Sex, Guys and Audiotape

'Diary of a Drag Queen' by Crystal Rasmussen (Ebury Press, 2019)

Picture the scene.  It's a beautiful sunny day in spring 2020.  Outside, the birds are singing a delicate morning chorus while the flourishing plant life sways and nods languidly in the gentle breeze.  Inside, a nearly-but-not-quite middle-aged woman sits quietly, embroidering a picture of a cute puppy dog using the softest of threads.  It's a complex pattern requiring infinite patience.  All is relaxed and calm and excessively gentile.  So, what do you suppose the embroiderer might be listening to?  Surely nothing so filthy, fun and raucous as 'Diary of a Drag Queen' by Crystal Rasmussen!

'Diary of a Drag Queen' is a no holds barred gallop through a year or so of the life of Crystal Rasmussen, aspiring fashion journalist, performer and so much more.  Like many twenty-somethings, Crystal is trying to make their place in the world.  Along the way, they face prejudice and disappointment, exploitation, poverty and even violence, but this is only part of the story.  Crystal also enjoys solid gold friendships and seizes every opportunity that life and LGBTQ+ culture has to offer, often firmly and with both hands.  From New York offices to London squats, international fashion shows to popular gay clubs, we get an entertaining and raw 'warts and all' picture of their life and experience, alongside intelligent insights into gay culture and prejudices on all sides.

Thanks to 'Diary of a Drag Queen', I'm now a very sheltered woman who knows more about gay sex than she could ever have envisaged.  The book is almost aggressively open from the start, challenging the reader with some poo-related anecdotes in the first pages that give you a flavour of how absolutely 'warts and all' it is.  It seems brave or attention seeking, but this is not just an autobiography, it's a book about choices and challenging our own ways of thinking.  Consequently, I think it's fitting that Crystal is bold enough to lay their cards on the table from the off and let the reader decide if they want to continue or not.  If you're put off by the early vulgarity, 'Diary of a Drag Queen' is not for you, but if it doesn't bother you or you can get used to it, you'll find emotional and intellectual depth as well as a variety of bodily fluids.  Just don't listen while eating.

Overall, 'Diary of a Drag Queen' is messy in the best possible way, as all human beings are.  It's stomach-churningly gross, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly sad, eye-openingly honest and interestingly thoughtful.  I rooted for Crystal through all their ups and downs and I genuinely hope that life after this diary ends has brought them love, respect and success.  It's a reflection on the book that I cared so much about what happened afterwards.

Now, what next...?

'Diary of a Drag Queen' by Crystal Rasmussen was first published in 2019 by Ebury Publishing.  This review is based on the audiobook, read by the author and streamed for free via my local library service.