Photos courtesy of Grace Contreni Flynn ’25
Rollerblades, bananas, and oh so much glitter! All this and more filled the 1962 Room in Cro for the Gender and Sexuality Programs’ (GSP) seventh annual Pride event on April 2nd. This year’s event was a Pride Brunch hosted in the late morning to early afternoon while previous years’ had seen a late-night celebration.
The Director of the GSP, Justin Mendillo, explained the shift “A lot of queer folks have thoughts around queer events being solely around drinking are often around evening time, which isn’t accessible to all of that folks we encapsulate. So, having it during brunch time we hoped that maybe some more folks would be able to come.” And they absolutely did. The 1962 Room was crowded with people from 11 am to 1 pm. The GSP also made a conscious decision to represent a diversity of experiences, bodies, and identities in the performances during this year’s event.
Reflecting on the significance of hosting such a public Pride event, Mendillo said, “It is always important to see yourself in your peers but also just in grown folks, to see that we age and age beautifully. Then also, I think that folks feel very restricted on this campus in boxes of hetero and cis-normativity. And so drag performances like these allow folks to feel more free [sic] to experiment and do whatever they want with their bodies.”
The Pride Brunch was hosted by the Connecticut Mother of the House of LaBeija, Xio Marie LaBeija with guest performances from Queen Midnight, Mia E. Z’Lay, Kenya Moneheart, Mx. Understood, and Harmony the Valkyrie. Xio Marie opened the show with an affirming performance of ‘Special’ by Lizzo. The audience visibly beamed and danced in their seats as she waltzed around the room, gesturing to tables singing “I’m glad you’re still with us. Broken, but damn, you’re still perfect.”
The show continued on with audience members being pulled up to dance and Drag Royals performing a variety of feats including Harmony the Valkyrie’s head-spinning roller-bladed rendition of “You’re Makin’ Me High” by Toni Braxton during which she skated circles around audience members. The event featured Drag Royalty from across the state, representing the fabulous range of talent in Connecticut. Mendillo commented on the variety of performers stating, “We were reminding ourselves that pride is just not about one set of performances or identities but about the plurality of performances and identities that we all have.”
The event was not only composed of traditional drag performances, but saw the guest DJ, Cody Rigorous, sing a moving cover of “Read All About It, Pt II” by Emeli Sandé. The Pride Brunch also welcomed activist and educator Ace Ricker back to campus, however this time he arrived in his drag persona Mx. Understood.
Mx. Understood is a nonbinary, activism-oriented performer. They delivered a spoken word piece at the beginning of the brunch and closed the event with an emotional performance displaying pride in their trans identity. As the first notes of True Colors by Zedd and Kesha echoed through the room, Mx. Understood began drawing individual cloths out of their sleeve with each representing a different color in the trans flag. They ended their performance by stretching the full trans flag, emblazoned with the words “We Will Not Be Erased”, across their chest.
Ricker described the process of first pulling the pink, then the white, and finally a blue cloth as being representative of his personal journey as a transgender man. On the significance of this performance, Ricker said “It was this way of reaffirming that I am valued by the audience that is bearing witness to this but also valuing myself […] there’s this sense that I should not in any way shape or form have to hide myself.”
Ricker lives a variety of lives and has come to campus in the past in his role as an educator. Near the end of our interview, he acknowledged the hardships that LGBTQ+ people are facing in the United States today amidst the passing of hateful legislation nationwide. His advice to any LGBTQ+ reader is as follows, “It’s going to be heavy sometimes. But I want to make sure that I am ready to help lift that heaviness up off of your shoulders and that if you feel like you’re in this dark room and you can’t find the door, I’m very willing to open that door for you. Even in this hard place through the words that are printed on that page, I want you to see that there’s someone that wants to uplift you. There’s someone that loves the word because of the uniqueness and beauty of every aspect of you.”
absolutely disgusting