Dan Clay is a writer and drag queen thrilled to be making his debut as a novelist with Becoming a Queen. Until now, he focused on spreading love and positivity online through his drag persona, “Carrie Dragshaw.” His writing as Carrie has been featured in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and television shows–from Cosmo to People to Watch What Happens Live–and his TED Talk on being your “whole self” details his first-hand experience with the healing power of drag.

Dan graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in philosophy and went on to get an MBA from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. When he’s not writing, he works for a climate change nonprofit and a New York-based branding agency. He lives in New York.

dan clay offers ten bajillion ways to becoming a queen

interviewed by addie tsai

Can you tell me about your relationship to Sex and the City, how you got interested in it? I just want to hear everything related to that world.

You want to hear how a Halloween costume literally changed my life? So I came to Sex and the City quite late. I almost was dragged there. I first watched it as a sophomore in college at Northwestern. I had HBO in the fraternity room I was living in. A bunch of girls wanted to watch the season finale of Sex and the City. Because I was embodying a particular type of man, I pretended to hate it. They were watching it, and I was rolling my eyes. Oh, this woefully feminine show. Inside, I was, like, Oh my god! This woman is fabulous! That was my first exposure. It was years before I found it again, when I moved to New York. As luck would have it, I moved into an apartment on Perry Street, which is the street her apartment is on in the show. I had a friend come visit, and she was like, Oh, I can’t believe you live on Carrie Bradshaw’s street! I said, Oh, I’ve never seen the show. We stopped everything and started watching the show.

Honestly, those first few episodes, which I watched when I was single and first dating in New York, felt like a documentary. This is my life. These are my relationships I have with guys. These are the friendships I have. It felt so real. I have a much smaller apartment, and a smaller shoe budget. But, aside from that. [laughs] Once I actually watched it, it was love at first viewing. I was such a Carrie intimately. Her faults are very similar to my own faults. Her strengths are similar to my strengths. Her passions are similar to my passions. Just had so much superficially in common. I’ve always dreamed of dressing up like her for Halloween. But it took quite a while to muster up the courage to wear a tutu. Because even when I was younger, I thought coming out was a moment. And then you’re out. And then it’s all over. But it’s been so gradual for me in terms of coming out and coming into embracing all the different sides of myself. It was a long time before I was confident enough to wear a tutu for Halloween. But then the Halloween of 2016 I dressed like Carrie. It was this very special moment for me. I think so much in my head of seeing [the show] in my frat room when I was so not even close to out of the closet to just finally feeling confident enough to do something I had always wanted to do. It was such a fun day. I took a ton of pictures with my friends. I posted one on Instagram. Not even once did the thought cross my mind that it would be anything other than something my friends would see, how we post for Halloween. I went out that night. I didn’t even bring my phone because I didn’t have a purse. I didn’t want to ruin my perfect outfit. It really was so perfect. I went to Patricia Field for the tutu. I tried on 18 different tank tops to make sure I got the perfect one. I can’t walk around with a tote bag! I just went footloose and fancy free.

Then I got home the next morning and my phone exploded.

Oh my God.

In a way I still don’t understand how it happened. It was just crazy. Opening it and seeing comments in foreign languages and comments from HBO and Sarah Jessica Parker. It made me so happy. The next day I posted another Halloween picture. No one started following. Tongue in cheek kind of thing, remember how I went viral yesterday? That one went crazy also. It was right toward the end of the Hilary Clinton / Donald Trump presidential race. The internet was this dark intense place. I thought maybe it’s an opportunity to 1) have fun and not overanalyze every single decision I make and 2) spread a little bit of love and sunshine into the world. That’s how Carrie Dragshaw was born. I want to keep doing this. It’s making people happy. I seem to have been given a gift from the algorithm gods and it’s reaching a bunch of people. I kept doing it, always thinking I’d do three or four more outfits. That was seven years ago.

So, I know a little bit about what it takes to do this thing. I’m wondering if these [posts] were moments where you said, I remember that outfit that Carrie was wearing in x episode, or do you go online and search and become inspired? How does it work going from that to the DIY part? How much of [what you wear] is stuff you already have, and how much do you have to go out and find online, etc?

