Drag Queen Beauty Pageant

by Malachite Splinters

  “W-what about you?” I said. There was silence for a moment. Then I heard and felt her move back up the bed and get back under the covers.

  “Come under here,” she said.

  I obeyed her. I would have done whatever she told me to at that moment. I would have jumped off a cliff like a base jumper without a parachute.

  “Hurry up,” she said.

  I got to the covers and went under them, where it was warm, and she was already lying down.

  She was scooted way down under the covers, so it was like crawling into a cave, and she put the covers all the way over our heads, and pulled me next to her and I felt her take my hand.

  “Spit,” she said.

  I did.

  “More,” she said, and I did.

  She moved my hand down between her legs. “Like that,” she said, showing me with her hand, and it sounded as if she was biting her lip when she said it. “Just like th—ahhh,” she moaned, drawing her legs up so they were the tent poles of our tent, or the stalagmites of the cave.

  I put my other arm around her back and she reached up and put her arms around my neck.

  “Just keep doing that,” she moaned, “just keep doing that, okay?”

  She was moaning with every breath now, a constant stream of wordless sounds.

  “Don’t stop,” she groaned and her words sounded like they came from a different place, involuntary, automatic. “Don’t stop, oh god, don’t stop—”

  I leaned down and kissed up her collar bone again.

  “I won’t stop,” I whispered, and kissed her neck, her jaw. My heart started to tremble when I kissed up to her chin, and then the soft place just between chin and lip. I kissed her lips tentatively.

  She tightened her arms around my neck, moaned and pulled me closer, so her breasts were touching my chest again.

  “Oh god,” she cried, and she started moving against me, underneath me, pushing her breasts against my chest rhythmically, gasping and crying out, loudly, really loudly, so loud that my eardrums, so close to her ecstatic mouth, started to buzz and tingle. “Kiss me,” she gasped, and I did, with my mouth closed, once, twice, waiting for her to deepen it, but all she did was part her lips a little and her tongue darted out to touch my lips when I kissed hers.

  “Don’t stop—” She put her head back, and cried out, “I’m going to come—oh, god—oh god, I’m coming—I’m coming—oh god—don’t stop—” she went silent, her hips jerking and I felt the spasms of her orgasm and just like I had promised before, I didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop until she told me to, not ever.

  Finally she lay still and limp, panting, and slightly damp. I still had my arm around her and I didn’t want to let go.

  She made her way up for air, out of the cave and I followed. The cold air of the bedroom felt good against my bare, heated skin.

  I heard her rearranging pillows and then thumping her head down onto her pillow.

  I half-heartedly did the same, fluffed the pillows on my side of the bed, that I could feel, but I didn’t want to be on my side of the bed.

  Didn’t want to go too far from her, and for a moment I felt a tiny fleeting fear that that was what she wanted me to do.

  But then I felt her reaching for me, and I went to her, instantly, dropping a pillow I had been plumping.

  “Lie down,” she whispered.

  I did so immediately. I lay down on my back and she came up on my right-hand side and snaked her hand around me like she had the first time she touched me in this bed, curling around me, like I was her body pillow. She put her head on my shoulder and I put my arms around her. I was still wearing the velour sweatpants. She still wasn’t wearing anything.

  Her skin was so soft and smooth under my fingers, it felt like butter. She didn’t say anything, just settled her head more comfortably onto my chest.

  I could feel her heart beating, feel each breath she took, and our legs were tangled together now too.

  I reached up and stroked her hair back from her forehead.

  “Mmm,” she mumbled. “Feels good.”

  The scent of her permeated me. There was jasmine, heady and intoxicating. There was the Shea butter she used in her hair. And there was the indefinable human smell coming off her skin, rich and satisfying to breathe in, it made me want her, want her as if I missed her even though she was right here.

  I thought of how babies had that baby smell, and I’d never realized people had it too.

  But then when had I been close enough to another person to find out?

  Not like this.

  Never.

  The sheets were soft but there was a slight grain to them, a slight texture, which I could feel distinctly on my bare skin.

  I kept stroking her forehead until her breathing became deep and even, and I was sure she had fallen asleep.

  I lay there wide awake.

  What just happened?

  It happened so fast, I didn’t process what was happening.

  My body had moved on instinct, faster than my mind could work, and my consciousness was lagging behind, and now I was lying here as shell-shocked as if I’d just come to safety through a hail of sniper fire.

  I lay in the darkness and held her. She was in my arms now, and I felt as if I was the one protecting her, even though she was bigger than me. I felt as if I had offered her my strength, and she had accepted it.

  I made Damaris come.

  That fact alone was unbelievable, I almost couldn’t accept it, as if it was a propaganda statement put out by a fascist government to mislead the public with smoke and mirrors. How could it possibly be true?

  It is true though.

  When I was touching her, I wanted to pour my love into her, to make it so she wasn’t sad any more, like she had been that day in the taxi at Coney Island. I felt my eyes filling with tears which slipped down my temples and into my ears, and I felt my heart swell with love for her as it had when I came.

