It starts with the glitter emet.
At the beginning of an eight-week drag competition I have somehow gotten myself into, we are given a simple prompt: “Show us who you are.”
The rest of the vision slowly comes into focus. A punk-inspired drag golem, the letters of creation in glitter across my forehead, a battle jacket honoring queer and trans Jews, living and dead, from Harvey Milk to Leslie Feinberg to Sasha Velour to the trans refusenik Ella Keidar Greenberg, from whom I draw my power.
But I never bring this look out for the competition. It feels too personal, too serious, for a comedy-focused smackdown. My drag is generally inspired by nostalgia, Midwest dads and high fantasy, and while the mythology of the golem fits into that, it also feels so much more vulnerable to literally wear my identity on my sleeve rather than mask it in camp and comedy. I don’t compete with that look — in fact, the entire concept is still very much a work in progress — but I keep the spirit of it with me for months.
I write “I AM MY OWN GOLEM” on a piece of notebook paper and tuck it into my bedroom mirror.
I’m not the first person, not even close, to consider the golem as a queer icon. Michele Kirichanskaya did so for this very publication in 2021, and there are a host of incredible artists invoking and playing with the symbolism of the golem, like Mendel Ida’s, Annaliese Rosa, Val Schlosberg and the creatives telling stories of diasporic joy through “Golem Zine.”
And I’m not the first person, by any means, to find resonance with the golem as a creature whose power and purpose are imbued by the breath of its creator. A protector in times of threat (like now), a destroyer in times of rage (like now), a manifestation of fears and fantasies of the other (we’ll get to this in a minute), a symbol of the potential of creative autonomy over one’s own body, one’s own identity. I picture my golem wearing one of those “Protect Trans Kids” shirts with the pocket knife on it. I want them to be something strong and steadfast and fierce in defending the young people who are in their own process of creating and becoming.
I think part of the reason I resisted wanting to become this drag golem is because I try to be stupid and funny and campy when I do drag. My drag rarely gets earnest or quote-fingers “political.” I don’t know if the golem mythos does anything for anyone other than me. It does feel powerful, this feeling of being in metaphorical control of the clay (or the concealer tube) in my hands, this reminder that molding and remolding my own relationship to self, to gender, to expression, is tied to something older and more powerful, a continuum beyond any one individual or creative practice.
To play with and invoke the lore of the golem feels like a meaningful reclamation at a time when people with power and influence are quick to make monsters out of entire groups, not just my own Jewish and queer communities, but trans people, disabled people, Black and Brown people, Palestinians, immigrants, students rallying against war. It also reminds me that my otherness is not exceptional, that it demands I expand the borders of my village to anyone being actively dehumanized and persecuted for the sake of maintenance of power, that my freedom and safety are inextricably bound with theirs and cannot, will not come at the expense of theirs.
My friend R works for the federal government. Every day since January she’s walked us through the caverns of her gnawing dread. I tell her about the golem mantra. She says it out loud and gets tingles. “I AM MY OWN GOLEM.” We remind each other, over and over, that we are relentless, passing the mantra the way friends will Venmo the same $20 back and forth, a small, consistent, certain gesture of care in an uncertain time.
In the spring, I join a queer group trip to Vietnam. In Ninh Binh, after a sweaty bike ride, green river and limestone around us, all of our traveling companions who have had top surgery remove their shirts for a joyful group photo, the peak of a temple rising behind them. I overhear someone asking, “is this okay, to flex in front of a temple like this?” As they pose, beaming, I think of that quote from Daniel Lavery’s “Something That May Shock and Discredit You,” the one about how God made trans people so that humanity can take part in the act of creation. I look at my sun-kissed, grinning friends and think, you are possibility made real; you are the holiest thing I have ever seen; I want to fight for a world where you get to feel like this every day. When I stand in my bathroom, testing the makeup for this golem look, I think of this, of them, of the power of autonomy and creation.
The next night, upon the ecstatic discovery that our hotel has a basement karaoke room, I shakily stipple mascara across my face in the dim bathroom light, attempting a drawn-on beard for the first time without the crutches of lace-front facial hair and spirit gum. It’s… fine? I tie a bandana around my head, a slapdash vacation pirate, and swagger and growl and belt through karaoke night.
By the end of the trip, most of the group calls me Rusty (my drag name) and this feels like a soft oversized grandpa cardigan around my shoulders, a welcome home. In their words and embraces I want to be better, to be the person I feel like when I’m Rusty, all the time.
When I come home, I begin the process of joining the Chicago Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an order of drag “nuns” whose goal is to serve the community and spread queer joy. As a new aspirant, it will be a while before I can attend events in full face as a representative, but in this irreverent but spiritual order, with its tongue in cheek religious imagery, I know I want to honor the places where faith and queer and magic intersect, and when the time comes, I will proudly wear the golem, glitter emet and all.
The times we live in are terrifying, uncertain and cruel, the kinds of circumstances that could drive someone to build a monster from the depth of a riverbed, hands shaping and searching for some great thing that can protect us all. I know slapping on a mustache and a wig won’t save the world, but it will, for split seconds at a time, remind me of my own power, make me a little braver, and connect me to my lineage and my community. And if it keeps me tethered to those things, it will make it easier to be confident in doing the hard, unsexy work our communities require of us right now.
And this Pride Month, this beautiful season of defiance and joy and rage, I hope that you, my Jewish siblings reading this, my beautiful queer and trans siblings reading this, those at all the beautiful intersections thereof, pull from your own depths and find that power to start making yourself, your community, the world into what you want — you know — it can be. Tap into your power, your imagination, to show up, protect the village and be something beautiful and relentless and creative and defiantly joyful and enduring. I love you.