By now, it’s all of the above. When I first started, it was my top favorite looks, the outfits I so remembered and instantly connected to. I think any Sex and the City fan has a running list of their favorite looks. But then as I kept going, it was more searching, or watching an episode, Oh, I’ve never done that. When it was growing, just asking people. What can I wear next?

Oh that’s so cute!

It’s such a passionate little community. Everybody had their own favorites. When I was doing it a ton, I would mix outfits that would take a ton of work with outfits that were a little bit easier, to manage my sanity. I had precisely zero drag and/or sartorial skills when I began.

So this is the beginning of your drag?

Very very beginning. So I had no idea what I was doing. But it was kind of part of the fun for me, just learning as I go. Oh, fuck, she has a smoky eye in this one? How am I gonna do a smoky eye? And just trying. Meeting proper drag queens throughout who gave me indispensable drag mother type guidance, Oh, that’s how you’re … ? No, you gotta do this. All of these things you just don’t acquire in your daily life.

Which is kind of like that scene in your forthcoming novel, Becoming a Queen, where they go to the party, and the drag queens help Mark out. [Laughing]

Yes, exactly. That was definitely inspired by my connection to a few queens. I think my favorite part is the captions. My favorite part about the DIY of it is that feeling of—there’s no way I’m gonna be able to imitate this $90,000 Versace gown. There’s just no way. Then you take it bit by bit. How can I get something that looks like the thing she’s wearing on top? What might embody the layers that she has? Bit by bit. It’s become so rewarding. At the time that it started, and still, I had a very professional career. So it’s such a different part of my brain to be using which is so exciting. There’s such an escape when you’re trying to learn something brand new to you. The world is falling apart, but I gotta learn to put fake eyelashes on. That is my task right now. It’s so fun. I still feel so grateful for the happenstance that created it all because it has led to so much connection. There’s so many pluses and minuses to social media. I feel so grateful I have this oasis of positivity and connection with people over this really fun show.

Who’s taking the photos? You also do this really amazing mirroring of the actual shot. I know how hard that is to accomplish.

In the beginning, it was just any friend I could convince to come over. In the very beginning, I was a little bit—we all have our own things. One of my things is asking for help. There was a period in between when it was a Halloween costume and it was a thing where I was just—even my friends are gonna think I’m absolutely out of my mind—so for the first few pictures, I hired a TaskRabbit.

[laughing] I love that so much.

Once they get to my apartment they won’t be able to say no or else they’ll be homophobic.

What did you tell them they were doing?

I need a photographer for a few hours. It was so weird. I wouldn’t even acknowledge it. I pretended it was the most normal thing in the world. I didn’t acknowledge I was in bad drag.

Total commitment.

One was the bandeau top and the cowboy hat. It’s such an out there outfit. It had to be outside. Okay, follow me. [AT laughs] We went to this park. The very beginning was touch and go. Once it got energy people wanted to take them. It’s so fun. I have a bunch of friends who just enjoyed the creativity of taking the pictures.

Now I’m curious, what is your sun sign?

Cancer.

Oh, Cancer. Interesting. I’m a Virgo and I definitely relate to trying to ask people for help is the worst.

It’s hard. Part of this has helped me with that. You ask for help and you realize the limits of your capabilities. Asking for help is what then allows it to expand and other people get to have fun with it, too. Goes from being this isolated project to being something that connects me with my friends, too, and meeting new people. There are so many outfits. Now I think, that’s the one where my friend taught me how to sew inside the Dolce & Gabbana robe, and that’s the one where my friend came over and taught me how to make a flower out of coat hangers. Each one has a little personal story for me, which is so fun to go back on.

Tell me about the evolution of the captions, and about how the captions are and are not what we see on Sex and the City.

