Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “Dear Bianca” by Leah Mell. Leah (she/they) is a genderqueer lesbian writer originally from the American South. At present, she is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her current working obsessions are flamboyance, persona, the queer body, and the archive, examining unstoried histories and people. She is currently working on a book project—part lyric memoir, part cultural history—that explores queer families in the South and their lineages, focusing specifically on her years performing and loving in the drag community in the Carolinas with her own queer family. Her poems have recently appeared in Baltimore Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and Rough Cut Press. She is fond of ghosts and the sea.
I remember first meeting you at a house party after I joined the drag family. The party was at Lolita’s old place, across the street from that 24-hour gas station. We hid in someone’s bedroom and chain-smoked Marlboros and gushed about Broadway musicals and the best makeup products for summer when it was hotter than the Devil’s ass crack in North Carolina and rivers of sweat under our wigs were inevitable. Green Marble setting spray was a must. We disagreed on eyeliner brands. You were one of my first sisters, only a few years older than me in drag. You felt like home.
You called me one afternoon and said in a rush, “Sister! I finally found out where they got that gorgeous floral fabric Lucy Liu was wearing, but it’s fucking vintage Yves Saint Laurent. Like, I have to become a Hollywood stylist now so I can have access to the fabric in 20 years and remake that dress. I mean, I know that’ll never happen, but wouldn’t it be sickening?” You had been researching this dress for weeks and finally found the information in some obscure interview with a costume designer. You were miraculous like this, hungry for every detail that fascinated you.
I remember you onstage in your favorite lilac vinyl dress, duck walking to that Ariana Grande / Britney Spears remix you found on YouTube the night before—Step on up to this, step on up to this crazy love. The rhinestones on your platform heels refracted the stage lights like miniature disco balls. Even in that dingy drag bar, the light clung to you as you looked out into the crowd and smiled, wide. A hair toss and a twirl. A final shimmering pose. You were beautiful. You were alive.
I stopped being afraid of the verb “to die” after two of our queer family members died in the summer of 2020. I stopped cloaking it in soft euphemisms. Cassie and Alex had not “passed away” or “moved on.” They were not “in a better place.” Their lives were not my loss. They just died. Heroin overdose. Heart abnormality. Too young. A tragedy. Something like that. You came to the funeral. You mourned them with me.
But I was afraid of the murkiness of your death. Someone posted the news report in the group chat. I read the article online, disbelieving. You were found dead in the roadway after being hit by a 2004 Volvo after midnight in October a few years ago. The driver had swerved to try to miss you, but couldn’t. She stayed on the scene. I didn’t know why you had been in the road. I thought maybe, in an irrational state, you were trying to walk the ten miles home from the bar. Maybe the friend who came out with you left with some guy and you didn’t have a ride. Maybe you didn’t have the money for a cab or an Uber. The article kept calling you a “man.”
We weren’t really speaking at the time. Your anger had started to burn a little too close to the surface, and you couldn’t welcome tenderness or healing. None of us could afford therapy. Your parents, your ex-boyfriends, your coworkers had all been cruel to you. Bianca—the name you had carved out for yourself—and your vintage dresses and winged eyeliner made them wince, made them ashamed. You were bending, warping under the cruelty. Vodka and violence twisted into vices and swelled.
We all drank too much. We knew this. We weren’t stupid. Working in drag, in nightlife could do that. Partying was literally in our job description. And so many people in the Bible Belt wanted us dead anyway. We were overdoing it. We were cutting back. We were beginning to suspect that balance in this industry might be a mirage. You tried to get sober after a particularly bad blackout during a show. We tried to support you. We threw you a party after your first month of sobriety. The whole drag family blew up hundreds of balloons from Party City and filled the living room. We were breathless when you finally walked in, laughing, shining.
But, we were all imperfect, and it didn’t last. You started sneaking cans of Clubtails into your bathroom while we were watching TV, taking shots when you thought no one was looking. We could hear you yelling at your boyfriend behind the closed bedroom door, banging things against the walls. I sent you messages almost every day, trying to make sure you were okay. You came over to my apartment and cried on my couch and said that you wanted to get better. You didn’t like who you were becoming. I told you that I loved you. It wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be.
