By Cig Neutron | Photography by Rannie Rodil and Cig Neutron

Most people know me for my special Makeup FX and winning Syfy’s Faceoff season 11, but I’ve always been so much more than that. A lot of my work that I’m genuinely passionate about doesn’t fit into the mainstream. Filtering myself through network television exposed me to a large audience, but it came at the cost of authenticity. I find deep inspiration in the absurd, but the number one theme I have always been drawn to, both personally and creatively, is sex. Eroticism is such a powerful medium to create with because it can shock and arouse. In some cases, it can do both, and that’s when you really move people. My work is an ever-evolving exploration of sex and irreverence.

Sex is THE fundamental creative act. Without it, literally none of us would exist. This is why I believe it’s so harmful that society, in general, has such a skewed and traumatized view of something so inherent to our being. It wasn’t until I untangled my own traumas surrounding my personal orientation and gender identity that I realized just how integral it is to my well-being. As with so many other aspects of my life, my art has helped me to understand my sexuality and identity better, but it hasn’t been an easy journey. It’s a wild tale of repressed trauma, overcoming addiction, and finally being able to truly see myself in that clarity.

I have always been an oddball. As a kid, I was obsessed with horror films and constantly drew monsters. I think I felt a kinship with them: the outcast, the misunderstood, the strange and macabre. I remember feeling so at home standing in Halloween stores, surrounded by terrifying masks, listening to spooky music with the thick smell of latex lingering in the air.

When I became a teenager and started developing my own unique style, I naturally gravitated towards a feminine aesthetic. Living in a small town in Indiana, this made me the target of vicious threats and hate slurs. It wasn’t until I moved to LA that I realized it is in no way normal to be called a faggot by grown-ass men everywhere you go. My world was so small then; I didn’t know I was queer because I never met a queer like me. I had no frame of reference or access to terms like pansexual or non-binary that encapsulated my experience. I could not understand why people were harassing me. I was just trying to express something inside of me, something I didn’t fully understand at the time.

At 17, I was in a performance art band called Astrodisiac, where I sang and played the keytar. Before our first show, I remember questioning whether I should put on eyeliner and red lipstick. I’m so happy to say that I did it, and that went on to become a staple of my on-stage persona. I remember feeling so alive performing in a full face of makeup.

After I graduated high school, I went to the Tom Savini makeup FX school in PA, and days after graduating there, I moved to LA and began working for the big FX shops on big-budget projects. I was very grateful for the experiences I had working on those types of projects, but I also felt like a cog in the machine. You don’t get to have a lot of creative input when working on such big projects. That was around the time that I met my now wife, Rannie Rodil. She was a photographer doing sexy cosplay photography, and I started helping her with makeup and costumes.

We eventually decided to break away from cosplay and create our own characters, and the coffee table photography book Bizarro Au Go Go was born. It was sexy, it was trashy, it was punk rock and for the first time in LA, I actually felt creatively alive. We sold our book at conventions and independent bookstores and even started an occult-themed soap company called Rub A Dub Beelzebub.

Eventually, I tried out for Faceoff season 7, and going on that show totally changed our lives.

I should have guessed what was going to happen when Syfy’s legal department requested I take down a lot of the Bizarro Au Go Go stuff I had online. I complied because it was a great opportunity for me. The show exposed me to a massive audience, which was incredible, but I slowly realized that Faceoff’s fan base was a much younger crowd. Before Faceoff, I was making sleazy, sexy monsters with substance abuse problems, and now, suddenly, I have a huge fanbase of kids. So, for a long time after, I started editing myself and toning down my art. This began to weigh heavily on my soul. Once again, I didn’t feel like I was genuinely expressing myself.

During this period of constant social gatherings and convention appearances, my dependence on alcohol began to grow exponentially. My 20s are a blurry, hot mess of monsters, drugs, wild parties, and beyond. I’m incredibly grateful for all those experiences. That chapter of my life is actually a huge source of inspiration and gave me a deeper understanding of the world, but alas, that level of excess is not sustainable.

