To Wong Foo: Thanks for Letting Me Know Road Trips Are for Me

To Wong Foo follows the characters Noxeema, Vida (Patrick Swayze), and Chi-Chi (John Leguizamo) as they embark on a road trip from New York City to Los Angeles to compete in the Miss Drag Queen of America pageant. Black, queer, and visibly deviating from gender norms, Jackson is apprehensive about the trip. Her concern is a brief flicker of reality in the otherwise lighthearted film, but no matter how cheeky it is, it does remind readers of the stakes the characters face—and foreshadows some of the main themes to come in the movie.

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Twenty years after seeing the film for the first time, at the start of a global pandemic and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I found myself sitting behind a steering wheel. Black, Queer, and visibly deviating from gender norms, at 26, I identified with “Auntie Noxee” in ways the 5-year-old version of myself who first fell in love with To Wong Foo had never imagined. I was ready to jump into full-time travel, but with a moment of collective reckoning and protests spreading across the country, I had spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to make of “this America place” before I hit the road. More than that, I was also trying to figure out how kindly it would respond to me, an unfamiliar and historically unwelcome face, once I had.

The day I was meant to start my trip, I sat in my grandparents’ driveway for so long that my legs started to get stiff. As I tried my best to muster up the courage to turn the key, my otherness felt like an embarrassment of riches, and I knew that the trip I was about to embark on, if not done carefully, could cost me everything. Finally, I turned the key and watched Texas slowly fade away in the rearview mirror.

Even before I got on the road, my choices had started mirroring scenes from To Wong Foo in interesting ways. Both I and our film’s protagonists encountered “that age-old dilemma: style or substance” (as Vida says) when choosing the vehicle that would cart us across the country. In true queer fashion, we both erred on the side of style. For Noxee and friends, that meant a 1967 Cadillac DeVille. For me, it was a 1979 Coachmen Leprechaun.

We also both hit the road under the vague protection of a more palatable [read: white] version of ourselves, both of us clinging to the idea that if they could do it, surely, we could, too. Noxee was escorted by Miss Vida (Swayze). I was hiding behind the white-crested wave of influencers the pandemic had created out of a little something called “vanlife.” We even had similar destinations. Noxee was headed to Hollywood in hopes of becoming Miss Drag Queen of America. I was headed to Joshua Tree to attend my first vanlife gathering, “Moonlanding,” and sit around a campfire with a bunch of strangers who’d made the decision to turn road tripping into a lifestyle. (OK, fine. Maybe they’re not that similar.)

And the parallel experiences continued. In the movie, the characters’ DeVille breaks down outside of a rural town called “Snydersville” as they hastily escape a slur-spewing, dress-lifting Sheriff Dollard. I, too, had my fair share of mechanical issues as I made my way west. Whenever we watched the breakdown scene in the movie, my mom and I took absolute delight in shouting “NO, I don’t THINK SO” alongside a defiant Chi-Chi (Leguizamo) as she wags her finger and reminds Vida that she never asked to be brought on their voyage. But when my own stylish steed broke down on a mountain in rural Colorado (and in New Mexico … and in California …), there was a lot less delight. In fact, when I called my mom to update her each time, the only things we shouted together were expletives.

There were also more existential parallels. Upon learning that they’ll have to spend the weekend in Snydersville for repairs, the trio begins to panic, wondering how long they have before the townspeople figure out that they’re not, in fact, cisgender women—and what might happen when they do. With each breakdown of my own, I understood the concerns of our film’s stars intimately. Though I’ve grown up in a somewhat different era, violence against drag queens, the LGBTQIA2S+ community, as well as Black and Brown folks are still problems across our nation. Hitting the road during the 2020 election, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, meant carefully scanning the vehicles at gas stations and grocery stores for confederate flags or conservative bumper stickers as signs that I might not be welcome. (Moreover, living in the age of social media means Snydersville also exists in my pocket in very much the same way it existed in small-town America in the movie.)

Being one of few Black folks in the vanlife space, and one of the more visibly Queer solo travelers on the road, the idea of engaging in activities like meetups and caravans was a bit unnerving, to say the least. Thrusting myself into remote locales with strangers who may or may not have managed to save space for a bias against one or more aspects of my personhood among their vanlife “necessities” felt foolish, in a lot of ways, and reckless in so many others. Like our film’s protagonists, I went through with it anyway.

Thankfully, for both me and the movie’s characters, things sometimes work out better than you expect.

In the film, instead of being rejected or harmed, our trio finds themselves embraced by the women in the community, and then by the entire town. When the weekend’s Strawberry Social festivities are interrupted by Sheriff Dollard and his hunt for the drag queens who escaped him, the entire town inserts themselves in the mix, everyone claiming to be a drag queen—a stunning display of allyship. One character, in particular, stands out for her warm acceptance: At the end of the weekend, as Vida begins to come out to Carol Ann (Stockard Channing), Carol Ann interrupts her, acknowledges her, and says, “I don’t think of you as a man. And I don’t think of you as a woman. I think of you as an angel.”

As a non-binary solo traveler, I, too, have had the good fortune to meet more than my fair share of Carol Anns. When I pulled up to Joshua Tree and I finally made my way to the campfire, I was greeted with warm smiles, a cold drink, and even hugs from a few folks who recognized me from the internet. Though I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, by the end of the weekend, I couldn’t have pointed you to a stranger if I tried.

There’s something extra special about being surrounded by people who understand that, for better or for worse, you’ll all be moving along soon. Just like Vida and company, I found that travel—particularly road-tripping—tends to inspire a surprising level of vulnerability and trust with those you meet along the way. There’s something in knowing you may never see someone again that empowers you to be your most authentic self. A little bit of abandon, a letting go of what we “should” be or are “supposed” to do and say, seeps out of each of us—and helps give others the space to do the same. This bit of travel grace makes it incredibly easy to see and be seen, with all the good, bad, and ugly of the human condition, without judgment.

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My Joshua Tree road trip, initially meant to last a weekend, somehow stretched into four years of road travel. Instead of heading back home, I decided to keep exploring, and in the past years I’ve been from Houston to Atlanta and Baja California to St. Louis.

Recently, I re-watched To Wong Foo for the first time since beginning my vanlife journey.

I was particularly taken by a scene toward the end of the movie, after the queens have been embraced by the townspeople, when they reflect on their time in Snydersville. As the bittersweetness of a pending goodbye hangs heavy on the air, Noxee revisits the objections she voiced at the beginning of the film. “I mean, now I realize that … you gotta take chances,” she says. “‘Cause you never know, you know what I mean?”

As the credits rolled, it clicked. The thing that pushed me over the edge as I sat in my grandparents’ driveway, to embark on the road trip of a lifetime? It was the voice of my beloved Auntie Noxee, reminding me that “you gotta take chances.”

‘Cause, you just never know. You know what I mean?