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You wonder why this was not a thing before but here you are.

My Therapist Told Me I Should Be A Drag Queen.

My therapist told me I should be a drag queen.

I’ve mentioned the idea in the past and it appeals to me in a way, but I don’t know where to start. I run in a group of white guys getting engineering degrees, I myself am half-heartedly pursing a degree in electrical engineering. I don’t want to be an electrical engineer, and when people ask why I generally say something to the lines of “I like analog circuitry” or “I’m already a decent programmer, so I want to try something different”. Both of these are true in a vague sense.

At night I dream of going to a local thrift shop and buying a gold sequin dress and match it to my purple scarf and shoes. Strutting at the local gay bar as a charactature of beauty. I worry I would be appropriating the aesthetics of a minority community without actual stake. Being a white guy with mild autism in a engineering field I definitely feel out of my depth.

I like to think of myself as a story teller. Long winded stories leading nowhere with no moral or purpose. Short vignettes of no intent. Creating a character is a form of story telling. Looking at who I am now and saying internally “How can I change myself to fit this situation better, to be more comfortable”. I like who I am now generally but who I am now wouldn’t purchase a gold sequin dress. What is drag but a forming of a character and playing who you are up and loudly.

“What people define as normal falls within a very small pattern of behaviors” A book I read sometime, I don’t recall which. I at 22yrs of age have learned I am autistic, or ‘not neurotypical’ if you want to sound pretentious about it. I sorta figured I was since high school, I’m generally anti social, I don’t generally like physical touch, especially unexpected sensory input and I have completionist tendencies for specific projects.

Talking to my therapist who I have also learned has autism recently, she mentioned autistic people tend to get along really well with autistic people. This makes sense to me on a broad level. I’ve also recently read that LGBTQ+ folks have higher rates of autism then cisfolks. The few folks I’ve met with whom I’ve clicked with very quickly tend to be somewhere on the gender spectrum, and outside the range of neurotypical folks. I find this intersection very interesting and hope in the future to find more folks different then myself in identity, but similar in crucial ways as many of my friends now are a little typical.

One individual I met named Jack I clicked with instantly. I was failing a circuits class and was very depressed at the time, unsure what I was doing with my time in college. In the circuits class Jack was building a sound filter, they had a guitar some knobs and chips and I kinda just started to talking with them. We later grabbed dinner and had a wonderful time talking about all sorts of things including their gender identity, music, analog circuits and school. I often reflect back on this time when considering the kind of folks I want to have in my life in the future. They had such a different background then myself but we clicked and were fast friends. I soon left Colorado as I was in a really bad headspace and generally depressed, but I look fondly on the time I knew Jack.

My therapist told me I should be a drag queen. The sentiment itself I find funny as I don’t know to what extent therapists tell people what to do at all. And I am very likely not remembering very correctly, but that was my interpretation. And I know that we get along on a level more then impartiality, not friends per se, but I asked and she said we were close professional acquaintances, which I think is a therapy term for friends.

She said she was watching a show, don’t recall which one, where one of the characters started as out straight laced, turned to drag for self expression, then ended up digging it and coming out. She thought of me, which is sweet of her. I’m always surprised when people think of me outside of direct contact.

I think the opportunity to act confident, and maybe in a small way appropriate the aesthetic just for a night would be fun and interesting, and maybe as well find someone with similar interests, someone I can get along with on the level some is hard to reach. Maybe then with a personal in and invitation I could do drag.