During this particular episode, my dad was sharing his disdain around my newfound hobby: performing in drag clubs as Mary Lou Pearl. I’d grown accustomed to these types of interrogations on my visits home, and just before I left and was trapped in the car for 45 minutes always seemed to be the best time for my parents to express their concern around how California had “changed” me and question where my life was headed. While this might sound like a parent chastising their young child who got ahold of their iPad, this was a line my dad uttered to me, a queer person in their late 20s at the time, while he was driving me to the airport to fly back to San Francisco after one of my regular trips to Georgia, where I grew up. “You can play ‘dress up’ or whatever, but why on earth would you post these photos on the internet? People will think it’s weird!”
