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Transcript

Mermaid: Rat holes, rat holes, rat holes.

Mermaid: This is probably the butchest that people will ever see me when I'm at work, like without makeup. This is just who I am every day, like shoes, everyday, everyday, everyday. Hair everyday, everyday, everyday. My nails aren't done now because two nails broke but we're gonna fix that.

Mermaid: My name is Mermaid Garçon. I was born in Brooklyn, but I've lived in Long Island my entire life. I work for the New York City Department of Health.

Mermaid: There's a big one over there.

Mermaid: And I feel like my coworkers are so cool. Last year, they came up to me just randomly and they just said like, so what are your pronouns? And I was like, she. Okay, she.

Mermaid’s Supervisor: Beautiful Mermaid.

Mermaid: Thank you.

Mermaid: When I was growing up, it was either you were a male or a female. And in the gay community, you were either gay, bi, or trans. There was like nothing in between. I feel like yes, I was born a male but I have so much feminine energy inside of me. I don't, I don't want to be this or that. This individual that is here before you now took a very long time. I've always told people I feel like in the world, everybody has a twin. You might not meet them, but there's somebody in this world that is literally just like you.

Milan: My name is Milan Garçon, I am from Cleveland, Ohio, born and raised. I always knew that I wasn't a boy, didn't want to be identified as a boy. The first time I knew was Freaky Friday, when Freaky Friday came out with Lindsay Lohan, baby, I said, you can wake up, you can go to sleep, wake up a different person, all you gotta do is see a shooting star. I was looking at shooting stars every night like gotta find one, gotta find one. But then they went back. So I'm like, I don't want to be a girl all the time. No, no, no, I don't wanna. I don't want to be a girl but I want to be able to experience the things that I want to experience, which are things that only girls are supposed to experience. Before nonbinary was the word of the decade, I would just always say I'm just me, I'm just me. I'm an entity. I'm an experience. That's what I would always say. It was really tough growing up in Cleveland being very feminine as a young person, knowing that that wasn't gonna gain a positive response. So it was a lot of closeting myself. But I’m a hustler at heart, you keep the hustle going. I moved myself to New York. I’m a media correspondent and a model. And when I think of me in New York, I don't think that I would be where I'm at without my sister.

Mermaid: So whenever I explain to people how me and Milan met, they do not believe that we met only four years ago. I see this individual walk on stage, low cut caesar, but they had a beat mug.

Milan: And I saw her come in with like these, this 50 inches of hair, like literally almost to the floor and she's so tall. I'm just like, who is this lady? But she is fab.

Mermaid: So we're sitting there and we're eating pizza. Love the pizza.

Milan: I just looked at her and I said, what's your name? And she was like Mermaid, what's yours? And I was like Milan.

Mermaid: And she looked at me, she said, so what's your favorite part of your body? And I literally said, well, honestly it would be my legs and my stomach. And she said that's crazy because mine is my stomach and my legs.

Milan: And she just like grabbed my hand, she was like, you're riding with me. And then once I got in Mermaid's car, I always tell the joke, I never got out.

Mermaid: Oh, you're Milan. I'm Mermaid. MnM. That would be a cute hashtag. And it became a hashtag.

Twiggy: And we got it. Traffic!

Mermaid: Twiggy said, and we got it, traffic!

Milan: We instantly saw something in the other person that we knew was inside of us, but we hadn't brought it out yet. My sister Mermaid, she was really like that person that grabbed my hand and was like Imma show you the ropes. And I didn't realize that I was doing that for her when it came to like expression and wearing whatever you wanted, doing whatever you wanted, saying whatever you wanted, like we kind of gave to each other in that sense.

Twiggy: This is the second one?

Milan: Oh, the second one, no shade, is tea.

Mermaid: It's all drag, literally I wore this for a ball in Atlanta. This was another ball in Atlanta. This was a ball in Philly. Oh my god, I loved this one.

Mermaid: Before her, I wasn't wearing makeup. I felt like, if I wore makeup then people would expect me to transition and that wasn't the path that I wanted. But she made me feel comfortable like, no girl, just because you're wearing makeup, and wearing heels, and hair and stuff, that's not what we want to do. That's not who we are.

Mermaid: Pretty Woman

Milan: I've never seen that movie.

Mermaid: Gimme, gimme. Showing your age. Showing my age! Never saw Pretty Woman? Gosh.

Mermaid: The year 2018, that is when I met House of Garçon.

Mermaid: And after I was luckily inducted in, it was magic after that.

Milan: Hello!

