I Am Not Myself These Days (11 page)

It was a slow news week, and I started making deals with God that I would stop drinking so much if only He would conjure up a small tactical nuclear war somewhere in the world. I spent an inordinate amount of time reworking my fantasy about Anderson Cooper showing up in the ABC cafeteria and asking me if I wanted to come up to his office for a quick drink and blow job. I had gone in expecting wacky newsroom hijinks, since my entire experience of TV news comes from an unhealthy obsession with Mary Tyler Moore reruns. But instead I was stuck, day in and day out, with a bunch of behind-the-scenes old white guys trying to mug for our cameras.

The days' only excitement for me came at six fifteen when Peter disappeared into his office to get made up for the broadcast. I would grow more and more nervous for him as the live six thirty start time approached, wanting to scream, “Come on, Pete! Get your groove on! My mom and dad are wrapping up dessert, flipping channels to ABC
right now! Let's hustle, buddy!
”

But Peter always got into the studio just as millions of aging people were clearing away supper dishes and tuning in to see what news ol' Pete had decided they needed to hear about tonight. Laura and I sat in the control room and watched the broadcast, joking with the technicians during the commercial breaks filled with ads for various liniments and nutritional supplements. By the end of the week, the news seemed anything but.

 

In the fluorescent-lit basement room that serves as a dressing area at Tunnel, I'm mixing a fresh batch of glittering gold lip gloss to replace the layers I had left behind on my last four vodka glasses.

“Here, hold this,” I say to Jack, handing him the gold pigment while I measure out the correct amount of gloss with the concentration of a biochemist.

“One of your eyelashes looks loose,” he says.

“Thanks. You haven't had any calls yet?”

“I had one, but they didn't want to pay enough. I'm having a good time here.”

I'm not sure if I believe him, but I'm glad he's here with me anyway. It's a big night at the club. Grace Jones is scheduled to give a small charity performance at three, and the club is packed. Personally, I'm not sure which is more charitable…someone giving Grace Jones a gig, or the audience having to stick around to witness it.

The dressing room is crowded with other drag queens and go-go boys. Some work for different promoters, and others, like me, work for the club itself. Getting a regular club gig is the best a drag queen can hope for. Very rarely do we have to actually perform; mostly we just get to show up week after week and act like we're having the time of our lives. We're like the professional laughers that TV shows hire for studio audiences.

“Are you ready to go back upstairs?” Jack asks. “Ryan and Grey are dancing.”

“I've just got to change my batteries and I'll be up. I'll meet you in the main room,” I say.

“What if I get a call?”

“Just tell any drag queen—they'll let me know.”

Jack leaves and I start the intricate process of retrieving the tiny flashlights positioned in little pockets all over my costume that make it glow. I'm just drunk enough that my fingers have abandoned all pretense of dexterity.

“Need a hand?” It's Carlos, a cute Puerto Rican go-go boy who has a little crush on me. He's just finished smearing glittered body oil on himself, and he has that alluring sexy smirk that all guys whose brains aren't wired to handle any sort of deep complexities in life have. Carlos is mostly straight, and during the day he works on his uncle's construction crew in Long Island, but at night he works the gay clubs because they pay more than straight ones, and he gets much better tips. Plus, he likes going home with an occasional drag queen. Or two.

“Sure. I can't get the one in back, right there,” I say, pointing to the light attached inside the waistband of my miniskirt. Carlos kneels down behind me and reaches up my skirt. All airs of modesty are disposed of in the dressing room. We're all wizards here, and we're all behind the curtain. Nothing to hide in Oz. He maneuvers in the fresh battery I hand him and stands up in front of me.

“One hand scratches your back, you wash mine,” he mangles in his heavy, incredibly sexy accent. He's pointing at his G-stringed crotch. He's in need of refluffing.

While the guys who get picked to work as go-go dancers unfailingly have some sort of genetic predisposition toward genital elephantiasis, they all still augment their gifts with the act of fluffing before they go onstage. This involves the manual stimulation, either by themselves or a nearby volunteer, of their cocks into a semi-turgid state. Once the desired girth is reached—and no extra since New York State law prohibits the display of full-on hard-ons—a rubber band is slipped around the base of their penis and behind their balls like a cock ring. The extra blood that has flowed into their dick is thus trapped there, ensuring an impressive bulge in their G-string—and more numerous tips.

“Okay, Carlos,” I sigh, as if being asked to take out the trash. “But only because you're so cute.”

I sit down in front of him and with one hand I pull down the front of his G-string and with the other I grasp his cock and softly start stroking it.

“No,” Carlos says. “With your mouth.”