You tried to get sober again, and it didn’t last again. You threatened to push a friend down the stairs. You screamed at our drag mom, your roommate, about an upcoming apartment fee. You started spreading rumors about us. We tried to get you help, called treatment centers and hospitals, but everything was too expensive or booked up for months. I needed to step back for a little while. I told you that. I couldn’t keep watching you hurt us and hurt yourself. You were not happy. You said that you understood.
A few days after you died, I learned from a friend of a friend who had been working at the bar that night that the bartender had cut you off and tried to call an Uber for you because you could barely form words. You stormed out and evaporated into the dark beyond the blinking red lights of the bar. This kind of detective work was not as thrilling or glamorous as those pulp crime dramas we used to watch together.
A few days later, a new article revealed that you hadn’t been walking along the shoulder or looking for a ride, after all. You had been lying in the street. You had passed out on an empty road or laid there intentionally, aching to be struck. I cannot know which is the truth, and I am afraid to. You died of a head injury on impact. Is that what you wanted? Did you want to die? Did you want to become a haunting? These inelegant words unfold like a fist.
Your Mormon parents refused to acknowledge who you were, even in death. In your obituary, they said you were a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They said you “went home to your Heavenly Father.” They spelled your cat’s name wrong. They used your deadname and called you their “son.” They sculpted you into a stranger, made in their likeness and sensibility. At a generic funeral home on a road named for a NASCAR driver, they gave you the cheapest possible service: bottom-shelf urn, two sparse bouquets, an outdated portrait, no queers allowed. I had to find the photos on Facebook.
I don’t know if I should say “I’m sorry.” It feels like a lie. And it’s not going to change anything. But even if I shouldn’t say it, I’m sorry that you never got the chance to heal. I knew it wasn’t really my fault that you died, but afterward, it felt improper to mourn you, given that I had distanced myself, that you had been upset with me. It still feels that way. Wouldn’t it be disingenuous? Wouldn’t it be a kind of selfish delusion? You thought that I had betrayed you. What claim did I have to grieving?
You always believed in ghosts. We used to swap ghost stories while smoking in the front seat of your beat-up Dodge. Remember? I had to blow smoke out of the cracked sunroof because the passenger window didn’t roll down. You told me that your new apartment was haunted, that kitchen cabinets opened on their own and cold spots materialized in new places each day. I told you my favorite: that I was convinced I was having a love affair with a ghost woman in a recurring dream. I was convinced it was really happening. It felt real. I want to believe like this again. I want to believe like you did, but people won’t stop dying.
A thing about the dead: They don’t come back. You don’t come back. Even if I ask nicely.
But I keep asking. I want to see you in drag again: a glamorous alien business woman dancing her heart out on a grimy bar floor. I want you to hear you yell “Sister!” when I walk into the club or into your apartment. I want to watch you model a skirt suit you found on a sale rack at the mall. I want to drape blankets around you when you fall asleep on the couch watching garbage reality TV. I want to listen as you rant about your favorite cold case or fashion designer or lipstick brand. I want to walk to the gas station with you for a pack of cigarettes. I want to sing “Cell Block Tango” and invent our own chair choreography. I want to hug you so hard that my diaphragm could collapse. I want you to open my kitchen cabinets. I want to find you in an unexpected cold breeze.
The end wasn’t perfect, but I loved you, Bianca. I still love you. You looked stunning twirling in your thrifted floral dresses, humming the Golden Girls theme. You went to work at that medical billing office in rural North Carolina with a full face of makeup every damn day. You made them change the name on your badge: “Bianca” printed over the cheap metal magnet. You demanded respect for the woman that you were even when those conservative old ladies told you that you were an abomination. You were beautiful and unashamed. You wanted to be loved painlessly and fearlessly and forever. I don’t know what forever looks like, but I hope you found it.
The last text message you sent me was four months before you died. It said: “I got home early this morning and am safe.”
Thank you to everyone for all of your kind words. I am so grateful to you for reading. Bianca was a beautiful person, and I am glad that more people can know her name <3
Coming up in early 80s Philly, when black trans women still ruled the night, I knew a spectacularly beautiful, spectacularly tall woman named Bianca. Her skin glowed iridescent as she flashed from bar to car. As I got older, she, along with all the other beauties stopped coming to 13th street. I always wondered what happened to her, then as I got older, she faded from my thoughts. This gorgeously haunting story brought her back to life for me. I speak your name. Bianca.