White Milk
I had an interesting moment in a conversation with my good friend last night. He’s struggling with a white friend who is tenuous about taking a public stance on the current state of affairs in our country. My friend voiced something like, “it’s as if he’s immediately hurt and expects forgiveness and patience.”
I have seen that behavior.
I know it personally, but this a story about drag race.
In season six, fans got their first glimpse of a drag queen named Milk. Milk immediately stands out for a few reasons. Milk is physically a very large person, and their drag aesthetic is artsy-fartsy, club-kid fantasy with an intention to “fuck up drag like you’ve never seen.” Milk is also — flatly — a VERY statuesque man (by modern, Euro-centric standards) when the drag comes off. Evidence of this followed the season as Milk was booked in and out of drag for high end photo shoots.
Needless to say, I was VERY smitten.
Milk hadn’t won the season but showed a lot of potential in terms of intentionally pushing the boundaries of drag. For me, at the time it was very much “what’s not to love? This is what drag is about!” Milk lost because she wasn’t particularly funny, and I don’t have any defense for that to this day. All things said and done though, Milk set a new bar for drag race and wore a mantle that would eventually fall to Aquaria who did win her season.
Just before Aquaria’s win, we got to see Milk again.
The prodigal weirdo had returned. I was ecstatic. Finally, I would get to see more Milk — handsome and artistic and outspoken. Truly inspirational.
As episode after episode aired, I fell to a volley of blows that left me oddly a bit crushed. Milk was still Milk. She was weird, and handsome as a boy, and intentionally doing things previously taboo to the show.
But also, she was delusional and an asshole. Her narrative was almost exclusively, “I’m really upset that the judges don’t agree with me about how I won this challenge. Additionally, I don’t understand how they aren’t more upset with you because all you’re doing is pageant drag.”
She turns to Kennedy and says, “I would have kept Thorgy because she was doing more for drag with her art.”
Kennedy claps back in the same beat — “Well fuck my drag.”
Lucky for me, either the editing is literally for exactly my type of idiot or I successfully pulled my head out of my ass on the first try. Either way, got it.
I agreed with Milk. I hadn’t liked Thorgy, and I didn’t find Kennedy’s drag to be impressive, but I still would have picked Thorgy because I valued her “art” more than Kennedy’s excellence.
I can assure you, Kennedy’s drag is excellent. Even though I don’t like it — it’s sheer excellence.
Kennedy sent Milk packing a few episodes later, much to Milk’s EXTREME disbelief. When Milk inevitably returned for the revenge episode, she pulls off the most impressive feat I’ve seen on the show to date.
Paraphrased:
“I can’t believe I was LET to walk around the workroom thinking I’m so great, like an asshole.”
Somehow, Milk managed to fit both her feet in her mouth AND successfully cram her entire skull all the way past her asshole. Seriously, I was mad AND impressed.
Milk then spent some time crying about how upset she was for being allowed to be such an asshole.
And I get to bring it back home.
Milk was upset because her memory was dying under new evidence. Milk was upset because the history she’d painted, in which she played the hero, was incomplete and almost assuredly WILDLY inaccurate.
Milk was experiencing a specific trauma and responding in kind.
The white kind.
That’s where we’re at. As awhite person, I’ve been to this place a few times, and I’m gonna be there again in the future — I know it. I want to consider some of the context here:
- I was raised to believe history is written by the winners.
- My memory is my history. As a common person I don’t have the boon and bane of having my life documented for others to see and comment upon.
- My memory is incomplete and inaccurate even as to my actions and feelings.
All that said, when something or someone comes along and says “August, you did the awful thing.” I immediately recoil because it IS an attack on myself. It’s not a physical danger or an existential threat, but it attacks the integrity of the story I tell myself of myself. When that story gets disrupted or distorted, it reveals the fragility of the sense of identity I’ve constructed as a human.
It’s a traumatic experience, and I think it’s a universal one.
Milk didn’t have the benefit of being able to escape and heal this trauma on their own time.
When I go through this trauma, there is work to be done to heal. Specifically, I have to revisit my story and correct my memory such that I am at fault, I am losing, I am “bad”. In my memory. Whether or not it’s hard it does take time.
White people. Take that time. When someone calls you out, it’s going to hurt because your story is under attack. Take the note and critically revisit your story.
But do it on your own time.
Don’t use the fact that you’re healing and working on yourself to detract from the movement or from others’ ability to heal and experience joy.
Reach out to other white people, tell them you’re struggling and ask for space to talk about the work. Don’t settle for pity or sympathy.
DO. THE. WORK.
Everyone else — don’t wait around. This is a journey, and there are white people that have the capacity to heal and fight with you. Do not spend your time waiting to be seen and heard and appreciated.
I love you. I am here and I am not perfect but I want to do the work because I love you.
You’re worth more than excuses and delayed gratification.
They can meet us down the road if they make it. We’ve got other fish to fry right now.
I love you. Truly truly.
Sincerely Not Dead Yet,
August
