What a drag my Saturday was

It started with a trip to Echuca’s Paramount Theatre to see the local performing arts group’s The Rocky Horror Show and finished with a Drag Paint and Sip session by Paint your Peach, featuring iconic drag performer Terry Daktyl, at The Terminus Hotel back in Shepparton.

With my boys all teenagers now, the content of each event was probably something they could handle, but, in no uncertain terms, nothing they wanted me to drag them along to.

How awkward watching anything like that with your mum when you’re a teen boy, right?

So anyway, I pulled my fishnets on and slipped into my leather boots for the trek to Echuca to watch ‘sweet transvestites from transsexual Transylvania’ with friends.

Don’t come at me for political correctness — or incorrectness — if you haven’t ever seen any iteration of The Rocky Horror Show (1973 stage show) or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975 film); I didn’t write the script.

I had friends who went to this semi-local performance who were not the slightest bit familiar with the storyline beforehand.

They left quite shocked, and entertained, of course, but also confused about aliens and, well, ‘Frank’ly, their sexuality.

I, however, grew up dancing The Time Warp and serenading my mum, whose name also happens to be Janet, with Dammit Janet (I love you).

This happens when a movie is on regular rotation for family movie night, I guess.

No red flags, guys, I had a trauma-free childhood, despite whatever connotations are conjured for those familiar with the show.

Anyway, its popularity obviously stuck for us all.

I saw it on a Melbourne stage a few years back.

And now, in my 40s, I still wanted to see it again, done by the Echuca performers last weekend.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I ran into Mum and Dad in the foyer, who were also there to see it.

And they had just run into my brother and his partner, who were staying in Echuca and going to see it that night.

All praise goes to Echuca Performing Arts Group for an upbeat performance of a cult classic — I’ll be looking out for the next production.

Now, while I knew almost exactly what to expect at the theatre, I wasn’t sure what to expect at Drag Paint and Sip.

Seeing a six-foot-two man dressed elegantly as a stunning blue-haired woman stick a giant rubber phallic-shaped adult toy to a bald audience member’s head by its suction base probably wasn’t it, but there you go.

Yes, we got the songs. Yes, we got the dance. Yes, we got to paint. Yes, we got to sip.

But we also got a comedic show that made my sides hurt from laughing and my face hurt from smiling.

When Terry Daktyl opened her mouth to speak, I was expecting her to take on the persona of a woman, too.

But she spoke about potential ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ and a couple of ‘things’ that might give away her true male identity if they fell below her dress’ hem line, in which case, she might have to retreat to the cold outdoors so that they too could retreat back above her hem line.

If I didn’t explain that properly, I’m sorry, but at the risk of turning this paper into an X-rated publication, I am not going to attempt any other description.

After we’d painted a pair of legs with boots and a G-banger-clad booty at the top, we brushed some glitter over our colours in keeping with the glam theme of the event.

And as the night wound up, we lined up for pictures with the towering star, whose post-performance make-up was still at least 10 times better than any war paint I could do.

When I asked how long it took to do, she said two hours.

Of course, maybe if I was prepared to spare two hours to do my make-up I might achieve something as impressive, but I’m not.

I’ll leave the drag for the drag queens and stick to being a daggy 40-something mum of three teenage boys, who I raced home to tell all about it (while they stuck their fingers in their ears and sang ‘la la laaaa’).

If you get an opportunity, drag yourself to an event like this.