I'm about to point out to him the intricate perfection of the lipstick I just reapplied when he grabs my hair and pulls my face toward his crotch.

It's Sophie's choice. My wig or my lipstick. Since I have no extra hairspray in my bag, I dive headfirst onto his dick with the resignation of a child being forced to eat his vegetables before dessert. Not that it's a wholly unpleasant affair. Plenty of people in this club would say I have one of the best views in Manhattan at the moment.

While working on the task at mouth, I glance from side to side wondering if any of the dozen or so other people in the room are taking any notice. Of course they're not, and I find myself a little disappointed. Am I not being sexy enough? I return to the job with renewed determination. I even let out a moan or two, as if I were in an open audition for a low-budget porn movie.

My redoubled efforts seem to pay off. The drag queens around me start to cheer me on, and I smile as widely as I can considering the situation, and give a beauty queen style wave to my newfound audience. With one free hand I grab my makeup brush and pretend to reapply my blush without breaking rhythm on Carlos. The room explodes with laughter, including Carlos, while I continue to touch up my entire face—eye shadow, powder, lip liner—all the while bobbing up and down on his dick. By the time I pick up my compact mirror and pretend to fluff up the bangs on my wig most of the room is doubled over in tears. The fish are sloshing around in a contented rhythm, everyone is having a great time, and Carlos is inflating at an alarming rate.

And then it happens. My right eyelash gets irretrievably enmeshed in Carlos's pubic hair. The lash had been coming off all night, so after Jack noticed it, I applied three times the amount of glue to it as I normally do. Now the combination of drying glue and tangled pubic hair has my face more or less permanently attached to Carlos's crotch. Something's gotta give, either my eyelid or a chunk of his pubes. I want to scream in laughter with everyone else, but having my mouth full, I'm reduced to a combination of chortling and gagging, which sets everybody off even more.

Ginny Tonic comes to my rescue with a bottle of spirit gum solvent, which winds up stinging my eyes so badly my tears streak my mascara down to my chin. But perhaps the saddest thing is that the entire ordeal was for naught. By the time my face is unimpaled from Carlos's cock, he's laughing so hard he's completely lost the stiffness I'd sacrificed so much for. I send him over to the corner to start over solo.

Back upstairs I start searching for Jack. For ordinary mortals, trying to find someone in a busy club is like trying to find a needle in a haystack at night during a lightning storm. The pulsing strobes illuminate the crowd just long enough to pick out a body part or two. Sound travels out of one's mouth mere inches before it gets knocked apart by a sonic bass beat. But to drag queens, this is our daylight. It's like high noon on a clear day.

I see Jack by the champagne bar and sneak up behind him.

I reach around and stick my hands in his front pockets. He spins around and tries to kiss me.

“I wouldn't,” I shout, “you have no idea where this mouth has been.”

“Do you want some water?” he asks.

“Only if it came out of a fermented potato,” I reply.

“You're not still drinking.”

“I have to. I wouldn't want all these drink tickets to grow up with self-esteem issues.”

“Just pace yourself. You've still got three hours to go,” he says.

He's right, of course. But this is no place for temperance. Ryan and Grey come up beside us, both sweaty from dancing.

“What do you guys want?” I ask them, holding up three drink tickets and, before they can answer, add “and get me a vodka while you're at it.”

Some people have mantras; I have a coda. I can find a way to end most sentences logically with “and get me a vodka while you're at it.” If my last name wasn't already hyphenated, I'd consider legally adding that phrase to it. “Kilmer-Purcell-And-Get-Me-Another-One-While-You're-At-It.”

The night has turned around successfully for me. By the time I'm halfway through with this seventh drink, I'm reaching the zone. Time starts slipping, and I have a hard time remembering the evening as one long narrative. It's breaking up into little moments with little or no connective tissue. One moment I'm with Jack, Grey, and Ryan at the bar, and the next I'm giving a lapdance to a guy in a wheelchair who I think has cerebral palsy. When one moment grows dull, there's a better one in the room next door. Standing in line in the unisex bathroom I spot Andy Dick. Minor celebrities always welcome the company of drag queens. It gives them the added sparkle that they haven't quite earned themselves. Suddenly the thought occurs to me that there would be nothing funnier than to be able to say that I touched Andy Dick's dick, so I take him into a stall and do just that.

I flit from room to room, corner to corner, dancing on top of speakers and throwing candy from balcony railings. Each segment of the evening is a succinct little capsule of uninhibited fun, fueled by vodka and the fact that there is no actual progression of time anymore. Word has spread through the club that Grace Jones won't show up for a while yet, which surprises no one and only exacerbates the tide of gossip about her massive drug problems.

