Ganymede Dixon
Ganymede Dixon
The Florida State University - ENG4932-04 -Women Rewriting Shakespeare
Essay 1 – Creative Parody
19 February 2009
He wasn’t a man’s man and certainly not a man’s woman. In fact, he wasn’t even a he … biologically speaking. But when Ganymede Dixon was onstage, heterosexual and homosexual men and women alike couldn’t keep their eyes off him. Tonight, he was a silver spike and studded rock star, jumping and crawling around on stage, lip-syncing along with the sexually driven song “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails; its pulsating beat, heavy guitar, and intensely male vocals was blaring from the speakers while red and white lights flashed onto the stage and into the crowd.
Ganymede spotted a blonde girl wearing a low cut pink tank top and was excitedly holding out a dollar towards him. He smirked and pulled her onstage while perfectly mouthing the lyrics, “Help me tear down my reason, help me its your sex I can smell.” Her boyfriend watched, at first indifferently and a little amused, what did he have to be afraid of? It was his girlfriend, and she was straight. The blonde laughed and still held onto the dollar. She turned to the audience and waved excitedly, obviously enjoying the onstage attention.
Ganymede took off his jacket to reveal a relatively flat surface where a woman’s breasts were strategically bound to the sides with black duct tape. “Help me, you make me perfect; help me become somebody else …” The blonde quickly tucked the dollar bill in the red boxers that were sticking out of Ganymede’s black pants and began to walk offstage. As if on cue, she was grabbed and spun around by the goateed performer. “I wanna fuck you like an animal … I wanna feel you from the inside …” He was feeling down the curves of her body and delivering the words to her. She giggled nervously but watched his hands travel below her waist. He smacked her ass accompanied by a quick grab before helping her offstage back to her boyfriend who had grown increasingly uncomfortable watching the performance.
Ganymede Dixon then turned to the blonde’s boyfriend and directed the performance to him, playfully tugging at the corner of the tape covering his chest.
The audience cheered with excitement and a female voice yelled, “Take it off!” Ganymede smirked but shook his head and waved a finger ‘no,’ the tape would stay on.
His favorite part of the performance was coming up. Two girls in black leather knee high boots and matching blood red lingerie seductively walked over to Ganymede, circled him once, and then began dancing with each other. Ganymede watched the half naked girls touching and grinding on each other for a few moments and gave a thumbs-up to the audience. He stepped into the middle of the girls, displaying them as his stage props. The girls dropped to their knees, one behind him and the other in front, grabbing at his pants, as if preparing to perform fellatio. Instead, she ripped the pants away and then the other tore off the red boxers to reveal red boy short style panties and thigh high black fishnets held up with a lace garter belt. The song ended and he walked offstage. Thank you, Mister Dixon.
He was known for his overtly sexual tendencies and flirtatious personality with a bisexual orientation – or rather just generally sexual – so know one was spared from the performer’s antics. Once he had used the costuming glue to tack on the dark facial hair to his chin for the night, it was attached to him even when he wasn’t on stage. He was a wily boy with a quick-wit and great smile. He had to remind the straight women and gay men that he wasn’t always a ‘he’ if they groped for something in his pants that wasn’t there. Ganymede didn’t pack his pants like most other drag kings did but relied on the male clothing and a hyper masculine persona to convey the gender of male.
“If I were a woman,” he’d begin the emcee banter while hosting the show, “I’d fuck myself. Really, I would. But we all know that’s just called masturbation.” Even these days, it was uncommon for women to talk about giving themselves pleasure. Even men in the 21st century still had stigmas with female masturbation, considering it a competitor with intercourse. In this still patriarchal world, this “man’s world,” masturbation and lesbians were growing threats to the hetero male’s sexual prowess. In this world, men wanted women to want men. But Ganymede, as a man onstage and also as a woman during the rest of life, believed firmly that being a woman didn’t mean being everything a man thought a woman should be.
“If I were a woman … I’d like women.” Ganymede Dixon raised the microphone into the air as the audience applauded and catcalled.
Some men booed and one effeminately called out, “I’d take you home with me, Ganymede, baby! Show you a good time.” Laughter. Most people in the audience knew that he had never and would never be with a man.
“I’m sure you would sweetheart,” he responded with a wink. He was everyone’s favorite boi, who many wished really was a boy.
When he was a she, she wasn’t nearly as obnoxious and lusty as she was when wearing facial hair. And she was certainly not bisexual or even bicurious. But she was still funny, loud, crude, outspoken, wore both men’s and women’s clothing – men’s clothing was more comfortable and freeing unlike a woman’s formfitting blouse or dress, and had strong opinions regarding politics and social movements.
In regards to her relationships with friends and lovers, the main objectives were to cut through the bullshit and get to the point with honesty and open communication. She had a girlfriend that knew her both as Ganymede, the highly desirable performer, and as rather attractive, slightly butch, woman. Although she knew both, however attractive others found Ganymede, her girlfriend never got used to kissing her minus the breasts and with facial hair. Ganymede was not her lover but her lover was sometimes Ganymede.
There was a difference between the ‘he’ and ‘she’ but both were a part of Ganymede. She was him and he was her. Clothing and presentation really did make the distinction between the two personas evident, but there were even occasions when she wasn’t in drag that people mistook her for a boy. And sometimes when she was Ganymede onstage, she would fuck with both genders, displaying her very real and very natural female breasts with her nipples covered solely by black pasties in the shapes of Xs but also have an attached strap-on that would protrude from unzipped pants.
Audiences thought the display was disturbing, pornographic, entertaining, humorous, edgy, bizarre, cheesy, or whatever else depending on their personal perspectives. And she meant for it to be all of those things. Gender fucking helped her achieve her personal drag performance goals: ask questions, raise suspicions, get the audience thinking, and keep them wanting more.
Works Cited and Consulted
- All Mixed Up. 1998 – 2008. Madeline H. Wyndzen, Ph. D. 16 February 2009. <http://www.genderpsychology.org/transsexual/glossary.html.>
- “Closer” lyrics and song by Nine Inch Nails, Nothing Records, 1994.
- Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare based on the Oxford Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1997. 1591 – 1657.