After the second picture, which was still from the first night, I decided that if I’m going to continue doing this, I was going to make a list of rules for myself. One was that I had to do whatever it took for people to not think it was a parody because it was so important for me to have it feel like a project of love and admiration and adoration and respect because I love the character. There are so many amazing sides of drag. Some of it is exaggerating and some of it is reading. This has to feel like a project of love. The other side for me was at the time I was starting to think about writing. I write for my professional career and I wanted to explore more of it. One of the rules I made for myself was no drag without writing. I can’t just do tutu Tuesday and post a cute picture of drag. It all has to have some sort of message, which was related to the time it was coming out. I don’t want this to just be silly. I want everyone to get a giggle, a thought, and a boost.

That’s so sweet.

The outfit is so cute, fine. I also want a little bit of a thought, and have everything to end with positivity because it was such an intense time. Carrie Dragshaw is not gonna have any thoughts on the G20 summits. [Both laugh.] All of that is obviously important. I wanted to be very clear about my role in the online landscape. So I made this list of rules for myself. Then I watched 15 episodes of Sex and the City back to back to back. Documented how Carrie writes. What are the clues that would make it sound like Carrie. I made this spreadsheet of rules. Multiple questions in a row. Obviously I couldn’t help but wonder. Transitioning from her individual experience into Maybe all women are. Never making declarative statements. I think there’s something so brilliant about the show in that it invites you in. One of the reasons it’s so rewatchable is her monologues are just so many structural things that just—maybe all of us are—has you lean in, nod your head, have your own thought. I wanted to rewrite Carrie a little bit because though I do have a lot in common with Carrie, I also thankfully have a little bit of a firmer grip on things. [Both laugh.] What if I accentuated the Carrie characteristics that I love—that fierce independence, not so needy on guys, not depending on the ebbs and flows of men’s attention for her self esteem? So I remade Carrie Dragshaw to accentuate the Carrie I wanted to push into the world. I’ve stayed very true to that original intention of a giggle, a thought, and a boost.

I love that, that’s so good.

I’ve never ended without a boost. Even when I wanted to, when I’ve been going through my own things. They’re all so autobiographical. When I reread them, I think, Oh yeah, that’s when I was ghosted by that guy, that’s when I almost got a book deal but didn’t. They’re just all thinly veiled memoir. It’s been an amazing exercise for me because I have a lot of the self-reflection that Carrie has that can be a virtue and a vice. The fact that I have to force myself out of it, and in the moment reflect on it, What is the lesson? How would I advise someone to move on from ghosting?, has been really helpful for me. Creating this character that has the confidence I wish I had has given me that confidence. It’s been a very drawn out therapy for me that hopefully has added a little light to other people’s lives.

Was this the first time you dressed in drag your whole life?

More or less. I lived in DC and this was before RuPaul’s Drag Race—there was something called the Drag Race. I forget what street it was down but it was a race of drag queens. That was the first time I’d ever actually done drag. I did it with my friends and it was so much fun. It really lit me up. But I wasn’t ready to ever do it again. One year for Christmas I was Eight Maids a Milking. I was a really snatched maid. I loved it but never wanted to be the one to do it. Carrie was the first time I was the instigator. Even that year for Halloween, my friends had a group costume idea. Oh, join our group costume. And I said, I’m gonna do my own thing.

Tell me how meeting Sarah Jessica Parker happened.

One, it was totally wild. From the very beginning, she was so kind. One of the reasons I continued doing it. I can’t remember when, but maybe three or four pictures in, she started following me. I can’t go back—

—You can’t stop now. [laughing]

—to posting pictures of my nephew or posting thirst traps. I’m in the presence of an icon here. It was pretty unbelievable for this regular person. From the beginning, there was this burst of publicity. A lot of it is just timing. A lot of articles about the one bright spot of 2016. It was just a very love-and-sunshine kind of thing. All of them were SJP approved, the headline of everything. Her support in the beginning is 100% the reason it took on the life it did. Throughout her career she has provided so much joy for me. Then she would write these messages that this was providing joy for her. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. For me celebrities lived in a different sphere of existence so the idea that she was connected to them was … and then she mentioned the account in an interview somewhere. Oh my god, she really knows what’s going on. Then I get this very casual Facebook message from someone who worked on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live: Hey, we’re having Sarah Jessica Parker on the show, would you be interested in coming on?