Milan: A ballroom house is a group of people, black and brown, LGBTQ+ people, that find refuge with each other. And really push each other to be their best selves in and out of ballroom. That is, that is a house.

Milan: To me, that Garçon house is bangy sophistication. We are full of love. Behind closed doors, we are just your average black family having a good time.

Milan: There's sodas back here!

Mermaid: Sodas?

Milan: Yeah, ginger ale--

Carolyn: That's my hiding spot, don't--

Milan: That's so funny.

Carolyn: Don't even go there.

Milan: That is so funny. Sister would you like a pepsi?

Mermaid: I didn’t know we were hiding sodas.

Milan: Behind the vegetables?

Carolyn: I gotta hide it. Because I know you guys will never go in there.

Mermaid: I’m never going in the vegetable drawer.

Carolyn: Get the onions, get the scallions and the tomatoes.

Milan: I got the scallions and tomatoes behind you. But you want onions too? Aren't scallions onions?

Mermaid: When people express like where they're from, I'm super excited to say that I'm West Indian. Especially with my family. We are very family oriented. I feel like that's a Caribbean thing.

Milan: I could probably do stewed chicken before I could do curry.

Carolyn: Well curry's a little bit more technical.

Milan: Curry is like technical, it's like the day before, it's the day of. It's the after prep.

Mermaid: I was an only child until I met my sister Milan. Now that I found my sibling and we literally live together, it's amazing.

Milan: We live together in the house that she was born and raised in, this is like her mom's house. They got a pool here so I was like yeah what's the rent? I'm moving on in.

Mermaid: And then my mom secretly is obsessed with it.

Milan: I'm a way better baker. I can make you anything.

Carolyn: Yeah, he's very good at that.

Milan: All of my pies, she. All of my--

Mermaid: She, mom. She, mom. She, she, she.

Carolyn: Correction, correction.

Mermaid: Yes, yes.

Mermaid: Before, she thought that maybe it's just you that's like that in the world. But now she sees like no, there's like other people like you and there's somebody who is just like you.

Mermaid: Hi, I'm Mermaid.

Milan: Hi, I'm Milan.

MnM: And we are MnM.

Mermaid: No, girl.

Milan: Sorry.

Mermaid: We walk--

Milan: Butch Queen in Drag's runway.

Mermaid: For the legendary house of

MnM: Comme des Garçons.

Milan: When I joined the ballroom scene I saw very quickly that the categories were gendered.

Milan: Knock, knock.

Mermaid: In ballroom, I walk the category which is called Butch Queen in Drag runway. That category is pretty much a Butch Queen, which is a male figure, or a male, who can be female-presenting, turn it on and become a drag queen. Which is who I am naturally.

Milan: Brain surgery, ha. You've seen nothing like this.

Milan: All right, you all, so we are on our way to the ball.

Mermaid: Bye Auntie!

Milan: Let’s go!

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, once again, we want to welcome you to the Unity Ball. We are going in this order, please be ready. The first is Schoolboy, then Pretty Boy, then Thug, then Executive, then Butch Queen in Drags, then Femme Queen and Trans Woman–

Mermaid: I define drag as feeling your essence.

Announcer: Let's go, Mermaid! Hervé Léger.

Mermaid: When I think about drag queens, I always had this idea that they were strong men who were portraying women. And that's kind of like a image that was put in my head, but there are many different types of drag queens.

Milan: Anybody could do drag, you can be any gender you want to be, be any gender that you gotta be, you could do drag.

Crowd: Travaille, Garçon!

Milan: It feels really good walking balls because you're getting like that instant validation back from your peers that you may not get from the world outside of ballroom. You know, you come out your whole life until one day it's just like, I've arrived darling and I do not have to come out to you anymore!

Mermaid: I have an energy that naturally exudes out of me, it can be masculine, it can be feminine, really no boundaries. And I just feel like nonbinary… it’s open.

Milan: It's such a simple concept at the end of the day where it's like, I am going to be myself fully, no matter the boundaries, no matter the spectrum, no matter the binary. No one's the same so, it can't be a binary in two genders, that just, the math isn't mathing, darling. It's kinda like that moment of seeing somebody that is like, the you that you see yourself being--

Mermaid: We literally found each other.

Milan: How lucky were we? But you gotta be present, baby! Luck will stare at you right in your face sometimes, but if you are not present, in yourself, you know, realizing what's going on with you and the world around you honey, you will miss it every time.

Milan: She's the twin that I was separated at birth somewhere in the dimensions and we found each other. You know, when you have a sister you know, y'all feel like you can take over the world, period.