His teeth closed on my earlobe. I moved my hand to his thigh but he pushed it away, jerked hard on the ear and I yelped in surprise and a little pain.
He laughed hoarsely, looking at me as I clamped my fingers protectively over my earlobe. “That’s how we did it in the desert. Not gentle. See?”
He got up and reached over me. I sat up to give him more room. He opened the top drawer of the nightstand and I heard a clinking and jangling sound and his hand was in front of me, eye level, filled and overflowing, brimming with clattering and sliding metal tabs on ball chains.
He took my hand and put the dog tags in my palm.Then he leaned in and bit the cartilage of my ear and filled my hearing with his hot, moist laughing breath. “What do you think?”
“Very impressive,” I muttered, taking advantage of his proximity to kiss him quickly.
I was horny again, and now I was jealous, too. That was a lot of dog tags. I let the dog tags fall onto the comforter, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, pressed myself to him, wanting to feel his arms around me again.
But he didn’t kiss back. He reached over me and put the dog tags away in the nightstand.
“I’m cold,” he muttered, and got up to fetch a blanket that was folded on the bottom of the bed, spread it over us and kept talking. He didn’t even seem to notice that I was pressing my half-hard dick against his hip as I cuddled with him.
“The Dog Tag Game, it was like a test,” he murmured into the top of my head. “Because of Keep It Quiet, Dwight being repealed.” He reached his arms around me and pulled me closer. I shivered as my arousal grew and I hugged closer to him, digging my boner into his thigh. “You think it’s all okay now?” He asked, like a rhetorical question. “You think it’s okay to be gay now?”
I didn’t know, I just wanted him, so I didn’t say anything.
“If they weren’t ashamed, they would go to the NCO,” he said, and he seemed to finally notice because he ran his hand down my back and kneaded my butt. I turned my face into his chest and groaned.
“If they lost their dog tag fucking another soldier,” Angel continued, his hand slipping under the thin flannel of my pajama pants and caressing my ass. “And they weren’t ashamed, they would say it to the NCO. Keep It Quiet ain’t the policy no more. Right, Dwight?”
He pulled his hand out and then, so delicately I gasped, lifted the end of the drawstring on the front of the pants, which was tented by my erection, and pulled it until the bow came loose.
I gasped, “Angel,” and my chest heaved.
He pushed aside the loose fabric and took me in his hand.
“No-one ever told the NCO, Machyl,” he breathed in my ear. “We knew because César went balls-deep in him every night for a week,” he whispered as he stroked me and I moaned and thrust into his hand. “And that NCO never told anyone how he lost his dog tags.”
All of this I remembered as I stared at the ceiling, alone in my bedroom, and none of it, not even that memory, made my dick stir to life.
Right now, Angel was in bed with César.
Maybe on his own bed, on top of the comforter, just like that night, which, when he was inside me, was the best sex we ever had.
Maybe César was calling him Ángel.
Maybe César was balls deep in him, like in the story about the NCO.
I just couldn’t imagine Angel being the receiving partner in anal sex. Not in a hundred thousand million years could I imagine that.
I didn’t think I would be able to sleep, not with all these thoughts swirling in my head, but somehow I did.
And as I felt it coming over me, I thanked the sweet Lord, if he existed, for the mercy of unconsciousness, and forgetting.
I dreamed of the drag camp in the desert.
The sand underneath the six-inch heel of the commander had turned to silver glitter. He trudged through it bow-legged, tottering on slingback stilettos.
The company spread out around him were also practicing, with their cargo pants rolled up to the calves, muscled arms spread out for balance, some in platforms, some flatforms, some in pumps and a medic in lime green suede T-bar wedge Mary Janes.
There was a gunner laced up in peep-toe black lace thigh boots with black leather laces, just standing there, knees wobbling and too scared to take a step, like a beginner on ice skates.
And the sand that wasn’t sand any more reflected the sun with a blinding ferocity and sparked rainbows with every glance, because it was that holographic glitter which showed the color spectrum when the light hit it. And it stretched beneath the heels of the infantry, under the tents and sand-colored installations of the desert camp, under the armored vehicles and out, out into the landscape beyond.
Someone’s violet feather boa wouldn’t stay around their neck and it whipped in the wind until it broke free and flew up against the bright blue sky.
It sailed toward the pale disk of the sun, and the expanse of glitter on the ground below turned into a burning sea of silver rainbows under the blue, with the purple wisp suspended between them, and I closed my eyes against the glare.
Who’s Day
I woke up on my stomach in bright daylight and blinked groggily at my phone for several seconds before I could make out the time.
It was half past noon.
I groaned and sat up, groping for the water glass on my nightstand and taking a long drink.
I hadn't overslept since… I couldn’t remember the last time I overslept.
I didn’t oversleep.
I just didn’t.
I rolled out of bed and pulled on an old college sweatshirt and a fresh pair of socks and then headed to the front door to pull my shoes on.
Fifteen minutes later I was on my couch sinking my teeth into a hot brunch roll, one of the good gooey ones where the yolk kept dripping out the sides of the toasted sourdough and sipping a silky latte, zingy strong with two extra shots. Living above a café had its benefits.
