Fishy Queen (Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Book 2)

by Malachite Splinters

  Jelly Sinclair URGENT - Invitation to participate

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach for a fraction of a second before a logical part of my mind stepped in and pointed out that one of the role play groups had probably included me in a mailing by mistake.

  Not that they would have my contacts or anything. Not that I used to play drag RPGs. Lord, no, that was just out of the question.

  I did need to check how they had gotten my personal email, though. I didn’t give that out online.

  Or someone from one of my groups was pranking. There might be a Dare Day or something similar. Those could get pretty crazy. Still, I wasn’t sure how they had gotten hold of this email address.

  I hadn’t been online in so long, I was totally out of the loop. I had never even went to check on the rumors that Damaris had mentioned, about the format change and Contessa Day being replaced with rolling announcements.

  Well, whatever it was, I figured I’d better look at it. I wasn’t stupid, I knew about phishing. Although I couldn’t imagine someone setting up a phishing scam targeting—drag fans? That didn’t make much sense to me.

  Anyway, I would just take a look. I wasn't going to open any attachments. I wanted to check the sender’s email address.

  I opened it, expanded the details tab.

  Something fluttered in my stomach.

  Was there a way for phishers to imitate an email address? Imitate the domain?

  I licked my lips, read the email.

  Dear Machyl Mostroso Lyons,

  We want to invite you to participate in the upcoming season of Vivesse Fashion and Beauty Parade. Please contact me on the following number as soon as possible to discuss. We need to confirm your mailing address for the contract.

  Rgds

  Jelly Sinclair

  Contestant Liaison

  Vivesse Entertainment Media Ltd.

  There was a number and address listed at the end of the email signature. It looked like an international cell phone number and the address was in Bangkok.

  This was good, it really was. I wondered which RPG group it was. I felt the same flutter of excitement I used to in high school when I was obsessed with these games. I kept playing up until college, when I finally started actually doing drag instead of just fantasizing about it.

  It was so much safer and easier to stay in the fantasy world of pageant RPG. There had been drama, excitement, intrigue and romance, and everything had been better, and meant more, and felt more real, than anything in real life.

  Considering how everything had turned out, maybe I should have stayed there. I had to report to the drag mothers tonight, and we all knew what that meant. I had only ever heard of one reason a queen would be dragged in front of the drag mothers: to be expelled.

  The drag mothers had obviously seen what happened on Friday night. Harrie Debby’s fans had made sure the whole of New York drag saw it.

  But how was that something I should be expelled for? I was the one who had been publicly humiliated.

  No, I should never have tried in the first place. I should never have joined House of Ellegrandé. Trying to become a pageant queen, let alone High Queen… how stupid was I to take on those dreams?

  How self-defeating was that?

  I had set my ambitions so high, I couldn’t help but be disappointed.

  No, I should have just stayed the way I was when I was dating Alec those first two years of college.

  I had my RPG and I had my dance and the two things were separate and it was fine. I would dress up as Giltie Conshens on my own, in private, for RPG, and that was fine, too. Alec would have blown a gasket if he so much as saw me with a packet of press-on nails. He hated anything femme.

  Not that he would ever say that. He just acted it.

  He never said it, but I knew what was in his mind, or I thought I did. When he was with a woman, he wanted a woman. And when he was with a man, he wanted a man.

  The most he ever said about it was once, I don’t know what I did. Maybe I was sitting wrong or I did a twirl or I moved my hand in a certain way.

  He had barked at me that that was the biggest turn off he could think of and never do it again. He said everyone could already tell I was gay and I didn’t need to flaunt it and shove it in everyone’s face.

  Well, I’d like to show him Anthony Alcantara as a counterpoint to that argument.

  I went to Duane Tyrone the day after Alec told me he was engaged, I went with a bag packed with the amateur things I would put on alone in my bedroom and told DT I wanted to join him.

  And DT had me get dressed up as Giltie Conshens in the dressing room and show him what I could do. And he shook his head and said I needed a lot of work, but he would give me a trial.

  A couple weeks later, when Alec showed up on my doorstep late at night with a bouquet of roses, I pretended to accept, but then took each bloom out individually by its stem and threw them at him. A thorn cut my finger and I screamed at him that I was a drag queen now, and I didn’t care what he thought of that.

  He stood there through the rain of roses and stared at me and when I was done throwing, he came toward me and picked me up easily and laid me down on the bed and told me he loved me while he made love to me.

  Time had told me what those kind of promises meant. Time had showed me. Time had shoved it down my throat until I gagged on those promises.

  Diddly.

  Diddly squat.

  I used to have a boyfriend, in the RPG. He had been big and strong and rugged and perfect. Not another player, he was just a character I invented who used to come in and out of the game and it always ended with us happy together.

  That was what I meant when I was talking to Anthony and used the example of things not working out like in the movies. I hadn't meant movies, I meant drag RPGs. But I wasn’t about to admit that to Anthony.

  I shook my head. I shouldn't be surprised at anything that had happened. I had set my hopes too high in a lot of things. Been idealistic instead of accepting the shittiness of reality.

