Miss Taint’s Fright Night

By Kayla de la Pena

It’s half past 2 a.m. and Miss Taint is walking out of Ventura, a local dive bar, pulling her suitcase full of drag behind her. She’s in a full face of makeup, a curly blonde wig under a backward cap and a sequined bodysuit with her hairy legs shooting out of the shorts. She’s wobbling in her heels, possibly from the rocky ground surrounding the bar, possibly from the bright blue drinks she was sipping throughout the night, always through a straw so as to not smudge her black lipstick.

“People are mad at me,” she said when she saw me. “I mean, they knew there was only going to be one winner.”

This isn’t what Miss Taint sounds like. Miss Taint’s voice usually booms with confidence.

“How y’all doin’, motherfuckers? Welcome to Mx. Fright Night 2018, the very first drag pageant of its kind,” Taint said earlier that night. 

This quiet and tired voice coming out of the queen belongs to Brian Hernandez. That same voice slipped out for a moment when, on stage after her first number, Taint announced to her audience that this may be the last time we see her, and this pageant was intended to find her replacement as hostess of Fight Night, the horror-themed drag show Taint is responsible for.

In her floor-length, beaded gown, her gloved hands clutched a dented microphone. “It’s been such an amazing four years getting to perform for y’all,” Taint said. Hernandez’s voice began to peek through as he explained his upcoming absence. “You just need to be OK in other areas to move forward,” Hernandez said. His voice cracks. “I‘ve performed so much. Y’all have been there for me from the beginning, and I can’t thank y’all enough.”

Hernandez is addressing the loyal following he’s acquired since he started doing drag at Heat nightclub, a popular gay bar with plenty of nights showcasing the “best” of San Antonio’s queens. While Hernandez is grateful for the opportunity he had to build a fanbase, his experimental drag style did not mesh well with those looking for female impersonators to lip sync to a pop song the DJ would have played between performances.

“I just don’t like the closed-mindedness. [The crowd doesn’t] come with the attitude that we’re all artists,” Hernandez said to me three days before the pageant. “They just come with a judgmental attitude.” 

Rolling around on the floor, swaddled with cling wrap, and slowly breaking free to ‘Til Tuesday’s song “Voices Carry,“ doesn’t garner the same reaction a crowd-pleasing Ariana Grande number would.

Hernandez is sitting at a wooden table on the patio of a bar on the St. Mary’s strip. He’s wearing a backward cap and a cutoff Depeche Mode T-shirt. Out of drag, he’s got a stubbly chin and looks like any 23-year-old barfly, just trying to relax and have a good time. To his left sits a woman in a T-shirt and jeans. It’s his mother, Christina. 

The birth of Miss Taint created fear in Christina Hernandez, but not because of the spooky element. “I was scared because I know how mean people can be. Since he was little, I would say ‘I just want to keep him in a little bubble.’ I didn’t want him to get hurt,” she said.

Hernandez said his mother is his biggest fan and goes to every show, but it wasn’t always that way. “I wasn’t very accepting at first. I was very closed-minded,” she said. “My mom brought us up in the church and it wasn’t right.”

Even through this, Hernandez took it upon himself to expose his mom to this new world, even though he wore her clothes the first time he got in drag.

“The first little thong I wore was my mom’s,” Hernandez recalls. His mom let out a hearty laugh.

From the early days at Heat to starting new shows at Thirsty Camel, The Leaky Barrel and Ventura to find a more appropriate audience, Hernandez credits drag as the only thing that brought him happiness after being diagnosed with HIV at age 19. 

After four years of fighting for the validity of his art and making a name for himself, as well as a name for those he’s cast in his shows, Hernandez said he burned himself out.

“I’m not gonna do this anymore, it’s just become a lot. They go hand in hand: your personal life and your drag life. You can’t create the best art and feel proud of it unless you’re at a good place in your life,” Hernandez said.  

That joy that drag brought to Hernandez vanished.

 “It’s an ugly thing to be out there on stage and feel uncomfortable. I’ve had my heel break or my costume rip and I have to continue but to just go out there and feel like you’re not confident in anything you produce, it’s just– I don’t know how to express it. Everybody's looking at you; it’s the sincerest form of embarrassment.”

Hernandez said he may return because performing is what he loved; but before he can continue, he has to work on the other aspects that make him a whole person.

 “I’m going to go to rehab. I’m planning for three months. I have a love-hate relationship with drugs.” 

This isn’t the first time Hernandez has tried to take a break. Earlier in 2018, he knew needed to take a break but could not bring himself to do it.