  If she had ever felt that despair, if she had ever felt that loneliness which had swept through me as I stood in the corridor, downstairs, I wanted to go where it was in her and put this in its place, what I was trying to give her when I made her come, tender care and my love.

  I was still crying, but they were tears of happiness, and I gave into them, holding her tightly to me, her warm, gorgeous, real, beautiful self, somehow with me now.

  Somehow mine.

  I love you, Damaris.

  Bagel and Lox

  I opened my eyes.

  It was still dark.

  I was lying with my head on the pillow, on my side, feeling the soft sheets underneath me. I heard the bedsprings creak and whine and felt the mattress dip somewhere behind my back.

  I had sex with Damaris last night.

  The thought crossed my mind, and for a fleeting moment I dismissed it as the product of a dream or what I’d been thinking about before I fell asleep.

  Then I realized that my bed didn’t creak and whine whenever someone sat down on it. And I had the sense that it couldn’t be the middle of the night any more.

  And then I remembered where I was. And I realized that it was Damaris behind me, and I turned over.

  Light flooded in and blinded me as she opened the blackout curtains. I shaded my eyes with my hand.

  “Morning,” she said. I peered at her. She was clothed once more, wearing the baggy t-shirt and leggings again.

  Okay, it was a dream, one part of my mind was saying. No. It really happened. It did.

  I sat up.

  “Morning,” I said back at her. “Did you sleep well?” I asked, automatically, like the polite schoolboy inside me was in charge.

  “Yeah,” she said with a slight note of surprise in her voice. “I did.” She moved around the room, picking things up. She glanced at me. “Can you not look?”

  My eyes had adjusted to the light and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Then I looked at what she was holding, and realized her arms held clothes, and she must be about to get dressed. />
  A flare of embarrassment licked through me like a bunsen burner turned way too high and I dropped my eyes to the covers.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. I could feel my face burning and I felt, all of a sudden, confusion seize me and start tearing my mind apart.

  I had seen her change a million times.

  I had helped her change a million times.

  That was one of the tasks I had been assigned as a junior when I first started at Ellegrandé. Well, junior was the polite term. Machyl preferred house bitch.

  Had I done something wrong?

  The realization hit me again, harder this time.

  You had sex with her last night.

  I stared at the crochet blanket, where there was a teal square next to a silver square next to a magenta square.

  What does this mean?

  Did this mean we were a couple now? A strange and unbearable tenderness spread through my chest.

  She likes you. No, she loves you.

  I frowned.

  Was that really possible?

  It was all too much suddenly.

  This was outside stuff. I was letting things from the outside world come in to our private world.

  Last night when she had brought me into her bed, we’d slipped into our own private dimension, where time stood still and nothing from the outside could bother us.

  Trying to consider these things wasn’t right in here.

  None of that mattered.

  The only thing that mattered was that I was here with Damaris, and last night— Oh St Sebastian…

  My mind was rapidly filling with images, with sense memories, so vivid they felt physical, as if my body itself, every inch of my body, was remembering.

  I became uncomfortably aware that I was, as usual in the morning, hard.

  “Okay,” she said.

  I looked up, trying to forget about my little physical problem, and saw that she was dressed.

  She was wearing the same outfit she’d had on Friday, the apricot crop top and the black and white track pants, although I noticed that today she had put on a bra.

  “It’s too cold to wear this,” she muttered, rubbing her arms with her hands and turned to the chair in front of the vanity, which had some clothes thrown over the back of it.

  She picked up a long-sleeved fine mesh top in a gray and black marble print and pulled it on over the crop top. The apricot was still visible through the mesh.

  She shrugged on the denim jacket with the quilted pink satin lining which I’d always liked.

  I’d always admired Damaris’ sense of style. When I started getting into fashion, she was one of the people I paid attention to.

  It was unusual for her to wear the same outfit two days in a row, and I couldn’t help but notice.

  “Are you going to get dressed?” Damaris asked, and I realized I had been sitting there, watching her, and felt my face go hot again.

  I glanced down at my clothes piled on the floor under the nightstand, and remembered that I was sitting there, without a shirt on, and my morning erection still pressing against her velour track pants.

  I felt a jarring sense of strangeness.

  We weren’t in our own dimension any more, our own private world.

  It was morning, bright daylight was coming in through the window, and the secrets of the night could not hide when reality was plainly visible all around us, stark and unvarnished.

  I felt uneasy now.

  I didn’t know what was going on, and I was afraid, all of a sudden, to find out.

  It’s okay. She likes you.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, keeping the bed covers over my lap, and reached down and picked up my clothes, positioned them over my crotch and stood up.

  “I’ll just go to the bathroom,” I said quietly, and slipped out of the room.

  When I got out into the living room, I was momentarily struck by a paralyzing terror that I had just done the stupidest thing the world and Duane Tyrone would be standing there in the kitchen, cooking breakfast in a terrycloth bathrobe.

  But then I remembered that DT wouldn’t have gone to bed until probably 5am after closing the club and would now be sound asleep in his bedroom, wearing earplugs against the sounds of the world.