As the caffeine sank in, I could feel my head clearing and my thoughts crystallizing after the events of yesterday.
Damaris and I always talked about how most queens didn’t have a hope of rising in the ranks, so they played along that they supported their house and drag mother to the death.
And that suited them fine, because most queens didn’t have a lick of ambition anyway. They knew their place and they accepted it and they were happy with their lot and proud of their niche.
Even most people with talent weren’t willing to put in the time and effort it took to get really good. World-class good, Vivesse good, High Queen good. They just weren’t.
I could see where Duane was at now. He was scared, he was backed into a corner like a wild animal and kicking and scratching and lashing out at anyone who came near.
And he was panicking, clutching at any addlepated idea that came into his head.
Like hiring Anthony again.
Like cancelling the auditions.
I chuckled to myself.
Whatever Duane said or tried to do was, ultimately, negotiable. Negotiable by me, over time but negotiable nonetheless. Because I knew DT and I knew how to get what I wanted out of him. In his best interests, of course, but in my best interests, too.
The scene on the sidewalk on Monday afternoon came back to me and I saw Marcus’ face, bright pink with anger, spitting at me in the late afternoon sunshine.
Marcus had accused me of being afraid of his competition. But I wasn’t.
I respected Bone China as an artist and I would go up against her at a ball any night of the year.
But I couldn’t risk Duane putting China up for the audition just because Damaris had gotten sick. Damaris and I had worked so hard for years and years to stand a chance at getting into Vivesse.
I couldn’t let Duane Tyrone do that to us.
The past few months had been shitty, because Damaris had started to fade away and she wouldn’t explain.
I just kept hoping that Damaris would pull through in time for the audit
ions, come out of her room and start flashing that big smile at everyone again.
I just kept working on her, trying to find a way to make her go back to the way she used to be.
Now I knew I was on my own.
I had already decided what I was going to do, and I could do it on my own, no problem.
And I had worked too long and too hard for this to let anyone—Marcus Fong, Duane Tyrone Johnson or fucking Anthony Alcantara—get in the way.
I reached for my phone, to check the time, and then stopped and forced my hand back.
No.
Duane wanted me up at the crack of dawn, cracking a whip over Anthony’s little empty air head with that big weave on it?
Anthony Alcantara.
I doubted he wanted to come back. And if he did want to come back, he wasn’t going to rehearse fifteen hours a day.
Lord, who did DT think he was kidding? Anthony was so lazy he couldn’t learn the steps to the Running Man.
There was one reason and one reason only why DT had let La Tata into the company in the first place.
Because Damaris wanted him in.
Tata was Damaris’ little fanboy and he used to hang around the club waiting to talk to her. And Damaris thought he was cute and sweet and wanted to do his make up and play dress up with him.
And what Damaris wanted, Damaris got.
Even though Duane could see, just like I could, that Anthony Alcantara was not cut out to be a drag queen.
I didn’t care if your face, like Anthony’s, could stop people in the street trying to figure out if you were a boy or a girl, it didn’t mean you were drag queen material.
I didn’t care if your face, like Anthony’s, could stop people’s breath and draw their eyes with its beauty. Beauty had nothing to do with being a drag queen.
Of course Anthony made a fishy queen, because apart from the face, he was small and built like a bird with no visible muscles.
So of course once Damaris got him all gussied up with silicone inserts in all the right places, he had this very nice feminine silhouette.
And—he could fit into women’s shoes.
I think that was what did it for Damaris. She had found the perfect living doll to act out her fantasies on.
Also, Damaris saw that Anthony was beautiful and in her mind, that was enough. Damaris always said she wasn’t a performer and she had no special talents apart from her looks. And Damaris was a different kind of drag artist. But she was wrong that she had no talents. She was really good.
The plain bald unadorned truth was that Damaris had rose colored glasses when it came to Anthony. She thought he was this little cherub who could do no wrong.
And I had waited so long for the day when I would never again have to watch Anthony kissing up to Damaris and gazing at her with big eyes like a lovestruck puppy.
The way he fawned over her turned my stomach, and what was worse was that Damaris was flattered by it and she enjoyed it and she let him keep doing it.
Damaris couldn’t see what everyone else did. That he was a spoiled brat who thought everything was going to be handed to him on a platter and he shouldn’t have to lift a finger to do any actual work.
My nani in Trinidad had collected black porcelain dolls for the past fifty years. She had a whole room full of nothing but shelves of them.
They stood on their little porcelain feet, held up by metal stands, with their big eyes staring at nothing out of perfect faces in every shade from milkiest latte to moonless night.
La Tata reminded me, had always reminded me, of one those dolls in particular. A light-skinned doll dressed in Victorian era clothing with a sun parasol in its hand. Pretty, fragile and useless.
Just like a porcelain doll, you couldn’t put Tata on a stage. You could put La Tata in a corner so people could look at her, and the stick up her ass would make sure she stayed there all night, as frigid and rigid as a librarian left out in a snowstorm. But performing and entertaining a crowd? Tata wasn’t capable of that.
