So, what’s your name in and name out of drag?
My name in drag is Pacha. Full name, Pachacunti. Out of drag, my name is Corey.
And what pronouns should I refer to you in drag and out of drag?
In drag, I use they, she pronouns, and out of drag, we’re figuring it out.
Okay. Yeah.
But it’s been like hovering on they, he.
Okay. Love.
Yeah.
And how old are you?
I turn 22 in under a month.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Excellent. So can you describe your gender and sexual identity, if it’s comfortable?
So I like solidly identify as bisexual or queer. That took a long time to get to, but that is pretty solid. In terms of my gender… it was so clear! And then I started drag, and now it’s all weird. Where I’m transmasc, but because I do drag, the connection of my gender expression gets all wonky. And then my connection to my gender as seen through my sexuality gets all weird when it’s like… I’m transmasc, but I heavily identify… *touching eyebrows* Sorry, I just got my eyebrows done and I keep wanting to touch them.
They look great.
Thank you. I bleached them and that was a mistake.
And then I went and got them tinted and shaped.
Okay. Yeah.
But I have grown to become a lot more connected to things related to womanhood or femininity than I was for a lot of my life because of drag. And realizing, oh, my bisexuality feels a lot more connected to sapphic-ness than I would have otherwise assumed. Which then makes being transmasc, and also being on T, and having gotten top surgery and having a beard, way more complicated, I guess. But it’s on my mind all the time.
Yeah. So where are you from and how long have you been in New York, if that’s not where you’re from?
Wait, where in Brooklyn?
Well, that’s where it gets less cool. No, I’m from Park Slope, which is beautiful.
It’s like the most beautiful place on the planet. But it’s also like… the way that I explain it, also I live here now, and so the way that I explain it in terms of where I grew up and where I live now is they’re about as far as you can be, as far as living in New York, while still living in New York.
Uh-huh.
Yeah. I feel a hallmark of being from New York is that you don’t live up near a bunch of trees, except I grew up down the street from Prospect Park and now I live next to this park. So I do live near trees.
It’s a luxury, honestly. Yeah. But I do think that I’m better than other people because I grew up in New York. I do think I’m cooler than other people because I grew up in New York.
It’s kind of bad.
So, tell me a little bit about Pacha. How would you describe that drag persona of yours?
So, when I started doing drag, I leaned very heavily or I identified very heavily with the concept or the identity of a drag thing. Despite the fact that my drag is and always has been super feminine.
Because when I thought about it, it was an expression of the femininity that had been and has been denied to me as a trans masc person.
It’s not female impersonation in the way that a drag queen is expected to be female impersonation. To me, my drag is much more like when I put on my makeup, I look like a drag queen. The point is not to look like a woman.
I’m supposed to look like a drag queen. So, for the first year, year and a half of doing drag, I was like, “I’m a drag thing.” I’m a feminine drag thing, but like that’s what it is.
And then I realized if people look at me and they see a drag queen and my thing is I want to look like a drag queen, it’s like, well, then I should just use that label. And then I was thinking about how I would want people to refer to me in drag. And I realized, first of all, no one ever uses ‘him’ for me in drag because I look super femme.
And also, I actually don’t know if that’s something I would want, as I was thinking about it more and more and being referred to more and more just like by my pronouns in drag.
There is one big difference between my ‘in drag’ look and affect, and my ‘out of drag’ look and affect. And that is out of drag, he, him is great.
And in drag, well, I’m putting all this effort! I put three hours of effort for a two-hour show. The most you can do is at least recognize that effort!
And that shift happened pretty recently. I did an interview with nightlife reporting group. I don’t know what they would call themselves, but an online magazine or whatever.
And they referred to me as drag queen. And I was like, oh, that makes sense.
And since that article came out, I’ve been much more like comfortable using feminine terms, which I think also has to do with the much more recent things that have come into my drag. I started padding like last week.
Was I there for that? Maybe.
Yes. That show on Saturday.
Yeah. It was JJ.
Yeah. I think was the second…? Yeah. It was the second show I’d ever padded at. As I started incorporating these more explicitly feminine things into my drag, I realized one of the things that’s really cool about my drag is like I don’t want to look like that out of drag.
How would you describe Pacha?
I would say like pop princess.
Do you think the personality that you’re performing is an extension of you?
I think of Pacha as the pop girly, princessy stuff that, as a kid, if I expressed interest in, it was like. Oh, well, all the trans stuff you’re doing is suddenly no longer valid. Cause you’re interested in this stuff.
Pacha is a way to like engage with that.
Okay. Yeah.
