Were you all performing individually before becoming the Cake Boys?
Richard: Initially, yeah, we were all individual performers, and the lack of drag kings in the scene made us want to start something like this. I remember sliding in Muscles’ DMs being like, ‘Do you wanna do this?’ And Sweaty Eddie is my partner, and Senerio came in and was part of our second show, The Dude Network, and we just all clicked and it made sense. It’s been a wild ride.
When we first started, we just wanted to create a platform to highlight drag kings and drag things and alternative types of performers. So we just kept going and now we’re here.
Senerio: The Cake Night show really took it to that next level. I have been calling it out since I came in: There’s nobody, literally nobody in the local scene, doing what we’re doing between the four of us, who have all these skills under one roof. And there’s plenty more where that came from! It’s a seemingly endless creation that’s happening right now, and it’s such a delight.
Sweaty: Our intention was always to create an ensemble performance that gave everybody space. [It’s] this other-worldly space where people bring a wide variety of drag and it all sort of feels cohesive and it doesn’t require to change what they’re doing to fit in. So much of the Cake Boys isn’t the four of us, it’s this world where the kind of drag that we want to see makes sense, as much as “making sense” is not really our top priority. We’re all about chaos.
Senerio: It reveals how much new talent there is when you come to a Cake Boys show. There are a lot of people who were able to do things that they haven’t been able to do on stage. And it excites me because I just want to see more of that at this point.
How did you come up with the name?
Senerio: We got fat asses! [laughs]
Richard: I put a lot of trust in fate and the universe telling me what to do. So I went on Urban Dictionary and hit shuffle, and “cake boy” came up, and the meaning of it is a feminine man, and it made sense.
Muscles: I mean, besides the fact that we all have great asses, it’s got some subconscious fun connections to drag kings in the ‘90s at Cake Bar. And also, we always get confused for a bakery in Brooklyn.