And then I stormed off only as a queen could: elegantly, with shimmery hair and an undercurrent of simmering rage.
Charlie’s laughter followed me down the stairs.
Chapter 3: I Feel as Fresh as a Summer Zeeve
I PUT on my wide, fake so-happy-to-see-you smile as I entered the bar. People began to mill around me excitedly, and I kissed their cheeks, posed for photos, and made fun of them to their faces. They laughed, because that’s what a queen did. I was a performer, my show built on flirting, sex, and sarcasm. I pushed the boundaries of taste and comfort, sometimes crossing the line by leaps and bounds. But I never pushed so hard that someone walked away feeling bad about themselves. I would never do that. People weren’t supposed to be the butt of the jokes, they were supposed to be in on the jokes and laugh with each other, not at. There was a difference between observation and bullying. I could never be a bully. There was too much of that outside of this place. Jack It was a safe space, free from judgment (well, as free from judgment as a gay bar could get—it should be noted that gay men could be catty as fuck and it was my job to even the playing field).
I made it to the end of the bar, making sure to keep an eye out for a certain Homo Jock King that I wanted to avoid. Thankfully, he was nowhere to be seen and if I was lucky, he’d already found a twink conquest for the night and was gone.
One of the newer boys was working behind the bar. His name was Izaac, and he made sure everyone knew it was spelled with a Z and not an S. I made sure he knew that I didn’t give two shits how he spelled his name, just as long as he had two shots of tequila waiting for me for a bit of preshow warmup. It was a tradition started by Vaguyna, god rest her soul, and continued on by me. It was usually all I drank anymore, as it was getting harder and harder to escape a hangover the older I got. That was a depressing thought, especially being only thirty-one. My body was an asshole that way.
Izaac was shirtless, as the bartenders often were. He was also straight as hell, with a muscled chest and stomach, a trail of hair below his belly button. Regardless of what else he was, he had the right idea, working in a place like this. He was cute in a bland Abercrombie cookie-cutter sort of way, all-American blond hair and blue eyes. He made a shit-ton in tips and then went home to his girlfriend. Straight boys could make a killing in a gay bar, with the whole forbidden fruit thing going on. This world was filled with gay-for-pay porn and gay-for-you romance, so they saw him as a challenge. He made bank, the boys got to flirt, and everyone went home happy.
Of course I had to hit on him. It’s just what Helena did. She devoured little boys like him and loved it when he blushed under the attention. We both knew nothing would ever come of it, and I didn’t even want it to. But it was fun to poke and prod, and I liked him more than any of the other bartenders or barbacks. He took my shit, but he knew to give it right back.
“My Queen,” he said as I approached.
“My questionable heterosexual,” I said, leaning over the bar and kissing his ear.
He grinned at me as he set two shots of Patrón on the bar. “You wouldn’t even know what to do with me if I swung that way.”
I grinned at him, showing far too many teeth. “Kitten, there would be nothing left by the time I was done with you. I would destroy you.”
He clutched his hands over his heart and sighed dramatically. “With an offer like that, who I am to resist?”
“You’ll give in.” I slammed back one of the shots. It burned as it went down. I placed the glass back on the bar. “They always do.” I brushed a trace of tequila off my lips and licked my finger.
“Maybe I like to go slow.” He leaned forward, elbows on the bar. He had these pert little nipples that just begged to be twisted. “All gentle-like.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then, honey, you’re talking to the wrong queen.” I took the other shot and felt myself even out. “I don’t do slow and gentle.” Well, I did, but very rarely. It was an intimacy that I didn’t quite allow myself to have.
“My girlfriend hates it when I do it slow and gentle,” he said seriously.
I grimaced. “Ugh, that is such a waste.”
“What? That I have a girlfriend?”
“No, that you like it slow and gentle. It’s unbecoming of a man with nipples like yours.”
He blushed and there it was. It was probably a good thing he was straight, because if he hadn’t been, I probably wouldn’t have been able to resist having his cock down my throat the second night he worked. What could I say, I obviously just cared too much.
“I’m never going to be able to look at my nipples the same way again.” He sighed.
“There, there.” I patted his hand. “I’ll do all the looking for you, and somehow, life will go on. Now stop distracting me. I have a show to do.”
Izaac rolled his eyes. “Your baby queens are already back behind the stage. I think Summer Zeeve was having a little freak-out earlier.”
My jaw tightened. Summer was a newer queen who had impressed me during her auditions with her ability to crab walk backward while gyrating her crotch toward the ceiling directly on the beat from Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer.” She was young, brash, and somehow, didn’t have a goddamn lick of common sense.
Most drag queens were also drama queens. You really couldn’t be one without the other. However, it was meant to be part of your persona, to add to the whole package. Summer tended to forget that and was about drama for drama’s sake. She liked to have mini-meltdowns prior to shows, saying she was too scared to go on, that she just wasn’t ready. It usually took me snarling in her face a bit before she would smirk quietly and go out on stage. I didn’t have time for her right now. Not for the first time, I regretted hiring her.
