One of the drag queens had a tattoo of the alien from the Alien franchise bursting out of the skin on his bicep.
This is what really made me think that I might be able to partake in the ritual of drag night. That I might be able to find a dress that would make me more lady-like and dance like a pop star. They didn’t even sing, only lip-synced. I heard somewhere that if you mouthed “watermelon” it would match up with whatever lyrics you were trying fake-sing. But could straight guys include themselves in a night of drag?
The wig was irritating my scalp. I knew I should have shaved my head, or used the gel the clerk suggested. He said that if I tried to put it on dry hair it wouldn’t be comfortable. If anything, buy a skullcap. Pantyhose even. Anything but dry hair to wig. But did I listen? I thought I would be able to tough it out. I was already going out dressed up like a woman and prancing around a bar full of strangers.
My ex-girlfriend wouldn’t have approved. I came to drag night the first time as a spectator at a friend’s request. She was going to be performing and wanted some support. I was touched that she asked, only because I knew my ex had spread the word that I wasn’t “in to that kind of thing.” I was never for or against it. It was just another thing I grew up with. I’d never seen a Pride parade or the pain on the faces of lovers who couldn’t legally prove their commitment. I knew the political debates when it came to homosexual culture, but growing up I saw people who liked the opposite sex, and some who liked the same. It didn’t seem weird to me.
I had met Tammy at work. She was the girl who talked to everyone and I was the guy who drove home alone as soon as my shift ended. It was when she followed me into the parking lot one evening that it even dawned on me that I had been noticed amongst the sea of employees.
“Why don’t you ever go out with us?”
“I’ve never been invited,” my mother would have been proud how polite I was.
Tammy laughed. “You don’t need to be invited. Just come.”
She helped build my confidence. I was more than just a two to ten grocery aisle stock boy. I was always the kid who did his duties without thinking too much. I went from showing up to school twenty minutes early and turning in all the assignments to arriving at work early and completing all my tasks.
My parents weren’t known for their social lives, but they were dependable. I was following closely in their footsteps. Then she broke me out of my prison of oblivion. The routine shut down and a new order took hold. I began to live a different, fun, kind of life.
Everything was going so well until I had her over for dinner. In one night my father managed to ask where he could get a Koran for “National Burn a Koran Day” and called Johnny Depp a “butt-fucking queer.” She started to liken me to him and would make small comments from that day on. It had only been a couple months, but I guess it wasn’t enough to prove myself.
A skullcap would have been another purchase. I bought a dress, flesh colored underwear, women’s panties and high heels. I shaved my legs and my back. I knew I should’ve waited a bit to make sure I knew the window to avoid ingrown hairs. Or I should’ve just gone with a long sleeve dress, but I didn’t want to be just another drag queen. I wanted to be fucking hot. I wanted the boys in the crowd to need to remind themselves that it wasn’t a woman. Now that my back was covered in red bumps I didn’t think I’d have to worry about people thinking I was a woman.
The first night I saw these men dressed like women, dancing to the loud beats of Lady Gaga and Alanis Morissette, I didn’t know what to think. It was appealing and exciting, but I didn’t know why. They had an in your face attitude and didn’t care what people thought. They made crude jokes over the PA about getting drunk and waking up in a strange man’s hotel room, trying to figure out where the claw marks on their back came from. They concealed their faces and bodies with the help of make-up and fake breasts.
When I handed over the CD with the song I wanted the emcee shook his head and laughed. It wasn’t a congratulatory laugh, it was one of pity. Silly boy, it said, you think no has done this song. You think it’s so damn ironic, don’t you? it said. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself so I told him that I was joking, of course. Just a bit of friendly banter between two queens. I wondered if he knew I wasn’t gay. Could he detect that I was a fraud?
Tammy used to say I was a fraud. Doesn't she know I'm so much more?
After the incident at my parents’ there was a wedge between us. At first I was broken. I would send unanswered texts. My voice mail would remain empty whenever I checked it. Other co-workers started inviting me out when I stopped showing up with her. I don’t know if they actually enjoyed my company or just felt bad.
My circle of friends started to expand on these nights. The contact list in my phone grew. I stopped calling it “my cell phone for emergencies,” but rather, “my phone.”
