FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Dakota Moe knew he was gay by the time he was nine years old. As the son of a charismatic Assemblies of God minister, though, he didn't want to believe it. It was not until he had been married and divorced once and engaged two additional times that he admitted to himself and his family "I am what God wants me to be."
Whether God's plan extended to female impersonation is anybody's guess, but today, as Misty Eyez, Moe has established a successful career for herself.
And it almost didn't happen. Misty Eyez was the product of a Halloween bet gone bad.
"I lost a bet with a friend in Tulsa in 1998," Moe said. "I had to dress up in drag for Halloween. At that point I realized, ‘Wow! I'm a really pretty girl.'"
Still, he didn't consider "drag queen" a career option. In fact, he didn't impersonate a woman again until the following Halloween. Shortly after that, though, Misty Eyez began receiving requests to perform at and emcee local AIDS-related charity events.
In 2003 Eyez met Fabscout owner Howard Andrew, who at the time was the manager of a gay bar in Fort Lauderdale. Andrew was the first to hire Eyez for a paying gig. Today the two are close friends, and Moe works as Andrew's Fabscout assistant when he's not on-stage.
"I live my life as a [gay] man, but my full-time job is as a drag queen," he said, adding that the career gives him an opportunity to employ the theater and music training he got in college. Then he waxes philosophical: "We're all dressing up to be something we're not."
Eyez, 32, hopes to put her talent and training to good use as a contender on an upcoming reality show to be hosted by RuPaul on the Logo network: RuPaul's Drag Race. The show will be patterned after Project Runway and pit drag queens against each other in all aspects of performance and costume and routine creation. At the end of the season, the show will crown "the No. 1 Queen in the country," according to its website. Eyez is one of hundreds of drag queens vying for a spot among the cast. The website contestants who receive the most votes from the public will be cast in the show. Eyez believes she has a good chance to be in the running for the title if she can grab one of the cast spots.
"As a seven-foot-tall - in drag heels and hair - 300-pound woman, I have always had to make my own costumes," she said with a laugh. "Let me go on this show to show my fierceness, and let them have it."
It won't be the first time she's faced stiff criticism, Eyez noted. She hasn't spoken to her father, the minister, since she came out. Half of her six siblings - two sisters and one brother - have sided with her father and won't talk to her, either.
As for her mother, "Since I came out of the closet, she has taken the role of minister's wife, generally," Eyez said, noting that, as the oldest of seven children, she and her mother were extremely close previously.
"There's a lot of hypocrisy in the church," Eyez said. "I have a lot of resentment about it." Despite serving as youth and music ministers at several churches as Moe and spending time as a missionary in both Germany and Poland, "I've become more spiritual than religious. I don't know what I believe in anymore."
One thing she continues to believe in is the value of acceptance and humanity. As Moe, she volunteers at least once a week at a Broward County, Fla., community center that provides a safe haven for GLBT children and teens to talk about their experiences and learn about safer sex. As Eyez, she volunteers with a variety of AIDS-related charities nationwide - including the Red Ball for children with AIDS - and she organized and ran the Hurricane Katrina relief benefit in Fort Lauderdale that generated $80,000 for victims in Louisiana and Mississippi.
She also believes in the value of life.
"My entire life, I was suicidal," she said. "I thought God hated me and the church hated me and my family hated me. I finally realized God does love me and made me in His image.
"I thought if I could force myself [to be straight], it would just happen, but it's never better to lie, especially to yourself. Never quit being yourself."
Eyez's contestant page for RuPaul's Drag Race is here. She needs to at least double her votes by Friday afternoon to move forward to the competition's second round.
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