From I.V. to TV, UCSB Grad Competes on ‘King of Drag’

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This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.

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Chase Lounge plays with gender the way kids play with Roblox. The L.A.-based king is funny, dramatic, and exciting, and soon folks will get a chance to watch him compete on King of Drag, the first drag king competition show. Lounge’s love for drag had its foundation in Santa Barbara. 

During his third year at UC Santa Barbara, Lounge joined a few friends to watch season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It was a chance to do something fun with a couple of queer friends, Lounge recalled. At the time, Lounge said, he was deep in the closet but was drawn to queer culture. A few months later, he attended a drag show on campus and saw his first drag king performance. It stuck with him. 

Lounge was still years out from performing himself, but by the time he graduated from UCSB in 2015, the foundation was set. While he pursued a master’s degree in Irish literature in Dublin, Ireland, he said he saw a ton of drag. By the time he moved to L.A. at the end of 2016 to pursue comedy, drag shows were a mainstay.

“[I was] going to drag shows, being obsessed with drag. Then I had like my own coming out journey, and realized I was like a lesbian, and then realized I was trans,” he said. 

One evening in the late summer of 2021, Lounge and his friend went to see an all drag-king show at the now-closed bar, Redline. “I was like, “Oh, this is what I’m meant to be doing. So I quit performing comedy and like literally was like in that drag show the next month,” he said. 

When he started, Lounge said, he leaned more into what’s traditionally considered masculine: abs, moustaches, and the like. But as he transitioned and grew more comfortable with his masculinity out of drag, his in-drag looks began to explore all facets of gender. It’s an exciting, colorful, and hilarious mix — an apple (that costume, he said, weighed 20 pounds and required three people to get him in it), a leotard-wearing leather daddy, a sexy cow — though usually, Lounge wears a clown white face, a consistent “mug” base. 

“And at his core, Chase Lounge is always a transsexual man, and he always uses he/him pronouns,” Lounge said. “But he, you know, just like there’s not one way for a woman or a man to look, he can look like anything and still be a drag king.” 

Chase Lounge the king, he tells me, is pretty raunchy, and pretty close to who Lounge is out of drag. 

“He’s funny. He’s political. He cares about the liberation of all people, and he wants to get there through things like glamor and comedy and kind of doing things for shock value, but in a fun way with [a] message,” he said. 

Lounge said fat liberation is part of his drag – that no one should be discriminated against for their body, and that all bodies can be celebrated. 

“In the queer community and in the trans community, I think there’s a lot of fatphobia,” Lounge said. “Especially with being a masc presenting person. It’s like, you should be skinny in order to androgynous.” 

In performances, Lounge said, he shows off his body and “throws it around” on stage. For him, it’s taking pride in something people are often taught to be ashamed of. 

More folks will get a chance to see Lounge perform this fall as part of a cast of seven other kings for the second season of LGBTQ streaming service Revry’s King of Drag. Lounge said he’s especially excited for the range of kings and how they each play with gender. 

Lounge said he and his fellow kings were fast friends during filming (they currently have a group chat to keep in touch), and that he thinks people will like seeing those friendships develop on screen. And then there’s the queer and trans stories woven into the show on screen.

“Representation matters at the end of the day, and so I think this is a really important moment for us to have this representation,” he said. 

As for Santa Barbara, Lounge said he’d love to return and perform, particularly where he partied in college. “I would love to come do drag in Santa Barbara and rewrite that [experience] for myself because I was so deeply, deeply closeted, but I loved all things queer at the same time, and just secretly wanted to be queer so bad.” 

King of Drag Season 2 premieres on September 20 and is free to watch on Revry’s streaming service.