I Am Not Myself These Days (2 page)

C
oming to” and “sobering up” are two distinctly different states of being. Each has its own independent schedule, and each comes with its own shocking revelations.

Most people aren't aware of this fact since they “sober up” sometime in the middle of the night while they're asleep, and consider “coming to” as the moment they wake up the next morning. Since my sleep averages about two and a half hours a night, I tend to approach the process from the opposite direction. For instance, on this first day into my sixth week of reign as Queen of Lucky Cheng's Amateur Drag Queen Contest, I “came to” about nine thirty a.m., and now find myself “sobering up” around one in the afternoon. I believe this reversal of the normal process owes something to the ridiculous amount of backlog my liver experiences on a daily basis. Truly, this is an organ that deserves a vacation. It's consistently voted my body's employee of the month.

“Sobering up,” I find myself in the conference room at the advertising agency where I work. My day job. There are about fifteen people present—some colleagues, some clients. My copywriting partner, Laura, is sitting next to me with some storyboards that look vaguely familiar to me. I can say with relative confidence that I most likely had something to do with them. What I can't say is what they are for. The entire board room citizenry are alternating their gaze between Laura, me, and the storyboards between us.

Oh, and I'm wearing clothes I've never seen before. They're stylish and of good quality, so I don't particularly mind. I'll have to excuse myself to use the restroom later and check the tags to see who the designer is.

“With that, I turn it over to our creatives who'll present two campaigns for you.”

This is Margaret speaking. Margaret is a fifty-something partner in the agency who's seen her fair share of partying herself. She has a reputation for being cold and aloof, but those of us in the booze biz just recognize that as hungover. Anyway, she's always liked me. For my birthday she gave me a collection of work by Edna St. Vincent Millay, bookmarked on her poem about burning the candle at both ends. I don't know if it was meant as a warning or as cheerleading.

People are staring at me with what I interpret as anticipation, although I'm not sure what for. Someone is going to have to step in here.

“Laura, why don't you bring us through the first campaign, and I'll take the next,” I say with a smile at my fellow meeting captives, hoping against hope that there is, in fact, more than one campaign. Laura is my age, twenty-five, nearly six feet tall, full-figured and voluptuous. With her straight jet-black hair and bangs, she reminds people of Betty Page. She smiles back at me in a way that lets me know that there will be a moment in the near future when she will do me bodily harm. But for now I've bought myself a few moments to figure out what the hell is going on in this meeting, and maybe even what I'm supposed to be doing here.

“This first campaign is, basically, a testimonial campaign, about people who use Gleam-a-Lot. It opens in a bathroom with a forty-something father and his three kids all brushing their teeth…”

“Could one of the kids be black?” one of the clients asks predictably.

“Uh, well,” Laura replies, thrown off track, “it's a family, so it would probably be simpler if they were all black. Or white.”

“Well they can't
all
be
black
…” another client replies, looking around the table with a conspiratorial astonishment that says
“These crazy New York ad guys…an entirely BLACK family! How do they think up this stuff?!”

“Then it's settled,” repeats the original questioning client—feeling somehow vindicated, “only one of the kids is black. Please go on.”

Laura's flailing, but the more she talks the more it starts coming back to me. I remember being in the agency's studio right before the meeting, with studio workers running around trying to mount Laura's and my work on blackboards. I remember sitting on the cutting bench regaling everyone with an exaggerated version of my triumphant Lucky Cheng's victory the previous night. Everyone laughs at the stories, especially the bit about the lapdance I performed on a middle-aged guy in the audience from Texas who was in New York City for an industrial textile conference. As part of my act, I got him to dial home on his cell phone, wake up his wife, and ask her how much he should tip the draq queen gyrating on his crotch.

It gets a little hazier before that, but I also remember getting into work at about eleven and finding six messages on my voicemail wondering where the hell I was, or more importantly, where the hell were the storyboards that I was supposed to have finished this morning.

