Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Kevin Mazur, Santiago Felipe, Matt Winkelmeyer), Everett Collection (CBS, Nelvana), Beyoncé’ via YouTube
When Hershii LiqCour-Jeté’s partner found out his niece and nephew had entered the foster system in Boston, he came to the RuPaul’s Drag Race and Drag Race All-Stars contestant with one big question: “How would you feel about being a dad?”
“I was like, ‘Being a what?,’ LiqCour-Jeté says. “But then he gave me the whole rundown because he had a brother that got lost in the foster system, like he doesn’t know where his brother is, and he didn’t want his niece and nephew to go through the same thing. So, very long dramatic story short, he asked me to join the ride and I said ‘yes.’”
LiqCour-Jeté says stepping in to raise 6-year-old Pharaoh and 5-year-old Egypt hasn’t been easy. (“Those two kids bully me,” she quips.) She’s had to come to terms with the kids breaking more than a few of her previously nice things, like a $300 piece of stemware she says Egypt somehow managed to “snap right in half with her baby strength,” and she’s still trying to embrace the level of Zen it takes to be cool with a kindergartener pouring their own juice.
“I used to be antsy and I still kind of am, but I’ve had to learn how to slow everything down,” she says. “With kids, everything is just so brand-spanking new.”
Photo: Nelvana/Everett Collection
When we first got the kids, we let them use our iPads but their behavior is a lot different without them, so we don’t let them use iPads at all now.
Now that they’re getting a little older, we do let them watch an hour or two of TV when they get home so that they can decompress from school or whatever. We try to encourage them to play with each other to run the energy down, but also I got this space-light thing that I saw on Mommy TikTok so when they’re very hyper, we’ll turn it on and say, “It’s calm-down time.” I’ll put something really chill on the TV like The Berenstain Bears, too, and it just relaxes them.
Maybe this is showing my age, but I like the cartoons from my era better so that’s what I show them. They like The Magic School Bus a lot and Animaniacs is their morning cartoon. Of course they have their shows that they like, too, but when they need to calm down, the shows that I liked seem to work a little better.
I find the old episodes on YouTube, so they’re not back to back but they’re on there. I do have to monitor YouTube because some channels can get a little weird, but I’ve found some channels that are just people reposting old episodes of shows so that’s good.
In the school my kids are in, they do dual language so we try to get them to watch some Spanish-language stuff too. They’re half Black and half Puerto Rican and I want them to be able to communicate with their grandma more, so we’re trying.
It’s getting to the point where they’re catching on really fast, so now they look at me like I’m crazy because unlike their other dad, I don’t know any Spanish. I was on the phone with my dad one time and my son got on the phone and said, “Pop-Pop, why doesn’t Baba know any Spanish? What did y’all do wrong?”
I mean, I grew up in a town in the Midwest. They didn’t teach us that bit. Sorry.
Photo: Beyoncé via YouTube
I try to let my kids pick what they want to listen to, but they don’t have a lot of music preferences right now. They just tend to listen to whatever we listen to, so they get a lot of early ’90s R&B from my partner and if I’m working on another mix for a drag show, they’ll know all those tracks.
I wouldn’t let them listen to my actual mixes, but they know the songs I use for them. Like, I’m known around Los Angeles for my “Single Ladies” mix so they know that song back to front because it’s something I’m always performing. They also know “Juice,” by Lizzo, which I do, and “Glow,” by Victoria Monét, which I play a lot just because I really like it.
My kids have been to two or three of my drag brunches. I’ve got a video somewhere where my son is giving me a dollar at a place called Wildcat in Santa Barbara. This was a couple of years ago, when they were still doing outside brunches and it was kind of open to the public, but they’re back inside now.
Photo: Traveller’s Tales
My son loves Batman, so we just got him this LEGO Batman video game that he’s obsessed with. I think we’re actually going to have to start designating the times he can play, though, because otherwise he’d sit on it all day and not move.
I’ve got to be careful what games I play around him, because I like gaming too. I just got done playing the new 007 game, First Light, and there’s a lot of shooting going on in that. He just happened to peek his head around the corner, like, “What’s that?” and I had to pause and go, “Nothing, go to your room. Don’t look over here.”
My partner does all the reading with them because they like his story times better, but I do all the gaming and all the “Let’s go outside and run all this energy off.” That’s my job.
I hate being outside, generally, but I’ll do it for them. Luckily they’re very approachable, too, so they make friends very easily in the park.
I’ve played so much tag with them in the park. They love hide-and-seek, too, and some version of it that my son made up called “Monster Tag,” where whoever’s “it” is the monster.
I don’t sit them down to watch Drag Race, but they know enough to ask, “Are we on TV?,” and I’ll say, “Yeah, you’re on TV.” So I’ll let them watch those bits, but I don’t think Drag Race would even keep their attention long enough that they’d really sit and watch it. They’ve seen me scrolling YouTube or something, like I’ll come up in a short and they’ll watch that, but me doing drag is every day for them so it’s just like, “Oh, okay, there you are dressed up again.”
I will say, Egypt will tell me that my makeup is ugly. She will let me know. If she does not like something, she’s not shy about telling me.
My son looks at Hershii as a separate entity. Like, he doesn’t look at Baba and think, Hershii, or at Hershii and think, Baba. It’s like it’s a separate person. He kicks Hershii out, too. Like, when it’s time for me to pack up to go to a gig, he’s the one helping me push my stuff to the door.
I remember the first time my daughter looked at me and called me pretty. It was like, “Oh! Thank you.” She’s starting to develop an interest in some of it, like I’ve explained what lip gloss is and what eye shadow is and she’s asked if she could wear it. This actually happened when my little sister was visiting, and when Egypt asked I was like, “I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet,” my little sister said, “You’ve got some nerve. You do all this makeup in front of her and you’re not going to let her try one thing?”
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