When I reach this point, even the conscientious eleven-year-old Episcopal altar boy in me shuts the fuck up and starts to have a good time.

 

Eva Corvetta and I are doing a mock lesbian sex show on a speaker when Tony, a go-go boy wearing only a towel, comes by to tell me that Jack got a call and had to leave. The go-go boy towel dance usually comes about two-thirds of the way into the evening. They each mount a speaker and dance while dangling a skimpy white gym towel in front of their dicks. Male dancers can't legally show their genitals, but this segment at least gives the audience the illusion of the possibility of getting a peek. Eva and I pull Tony up onto our speaker to dance with us. We take turns lifting the corner of his towel and peering underneath, acting out theatrical reactions of amazement for the crowd. Being a drag queen in a loud club requires much the same dramatic skills as those of a silent movie actress.

Soon we're sandwiching him between the two of us, rubbing and grinding, of course always mindful of protecting our costumes and makeup. With him safely hidden between the two of us, we pull his towel off completely and take turns spinning it over our heads.

Okay, it's safe to say that nobody dons a pair of metallic opera gloves to open a stubborn jar of pickles. They're slippery. And this is why, completely unintentionally, while I was spinning Tony's towel over my head, it
accidentally
slipped through my fingers and flew out into the crowd.

There was very little chance that anyone in the crowd was going to find it in his or her heart to return it.

This is how Eva and I wind up ten feet above the dance floor with a hot naked man sandwiched between the two of us and about four hundred drunk, high, and horny gay men between him and the nearest dressing room. I could go to a thousand wars and never see the look of fear in any man's eyes like there was in Tony's. The dance floor surges toward our speaker, cheering in anticipation. Eva and I do the only thing two compassionate drag queens could do at a moment like this.

We jump down off the speaker and leave Tony standing by himself.

With drag queens, the audience is always right.

I
double-check the address that Jack had written on the scrap of paper and head up the brownstone stairs, being careful not to catch my heels on the long white fake fur cape dragging behind me.

I left the club early to make it to this party. Jack told me to try to be there by three a.m., and it's now three twenty-four, according to my cell phone.

Apartment 4A. I hit the buzzer.

“Griffin,” the intercom crackles.

“Chinese delivery,” I shout into the box as I'd been instructed. The door buzzes, and I go in.

It's trashier than I'd imagined. The hallway is carpeted in a threadbare mauve rug, and the walls are painted the same glossy putty color as most mid-priced rental buildings across the city. The stairs are covered in brown linoleum tile, chipped and peeling in the corners. The staircase tilts away from the wall as they do in all buildings over fifty or so years old.

Listening to Jack call into this place from our apartment led me to believe the headquarters of his escort agency must be at least as impressive as our gleaming penthouse. But now confronted with the dim reality, I realize that operating an illegal high cash flow business probably calls for a certain level of deceptive discreetness.

When I reach the fourth floor, I hear the muffled laughing and low music from behind the door at the far end of the corridor. I reach for the knob, and I'm surprised to find it turns easily and opens into a bright fluorescent-lit space decorated in a fashion not too different from a doctor's waiting room. I would have thought I needed a secret knock or further password or something.

Instead, the dozen or so people in the room, mostly women, turn to look at me, a moment of confusion passing their faces as they try to comprehend why a seven-foot-tall drag queen has joined their little party.

“Aqua!” Jack calls out from a sagging couch in the corner covered in a brown corduroy bedspread.

As soon as he calls out his recognition, the rest of the room relaxes and a few let out small chuckles of greetings.

The women all look similar, in an Eastern European way—blond, thin, and leggy. Not quite pretty enough to be models, but more attractive than the average woman on the street. They're all dressed in a tacky style of evening wear, tight short black dresses made of cheap material and Payless heels. Most are smoking.

Jack rises to greet me, and Ryan and Grey wave from their spot next to the couch. In the corner, nestled between two tall gray filing cabinets, sits an older woman at a desk covered in magazines, Diet Pepsi cans, and ashtrays. The room reeks of too many varieties of cheap perfumes and sweat.

Jack hangs my cape on a hook by the door and ushers me over to the desk.

“Elaine, this is Aqua. My boyfriend,” Jack says with his arm around the small of my back.

The folding card table next to the desk is covered with a paper tablecloth printed with pictures of balloons and confetti and the word “Congratulations” with three exclamation points. In the middle of the table, among plastic plates and forks and knives sits a half-eaten grocery store sheet cake. The section that remains uneaten reads “Hap…Retirem…Elai” in swirly red frosting.