So it does feel like an extension of me. And I was talking about this the other day with a friend, about how much is a drag persona, an extension of yourself versus a persona. And for me, doing femme drag is such an extension of like being trans masc.
I literally went on testosterone to get rid of my hips. And now I put up two inches of upholstery foam onto my hips to perform. And yeah, because it creates this huge distinction between my out of drag self that feels very like androgynous in a way that like extends into both, versus starting femme and going more androgynous, but doesn’t even touch the masculine side of things.
Can you remember the first time you did a drag performance or you go into drag?
This is one of my favorite things, or I think it’s really funny, because every drag performer you talk to will have like five different anniversaries.
And what it results in is all these younger performers being like, well, I’m still under a year in drag. But you’ve been doing drag for two and a half years…? But it’s like, oh, but the first time they actually were “capital D” doing drag was under two years. But you’ve been doing it for two years!
What I consider my first time in drag was a month before I actually performed. But it was bad.
I think of myself as having the first time I got into drag, which was somewhere between May and July of 2023. And then I got COVID.
And so I couldn’t perform. And thank you Hush Bar in Hell’s Kitchen for giving me COVID. Sorry for the name drop. No, but my first performance was on August 1st, 2023. And I had a blue face and a pink wig. That was a hard front that I’d had for four years at that point.
And my parents came, and I was underage.
And my twin came, who was also underage.
And I did Brick House by the Commodores
because it was my mom’s favorite song.
And I was like, there is a very small chance that I’m going to get on stage and hate this, so I might as well do something that my mom will enjoy.
But it was awesome. And I loved it.
And then I would proceed to have five more anniversaries of the first time I felt I was doing drag consistently. And then the first time that I did drag where my makeup looked okay. And then the first time that I did drag and I had my eyebrows blocked.
What did your makeup look like the first time?
It was a light blue that was like an almost purple. I didn’t have foundation, and I was kind of scared of foundation.
And when they would put makeup on my face for the shows, I would actually start crying. So I had really zero makeup exposure outside of theater and also playing around with shitty drag in middle school. ’Cause I was really into Drag Race in middle school. I stick out less now, but for a long time I felt I was the odd one out. And so it felt more comfortable to associate myself with things and kings. Even if then in those shows I was like, well, what am I?
But I think the problems in the drag scene that have to do with isolation and ostracization are really a problem with the LGBT community at large, of cis gay men not even space for other people in their communities.
Last semester I wrote a paper about drag for one of my classes. ‘Sex Work in the City’ was the class. And I wrote this paper about the connection between sex work and drag and burlesque and the exchanging of money for intimacy.
We talked a lot about intimate labor in that class. And so I was looking at how the dynamic of giving a tip and that being the only moment of physical contact that you can make with a performer - what is the connection between that and sex work? Especially considering that a lot of drag performers are also sex workers. But drag is not inherently sex work.
I find this really interesting, but for that paper I had to preface ‘I’m not going to talk about kings in this paper.’ And it’s not because I don’t think it’s relevant or that I don’t think drag kings exist or that their art is not valid.
It’s just literally a completely different conversation.
But I think that that when people say that they want kings on Drag Race. There should be a whole different space for kings or for everyone. But Drag Race, in the way that it exists right now.
I mean. This is a problem that I know that a lot of my king friends have when they do competitions.
They’ll make it really far, and then the top two lip sync will be a Donna Summer ballad or Hallucinate by Dua Lipa. And how is a campy king supposed to do a diva ballad or a pop girly dance number when that’s not the kind of drag they do?
They’re expected to lose. And so they go into these competitions like, well, I know I’m not going to win.
You should be able to have the delusion that you’re going to win, but they’re not even granted the space to be able to have that delusion. It would be nice if they could win.
And then it creates this environment of competitions are either audience-based or judge-and-audience-based. But I was in this competition, and I’m not going to name names. And if the person hears it, well then change your behavior.
I was told we were told going in that it was going to be 50% audience vote, 50% judge vote. We get there and the judge says, I don’t want to vote. So it’s going to be all audience vote, except there was one king who did better than me. I mean, he did better than me partially because I was in new shoes and so I was a little slippy - but he looked better than 90% of the other performers.
I would say that it was us two and one other person looked the best. He, I, and one other performer performed the best. And neither of us was in the top two. And I was like, well, he probably should have been, except he wouldn’t have won the lip sync, and he said he wouldn’t have won lip sync because it was Hallucinate by Dua Lipa.
What is he supposed to do with that song?
’Cause you can’t even really act it. And I love Dua Lipa, there are all these pauses that are perfect for a split. But if you’re doing a funny number... that’s why the judge vote exists.
