The Diary of a Drag Queen

Description

A cocktail-spitting, norm-pinching dive into everyday queer life in the twenty-first century—a hilarious, moving memoir Life’s a drag . . . Why not be a queen? When you peel off the sequins and lashes, wipe away the lipstick and mascara, open your heart and your eyes—what does the life of a drag queen really look like? Crystal (and Tom) Rasmussen tell all in this outrageous, raunchy, moving, naked (in more ways than one) memoir about life on and off the stage. Born into a loving working-class family in northern England, Crystal finds her way to London, to a coveted, soul-crushing job in New York fashion, and back again. Searching for good sex, good stories, and “the one,” she shags men of all kinds from all sorts of platforms, sells cider to tourists, and performs with her college drag band, DENIM. She learns about true love from her mum and falls in love with her best friend. Charting her day-to-day adventures over the course of a year, we encounter tucks, twists, and unfiltered sexy bits, heinous overspending, body shame and self-love, and endless nights sprinting from snag to snafu in a full face of makeup. In these pages the previously unspeakable becomes the everyday and the celebrated, and Crystal makes sure we feel every single thing along the way. A full-hearted, full-throated, full-disclosure portrayal of the queer experience that makes you laugh and cry and wish for understanding, Diary of a Drag Queen is a dazzling, true performance of a real, flawed, extraordinary life. Crystal Rasmussen is a global superstar in her mind and a regular columnist at Refinery29. Look up the term "Global Phenomenon" and you will find a picture of Crystal. Living in overdraft since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Crystal forms one-fifth of DENIM, the drag supergroup, and is adored for her lazy demeanor and powerful falsetto. Tom Rasmussen is a journalist and queer performer. When not in drag, they are a regular contributor at The Independent, Dazed, i-D, LOVE, and Refinery29. Their work has also been featured in The Guardian, Vice, Broadly, Tank, and Gay Times, and they were named an LGBT trailblazer by The Dots and one of the voices of now for i-D. Tom also forms half of the radical queer punk band ACM.