It was Saturday, the second in the month, which meant I had three other queens with me. I was the only regular, the others were on rotation. Georgia O’Queef was an older black queen who loved lavish costumes and Bette Midler. The other, Crystal Queer, was a couple of years younger than me, a lovely queen who usually utilized the stripper pole installed on the stage. She’d told me once her dream as a child had been to grow up and work at The Candy Store, but that dream had died when the strip club had closed after it turned out to be a meth lab and had forty-six dead bodies buried underneath the floorboards. “There’s nothing like seeing your childhood dreams dying because of murder and meth,” she’d said sadly. Given that she was one of my favorites, I’d had Mike, the owner of Jack It, install the stripper pole after I’d promised under no uncertain terms that there would be no nudity. I’d promised with wide eyes, both of us ignoring the fact that there were dicks out in the back room even as we were speaking.
“Of course I have to deal with children,” I muttered.
Izaac shrugged. “Not everyone can be so well put together like you, Helena.”
“If you ever leave me,” I threatened, “I will hunt you down and it will end in a murder-suicide.”
He cocked his head. “Who would be the murdered one?”
“Try and quit one day,” I purred. “See what happens.”
“I could never leave you,” he said. “No one simultaneously strokes and crushes my ego all in one breath like you do.”
“And don’t you forget it,” I said. “Tell me I look beautiful.”
“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you, baby doll. Now I must leave before I pull on those nips of yours.” I winked at him as he blushed again, leaving him behind and heading toward the back of the stage.
I pushed through the curtain at the end of the hall that led behind the stage. Georgia stood with her hands on her hips, wearing a long, elegant, and deeply cut blue dress with a train that stretched along the floor. The edges of the dress were slightly frayed, years of mending not able to catch every little stray strand.
Crystal wore white thigh-boots and a black unitard that barely covered any skin and would have been a probable pornographic situation if it hadn’t been for strategically placed costume tape that held the p
ieces together to not reveal any more of her more… manly components.
And then there was Summer. My dear, sweet, overly dramatic and pain in my ass Summer. She wore some ridiculous fishnet concoction that looked immaculately sloppy, like she’d spent hours poring over it to look purposefully like a hooker. Knowing her, she probably had. She was a nineteen-year-old college student named Tristan in her real life, and I was sure he would be kind and sweet with whatever he did with his life, but as Summer, the need I felt to bitchslap her rose more and more every day. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to take it. She was good at what she did, mostly, but she refused to take any kind of advice or direction and most certainly didn’t want a drag mother hanging over her. Not that I’d ever do that for her. I didn’t want to be responsible for her murder, after all.
Georgia looked over at me with a frown. “Thank Christ you’re here. Get that cunt under control before I tear off her wig and shove it up her ass.”
Georgia was an old queen who didn’t take shit from anyone. She was amazing.
Crystal was standing in front of Summer, who was wailing about how she couldn’t do this, about how nervous she was, and that she’d be alone forever, she would never find a man, and she had an Econ exam she was sure she’d failed, and her professor hated her, that cunt, she was just jealous because Summer looked better in Uggs than that skank ever would, and she hadn’t had time to perfect her routine and all those boys were going to laugh at her, but she’d show them, she’d come out stronger than ever and everyone would love her if they only gave her a chance—
I didn’t have time for her shit. I had a show to put on, a routine to perform, a Captain America wannabe to ignore, and a best friend to murder for inviting said Captain America wannabe to my brunch, which was supposed to be a safe space.
“Listen here, you silly little bitch,” I snapped. “We don’t have time for you to pretend there are cameras following your every move. Stop your fucking nonsense before I rip out your falsies and choke you with them.”
Summer ceased at once. Regardless of what else she did, she certainly knew when I was this close to following through on my threats.
“Now, I don’t care what your problems are outside of this room. You are here, I hired you to be here, and you fucking focus. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Helena,” she said with a watery sniff, though miraculously, her eyes were dry. “And I know my routine. I promise.”
“I know you do,” I said. “You’re good at what you do. Now if only you talked less, everything would be well and the world would be a better place. Now, Georgia, you’re up after me. Then Summer. Then me. Then Crystal and then the finale with all four of us looking fierce and phenomenal. There will be no deviation. This show will go off perfectly as it always has. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” the queens said.
“Good,” I said. “And what do I always say?”
They all spoke as one. “If I ever catch you performing ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen, I’ll castrate you and feed your dicks to some horses. That song is overplayed and no drag queen should ever perform it ever again anywhere ever.”
I clapped my hands together. “Isn’t this just so much fun?”
I TOOK a breath and waited for the DJ to announce my name.
The shots were doing their job. I felt loose. I felt good.
I took another breath and held it, letting it out slowly. Tyson the little twinkie boy had taught me his art of breathing, and I was surprised by how much it’d helped me.
I always felt nerves before a show, a low, underlying current that was almost soothing in its regularity. Vaguyna had told me that any queen worth her salt still felt nervous, because that meant she was still in it to impress. It was the moment you stopped being nervous, she said, that it was time to hang up your wig.
“And now, ladies and gentleman, Jack It is proud to present the fiercest bitch in the Wild West, her majesty, the Queen, Helena Handbasket!”
The curtains parted.
The crowd roared.
