AUBURN - When he was an Auburn High School student, Patrick Allen Joslyn had big dreams of becoming a star someday.

That day has certainly come.



“I wanted to be famous,” Mr. Joslyn said. “I just didn’t know how I was going to make it happen.”

A member of the class of 2004, Mr. Joslyn, 29, has performed all around the world as his drag queen alter-ego Joslyn Fox, who made a big splash as a contestant on Season 6 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race." He finished in sixth place.

While Mr. Joslyn confessed that he was nervous to be back at his alma mater this week, the 60 students of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender alliance, and several faculty members who filled the Auburn High School library were noticeably starstruck.

With questions ranging from the frivolous - his favorite color and why (answer: “Red is a good color for power and confidence and I look good in it”) - to the relevant - his coming out to his family and friends - Mr. Joslyn engaged and encouraged the students to ask him anything or say whatever was on their mind.

Mr. Joslyn, who still grumbles that his name was misspelled in his high school yearbook, said the best part about being a popular drag queen is the meet-and-greets he has with fans after drag shows.

“I remember the very first one that I had. I had this, like, out-of-body experience where I went to sign my first autograph and it suddenly hit me that I used to be that kid waiting in line, waiting for the autograph,” Mr. Joslyn said. “So, in that moment, I suddenly realized that I was on the other side of that.”

Mr. Joslyn said he and his best friend, fellow Auburn High School grad Paul R. LaRochelle III (who passed away two years ago) used to be “so celebrity-obsessed” that they camped out two nights in Times Square just to meet Britney Spears. Mr. Joslyn said it was worth it.

Mr. Joslyn, who has been plucking his own eyebrows since he was 14, said he needs a “good three hours” of makeup to transform himself into Joslyn Fox and he does it all himself.

“A 'J. Lo' look (as in Jennifer Lopez), that’s always what I go for,” Mr. Joslyn said. “Someday, she’ll tweet me back.”

Mr. Joslyn said he started doing drag when he was 20.

“I wanted to go to college but I didn’t know what I wanted to go to college for,” Mr. Joslyn said. “I was dancing all through middle school and high school. I was doing musical theater. And I was really into hair and makeup. Then I really got into editing music and I wanted to become a DJ. And I was frustrated when I didn’t know how to do all of that in one thing. And when I found drag, I realized that it encompassed all of that.”

Mr. Joslyn said people, including himself, were ignorant about drag queens until RuPaul busted out with all his unabashed glory.

“Even in the few years after high school, I had boyfriends and friends who said, ‘Oh, I would never date a drag queen,’ or ‘I don’t hang out with drag queens,’ and that was 2005, 2006, before 'RuPaul Drag Race' was on and 'Drag Race' made it mainstream,” Mr. Joslyn said. “Even then, it (becoming a drag queen) wasn’t even a thought. I didn’t know what a drag queen was. I thought it was my drunk aunt on Christmas Eve.”

Mr. Joslyn, who just came back from a drag performance in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is off next to Albuquerque, New Mexico, said when he made a commitment to himself that if he was going to get into drag, he was going to make a career out of it. And the best way for him to do that was to get on “RuPaul Drag Race,” for which he auditioned four times.

“RuPaul is very, I’d say, cold, for the lack of a better word. When we’re filming there is never any interaction with him,” Mr. Joslyn said. “It looks like he’s looking at us and talking at us. He’s actually looking at his camera. And we’re facing our cameras. So he’s not even looking at us, never mind not talking to us.”

For many contestants, “RuPaul Drag Race” is a fierce competition in which the judges can be very harsh and critical. But Mr. Joslyn was just happy to be on the show and was excited to make friends.

“I saw 'RuPaul Drag Race' as a learning experience,” Mr. Joslyn said. “I cried myself to sleep at night in the hotel room, but I took everything I could out of it and I’m far different now than I was at that time.”

Mr. Joslyn married his longtime fiance, Andre Girouard, on the “Drag Race” reunion special.

The original plan was for Joslyn Fox to surprise Mr. Girouard with the wedding, but the producers of the show said they didn’t have the time to include it. In actuality, the producers were in cahoots with Mr. Girouard to ask Joslyn Fox’s hand in marriage and have the nuptials done in front of a live audience and later aired on national television.

“When he (Mr. Girouard) got out of his chair and he was walking, I was like, why does he have to get up now to go to the bathroom, and he’s going the wrong way! I had no idea.” Mr. Joslyn said. “I don’t think there’s been a drag queen wedding on TV. I don’t know of any other gay wedding on TV. I’m still researching that.”

A self-confessed math nerd (“I love math like Carrie Bradshaw loves shoes”), Mr. Joslyn said the school’s alliance, which he joined before coming out, was his security blanket, a place he could go and feel normal (“whatever normal is,” he added). He also said that he’s glad Auburn High still has an alliance and it’s going strong.

“I remember being a freshman. I was straight but I was in the alliance. And, again, I met these people and it put a face on what gay was and humanized it,” Mr. Joslyn recalled. “There were juniors and they took me under their wing when I was a freshman, and by December, I was out. And it was just like, ‘Yup, I’m gay.’ It wasn’t even a second thought.”

One thing he said he learned from RuPaul is that when people are saying nasty things to someone because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, it’s not the one being abused who has the problem but the abuser, and you almost have to feel sorry for them.

As for his personal coming-out story, Mr. Joslyn said his story is boring and acknowledges its anticlimactic outcome is probably pretty rare.

“I had come out in December to everyone in school and it was no big deal to me. It wasn’t until June that I came out to my mother. It was just something I was sitting on for that whole six months,” Mr. Joslyn said. “I just found an opportunity to throw it at her and get out of the car and not have to face it. I told her that I was gay and she asked me what I wanted for dinner. So, it was not a big deal. I think I was lucky enough but naive about how crappy (coming out) was for other people.”

Although the talk was well-received by the students, very few had much to say afterward as they rushed to get selfies with Mr. Joslyn.

Lynn Barrette, wellness teacher and adviser for the alliance, said Mr. Joslyn’s talk will inspire other students to come out to their parents and be true to themselves.

“I’ll always ask kids, ‘How did your mother take it?’ And, they’ll often say, ‘She doesn’t know. I can never tell her,’ ” Ms. Barrette said. “I think that a lot of times kids think that they’re going to live not true to themselves and they see Patrick come around and they see you can be true to yourself and have a great relationship with your mother.”

Joe Phelan, one of the founding advisers of the alliance when it started in the early 1990s, said that Mr. Joslyn speaking to the students puts out a positive message.

“I used to tell people it seems to me that the best and brightest and the most sensitive kids are in the alliance,” Mr. Phelan said.

History teacher Donna Heidemann, who reached out to Mr. Joslyn to speak to the alliance, said the talk was “humbling.”

"Patrick was a little, tiny student with big, big dreams, and he went for them all,” Ms. Heidemann said. “He was always comfortable in his own skin and I learned a lot from him because of that. I’m so proud of them.”