Thrillist: How did you get started doing drag? What drew you in?

Untitled Queen: I went to graduate school for my MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons in 2007. I went to school with a friend, Jess Ramsay, who was a sound artist and DJ in nightlife at the time. She really encouraged me to try [drag], but I was never really that interested in it, at all. I thought drag was okay when I went out but wasn’t really obsessed with it; I wasn’t watching Drag Race or anything like that.

And then it was one of those cases where I was the last person to know. Everyone knew I was probably a drag queen… I started to finally think about it—and I met Macy Rodman, who is an amazing trans pop star. Anyway, the short story is that she was just starting her iconic punk drag show called Bath Salts and she was like, “Hey do you want to do the first one?” And I was like, “Okay.” And then I…just said yes to anything.

I met Merrie Cherry out one night during Pride and she was like, “Hey, I have a competition called Dragnet at Metropolitan. Do you want to compete?” I did that competition—I won—and that just snowballed.

I entered into this Brooklyn nightlife that just made sense to me, and I realized I’ve been doing drag my whole life; my whole art life has been very much connected to what we call drag. It’s been about 10 years and I haven’t stopped since.