homosexuality and homosexual desire, and inverse to the way that Buffy used vampires in high school as a metaphor for the horrors of sexuality and adulthood. While I may be well past the stage of high school hungering for acceptance through a spotlight, or wanting the new boy in town to like me (though I doubt any of us ever do get totally past either of those states of mind), I instantly identified with Peter's angst. And with his dawning awareness that all the other characters have their own angst that make them such easy targets of his "devastating" tirades. As RuPaul famously, and wisely, stated, "We're all born naked and the rest is drag." When I started reading Dragging Mason County, I was unaware that it was a young adult novel (I had been lured to it by the ads that were a part of  Blake & Clay's Gay Agenda's pre-show) yet I never felt pervy or aged out. A little out of time, as my high school years were social media free, drag was a joke not a vocation, and coming out was not even a concept. Dragging Mason County becomes an opportunity to marvel at how far we've come, how much is the same, and how far we still have to go. But most of all, Dragging Mason County is so consistently funny, so full of devastating lines that leave one screaming with laughter, that the category it belongs in is "All Ages."