  Well, here was a big dose of it.

  Instead of becoming a real-life pageant queen as I had always dreamed, I was sitting here, twenty-seven years old, single, looking at this fucking fake email about a role playing game for people who were too scared to come out of their bedroom and face life.

  I rolled my eyes.

  So childish.

  I was going to call the number. It might not work. It might just be there for the look and it was actually the number of a three-star hotel on Sukhumvit.

  But the RPGs I had played were pretty sophisticated and I was willing to bet it was a US cell number set up to look like it was calling Thailand.

  I got out my phone, typed in the number and called it. It rang and I decided to play along. It was dumb, harmless fun. I had played these games and I turned out a socially functioning human.

  “Jelly,” a woman’s voice replied shortly in a broad Australian accent.

  “Ms Sinclair,” I gushed, remembering the old happy days of staying up all night, getting high on the rush of game play. “I received your email.”

  “Who’m I speaking with?” She replied shortly.

  I grinned to myself. Jelly Sinclair was famously abrasive. I put on my drag voice. “This is Miss Giltie Conshens.”

  “Machyl Mostroso Lyons? Is this Machyl Mostroso Lyons?”

  I repressed a giggle of delight. Whoever this chick was, she had Jelly Sinclair down to a tee. The voice was really accurate.

  The player must be a cis woman, I thought. That was the weird thing about drag RPG. It was mostly cis women who played.

  “This is she,” I replied archly. “How are you today, Ms Sinclair?”

  These conversations were never very illuminating. Sometimes there were juicy plot points to cover, but often it was just shooting the breeze, enjoying the character and building the fantasy together.

  “Yeh, I’m fine, Machyl,” she practically barked. “I’ve been waiting for your call.”


  I looked at the time signature on the email. It had been sent last night at twelve-thirty. I raised one eyebrow. Someone had been up a long time.

  “We want to offer you a position in this year’s pageant,” she said briskly. “So I need a mailing address from you, please.”

  I laughed softly. “What an honor,” I smiled, imagining if this were real and the old thrill was strong in me again. I was so going home and doing this after the trial this evening.

  “Strange you should have chosen me when I didn’t even audition this year,” I teased. “Why, the submission deadline isn’t until tomorrow night.”

  “We reserve the right to select contestants as we see fit,” Jelly Sinclair replied abruptly. “The mailing address,” she repeated.

  I frowned. I didn’t want to break the game play, but none of this had been discussed with me and I wasn’t sure if they wanted me to give a fake address or if this was somehow a plot point and I was supposed to give a specific answer.”

  “Machyl, I need a mailing address for you now,” she said. “There’s a bicycle courier waiting with the contract as we speak.”

  “Okay, look,” I said. “This seems like a fun installment, but this just came out of the blue. There weren’t any instructions or anything with the email, and I don’t even know how you got that email address. Let me take a look at the series bible and I’ll let you know how much I want to invest, okay?”

  “The instructions are in the packet the courier will deliver, along with the contract. We don’t send this stuff by attachment. We have your email address on record on the website. You agreed to be contacted about possible opportunities in future.”

  “You’re very good at this, okay,” I said, more insistently. “Seriously, the accent is perfect, it sounds just like her. I like games with real-life artifacts. But I’m not giving you an address until I find out more. This must be a pricy one if you’re couriering and stuff.”

  “I’m sorry?” Jelly Sinclair barked. “Do you think I’m a—game thing?”

  “What?”

  Whatever else it was, this had to be a phishing attempt. I should probably hang up now.

  “There’s a customer service number on the official website. Call it, and I want you to say the following words to the agent who takes your call. Are you ready?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m looking for a blue goat with one cocked horn,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” I looked at the phone.

  “That’s what you need to say. I’m looking for a blue goat with one cocked horn. They’ll connect you to me. Now I can’t waste any more time on this.”

  She hung up the phone.

  I stared at it, put it down on the desk beside me.

  Then I pulled up the Vivesse official website and scrolled down to the bottom, to Contact Us, and clicked through. There was a toll-free customer service number, and I punched in the number.

  As I did, my heart started to race like a horse was galloping on my sternum and I started to feel lightheaded.

  “Welcome to Vivesse Entertainment,” a pre-recorded female voice spoke. “Please select your preferred option. To subscribe—”

  I jabbed the zero to be connected to an operator and the hold music started playing—the theme music for the pageant, of course. I was jiggling my leg so hard, I was about to bounce off the chair.

  “Welcome to Vivesse, how can I help you toda—”

  I interrupted. “The blue goat with the cock—something about a horn!”

  “Could you repeat that, please?”

  The voice on the other end could be a man or a woman, with a slight accent that I couldn’t place.

  “I just got a call. I have to say something about a blue goat with a horn and something about, um—is that—?”

  “I’ll connect you now,” the voice said, and the hold tone came back again.

  I stood up and walked up the row of desks, turned around and went back, and did that again while the hold tone played the theme song over and over.

  Then I stopped short as the hold tone turned to a ring tone, and on the second ring, the call picked up.