“Hi, Sweetie,” Elaine says in a cigarette-graveled voice, reaching out a hand. She looks to be about seventy, with hair the pallid shade of blond that only years of covering gray can achieve. “Aidan's told us all about you, but you're even prettier in person.”

“Happy retirement, Elaine,” I say, “what a great party.”

“I keep waiting for my gold watch, but I guess I'll have to make do with this,” Elaine says, holding up a gold Zippo lighter and matching cigarette case still nestled in its gift box. She's joking, but obviously tickled and proud of the gift. “Everybody chipped in,” she adds.

A few of the other girls have come and circled around me, bending over to examine the fish in my tits.

“Are they real?” one blonde asks, tapping on the plastic.

“Are these?” I reply, smiling, grabbing her left breast.

“If you've got enough cash, they can be made out of anything you want,” Elaine answers for the blonde. Everyone laughs.

I settle down on the couch next to Jack and two other women. Ryan, Grey, another male escort I haven't met, and another blond hooker with a bad nose job sits across from us. Elaine busies herself with trying to find a livelier station on the radio sitting on her desk.

“This is Tiffany, and Shelia,” Jack says, gesturing to the girls on the couch, “and that's Roger and Tonya,” he adds, pointing at the two others across the beat-up coffee table covered with old
Glamour
and
Elle
magazines.

“Hi,” I say, “Hey, Ryan. Grey. What's up?”

“Slow night,” Ryan says.

“Deadly,” adds Roger.

Jack's told me that he doesn't like to hang out here, preferring to stay connected by beeper. Too desperate, he says, and now I see why. According to him, the only hookers who sit here waiting for calls are those who need cash from Elaine right away or those who have boyfriends or husbands who don't know what they do and would be suspicious of pagers. Besides, most of Jack's clients are his own private customers; he only gets two or three calls a month from the agency. The agency lets him call in to use their credit card machine when he has a customer who can't pay in cash. For a cut, of course.

“How long have you worked here?” I call over to Elaine.

“You know how they say this is the world's oldest profession?” she says. “Well, who do you think sent Eve to Adam?” She barks out a gruff chuckle at her obviously often-rehearsed joke.

Jack brings me a slice of cake, too sweet and bland. Dry. The edge that was exposed is especially stiff and stale.

“Can I get some booze?” I whisper to Jack.

“There isn't any. She doesn't like the girls to drink,” he whispers back. “Just follow Tonya when she heads to the bathroom; she's got some in her bag.”

The group of us around the sofa exchange small talk, Elaine chiming in with her jokes in between answering the phones and paging other hookers. Occasionally Elaine motions for one of the girls in the room to join her at her desk. She scribbles an address on a sheet of paper and goes through the terms that she'd just settled over the phone before sending the girl on her way. Often the girls make a stop in the restroom to apply a little more makeup on top of their already tricked-out faces before they depart.

“How long do drag queens have to work before they retire?” Ryan asks me kiddingly.

“We don't retire, we spontaneously combust on top of a speaker one night, showering the crowd with clouds of glitter,” I reply.

What will all of us be doing fifteen years from now? No one in the room, except Elaine, looks like they could possibly be older than thirty.

“I'm going to night school,” Tonya says, “for landscape architecture.”

I've learned that Roger and Tonya are a couple. Both are from small towns in Pennsylvania, and met here at the agency. Roger came in thinking he was going to take wealthy older matrons to dinners and benefits, only to be told laughingly that there is no such thing as the “gigolos” he'd seen on TV and the movies growing up. The very few calls that come in from women are nowhere frequent enough to make any sort of a living, and mostly the women just chicken out before the escort arrives anyway. Every male hooker, straight or gay, has to earn his money from men and the occasional couple.

Tonya knew exactly what she was getting into, being introduced to Elaine and the agency from an old roommate who'd since moved to Palm Springs to work with Heidi Fleiss and do a little porn. Tonya spoke of the roommate with a certain reverence, as if the girl had made it big. Tonya had an air of resignation about her, as did the rest of the girls. They did not live a life of limos and champagne as pictured in the Yellow Page ads the agency ran.

I look around the brightly lit room. I hadn't had that much to drink tonight, and the fluorescent lights sober me up more than a hundred coffees and cold showers could.

“How long do we have to stay?” I whisper to Jack, just as a heavyset bearded man walks through the door. He looks about fifty and stops just inside to light a cigarette off one of the escort's lit cigarettes. He is wearing a cheap acrylic golf shirt and ill-fitting brown slacks. He mutters greetings in Russian or Polish to a couple of the escorts as he makes his way over to Elaine. He ignores Jack, Ryan, Grey, and Roger, only acknowledging the women. He stops when he gets to me and looks me up and down.