Before that, things are pretty much blank. I concentrate. Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can't sweat the fact that you've lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float up like surreal Mylar party balloons at unexpected times throughout the next day and start piecing together a colorful, if incomplete, version of reality.

One such balloon presently floats to the surface of my memory. It bears the caption “Pobody's Nerfect: Congratulations on Finding a Place to Sleep Last Night!” I get a flash of a bright white apartment, an amazing skyline view, and a cheese omelet with hash browns served in a round foil deli container. It's from this morning. I was at that boy's apartment. The boy from Lucky Cheng's last night. I'm not even going to attempt the mental exercise of conjuring up a name. I think I've accomplished enough. I've determined where I woke up, what meeting I'm in, and whose clothes I'm wearing. A good day's work for a Friday. Coming up with his name would just be showboating.

I can't wait for this meeting to be over and to go put my muddled head down on my desk.

 

I don't get home from the agency until around nine thirty p.m. The hangover that set in after lunch is finally waning. If I can keep down a soft-boiled egg and grab a half-hour nap I should be in sporting shape for tonight's midnight show at Tunnel. At least tomorrow is Saturday and I can recover a little more fully before going out again.

I've been in advertising for roughly the same amount of time I've been doing drag, which is about four years. I'm actually proud of my industriousness. Being a junior art director doesn't pay all that well, and neither does being a drag queen, so together I've calculated that I bring home roughly the same amount as a unionized sanitation worker. Unfortunately, much of the money I make as a drag queen goes back into my craft. Or down the hatch. Or, occasionally, up my nose.

There's a strange lack of knowledge about the role of drag queens in our culture. I attribute this to the appalling state of our country's education system. Others might blame an utter lack of interest. Who am I to judge?

People dressing in the opposite gender's clothing is like crack-cocaine for the daytime talk show industry. And being on television is like crack-cocaine for a drag queen. Well, actually, crack-cocaine is like crack-cocaine for a drag queen, but being on television runs a close second.

But these shows never really explain the many different types of men who dress in women's clothing. There's a big difference between transsexuals, transvestites, and drag queens. And it's this difference that I'm presently trying to explain to my mother over the phone, while boiling an egg for a light preshow dinner. A producer from Maury Povich called the other day to see if I would like to appear with my mother on an episode entitled “My Drag Queen Son Thinks I Need a Makeover!”

“Josh, I simply have no desire to go on Channel 4 with you if you plan on wearing a dress,” she says.

“First of all, I'll be wearing a black latex miniskirt and halter top, not a dress. And second, it's not just Channel 4, it's
Maury
—a nationally syndicated show.”

“Irregardless—” she says.

“That's not a word, Mom.”

“Irregardlessly,”
she continues, purposely trying to piss me off, “I'm not going to have all my friends think my son wants to be a woman.”

“I've explained this a million times, Ma.” I sigh. “I don't want to be a woman. Transsexuals are the ones who feel trapped in someone else's body or whatever. I'm a drag queen. I'm a celebrity trapped in a normal person's body.”

“Well, can't you get famous at something less perverted? Try out for a play or something. Something your father and I can go see. You were great in
L'il Abner.
”

“It was
Bye Bye Birdie,
Ma; I didn't get in
L'il Abner.
And that was middle school. Anyway, you know you're always welcome to come to my shows.” I'm absentmindedly twirling the egg around in the boiling water. “And what I do is not perverted. You're thinking of transvestites,—guys who dress in their wives' clothes and jerk off.”

“Language, Josh.”

“Sorry,
masturbate,
” I say.

There's a long pause on the other end of the line.

“You know that if you want to have an operation that's something you can talk about with your dad and me.”

“I said those are
transsexuals,
Ma. I'm very happy with my penis, thank you.” I was about to add, “and so are hundreds of others,” but figured I'd save it for a later conversation. My plan is to drive my mother insane with a kind of psychological Chinese drip torture, not flip her out all at once.