  “Jelly.”

  It was her.

  I broke out in a cold sweat.

  “This is Machyl Mostroso Lyons,” I said, my voice sounding abnormally high. “You—you just called me.”

  “Right. Hi, Machyl. Got my address then?”

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  “Where are you? It’s an hour or less in Madhattan.”

  “I—I’m in Madhattan,” I said, and I trembled as I gave her the company address.

  “Call me when you’ve had a chance to read it,” she said. “I’ll arrange the courier collection.”

  “I’ll sign it,” I said. “I’ll sign it when the courier gets here.”

  “You’re not going to read it?” She asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll read it after I sign it.”

  “That’s what they all say,” she said wryly. “It’s a good sized packet, Machyl. There’s a number of legal documents including the contract, the non-disclosure agreement, the waiver and so on. You have twenty-four hours. That’s… half past midnight tonight.”

  “How did this happen?” I blurted out. My face was hot. I wiped sweat from my brow. I could literally feel a warm slick of it running down my back.

  “Listen, Machyl. I can’t tell you anything until you sign that non-disclosure agreement.”

  “Of course,” I gushed. “I understand. I have to keep it a secret until Contessa Day. But, listen, I heard this rumor—”

  “You’ve got my number. Just call me when you’ve made your decision and signed the documents.”

  She hung up.

  It took the courier just under twenty minutes. I knew because I was timing it and I was standing outside the building and watching, and I saw the cyclist coming down the street from two blocks away.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I said, ripping apart the waterproof cover with the waybill in a clear plastic pocket to reveal a flexible cardboard envelope inside. My fingers were shaking so hard I could barely rip the top off the envelope.

  “I can’t wait,” he said.

  “Just wait!” I shouted, my voice ripping out of my control.

  He shoved a clipboard at me. “Sign here, please.”

  I got the cardboard envelope open and held the top apart with my fingers, peeking inside. There was a thick sheaf of white paper which I tugged on until it came out.

  I wanted to just sign it and give it back to him before I woke up from this dream. Any minute Anthony was going to come sailing down fifth avenue on a pink kite just like in my dream. I had to sign the papers before I woke up.

  Adrenaline was making my legs faintly ache, my skin prickle. I blinked and the text on the pages swam before my eyes. I was looking for a line to sign on, and I couldn’t find it.

  “Sign to confirm you received the document, please,” the courier, a thin, wiry mid-thirties white guy all in skin-tight cycling gear, said again, curt and insistent.

  I took his pen and scribbled a scrawl that barely resembled my signature, and he took off immediately.

  “Wait,” I said. “No, wait!” I shouted, but he just raised an arm as he accelerated and merged into traffic.

  Clutching the envelope, I went back inside. My breathing got slower and I felt weak as if I was going to collapse. I sank into the swivel chair at my desk and tried to calm down.

  Panic flashed through me again.

  What if it still wasn’t real?

  What if that wasn’t the real Vivesse website I had just gone to, but a fake? That did happen. People got duped by copycat websites, duped into giving out their credit card details and all of that.

  But who would pull such an elaborate hoax?

  No. I went to my browser and checked my history. The URL was correct.

  This was real.

  “Okay, Jelly,” I smiled, sitting on the window ledge and looking
at the long lines of the glass-fronted building across from ours, and along that line of sight up the long avenue flanked by glass facades that flashed orange in the late afternoon sun. “Sure thing, hon.”

  “I’ll say it again, we’re only going to give a very short notice period. I’m talking fifteen to twenty minutes. And this could occur at any time in the next twelve weeks.”

  “Do you want me to be in drag when this happens?”

  “This is why we need as much information about your schedule as possible. Feel free to update us weekly, even daily if your plans change.”

  “You’re not going to show up at my church, are you?”

  “Machyl, if you read the contract carefully—”

  It had taken me almost three hours to read the entire packet. There was a lot of legalese, but I knew what was in the contract. The general outline, the main bullet points, were well known to fans like me.

  When I finished reading and re-reading it, and after looking up a few things online, I signed the contract, then the waiver, and then, finally, the non-disclosure agreement.

  “No, I read it,” I said. “I read it carefully. I just don’t think that would make great TV.”

  “Then you understand that we reserve the right to choose the time and place when your candidacy is announced. But have faith in us and know that we want to show you and your talents in the best light. So just… keep us up to date and we’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Okay,” I said, realizing that a camera crew showing up at the church of a drag queen would, in fact, make for great TV.

  “And you’ve signed the non-disclosure agreement?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So you understand that you must not disclose your candidacy until Vivesse has made the reveal?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That means everyone, Machyl. Your partner, friends, family. Everyone.”

  “Of course,” I assured her. “I read the terms of the agreement thoroughly.”

  And I would abide by those terms as thoroughly as every other pageant queen-in-waiting, Vivesse-bound and counting down til Contessa Day.

  As the call ended, I stood up off the window ledge and went to gather my stuff. I allowed myself to go through a short voguing routine on the office carpet, not caring if the cameras were watching.