“After the fight,” she said. “Well, fuck. I thought I was stepping on your toes yesterday. That’s why I wanted you to come here so I could talk to you in person. Apologize for macking on your boyfriend and then being a giant bitch and telling you you could ‘have him’. I felt like a total fool…”
Oh… wait…
“You thought I was mad at you because of that?” I said, incredulous.
“Yeah, when Machyl told me today, I was like, Ha ha, Damaris, maybe that’s why Anthony had a face like thunder after he heard you and Marcus hooking up. And then I felt like… oh my God, I felt so bad about it,” she said, looking at me.
“No, no,” I said, “that’s not what happened at all. Marcus just, um, told me he liked me after I went to his house because I, um…” I couldn't figure out what else to say.
“Wait,” she said. “So I’m responsible for the two of you getting together?” She smiled wryly.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“So did you come here tonight to see me or him?” She asked, fixing her eyes on me.
“You,” I said immediately. “I didn’t come here to see him. That was just an unfortunate coincidence.”
She pursed her lips. “Look, this is what I’m trying to say… you have integrity.”
I looked at her, she held my gaze.
“I—I wish I’d always had the same integrity as you,” she said.
I gazed at her in astonishment.
“So don’t throw it away just because you want to impress the idiots in this place. Okay? Don’t do it just because you want someone to like you. Okay?”
I shifted my gaze away, uncomfortable.
“I don’t think he just wants to hook up,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he wants to be in a relationship with me..”
“Do you like him, Anthony?” She was holding my shoulders again. “Do you really like him? Because if you do,” she removed her hands and held them up. “I won’t say another word.”
I traced my fingertips over the embroidered flowers on the pillowcase. The fabric was smooth as if it had been carefully ironed after laundering.
I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to say what I was about to say, but the restaurant and the meal with Machyl and all my fears seemed like another lifetime.
I felt as safe and unafraid now as if I was back in the womb, on this soft bed in the dimly-lit room as the walls and floor vibrated rhythmically with the music from downstairs.
“Machyl told Marcus I liked him,” I said quietly.
In the silence that followed, I raised my eyes and looked at her.
She sighed. “I know,” she said.
“Wait, you knew?” I said, shocked. “About Machyl?”
She nodded, reaching out and putting the shot glass on the nightstand. I did the same.
She took a bottle of water from the nightstand and had a drink, then offered it to me.
I poured some into my mouth, careful not to touch where her lips had been. I gave it back to her.
“I’m so tired of the drama around here,” she muttered, lying back on the pillows.
I smiled and did the same. “Me too,” I said.
“Aren’t you mad I didn’t tell you about Machyl?” She asked.
“Um…” I wasn’t, actually. None of that seemed to matter now. It was all out there, in another world. Now I was in the Damaris world, this was all I cared about. “It’s all so childish,” I said. “Amateur dramatics, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said, curling up on her side and looking at me. “It’s really childish. I feel like I’m back in junior high sometimes. Like, can’t people just be honest with each other?”
I smiled lazily. I was feeling a little tipsy, even though I hadn’t drunk that much raspberry schnapps. Maybe dreamy was a better word.
I could smell a faint scent of coconut, mixed with Shea butter. It was coming from the pillow case my head was laying on, the embroidered one, as if traces of oil remained which hadn’t come out in the laundry.
“Hey,” Damaris said, smiling at me.
“Hey,” I said, smiling at her.
“I’m so tired,” she yawned and stretched her arms out, then retracted them and tucked them under her cheek.
I remembered something Machyl had said.
You want to play games with a girl who was suicidal a month ago?
I knew she wasn’t doing so well—what else would you say about a girl who won’t come out of her room?—but no-one ever told me it was that bad.
I felt a pain within me for her, and reached out my hand, a little afraid, and touched the blanket over her arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She screwed her eyes shut and pressed her face into the pillow for a minute.
“You called in sick,” I said timidly.
“Can we not talk about it, please?” She sighed and turned onto her back, looking at the ceiling.
“O-of course,” I said quickly. “Sorry, I—I’m worried about you too.”
“You are?” She said, and her face crumpled.
Oh no…
I wanted to hug her but I couldn’t seem to move my body, I felt self-conscious and all I could think was She doesn’t want me hugging her.
She wiped her face.
“Stupid fucking crying,” she spat. “I hate this. Crying the whole damn day. I’m done with it.” She sighed again. “Get me a tissue,” she gestured at the nightstand on my side of the bed.
I turned over and took several from the box and handed them to her.
She blew her nose and by the time she tucked the remaining tissues under her pillow, she did seem to have stopped. She curled up again.
“Did you have sex?”
“No!” I said, shocked. That was a non-sequitur! “No, and please… I don’t want to talk about it.”
She looked at me. “Works both ways I guess,” she said. “Would you stay here tonight?”
I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly. What had she said? What did you say here tonight? That must have been it. I didn’t know what that meant, though.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said, looking at me finally. “Please stay?”
