SCABs

Six months gone: I am not a gimmick. @dinglebobs

By Ben Conway 

This SCAB is a bit of a cheat because I wrote it over six months ago on the night after my interview day; I was certain I ballsed it up and I wrote this in an attempt to strike some humility/want for the school to Marc. Other things, which aren’t included in this excerpt, is the idea of chaining myself to the rails and not leaving until you gave me a place. You might get the tone of desperation throughout.

I am not a gimmick.

It is driving me insufferably insane to think you *may have got the impression I had an act on throughout my interview day – I am an over-thinker which is why I am once again spewing out my insecurities in a fervent attempt, to be honest.

So I walk in, Gerri Halliwell platform shoes circa Spice Girls and answer half points on your personality test – great we’ve got a cocksure fag boy. I then follow it up by painting a mediocre pair of eyebrows on a kind enough volunteer who I completely forgot the name of (sorry volunteer). None the less, the joke of it cracked and I held some attention but I completely missed explaining the point of what I wanted to sell in my whole presentation.

I read your 4-minute performance as a challenge to condense what I love about the subculture of drag because drag has the ‘in your face’ tenacity to tell the anyone “I don’t give it a *%^$ this is me and you are going to sit down and enjoy it”. So the attempt was to make you guys at SCA feel as engrossed in the ritual as how I do, the eyebrow thing was a visual shtick to make you all understand how quickly a face can be transformed – usually queens that 30 minutes to do brows, so they were never going to look amazing. 

What I’m trying to say is, yes, the performance was an act in its own right, to demonstrate how drag makes me feel comfortable and creative –  but it wasn’t me hiding. I am those crooked pair of eyebrows because I never get things right the first time. I am lost in the moment because I can lie about my confidence to people to impress them on first glance. I am that sixth eleventh, toe, that I most definitely have. 

The funny thing is Marc, without sounding anymore of an overbearing and groveling to assure my standing of who I am to you – twat – my original intention to apply at your school was to just know that I was good enough.  I didn’t entirely know if I wanted to come because I had an offer at Falmouth and I hadn’t seen how you operated. But one thing I’ve learned over the years is that when I have settled for something less than, I always have a nagging thought in the back of my head that will piss me off for years. 

I don’t know how many of these bargain plea’s you see come in, and if you have a timer running to see who’s the first to use theirs – but even if you do not think I fit in at your school, I would be happier knowing that everything you saw was me, straight up, honest and nothing else”. 

Reading this over is hilarious, not that I think I have changed drastically as a person, other than willingly writing “I am those crooked eyebrows” without a gun to my head. I think that it chimes in really well to some insecurity I have been having at the beginning of this course.

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