Diary of a Blues Goddess (5 page)

"We just called him Casanova Jones because he was such a damn slut," Dominique added. "His real name was… what the hell
is
his real name, Georgia?"

"Rick."

The night before, Rick had approached me between sets, raising the eyebrows of my bandmates. Certainly, I was their lead singer, but to them, I was the woman with panty lines and lingerie-obsessed cats. I was the woman who spilled cocktail sauce down the front of her one white gown—which no dry cleaner could salvage. In short, to them, I was Georgie, the woman least likely to attract a guy who owned—didn't rent—a custom-fitted black Armani tuxedo.

"I thought it was you." Rick had smiled, leaning in to kiss my cheek, and allowing his lips to stay there for that fraction of a second too long. He took my hand and held it, his index finger stroking the inside of my wrist ever so slightly. "You're still as beautiful as ever, Georgia."

"Thanks. You look the same. Shorter hair… A little more corporate, but other than that… " His eyes still crinkled in the corners when he smiled, and his teeth were toothpaste-commercial perfect. His hair was still thick and a deep black; he had a strong jawline and very broad, former football-player shoulders.

"You know… you were the
one
girl I've wondered about… Have you stayed in New Orleans this whole time?"

"Can't get beignets anywhere else."

"I never left either. Even went to law school here. New Orleans is my town. Must be destiny that we ran into each other finally."

Yeah. Destiny. Or another cosmic mind-fuck.

"And then what?" Maggie asked.

Dominique held up her hand. "Like was the kiss on the lips or the cheek?" There are more important things to discuss first.

"Cheek," I said firmly. "Ladies, he was there with a date. A
gorgeous
date, I might add. She looked like a Swedish supermodel. And she was perched on these four-inch stilettos and walked around in them like she was in sneakers. Effortlessly."

"Don't you
hate
women like that?" Maggie asked as she stuck my head under the faucet and started washing my hair.

"Hold on, girls." Dominique sashayed over to the counter and hopped up on it, sitting there, legs crossed and fluffing her hair. "
I
walk effortlessly in stilettos—you can't judge a woman for that."

"Yes, we can," Maggie said.

I have never seen Maggie in a pair of heels. She always wears black boots, even in the dead of summer. If she dresses up, it is only to wear her black boots with a black skirt, topped with a black jacket. She saves all her color for her hair.

Maggie lathered me up with her secret shampoo. I talked loudly over the water, my voice kind of echoing in the sink. "So his date was hovering in the background, a few feet away, trying to look disinterested but giving me the evil eye. And he asked if he could take me to dinner on Friday. For old time's sake. To catch up."

"Once a male whore, always a male whore," Dominique called out over the sound of the faucet.

"I don't know. I didn't get the feeling she was his girlfriend. But I barely know him. I don't even know if we could figure out enough things to talk about over dinner."

"Oh please," Dominique clucked. "I thought he would bend you right over a desk and take you from behind the way you two talked in homeroom. I remember wishing someone would talk to me that way." She sighed. "If things go right, you won't be doing very much
talking
at all."

Maggie finished rinsing and piled my hair into a towel, which she did up into a turban.

"Shut up, Dominique!" I slapped her hand. "I don't usually have sex on the first date."

"You don't usually date, period," she countered. "You're always busy with the band. You should take up sleeping with one of them—not Gary. One of the other ones. Not Jack—Maggie has dibs. That leaves Mike or Tony. And Tony has a British accent, so I vote for him."

"Irish."

"Irish what?"

"It's an Irish accent."

"Fine. I mean, if you're going to spend every weekend with those guys, you might as well."

Maggie sat me down in a chair and started trying to pull a comb through my hair, which is akin to pulling a comb through Brillo. My hair falls to the middle of my back, though with the curl in it, when it's dry, it's usually just past my shoulders.

"Ouch! What are you
doing
?" My eyes teared up from the tugging.

"Sorry," she muttered. "Listen, you
have
to go out with him. Come on. I'd go out with Jack in a heartbeat."

