Divas Las Vegas
Authors: Rob Rosen
By Rob Rosen
Special thanks to Michael Luongo, the first to believe in
my dream. To Felice Newman and Frederique Delacoste at
Cleis Press for turning my dream into a reality. To Mark
Rhynsburger for making sure the dream was grammatically correct and properly punctuated. And to my mom,
Patti Weir, for raising me to be the dreamer that I am.
For Kenny,
my one and only diva
27
One-Armed Bandits & Two Hot Men
85
I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name
284
Epilogue
OKAY, I SUPPOSE YOU'RE WONDERING WHAT I'M DOING IN
here. I mean, really, it's not every day you find me locked in
a closet, crouching behind two boxes of Bibles, three cases
of votive candles, and covered by a dozen choir robes. And
I suppose you think it strange that all I've got on is a pair
of underwear-albeit a snazzy pair of Armani silk briefs.
Weirder yet, what am I doing in a church out in the middle
of the desert? Not exactly my usual venue, right? Jeez, full
of questions and we've only just begun. Why not save your
queries until the end; it'll make this a hell of a lot easier on
the both of us.
This whole ordeal did start innocently enough, surprisingly, and ended, well, here, for now. Though with Justin
and me, ordeals seem par for the course. Oh, and in case
you didn't already know it, Justin is my best friend. Just
as crude, just as conniving, just as troublesome and full of
mischief as when we first met. Naturally, I'm right by his
side, come hell or high water. Though I wasn't counting on
the water to be as high and as choppy as it is right now. Yet here I am in this closet, and guess who we have to thank?
(Well, I'm sort of to blame too, I suppose; though you'll
never hear me testify to that in a court of law. My mother
didn't raise no stupid son, you know.)
Anyway, I guess now's as good a time as any to try and
explain how I got here. There's not really much of anything
else I can do. Besides, I'm sure it'll all be hilarious in retrospect, though right now it is a bit daunting. (Well, terrifying
is really the word for it, but I don't want to alarm you too
much. You don't happen to have a gun on hand, do you?)
Okay, so here we go.
This mess began a few weeks ago. Me and Glenda,
my other best friend, who, on a side note, just so happens
to be stunningly beautiful and unabashedly bisexual,
were managing Buy the Book: your average small-time
bookstore/coffeehouse. Justin, at the time, was out gallivanting around an unusually sunny San Francisco, looking
for love in all the wrong places and, generally, finding
it. And life, for the three of us, was sweet and luxuriously boring. Even I, looking back on it all now, was
seemingly content.
Of course, life rarely remains that humdrum for very long.
The bottom was about to drop out from under us and there
we were, as usual, without our protective bottom-dropping
safety apparatuses on. Luckily, there was a silver lining, but
again, only in retrospect do I now see how tarnished that
silver was. Why, oh why, is hindsight twenty-twenty? Too
bad you can't have some kind of LASIK surgery on your
foresight. Oh, well, I guess, as they say, that's what makes
life interesting. Anyway, here comes that dropping bottom
I promised.
Brian, the owner of Buy the Book, made an unexpected
and rare appearance at our little store. He was usually more
than happy to leave me to manage the business, and we
rarely had much contact with him. So when he walked in that morning, I thought something might be up. That and
the nervous look he had on his face. Plus, he locked the
door behind him and put the Closed sign on. The two small
suitcases he had with him were kind of suspicious as well.
Okay, I didn't need a ton of bricks to fall on my head; I
knew he was bringing us some shitty news.
Glenda emerged from the back office, noticed the
impending-doom look on Brian's otherwise adorable face,
and walked over to my side. Brian gave us a weak smile and
motioned for us to have a seat. Naturally, we both grabbed
for a life-sustaining cup of lava first.
"Yo, dude, what's up?" I asked.
Brian sat across from us and set the minisuitcases down
on the table before he responded. "Um, okay, I have good
news and I have bad news," he said, his feet tapping furiously beneath the table. My heart was beating along to his
rhythm and I had a lump in my throat the size of a lemon.
My stomach was doing the gastric samba as I proceeded
to the next question. "And are these two lovely Guccis the
good news or the bad news?"
"They would definitely be the good news," he responded,
strumming the cases with his fingers.
"Urn, Brian, could you stop with the tapping and tell us
either one of these two newses? You're wrecking my last gay
nerve here." I grabbed his hands to keep them still.