Pablo “m’ama, non m’ama, m’ama” (she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me). Watercolor and pen. By Ayoung Kim

Pablo, our monk-artist-deep-soul golden retriever,

loved dancing with drag queens. At the time, I had been living in a three-story flat in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with my sister and two friends. We had been hosting performance parties regularly for a couple of years, which transformed into a showcase for our friends to demonstrate their ability to don Marge Simpson-esque wigs while dancing to cabaret-style choreography.

It also afforded the opportunity for our housemate and some friends to don drag for the very first time. One friend came out of the closet as a Spanish señora, another as a German punk rocker, and our roommate in a self-styled rainbow wig with tight black mini-dress ensemble (actually an XXL racer-back tank top.) It was an honor to witness their glory, their glee in applying make-up, their panic in trying to find boobs (necesito tetas!) to fill their bras.

The Pablo

It was during a routine which I had choreographed to “Mama Mia” that Pablo literally leapt to life. He had been lying on the couch as a member of the audience, but once we started dancing, Pablo bounded off the couch and jumped up and down in front of our housemate Jud à la rainbow wig-XXL racer back tank dress, as if copying his moves! To the astonishment of everyone, Pablo became a kangaroo, bouncing off his hind legs! The audience shouted bravo, Jud was holding his dress down (it kept riding up with all the bouncing around), and I kept the count to keep our dance routine on track.

It was not a one-time-fluke. The next time we performed this routine, again Pablo rushed up to Jud—not to me, not to my sister—to dance with him. He became so boisterous, he would “thwack” his front paws on Jud’s chest as if giving him doggie-style fist-bumps. Thereafter, that dance became known as “The Pablo”, named after our very own golden retriever-cum-dancing queen.