The Bass Player

I’ve always been the bass player, both literally and figuratively.  In the late-80s and early-90s I played bass in a post-punk/neo-psychedelic band that was pretty serious, producing a four-song EP and two videos that all received airplay.  I enjoyed being on stage, but off to the side in semi-shadow, with the audience’s attention focused squarely on the singer and guitarist.  I worked for three decades behind the scenes in talk radio, which enabled me to be celebrity-adjacent as well as attending movie premiers or concerts.  And, for the past 22 years I’ve been an architecture columnist with the Globe and Mail.  Writing is great: once you get over the shyness of interviewing people, you spend the rest of the time inside your head creating a story.  You choose what the ‘characters’ in your story are going to say, and you paint word-pictures that transport your readers to different places…and sometimes different eras.  And then, once it’s printed, you enjoy (hopefully) the audience’s reaction via email.  No muss, no fuss, and no beady little eyes staring at you—the chief reason I’ve turned down offers to speak about architecture nine times out of ten.

And then, in June of 2025, I did drag for the first time, and everything changed. 

But first, let me tell you why I did drag: since 2009, Shauntelle (my wife) and I have attended an event in Lake George, New York called “Ohana: Luau at the Lake.”  It’s held at the Tiki Resort and, quite logically, has a Polynesian/Tiki theme.  It’s put on by a Shriners-type of group called the Fraternal Order of Moai (FOM), who raise money for the Easter Island Foundation.  The three-day event includes themed costume parties, cocktail competitions, live music, a drunken “room crawl,” seminars, vendors, a silent auction, and a pig roast.  It’s such fun we’ve only missed a few years.  As relatively new members of the FOM—and the first Canadian chapter to boot, eh?—our group decided to hold a coffee station the morning after the room crawl to assist sleepy-eyed, hungover attendees with starting their day.  We discussed doing a sort of retro-diner theme with the boys dressed as waitresses and the girls dressed as angry fry-cooks.  That idea evolved into “FOM Horton’s” with yours truly as the only one willing to put on heels and a wig.

As big fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’d already jokingly come up with a name, Irma Girdle, so in the weeks leading up to the event Shauntelle and I gathered up a cheap wig from a party store, nylons, a bra, and used pumps from a thrift store (I’m a 10.5 – 11 in women’s), nail polish from the dollar store, and a waitress outfit from Amazon.  We have a friend who used to do makeup tutorials at a big cosmetics company—and became known in the drag world for her skill at drawing eyebrows—so we put her in charge of Irma’s face.  And despite knowing I was going to be on display and the main photo-op for our FOM Horton’s “customers” I became more and more excited.  I thought about what Irma might say to people; how much sass would she have?  I began practicing walking in heels.  I wasn’t too bad at it.

When that morning came and the face went on, I loved watching the transformation in the mirror.  “Hey, you’re a really good-looking woman,” said almost every one of our friends.  I never got a lot of compliments when I was 27, so to get some at 57 was a big deal.  Is it weird to say I liked being pretty?  When I put the clothes on, something else happened.  I felt electric.  I’ve always loved how stockings look on a woman’s leg, but who knew I’d like how they feel on my leg?  Because of this, my body language changed as I walked over to our coffee station.  I had confidence.  I felt sassy.  Sexy.  Powerful.  Feminine.  And even sweet.  And all of it gushed out as I interacted with our coffee patrons.  I told people how beautiful they were, complimenting their eyes, hair, their smile.  I called shy people over to come take a photo with me.  I grabbed bums as I gathered couples closer for their photos with Irma, all to big laughs (if I did that in my boy clothes I’d get slapped or worse).  One short, cubby, beautiful young lady gave me paste-on gold freckles from her purse because I complimented her on the ones she had applied to her face that morning.  One man wanted me to sit on his lap, which I did, and he got handsy.  There was palpable joy in the room, and I was creating it.  I didn’t want it to end, so, after the two-hour event, I walked (in heels) over to the pool area and played bongos to the DJ’s music for a half hour, and then did my shift at the FOM’s merch table as Irma.

On the 6.5-hour drive back to Toronto, as we laughed about the event and shared memories, I gathered up the courage to say this to my wife: “I think I’d like to do drag again.”  And because she’s a creative, funny, liberal-thinking, wonderful person, she didn’t ask me if I was gay, but rather asked how she could help.  And that’s the day Irma Girdle, a lead singer rather than a bass player, was truly born.