Bingo at Mac’s Bar in Saginaw. Bartender Trisha Gemeinhardt (right) joins in on the fun.
Friday, Jan. 31. (Crystal Gwizdala/Managing Editor)
By Crystal Gwizdala
With additional reporting by Patrick Sochacki
SAGINAW — She owns the room.
Her ankle-strapped, five-and-a-half-inch pumps stomp across the wooden floor boards in Steamer’s Pub; her dark, sultry eyes ensnare the crowd. Naked women flash across the TV screens. But, all eyes are on her.
Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” fills the space between the brick walls as she saunters up to our table and plonks in the void where a chair once was. From the floor, she looks up at us. Blinks a few times.
“I do everything with confidence,” Astara Love states stoically.
She could intimidate a racist homophobe, or someone who wears the Confederate flag as a shirt and carries around three guns. Yet, she’s beautiful.
Astara Love is a drag queen.
Not only that, she’s also a titleholder: Miss Amateur Glass City, Toledo, Ohio; former Miss Amateur Legends, Toledo, Ohio; former Miss Gigi’s Classic, Detroit, Michigan.
“I’m very A-brained. I have to have everything [in the pageant] mapped out. If I can’t, […] I’m not doing it,” says Astara. “I don’t want to go there and waste my time, money.”
When she performed Gigi’s Classic, it took her eight months to complete her gown. She spent $5,000, four months of dance rehearsals and three months of non-stop sewing outfits. She made all the music, all the costumes, and the gown herself. On top of that, she was working three jobs and driving from Flint to Detroit once a week for choreography, and then to Toledo to coordinate with back-up dancers.
DeAngela Show Shannon in Toledo, Ohio. Oct. 19, 2019.
(Photo courtesy of Gigi’s Gay Bar)
“It’s a lot, but I love it — it’s a lot of fun. You get to travel and meet new people,” says Astara.
Astara got the itch to do drag seven years ago. When she first started, she was “atrocious” – a much different character than she is now. But Astara stressed that drag isn’t about being “this great big drag queen.”
“The original point of drag, I think, is to find out who you are, who your character is — what do you want to give the audience?” asks Astara. “You have to find yourself and you can’t until you get on stage and understand the spotlight. […] I think it’s cyclical and comes back to who you generally are as a person, just the other half. If I were to be a woman, […] this is the woman I would be.”
Tonight, Astara is blonde. Her makeup is on-point: fuchsia and silver eyeshadow with a perfect cat eye and bold lipstick. Chunky silver jewels drip from her ears and embellish her fingers. She wears a ruby bodycon dress lined with sparkling gemstones, completed with fishnet stockings.
For events like drag karaoke or bingo, she creates her look based on how she’s feeling.
“Some nights, I’m like, ‘fuck this. I’m not wearing a wig; I’m wearing my natural hair.’ […] I’ll wear bikinis, cat suits. Sometimes I’m like, ‘I feel like a whore tonight.’ Other times, I’ll wear a full-length gown.”
Astara started out by hosting drag bingo events next door at Mac’s Bar. The owner, who also owns Steamer’s, asked her if she wanted to do karaoke. Astara responded, “Fuck yeah.”
“I was actually hired to roast people, but I can’t do it. It’s more [of a] cathartic [experience]. I’d rather roast myself – I’ve got plenty of ammunition.”
For Astara, her favorite part of dressing in drag is bringing emotions out of people — whether it’s from a joke or a high energy song, she wants to give her audience smiles.
“I try to give all the audience a little bit. But sometimes when you’re doing a show,” says Astara, “you make a connection with someone in the audience and you just feel that they need something. I focus my energy on that person, or a piece of it, to give them what they need – they need to be touched; they need to be loved. If I could stay the whole time I would, but I can’t, so I give them what I can. I make sure that I acknowledge them.”
“It’s the person I am, it’s who my mother raised me to be,” says Astara. […] I’m just lucky enough that I was able to find a career that I could share my love and also help other people find their love in a different way.”
For every pageant Astara competes in, her mother is on the edge of her seat in the front row cheering her on.
“I call her crying about putting this act together and she can see the final product. [And when I perform], I don’t pay attention to the audience because it’s just not important. […] [When] I’m done, she’s crying, and I’m like, ‘I can’t look at her because I can’t cry at the end of my number – it’s happy.’ So then I just, I just lose it. When you win and your mother is there in the audience…She’s my mentor in life.”
When Kevin Piper – a.k.a., Astara Love – came out to his mother, she stopped talking to him for six months.
“At first it was a little hard when I came out because, you know, I’m 41,” says Piper. “I come from a different generation. And it wasn’t because she hated me, she thought that she did something wrong as a mother.”
It’s not that Piper’s mother was bigoted – she had gay friends and Piper had a gay family member. It was just a shock. He started taking her out to coffee shops to ease her into it. On her 50th birthday, Piper took his mother to a bar and got her strippers.
“Once I showed her I’m no different and I’m still your son,” Piper says, “it completely changed.”
Piper expressed that he was very lucky to have a mother who truly gave unconditional love. Not everyone who comes out has that. In drag, there’s a sisterhood.
“In drag, you have families,” says Piper. “[…] These support systems are not just for our art – for the help of getting ready for a pageant – but for when you as a person need something that maybe your family doesn’t understand […] because we’re all going through this journey together.”
If you’re looking for support, Piper recommends joining the crowd at Steamer’s Pub and Mac’s Bar on Hamilton Street in Saginaw.
“There are safe places in this area. […] We’re fortunate that the owner [Joel Currant] is creating a safe space. He has an open policy. If you fuck with anyone in this bar or the bar next door, […] you are out. He wants everybody welcome. He don’t care what color you are, what sexuality you are, what gender you are. If you want a fucking butt plug with a furry tail hanging out, he don’t give a god damn unless you’re going to treat someone with disrespect.
“This is a safe space in Saginaw, and I am fortunate enough to be able to help pave that way to bring some of that back to Saginaw.”