[Both laugh]

Would I be interested? I would give my left arm.

So I called. Yeah, we’re gonna do this pageant of drag queens impersonating her. I thought maybe you could do the Sex and the City one. Maybe?! It was so crazy. Then the joy. And then instantly, debilitating fear.

I was wondering about this.

One of the only things I regret is how impossible it was to enjoy the lead-up to that because I was so terrified. It was everything. When a car slams on the brakes and the luggage comes forward. You’re going to be on TV, in drag. Not just drag, but silly. Every insecurity. I’m gonna be on TV in the most public way possible embodying everything that’s ever made me insecure in my life. And then just the fear of not being a good drag queen. My wigs aren’t that good. My makeup isn’t that good. On Instagram it’s fun and DIY but they told me who the other drag queens were, and they’re amazing drag queens. Drag queens I go see in the city, so I was terrified of that. And then, there was a ton of fear around, how they say, don’t meet your icons. She’s not gonna make the connection that this Carrie Dragshaw is the same person she follows on Instagram. Or she’s gonna see me and be this diva and it’s gonna be really crushing. So so so afraid. Then the show started. I walked out and her eye contact. I’ve never had eye contact like this before.

She was selling her shoes in Houston. I couldn’t afford the shoes but I went there to see her. She spent intensely intimate time with every single person. You did not feel like she was rushing them.

That was one of the lessons I took away from the experience. When you’re really famous, there’s this swirl of people everywhere you go. It was interesting observing it because it’s so not my world. There’s somebody who opens the door for you, somebody who drives you. Every single person she interacted with, she gave them this moment. She even talked to the friend that came with me. She was just so kind. In an instant, it was this acknowledgment of everything. It meant so so so so much to me.

I noticed she interrupted the moment to talk about the Instagram account—

The no drag without writing! She mentioned the writing which was so meaningful to me. I even had this whole existential crisis about changing the name of the account. When it started growing, people were like, you have to change the name to Carrie Dragshaw. I went to do it and I couldn’t do it because yes, obviously this is a character, but it was also far and away the most authentic thing I had ever done in my entire life. If anything I should change my name to Carrie Dragshaw.

It’s not a persona.

It is more me than anything I’ve ever been. The captions have the guise of talking like Carrie but everything that’s being said is something I wished I had the courage to say as myself. Even having her—not at all in an ego way —say my name. She was extremely kind. I’m relatively put together. But after the show, I was such a rollercoaster of nerves and emotions. As the show was ending, she said, Wait for me. So I stayed. I thought she meant, Just wait, don’t go anywhere. So I’m standing behind the bar on the show. This person is like, It’s over. You have to go.

[laughing] All of this is what I would be doing.

Sarah Jessica Parker said to wait!

So I’m not doing anything else.

So I can’t go anywhere? [Both laugh.] Then I went backstage and she was so unbelievably kind. I was word vomiting about the manicure I got and how I had to draw marker on my wig to make highlights. I was just talking talking talking talking and not saying a thing, and she was so so so so extravagantly kind. It really was the best day of my life for so many reasons. It was such an embodiment of all my insecurities and a validation of them. I had my best friend there. I knew I wouldn’t be able to articulate myself so I wrote a note beforehand, this is what I actually want to say to you. It just meant the world to me. You should meet your heroes, if your hero is Sarah Jessica Parker.

What do you do as your day hustle? How did you get from that life to Carrie Dragshaw to your debut novel, Becoming a Queen? What was the evolution?

