Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

Dear Todd,

Today is your birthday, and I want to give you something you can keep.

This is not simply a birthday card. It is a reminder of your life, your work, your friendships, and the people whose lives are different after knowing you.

You have spent much of your life recording other people’s stories. You have preserved names. You have asked people questions and cared about their answers. You have created books, publications, memorials, community projects, advocacy work, friendships, and connections among people who might otherwise never have found one another.

Now I want to turn some of that attention back to you.

There are things dementia may occasionally make harder to retrieve. That does not erase them. Your history exists in books, websites, archives, photographs, friendships, and the memories of thousands of people whose paths crossed yours.

I am one of them.

The Writer

Todd, you have written a remarkable body of work.

Many people know you through DRAG411 and the books that grew from it. What began as an effort to gather information about drag performers became something far larger.

You created resources about drag queens, drag kings, pageants, performance, bullying, relationships, careers, community, history, and the lives of people who often received little serious attention from mainstream publishers.

Your publications include works such as The Official Drag Handbook, DRAG Bully: A Survivor’s Guide, Crown Me!, DRAG King Handbook, DRAG Queen Handbook, DRAG Stories, DRAG Mothers, DRAG Fathers, DRAG World, and numerous other books, directories, compilations, and special projects.

You wrote fiction.

You wrote plays.

You created reference materials.

You gathered contributions from performers and writers from many places.

You did something that sounds simple now but was far less common when you began doing it: you asked people to tell their own stories.

Then you listened.

DRAG411

DRAG411 became one of the projects most closely associated with your name.

Thousands of performers became connected with the project over the years. People from many countries participated. Writers, performers, pageant titleholders, entertainers, and community members contributed their knowledge and experiences.

The project eventually represented thousands of drag performers across dozens of countries.

That is an extraordinary archive.

You were documenting people who did not always appear in traditional historical records. Many worked in bars, clubs, local pageants, community events, fundraisers, AIDS benefits, pride celebrations, small theaters, and venues that eventually closed.

You kept records of them.

You wrote their names down.

You asked what they knew.

You preserved their answers.

That work now has historical value far beyond the books themselves.

You Let People Speak for Themselves

One quality appears repeatedly throughout your work.

You did not simply tell people what drag performers thought.

You asked drag performers.

You did not decide what pageant contestants needed to know.

You asked titleholders, judges, promoters, performers, and people who had actually competed.

You did not decide what transgender people should say about transition.

You invited transgender people to speak about their own experiences.

That approach became part of CommUnity in Transition, another project built from people describing their own lives in their own words.

You gave people space to speak.

There is dignity in that.

There is respect in that.

There is history in that.

The Advocate

Your work has never been limited to books.

You have spoken publicly about LGBTQ equality and community issues. You participated in Harvey Milk-related events in Florida. You became involved in anti-bullying advocacy. Your publishing work repeatedly addressed the emotional damage caused by bullying, rejection, prejudice, and exclusion.

You understood that words can hurt people.

You understood that words can save people, too.

So you used yours.

You wrote.

You spoke.

You gathered stories.

You introduced people to one another.

You helped create communities where people could see that they were not alone.

That has been advocacy in one of its most human forms.

Florida

Florida is an important part of your story.

Your family moved from Michigan to Florida, and Clearwater became part of your formative history. The Pro Shop Pub became one of those places that appears again and again when your early life and later writing are discussed.

You observed the people there.

You noticed personalities.

You noticed the strange combinations of people who could occupy the same room.

You saw gay people, straight people, working people, professionals, outsiders, regulars, newcomers, and people living lives that were rarely represented honestly elsewhere.

Those people stayed with you.

Years later, some of the characters, experiences, humor, tensions, and humanity you encountered during those years became material for your writing.

Florida later became one of the places where you participated publicly in LGBTQ advocacy.

That part of your life belongs in your story.

Arizona and Other Chapters

Your life eventually took you beyond Florida.

By 2013, published accounts placed you in Phoenix, Arizona. Your work continued across geographic boundaries, especially once DRAG411 developed into an international project.

The internet allowed performers, writers, activists, pageant participants, and community members from many places to enter the same project.

Your community stopped being defined by one bar, one city, one state, or one country.

It became international.

That happened partly through technology.

It happened much more through your willingness to talk to people.

The Historian

There is another title that belongs to you.

Historian.

You have spent years maintaining the Original Drag Memorial.

Today it contains more than two thousand names.

Think about what that represents.

More than two thousand people had lives.

They had friends.

They had performances.

They had favorite songs, favorite costumes, favorite stages, favorite audiences, arguments, jokes, triumphs, disasters, romances, families, chosen families, and stories.

Some died with little public recognition.

Some performed under names different from those on their birth certificates.

Some belonged to communities that had already lost enormous numbers of people during the AIDS epidemic.

Some could easily have disappeared from the historical record.

You kept their names.

That may become one of the most meaningful parts of your legacy.

The Man Who Keeps the Names

There is something deeply moving about the Original Drag Memorial now.

You are facing dementia.

Memory sometimes makes you work harder than it once did.

Yet one of the projects you have continued to care about is a project devoted to remembering other people.

You have spent years making sure people are not forgotten.

There is something almost poetic in that.

Your own memory does not exist only inside your mind.

You stored pieces of it everywhere.

You stored it in your books.

You stored it in DRAG411.

You stored it in the memorial.

You stored it in the people you interviewed.

You stored it in the writers you invited into your projects.

You stored it in the performers whose names you recorded.

You stored it in your children.

