Frank Lee Madir
I’ve been a drag king since 2022, but haven’t been very good at getting the evidence up on Instagram! So I’m going to build my timeline of what I’ve done, here where I can edit it, and maybe I’ll add it back over there where people expect to see it, once I have everything in order!
Mardi Gras 2025
250301; Chest hair by Hamish, using whatever minimal makeup I’d brought.
I worked for months on building the boot that was supposed to go on top of the bus, Priscilla style. There was drama (of course) and in the end I got the last four days to work on my own costume, while others took over finishing the boot and mounting it on a gurney as a pushable.
The brief was ‘I want a beard without messing with makeup’ and ‘shiny and metallic’, as the float was Let Drag Kings Shine. I got advice and some help from a friend, and launched in to making the foam wig, plus spats and cummerbund. The plan was to pair them with somewhat shiny fake leather pants that have an unattractive waistband and my regular comfy shoes that have a mary-jane strap, so needed the top covered.
A friend also encouraged me to wear my yellow Freddie jacket, as she was making a gorgeous replica of George Michael’s jacket, so I brought it and some similarly yellow men’s underwear that just so happened to be rubber ducky print… in the end it was so hot that I wandered around Start area wearing nothing from neck to ankle but rubber ducky pants, cummerbund, tape and drawn on chest hair! I did put the pants on for the actual march, and hung the jacket from my waistband, but I have very few photos of that.
Blinding Lights at Queers of Joy
230420; makeup by Glen 20.
This was the last show I managed to upload to Instagram – from very close to two years ago. Whoops! At least this is finally some sort of progress, pulling that stuff over hear, so I have a framework to add newer stuff to. Each listing currently uses a block – Gallery: Two columns with text and image on p5/8 of the blocks ‘all’ list.
We learnt the choreography two days before the show. Very well, if I do say so myself!
Makeup by @the_real_glen_20 , referring to the picture of Clark Gable in the third shot, that I pulled up on my phone and held under my chin while they worked. Such a spectacular job, when went downstairs and walked past my friends, they didn’t recognise me!
I love my drag name but have always been a little awkward about the film it refers to. It’s iconic and important, but the setting, the plot and most of the characters range from disturbing to awful. I had assumed that the big name ’30s hollywood stars who played in it would have aged equally as badly, but it turns out that Clark Gable was an interesting one who stood up for their principles and the rights of the people around them in ways that would have been downright rare at the time.
My Instagram profile pic is also from this night, half way through my makeup being done. the stick on moustache was spectacular, but didn’t hold well enough to last the show, so was replaced. More to learn!
Blinding Lights rehearsal at the Working Kind Collective
230418
Advertising for Queers of Joy, photo taken at the Blinding Lights rehearsal.
Break Free impromptu at WKC Palace Party
230224 was, I believe, the World Pride viewing party that my pajama photo shoot advertised. I think I wore tails and got up and did an impromptu performance to I Want To Break Free, which I eventually converted to a solo a year later.
Pajama Party at WKC
This is dated 230222 on Instagram. Was it a working bee and photoshoot?
Ewin Trouble photographed me and tried to direct me to look ‘sexy’. I have no idea how to do that, but there were some great photos in the end. I’m wearing my beloved giraffe PJs that do still fit if I don’t have to do the top up! Ewin Trouble is wearing my dressing gown.
>Join me! https://fb.me/e/5lce8akY8
Thanks to @ewin_trouble for both the photo shoot and the surprise magic rainforest!
I’m In Love With My Car at Recycletastic
221220
>I’m in Love with my Car (Totally an ace love song) – my first drag solo, at @recycletastic189enmore on 20/12/2022 for the @nomilkinmyt fundraiser. Video credit to Jeff NME
Impromptu Photoshoot outside the Red Rattler
dated 221209 on Instagram, the photo is from an impromptu shoot at either QOJ or DK when I went to grab something from my car…
>I went out without a beard the other day – what a mistake! Some bloke sidled up as I locked Bea and walked off. I’m always happy to exchange a few words with people who appreciate her, because they’re right, she absolutely is the best car ever. This one, though, launched right in. ‘nice car. you know they don’t have a radiator, eh? they’re air cooled. no radiator. At all. Air cooled. No radiator’
Not that he’d know, but I’ve been driving and maintaining this car for nearly 23 years, now. She’s the love of my life and I married her (see kateandbea.weebly.com if you don’t believe it!) and to be able to share a glass with her, I had to pour some water into her windscreen washer tank, because she doesn’t need anything else. What’s more, I work for a vintage volkswagen mechanic with a parts warehouse.
Even though my ability to learn has been severely hampered throughout my life by people’s perception of my gender, I do know that my spare tyre is not a radiator.
(For those who actually don’t know anything about bugs – which is perfectly reasonable for people who don’t have anything to do with them – this is the second thing, after the engine being in the back, that’s notably about bugs /from the perspective of people familiar with other kinds of cars/. one of the big reasons it’s that obvious is because radiators are a pain and need to be maintained, so are memorable to people who have to deal with them. Yes I’m blithely ignoring that decades of technology has probably improved matters in modern cars – I have no clue and don’t care all that much because my car doesn’t need it – but radiators burning out and people trying to fix them using eggs are still closely associated with the concept of the car in the collective brain, at least for anyone who remembers cars as something that could be worked on at all, before everything went computerised.
This was nowhere near the first time such a thing has happened, of course, but I think it wins for the most jaw-droppingly blatant. Give me another week and I might come up with something suitable to retort to his long-gone back, after being stunned to silence by his staggeringly entitled lack of awareness. Maybe.
Outside
three posts dated 221202-4 on Instagram, covering both performances of Outside, I think:
with the fantastic human and/or bear who was also responsible for the beard!
“I think I’m done with the kitchen table, baby”
first attempt at putting up a reel – it only gave me the choice of sound or no sound, none of this adding a legal version of the soundtrack over the top, and certainly not the sweet music of the screaming crowd without the song… any advice, @nickoteen_drag or anyone?
Rehearsal for Outside
Four posts from 221126-9, from the Gold Star program in the leadup to the first performance:
>still waiting on getting help from another human before embarking on messing with my face, but zoom has some suggestions….
>First attempt, just me and an eyebrow pencil at the Kings of Joy palacewarming
>if this is what @aftercare_bear can do in five minutes in the dark, i wait to see what we come up with for the actual performance on thursday!
>Where did the picture go, from two posts ago? apparently it can’t be edited, even to switch the images so the blank one isn’t in front? Frank is pretty new to instagram, and -frankly- isn’t very impressed. he also just tried to upload a short bio, and it came up in red: 672/150! so let’s dump it here…
Frank is a single dad who can often be seen toting his kid to the local Repair Cafe, the anarchist reading group and every protest he can manage, as he ignores his half-done PhD – Spectra within minorities: a sociopolitical analysis of the strategies of subgroups making space for themselves amongst multiple minorities, comparing Jewish atheism, Queeredge and mature age student associations.
By day he’s a vintage Volkswagen mechanic, and yes he certainly does wear his utilikilt in the workshop.
It’s not his usual – there’s far more hip thrusting than he thinks an ace guy needs in his life – but he’s game to try this group dance thing since it’s for a good cause!
HANALEAH 