 “I thought ‘I can’t stop doing these. Where are my friends going to perform? Where are my fuckin’ monsters going to perform?’”

Hernandez’s mother still just wants to protect her son. 

“I’m proud of him for stepping up and taking care of Brian,” she said.

“I have a whole life to live outside of drag,” Hernandez said.

Miss Taint is sitting across from me on the patio of Sancho’s Cantina, sipping a margarita. She has a full face of makeup, a ripped and burned red skirt and a black brassiere. Mickey Mouse ears sit on top of her head. Long black hair twists across her back and shoulders. Every other patron sends a glance her way at one point or another.

The last time we spent any time together, Brian Hernandez, the 23-year-old behind the makeup, was burnt out, tired and artistically stunted. We spent the evening cruising around the south side of San Antonio and chatting.

We made a stop at a Don’s and Ben’s liquor store. Malibu rum seemed like the right choice to spike Sonic slushies. I asked about what made him decide to stop performing and go to rehab. He vaguely mentioned a three-day bender involving uppers. He won’t get into specifics, but he does mention he is afraid he will accidentally stop his heart. In the two months that followed, Miss Taint was almost nonexistent. Hernandez needed to help himself before he could feel comfortable as his alter ego again. He was ready to take care of Brian. Then in December, he relapsed.

“That was just a big mess. My mental health went out the window. I was about to, like, check into a hospital. It was just, like, me doing that to myself,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez already had reasons to get clean. He worried about his health. His art started to suffer. He stopped finding joy in drag. When his grandmother found out about his addiction, he changed.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to continue using, knowing that she knew. It wouldn’t be OK if something ever happened to her and I was still on drugs,” he said

And with the new year, he made a change and stuck with it. “I needed this year to end. Rest in peace, bitch. I’m done with it,” he said.

January was tough, not only for Hernandez, but for his mother as well.

Christina Hernandez struggled to watch her son go through withdrawal, but her support never wavered.

“It was hard. It was hard for me as a mom to see his struggles. He would have nightmares, he wasn’t able to sleep, and I would constantly go check on him and see if he was OK,” she said.

“When he would tell me about his symptoms, I would look it up, I would google it,” she said. She sent her findings to her son to help him understand. “I don’t think he even knew what he was going through either.”

By the time February rolled around, she noticed a shift in her son’s behavior.

“His moods were changing, he wasn’t as irritated, he told me his nightmares weren’t as bad anymore,” Hernandez said.

She saw a spark in him as he prepared to bring back Miss Taint’s Fright Night.

“Even now, he’ll come in and he’ll wake me up in the middle of the night just to talk and we’ll be there talking all night about ideas on his shows and I give him input and I am very happy with how he’s doing,” she said. “He’s overcome a lot of obstacles. I’m very proud of him.”

His mother is excited for the new version of Fright Night. “It’s not just a drag show, it’s art. It’s more emotional now. Before, I think he was numb, and now I see him full of emotion,” she said.

Hernandez is selective about gigs he accepts now. He’s only taking what feels comfortable, but he’s ready to resurrect Miss Taint.

“You’re putting yourself out there for a lot of people to judge you and a lot of people to talk about you. It just doesn’t help when you’re on drugs,” Hernandez said as he was stuffing his shaping pads into four pairs of pantyhose, transforming into Miss Taint. He’s 85 days clean at this point.

Miss Taint’s Fright Night will be more theatrical, have a variety of performers and artists and will have a storyline to each installment. Not only that, but performers will receive won’t have to just rely on tips from the audience. Hernandez wants to pay his performers - which is not something he always experienced when he started out.

“It’s a drive– It’s a vision that I didn’t have before. I don’t know strong it is, but I’m still going to fulfill it, because it’s something that I thought of,” Hernandez said. He already has queens asking if they have spots in future shows, but he can’t give them an answer.

“I need to see how this one does. If I don’t like it at all, if I get the wrong vibe from it, which I highly doubt, I’m not going to want to do it again. I need to see if I feel proud in the vision I have for it and if I’m able to fulfill it the way I want to. I want it to be Disneyland, bitch. Nothing more, nothing less. But like, horror edition. That’s the tea. I love that,” he said.

Now, Hernandez carries himself with pride and swagger, almost, but not quite, to a fault.

“I keep my distance between me and other performers because I know I have a very big ego, but it doesn’t come from anything other than my newfound confidence,” Hernandez said. “I went to hell and back; I have a right to be this way.”