Damaris beckoned me to follow her into her bedroom. When I got inside, she shut the door.
The lights were low, just the Cheshire Cat lamp on the vanity burning. There were pillows piled up against the bed head with a back-shaped indent in them where she had been propped up, and a blanket crumpled on top of the neatly made sheets.
Her laptop, an old and clunky model that hadn’t been seen in stores in a good few years, sat glowing blue from its screen half-buried under the blanket.
She climbed back onto the bed, leaving the vampire bunny slippers on the floor, and crawled back into the indent in the pillows.
She looked at me, patted the space next to her on the bed. I followed obediently.
It was the first time I’d been invited to sit on her bed. I’d never been invited into her room before.
The bed was the only piece of furniture in the room apart from a small vanity with a chair in front of it, and a matching wardrobe.
She pulled some pillows out from her side of the bed and put them behind me so I was comfortable.
As I settled back, I started to feel comforted, feel cared for.
I started to feel as if there was nothing else but the two of us now in this room with the darkness gathering shadows in the corners and the music from the club down below vibrating the walls and floor like an indistinct heartbeat.
The soundproofing was and always had been inadequate, but I’d never been in the apartment this late, at night when the club was open and it occurred to me that it must be almost impossible to sleep in here when that music was playing.
I thought of my bedroom with its thick walls, the cocoon of silence which descended on me when I lay in bed at night.
Damaris arranged the blanket over her curled up legs and passed me the corner and I got under it as well.
The familiar scent of her washed over me and I started to feel as if the terrible void of sadness inside me could be filled and healed, now that I was here in her room with her, and she had shut the door and no-one else was allowed to come in.
She moved the laptop down the bed to the level of her knees, on the blanket between the two of us.
“I was watching Vivesse season twelve,” she said. “You want to watch?”
I glanced at the screen. I could see it was filled by a static image, figures lined up on a stage in front of a curtain, women to look at them with a glance.
“Sure,” I said.
“Wait though,” Damaris said, half-turning toward me. “So what was that downstairs?”
My stomach clenched with anxiety. I was stretched out, half turned toward her too, and I had been relaxed, but now I was tense.
The thudding bass of the music filled the silence between us.
Damaris asked me to come here because Machyl had told her that I had feelings for her.
Then she came downstairs and found me and Marcus about to get reamed by DT for—for—
I bit my lip and looked at the pillowcase I was leaning against. Baby blue with an embroidered swirly floral pattern fanning out across it. I touched the embroidery. It felt smooth and nice, all the little threads lined up uniformly just so.
Damaris had put herself on the line for me, when I asked her to, down there.
She had saved me from DT, told him that she asked me to come over even though I was sick.
And Marcus was right there. He heard her say that.
So now Marcus knew that I had come here to see Damaris, not to see him and discuss the problem with Machyl and make out in the storage closet.
I crossed my arms. I wasn’t feeling so good any more.
When I left the restaurant where Macyhl was, I had felt a dead certainty about what I was doing, that I needed to go to Damaris and just plead with her not to hate me, not to stop being friends with me just because I couldn’t control my own thoughts, couldn’t control my own desires.
I felt as if I was being pulled toward her by a steel cable coming out of my chest and there was nothing I could do to resist its tug and even if there was I didn’t want it, I didn’t want to do anything that would distance me from her.
Because she knew, and because she had decided what to do about it, I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to go to her and find out my fate, and I was ready to prostrate myself on the floor to make sure that it didn’t involve losing her.
But now that I was here, with her, on her bed, I was feeling those bad feelings creeping back in.
The bad feeling that came when I looked at her and how amazing she was, and then compared that to myself.
Let’s just say you’re not really Damaris’ type, okay? Machyl’s voice echoed in my head.
When I started to remember that I was the other person in this equation, that was when I started to feel bad about it.
And then to imagine her knowing how I felt about her, when I was like this.
Imagining the sheer pity of it, how pathetic it was, how shameful, to be the one who was exposed like this.
I shied away from it, turned away and my instinct was to protect myself. For her to crack me open and prize me apart to look inside and know, that was the worst. That was what I couldn’t bear.
The shame filled me up until I thought it was going to force itself up through my throat, until I was so uncomfortable I just wished my soul would detach itself from my body and leave it behind, a hollow husk, and I was freed from the burdens of this world.
“Anthony?” Damaris said, breaking in on my misery.
“Yeah?” I squirmed.
“So you did lie yesterday?” She said. “When I asked you if you liked Marcus.”
What?
I looked at her in surprise, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was fiddling with the corner of the crocheted blanket, made out of dozens of different colored crochet squares joined together.
“Um—” I floundered.
She sighed and tossed the blanket corner aside, lay back on the pillows.
“You still mad at me?” She sat up, turned and looked at me directly.
I quailed under her gaze. It worked to let Marcus do the talking, fill in the silences. It didn’t work with Damaris.
“I’m not mad,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I thought you were mad at me,” I said quietly.