We weren’t officially broken up and she used that fact to continue our relationship. She started coming over to our table while we laughed about the angry customers from work. The way a worm works its way through the earth was the same way she was able to come back into my embrace. I felt indebted to her for revealing my new lifestyle to me.
Although, she would become jealous of any people I hung around with that weren’t her. She felt she needed to be a fixture in my life at all times. That I was incomplete when she wasn’t standing by my side.
She told me that she lived alone, but wouldn’t show me her apartment. I was left to my imagination. I envisioned Misfits tapestries, not posters because with her rowdy tendencies posters were more apt to tear and be ruined, and framed pictures of drawings she had done for different local band shows. She would say a frame made her feel more accomplished.
I ran to my car, but had trouble staying balanced. Another detail I should have practiced more. The cross-dressers walked and danced and conversed so easily in their high heels, made it look like nothing. I thought I would just need to make the straps tight enough and I’d be another one of the girls. Only I kept rolling on my ankle, throwing my hands out and grabbing anything for stability. I almost ripped a queen’s breasts off. He called me a faggot and told me to get lost. The group he was a part of laughed at my humiliation.
I tore through my CD booklet. I thought Aerosmith would have been funny, but I remembered the laugh, of course a straight man would pick that song to perform to. The emcee didn’t know I was straight because of some sort of radar, but because I was trying too hard.
She said I always tried too hard. That’s how she knew my true colors, she’d say.
My thumb flipped each page, looking for a suitable song didn’t come as easily as I had hoped. My original pick came in the middle of a performance to Shania Twain’s “Man, I feel like a woman.” The strangers crowded around in a semi-circle loved the six-foot queen shimmying and spinning on the dancers poll. They would walk into the dance area and slip dollar bills into the bra that concealed the fabricated breasts. I wondered what they used. My skin had already started turning orange from the fruit I tapped to my chest. A bra was the other item I didn’t think I needed to spring for.
I got to the end of the booklet and didn’t see anything. Nineties alternative and old jazz didn’t cut it for a fun drag song. I wished I was into the new indie music, filled with drums machines and synthesizers. I decided I was already joining a drag show, so I might as well roll the dice. I grabbed an unmarked burned CD and prayed fate would shine on me.
Tammy said I didn’t have opinions of my own, meaning I couldn’t be my own person. I could only listen and consume. Just because I wasn’t vocal didn’t mean I didn’t have a voice.
I ran back into the bar and found the emcee. He looked at the disc and then to me.
“What song?”
“Track five,” I remembered I normally liked track five on CDs.
“But what song is it?” He asked, growing inpatient.
“A good one,” I said. “Trust me.”
He again laughed the laugh of pity and walked away without another word. The makeup I applied was too thick. The sweat made the foundation act like a layer of ice on the ocean. The faster the liquid moved underneath the more likely the ice would crack and shift.
I felt the vibration of a beat coming through the wall. The night was about to begin. My red dress kept riding up to reveal my hairy upper thighs. I thought I would be able to cover the hair with the skirt of the dress, but I didn’t expect it to crawl a little with every step I took. God gave me feminine calves and arms, but my father’s thighs. They were thick and muscular. It was the most out of place characteristic I had. These were the only things he ever gave me. Why couldn’t she realize that?
I walked to the back of the stage where the DJ sat. I would hide from the crowd, then unveil myself to be the hottest new queen this place has seen. If they loved me I would be able to do this every week. Make a little extra cash on the side. The emcee told me I would probably go earlier when I told him no one I invited had come. The truth was I didn’t invite anyone. I wanted to be a new person in front of new people who had never seen me. Wanted to prove that I could take a stand. Not just listen, but shout.
The wedge Tammy had created grew larger. The more she distanced herself the more I felt I needed her. Or maybe just her approval. When she brought me into the circle of work friends it was as if I was branded with her logo. I was hers and she was my keeper.
The advantage of the wedge wasn’t apparent until I saw her walk into a bar with the new guy, Reid. He seemed shy and uncomfortable at work too. Tammy was helping him out of his shell. She didn’t understand why I had gotten so mad. She didn’t know why I walked out. I had a feeling I know why she didn’t follow. I was on to her selfish ways. How she thought she knew me because I relied on her. How she loved the idea of being sought after and needed.