I think one of the late-in-life lessons I’ve learned is that while growing, you’re asked, what do you want to be growing up? As if there’s one thing. Right now I’m five things. You can actually be them all. My career for 13 years, and still, is I work at a brand agency called Lippincott. I also consult for this climate change nonprofit that started inside Lippincott. It was basically operating from the realization that climate change has a brand problem. Even people who care about it don’t prioritize it in their voting. So it’s an ad agency for climate change. I work for that a little bit, and obviously Carrie. It was very very clear from the first message I ever got very early on in Carrie where the writing, and connecting to people through the writing, as people began to tell me how it inspired them, was such a uniquely rewarding feeling. It was so saucepan-to-the-side-of-the face obvious that this is what you want to do. This is what makes your heart sing. So for a while it was just, channel that into Carrie. Then the more I got excited about Carrie and about the captions and about connecting with people in that way, that’s when I started exploring writing stuff longer than a caption, in a trajillion different directions. Oh, maybe memoir or maybe a Carrie-length thing. Just experimented. It was so fun. I’m sure you feel this in your creative pursuits. My career is so structured and so much of life is structured that it was amazing just trying things and seeing what was working and what wasn’t. It started to feel like it might be a thing I really wanted to do seriously. I started taking online classes, how do you structure a book? I’d recently graduated from business school. I’m not going back to school. Still paying off the loans from the previous one. Done with undergrad, done with business school. So I can’t actually go to school. Same way you can learn online how to do a smoky eye, you can learn online how to structure a chapter, how to transition. The fiction side was really lighting me up that some of the experimentation wasn’t. Then I went to a course called Highlights. An in-person school where there were teachers and published authors.

It’s such an amazing program. The same way that Carrie Dragshaw did, it changed my life completely. It introduced me to people that didn’t know anything about the Instagram world and didn’t know me. My mom was saying I was a good writer, but I’m not sure she’s an objective audience. I took this novel workshop and the other participants would say it was clear the novel as a whole wasn’t good. But it was also clear parts were. Okay, well if I can write that part, then I just have to do that 900 more times. Having strangers validate it, saying, okay, you can do this. You just have to keep learning, keep trying. I met a publisher who gave me a list of agents who she thought would be relevant for the type of thing I was trying to write. I got a suggestion from someone in the literary world about Young Adult and I was really inspired by that because a big part of Carrie was thinking it would be so cool to help people skip past the completely unnecessary years of shame. Can they, really? I don’t know. I just wasted so much energy hating parts of me. It was a total waste. I did not need to do that. I don’t think everyone does it. With Carrie and with this young adult book, I could get there earlier. Adults are pretty set. I loved the idea of getting to people a little bit earlier because, Lord knows, I hope school is a little different now than when I was there. But not that different.

I usually hate the how autobiographical is your novel question, but given your particular journey … I mean, Mark does end up creating this social media project that comes from his personal experience [with loss]. How much of Mark, the protagonist of Becoming a Queen, is you?

So much of him is me to the point where there were rounds of editing where people would make comments about Mark and it’s like, Oh my god, that is a lesson I need to learn for myself.

[laughing] He’s just totally in his own way so much so that it’s not believable. There are tons of ways he’s different from me, also, but a lot of his insecurities are insecurities I’ve had. A lot of his drag journey and experience and being so tentative are so one-to-one with my experience and even his [spoiler alert] name, the fact that I didn’t want to change my Instagram.

—I love that part! And the friends are trying very hard to give him something more fabulous than a regular dude name.

They’d all grown up with Drag Race so they expected a certain amount of pizzazz. Hopefully I’m not as debilitatingly interior as he is but I probably am.

What about relationship patterns in terms of how he—

Definitely the guy he starts with. That was cathartic to write.

[Both laugh]

It’s definitely the guy. I remember one time me and my friend—we didn’t get dumped, because it wasn’t enough to have it be dumped, but we were spurned by the same guy. We were like, are ten guys doing this to everyone? It’s like there’s just a few guys we’re all going after. One of the things I was trying to capture in the beginning of that book is that when you’re young is that if you’re in a place that doesn’t have many queer people, you connect with the other one.

[laughing] A scarcity issue.

It’s the only other one that you see. Or it’s what your fantasies are leading you towards. In really beautiful ways the guy he ultimately connects with I’ve been so fortunate in my own life to have boyfriends who are similar, just the prototype of loving, selfless, kind, truly showing you what it is to be loved. That character was also in a beautiful way a collection of really wonderful amazing relationships I’ve had throughout my life. That’s one area I’ve strayed from Carrie Bradshaw’s past. [Both laugh.] I’m confident in my own worth so I think that does lead me to men who are a bit more Ezra than John. Carrie really didn’t have anyone.

