Manila Luzon Remembers the Life of Her Friend Jiggly Caliente: ‘She Started My Chosen Family’

On Sunday (April 27), the family of Bianca Castro announced that the iconic performer — better known by her drag name Jiggly Caliente — had passed away, after battling a severe infection that resulted in the amputation of her right leg. Caliente came to public prominence after competing on season 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and quickly became one of the show’s most celebrated queens. She returned to the show for season six of All Stars, served as a judge on Drag Race Philippines and starred in a number of episodes of the groundbreaking FX series Pose.

As tributes continue to pour forth in Caliente’s honor, Billboard reached out to Caliente’s close friend, Drag Race star Manila Luzon, to pay tribute to her life. Below, Luzon looks back on the first time the two of them met, their mutual love for reading each other and why she considers Caliente to be “the person that really started my chosen family.”

For those looking for a way to help, Caliente’s family has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for medical and funeral expenses, and to give the drag star “the beautiful, heartfelt goodbye she deserves.” If you’re able to donate, please consider doing so here.

Shortly after I started dating Sahara Davenport, she took me to a dinner celebrating one of her drag queen friends, and that’s where I first got to meet Jiggly. It was funny, because when I first met Sahara in a dark bar, I had just come back from a vacation in Mexico, and Sahara had misheard me and thought I was from Mexico. So, when I met Jiggly — this little, round, Filipino drag queen — she looked at me, turned to Sahara and said, “Girl, he’s not Mexican! He looks Filipino!”

The very next night that we went to visit Jiggly at The Web, which was the gay Asian nightclub in New York City. She was DJing in this little hip-hop room — she had a disc changer, and her massive folder full of burned CDs of Beyoncé and Missy Elliott. I remember being so impressed, because I certainly didn’t know how to DJ, and to have a drag queen DJing felt like, “Oh, you can perform as a drag queen but also DJ?” She just had this authority about her as the one entertaining the crowd, she had complete control over the room with the music she was playing. I always found that very admirable.

Quickly, Jiggly became the first person that I considered my chosen family as a gay person. I had been living in New York City for a few years, but I really didn’t have that queer community at that point. Jiggly was Filipino, and she was my connection to that part of my own heritage. She was a year older than me — even though she’s smaller and loved to say that she was my little sister. In the Philippines, you always refer to your older sister as “ate.” So, whenever she would say, “Oh, I’m her little sister,” I would go, “Girl, no, you’re my ate.”  

She was the bridge, for me, to drag performance in New York City — I was a drag queen, but I wasn’t really going out and pursuing drag. Jiggly, meanwhile, was always out; she was going to Barracuda, she was at Therapy, she was always doing competitions, and she was always winning because she was such an impressive dancer. She started my chosen family. 

Why I fell in love with Jiggly so much was because, first of all, she was so beautiful — you could never come for her face. She would always read everyone for their mugs, even back before Drag Race, she just had the most blended, beautiful mugs. But what I always loved about her is that she was this short, tiny, yappy little queen, and she had a mouth on her. She would tell everyone like she saw it; she would not let you get away with anything. If something was wrong with you, she would be the first to point it out — and never out of spite. She said it because she had very little filter, and she was always able to deliver it in a way that was shady but so funny. You would always laugh about it. She was brave enough to always say the things that no one else would ever have the guts to. 

At The Web, she was the runt of the litter, so we were always picking on Jiggly in the dressing room. But she would always get us back, and would know just what to say to shut us all up. You could not tell her that, in the Destiny’s Child group, she was not Beyoncé. That is what I loved about her: even if she wasn’t this “conventional” drag beauty, she had this confidence about her. She knew that she was an amazing performer, that she had mug for days, that she was going to win over every crowd she was in front of, and that she could read you the house down if you came for her. 

When we would be on phone calls kiki-ing, we would both always be saying the most horrible things to one another. I would tell her, “We are going to hell for laughing at this.” But that was the thing about her — she always found the humor in everything. Even when everything in the world was going bad, Jiggly had this way of turning it around and making you laugh at it. It’s so strange, because as I’ve been reading all of these tributes to her, I keep going to call her, because I just want to kiki with her about her own death! I want to know what she’s thinking about everyone talking about her. 

