For Luis Rowley, OCD and depression are something he needs to deal with daily.
But for Luey Lu, Luis’ drag persona, they are problems which seem a “million miles away”. The 22-year-old, who lives in Everton, is a hotel receptionist by day, but by night, is a self-proclaimed “over-excitable gremlin” who entertains audiences across the city.
While customers think they are simply just filling seats at his performances, what they don’t know is they are actually helping him battle his mental health issues by giving him a reason to get into his horror-inspired outfits.
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The former University of Liverpool student told the ECHO: “When I’m out of drag, my mental health issues are just something I have to put up with every day, especially the OCD. Depression can have its up and down moments but OCD is just a constant ride, it never has good or bad moments, it just has the same bad moment for me. I can sometimes feel like a small person in a sea of people.
“When I get into drag, it is like all those worries aren’t really in my mind. Even when I do feel OCD tendencies in drag, I don’t feel as bad about them and they don’t scare me as much. I’m the face eyes are drawn to out of intrigue and fascination, I’m a walking talking attraction. When I’m Luey it's different, those things don’t go away, but they’re put on the back burner whilst I just allow myself to have fun. Sometimes you’ve just got to be able to let your mind have a rest and enjoy life without all the inevitabilities pushing you down.”
Luis only started doing drag when he moved to Liverpool to study just over five years ago. Having grown up in a “very small and religious” village in Staffordshire, “where everybody knows everything about each other”, his exposure to the LGBTQ+ community - apart from what was seen on TV - was next to nothing. As a result of this, when Luis first started visiting the city’s Pride Quarter he felt overwhelmed.
It was when Luis walked into OUT!, a RuPaul-inspired bar on Cumberland Street, he realised he wanted to become a drag queen. This wouldn’t be the only epiphany Luis would have as the city’s queer scene soon helped him understand he was transgender.
The criminology and sociology graduate said: “It was only when I came to Liverpool and spoke with trans people about trans issues, that I realised I was trans myself. Now, people’s misunderstanding of me being a drag queen is routed in the idea of gender roles, which obviously drag has tried to tear down for years.
“People often misunderstand trans men’s relationship to femininity, often believing that all trans men wish to completely distance themselves from anything deemed to be feminine, but that’s just not true. All people can be feminine, masculine, or androgynous, no matter their gender identity, because presentation is not equivalent to gender. If I go on a night out as Luey, dressed as a clown or Barbie or a tooth-faced monster, I’m still going to go to work the next day as Luis, the hotel receptionist.”
Not only as a drag queen but as a trans person, Luis recognises the power his and Luey’s voices can have. Between hosting and performing, Luey takes a moment to raise awareness of issues - women’s rights and transphobia - which “desperately” need to be addressed.
He said: “My drag is very intentionally dumb, I don’t want to aim to be good, I want to aim to have fun being a disaster. That being said I am known for taking a moment to be serious, come out of that clownish bimbo persona and discuss issues that are seriously affecting our community and society as a whole, advocacy is very important to me and with the influence drag artists can have I think it's important to use that to fight for our human rights.”
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