Not even Big was either. I still cannot handle that his name was John the entire time.

That was the first episode I saw.

You don’t even know what it was like!

Girls were losing their minds because she looks at the phone and it’s from John.

We’ve waited how many years for this name?

There but for the grace of John go I. [AT laughs.] I hope to imbue my Carrie with the confidence of Season 2 Carrie, the smoking, I-don’t-need-no-man Carrie.

The outfits are much wilder.

Totally. She has a DIY aesthetic almost in the early days and then they get that Dior budget.

I don’t want to give away the spoiler, but I’m wondering if this cataclysmic event that happens for Mark’s family [which involves alcohol abuse] that changes not just his entire life but his understanding of the kind of family he was sitting in, was always a part of Becoming a Queen?

It was the origin for me, more than the drag. It was for very specific personal reasons that this story shows how a family recovers from this because so many families are affected, whether it’s alcohol or opioids. Any addiction. But how? That was the driving question for me. How do we? Countless people do. How could you possibly? Whether it’s an ongoing thing or an ending thing. There are so many beautiful books about recovering from your identity. Coming to terms with yourself, loving your special self. I want to write something where his LGBTQ identity was the solution to the problem, not the problem. That’s where the drag comes in for me. There are countless books about coming to love yourself but I wanted his to be the B plotline to the A plotline of the family because even the drag of it all for me has been a source of healing for so many things that had nothing to do with drag. There’s just something magical that seems to happen when you start loving your full self. It starts healing things you didn’t even think had anything to do with your identity. It becomes this all-encompassing helper.

It’s interesting because when I first wanted to interview you—I’ve been obsessed with you for a while—but then I saw you had a novel coming out, I thought, THIS IS MY IN!—I hadn’t read the novel yet. I didn’t realize at the time how perfectly the novel would fit with the theme of this issue, which is SURVIVE. Not just what drag does for Mark, but that what he’s actually using it to heal and recover from is literal survival for his mental health, for trying to move forward.

Yes. His family and his friendships. One of the arcs I wanted to draw was that I think when you start to love yourself you become more generous with yourself also. When you’re in a really tough spot, you think, am I lovable? It makes it hard to reach out to others because you’re so in yourself and one of the things I wanted to do is show him become a more magnanimous person as he becomes more in touch with his fullness. There’s this line of reasoning from people who are anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, that a lot of our choices in life come from a place of selfishness. They hear it as, I want you to use my pronouns because I’m exerting my power over you. They’re obviously only applying their own mental condition to our existence. I think when you start loving yourself and embracing yourself, it’s the opposite. You open yourself up for more connection and I hope that comes across with his family relationships, his boyfriends. There are moments where I do think, Oh my god, Mark, there are other people in the world!

Get it together! [Both laugh.] One of the things I love about Becoming a Queen, especially for YA, is how you push against ideas of the normal and abnormal family. Mark believes he has this typically healthy family until this loss disrupts that. Then you have his boyfriend Ezra, who is seen as having this pretty dysfunctional, fractured family and it’s almost because of that he’s more able to cope with conflict than Mark is initially. I really love that for teenagers because one reason I like to write YA is—I grew up with Judy Blume, who I love—but I feel there’s this whole world of YA always depicting the family as a kid with parents who are married, nobody ever fights. I do think in those normative families it’s when unexpected conflicts arise that it blows up the idea of how healthy or unhealthy we are. We’re all some version of the same thing.

One of the things you learn as you get older is that every family has stuff. Exactly to your point I think some of the families that have the hardest time dealing with things are the ones holding on to a certain identity—we’re this kind of family—and it prevents you from actually addressing issues head-on.

One of the joys of writing is, in order to write halfway believable characters, you have to embody their mindset. It was so expanding for me to try to think about why a parent would hide something like this. It’s obviously out of love or protection. Everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing when they’re doing it. One of the beautiful things about trying to write anything is to get in that mindset where you recall when you reflect on someone’s decision, oh this is the wrong way to handle this, but in the moment of writing the character, you say, I get it. I get why you would want to shield your kid from this atrocity but that causes an even bigger trauma for the kid.

