RuPaul Charles — at this point in the 63-year-old’s life, after 24 Emmys for his hit series Drag Racethat’s just RuPaul — he’s lived by a few maxims he’s adopted throughout his expansive life.
“Don’t take life too seriously.” His high school drama teacher in San Diego gave him that lesson. “You were born naked, and the rest is torture.” This was passed down to him in the 80s, when he began performing professionally as a club performer in Atlanta, through a drag queen named Lakesha Lucky.
“You’re too bloody sensitive and you remember too much.” He got it from his late mother, who died in 1993 and was nicknamed “Evil Miss Charles” by the neighborhood kids.
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“I found out she was actually talking about herself,” says RuPaul. “But I learned how to use it as a blessing rather than a curse because that sensitivity shaped my intuition and instinct.” He adds, “Reminiscence, which I could probably do without.”
RuPaul with his mother, Ernestine, as a child in 1960, with his father, Irving, holding his cousin.
Courtesy of RuPaul
RuPaul has been reminiscing a lot lately — about her broken childhood in San Diego, her metamorphosis from David Bowie-esque performance artist to glamazon pop culture icon, her long road to sobriety from drugs and alcohol, and her successful 30-year relationship with husband Georges LeBar – and the proof is on the pages of his new memoir, House of hidden meanings. “I was discovering so a lot of myself,” he says quietly.
When asked if it’s a comfortable place for him, he quickly replies, “Oh, hell no!”
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Even so, he says he’s a “seeker” and is happy to keep talking – while remaining skeptical. “My mother was very skeptical,” he says. “I can be like that too, not trusting situations. I’m very, very careful with people. Those were my mother’s attributes.”
He says his father Irving was the opposite. His parents divorced when he was 7 years old. “He was very charismatic and very superficial. You know, I think a lot of people who might have gotten to know me over the years might think, ‘Oh, he’s superficial. I am, too, to a certain degree.’
But, RuPaul adds, he’s not an extrovert. “I learned how to be an extrovert. My real me would probably shock them. Because I’m more of an observer and I’m always looking for clues. I’m always looking for what lies beneath.”
Sober since 1999, RuPaul says sobriety has allowed him to recognize the “light and dark” in his emotional makeup. “Sobriety requires balance and poise. And when you’re high, it’s harder to maintain balance.”
He adds that his spirituality helped him stay grounded. “Through meditation and prayer I found that middle ground.” There he also finds the truth: the truth about his childhood, his relationships, his identity.
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Georges LeBar and RuPaul at the 71st Annual Emmy Awards on September 22, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.
John Shearer/Getty
“There’s the drug thing,” he says. “You can never get high enough to erase the truth. The truth was always there, no matter how high I got.”
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Source: HIS Education