My heart was doing something strange. It felt as if all my arteries and veins and blood-carrying vessels in my body had dried up, and my heart was pumping, dry, the tissues sticking to each other slightly, making a weird squidging slapping sound as the ventricles contracted.
“Okay,” I said, sure I was about to wake up at any moment.
She sat up and closed the laptop and put it in the drawer of the nightstand. “I’m going to brush my teeth,” she said. “There’s a spare toothbrush. Come on.”
The apartment was quiet and empty. Just the vibrating bass from downstairs shook the glasses slightly in the kitchen.
Damaris slipped into the bathroom and turned the light on.
I followed her, my feet feeling the texture of the chenille bathmat.
She ran the water and handed me a toothbrush wrapped in plastic, which I opened and obediently spread with toothpaste and started brushing my teeth, dropping the plastic wrapping into a garbage beside the sink.
There was just one light over the sink, a fluorescent tube inside a diamond-etched glass cover. The sink was a creamy brown color which matched the toilet and the bathtub.
If my apartment looked eighties, DT’s was downright seventies. It looked like the landlord had done literally nothing in here since before DT moved in. At least the tiles were white, and that made it a bit brighter.
You’re distracting yourself.
I was trying not to think about what I was doing. If I did, I might wake up from this dream. Or I might start to question what I was doing.
You want to play games?
I tried to get Machyl’s voice out of my head.
“Stay here,” Damaris said. “I’m a bring you something to sleep in.”
“I need to take out my contact lenses,” I said. “Do you guys have any saline solution or
contact lens case or anything?” She shook her head no. “Maybe just a glass of water,” I said.
“Help yourself,” she said. “In the kitchen.”
I went and got a glass, stopping it from tapping out a little staccato beat against the others with the music from downstairs.
When I got back to the bathroom, there was an old soft t-shirt and purple velour sweatpants with a gold appliqué crown on the butt waiting for me.
I changed, feeling a guilty thrill go through me as I put Damaris’ clothes on over my bare skin.
I folded my own neatly and started to leave when I remembered about my contacts. I filled the glass half full with water, took the contacts out and dropped them in.
I turned out the bathroom light and carried the clothes back with me to the bedroom. My bare feet felt good on the old floorboards.
I could smell the scent of her room, the scent of her, wafting toward me through the half open door as if she was calling me. I couldn’t wait to be back inside. I closed the door behind me and put the clothes on the floor next to the nightstand. There was just a lump in the bed which indicated she was there, and only one light was on.
She wants to go straight to sleep I guess. I supposed that was fine. I was tired.
Standing there, I froze.
I couldn’t possibly get into that bed with her.
This was crazy.
Everyone was downstairs in the club, dressed to the nines and working their butts off.
Damaris and I were supposed to be there too, but instead we were up here about to go to bed.
I went closer to the bed, and then sat down on it.
“I gave you the sweatpants cause it gets cold in here,” she said, an indistinct lump under the sheets. “There’s no heating on yet.”
“Thanks,” I said, stroking my hand over the plush material, which felt like very short nap velvet.
“Get in,” she said.
I could just see the back of her head lying on the pillow, the covers pulled up to her ears.
I pulled back the comforter on my side of the bed, and the sheet underneath it.
I noticed that the sheets were printed in the pattern of a vivid swirling blue and purple starscape, with bright yellow galaxies spinning among the nebulas. It looked just like Machyl’s nails.
I gingerly sat down in the interior of the bed, drew my legs up and pulled the covers over me and edged down in the bed until my head was on the pillow.
I was right on the edge and I lay there stiffly, not daring to move a muscle.
“Come more in,” Damaris said. “Turn your back to me until it touches mine.”
I obeyed, backing toward the opposite side. I felt a strange sense of relief that she wanted me to keep my back to her.
I bumped up against something. It was her, and she pushed back against me until our backs were aligned, and then I felt her relax.
“That’s better,” she said. “We used to sleep like this when we were kids. Back to back.”
I had never slept with anyone except my nanny when I was really, really tiny in the Dominican Republic, before we moved overseas.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I didn’t feel very sleepy. I felt tense, my muscles strained.
A tendon in my neck ached and I reached up to massage it. My foot itched and I scratched it with my other foot.
Now that we were both silent, the room was drenched in reverb from the club below.
I felt a flare of impatience. It was impossible to sleep like this.
“Stop fidgeting,” Damaris said sleepily. I tried to freeze, shut my muscles down, but it didn’t happen. I was even more on edge.
Finally a huge cough burst out of my chest and I bent double, my chest spasming. My throat was dry and I just kept coughing.
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” Damaris muttered, sitting up and handing me the water bottle.
I drank, wiped my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said.
The small light on the nightstand was still on. She was very close, her thigh, encased in thin leggings, leaning against mine.
She had put her hair in a long braid which hung down her shoulder over a baggy t-shirt.