The brother bond in Becoming a Queen is so beautiful. I love that he’s very affirming in his new understanding of Mark’s sexuality and in trying to help Mark figure out how to correct his dating faux-pas and woo a suitor.

There’s this funny meme online: Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre straight white man. Can I try to give him that confidence to the point of trying to skip past some of these years of shamethis? What do I wish I would have been telling myself at that age? This doesn’t have to be that hard. You’re awesome. It’s definitely my favorite relationship in the book.

The moment that caused the most anxiety was when they have the makeup dance outside and Mark said, I can’t do this. I was so glad that scene is short. I can’t take this! They really just break up and this is it for too many pages?

By now, as a writer, you know, I’ve read it 18,000 times and I say, I’m going to be able to get through this chapter without crying. But it didn’t happen.

I cried so much reading this book.

I really wanted to capture the kindness—when he goes to—can’t be CVS because they don’t sell cigarettes.

—Walgreens.

Yes. [Laughs] The geography is the same as the town I grew up in. I can’t make up a town. I’m learning too much. When I was a kid, CVS sold cigarettes! But I wanted to show how beautiful someone’s spirit can be and how generous just getting a light, those human connections.

That tension with the stories of the brother he wants to hold that still involve alcohol.

Anyone who’s gone through any difficult thing, you always want to be fixed before you’re fixed. You always think you should be fixed before you’re fixed. You feel ridiculous that years and years after you’re still holding on to things. Of course you are! The main thing I wanted to do with the book was be in it. What kind of book do you want to write? There are so many where something awful happens. Now we’re in part 2 three years later and we’re still dealing with it. I wanted to go into the awfulness of it. How do we get out of this? We do it with dresses.[Laughs] I knew I’d found the right agent when there were certain parts, even the most soul-crushing parts, the most this is too much parts—he was like, this should be longer. I’ve got the right person. Throughout your writing journey you’ll meet people who want to amp up the romance side, move this forward, etc. But it was really important for me that the cataclysmic event is almost pathologically important but also that it be exactly in the middle. I’m a pretty directed person and then something just happens, and it just blows up.

I have a few more fun questions.

Oh I love it! This is so rewarding for me.

Do you have a favorite designer?

Oh great question. Do I? Probably Comme des Garcon.

They do such wild stuff.

Wild stuff. My personal style looks expected and then you get up close and it’s a twist? And Comme does a ton of stuff like that. Oh it’s a blazer—wait, it’s a skirt? They play with form and I have so much fun in my own life with clothes and just experimenting and expressing.

Favorite—this is more a Carrie Dragshaw question—cosmetic product?

My overall takeaway is it is insanely expensive to be a person who regularly wears makeup. I got by at the start with the generosity of friends. The first night I did my makeup one of my girlfriends did it and she said, oh take this, take this, take this, and sent me home with a ton of products. When those ran out, I went to Sephora and got foundation or something. I looked at the price and was like, Pardon me? I’m glad I am impersonating a woman of the fresh face. [Sarah Jessica Parker] obviously wears makeup but it’s relatively simple because I don’t think I would ever have the skills to contour. My thoughts on makeup are less about favorite brands and more just respect for how people do it. The tips I got from drag queens I’ve met along the way have been really helpful. But mine is pretty lazy.

What is the most life-saving tip a drag queen has given you?

I was at a party with Milk and I was really self-conscious about something. I wasn’t even in drag. I was just articulating insecurities for reasons nobody really knows. I said that I wasn’t very good at makeup and I wasn’t wearing nails and you’re not really a drag queen unless you wear nails. She said to me it’s what you want it to be. Your drag is your drag. If nails aren’t part of it, then they aren’t. The moment that I light up is so simple: any time I put on blush, I think, now I’m a pretty girl! I love it so much.

I love that. I personally think that one of the most powerful things about Carrie Dragshaw is that it doesn’t feel like this over-perfected, produced drag. I imagine part of what’s made it so acceleratingly popular is that it feels like anyone could do it. When you see drag queens, first of all, I couldn’t do it, and secondly, the idea of the hours I would have to spend to do it just stresses me out.

