Before I came out as a transgender man, I used to perform as a drag king. My stage name was GQ Joe and I performed to the tunes of Justin Bieber, NSync, and other terribly bad pop songs. I did this for 7 or 8 years, performing at drag shows in bars, at Pride, and on college campuses. Don’t get the wrong idea, I was not amazing, but I wasn’t bad. I was good enough. I’m sure there is video somewhere on the internet, but I’m not about to help you find it.

When I came out, I chose to stop performing. For me, personally, I didn’t want to perform as a man any longer because I wanted to live my life as a man. But, this post is about a story that occurred the summer before I came out publicly.

I was MCing and performing in a drag show at a small gay bar on the outskirts of town. The bar was located in a strip mall and the entrance to the bar was at the rear of the building. At a pseudo intermission, I stepped outside to get some air, when my friend called me over. He introduced me to Kamila and Gabriella. Gabriella had just moved here and was going to begin teaching at one of the universities and her sister Kamila was visiting her from New York.

We chatted for a few minutes and then I had to go back inside to start the second half of the show. Which, first involved warning the drag queens that we were starting and making sure they were ready to go. I opened the second set with Nick Lachey’s melodramatic ballad, “What’s Left of Me.” The “choreography” that I created involved stripping off an item of clothing and throwing it into the audience, each time he sang “But you can have, what’s left of me.” At the end of the song, on the very last “But you can have, what’s left of me.” I am standing in my boxer briefs (with more ones than I deserved stuffed in them) and a nude undershirt that I had drawn abs onto with marker. As I stated in the beginning, I was not great, I was good enough.

After the second set finished I went to get a drink, but before I could, Gabriella came up to me. She politely said that I had done a great job (obviously lying—but I wasn’t mad at her for it) and then said “My sister has a message from New York for you at the bar.” I started to ask “What?” but Gabriella had turned and walked away.

I looked up and down the bar and then saw Kamila sitting at the end, ordering a drink. I approached her and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey GQ Joe. Nice show.” She smiled. She had an incredible smile.

“Hey Kamila, your sister said you had a message for me from New York?” I asked, trying not to sound totally and utterly confused. Which I was.

Without saying a word, Kamila smiled and then gently grabbed the back of my head and pulled me in for a kiss. Not a small peck. A long and intense and amazing kiss. I liked messages from New York. I liked them a lot.

“Message received.” I said with a smoothness that caught me off guard.

To this day, that remains the best pick-up game I have ever witnessed or been a part of—not that I had anything to do with the delivery. To make it even more impressive, I later found out that Gabriella had not even told Kamila she was going over to talk to me, let alone that she’d be telling me to go get a message from Kamila. Which means that kiss was total improv.

What’s the best pick-up line or pick-up scenario that’s been used on you or that you’ve used?

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