I gulped some more water. I didn’t understand why she had asked me to sleep with her.
I wasn’t like a sibling.
I wasn’t even that close to her.
I didn’t even know her that well.
We’d only hung out alone together a few times, Coney Island and a couple of shopping trips running errands for Brooklyn. We hung out at Ellegrandé’s all the time of course, but she was always here, because she lived here.
And before yesterday, she hadn’t spoken to me for three months.
I gave her back the water and she reached out and returned it to the nightstand, then scooted back under the covers.
I did the same, feeling self-conscious again since we weren’t even back to back now, instead lying side by side on our backs.
I felt so awkward I didn’t know how I was ever, ever going to get to sleep.
I glanced at her and saw her eyes were closed. I closed mine as well.
“Are you going to turn out the light?” I whispered, hoping she wouldn’t get annoyed.
“I sleep with the light on,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. The light, the noise… “How do you sleep like this?” I asked. “I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.”
“I got used to it…” she sighed, and then she said, “I don’t really sleep anyway. Not since I… it’s a symptom of my depression.”
I tried to imagine lying here night after night as she must have when she was keeping to her room, just listening to the indistinct buzz of the music. I couldn’t make out what the song was and bit by bit, it was getting on my nerves more and more.
“Doesn’t this buzzing bother you?” I asked. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“At first it was pretty distracting,” she said. “When I was working I almost never heard it. I worked most nights anyway. By the time you go to bed at four am, it’s quiet.” She sighed. “But I got used to it. It’s kind of comforting after a while. Like a heartbeat. Or at least you know there are people nearby, things going on.”
I turned my head slightly to look at her profile. It seemed much too intimate to turn completely toward her.
“Of course, the problem with being depressed is sometimes you just want everyone else to fuck off,” she muttered. “Those nights were torture.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what to say.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, then got up on her elbow, reached out and turned off the light on the nightstand.
The sudden fall of thick darkness was incredibly relaxing.
“There,” she said, lying back down. From the proximity of her voice, I felt as if she was facing me.
“Now it’s really dark,” I remarked.
“There are blackout blinds and like three layers of curtain. I think Calleen was a freak about light. It’s good when you’re sleeping during the day.”
Her voice was close, and I could feel the heat of her next to me, and I was starting to feel more relaxed, now. Maybe the banal conversation about curtains was helping. I closed my eyes.
“Thanks for staying,” Damaris said.
“That’s okay,” I yawned.
Then I felt something which made me open my eyes wide in the dark, which made my muscles jump in shock and nerve endings fire frantically.
I felt Damaris’ hand slide across my stomach and hold on to one side of my flank.
“Sorry,” she breathed. Her face was right next to mine. “I need a hug.”
And then the hand pulled, and I heard the sheets rustle and a warm, heavy weight came to rest all along my right-hand side, and Damaris’ breath was very close, right next to my ear.
I was pulled snugly into the curve of her body, and my right hand was still by my side, trapped between us, and I wasn’t sure what part of her it was next to.
I was
barely breathing, but when I did, my breath hitched.
“Is that okay?” She asked.
My left hand was free and I picked it up, slowly, and touched her arm, the one which was resting on my stomach over the old t-shirt.
The moment I felt the smooth skin of her arm under my fingers, she tightened her grip on me.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to relax and moving my hand up her arm to her shoulder reassuringly.
Silence fell again. I could hear my breath, and Damaris’ breath, in the darkness. It was warm under the covers with two people, warm and comfortable, and I slowly started to settle into the comfort of her body, her presence.
Maybe I would be able to sleep here after all. It was peaceful here in the dark despite the perpetual buzz and thump of the music.
I think I’ll fall asleep soon.
I thought of Calleen Jones and how she had lived in this room for all her years here at the House of Ellegrandé, before Damaris came.
I remembered the second time I came to the House of Ellegrandé, by myself this time, and I hadn’t told Sue Ellen.
I watched the show, looking at the performers carefully.
I had a virgin Cosmo in one hand and a cocktail napkin in the other, which I rolled between two fingers as I watched.
I was looking at the way the artists moved, looking at their faces, looking at their bodies, looking at the clothes they wore, the dances they did, the songs they sung.
I could do that, I thought to myself. I’m small and slender.
The cocktail napkin had separated into four ply tissue-thin sheets which rolled easily under my thumb and forefinger, and as I watched and thought, I rolled the cocktail napkin between my fingers into thin, hard rat tails. The bar top was covered in them, and my virgin Cosmo was untouched.
I could do that.
I could look like that.
I could feel like that.
Something was really happening to me, something special, something new, something to dance and shout and scream about.
I felt like fireworks were going off inside me, like the first time I saw the Fourth of July display over the Hadsome River. There was a happening going on right now, and it was happening to me.
At that moment, a voice came over the PA system and began speaking right while the two were still up there, performing.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” it crooned in a beautiful rich bass. “Our hearts are as empty as this space tonight.”
Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Page 21