ter the “No Filter” show at Jacque’s, she and three other queens are off to Jacque’s sister club, Machine in Fenway, to perform another set. In addition to performing at the cabaret, she hosts the early show at Machine’s All-Star Mondays. The hour and a half show can be roughly described as a 4 a.m. Youtube deep dive of drag comedy, a night of idiosyncratic lip-syncs and voiceovers. Featured acts include a lip-dub compilation of Tanisha’s meltdown on Bad Girls Club (“I ain’t get no sleep cause of y’all”) and a sexy saunter over to the bar where Raquel requests a cocktail, only for the bartender to hand her a glass of shrimp cocktail sauce with a straw in it. The club erupts into a riot when she picks it up and drinks it seductively, pulling shrimp out of her handbag to dip. Another queen performed a lip-sync to the song “Pupusa” by Hi Fashion, and in between choruses accompanied by grinding and twerking, she took out a fresh ball of dough and taught the audience how to make pupusas, a Salvadorian delicacy. The show is an eccentric step away
from what you might see on an episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race, a cross between America’s Next Top Model and the world of drag performance. RPDR has catapulted drag into the mainstream, but Von Handorf says that like all things that become popular fast, the show isn’t an entirely inclusive representation of drag culture. “[In] Drag Race, there’s a lot they do showcase, but there is a certain expectation they have on the show, and there’s a lot of things they don’t showcase, like genderqueer or bearded queens. That’s really important in the drag and LGBTQ community,” he said. For many (including Von Handorf), RPDR can be a first taste of drag, but there’s more to the art than just production value and competition. “One thing I’ve noticed being in drag is that you have a lot of voice in the community, and that’s something I wasn’t expecting at first,” Von Handorf said. For Raquel, riskier acts and shows like No Filter aren’t just ways to engage an audience, but opportunities to amplify that voice. “I think it’s pretty important now in this country’s political environment to have
things that push the boundaries of gender and gender expectations and queerness as well. We kind of still need to hold our own unfortunately, and I think it’s really good to push the buttons on gender… male and female and everything in between.” Raquel may only be one performer, but drag is never one character, one show, or one note. “Drag is a lot of misfits,” she says. “A lot of people have quirky idiosyncratic things about them.” Her co-hosts at Jacques, Emphysema Menthol One-Hundreds and Violencia, bring their own style to the show, and the three bring the house down on a regular basis. Lately, there’s been a higher demand for drag, with shows migrating from gay bars and cabarets to restaurant and popular brunch spots. At its core, drag is a queer artform, but there’s something everyone and anyone can take from it. “With the queer community and in general I think a lot of people come out and love drag because it speaks to that inner different,” Von Handorf says. “Drag is for everyone… it should be for everyone.”