RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Roxxxy Andrews opened up about her connection to Pulse, the gay nightclub where the deadliest shooting in America took place on Sunday, June 12, and debuted the new tattoo she got in honor of the 49 lives lost and 53 wounded in the attack.
“For 10 years this stage was my home. This club we helped build to what it was. We were family, we were a community. I started drag here! The memories will live on for ever,” the Orlando native wrote in a moving Instagram, posted on Monday, June 13. “It was made to remember a pulse of a wonderful man and created its own pulse that lived in all of us. I’ll never forget my memories I’ll never forget the people. This stage and place will always be in my heart. I love u all and thank you for the memories.” (Pulse’s name is a reference to John Poma, the brother of the nightclub’s co-founder, Barbara Poma. John died of AIDS in 1991.)
On Wednesday, June 15, the season 5 second runner-up (real name: Michael Feliciano) shared a shot of her fresh ink, Pulse nightclub’s logo with a red heartbeat line drawn through the middle. “Never forget my pulse…” she wrote alongside the pic. “Or the fallen your hearts will beat on me forever. R.I.P.”
The day of the attack, Andrews told fans that she had been one and a half hours away in Tampa when gunman Omar Mateen opened fire inside of the nightclub. “Guys I’m OK. I was in Tampa,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “I’m now a block away from Pulse, waiting to see my best friends who are stuck in there. Love u guys please pray.”
Kenya Michaels, a drag queen who placed fifth on season 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, stopped by Pulse for a midnight performance the night of the shooting. Luckily, Michaels wasn’t harmed in the tragedy, as she left the club before Omar began his rampage around 2 a.m.
As Us Weekly previously reported, Omar pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS before police shot and killed him just before 6 a.m., several hours after he besieged the LGBT club with an AR-15 assault rifle. His father, Seddique Mir Mateen, has insisted that Omar was not “radicalized.”
Despite reports that the 29-year-old from Fort Pierce, Florida, had a history of messaging men on gay dating apps and spent many nights at Pulse prior to the shooting, his dad has vehemently denied that his son was gay.
