Thirteen. The Show
Becoming the finest drag queen on K Road – the finest, since Nick settled for no less – was a very delicate thirteen-step process. The magazines were research, shopping too – then there were drawing boards, a final five outfits, cutting and styling the wig, and a test run on the mannequin. Two hours of hair, ninety minutes of make-up, three hours of assembly and seventy-five minutes of pacing later, with the addition of a black hat, silver diamond-encrusted jewelry, knee-high boots and a long blonde wig, standing, moving and certain ways of sitting all became near physical impossibilities but it didn’t matter, because the moment he stepped out on that street the world was under his knee high heel.
Out of the thirteen steps, at any given moment, Nick would be doing seven. Behind the mirror voices growled from the television. “New reports reveal that pills seized on K Road have been found to contain traces of illegal substances. Other reports,” the chief constable growled, “that now tell us that the drugs currently legal are ten times as strong as black market amphetamines. Make no mistake,” – the camera cut to footage of kids skipping across rooftops on K Road – “the ones behind this are dark, immoral men who have no interest in anything other than profit.”
“And we love them for it!” Karma turned to the mirror and began pouring deep red all over her lips in wild circles. Her eyes blazed into his own reflection with deep focus.
“Just think…” She gazed in admiration at her reflection. “Next I’ll have to come over and do this with you in New York!”
“New York!” Chi Chi turned abruptly in her stool. “What are you doing HERE?”
“Everything,” I told her.
She shook her head. “You must be on something.”
“Not yet.” Karma held her pill above her head. “For courage.” She saluted. And down it went.
An hour later I felt a strong wave of nerves rush over my skin. Bumps appeared on my arms and vanished in flashes. My left leg felt wrong unless it was bouncing and shaking. My arms were constantly cold.
I watched the swell of the chattering crowd as I rocked on my heel, trying to strike a rhythm that would soothe me. I unwound into the plastic white chair, blonde curls spilling out under the pageboy cap, feet rammed into black stiletto boots and a dress short as death, drifting around in the breeze, gazing into the canopy of black that covered the night. Eyes followed me across the bar but it had nothing to do with me. It was as if I was the shell of something else that I didn’t quite know how to imitate. I got nervous from all the attention.
Karma stretched her arms out towards the sky. “I am having the most marvelous time!”
Then Karma’s voice went soft and the pools of blue in her eyes quivered.
“I haven’t told many people this,” she said quietly. “But I got a girl pregnant when I was seventeen.” She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure if I was gay… and abortion is illegal in Brunei, so for four months I sat in my room, accepting that this was my life.” Her pink fingernails played with the handle on her bag. “Then, out of nowhere – she loses the baby.” She stared dead ahead. “And everything was back to normal.” Her voice went quiet. “Except for me.”
“I couldn’t stand to be around anything anymore, so… I moved here. At seventeen. Left my whole family behind.” I didn’t know what to say. She shook her head. “So. Life as you know it.… Enjoy it while you can. It can all change like that.” She snapped her fingers, the press-on nails leaving red marks in her skin. “And it’s never coming back.”
I tried to play the guitar to calm down and could barely hold the strings.
Chi Chi stared down from her glittering mountain. “Are you almost ready?”
Karma nodded. My head flashed with heat. Still I couldn’t stop shaking.
“It’s probably just exaggerating how you already feel,” Jack advised, drink in hand. When did he come in? “Although I don’t understand why you’re so nervous. Crowds are one of the easiest things to handle in the world.”
“Easier said than done,” I insisted, teeth chattering.
Jack hesitated, then signaled for water. “Give me one of those.”
“I thought you hated these pills.”
“I do,” he said as he threw the pill back. “But if you’re going to be down, I want to be down too.”
On stage Karma had them in the palm of her gloved hand – the crowd danced until they were dead.
Chi Chi howled over the crowd’s roar. “Our audience has spoken!”
Karma fanned a hand to her face. “We did it! We did it!” We waded through a dense sea of compliments – “Congratulations!” “I love your dress!” “You look just like my sister!” – before the doors shot open and we spilled out onto the black streets. Karma stumbled forward and fell onto her knees. She leaned forward, as if she were about to kiss the sidewalk, but then decided against it and instead sank back with her arms spread. “I love this city!”
We leapt down the street, now slick and gleaming. Girls in plaid skirts and ripped fishnets tumbled over the street, screaming. Two drag queens sold sausages for a dollar behind a wave of smoke that curled up from their barbecue steam.
At some bar or another, after a few shots too many, or merely too strong, Jack swayed, and then stumbled, until he caught a pillar and slowly sank against it. I staggered towards him, my rhythm no longer quite matching the music.
“Hey you, how you feeling?"
Nick and I spilled back onto the wet night pavement, each dragging Jack along by one arm. At one intersection or another, no one remembers, Jack adamantly groaned and veered right, moaning “Fooooooood,” drawing the sound mournfully across the night air. We looked to our right. Jack stretched against our pulling bodies towards a white trailer parked alongside the street, alit with flickering fluorescent. After confirming that yes, Jack did want food, I followed my drunken hero down the hissing sidewalk. Almost immediately after beginning the determined walk towards the counter, he veered and settled instead into the corner of a nearby storefront entrance, his body weight sinking onto the sidewalk.
That was the first time I noticed how profoundly sad Jack looked sometimes, when his eyes were glazed and focused on nothing. The confident, growling, brash young man of 29, eternally proud, affectionate, fierce, extremist in all his emotions, was now, hundreds of kilometers away from the dozens of women he’s seduced and throbbing rhythms of the bass music and general frictions of Flat 56. And I was the only one who could see him.
I squatted down next to Jack and passed over a mug of tap water I’d collected from the one chef that understood English. Jack limply held out a hand. I cupped his fingers around the mug.
“Come on, drink-drink. I got you some water.” I drew out my Chicago “water,” hollowed with nasal “a”s and curt “r”s, which never failed to garner a reaction. Jack shifted into a half-smile and made kissy faces in my general direction, eyes still lidded shut.
“Yeah, I know. Drink the water.” Jack leaned his head against me, resting it in the crevice between my shoulder and neck. I wrapped an arm around him. “Ah, Jack.”
We sat side by side in silence.
I wanted to stay with Jack here forever, slowly making bad meals and drinking away the days. But like Faust, as soon as I thought about it, there it was, TIME. Leaking back in. Neither of us could stop the gears of the world, or our slow return to the clock rhythm. And like the deadened atmosphere of the carnival in the late afternoon, it was all going to end. I did not know where he fit in the real world, the one that was slowly pouring back into all our minds, the one that called across the sea. I knew Jack didn’t know either. I had the awful feeling I would never see him again.
Jack shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. I’ll find you in New York. What do you graduate? I’ll be there for your graduation day.”
I told him the coming spring, and he slurred back the date. Then his head fell on my neck. We slept for a while on the sidewalk like that, with me squat
ting down next to him, until I finally decided to stand. “Come on, cowboy.” I held out a hand. “Let’s go home.”
The sky was shifting to a pale blue. As the sun rose behind the buildings the road faded into an abandoned street, with garbage fluttering in the winds. We side-stepped the blood and walked off into the faded light of the morning.
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