The nerves melted away as the familiar beats of a Britney remix poured from the speakers. The bass reverberated down the walls and through the floor, vibrating up into my skin.
I knew this routine like the back of my hand. Some people see a performance by a drag queen and think it’s nothing but a man dressed as a woman, lip-synching along with a random and forgettable pop trash. And maybe those people were right, at least partially.
Because I was dressed as a woman. I was lip-synching pop trash.
But I was doing so much more than that.
For everything a person did see, for every deliberate step I took, each slink and slide of skin, there were hours upon hours spent choreographing and learning in front of a mirror, listening to the same songs over and over again. It started off with an idea of what each number was meant to convey, the music and choreography following after.
Tonight, I was fucking Britney, bitch.
The crowd screamed for me when I dropped into the splits. I bounced once, twice, three times, ignoring the twinge in the back of my right thigh, the thin sheen of sweat I could feel above my lip. I bounced up again, and swung the leg facing front back up under me, resting back on the balls of my feet, my hands splayed out at my sides. The beat changed and I rocked forward, hands to the ground, crawling down the center of the dance floor, the crowd gathered on either side of me. The floor was sticky and I had to keep from grimacing, locking that cocky fuck-you smirk on my face. I was going to chew Mike out later. It was his fucking bar, but I brought in the money. He needed to keep it clean.
The music changed again and I stood, dropping out of the routine. Men and woman on either side of me held out money, ones and fives, and I grinned at them as I took the bills into my hand. I wasn’t paid for what I did, not by the bar. I donated my time and energy, putting together the show for free. I spent my own money on the costumes, the wigs, and the makeup. I scavenged the thrift stores, looking for vintage this and sequined that.
It was hard work.
I did it because I loved it and wouldn’t have it any other way.
But it was also expensive.
Which is why I had no qualms taking the money from their hands.
Paul had asked me once if I felt like a hooker and these were my johns.
I told him it was more like being a drug dealer and giving them a high.
Then I kicked him in the shins and told him if he ever called me a hooker again, I’d fist him so fast, his asshole would be stretched for a week.
He probably shouldn’t have asked me that while I was Helena.
So I kissed and schmoozed and thanked the boys and girls as I took their money. I moved through the dance floor, past the people sitting in chairs on either side of the room to the back where it was standing room only. I sang along with Britney, who was now telling everyone that there were only two types of people in the world. People in the crowd grabbed my arms and hands and I let them, kissing their cheeks and whispering sweetly in their ears.
There were still a few hands outstretched along the rear of the room, and I thought I saw a twenty-dollar bill. I tried not to lunge at it like a fat kid on cake, as I was a queen and thus needed to move with dignity and grace. (In all reality, I focused on the twenty-dollar bill, and if I was a fat kid, then the cake was mine, I swear to god.) The twenty was gripped in a big, tanned hand, the fingernails immaculately groomed. The hand was attached to a thick arm, the lights above flashing and showing the light hair that dusted the skin.
I liked big hands.
Because they usually had thick fingers.
What can I say, I wasn’t a picky person.
Most of the time.
“Come to mommy,” I whispered to that hand as I moved down the line.
I should have known it was going to be a trap. But twenty dollars to a drag queen was like a large crack rock to a tweaker and I was going to have it. It was mine. And if the owner of said twenty was anything good, then
maybe Helena would be finding herself some cock tonight.
But that’s the problem with drag queens and twenty-dollar bills and potential hot cocks. The power of Andrew Jackson blinded us to anything else and the allure of dick made our mouths water. I needed a new hot glue gun. And I had almost saved up for these knee-high boots that had flames up and down the sides. I had needs and that twenty would go toward the needs. I also wanted to get plowed like I was a field during planting season.
I hadn’t noticed that I’d wandered into dangerous territory.
I had already been through the bears and the twinks. I had passed through the leather daddies and their boys, the lesbians with killer pixie cuts and the Doc Martens that Paul was sure one day would give him a penis kicking. There was the obligatory bachelorette party that had screamed drunkenly when I’d given the bride-to-be a lap dance. The models stood posing, nary a hair out of place. I’d even gone through the Muscle Marys and their steroidal dreams.
I had passed them all.
Into the heart of darkness.
The point of no return.
The Homo Jocks.
Like high school, gay bars have cliques. The groups stick together. Sometimes there was intermingling, but more often than not, the gays stayed where they were allotted. Sometimes things changed when people moved groups. A twink cannot remain a twink for the rest of their lives, no matter how much they wish it so. Aging twinks were sad twinks and had to find a new group to assimilate into. A twink could become a bear, but a bear could never become a twink. It was all very confusing, the homosexual lifestyle. Only those that were gifted could ever hope to understand or be a part of it.
But I was blinded by greed. I wanted that twenty-dollar bill.
I should have noticed when I moved from the lesbians to the homo jocks, but to be fair, there was a hard time distinguishing between the last bull dyke and the first homo jock. Both had good-sized chests and short hair. The only reason I noticed the difference was when the first homo jock had a distinct lack of lesbianic features, such as plaid and a braided belt. I saw a stretched tank top with the words LANDO’S GYM across the front and knew I was fucked.