The Man-ifestation of Savage Garden's "I Want You" and my first performance.

When I first heard and saw the video for Savage Garden's "I Want You," I knew the world was onto something. It was 1997; I was eleven years old, and I thought Darren Hayes was incredibly, incredibly attractive.

Going back to this music video delights me now. Hayes is a riot of androgynous deliciousness and, to top it off, the storyline's leading girl is a red-haired vixen with deviously short locks. It's there even in the video's initial moments: a highly contrasted Darren Hayes face, bright whites and navies, and a hard time given to a viewer to decipher this person's gender. In the video's storyline, Savage Garden's lead singer is sending out his message through futuristic, technological means which, as we see for sexual frustration's sake, turn out to be a sketchy and inconsistent feat. His message? Well, it's actually a mix of the overt and the modest:

I'm the kind of person who endorses a deep commitment

Getting comfy getting perfect is what I live for
But a look and then a smell of perfume
It's like I'm down on the floor
And I don't know what I'm in for

Now, I know it's a pop song, but I see a lot of personal morals echoed in those sentiments. The general public tends to bypass the song's shyer meanings because, well, it's often dubbed the 'chic-a-cherry-cola' song for that opening verse's crunchy end as well as the fact that its chorus is a series of basic lustful expressions.

So why did I choose this song for my first solo drag performance? Firstly, it was a tune that had never left an iPod or playlist since I'd discovered it and, secondly, because the lyrics seemed challenging to lip-sync and, hey, though I don't like to admit it, I had never truly learned every word (but what a good excuse to, mm?). I am always up for a nostalgic dip into the 90's pop scene. What's more, I began my coming out process in late 2004; Darren Hayes would somewhat shock the world with his own coming out sometime in 2006 (and, dear goodness, did we both ever just finally make sense).

Now that I look back on it: "I Want You" seems to encompass everything I wanted Dimitri Savage (then just Savage) to resonate in performance. Gentlemanly, occasionally wavering, intimate, poetic, complex sexpression!

In order to discover my first performance ideas free from other kings either dominating or participating in the spotlight, I had to relisten to the song and imagine it as my own. I mean, really listen. I sat in one place. I tried sitting, standing, leaning, sitting again. I had to pay attention to how my body wanted to react to the beats, message, transitions.

I had a faux Grecian column (I'm an antiques nerd: did I mention?) in my room which doubled as a side table and stool. I found myself sitting on it in my carpeted room, facing a mirror. This was asking a lot of myself. I was being forced to literally face myself and, though friend relations and romantic relations were in a suspended state of complicated and unfortunate and not-in-my-favor, I had to bring myself up out of that mournful fog and into a playacting landscape that said I was a confident human-being. Nay, that I was a confident, strengthened, fiercely passionate man.

I don't need to try to explain;
I just hold on tight
And if it happens again, I might move so slightly
To the arms and the lips and the face of the human cannonball
That I need to, I want you

It took me days of rehearsing, of listening to barely anything else as I drove. As for dance moves? I took to trying something I wasn't at all sure of: sitting down for nearly the entirety of the song. There's a jazz-slamming punch of beats later, which is where I elected to change my sitting stance to that of standing; but, even then, my character did not move another inch beyond hips, arms, and mouth. For my first performance, I think this was all I could think to muster. To move as a femme king, strut, trust my muscles through all that anxiety otherwise? I didn't think it possible. I didn't know, then, how I would man-ifest such movements or even if I convincingly could.

Instead, I opted to try for what I figured impossible but highly desirable: gathering the audience's attention to me in an unmoving mass before exploding.

I chose king apparel with what I hoped was a polished hipster twist: black polyester pants, dress shoes, charcoal argyle socks, a white charcoal-striped shirt, a blaringly red skinny tie. My hair, which is a next-to-black brown and is already short, sports a daily forward-facing pompadour and so I would not be changing that. Facial hair? Real bits of my own in sideburns and a small, roaring soul patch. My idea was to embody a stiff (pun intended?) business man who faced just the amount of inner struggles exhibited in lyric. This man, Savage, would want and want until he could no longer take it, as the song suggests and opens dramatic acting to. (At this time, I did not elect to bind, as I hoped a sports bra would do all the flattening workings for me. In retrospect, I regret this; while my breasts are very small, I believe I threw my 'cover' by the slightest hint of them. However, now I can see that first performance as a step.)

