VIENNA — Long legs crossed, one leopard-skin patterned spike heel dangling, the bearded diva with the expressive brown eyes leans back and laughs when asked what has changed for her since winning Europe’s biggest entertainment contest nearly a year ago.
“I’m living my dream,” said Conchita Wurst. “Everything fell into the right place for me.”
“Everything” might be a big word. But for the drag queen, whose journey of self-discovery took her from bigoted small-town Austria to her emotional victory at the 2014 Eurovision song contest, the last 10 months appear to have confirmed that her path — though not always easy — was the right one.
She rubs shoulders with fashion icons Jean-Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld and plays sold-out gigs across Europe. Her appearances on Austrian radio talk shows attract callers from as far away as California.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has paid his respects. She has addressed the European Parliament on LGBT rights, and her biography has just appeared in German, with other languages to follow.
Born 25 years ago to innkeepers as Tom Neuwirth, Wurst was raised in the sleepy Austrian town of Bad Mittendorf, where conservative values were the norm — not a very comfortable place for someone who was different even as a child.
“I was constantly stressed, the target of the derisive glances of my schoolmates and their taunting,” she recounts in the book “Ich, Conchita” (“I, Conchita”).
Wurst came out at 17. After several performances brought her some local fame, she was asked by a reporter for a weekly paper whether she was gay. Suddenly she realized that she had to stop lying to herself and those closest to her.
“Yes,” she blurted out. “(Then) I went home to my parents and said, ‘Listen, I’m gay.’ “
She says that for her parents, the shock was “not the fact that I’m gay but (that) a week later, a newspaper will come out and everybody will know it,” including the conservative clientele frequenting her parents’ inn.
Eight years on, she calls that moment “one of the most important of my life, … that second where I chose to be myself 100 percent.”
Still, she cautions others to think hard about when and how to follow her example. “Just take your time,” she said in near-flawless English.