Totally. I am obsessed with drag queens and I love them and worship them and the minimal drag that I do, I’ve learned that whatever you’re tipping drag queens it’s not enough. You’re dancing while you’re tucking. It’s totally insane. There’s this thing they do on Drag Race sometimes where they do quick drag. They only have twenty minutes. I’m like constant quick drag. Then I’ll spend ten hours on my Couldn’t help but wonder thing. So I think we all have things we don’t have patience for and things we do have patience for. Your drag is your drag. I like that I’m still visible. It means something to me that I’m still there. I’ve always wanted it to look like a guy who’s just scrounging things in his apartment and trying to embody his favorite character.

It doesn’t have to be a stage performance or lip sync. You don’t have to know how to sass in a queer bar.

That’s something you learn living in New York or anywhere you have people expressing themselves. There are ten bajillion ways to be a queen. There’s the conventional beautiful drag queens. There’s the Bushwick bearded queens. There’s the fashion queens. There’s just people living their life not performing queens. That gave me more confidence to just be. You try different things. Now it’s this steady source of joy. You get people reaching out, help me with this. There were things where I was in what was literally an unbelievable oh my god I can’t believe I’m in this beautiful piece of clothing and it didn’t feel right. Oh no. Me in actual dress isn’t my drag. It just wasn’t it for me. Redid it in my own DIY way with a ten-dollar fabric from Walmart and a flower I found from a garbage can. I’m a flower-in-a-garbage-can drag queen. You find out what you actually are.

As Dan, what’s your favorite fit to wear?

Out and about? I would say probably this Nike Ricard Tisci collaboration piece I own. It’s a black mesh pleated long skirt and then I wear that with exercise tights and some sort of blazer on top. One of my favorite things with clothes is that – I don’t even like masc/femme – it’s all everything – the conventional pairing. A muscle tee with a skirt. I like that butch queen tension so that’s my thing. Something skirt-esque on the bottom and something manly on the top is what I feel most inspired.

I was sending a picture of you to my co-editor and I said to her in a text, this look is so hot to me. Where you wear a tutu and your muscly arms are showing.

Even in my day-to-day life it’s my drag. Gay guys are just addicted to masculinity in so many ways. We all have the things that pull us towards them that we know shouldn’t. Oh would that guy walk home with me if I would have been in jeans instead of a skirt? So I try to dress in a way that forces me to be authentic to myself.

That’s a great aspect of the novel, too. Especially because drag is considered accepted within gay community, but this hold on masculinity for cis gay men in particular, you see that push.

We have some things to sort through. We have some work to do.

I love that part in the novel where the brother says, the right person is gonna want more of the thing that you’re afraid of.

Talk about a wish fulfillment sentence. That was so my experience. It’s amazing how often you have to learn the same lesson in life. When I was 22 I had this amazingly supportive and loving boyfriend. Then things end, you go back in the world, and you do it again and again. Life has two lessons you learn over and over.

If you had all the money in the world what would be the fantasy look?

I can’t get any more fantasy than the Versace dress Carrie wears in Paris. It’s just so good. I did this picture with Patricia Field and she was so unbelievable. The outfits are such a huge part of it so to be talking to her about it was incredible. She described this moment during one of the very last episodes they were filming here in New York. She was starting on this other show. But it was one of the last shoots for Sex and the City so she wanted to see it. She got there and apparently Carrie was sitting on the dress. Patricia Field was like, STOP! She needs to be drowning in the dress. Enveloped by the dress. So she fluffed it and gave it this iconic moment with all those layers.

It reminds me of the movie where she’s trying on all the wedding gowns. I love the move they went to in the end, but those dresses are so amazing!

I wanted her to have five weddings. What I imagine Paris Hilton would have.

One for the aisle, sudden quickchange at the altar.

YES. That dress forever my heart.

Becoming a Queen is a vibrant and emotional young adult novel from debut author Dan Clay about a boy who turns towards love, self-expression, and drag when the unthinkable happens.