"And I'd go out with George Clooney if he asked," Dominique said. "Well, if he
begged
."

Dominique takes her Clooney obsession very seriously. And she firmly believes if he just for a moment put aside his rampant heterosexuality, he would, indeed, go for a six-foot-two-inch tall drag queen with platinum hair and a collection of vintage transvestite go-go boots.

"Look, dating is hard enough without being with a guy so good-looking that all the women in the room want to sleep with him."

"Is that what this is all about? Personally, I
want
to date a man everyone wants to fuck because I'm so
deliciously
fuckable myself," Dominique said, pushing her fake tits together and admiring them. "You know, Georgia Ray Miller, you have had some ridiculous theories before. And this from the woman who takes advice from a ghost."

"Fine. Don't come screaming into
my
room in the middle of the night when you hear her footsteps in the hallway and her slamming doors."

"Uh-huh, girlfriend." She hopped from the counter and wiggled her hips. "Let's put aside the ghost for a minute, and consider Casanova Jones. First of all, I don't know what it's going to take for you to realize how beautiful you are. I have to
work
for
my
beauty! You think all this waxing and dyeing and primping and plucking is easy? Hmm? Georgia Ray, I remember Casanova, and he
was
one of the fuckable gods of high school. But you—" she came over and stood directly in front of me "—you are an equally fuckable goddess. A beautiful, sexy, voluptuous goddess. I have breast envy. I mean, yours are perfect." She reached out and squeezed one of my breasts. I didn't even blink. She's had breast envy since I got my first padded bra in seventh grade, and feeling me like an overripe cantaloupe was just typically Dominique.

"Well, you've slept with your quota of men since high school, so I'd say it's time to consummate things with this Casanova guy," Maggie said. "Most of us would do anything to be with that one guy we crave."

Maggie is fearless enough to wear lopsided hair and not care about it. She gets her tattoos without getting drunk first, and she doesn't even flinch. She will speak her mind to anyone—from a drunken Mardi Gras reveler, to a snobbish customer, to her very formidable father. She was the first person I knew to pierce her belly button. And the only person I knew who pierced her nose—and her tongue. She eventually took out the stud in her tongue, but a tiny diamond in her nose remains. Maggie never cares what anyone thinks about her. Not when her hair is pink, not when her tattoos are displayed in all their glory when she's wearing a tank top.

Dominique is also fearless—though not about spiders or scary movies or any one of a dozen things she's ordinarily terrified by. Still, she was a he—Damon—in high school. After we graduated, Damon told his father, a retired captain in the army, that he was gay. When his dad promptly threw him out of the house, he came to live with Nan and me, heartbroken, with a black eye, but grateful our door was open. Three years later, he was Dominique, and the beautiful voice he had raised to the rafters in his gospel choir was now used to belt out show tunes and disco hits onstage. His father has refused to see him all these years, yet Dominique will not change who she is, not even for her family. She volunteers at an AIDS crisis center, and instead of beads, she hurls silver-foiled packages of condoms at Mardi Gras. She's vocal and in-your-face sometimes. And she tells everyone she's not gay—but queer. And proud of it.

Maggie finished combing my hair, and the three of us went out on the side porch so we could sweep up my hair cuttings when we were done.

I continued, "But you should have
seen
this girl he was with. She had cheekbones to die for and perfect hair. Shampoo-commercial perfect. You know, like the one with the blonde who's acting like she's having an orgasm while she's getting shampooed by young, hunky men."

"I
love
that commercial," Dominique cooed.

Maggie began snipping. "He obviously hasn't forgotten you, so go for it. What's the worst that could happen? A bad date. Big deal. You've had plenty of those."

"Amen." Dominique chimed in.

I looked up at Maggie, hearing the metal snip-snip of the scissors clicking away. "Remember… I want a
trim
—not lopsided hair."

"What about a bob? A sort of European, angular thing?"

"If you cut my hair in a bob, I'll look like a troll doll. I like it longer, and I like to go with my natural curls. For God's sake, you've been cutting my hair for four years now. You know what I want."

