Ruby Dickulous: Austin's Comedy Jewel

I’d like to begin this recap of my con­ver­sa­tion with drag queen Ruby Dick­u­lous by thank­ing her grand­moth­er. Austin would be less inter­est­ing if her grand­moth­er hadn’t blessed the drag name Ruby Dick­u­lous when Ruby was final­ly ready to unleash her­self on the stages of the Austin drag queen scene in 2012. We also pre­fer the final choice over the tongue-twister Ruby Ridicu­lous. As Ruby recounts her grandmother’s reac­tion to which name would win: ​“Ruby Dick­u­lous – because I like the dick close to Ruby.”

And now for Ruby’s backstory. 

“Roller­coast­er” just about cap­tures it (and not the ​“must be under 4 feet tall” kind either). While Ruby quick­ly declares that ​“my whole fam­i­ly was fun­ny, out­ra­geous peo­ple,” there’s also a dark cloud of shame that seemed ever-present. She grew up in Cor­pus Christi, but her fam­i­ly moved every three years or so because of her alco­holic father, and the peri­od­ic need to escape what­ev­er cir­cum­stance he’d man­aged to land him­self in. Lay­er onto that oth­er fam­i­ly secrets, such as her mother’s step-father who secret­ly cross-dressed – the afore­men­tioned grand­moth­er who was a drag queen – and for Ruby, the ulti­mate secret while grow­ing up: being gay. 

The 80s and the 90s were a dif­fer­ent time in Amer­i­ca, and cer­tain­ly Texas, when it comes to being gay, but the con­cept of being a drag queen wasn’t for­eign to Ruby’s moth­er. One dis­tinct mem­o­ry Ruby shares is of play­ing baton with a PVC pipe on the farm and mak­ing her moth­er watch her per­for­mances. After one such per­for­mance, her moth­er declared, ​“You love to high kick and swish your hips around, you’ll make a good drag queen one day.” It wasn’t until 2012 that mom’s pre­dic­tion came to fruition.

Between then and now? The foun­da­tion was being laid. 

In high school, Ruby played both foot­ball and per­formed in the­ater (even win­ning an award for UIL all-star and all-star cast) because in a small town, you could get away with both. After grad­u­at­ing, there were dal­liances with per­for­mance, and act­ing was def­i­nite­ly what she dreamed of pur­su­ing. But she didn’t. In fact, in an effort to pro­tect her, her par­ents said ​“you dream real­ly big. And we’re real­ly wor­ried that if you don’t achieve those dreams, that you would be real­ly depressed.” Which per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the life­long strug­gle that Ruby has had: ​“Look­ing back now, I nev­er believed in myself [which] was the biggest problem.”

It cer­tain­ly wasn’t for lack of tal­ent. Between the award-win­ning the­ater per­for­mances, being hired on the spot for a Cor­pus Christi radio job by the leg­endary jour­nal­ist and TV pio­neer Vann Kennedy (who also gave Wal­ter Cronkite his first job), and land­ing the role of ​“gay cor­re­spon­dent” on the 101x Jason and Deb show in the ear­ly 2000s, suc­cess seemed immi­nent. The cul­mi­na­tion of her then efforts was being asked by Austin Pride to host an event in 2012.

Drag brunch­es were occur­ring across the coun­try, but Austin had yet to have one, so Ruby asked Austin Pride to let her pro­duce and host the first ever Austin drag brunch. Things are look­ing promis­ing, right? The cloud, how­ev­er, had per­sist­ed in fol­low­ing Ruby. Whether it be in the form of alco­holism, DUIs, wrecks, or the irony of being run over by a drunk dri­ver (with the met­al plates to prove it), crip­pling addic­tion would not make that 2012 the debut she hoped for. While the Austin Pride drag brunch was the offi­cial debut of Ruby Dick­u­lous, her mem­o­ries of her com­ing out event are near­ly non-exis­tent due to the stage fright and “… if you start tak­ing Xanax and shots of whiskey at 10 in the morn­ing, there’s a good chance that you’re not going to fin­ish that show sober.” Ruby was black­out wast­ed, rag­ing at the audi­ence because her keys went miss­ing. You’d think sobri­ety would come soon after, but it didn’t. She put that off, too, and Ruby Dick­u­lous lay dor­mant for years, hid­den behind that per­sis­tent cloud of shame.

The dor­man­cy was filled with a suc­cess­ful real estate career, one that con­tin­ues to this day. Back then, the idea of return­ing to standup was put on pause for the sake of finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, but it was evi­dent that she was miss­ing a cre­ative outlet. 

It wasn’t until COVID that Ruby quit her addic­tions for good, after the sud­den real­iza­tion that – if you keep putting off your plans and dreams – a pan­dem­ic can take it all away before you get back to it. The lone­li­ness of COVID was soul-crush­ing for Ruby, but it was eeri­ly sim­i­lar to the lone­li­ness of being an iso­lat­ed alco­holic. She real­ized that ​“every­body’s forced to live like you were for the last decade.” What shook her into sobri­ety was the real­iza­tion of how for­tu­nate and grate­ful she should be for her life and the suc­cess­ful real­tor she’d become.

Ruby’s self aware­ness struck hard: ​“If you can’t man­age a suc­cess­ful life, and you’re this sad, what are you going to do when your par­ents die…and that washed over me.” On July 13, 2020, Ruby stopped drink­ing for good, real­iz­ing that sobri­ety was the only route to gain the men­tal strength she need­ed to face all of life’s chal­lenges, and to stop putting off dreams.

In her words, after 90 days of sobri­ety, she hit the ground run­ning with putting on shows as Ruby Dick­u­lous. It’s not easy, and she admits that ​“the neg­a­tive thoughts creep back in – those feel­ings nev­er go away.” But, by all accounts, Drag Real­ty is a suc­cess (made more so by Ruby’s ear­ly adop­tion of the Tik Tok plat­form). Her Drag Brunch shows can be seen month­ly at Cap City Com­e­dy Club, and have been pop­ping up at oth­er venues around town. Even more oppor­tu­ni­ties await Ruby; some must be kept secret for now, but oth­ers are just a mat­ter of time. As I write this, a dark cloud looms in the skies out­side, but Ruby doesn’t have to wor­ry about the dark cloud in her life tak­ing her dreams away any­more. These days, as any Tex­an knows, clouds bring rain, and the reign of Ruby Dick­u­lous is just get­ting started.

Fol­low Ruby Dickulous 

• Web­site — ruby​dick​u​lous​.com
• Twit­ter — @rubydickulous
  
• Insta­gram — @rubydickulous
• Tik­Tok — @rubydickulous
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​r​u​b​y​d​i​c​k​ulous
• Youtube — https://​www​.youtube​.com/​c​h​a​n​n​e​l​/​r​u​b​y​d​i​c​k​ulous
  
• Twitch — @rubydickulous
  
• Do512 — do512​.com/​r​u​b​y​-​d​i​c​k​ulous

Ruby Dick­u­lous can be seen and heard:

• Drag Brunch — 12pm month­ly at Cap City Com­e­dy Club (check sched­ule for updates)
  • Novem­ber 12, 2023
  • Decem­ber 17, 2023
• Drag Brunch — at oth­er venues through­out each month