Auditioning for RuPaul and Finding Out I'm Ignorant feat. Greg Mania

The message came from a woman named Brandy. In her profile picture, she wore a Margaritaville T-shirt and fanny pack and stood posing on the rooftop of a building, behind her a dreamy, sepia-toned cityscape that looked like it could’ve been New York or LA. I almost never checked my Instagram hidden messages folder anymore. All my writer friends had told me that when I published a book, my DMS would be full of dick pics and rich dudes trying to fly me out, but as much as I got my hopes up, whenever I went into my inbox it was just AI porn bots and people trying to sell me bitcoin shit. Something about Brandy’s touristy profile picture didn’t scream SCAMMER, though. Instagram showed me the first words of her message:

Hi Edgar! My name is Brandy and I am a casting associate…

I slowly sat up in bed. I knew from my past DMS that I really needed to lower my expectations. Still, out of curiosity, I clicked through to see the rest of her message.

…producer on this upcoming season of LINGO on CBS, hosted by the fabulous RuPaul!

Huh? LINGO? I’d never heard of RuPaul having a gameshow, despite watching every episode of Drag Race a thousand times and knowing the names of his preferred makeup artists and where he shops for costume jewelry (Santee Alley in LA, across from the quinceañera dress shop!), but Brandy included a Youtube link to a trailer for the show that looked pretty legit. There was the CBS logo. There was RuPaul holding colorful note cards. I went to Brandy’s Instagram profile and saw that she’d posted a handful of casting calls for other shows, all of which seemed like they could exist too. Even so, I had my guard up, until her message got more specific:

After coming across your profile and seeing that you’re a writer, I wanted to know if you and/or someone you know is GREAT at wordplay games and would be interested in applying. You MUST have a valid passport to apply since filming takes place in the UK.

The fact that she had done a little bit of research on me, and that she wasn’t promising anything more than an audition and only IF I had a passport, made me think this could be real. Maybe she’d met enough traumatized gay people that she knew the best way to hook me would be to act like she didn’t need me. It worked. For a second, I imagined myself getting flown out to the UK by my favorite rich dude of all time, RuPaul. Maybe I could even make some money. I had a gay friend who won Jeopardy like 8 times and bought a house. And another who was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I didn’t think I was smart enough for those, but words? Words?

Hi Brandy, yes I’m interested! I quickly typed back, trying not to sound too desperate.

I’m a writer. I know words. Finally a game I could play.

$$$

First I needed to find a partner. The next morning, before getting on a call with Brandy to discuss the audition —which would involve playing a round of LINGO on Zoom with a producer—I went through my mental rolodex wondering who to invite.

Who would be good on TV?

Who knew words?

Who was gay and would appreciate this?

I thought of my bestie Arturo, who works at the library and studied acting in college. But he didn’t have a passport at the time. I thought of my Jeopardy friend. But he was about to go shoot another episode of that show for The Tournament of the Champions--coming on LINGO would have been a downgrade for him...

Then it hit me: Greg. Bitch. It had to be Greg.

I met Greg Mania when I first moved to New York. I’d been a fan of him since reading his memoir, Born to Be Public, about coming-of-age in the NYC queer nightlife scene in the early 2000s along with totally unknown club kids like LADY GAGA. Anyway, how do I describe Greg? He had the height and build of a supermodel -- over 6ft tall, with a bleach-blond pompadour that towered above him and added another foot—with a wardrobe that was Alexander McQueen meets Russian hooker: all animal print, studded leather studded jackets, and the faint smell of cigarettes and vodka. Greg was words and TV. And also Polish, so he had a passport.

(Greg Mania and the cover of Born to be Public. Check out Greg’s Substack, SOS: Save our Serotonin!)

My ask went basically like this--

Me: Girl what are you doing next week do you wanna audition for RuPaul’s new game show? It could be funny, but also, what if… ;) ;) ;)

Greg: Girl duh!!!

So let me tell you right now that I didn’t “super” “understand” the rules of “LINGO.” The game was like: You had to guess five-letter words around a theme? Sometimes the words would be partially filled out? Sort of like Wordle but also Scrabble but also Wheel of Fortune? Something like that? Who cares! We were both writers, so we felt confident we’d do fine.

Our prep instead focused on the TV part. What should we wear? Do we coordinate outfits? And, most importantly, what do we say when RuPaul asks us how we know each other? The real story—that we met on Instagram, became mutuals, and went to a literary party in Brooklyn together—wasn’t interesting. We needed something FUN.

