Marti Gould Cummings: Life’s a Drag When the Heels Are Off

Marti Gould Cummings is a self proclaimed “drodge queen” who doesn’t want to be “typical.”

Cummings pulls inspiration from everyone from Justin Bond to Liza Minnelli. He is notorious in Midtown Manhattan for his over-the-top outfits, racially charged banter and one-of-a-kind showmanship.

When asked why he doesn’t use a drag name when he performs, Cummings gleefully responds: “My name is Marti Gould Cummings and I didn’t change my name because that’s who I am and I like to see my name in print.”

“I’m not your typical drag queen,” Cummings said, drawing attention to the fact he doesn’t wear wigs or fake breasts. “My character is a version of me simply heightened by the fact that I wear a dress.” Cummings has been known to perform up to six shows a week. But the moment the lashes come off and the crowd goes away, the feeling that’s left behind is hard to describe.

“People move aside for you when you’re in a dress,” Cumming said. “They hold my bag and open doors for me. When I leave my apartment in a baseball cap and shorts and I’m incognito, it’s different.” Cummings leads what some would call a double life. “It’s very humbling. You wear a pair of six-inch heels and the world turns to you. You wear a pair of flip-flops and no one cares.”

Cummings, 24, who moved to New York to pursue a career in musical theatre, found his true calling after performing in an Off-Broadway show as a drag queen. He dressed as the character at a party years later and the bar owner thought he was funny and asked him to start a show there.

“Now, I have a very big following in a ten-block radius,” Cummings jokes about his current celebrity.

Although Cummings tells a “Cinderella Story,” the road to success was not always paved with glitter. Cummings was fired from numerous jobs throughout the years for getting drunk on stage. “It’s hard to get fired in nightlife for drinking too much,” Cummings said with a laugh, “but I managed to, several times. I had acquired a pretty horrible reputation for myself over the span of only a few years. That’s when I decided to get sober.”

Cummings says, as so many do, that getting sober changed his life. “It certainly changed my shows. It taught me that if I put my mind to something, I could make my life 10 times better.”

For Cummings, working in nightlife as a drag performer comes with an unexpected solitude. “I wear dresses for a living – cockblock. I work in nightlife and don’t drink – cockblock. I’m effeminate – cockblock. I’m literally cockblocked by own sequence,” Cummings jokes. “I was made fun of in school for being too effeminate, but now, I make a career out of it. It does affect my dating life, however. Men are intimidated by me. Either that, or they piss me off, and I get rid of them.”

For the time being, Cummings is living single. “I’m married to my job right now,” he said. “If something comes along then great, but for now, I’ve got a husband, it’s my job and I’m working every day.”

The show doesn’t stop when Cummings gets home. “I self criticize like you wouldn’t believe. Was that joke funny? Did I look OK? Did I sound OK? That’s when my sobriety kicks in. I always get lonely after shows and [that loneliness leads to] depression. But I know that I am worthy so I start to check in with friends to see if they’re OK. The minute I find out how someone else is doing, it takes the pressure off myself.”

In this relationship with his audience, Cummings is paradoxically more alone at home than at work.

“It’s a very weird sensation, going home alone,” Cummings said. “I know I am not going to meet a guy when I am out in drag because of my own insecurities, so I usually go home alone. When I take off my makeup, it’s a very strange sensation from going to entertaining hundreds of people and making them laugh to going home alone and there’s nobody there. It’s a lonely mind fuck.”