Since I left she had started spreading the myth that is my father. Better, the perception she has of him after one night. She used the fact that I have a hint of him in my face to prove that I am like him. That I hate everything not white and everything against the status quo is just wrong. She was trying to hurt me.
The first performer of the night was a man who looked much like Dr. Frank-N-Furter. The song she danced to was Ke$ha. I think, I wasn’t sure, though. I didn’t listen to the radio and all I knew of pop music was what the girls at work spoke of. They never directly talked to me about it, but I couldn’t help but eavesdrop when they called Katy Perry a slut or said Lady Gaga was actually a man. They said one of the girls we worked with looked like Ke$ha, and then called her a whore. I wasn’t sure if they were talking about our co-worker or the singer.
The dance beats came to an end and the emcee walked out with his microphone.
“Damn, doesn’t she have a nice ass? I would love to slather that in Haggen-Daaz and eat it right up. Skip the fucking spoon, that would just get in the way,” a smoker laugh boomed from the PA speakers. “Seriously though, I’ve got to watch what I say. I don’t know how many of you know that I’m forty-one, but I want you to know,” he paused, “my boyfriend happens to be twenty-one,” the crowd shouted words of praise. “I know, I know. So if I talk too much about wanting to eat other men’s asses he’ll do one of two things. Get jealous and make me eat his ass all night,” another laugh. “Or he’ll talk to my new aim and all three of us will fuck in a strange man’s hotel!” The crowd cheered.
“Now, we have a new performer tonight,” the emcee continued on. “Are you ready for a new performer!” The crowd cheered again. “Please welcome,” he looked at his scrap of paper and shook his head a little. “Sally.”
The music started and my heart sank as the Toadies guitar riff came through the speakers. It was a song about a man raping a girl. Some people would argue that it was consensual, but the son of a bitch convinces this girl to give up her virginity. If there is any sort of persuasion involved I wouldn’t go as far as call it consensual.
“Next song,” I shouted. “I’m sorry, the next one.”
The emcee stood in open-mouthed bafflement. He had to have known I was straight. I didn’t belong. I could feel my makeup had shifted in large pieces across my forehead. My scalp burned and the song continued to play. I made a circle with my hand and yelled next song again. The emcee shook his head and leaned down to hit the track button.
A bass line popped through the speakers and my breathing mellowed. This could work. I could dance to this. I tried to move my hips back and forth when the singing broke in.
“I got sunshine, on a cloudy day…”
I started shifting my weight between my feet and remembered my ex-girlfriend shrill voice, I’m not trying to be mean, but you don’t have rhythm, you need that to dance!
If she could see me now.
“I
guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way…My Girl…”
My eyes were closed when I realized I wasn’t lip-syncing along with the song. My shoulders pulsed with the sound of the guitars. I tried to match the harmony parts, repeating my girl over and over. I hadn’t moved, just continued to shift my weight back and forth. This wasn’t the kind of song you needed to run in circles to impress, though.
Silent wonderment.
“I got a sweeter song, than the birds’ in the trees…”
I opened my eyes, expecting to see the crowd grooving along with the song and me.
No one moved. They all had the expression of watching someone slow-fall. It was a fall that you expected the person to continually recover from, so you never lend your help because you don’t think they need it. Then you feel like an asshole when person ends up on the ground.
I still hadn’t moved from my original position. The chorus came back and I mouthed my girl a few more time and tried snapping my fingers. I glanced to each side of me and still no one dared to move along with me. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and felt a sheet of foundation fall over my eye and onto my cheek. I tried to smile, but had trouble because I had resorted to mouthing watermelon over and over. The small heels on my shoes clicked with my weight.
I couldn’t remember how long the song went, but time was also elongated while performing. I tried to scope the big room for any familiar faces. Could Tammy have just showed up for the fun of it? Wanted to go out and have a fun time at the drag show? She would see me and realize she had been wrong. She would know what kind of mistake she made. She’d dump Reid and let me back into her arms. We could go back to her place and lay into the night together.
But I didn’t see her face in the crowd.
From what I could tell no one had left the room, but no one felt the urge to join me in the fun.
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