“What's this?” he asks in a thick accent, to no one in particular.

“Hey. I'm Aqua,” I reply.

“You working?”

“Just visiting,” I say. “For Elaine's party.”

He doesn't answer, and instead picks up some papers sitting on the desk and rifles through them.

“Have you ever thought about working?” Tonya asks. “Stand up a second.”

I do, half hoping that Jack will follow suit and we could leave.

“Turn around,” Roger says. “You've got a great ass. I'm sure you could pull in some cash from trannie chasers.”

I sit down again.

“You'd have to lose the fish,” Tonya adds. “Guys like it real. I know a girl who works at a shemale agency. You could give her a call.”

Before I can answer she's scribbling a number down on a corner of a magazine page.

“This is Rog's and my home number; give us a call tomorrow and we'll hook you up.”

She hands me the ripped scrap, and Jack takes it and stashes it in his pocket.

“We should all get together and have brunch sometime,” Jack says, changing the subject.

“Ladies and tramps,” Elaine yells out, standing up as she hangs up the phone with an exaggerated flourish. “I've dealt with my last prick. Literally.”

Everyone laughs and she stands and takes a pink cardigan sweater off the back of the desk chair and folds it into a small ball. She slips it into a brown paper shopping bag with handles that's packed full with personal effects from the desk. The stern man replaces her in the desk chair, and all the escorts stand up to form a receiving line of hugs and kisses as she makes her way out of the agency.

“And who says whores won't kiss?” Elaine jokes, reaching the door. Jack and I follow her out the door, and Jack takes the heavy bag from her as we head single file, with her in the lead, down the stairs. In the dimly lit stairway she seems as if she's shrunk five inches as she stiffly and awkwardly takes one step at a time down the four flights. I watch the back of her head as she hobbles down, trying to see through her skull to the thoughts she must be thinking as she leaves four decades of organizing paid sexual encounters behind her for good.

Out on the street she turns to walk east with us down Fifty-fifth Street. She takes Jack's arm. Suddenly she's the same as any of the hundreds of old ladies walking around New York's sidewalks on warm autumn nights when the weight of accumulated years makes it impossible to sleep. I fall behind the two of them.

“Thanks for stopping by tonight,” she tells Jack.

“It was a great party, Elaine,” he says. “I'll miss talking with you.”

“Oh, I'll page you every once in a while in between
Wheel of Fortune
and
Jeopardy
. Gonna have to get used to falling asleep when everybody else does.”

“You going to take a vacation or anything?” Jack asks.

“I don't know, maybe visit my sister in Palm Springs. I might move there one day,” Elaine answers.

“I grew up in Southern California,” Jack says.

“I can tell. You're an open person. Like talking to the desert.” She turns to me. “Watch this one,” she says, nodding toward Jack. “He seems simple, but you just never know.”

I laugh, not knowing how to respond. Luckily she spots a free cab heading up Third Avenue and her attention turns to reaching the curb before it speeds by.

Jack hands her the bag.

“Keep in touch,” he says, helping her into the back seat.

“Happy spanking!” She smiles back as she closes the door and leans forward to give the cabbie directions.

 

The water nearly overflows the tub as Jack climbs in behind me. I lean back onto his chest and he wrings out the washcloth of warm water over my head. I close my eyes as the water runs down my face, relaxing away the forced smiles and clownish faces I'd had to pose all evening. My cheeks sting from the nightly scrubbing away of thick foundation. He rewets the washcloth and drapes it over my chest.

I take a sip from the vodka he's set on the side of the tub for me.

“Let's retire,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Where should we go?” I ask.

“We'll find a little hacienda on the ocean in Baja.”

“I want to grow lemons,” I say.

“And we'll get a goat.”

“And we'll open a little bar in a nearby village where Aqua can sing standards and make people cry for lovers that they can never have,” I say.

“She'll ride a burro back and forth from home every night, and all the village children will follow her with flowers.”

“And she'll toss them Chiclets and Lifesavers.”

“I'll make you profiteroles and serve them to you on the beach every night,” Jack says.

Jack pours shampoo in my hair and starts rubbing my head. It smells like lavender.

“I'll build us a raft. We'll lie on it watching stars and memorizing constellations,” I say. “And I'll learn Spanish and sing you to sleep.”

He starts singing softly to me and rinses my hair with clear water squeezed out of the washcloth. I'm dozing off when he lifts me up and wraps me in a thick white towel and guides me to bed.

I just begin to fall asleep when I feel Jack, curled behind me under the cool sheets, tracing out letters with his fingertip on my bare back.