She loved the pageants — one time, we were on tour when the Miss Universe pageant was airing. We were in Europe, it was the middle of the night, and we had finished our show. Jiggly refused to get out of drag: she was in full makeup, rhinestones, the wig, and I just looked at her like, “Why are you doing this? We are on a tour bus!” And Jiggly was like, “Well, I have to be dressed up, it’s the pageant!” Just in order to watch the pageant, she had to be in full pageant mode. So she sat there, in drag, and we watched Pia Wurtzbach win Miss Universe.

She also loved comic books. She was the foremost expert on the Marvel Universe before it was big. She knew all of the side characters and their backstories, and she had these dreams of what her ideal X-Men movie would look like. She thought that she was Jubliee, the young Asian superhero who could shoot sparkles out of her fingers, and that is literally Jiggly to a T. Even when she was in the hospital, we would be playing the X-Men cartoons. There was that geeky side, that nerdy side to her that I loved.

I’m going to miss her kicking all of our asses at Mortal Kombat. Whenever she would come over, it would be me, her, my husband, Valentina, Heidi N Closet, and she would just destroy us — though Heidi will probably read this and disagree with me. It’s just those little things — that little gamer, comic-book-nerd side that you wouldn’t guess about her when she’s in a sequin gown lip synching something so fiercely on the stage — that I’ll miss. 

I went to go visit her in the hospital in New York City last week. I had been aware of her situation, and was in contact with her brother. I was being patient; she had a severe infection and at first, it was mostly a concern of, “Well, how is my friend going to feel that she had to have a limb amputated?” Jiggly became so popular because she was such an amazing dancer, you know? She was high-kicking and doing cartwheels, so for a short, round little drag queen, it was always a crowd-pleaser. So it was devastating to hear the news about her limb. So I was just trying to be very patient for her to recover. But the infection was so severe, and her body was under so much trauma, and it was really hard to see her in the hospital. 

When I finally heard she had passed on Sunday, obviously I felt really sad. But I was also relieved. We would have gotten her a really fierce rhinestoned prosthetic and some gorgeous gowns. But I know that would have been very difficult for her, so in a way, I was relieved. She was surrounded by her family and her friends and her drag family, and I know that she felt the love and all of the positive energy from around the world once her family released the statement about her condition. I mean, there was this outpouring of love, and she got so many visitors in the hospital: friends, co-stars, family, people from all points in her life were able to come visit her. We were all able to see her in her last days, and to be with her and share our stories. 

As drag artists, a lot of us are seen as rich and famous because we were on TV, but drag is a very expensive career. We have very expensive uniforms for work. Jiggly deserves a send-off worthy of the star that she was, and we also want to make sure that her family does not have to worry about finances. They’re worried enough about the loss of Jiggly. So, we’re turning to the fans to help support by helping out with some of the medical bills, and helping with the funeral arrangements so that burden isn’t there as well. Jiggly just has her brother left now — she had lost her mother many years ago. So, my heart goes out to her brother, Gian, who now has had to say goodbye to both his mother and his sister. 

I don’t have to hope; I know she secured her legacy. She went on Drag Race as a trans woman when it was still taboo, because she knew she had to get on the show. After that, everyone agreed that she was a star. But I really hope people remember her for not taking herself too seriously, while still taking herself seriously enough as a woman. I hope people remember what she’s done for her communities — the Filipino community, in representing Filipinos and Asian-Americans in the media, and for her activism and representation in the trans community. She produced the show Translation with Peppermint, Carmen Carrera and Kylie Sonique Love, where they openly talked about trans issues. She made that happen — that was her concept and her idea. Her gender identity was always so important to her, and she was a woman as long as I knew her. I know that she will be remembered for that.

She will always be remembered by the people she loved as the fun, loving, shady, goofy little Jiggly. And I will always remember her as my sister. 

As told to Stephen Daw.

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