So that if he performs really well, but the audience isn’t going to vote for him, they put him in the top two - except the judge didn’t, because the judge absolved themselves from voting.
And most competitions in the city are completely audience vote. And it creates this thing that the judge can say all they want. Like, oh, well this person should be in the top two, but you’re creating this environment in which they’re not being voted for. You are just as responsible.
And I know that the performer I’m thinking of who was at this competition with me went to Drag Wars and had a horrible experience and also got misgendered on stage by the host. Because this is also a thing of being referred to as girls. And even if there’s a king in the cast. Or even the vocal expressions of, yes diva. Well, that’s a trans guy who’s a king!
And you’re calling him a diva.
Not to be nitpicky, but it’s also against the entire point of drag as a form of self-expression.
This is why I personally don’t see Drag Race as the place for kings. ’Cause I don’t think kings would do badly. Drag Race is just already hard for people mentally. I don’t want to see someone go on and just be like absolutely destroyed and also get misgendered every week.
It would be that weird thing of if a drag king went on and they changed all the lingo like when there was the first trans man on Drag Race, where it went from “may the best woman win” to “may the best drag queen win.”
Except if it then were to change to be drag artist, everyone would be online complaining about it.
And I know that ’cause people still complain about losing transphobic language in the show. People still complain about it. And well, maybe that’s because that’s a slur.
We don’t need to have that on national television. If people are still complaining about that, I can’t even imagine what it would be like for the first drag king on Drag Race to experience like the harassment.
I wonder if that’s going to happen.
That would be crazy.
Do you have one pose that represents your drag performance?
That’s a really good question. Someone once asked me after I performed what to me is the cunt factor. And when I was responding, I thought, what do I do all the time in my numbers?
And I realized one thing that I really like to do is ’cause I wear these ginormous shoes - I love a heel clap and I love a split, and I love doing both of those in most numbers that I do.
Okay, yeah.
Maybe it’s also that I can’t really do any stunts other than a split, so I’m very intentional about when I do splits in my numbers. And you know what. I have people do splits and they can’t actually do the split. And that drives me crazy.
I saw a tweet once, actually many times people say this a lot - if your pussy doesn’t touch the ground, don’t do the split. Don’t do it. It looks bad. I’m sorry, it looks bad.
And if you can do it one day and then you can’t do it three days later, three days later don’t do it. Or stretch. I don’t have to stretch ’cause I’m special and awesome. No. I should stretch ’cause I’m 22 and want to be doing this for a long time.
But stunts are hard. That’s why they’re stunts. That’s why they’re cool. If you can’t do it properly, don’t do it. Do more other interesting things. I saw a tweet once that asked what are your pet peeves in drag? And someone responded saying, my pet peeves are when someone does more than two splits in a number unless they’re doing like four or five.
’Cause what always ends up happening is the first one is mistimed, and then it undermines the second one.
And I realized after I saw that tweet, every time I do two splits in a number, it looks bad. And one of them is always mistimed, and it always undermines the second one.
And then I learned that I could do a somersault at that camp show. I mistimed my split, and then I had that big greedy quick key change, and I was like, shit, I have to amp it up.
And I was standing behind the curtains at Henrietta Hudson. Thinking, what is the one thing I could plausibly do that I won’t hurt myself doing? And you know what? I did it.
And then I did it on the Pink Metal bar.
But that’s to say, I feel for me, one of the defining things in my drag is that consistently I can do a split and it doesn’t look painful. And I don’t bruise my knees when I do splits anymore.
And that is something. If you’re bruising yourself every time you do drag, be careful. I feel a lot of drag performers are in their twenties and they’re not thinking about the long-term effects of this really intense dance on their bodies. Wear knee pads. And if you aren’t going to wear knee pads, be careful with your knees. You only get two! We only have one pair of knees. If you are repeatedly slamming them into the ground, you are going to break them.
That all to say, I feel my distinguishing thing is like I will always do a split in my number because I can do it and because people eat it up. So a split and the heel clack.
I love that.
Did I say I was chatty? I’m chatty. And I have a lot of thoughts on the drag scene.
Something I talk about not a lot in like the drag scene, is that I have mobility issues.
Heels were a life changer for me. I have clinically flat feet. It’s kind of disturbing to look at. I get really insecure in dance classes because my feet look like this *hand gestures* when they’re supposed to look like this *different hand gestures*.
Yeah, which is weird, because it doesn’t seem like it would, but it forces an arch into my foot. I could walk 10 blocks in heels, and my feet would hurt because I’m wearing heels. But if I walk 10 blocks in regular shoes, my feet are killing me.
Interesting.