Years into being a full-blown alcoholic, I began to degrade. My mental state was wildly unstable. Every morning was agony, and every night was a blur, if I even remembered it at all. Eventually, through a wild encounter in New Orleans, Rannie and I were able to find sobriety with the help of actual spirits (this is a whole story on its own, which I’ve tried to encapsulate in the docuseries Black Tea and Bourbon available on our youtube: youtube.com/rancig).

The clarity that came from sobriety really allowed me to see myself for the first time in my adulthood. I was finally present long enough to begin the process of self-analysis and introspection. I started to look at my kinks and sexual proclivities in a very honest way. I had always been very much into Fem Dom and being submissive. Multiple times I would find myself crossing the pornographic genres into Bi FemDom, and I thought, “Huh, if I would be into sucking a dick because a Dom told me to…am I just into sucking dick?” It was kind of a funny thought, but it got me thinking. If I’m into that, what else am I open to, and if I’m open to that, what does that make me? Those questions, and my honesty in answering them, led me down the path to the realization that I was pansexual. The fluidity in perspective that this understanding afforded opened me up to an exciting new view of sex. I finally allowed myself to be turned on by what turned me on with zero shame.

I began channeling this newly found inspiration by drawing and painting different erotic scenes. In the past, I had made sexy art, but never anything this explicit. Something about the rawness of depicting bold, queer sex through art was exhilarating and profoundly healing. This began another phase in my life where I felt pure expression flowing through me. Around this time, I also allowed myself to start dressing more feminine again. The first time I put on a pair of heels, it was like a switch flipped, and I instantly reconnected with my teenage self. The euphoria hits hard. It’s so strange, but I didn’t even realize I completely hid that part of myself for so many years because it had brought me so much pain. Now in this chapter of my life, I could fully reconnect with that part of me and allow it to flourish.

Reconnecting with the feminine essence that was always trying to express itself through me led to a cascade of realizations about my gender identity. I was also very deep into my occult spiritual journey at this point. I was learning about concepts in alchemy, such as the rebis, reconciliation of opposites, and the existence of indigenous two spirits. Everything just started to click in a big way. It is my firm belief that Trans people are sacred. Allowing oneself to freely express the divine feminine and masculine polarities within oneself is a spiritual endeavor of the highest magnitude.

This wasn’t without consequence, however. When I came out, 99% of the people I thought were my friends just completely ghosted me. In the following days, I lost 40,000 followers on Instagram. I know it’s just social media, but when you finally make sense of yourself and excitedly share that with the world, it hurts to be abandoned, both online and in person.

This took a long time for me to process. I felt like I no longer had any friends. My perspective now is that this time period was necessary. I needed to shed all of the things in my life that were holding me back so that I could fully embrace all the wonderful new people and things that were going to come into my life. Feeling no connection to LA anymore, Rannie and I moved to Las Vegas.

We’ve only been here a year, but the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had here are completely nourishing on a deeper soul level. I never thought I’d leave LA, but now I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Vegas.

I wanted to get back into performing live, and I’ve had some amazing opportunities to do so. I’ve reemerged into the fine art scene by having a resident artist wall at Slonina Art Space. I feel like I’m creating from a genuine place again, having finally integrated all aspects of myself and my identity. I am still struggling to find the balance with what is too much for the mainstream, but most of my work now has an erotic edge with a healthy dose of queerness. Whether it be the hermaphroditic pixies I call Prixies, or my latest series of sexy pickle people. I’m having fun exploring ways to push the limits while putting people back in touch with their sexuality in healthy and fun ways through art.

The only place I can post my entire body of work is on Patreon (Patreon.com/rancig). I’m currently working to bring the Bizarro Au Go Go insanity to the Vegas live performance scene, as well as through film. My podcast, Spewtron, documents my journey of sobriety and cultural understanding. What started as a comedy podcast set me on a path of connection and learning about other people’s perspectives, which completely enriched my worldview. I interview artists, queer folks, sex workers, and more, all in an effort to destigmatize and rehumanize.

After everything I’ve been through, I now see the esoteric majesty of the universe. Sex is divine, and Gender is sacred, but far too often, these things are abused and demonized. My work aims to empower people and put them back in touch with the core fabric of our humanity through sexy and playfully absurd ways.

This article was originally published in the second issue of PROUD & Kinky Magazine. You may read it in its original format here.

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