“I work in nightlife” is the typical and discreet answer 31-year-old Jayme Giles gives to strangers when they ask what he does for a living.
Though he works at Champion Party Supply in the daytime, he becomes the “local eye candy” by night as a drag and burlesque performer named “Bruno Baewatch.”
He uses his Bruno Baewatch persona to lean into his masculinity as a transgender Afro-Latino man and break barriers within the community.
After moving to Seattle in 2018, Giles was introduced to burlesque performance by his former boss at Amazon, who was also an entertainer.
The art of drag can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman theatrical performances.
Today, drag has been used as a way for people to bend gender norms, entertain, educate and spread joy.
It has also become an outlet for trans and gender non-conforming folks to cope with the prejudice they face.
“Seattle is a refuge for a lot of queer people, and throughout our lives, we have faced a lot of judgment, disrespect, adversity that we didn’t even know was happening,” Giles said.
Giles knows this first-hand.
His mom, a first-generation Mexican immigrant, did not speak to him for a year after he transitioned from a woman to a man.
Bonding over this adversity has helped build a tightly knit community of Latin drag performers in Seattle, Giles said
But it is not without its obstacles.
In 2021, the diner theater Julia’s on Broadway in Capitol Hill fired six drag performers after they confronted the owner about only paying performers around $75 per show and dancers nothing and prohibiting performers from working gigs at other venues.
Spearheading this confrontation was Jacob Almanza, 33, also known as Queen Andrew Scott, a Black Mexican drag queen best known for her 2023 appearance on the second season of the TV show “Drag Latina,” broadcast on Revry.
“I was so tired of being controlled and condescended to,” Almanza said. “The way we were talked to and the way we were made to feel that mattered more to me than the money.”
As Queen Andrew Scott, Almanza is a “futuristic chola” and the self-proclaimed “Chicana baddie of Seattle.”
He works as a drag queen full-time, performing three to four nights a week in between his marketing, choreographing, writing, and costume designing gigs, which are all drag roles that many performers take on.
Giles described him as “one of the hardest working people in the city.”
Moreover, nurturing new bonds with other Seattle performers encouraged Almanza to explore his Mexican heritage through fashion and music, something he previously felt disconnected from professionally and emotionally.
“Before 2020, I was a severe alcoholic, and my drag suffered a lot. Once I got sober, I realized that my culture and my roots…that is an advantage,” Almanza said. “That is a spiciness. That is an extra ingredient to my drag that I can really pull from because I grew up Latino, and there’s so much to it that I can play with.”
Almanza’s struggle to embrace his culture was rooted in deeper conflict from his childhood.
“My parents, growing up, didn’t want us to learn Spanish because they wanted us to do very well in school,” Almanza said. “Before I was almost embarrassed, which is crazy. I wouldn’t even pronounce words in Spanish. I wouldn’t even let my natural accent come through because I’d be afraid to stand out.”
Seedy performs at a drag brunch at Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood.
Photography: Mead Gill
Other Seattle Latino performers had experiences similar to Almanza’s.
Local drag king Elijah Baehr, 34, also known as Sid Seedy, grew up in Hawaii with little connection to his Latin culture despite being half-Mexican.
Baehr recounted a childhood memory in which he asked his father, “If we’re Mexican, how come we don’t have that Mexican culture?” His reply was, “Because there is nothing to be proud of. We’re not Mexican; we’re American.”
Baehr is now a full-time performer who draws on his years of experience growing up in theater and is inspired by an array of people, including the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, and Vaudevillian Theater.
All of this helps bring the effervescent Sid Seedy to life, though Baehr only recently began embracing his culture through performance.
“When I think about celebrating Mexican culture…within my drag art, it feels like a graveyard in my own body [has] started to come back to life,” Baehr said. “To discover you’re Indigenous is an incredible and sad and wonderful experience, and to be able…to find your community within it feels like I’ve been like a lost child my whole life finally walking into something familiar.”
Baehr’s incorporation of Mexican culture is seen in his costumes and makeup, often inspired by skeletons and Dia De Los Muertos.
As meaningful as culture is to him, Baehr created his drag persona from many different experiences that make him who he is, a sentiment echoed by Giles and Almanza.
Being Latin is an important aspect, but only one aspect of many, he said.
A gathering space for Latin drag was born when Almanza was approached by Stetson Wilson, the events manager at the bar Unicorn in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, to kickstart a Latin drag night in Seattle.
Three years later, Unicorn’s Latin drag night “Leche” (“milk” in English) is a staple in the community.
Hosted by Almanza on the first Wednesday of every month, “Leche” is a platform for both established and new Latin performers to celebrate their art and culture through drag with support from the queer community and their friends and family.
“It’s been a long time coming, but I think our community is at the best it’s ever been, period,” Almanza said. “Respect the art, love the artist, get curious about it, ask questions, and go to a show. Go support local drag!”
Mead Gill is a senior at the University of Washington majoring in journalism and public interest communication and minoring in music. As a Pacific Northwest native, he is passionate about highlighting the diverse voices that make up his community.