“Well, whatever you are, I'm not going on any cry-baby
Oprah
show with you and your weird friends.”

“Jesus, Ma, are you even listening? It's Maury Povich, not Oprah Winfrey. If it were Oprah I wouldn't even give you a choice. We'll talk about it again tomorrow.”

I decide that when I do get famous I'm going to have to estrange myself from my parents. I don't think they'll come across well in my
People
magazine profile.

As soon as I hang up the phone, it rings again. I'm sure it's my mother calling back to remind me to send a birthday card to my great aunt Zelda or something.

“Is Aqua there?”

“Barely,” I reply.

“What's going on?”

I don't recognize the voice.

“I'm boiling an egg,” I say.

“I would think a six-time Amateur Drag Queen titlist would have someone to do that for her.”

“I give the staff Fridays off so they can get laid,” I say.

“You're very generous,” says the mystery voice.

I take a long sip from the icy vodka I'm holding in my non-egg-stirring hand.

“Well, it's easier than screwing them all myself,” I reply.

I start to add up what I know about this anonymous caller. He's someone who was either at last night's show, or someone I called today to brag about it. He's relatively humorous. And he acts as if I know him. Another good thing about being a drunk is that it sharpens my sleuthing skills.

“I was wondering if I could come by this weekend to pick up my clothes?”

Now, you'd think a question like this would narrow down the identity of this mystery caller quite considerably. In my case, it's still wide open. I have a box full of clothes from mystery dates.

“I'll bring back your drag stuff too,” he continues.

“Which stuff do you have?” I ask. This'll nail it. No matter how high or drunk, I never forget an outfit and where I wore it.

“The stuff from last night. How much drag paraphernalia do you have scattered around the city, anyway?” he asks incredulously.

“Um, I was just kidding.” I wasn't. But at least now I could picture him. Kinda. The boy in the mostly white apartment with the weird masks on the wall. “Can you come by tomorrow? I have a show tonight; I'll be up around noon.”

“Where's the show?”

I should've kept my mouth shut. Now he's going to want me to put him on the list, and I already have two more people than I'm allowed.

“It's at Tunnel,” I say, “but the list is closed.”

“That's okay,” he says. “It's too busy there. I wouldn't be able to talk to you anyway. Are you going anywhere afterward?”

I think it's a little presumptuous on his part to think that I would want to talk to him anyway. I mean, sure, I went home with him, probably slept with him, ate breakfast with him, and wore his clothes to work the next day. None of this I see as necessarily flirtatious on my part. All in a night's work as far as I'm concerned. But there's something flirty/sexy about his voice that's appealing to my inner-romantic comedy actress. Then again, maybe it's just his penthouse apartment I'm hearing. My inner–gold digger frequently beats the crap out of my inner–Meg Ryan.

“Yeah, I'll probably go to the Boiler Room afterward,” I say, “I should be there after three.”

“Okay, I'll see you there,” he says, “unless I get paged.”

Paged?
At three in the morning? My penthouse fantasies instantly expand into penthouse doctor fantasies. The idea of blank prescription pads just lying around an apartment nearly causes me to choke on my eggs à la vodka.

“And hey,” he continues, “don't drink so much tonight. See ya.”

He hangs up right before my rage begins to well up.
“Don't drink so much?!”
Who the fuck is this guy other than some guy I don't even remember fucking? No one, absolutely no one, tells me what to do when I go out. That's the whole reason I force my swollen feet into seven-inch heels that leave them covered in blisters, which would really really hurt if my feet hadn't gone numb two years ago. That's the reason I wear black latex catsuits in 100-degree dance clubs. That's the reason I spend more hours putting on wigs and makeup than I do sleeping. So that I can go to the front of every fucking velvet rope line, get showered with drink tickets and free bumps, and get paid merely to be somewhere and do whatever the hell I feel like. I have a helmet of blond hair and armor of corset to protect me from all manner of dull people—dull people who do things like watch how much they drink.