Lucy Couture’s notes-app calendar is booked out for months. Sometimes she has multiple shows on one day – and this isn’t even her main gig. Weston – the man behind Lucy’s voluptuous blonde wig – is a preschool teacher by day.
Lucy got into drag on a dare. While in the professional cast of a Kinky Boots near Chicago, “all the gay little dancer boys did a drag show, and we were all rotted.” But Lucy was hooked. She started small. “I was literally, like, going to Goodwill, dying a dress pink in my bathtub, and like, styling a wig. But listen, humble beginnings, right?” Things picked up momentum when she moved back to St. Louis in 2021. Around this time, the horrific murder of George Floyd encouraged Lucy, who is white, to think about activism from a more intersectional lens. “What’s that Doctor King quote that, like, if they come for someone else’s rights, they’ll come for yours too?” She entered Missouri State Pageantry, a mostly Black pageant, upon the recommendation of a friend. She won. This gained her enough recognition to start booking gigs, and before she knew it, she was asked to host a weekly show. Lucy hosts “Messy Mondays” every Monday at 8 pm at Rehab.
Lucy Couture. Photo credit: Scott Kirby
But she didn’t stop there. Lucy hosts the Gay Heartthrob Pageant in St. Louis every year around Valentine’s Day. She’s proud to have founded the only drag pageant in St. Louis without gender restrictions. Contestants just need to identify as LGBT, be over 21, and have no other state or national title. Gay Heartthrob elevates emerging masc-presenting performers, cis women in drag, stereotypical drag queens, and everything in between. Lucy herself performs in looks that fall outside of the typical drag boxes, oscillating between comedy and glamour. Sometimes she wears a gown suitable for The Bachelorette, sometimes she dresses like Ms. Rue Who from The Grinch. Anything goes.
Before drag, it was hard for Weston to express all parts of his gender. Sure, he’s a gay man, but even in the extra flamboyance society rations to gay men, he felt unable to express himself fully. “Gender is so much more complex, and peoples’ understanding of it is so limited, that if I wasn’t Lucy, Weston would have to figure out something else to explain their heart to the world.”
Like many of the queens I’ve spoken to, Lucy places great emphasis on making her events a “safe space.” It’s quite the buzz-phrase, Lucy acknowledges: everyone always thinks they’re creating a safe space, “but then you look around and then it’s all white gay men between 20 and 25. You know what I mean? Like, that’s not a safe space. If a lesbian cannot come to your show and feel accepted and loved, you don’t have a safe space. If a Black person cannot come to your show and feel accepted there, that’s not a safe space.”
Lucy Couture (Photo by Scott Kirby).
When it comes to inclusion, Lucy emphasizes how the queer community needs to get our act together, because dividing ourselves into “in” and “out” groups is the least of our problems. Gay Heartthrob raises money for Pride St. Louis, a queer advocacy organization. She also makes sure her pageant isn’t rigged – one of the quickest ways to make newcomers feel like their work doesn’t matter. Rigging is a rampant problem across drag pageants – she’s sat on judges’ panels where winking-eyed tabulators will not-so-subtly ask judges if they meant to give a girl a five, or if they really meant to write a one. This only motivated her further to create an equal playing field. “We need to be looking out for each other because there are people that would rather see us all dead than see us out existing proudly and safely as a queer or trans person. As fun and glamorous as it is and as it looks online sometimes, we need to constantly remember that this work that we’re doing – of making people feel safe and valuable – is so much deeper than any wig, any crown, [or] our personal egos and insecurities.”
Tonight, the bouncer at Messy Monday looks me straight in the eye good-naturedly, despite the rain outside. “Girl, I’m here,” he says, smiling. “No tornado took me to Kansas.” As I enter Rehab, performers mill casually around the bar with patrons. I sit in a crowd of about 20 people, relaxed and chattering at the tall tables and stools. There’s no grand entrance for Lucy. When it’s time for Messy Monday to begin, she just leaves the table she’s been chatting with to bunny hop onto the stage. Tonight, she sports a blonde pixie cut wig and a periwinkle cape.
A man in beige turns around and stares at me suspiciously. Have I done something wrong? Are these seats reserved? “Fuck you, bitch. You’re so pretty,” he says. My heartbeat returns. The man in beige offers me a mozzarella stick.
Pride United Ball at the Little Bevo. Photo by Geoff Story.
Tonight’s cast is a diverse set of acts. A stout Black queen arches her back up and down as she crawls through the crowd. When she forgets the words to her act, she simply throws out her arms and screams, met with drunk cheers. Green rhinestones flash at us from a Black king’s 60s-style suit as he boogies to the Bee Gees. Another act looks like Regina George. Her makeup seems to give all of her features an upward slant on her already angular face.
Despite being the host, Lucy Couture performs twice: a cheeky Cinderella medley in her cloak, and later a high-kicking, splits-twerking number in a unitard. She has a ballerina’s posture but a drag performer’s flair for farce, waggling her fake boobs in someone’s face as she passes. Unlike any performer I’ve seen, Lucy thanks us as she takes our bills. When she recognizes me, she gasps and hugs me mid-number. I’m reminded of the lesson she shared with me: when you take someone’s money, make everyone feel special.
But Lucy’s true superpower is in her crowdwork. She seems to be personal friends with almost everyone here, interacting with every person in the crowd before the end of the two-hour show. I’m struck by how difficult it must be to create a safe space, but Lucy is truly masterful. She’s self-effacing, encouraging us to laugh at her, with her. “I have ADHD, everyone say ‘We knoooow!’” We gleefully oblige. She’s so shamelessly comfortable with herself that we have no choice but to treat ourselves the same way, cheering and whooping when we agree or disagree. “If you’re gay and you know it, clap your hands,” she sings. Again, we oblige. This time, Lucy makes sure to prescribe a separate round of applause for the giggling straight ally couple in the audience. With loving ribbing, she notes, “When there’s only two straight people in the audience, now it’s a safe space, motherfuckers!”
