Kita Mean wouldn’t call herself a catatrophiser – she much prefers to acknowledge that she’s a drama queen. So it’s almost surprising that she downplays a night she nearly died – an innocent victim in a shoot-out in the US.
“It’s the first time I’ve intentionally relived all of those memories and not as a passing thing,” she unexpectedly reveals to Woman’s Day during an interview about her new book Life In Lashes. “It’s quite like therapy in a lot of ways. That was a crazy, crazy experience.”
When Nick Nash was growing up as one of five children on Auckland’s North Shore, everything he saw on television was Americanised and he always fantasised about going to Disneyland on holidays.
So after winning RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under in June last year as his alter ego Kita Mean, the thought of touring the US “felt so amazing and magical to me”, Kita says.
Growing up as Nick was a rough road for Kita.
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“But when I went to America, this part of me was thinking that we’re so sheltered here and America is very liberal with their gun legislation. Me with my creative drama queen brain started thinking about all the possibilities, all these scenarios in my head. And it actually happened.”
Part of a 37-show drag tour, the act was only in its first week in August this year when it became embroiled in a shoot-out in the early hours of the morning.
Kita had been at a bar with drag sister Kornbread and her friends in Minneapolis, and they were outside saying their goodbyes when, less than 100 metres away, they heard bang bang, bang.
“I’m not used to that sound, so it felt like it took forever,” Kita recalls. “My head’s quickly processing ‘What’s going on?’ Then I saw panic around me.”
The group was frantically diving behind a parked car or scrambling into the shelter of the club’s entranceway, trying to take cover.
“I didn’t immediately think gunshots. It took me a while to get it. I could see these yellow flashes, just firing, firing, firing. The gunshots stopped for a bit and then before we knew it, these cars were zooming right past us, going at it again, shooting at each other.
“It was so insanely loud. All it takes is a bullet to ricochet or the gun to be angled the wrong way for any one of us to have drastically been in a different outcome.”
They cars sped away. Still in shock, the group managed to get inside an apartment block foyer, where they waited for their Ubers to arrive before Kita got back on the tour bus and headed to their next location.
“Everyone I spoke to there said it was such a freak occurrence to get caught up in something like that. Going to America was something I always wanted to do and apart from that one scary incident, I had the time of my life there. The cities just blurred into one big fabulous experience.”
Indeed, since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, life has been a whirlwind for Kita. The co-owner of two Auckland cabaret bars – Caluzzi and Phoenix – found out she had won during New Zealand’s second lockdown and as well as doing the US tour, she has recently featured in a Down Under Tour of Australia and New Zealand, and is about to star in a Beauty And The Beast pantomime in Christchurch and Wellington.
Strutting her stuff in the US and having the “time of my life”.
“This is the most I’ve crammed into a year. I would never have thought I would be doing the things I’m doing. I’m so grateful.”
But it hasn’t been easy. Growing up, Nick, now 36, was a true performer, but endured years of torment and random attacks due to his sexuality and only felt able to truly be himself when he became Kita Mean just over a decade ago.
Life In Lashes is a raw tale of how a star was born, although Kita is only a small part of Nick’s life now as he is busy running two clubs.
“I’m a business person,” she muses. “I never thought that would be the case. Then I thought the lockdown was going to take it all away. Performing is probably a small fraction of the equation. And it doesn’t feel like work when I’m performing, I love it so much.”
Where Kita wants to bring joy and laughter to those around her, Nick really wants world peace when it comes to the diverse world he lives in.
“I’ve had names screamed at me out of car windows, I’ve had people throw bottles at me. You get that stuff everywhere you go.
Far from being Mean, Kita brings laughter and happiness to others.
“Somebody said something very wise to me once: ‘Happy people don’t go around being horrible to people.’ You need to come from a place of understanding and empathy.
“I look back on my life so far and I am so grateful – even the struggles and the people who have tried to push me down can’t dull my flame.”
Life In Lashes: The Story Of A Drag Superstar by Kita Mean (HarperCollins NZ, $39.99).
