In my early years when in a diminutive state, everything was bigger and longer and wider and taller. My now humble childhood home seemed spacious if not expansive. My front yard - currently measured in feet and inches - was experienced then as a boundless world of make- believe kingdoms. Time passed slowly as an hour represented a more significant portion of life lived.

Such was the context of innocence for what I consider my first gay trip. I was five years old, and my family and I lived in Culpeper, Virginia, a middling town famous for cattle ranches about halfway between Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville, Virginia, where my grandmother lived.

Even in our environmentally conscious age, one would be hard pressed to find fault with certain verdant stretches of Route 29 between Culpeper and Charlottesville as the perfect balance between machine age utility and green-space preservation. Fresh fruit and vegetable stands still dot the side of the road. Of course, I am making this observation as an adult not as an impatient child ready to get there.

Mom was driving us back home to Culpeper in the family wood-paneled station wagon. I am sure I came down with a bad case of the are-we-there-yets, and my sister - eleven years older - loved make-up and country music and armed with a purse full of Maybelline for emergencies found one in me. For the next hour I commanded all the attention in the car and exulted in it. I sat still and quiet as a little princess being prepared for the ball: glue for eyelashes, brush here, blush there, red or pink for lips, green eye shadow, black eye liner, blonde wig teased to the heavens, falsies and chartreuse sweater (not really my color), and tan tweed skirt. At that stage in her life, my sister could have been a drag queen’s best friend as it is amazing that she just happened to have all of these supplies at the ready.

For my childhood self, the one pleasure of road travel involved stopping at random stores and piling up on snack food normally prohibited. Somehow the world of the road existed as an alternative universe allowing for suspension of parental responsibility. My venue that day was a brand new old-style country store of the type that would have been vogue a few decades prior. Past the long gallery porch and inside awaiting navigation lay an uncharted region filled with childhood exotica like Twinkies and Raspberry Zingers, which in the world of the road could not only be had but could be had before dinner.

"Well, isn’t she adorable? Who you supposed to be, darlin’? Are you Dolly? You Dolly Parton?" cooed the proprietress, who shockingly looked like a 60-year-old version of my drag persona.

"Yeasss," I said in my best country drawl tossing my dime-store bouffant.

Occupied with fruity sponge cake, the rest of the trip passed quickly. I glided through the front door of our modest home as a queen of country music. Dad, awaking from a recliner nap, stared nonplused at first but then seemed to make sense of it. One more piece in the rainbow puzzle slipped into place. "Why, you look like Tammy Wynette," he said matter-of-factly. The tough part came when my sister had to take off all the stuff. Sitting through the make-up-removal process proved not nearly as fun as putting it on, especially when you have precious little time to watch TV before bedtime.