  Despite this I felt a sense of relief when I was safely in the bathroom with the door locked.

  I peed and washed my hands, got dressed, wincing slightly at having to wear the same underwear again.

  I hadn’t slept over at someone’s house since I was in high school, since Sue Ellen and I did a marathon of Vivesse Fashion and Beauty Parade not long after the first time we went to the House of Ellegrandé.

  That was back when Sue Ellen was still slightly involved in me becoming involved in drag.

  I borrowed some facial cleanser and re-used the toothbrush from last night. Found a comb and carefully worked it through the length of my weave.

  I met my own gaze in the mirror.

  What’s going to happen now? I dropped my gaze. I didn’t want to look at myself.

  She likes you, Anthony. Why else would she do that?

  But I didn't believe the voice.

  The sense of unease had grown stronger, and now I was ready, and I had to leave this bathroom and face Damaris.

  And that was just the start.

  Don't think about that.

  I bit my lip, then saw in the mirror how unattractive that looked and stopped.

  She didn’t kiss you.

  A stronger pulse of uneasiness squeezed my heart and I broke eye contact with myself.

  Did you notice that, Anthony? That she wouldn't kiss you?

  I wished it was night again, and then I didn’t. I wished I was somewhere else, and then realized that being near Damaris was the only thing giving me a threadbare sense of safety right at this moment.

  Don’t doubt her, a different voice said in my head. If that happened, it obviously means she likes you.

  It was true.

  Obviously.

  Why would she—unless she liked me, too?

  I swallowed, hard, thinking of last night, before I came here.

  I had been sitting with Machyl in that restaurant, and he had made it clear he knew I liked Damaris, and then I had received that text from Damaris. Machyl told me.

  First I thought she meant Machyl had told her I liked her, then I thought she meant Machyl had told her I had hooked up with Marcus, and now I knew it was both.

  Machyl had told her everything.

  Don’t you see what this means?

  Damaris said Machyl told me and texted me to come over.

  And when I had come over…

  I felt a shiver run over my body. I had initially thought I was going to have to beg Damaris for forgiveness for how I felt about her, but—but it was like the opposite had happened.

  She returns your feelings, Anthony.

  I felt my heart start to beat faster, and pins and needles rushed through me with exhilaration hot on its heels. I opened the door of the bathroom.

  I knew what I had to do. My heart was pounding powerfully.

  Red and black flashes passed over my vision.

  I walked into the bedroom.

  Damaris was sitting on the bed again, on her phone, waiting for me with her shoes on.

  I sat down next to her, turned her face toward me and with a huge swoop of my stomach, kissed her on the lips.

  Oh St Sebastian.

  I’d never kissed anyone before. In the sense that I’d never initiated a kiss, never been the one to lean over and actually do it.

  I felt my heart flutter like the wings of a caged bird, yearning to fly free on the wind after years behind bars.

  Yes you did, a voice sniggered in the back of my mind. You initiated a kiss with Marcus. More than once.

  But that didn’t count, I thought to myself as I traced the smooth skin of Damaris’ jaw and felt the delicate seashell of her ear.

  What I felt for Damaris compared to Marcus was li
ke comparing a blue whale to a sea monkey. So it didn't count.

  My lips left hers after a brief tender press like rose petals touching and I opened my eyes, looking for hers, aware that right now, I felt as tender as the tiny bud at the heart of a rose, the one you saw when you pushed back the closely folded velvety petals, and just as vulnerable.

  A bloom of sexual awareness opened behind my belly button, imagining that bud at the heart of the rose and all its tender sweetness.

  Damaris looked back at me, then turning her face away from me, dropped her gaze and looked into the distance.

  She stood up, sticking her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket, then took them out and pushed her hair back.

  I felt a frown of confusion form on my face, even before the humiliating sting of rejection pierced the tender spot inside me and turned it sickly and rotten. Oh… shit…

  I stared at her, then at the floor. I thought that was the right thing to do.

  What have I done?

  The question expanded from the kiss to last night. My face was burning and this time, I couldn’t find any comforting answer.

  “I’m going out,” Damaris said, not meeting my eyes. “Come with me?” She glanced at me then.

  I felt my heart swell. She just didn’t want to kiss right now. That was fine. Not everyone was like Marcus, intent on sucking face all the time.

  No, and thank god.

  I didn’t know how Marcus had gotten into my head, but I pushed him firmly out.

  “What time is it?” I asked, trying to act normal. Trying to be cool. Casual.

  The last thing I wanted was for Damaris to see me as this desperate, lovestruck kid.

  She was only a year older than me, but she seemed so much more mature. She was like a real adult. She always seemed so sure of herself, seemed like she always knew what to do.

  I can be like that too.

  I wasn’t a virgin any more. That was the thing. I wasn’t a kid now. I was an adult, too, or at least I was a big part of the way closer to getting there.

  I felt a sense of pride wash through me, puffing my chest out, when I looked at her, that I was—that I was with her and she was making me better.

  She had made me a man.

  “It’s only eight am,” she said. “I was asleep, like, before midnight.”