“Well, I thought you were mad at me,” she said, and giggled.
Her smile was so bright, I couldn’t bear to look at it for long. I looked at her and smiled shyly.
“So cute,” she reached out and pressed the tip of my nose like a favorite aunt with a two-year-old.
But I bloomed inside, joy flowering in my heart. She wasn’t mad at me.
I felt like I’d been granted a reprieve by God himself, a letter etched on a stone tablet fifty feet high and edged in solid gold scroll designs, carried down to me by avenging angels with flowing hair and flashing silver armor.
“Hey,” she said, turning to the other side, rolling over, reaching under the bed and coming back up with a frosted glass bottle. “Do you want some raspberry schnapps?”
I smiled, pleasure spreading all through my body.
It was okay.
Machyl must not have told her after all.
Machyl had told her about Marcus.
That was what Machyl had told her.
She didn’t know.
Oh, St. Sebastian, thank you for this mercy.
Sweet relief edged my breath as I sighed. “Yeah,” I said.
“Can you just get those little shot glasses over there on the vanity please?” She sat back on the pillows and cracked open the seal on the bottle.
I got up, the bedsprings creaking and whining as I did.
The bed was one of those metal frame ones with elaborate curlicues around the head and foot, gold metal flowers curling around the bed posts at each corner.
It hadn’t been chosen by Damaris.
This room had belonged to Calleen Jones ever since the House of Ellegrandé was founded and for almost thirty years afterward.
/> I found the shot glasses, one clean, the other smudged with fingerprints, both bearing the legend Gaymos México! And in small blue letters beneath that, Puerto Vallarta, México.
I brought them back and handed them to her as I got back on the bed. It creaked again and the backboard of the frame bumped against the wall.
“It always does that,” Damaris shrugged. “Creaky as shit.” She poured me a shot glass of schnapps and handed it to me. “Machyl got these for me,” she explained.
I took a sip. It was overpoweringly sweet with a sharp edge. Just like Damaris.
“You like it?” She asked, eyeing me. “I like the mango one, but they don’t have that every time.”
“They have mango schnapps?” I said in surprise.
“Yeah we always drink that,” Damaris laughed. “You know, cause it’s like kind of Thai. For watching Vivesse.”
“Oh okay,” I laughed as well.
We. That was Machyl.
I realized that to be asked into Damaris’ bedroom to drink schnapps and watch Vivesse late at night was an honor extended only to a few—maybe just to Machyl—and now it had been extended to me, and I felt a spark of excitement within me, and happiness, and joy, and everything, and I would rather spend a lifetime here with her doing nothing but watching old episodes of the Vivesse Fashion and Beauty Parade than have sex with Marcus, even if that naked picture of him was in my mind’s eye right now, the way his eyes were staring directly at me, making his intentions clear.
She took a sip of her own schnapps, made a slight face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Not as good as mango.”
She laughed, then, and I laughed too, and wondered if I had ever been happier, ever.
She didn’t know, and that was the way it should be. She never needed to know, and everything would continue like this, forever.
The trouble with Machyl would blow over. Marcus thought that the source of all the trouble was the auditions. And the auditions would, eventually, be over.
I just needed to wait it out.
Duane Tyrone had caught me and Marcus red-handed in full-blown fraternization, and he hadn’t fired us both on the spot.
He had said he would “deal with us” at the meeting on Monday, but what was the worst punishment he could deal out?
Cleaning the toilets for a month? I would happily scrub cum stains off the walls if it meant I could be close to Damaris.
Really, if he was going to fire me, he would have done it right away. Right?
I wasn’t really useful to the business, but I also wasn’t hindering it. I didn’t even get a salary. I looked pretty in drag, and customers liked me.
They liked me a bit too much, if I was honest.
Can we please not think about that right now?
Everything was going to be fine. That was the point. Just fine.
“I’ll be twenty-one next month,” Damaris said, looking at me over her shot glass. “Can finally stop using that fake ID.”
I smiled.
“At least the fake has the right name and says F on it,” she muttered, her smile fading.
I frowned. I hadn’t thought of that.
“And it’s not like I can drive anyway,” she said. “So what am I going to use as ID?” She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”
I wasn’t sure about that. It seemed to me ID was and could be quite important in life in general.
“So you and Marcus are like officially together now?” She asked, sipping her schnapps.
Why did she have to keep asking about it? I really wanted to forget about it now and just enjoy her company.
I shrugged.
She frowned at me. “You’re not the kind to…” She scratched her head.
“What?” I said innocently, drawing my knees up under the blanket and looking at her with my head cocked to one side.
I could act cute with Damaris and she liked it. I did it all the time. The boys of Ellegrandé didn’t tend to warm to it as much.
I supposed Marcus might like it, if I did it for him.
But I didn’t want to. I saved it just for Damaris, and that was how I wanted to keep it.
She grinned at me. “Look at that little face. I know you’re not that innocent, Anthony, so don’t even start to play.”