You stored it in your friends.

And Todd, you stored some of it in me.

How I Met You

I met you in 2011.

You had posted a request asking people to submit contributions for a project connected with your work on drag culture.

I responded.

I thought I was contributing to a book.

I had no idea I was beginning a friendship that would still matter deeply to me fifteen years later.

My name, Jay Santana, remains associated with the contributors to your work.

I love knowing that.

There is a small piece of our shared history preserved there.

The Telephone Call I Will Never Forget

There is one story about you that I will carry for the rest of my life.

I had gone into surgery.

When I woke up, my life had changed dramatically.

My arm had been amputated.

Two ribs had been removed.

Part of my foot had been removed unexpectedly.

The surgery had changed my body permanently.

I had every possible reason to be thinking about myself.

Instead, somehow, I woke up thinking about your deadline.

It was around February 12 or 13. I remembered that I had promised you a contribution for one of your books.

And I panicked.

I started sending you messages.

I apologized.

Then I apologized some more.

I told you that I did not know whether I was going to finish my contribution by the end of the day.

Todd, I had just had my arm amputated.

And I was worried about turning in an article.

Your reaction told me exactly what kind of person you were.

You could not believe I was worrying about your deadline.

You told me the book could wait.

You told me to take care of myself.

You told me to give myself time to heal physically and mentally.

You told me that everyone was sending good energy my way.

There was no lecture about deadlines.

There was no disappointment.

There was no pressure.

There was simply Todd.

The person came before the publication.

That telephone call turned a professional connection into a genuine friendship.

Robyn and Emery

Something else happened during that conversation.

You introduced me to Robyn and Emery Walters.

They became dear friends of mine.

Think about that for a moment.

One telephone conversation created three friendships that became meaningful parts of my life.

That is another part of your legacy.

You connect people.

Sometimes you connect them through a book.

Sometimes you connect them through DRAG411.

Sometimes you connect them through advocacy.

Sometimes you connect them through a website or project.

Sometimes you simply recognize that two people should know one another.

Then you introduce them.

Lives change.

Mine did.

The Friend

I could spend pages listing your publications.

I could talk about DRAG411.

I could talk about the thousands of performers.

I could talk about your advocacy.

I could talk about the Original Drag Memorial.

I could talk about Florida, Arizona, your plays, your books, your speaking appearances, and your community work.

Yet the Todd I cherish is the man on the other end of that telephone.

The man who heard that I had just lost my arm and immediately forgot about his deadline.

The man who cared far more about whether I was okay.

The man who introduced me to people who became part of my life.

The man who has remained my friend across years of change in both of our lives.

That Todd cannot be measured in book sales or publication credits.

That Todd lives inside the people he has loved.

You Have Left Evidence Everywhere

Todd, you have left evidence that you were here.

Your books are evidence.

Your plays are evidence.

Your photographs are evidence.

DRAG411 is evidence.

The Original Drag Memorial is evidence.

Your advocacy is evidence.

The names you preserved are evidence.

Your children are evidence.

The friends you introduced to one another are evidence.

The people who trusted you with their stories are evidence.

I am evidence.

There are people walking around this earth whose lives contain a piece of Todd Kachinski Kottmeier.

That is an extraordinary thing to be able to say about a human life.

Dementia Does Not Get to Write Your Biography

You are living with dementia now.

I know that.

You know that.

There is no reason to pretend it is not happening.

Some days may be easier than others. Some memories may appear immediately. Others may take longer to reach. Some may retreat entirely.

Yet dementia does not get authorship of your life.

It arrived after the books.

It arrived after the friendships.

It arrived after the advocacy.

It arrived after DRAG411.

It arrived after the thousands of names.

It arrived after decades of conversations, arguments, introductions, performances, laughter, writing, publishing, loving, losing, creating, and living.

Dementia is one chapter.

It is not the whole book.

You already wrote too many chapters for that.

When You Need Help Remembering

If there is a day when you cannot remember something you accomplished, somebody else can remember it with you.

I can.

Emery can.

Your family can.

Your friends can.

The writers can.

The performers can.

The people whose stories became part of your books can.

The people who found guidance in something you published can.

The people who found their own names recorded in your work can.

The families who discover that somebody they loved has been preserved in your memorial can.

Memory does not have to belong to one person.

Sometimes a community carries it.

You spent years helping a community remember itself.

Now that community can help remember you.

What You Gave Me

You gave me an opportunity to write.

You gave me a place in several of your projects.

You gave me encouragement.

You gave me understanding during one of the most traumatic periods of my life.

You gave me Robyn and Emery.

You gave me fifteen years of friendship.

And you gave me a story I will continue telling.

It begins with a man looking for contributors to a book about drag.

It continues with a writer named Jay Santana answering him.

Somewhere along the way, the editor became the friend.

Then the friend became family.

Happy Birthday, Todd

Todd Kachinski Kottmeier, you have lived a life filled with stories.

You have written some of them.

You have published some of them.

You have preserved thousands of others.

And you have become part of mine.

On your birthday, I hope you can look at these pages whenever you want and recognize pieces of yourself.

Writer.

Artist.

Speaker.

Playwright.

Historian.

Advocate.

Father.

Publisher.

Archivist.

Connector.

Friend.

The Infamous Todd.

My friend Todd.

You spent years making sure other people would be remembered.

I want you to know that you are remembered, too.

You are loved.

You are appreciated.

You have made a difference.

You made a difference in my life.

And whenever you need someone to remind you of that, Todd, I will.

Happy birthday.

With all my love,

JT