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I finally caught up with very busy Leigh Shannon in her fabulous drag store, Ritzy Rags Wigs and More, located in the throbbing heart of the Vini district in Orlando where several blocks of gay-owned stores and salons form a virtual safe-harbour for all of Central Florida's party animals. Leigh described her shop as a women's consignment store serving every aspect of cross-dressing. She also has a lovely intimate backroom where you can sit for a complete makeover for $75. She's there to fulfill the needs and during our interview, Leigh helped customers with trademark devotion, including some well-known female impersonators who were in to find just the right pageant shoes.

Leigh's been doing drag for 20 years and it seems to her to go back a lot longer and deeper than that. She comes from Louisville, Kentucky where she did her first hometown shows at the old Downtowner.

You may have been there yourself, readers, but did you ever dress up in sheets at age 6 and do Diana Ross songs in the basement while your folks were out in the country wearing their own sheets - the ones with eye holes in them?

Born a mountain family from Virginia, Leigh had a hard road walk as a highly visible person in her town. Her pain stemmed from the guilt she carried for many years while she was enrolled in Berea College in Louisville for the Baptist Church music ministry. Her mother, knowing and accepting as she was, passed on early in Leigh's life, leaving her with a father who was devastated by her coming out. Leigh learned the hard lesson that love cannot always overcome ignorance and she saw that blood does not always make family. She loved her dad, but being an uneducated man, it was too late for him to change. The guilt, or rather her courageous reaction to it, drove Leigh to switch to the University of Louisville. As a 17-year-old out on the town one night, she went to a gay bar dressed knowingly in a jump suit and plenty of jewelry. Now this was a "girl" with a football player's big body and beard, so our young Miss Midler-to-be was soon snatched up by the show Queens, whished backstage, dressed and thrust out into the lights. Her first job earned her a $5 bar tab, but just being hit on got her hooked. She wore the same dress for six numbers in a row and made a grocery bag full of money.

Moving to Florida some 10 years ago was the watershed of her experience. It set her free at last to come out and accept herself fully as well. Everyone has a mission, she believes, and not too much time should be spent on gaining acceptance. Leigh has moved on and will continue to do so by adapting herself to trends in music, celebrities, and show business projects, whether it be doing Emcee work, look-alike, country songs or her favorite Bette Midler.

She is famous for her impersonation of the Divine Miss M because the role fits her like the gloves she sells. The two of them are united in one brassy, fabulous slang-slinging attraction that draws the big straight crowds for the dinner shows at the Clarion Hotel near Disney. Her success there has sharpened her focus on another project: a full-scale production of her own Illusions in Revue, a celebrity look-alike extravaganza at a new supper club near Disneyworld.

Leigh Shannon chose her stage name at the prompting of Shannon Lee, her drag mother, and from her own like of Leigh Taylor Young of the 80's. Leigh is a professed boy-Queen, has had only minor eye surgery and occasional facelift, but has no plans for breasts or other augmentations. She proudly retains her manhood, proclaiming she makes love out of drag and get butch in bed, complete with shorts and ball cap. At age 37, she confesses to re-grouping and limiting her week to one of 3 or 4 nights out instead of the 5 or 6 banger of a while back. Leigh stresses the importance of eating properly, exercising and staying away from drugs. Her business takes a lot of her time and she shares the store six years now with Nancy Gilman, her longtime partner who has successfully raised seven children on her own. Heroes stick together.

Leigh Shannon is quite a philosopher and writes a column for Encounter Magazine, a glossy Florida gay expose. In it she tells of club news, and counsels her readers concerning political issues, local events, and where and when to buy furniture. She has a devoted husband of 10 years now.

A large number of people are genetically gay, she says, recounting the results of recent medical research, "It's something in our body."

Her strongest inner urge has always been to entertain and the cross-dressing followed. Like many of us, Leigh not only admired strong female characters, but wanted to become them.

She retains her faith from her Southern upbringing, but doesn't believe in the Bible as written by man. As you sow, so shall you reap. This sacred maxim has kept her independent. Early in the drag circuit she began questioning people's motives. She had to become a "bitch" first and was perceived as a very strong individual. "People would like me better if I wasn't successful," she adds. "It's all about entertainment and you don't have to be friends with everyone. People eventually feel guilty about treating you badly".

When asked about her genetic family's reaction to her profession, Leigh shared that she hadn't told them yet-after 10 years away from home. She's waiting for an emotional wave to ride and hopes the news of the her success in business will soften the blow.

Strictly and famously a boy-Queen, Leigh believes gender reassignments are many times done for the wrong reasons and that a lot of girls live to regret it. She cautions pre-ops by reminding them of later life when we all long for a white picket fence and acceptance. Be aware of the statistics surrounding sex-changes, she says, it can go haywire for some.

Again underlining reinvention as the key to success, Leigh advises girls competing in the pageants not to let their crowns go to their heads. That tiara is a billboard to connect you with a bigger world. A holder of 12 titles, she urges contestants not to be scared of someone else in the show and if you lose, be intelligent enough to see why you didn't win.

Leigh's interests outside of show business are none the less ambitious.

She is apalled by the failure of the justice system in our country, citing her outrage at the O.J. Simpson trial and the endless hearing surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. Her addiction to true justice brings her to question why people put up with the deceit of government. She perceives the growth of its total control over society. She is considering law school and plans to take her activism to a higher professional level as an attorney. It's part of her aptitude for reinvention, she says; another inner urge. And yet another gown to her wardrobe of accomplishments: Leigh will be publishing her memoirs in a year or two as she delves into her own many-colored past to reveal the rainbow in us all.

Leigh Shannon: "Follow your dreams as long as you don't hurt people along the way. Live this life like it's the only one you've got. Leave a legacy, a memory. Remember the first word in memory is me."

All this and more from a country guy who finally made it to the big city, but to get there, had to become a gal.

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