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Diary of a Drag Queen by Daniel Harris — book cover

Diary of a Drag Queen

by Daniel Harris
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Overview

The sudden break-up with his long-term partner along with the untimely death of a close friend sent cultural critic Daniel Harris—a top gay journalist whose literary and cultural criticism has been praised by Janet Malcolm, Alexander Cockburn, Dale Peck, and Gary Indiana—into a deep depression. Complicating matters was his accompanying mid-life crisis, which entailed facing up to the harsh realities—and daunting challenges—of an aging gay man finding a new partner in today's youth-worshipping gay world. Then Harris discovered for the first time dozens of men of all ages and sizes online shopping for sex partners in cyberspace. But he soon found that more than just gay men trolled gay sex sites; plenty of "straight" guys sought male sex buddies online, too, but often with one proviso: their male partners had to dress in women's clothing. Although Harris had never before done drag and had no prior interest in women's accessories, he set to work learning the ropes of cross-dressing once easy access to this pool of handsome, desirable and frequently off-limit men was made available to him. Diary of a Drag Queen is a revealing, comic, and sexually charged chronicle of hundreds of one-night stands in high heels.

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Editorials

Kirkus Reviews

Journalist Harris (The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, 1997) dons the drag, turning the hermetic Daniel-bookish, reserved, aging-into the cyber-whore Denial. Talk about taking your midlife crisis seriously. Harris is not a transvestite or a cross-dresser, just "a shameless opportunist indulging in a fantasy rampant among gay men": that straight men are sexier than gay men-more robust, more macho-and that they make ideal mates. "When one is taught from birth that gay men are morally reprehensible, diseased pariahs, child molesters, one may not want to select one's Prince Charming from abominations of the same ilk," he explains. Vanity is another motive. Harris realizes that he has lost his physical allure; he's in his 40s, balding. As Denial, he has a stab at a sexual renaissance. With the help of the Internet, his method for meeting men, he'll get all the sex he wants (and then some); along the way he'll meet misguided nice guys, psychopaths and losers. The sexual act itself, incidentally, is "as unimportant to [him] as taking a shower." The best material comes when this "high Solomonic priestess of the pillow" listens closely and dispenses advice to the lonely souls who have made it to his bed. He recalls one john who feels so good after their encounter that the man promises to propose to his girlfriend as soon as he gets home that night. (Harris is happy to have helped.) Throughout, he gains insights regarding sex and class (the poor are more likely to tell him gallant lies, for instance); feels the sting of being in the closet (all of cyberspace feels like a closet); and learns a lot about himself (being a woman brought out the man in him). Harris goes where few men have gone before inthis graphic, candid tell-all.

Book Details

Published
June 28, 2005
Publisher
New York : Carroll & Graf, 2005.
Pages
280
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780786715169

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