At this point, my first book, High-Risk Homosexual, had come out, and my agent and I were about to try to sell my second book, Alligator Tears, to publishing houses. Greg’s book had been out for a year or two, and he was working on his second one too. The pressure was on both of us to sell enough copies of our debuts so that a publishing house would give us another shot. There was no way we weren’t going to mention our books on a national platform like LINGO, which I had no idea existed yet suddenly carried the weight of our entire future careers as writers.

We need a cute story! I texted Greg in a panic.

Something that would make us stand out. Something memorable and short and sweet and that we could use to casually bring up our books.

Ideas we pitched each other for how we met for when RuPaul inevitably asked:

1. We were riding the train one day and sitting across from each other. I was reading Born to Be Public and he was reading High-Risk Homosexual.

(CORNY. And such an obvious lie!!!! Also this is lowkey the plot to Before Sunrise.)

2. Honesty: We both became fans of each other after reading each other’s books.

(BOO. Boring. Do you think I’m meeting RuPaul and telling him even one true thing about me? Absolutely not!)

3. We were at a RuPaul’s Drag Race viewing party at a The Cubbyhole, a gay bar in New York, and when we found out we were both writers, we became friends.

(Perfect. Believable. And it’s kind of a plug for Drag Race too, so they would def keep it in. Baby that’s what we in the business call synergy.)

The plan was to admit that we lied about how we met after they aired our episode and hope that people understood. It wasn’t that big of a deal. We were just struggling queer artists trying to make it, we were taking destiny into our own hands, we were doing whatever it takes to survive, blablabla. Besides, wasn’t the whole point of drag to sprinkle a little glitter over the truth?

With our story decided, we kicked back and waited to meet RuPaul.

$$$

The morning of the audition, we were still more concerned with our storyline than playing the game. Greg and I texted each other pictures of our outfits, since he was in New York and I was in Puerto Rico, so we wouldn’t get to be in the room together. I dyed my hair blue the night before and wore a leopard print shirt. Greg chose a hot pink button up and piled his blond hair up into a work of architecture.

We looked like what Republicans think gay people look like.

When the LINGO producer started our Zoom audition, he gave us a quick rundown of the rules of the game again—it truly went in one ear and out the other—and started the clock. For the sake of Accurate Journalism, I just now tried to find the rules online and came across this video making fun of how unnecessarily complicated they were, so I give up, but the producer said something like, “Alright, you’re guessing five letter words. The theme is travel!”

A scrabble-looking board appeared on screen, with five rows of words, five letters each. Some of the letters were filled out, but most weren’t. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes, but between all the awkward silences as we tried to fill out the board, it felt like hours. My brain did that thing it does--like when I try to do math or look under my car hood to see what’s wrong—where it kind of just powered down… Most of the audition was a blur. What I remember is that at one point I was so broken and desperate and the guy kept looking at me like he was rooting for me but I was obviously doing horribly that I just started shouting out things that I thought were words, but weren’t really or didn’t apply at all…

The two “words” I remember screaming like they would save me are:

Jammies!

(Not five letters. Not related to travel. I have never said this word in my life. IDK man…)

Boeing!

(Also not five letters. More of a brand than a word. The producer stared at me so crazy when I said this that for a moment, I was like, Are you even a writer? Baby, do we need to go back to grade school and go over numbers and nouns again?)

Greg did a little bit better, but honestly, we were both bad at LINGO. I can’t speak for Greg, but as a stoner memoirist, half of my writing process is just sitting at my laptop struggling to remember words and memories, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that coming up with 5 letter words in 10 seconds while a man tries not to laugh at me through a screen didn’t go well.

The good news was that our vibe was on point, because even though we absolutely did not pass the audition, the producer said he loved our personalities and had another show we should try out for. This one would be shot in Ireland and we’d have to guess song titles based on 3 seconds of a song they would play for us. I was tempted, but I also know myself. The only artists I listen to regularly are Corinne Bailey Rae and Bad Bunny. I could guess Put Your Records on in a heartbeat, but if I could barely get through a word game, I knew I wasn’t about to do good at a song one. Plus, it wouldn’t be hosted by RuPaul, which took the fun out of it. As the producer spoke, all I could think was that I’d blown our big break. We said we’d think about it and ended the call.

Afterward, Greg and I debriefed on the phone. It was a very quick conversation that went like:

Me: Well, they got us girl…

Greg: At least they liked our looks!

Who knows, maybe in another life, we would’ve gotten flown out to the UK. I would have known all the words and RuPaul would have loved us and invited us back over and over. We might have even gone on to do our own Tournament of the Champions.

But it wasn’t meant to be. They cancelled LINGO after that season.

What’s a five-letter word for someone who’s mad about not getting to meet RuPual?

Cuz bitch, I’m still sitting here, reading these old ass DMS from Brandy…