Duane’s idea was about as efficient and wise a use of my time as individually plucking my beard hairs out with a tweezer.
I balled up the paper wrapper of the brunch roll and stuck it into the now empty paper coffee cup, yawned and lay down on the couch. The new girls would be turning up at the club at seven this evening, so I had the whole afternoon. I had worked this weekend, after all. I deserved a little down time.
I turned on the TV and navigated around looking for something mindless to stream. The Vivesse box set popped up. I smiled.
There was nothing more comforting than re-watching old episodes of the Vivesse Fashion and Beauty Parade. Fashion, music, drama, humor and the fine and varied arts of drag were all combined into one package drizzled with nostalgia and a big helping of glamor. I loved it more than anything else in the world.
Before that, I was going to make a little phone call to Anthony Alcantara.
My smile broadened.
It was time to get La Tata out of our lives. For good this time.
By six-forty five that evening, the shelves were dusted, the counters thoroughly wiped, the costumes organized and stray heels and lipsticks put away, and the rows of wigs had been given an extra comb and tszuj in readiness, and I had taken up my place in the dressing room, perched on the end of the counter.
Everything was set for the new girls to arrive.
After calling Tata, I had spoken to Damaris and updated her about everything, and we had talked for a while about who the new girls could be.
She didn’t believe we were really getting someone from Cosmosis, and thought that DT had made a mistake. I tended to agree with her.
As far as Larry’s Last Drag was concerned, neither of us were surprised and the less said about that the better. Damaris had said, beggars couldn’t be choosers and we would just have to make the best of it.
I was more optimistic. The drag mothers might not like giving up one of their artists, but as a group, they had to find a solution to DT’s problem.
That was the whole point of the New York system. Houses cooperated rather than competing directly with each other. There were negatives to that, such as having to give up a talented artist to another house in need.
But the benefit was insurance in case they ever faced a similar situation, and the peace of mind that the other houses would pitch in and help out.
Larry’s Last Drag was definitely home to some, shall we say, interesting characters, but the mothers had to find someone who would work for Duane Tyrone. Someone who would fit in at House Ellegrandé.
So I wasn’t really worried.
No, I just straight up was not worried.
I had spent so much time and energy trying to help Duane and that had all been thrown back in my face last night.
Just at this time, I wasn’t feeling too kindly disposed toward his many problems, most of which were, in all honesty, self-inflicted.
I had my own thing going on and that was going to occupy the majority of my time.
Duane wasn’t down in the dressing room. He was upstairs in bed with a heating pad, because his back had been getting worse all day, ever since I returned his many missed calls which hadn’t woken me from my long slumber this morning.
I had told Duane Tyrone that Anthony refused to come back to House of Ellegrandé unless he was allowed to audition for Vivesse. I told DT that Anthony was willing to work and improve—as long as he could audition. I told DT I had tried to explain to La Tata that our drag mother had cancelled the auditions because of the trouble that La Tata had caused. Although I told DT that I didn’t tell Anthony that last part.
But Anthony had been adamant, I had explained. And furthermore, Anthony was only willing to rehearse at the same time the new girls did. And finally—and I had assured DT that I tried hard to make Anthony see the seriousness of the situation—Anthony was busy this week, and couldn’t show up to rehearse until Saturday morning.
So I was the one who carried the tray of glasses d
own to the dressing room, along with a bucket of ice with a few cold beers and a bottle of cava.
And I sat myself on the counter and looked at the time on my phone until the clock hit seven.
And right on cue, the buzzer went. I jumped up and pressed the release for the artist’s entrance in the alley next to the club, then scurried back to my place and crossed one leg over the other.
I actually felt a little nervous.
I caught sight of my own smile in the mirror and felt a flash of anticipation. I had decided that we were going to cancel the rehearsals tonight and have a little team bonding celebration instead.
Duane hadn’t thought his schedule through. If the club was going to be open every night, as it needed to be for business reasons, then I couldn’t rehearse the girls in the club. That was obvious.
And trying to hold rehearsals in the dressing or green room would be like having a bunch of elephants performing ballet in a fish tank. There was just no space.
And I wasn’t about to jump through a dozen flaming hoops trying to organize a suitable rehearsal space which was also on budget at such short notice. I wasn’t a circus tiger and DT wasn’t going to treat me as such.
So, no. We were going to have a little celebratory drink and chat, and then we would all go to dinner, and chances were the new ladies would be amenable to an expedition to House of Cosmosis later on.
And if the new girl was from there, we might just get the VIP treatment and one of those expensive private tables with a great view of the stage.
If they didn’t want to go, I was going to go by myself.
I needed to drink and dance.
I needed the release.
And if Angel happened to be there and saw me grinding on a stacked Latino rude boy, so much the better.
I heard the artist’s entrance door go and footsteps coming down the corridor leading to the dressing room. The footsteps were light and quick, to my relief.
Despite trying to reassure myself, I had had one or two paranoid thoughts about the drag mothers foisting unmentionables on us. This could be the perfect opportunity to unload a turkey who might otherwise have been expelled. A transfer was preferable to having to expel a queen, after all.
Fishy Queen (Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Book 2) Page 6