Charles Jensen | Writer

It must be summer in Maryland, because it’s either raining, hailing, or sizzling outside. I just walked the dog and felt like my skin was simultaneously peeling away from my body and developing blisters.

What does this mean? Well, it means this past week was DC Pride. It’s important that this festival occur at a time of year when everyone smells awful and every enclosed gay space smells like a locker room with broken bottles of Abercrombie & Fitch cologne littered about.

Such was the case on Friday night when I took in the drag show at Town, which featured some very special guest ladies: stars (and losers) of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 2 Morgan McMichaels, Tatianna, and Sahara Davenport.

Here’s the skinny on these skinny ladies:

Sahara Davenport had clearly just invested in a new Bedazzler, as just about every stitch of clothing on her body (which wasn’t much to begin with) was encrusted with shiny glass and beads. It was like Britney Spears in the “Toxic” video, if you could retroactively subtract 9 cheeseburgers. Her performances weren’t great. She was clearly not America’s next drag superstar. C-

Tatianna was, I thought, really unpleasant on the show and I had given her low marks on the internal scoresheet I maintain in my head. Although RuPaul often lauded her for serving up Real Girl action, I was like, meh. Drag’s more fun when it’s bawdy and inappropriate, not aiming for realness. After all, these are men in dresses. But let me say that having done drag from the age of 14 on, Tatianna she was the hell she was doing. She was a fantastic performer, great dancer, and–yes, girls, this matters–knew the words to her songs. A+

Morgan McMichaels was also really good. She was fun, had great songs that suited her, and she was gabby on the mic, which I like. But she was definitely lip synching in Tati’s shadow, unfortunately. A-

I wish I could write more, but honestly, they were serving $2 rail drinks and I’m not proud.

The regular ladies of Town were, I think, subdued a bit as a tribute to their guests. We got a little Tina Turner medley and “Barbie Girl” starting with the queen in a foamcore Barbie box that she broke apart. The production values are definitely going up.

It took about five minutes of dancing for the entire lower level of Town to smell like a dirty gym sock. The humid air was thick like cashmere–so at least it felt expensive. We danced for a while, but honestly, neither my heart nor my nose was really in it.