This was true—after much trial and bad-hair error. Dominique and I were Maggie's guinea pigs. This fact itself was a mark of our friendship, because long before she was cutting her own hair lopsided and dyeing it raspberry, she was doing all kinds of things to ours. I've had bobs and pixie cuts, punky spikes and Madonna-like platinum. Dominique has had fades that make Grace Jones's hair look conservative. She once even ended up bald thanks to a chemical straightening process gone awry.

"So… you're finally going out with the love of your life." Dominique clapped her hands.

"He's not the love of my life." I shot her a glance.

"Then the lust of your life," Maggie offered as she bent over and cut angled pieces near my face.

"Well—" Dominique put her manicured hands on her hips "—I say go for it."

"I'm not even positive I'm going."

Maggie picked up a pair of clippers from her "house call" bag of scissors and combs. "If you don't go I'm buzz-cutting you right now."

"Georgia's-gonna-get-some," Dominique sing-songed, waggling her hips. "A little sucking. A little fucking."

"Why is it queens don't know the meaning of the word
understated
?" In Dominique's case, I'd settle for mildly dignified.

"I'm going to ignore Her Royal Bitchiness. Maggie, you should have seen the stare-downs between them." Dominique twirled. A pair of tourists walked by, and she waved at them and struck a pose, daring them to take her picture, which they obligingly did.

"Seize the moment," Maggie said, moving around to my left side and trimming away.

Dominique leaned over and grabbed her own rear end. "Seize some
ass
, honey. Some tight little ass."

I shook my head; she was on a roll. There was no stopping her.

"Stop moving!" Maggie shouted at me. She finished my cut and we went back inside so she could blow out my hair. When she was finished, it looked shiny, straight and perfect. Of course, with my luck it would rain the minute I stepped out the door.

Next up was Dominique, with bleach across her eyebrows. She looks beautiful in platinum hair. When I see how striking she is, I just know occasionally the heavens screw up and send a girl down in a boy's body.

Jack came into the kitchen, stretching, bare-chested, in a pair of plaid-flannel pajama bottoms.

"Hello, ladies."

"Hey, Jack." Maggie smiled. For a chance to be near him, she joins us at gigs every opportunity she gets. We tell the management she's our manager. Maggie has partied with morticians, the national gathering of Kappa Alpha Phi fraternity, the New Orleans Fire Department (when, despite her love for Jack, she went home with a sexy captain who was Mr. November in a firemen calendar), orthodontists, the navy (when, again, despite her love for Jack, she went upstairs with a sailor who looked a lot like Tom Cruise) and the gathering of a Scottish Highland clan—who partied with us afterward and made us all drink single-malt scotch until we were sick.

"Mags." Jack smiled back. "I love Georgie's hair. You did a great job. Georgie, you look very sexy."

"As opposed to my usual appearance?" I was getting tired of my band thinking I was little more than sequins and pantyhose.

"Give me a break. You always look hot, but this cut shows off your eyes, and how exotic-looking you are. Don't tell me all this is for that guy last night."

"Casanova Jones?" Dominique crossed her arms, waiting for the bleach Maggie applied to her eyebrows to work. "So tell us how he looked, Jack."

"Nothing great. Not as beautiful as Georgia."

"Get off it, Jack," I muttered.

"I'm not. He just looked like any average on-the-make guy. In a penguin suit."

"I'm not listening to this. I've got to go. I have a date."

"Not with that guy, I hope." Jack's brotherly protective side took over.

"A certain piano player. Ta-ta, gang," I said, brushing my shirt. "I'm off to get depressed or drunk enough to sing the blues."

"Tell Red I said hi." Dominique waved.

"I will." I left the house and headed down the street. Whatever weather Cammie's father had paid for the previous day was gone. New Orleans humidity hung as thick as Spanish moss. I tried to soak in the Crescent City's native moodiness. If I was ever to become a blues goddess, it had to happen here, in the city I called home.