As for how my performance went, I feel I would ask audience members to speak. I had a multitude of reasons to fear judges, spectators, and Emcee alike (again: the drama, I promise you, was pathetically and hurtfully rampant). During the performance, I kept my eyes on a bright spot on the back wall. I spent a beat break-down portion of the song unbuttoning my shirt and lifting my tie and, when I heard how shrill and enthusiastic most of the screaming was, I was taken aback. My last moments on stage were spent on knee in a black 'wife-beater,' head turned shyly into my right arm, biting out the remaining words, bringing my pelvis from stage to air to the beat.

I was convinced from the start that I could not be attractive in drag, that I was a fool for trying, and yet there I eventually stood on stage with the second place spot. (The third spot, I am goofy-arrogantly happy to say, was taken by that of my other performance: a drag boy band by the name of the Dragstreet Bois.)

One of the judges, a beloved hometown drag queen and performer, addressed me during the 'judging' portion and informed me that I had everyone melting though I had hardly moved an inch; this, she seemed to say, was a remarkable talent to have.

I won't lie: the aftermath was stupendous. I had positive reactions all around, gay men dropping self-confused compliments, Facebook messages sent on in approval from heterosexually-identified women, college students asking my friends who I was. But it wasn't all that that fueled me: it was, really, the sake of gender and the thrill of performance and what I could feel I was exploring in myself.

Who would want to go back after an experience such as that?

Ooh, I want you
I don't know if I need you
But, ooh, I'd die to find out
Ooh, I want you
I don't know if I need you
But, ooh I would die to find out

So can we find out?

See performance here, if so inclined.

I need drag to

cloak me with a hard shell.

seal up the crevices in my chest.

take me under and into another mind.

lift my chin to a spotlight and unburden my eyes.

birth giggle eruptions and the electric joy in movement.

settle my feet flat on a stage, ready to shimmy.

allow me access to that other woman that breathes fire.

reclaim a no-I-do-it-this-way stance on performance.

inspire me to support the pop culture pieces I find so vital.

take said pop culture pieces and repaint them with a queer lens.

become the modern gentleman who may pelvic thrust but pant poetry.

focus on a back wall, lose anxiety to the bright white light and dark-edged beat.

pretend to be a seducer, a wooer, a-toss-of-hair-and-I-have-you.

challenge my concept of my body, its limitations, its possibilities, its beauty.

dedicate, such as in poem, intense energy to a matter of three or more minutes.

bury the burning in my bones (a la post-tattoo) that craves more, more, more.

Introduction: Drop the beat, create the heat.

In an overwhelming list of potential identifiers, I hereby elect to add another and choose to call myself a drag king.

My drag name is Dimitri Savage. A last name of 'Savage' was constructed, you must know, in a split-second decision-making blunder in which I was taking my first solo stab at drag kinging and had to declare a stage name. (All performance details were pinned, the lyrics rehearsed obsessively, the outfit on, the personality in its baby stages [pun intended], but my title? Oops.) The song? An old, beloved favorite that has never left my playlists and ever-swelling nostalgia: Savage Garden's 1997 sultry standout sensation, "I Want You." So, to grasp at very obvious options, I whispered 'Savage' to a friend relaying the message to a fellow king host and then ex-friend. I laughed at myself. Savage? Really? What was I attempting to embody, some sort of Pocahontas-era worded, mohawk-possibilitied, growling stud? Little did I know at that moment that the name 'Savage' would put a teeth-tearing-into-meat a la queers-enjoying-what-they-see attitude into itself. Or, as holy shit could not be possible, that it would be a name I could eventually be somewhat known for. (Wait, what?) I still thought the name hilarious.

'Dimitri' would be an addition later to come. As I've always said, I find Dimitri and Vincent to be two of the more beautiful male-concerned names. Those names might immediately conjure a number of things: the swoopy-haired fellow from the animated film Anastasia, a mournful Don McLean tune, and, personally, romantic sixteen-year-old self reveries of androgynous and tragically poetic ideal loves. Let's think long dark hair, deep green eyes, pale skin, misunderstood like Mr. Darcy, all the emotional heroism of a brooding but gentle fantasy character.

I added 'Dimitri' to 'Savage' to give this budding self and character two halves. On the one hand and foot and dance move, I like to imagine my kingly reflection as fierce, sharp, strengthened, chin defiantly up, lips pained or unafraid; on the other, I see softness, gentlemanly graces, diction thriving, seduction shy, manner composed.

Some king names read in trick, much like one belonging to one of my first inspirations and introductions to kinghood: that of king friend Hunter Down. I realized shortly thereafter that mine could as well; though, in all serious, 'The meat tree savage' does not contain the less explicit and not-necessarily-large-penis-equipped image I was going for.

My drag name is Dimitri Savage. I'm beginning to realize that the construction of this theatrical self is ever-growing in its importance and self-necessity.