I twisted my hair around one finger. “You don’t want me to be innocent?” I widened my eyes a little.
She pushed my shoulder. “You’re avoiding the subject,” she said, but she didn’t sound mad. She was still smiling, and her eyes were looking into mine, curious.
I felt an overpowering attraction to her sweep through me.
I looked down at the crocheted blanket. I was willing to bet Machyl’s grandmother in Trinidad had made this.
They were all over the place, on the couch in DT’s living room, downstairs on the old falling-apart couch in the green room. And there were about a million doilies all over the counters which you could arrange your make up on neatly if you felt so inclined.
I was avoiding the subject. I didn’t want to talk about it. I could feel her eyes on me.
“I guess it’s really none of my business,” Damaris said slowly, turning away. “Sorry.”
“No—” I said, because I felt like I had offended her, and because I wanted to let her in, wanted to tell her everything, but I also didn’t, wanted to keep her out. “No, it’s not that…”
“It’s fine,” Damaris said, pouring herself another shot glass of schnapps and turning to me to fill my glass as well but not looking at me. “You don’t want to tell me. I get it.”
“No,” I said again, feeling desperate now.
It was the desperation I felt every time I had an inkling that I had failed to please her somehow.
The lurking terror behind it was that I would do something to mess up, mess up so badly that one day she would just be done with me, and I would lose her. “We’re not really together,” I said quickly. “We kind of are. I just don't want DT to find out,” I explained. “I don’t want to break DT’s rule.”
She can understand that, surely…
She glanced at me. “You don’t want Duane to know?” She burst out laughing.
Feeling sheepish suddenly, I avoided her gaze. She stopped laughing and nudged my shoulder with hers.
I felt myself getting hot in the face.
“You’re blushing!” She cried, pointing at me. “You’re blushing so hard,” she laughed, and pulled on my arm.
She clearly saw I was embarrassed and touched my cheek, leaning her head on her hand against the pillows.
I felt my heart swelling when I felt that and I looked at her, smiling.
She probably thought I was smiling thinking of Marcus. She took her hand away and used it to push her hair back over her shoulder. Her smile turned wicked.
“What did DT catch you doing?”
I looked down at the embroidered pillow case again, shrugged. “I don't know,” I said.
She cackled and slapped my knee. “Come on,” she said.
I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked at the knee she had just touched.
“He may have opened the door of the storage closet at an awkward moment…”
She stared at me for a moment, then cackled. “You are so bad,” she said, leaning her head back and laughing.
I was surprised, because actually wasn’t it strange for her to be so light-hearted about it when just yesterday she and Marcus had been hooking up in that very storage closet, and that had ended in a fight?
“Seriously though, Anthony,” she said, not laughing anymore, and it seemed to me the laughter had faded very quickly. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
She looked at me, her eyes very large and dark. She drained the shot glass, looked down at it empty in her hand. She took a deep breath.
“We’re friends, right?” She looked at me.
I stared at her
. “Of course,” I said.
“So I—please understand I’m saying this because I’m your friend, okay? Because I feel like I know you fairly well…”
Yes, you do, you know everything about me, I love you so much, Damaris.
“This isn’t like you, Anthony,” she said finally, raising her eyes to mine cautiously.
“Not like me?” I echoed, not sure what she meant, but feeling increasingly alarmed.
“This Marcus thing,” she said.
Oh…
“Look, am I right about this—” she reached out her hand and touched my shoulder, like she wanted me to look at her.
I did, though it wasn’t easy.
“You’re looking for a relationship, aren’t you?”
I stared at her, transfixed. I felt that loneliness from earlier start up in me again. I nodded silently. “You’ve never dated anyone since you came to the House of Ellegrandé, have you?” She asked.
I shook my head no.
“When I asked you yesterday,” she said, “if you just wanted hook-ups, I didn’t mean it because I really thought that. I thought the opposite, I still do. I was just asking because I—was trying to get you to talk about it,” she raised her hands in a gesture of frustration.
“I know you Anthony,” she looked into my face, held my arms above the elbows. “And I know you want… love.”
Frozen, I looked back at her.
Yes. That’s what I want.
She squeezed my arms, hard.
“Don’t be with Marcus if you don’t feel that way about him. Okay? That’s all I want to say.”
“What—what makes you think I don’t?” I breathed, barely audible.
“Because this just came out of nowhere,” she said. “I knew he liked you, Anthony, but I didn’t think you would just— respond like this.”
“You knew he liked me?” I said in shock.
She raised one eyebrow. “I thought it was pretty freaking obvious, but maybe that was just me.”
“Well I think it was just you,” I said, feeling a little indignant. “I didn’t know until yesterday!”
Now both her eyebrows flew up her forehead. “Yesterday?” She echoed. “Are you saying—this just started yesterday?”
I nodded slowly.
“After—?” She looked at me questioningly.
I nodded.
Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Page 20