And like, I was in physical therapy for a really long time for my feet. So it created this dynamic of walking is hard and dancing is hard because it hurts to move. And then to be in drag, where I don’t have to disclose that, but when I do disclose it, it’s like. Wow. The things you can do are really cool. I guess the phrase “in spite” is not great, but like in spite of the fact that walking hurts, I can do really intense dance.
I also have narcolepsy.
I fall asleep everywhere. I get hungry, and then I eat, and then I fall asleep.
Have you ever fallen asleep too close to a drag performance?
So I’ve definitely many times felt, I’m gonna go to this show, and then I sleep right through it. But never my own shows, because I… I do take it really seriously. I’m gonna show up.
I also hate being late to places, which is really hard in the nightlife scene, where everyone’s half an hour late all the time, and I show up half an hour early. So then I’m sitting at the bar for an hour waiting for the show to start.
Also I’m like notoriously a slow walker.
People used to, my friends, with quotes, used to actually bully me for it over the course of my life.
You’re from New York, and you’re gay. Why are you a slow walker?
Well, some of us are disabled. Shocker. Some of us are disabled!
But in drag, well, if I’m wearing heels, no one’s gonna expect me to be running. It’s really cool to transform in that way of slow, soft features, circular, to like boom! Does that make any sense?
Yes, I love that. Well, that’s all of my questions. Is there anything final that you want to have on record?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My final statement is: having grown up with really bad social anxiety and having grown up feeling I didn’t have a place, it is really special to feel I have a place.
And I know that that’s something that a lot of drag performers can empathize with, of feeling really out of place growing up, or feeling they didn’t have a home. And then to be in this place where like you have family. I am close with my family now. I wasn’t for a lot of my life.
But to be able to know if anything happens with the people in my non-drag life, I know that like I can always go out.
Pink Metal was particularly special to me, ’cause I went after my shitty competition the other day with my best friend from my first college, who is not in the drag scene, is not really a bar person, doesn’t really like loud spaces. And we went, and we got there after everything ended at the show, and we sat there like talking with the bartender until 2 a.m.
And when we got there, I had to go down the line saying hi to everyone. And it’s this really special thing that people that knew me when I was young now get to see me have friends, to put it really bluntly.
They get to come with me to a place that I spend a lot of time, and they have to wait while I say hi to everyone I know. And when we’re talking, people come up to me and interrupt our conversations to say hi to me.
Which just really never… like, I had a lot of experiences growing up where I would meet people with my friends, and six months later I would be with the same friend and see that person again, and they would have no idea that they had met me before.
And I’m like, but you know the memory where we met. And you don’t remember me. How does your brain work like that? That there was this person standing next to this person that you remember, talking to you, and you don’t remember them.
And I know that it was nothing that I did wrong. But to now be in this place where people know who I am.
And my sister was telling me that a high school friend of hers, who I was amicable with in high school, their current partner knew who I was by name in drag. And that blew my sister’s mind.
People know who I am. And that’s really special, because people would forget who I was.
There is something really special about this community that, as frustrating as it is to be a part of it on a very regular basis, I also know that there’s a reason that I haven’t left. And there’s a reason that people don’t leave.
Because we engage with each other like we’re besties and family, even though we’re a bunch of strangers basically, I’m never gonna - unless I really have issues with someone - I’m not gonna be that person that’s nasty to them at a bar.
’Cause there are only so many spaces where we can be ourselves.
Why would you risk hurting that?
It’s so special to be able to be in the place where I grew up, surrounded by people that I never would have been able to talk to. Because by virtue of them not living here, but also my not being able to talk.
And now I’m in this place in my life where I can talk to people. I find myself interesting. People find me interesting. And getting to show people that I knew for a very long time that like I’m finally like a person. A person who can talk.
That’s really cool.
I am very grateful that I found the drag scene when I did, even if I was 19. Well, maybe I was 20.
But even then I realized people didn’t care as much as they thought they did.
I had a fake ID, it was a bad fake ID, but like whatever.
And on my 21st birthday, I talked to my therapist a lot about how it was the perfect birthday. I spent the whole day at a bar. And like it was a bar that I spent a lot of time at. And my friends came. And that was so special.
Like, oh… for the first time, I’m not crying on my birthday, and I’m not alone.
And to realize oh, even though this year looks really different than last year, and I’m kind of nervous about my birthday, you know what? It’s still going to be better than six years ago. And five years ago.
And like up until last year, my birthdays have kind of just been shitty.
’Cause birthdays can be shitty!
Especially when you feel hyper aware of the negative relationships that you have, or the less-than-genuine relationships.
I’m in a real community. That’s special. That’s my thought.
Amazing. Okay. I’m going to end recording.