Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors

A defiant yet tender memoir about drag culture and bipolar disorder that reveals the hard-earned truths of being queer in the American Midwest

In Drag Thing, Gabe Montesanti recounts her immersive entrance into St. Louis drag culture performing as Fender Bender, a drag king who ultimately transforms into a "drag thing" (a performer who defies classification altogether).

Exploring the fluidity of gender and identity through parody and honest self-exposure, Montesanti learns about binding and the art of facial hair and contouring, and she designs and constructs her own elaborate costumes with minimal budget and maximal imagination. As she clambers for success on the stage with snowballing intensity and copes with estrangement from her family of origin, she fights for her sanity--for her life--in her battle with treatment-resistant bipolar disorder, until her drag persona and her rapid cycling mania become indistinguishable from each other.

Drag Thing is a raucous, invigorating story of breakdown and self-invention, delusion and authenticity, set against a backdrop of anti-queer, anti-trans violence in which drag becomes a symbol of endangerment, glamour, and rebellion. Punctuated throughout with the author's drawings that bring "thingness" to life, Drag Thing is an anthem to the hard-won survival of a singular spirit.

Gabe Montesanti (she/they) is the author of Brace for Impact: A Memoir (The Dial Press), which chronicles her time skating for Arch Rival Roller Derby. She is also a former drag performer. She earned her bachelor's in studio art and mathematics from Kalamazoo College and her MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. She has attended artist residencies at Sundress Academy for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska. Raised in Michigan, she now lives in St. Louis.