GOTHESS JASMINE

The first time I saw Gothess Jasmine, they had three eyes. The lights at Cheer Up Charlies gave their skin a purple glow as they prowled the stage in a pair of Pleaser heels and an outfit made mostly out of jewelry. They gazed out into the crowd with all three eyes.

“The message of the day is ‘allyship,’” Gothess declared, and the audience cheered.

It was the second iteration of the Pantheon, a monthly drag show and spiritual market for Black Indigenous and POC performers and creators from across Texas. Throughout the night, Gothess, the event’s creator, alternated between bubbly host, sensuous dancer, enraged activist, merciless dominatrix, and back again. During their own performances, they were erotic and commanding, twerking, falling into the splits, and then clacking their heels together so hard that at one point, a strap broke. 

In between performers, they bossed around a white sub who crawled around the stage, picking up the tips that had been thrown onstage. If the sub moved too slowly, Gothess would threaten to punish them, and at the end of the night, they eventually delivered on that promise. For the last few minutes of their routine, Gothess borrowed a belt for an audience member, gave the sub a few tender caresses, and then spanked them.

‍

I would later learn that this isn't a typical feature in Gothess shows, but still, that night I felt discomfort, awe, confusion, and excitement. It was exactly how Gothess Jasmine wanted me to feel.

“I want [people] to be confused,” Jasmine Beatty (aka Gothess Jasmine) said. “To be shocked and gooped and gagged. In a state of confusion, our brains are working overtime to try to figure things out. To be confused means that you're thinking. To think is to alter or strengthen your perspective.” 

The 31-year-old Black drag performer had been working to create an event like Pantheon for years. The show was a way for them to carve out the space they wanted in Austin. The first Pantheon in June had featured only Black performers in celebration of Juneteenth. The August show directly addressed white allies, and Gothess used their platform to point out that allyship was about more than tipping BIPOC performers or even volunteering to get humiliated by a Black person on stage, it was really about what white people did when nobody was there to hold them accountable. “Pantheon is a lot like church,” Jasmine said. “There has to be a message.”

Pantheon isn’t the only place you can find Gothess around Austin. They’ve been hitting the stage in drag for just two years, but already they also host Sappho’s Songs, co-host Die Felicia, and are a regular performer at other weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly shows like the Big Gay Cabaret, Side Show, and Sirens, to name a few.

Jasmine’s drag lives up to their stage name, a portmanteau of  “goth” and “goddess,” with looks that are supernatural, otherworldly, and ethereal. They’ve been a yellow alien with mushroom-like rings protruding from the sides of their head, a Jack-o-lantern complete with a homemade pumpkin head, and a being of glowing flowers with floor-length multi-colored Senegalese twists. They’ve even been a sexy burlesque version of the possessed girl from The Exorcist. Most of their looks come with three eyes (one look even had five eyes), a visual reminder of Jasmine’s belief in the importance of different and shifting perspectives.

Their lip-sync performances are seductive and athletic, calling upon acrobatics and multiple kinds of artistic movement: burlesque shows, belly dancing and strippers. Gothess’s routines regularly include strip teases, twerking, running or falling into the splits, and even “walking on splits” from one side of the stage to the other. And there’s the shoe clacking. “It's a way of re-engaging not just myself, but the audience and the performance,” Jasmine said. “Also, it just feels like a liberation of expression. I'm doing it for me, I'm feeling it. I'm throwing my pussy on the floor, and this feels amazing.”

Clacking their heels together is also a callback to the community of strippers who encouraged Jasmine to become more comfortable with their body and creative expression. Jasmine grew up in a nomadic, military family where, as the oldest of 10 siblings, they often played the role of another parent. Their family moved to Fort Hood in 2011 and they began working as a waitress at a strip club in Killeen. The strippers supported Jasmine’s creative instincts and quirks, complimenting their makeup and early drag looks. 

By the beginning of 2020, Jasmine's creative work – doing makeup and making henna art for other performers and at festivals – was bringing them to Austin more and more, and they needed a change of environment. They moved to Austin in February 2020, a month before COVID-19 changed everything.

The first time I spoke to Gothess Jasmine, they only had two eyes, enough for them to easily read me. That night at Oilcan Harry’s as they were waiting to perform for Side Show, they invited me to sit at a table with their friends. When I politely demurred, Jasmine said, “Oh, you’re an introvert, aren’t you?” Then they introduced me to their partner, Dan’Chaye McGruder, a chef and fellow introvert.

‍

Dan’Chaye told me that they try to come to all of Gothess's performances, partly so that Jasmine won’t be the only Black person in the venues. I looked around the bar. It was a Wednesday night, but there were at least thirty people inside. Dan’Chaye, Jasmine and I were the only black people.

“I see a lot of us sprinkled into these spaces and it feels like that is exactly what white supremacy would like,” Jasmine said, explaining how white supremacy wants BIPOC to feel isolated, invisible, and powerless. As a Black performer, they're frustrated by how Austin lacks dedicated and consistent spaces and events for queer BIPOC. Moving to Austin right before the pandemic and the racial reckonings of 2020 brought to light the inequalities and hypocrisies of the city for Jasmine. “Here in Austin, I have recognized that even the white liberal or the self-proclaimed white ally is far more comfortable with white supremacy at large.”

A common refrain for Jasmine is “see a need, fill a need” from the movie Robots. It’s why they’ve created events like Sappho’s Songs and Pantheon, to try to meet some of the needs of queer and trans BIPOC in Austin. (Door proceeds from Pantheon go to organizations like Black Trans Leadership of Austin and Sex Workers Educating & Empowering Texans.) It’s why Jasmine doesn’t mind (too much, anyway) being the “diversity hire” in some drag shows, so that even if there’s just one other Black person in the crowd, they won’t feel alone. 

“I will say what needs to be said every time in these white spaces, and I will let them know that there are intentional spaces for the few of us sprinkled in here,” Jasmine said. “We need to know that we're out here, and you're going to be uplifted and seen. The whole thing is to be seen and to see others. That's what I'm hoping my work can do.”

‍

‍