I had the body of… I didn’t even want to continue the comparison.
I had always known I was worthless as a man, and I had never felt it as strongly as this moment.
The doors opened and I followed her inside and we stood in the middle and held on to the pole.
“Oh My Darla,” Damaris said softly.
I turned to see that it was, in fact, Oh My Darla, seated primly at the end bench among the New York City subway passengers with her enormous strawberry-red lips quirked in a small smirk.
“I didn’t even realize it had gotten so late,” Damaris muttered.
“Me either,” I admitted, noticing Oh My Darla’s retinue dotted around the carriage. “I’ve never actually seen it before with my own eyes.”
“I have,” Damaris muttered. “Pretty damn impressive.”
Oh My Darla was posing for a selfie with an older South Asian man. Once he was done, two little white children popped up for a photo. I realized that an actual line had formed, and it snaked past us across the carriage.
Oh My Darla flashed her big bright smile into the camera flashes as we watched.
Oh My Darla was a sort of cowgirl character with a huge teased blond wig, pneumatic cleavage peeking out of a red gingham western shirt with pearl buttons, a cartoonishly waspish waist above a full skirt which fell just below her knees, and tall white cowboy boots with holographic inlays.
She was white, with deep blue eyes and a peachy complexion that looked like it didn’t need foundation to be flawless, although that was probably a testament to her make up skills rather than Mother Nature, and very pretty features which nevertheless required a good deal of contouring around her temples and jaw.
I had seen Orion Dallas—it had to be a stage name—out of drag and he was very good looking in a masculine way.
I couldn’t help but think of the conversation with Machyl the other night. I had referenced Orion Dallas and his boyfriend—I could never remember the name—who were both drag artists at House of Cosmosis, arguably the top drag house in New York.
Doesn’t mean it’s not disgusting, Machyl had grinned through his teeth with a wide, humorless shark’s smile.
Well, Oh My Darla didn’t look disgusted. She looked happy as a clam at all the attention.
“You’ve got to admit it’s a good idea,” I muttered, looking at the line which now stretched all the way down the carriage. “Look at all this attention it brings to Cosmosis and the Sunday Split.”
“You have to be famous first, though,” Damaris said. “If one of us got on the subway in drag, do you think anyone would give a flying crap?”
I pursed my lips. “I wouldn’t even feel safe doing that.”
She shrugged. “I think you’d be fine as long as you were done up really nice and it looked like a costume. Then it’s, like, something special.” She crossed her arms. “As soon you try to make it seem normal, people feel threatened. Like, I’m here, like a normal person. That’s threatening.”
I frowned at her. “Damaris, you can’t even tell—”
“I know,” she interrupted me. “It didn’t used to be that way.” She cast her eyes around the subway car and said, lowering her voice even more. “I’ve felt unsafe before. But not when I was dressed up to perform. It happens when I’m dressed casual, like I am now.”
“You’ve been on the subway dressed up before?” I asked in surprise.
“No,” she said, and then went silent.
I noticed one of Oh My Darla’s entourage, a big bear wearing shiny high riding boots, black jodhpurs, a leather harness over his hairy chest—which was muscular but padded with a layer of fat—and a black police cap, visor pulled low over his reflective aviators, his face expressionless, mouth set underneath a generous 70s ’tache.
He held a riding crop in one hand and balanced an enormous old school boombox on his shoulder. I gazed at the thing, wondering if it could possibly still work or if it was just a prop.
He reached up and pressed a button on it with a loud mechanical click, and music started playing. I recognized the track instantly. Homo On The Range, from her second studio album.
I looked at Damaris, who was also looking at the bondage bear. I caught her eye and we both smiled and started mouthing the words.
Homo on the range
Where the deer and the cattle
Are strange
But I couldn’t help wondering if Damaris had been checking out the bondage bear. Sure, I had been looking at him, but I wasn’t checking him out. He wasn’t my type.
Was she into that look?
Or did she like how dark his skin was, fluorescent lights overheard glowing in it like moonlight?
I remembered the Coney Island guy had very dark skin as well.
You’re very quick to question her loyalty, the voice said in the back of my head.
Loyalty? I felt a spasm of anxiety at the word.
You think she’s already checking out other guys?
I tried to ignore the voice. This line of thinking was making me feel sick to my stomach.
I didn’t know what I thought.
I didn’t think anything.
I was an idiot.
The idea of Damaris being faithful to me—that was an alien concept. The question of faith or unfaith seemed as insane as trying to wrap a puny human brain around an alien life form’s explanation of what it was like to travel through the universe for forty light-years to reach Earth.
The anxiety intensified. I couldn’t conceive of either of these things because I couldn’t conceive of Damaris and I being a couple.
The moment this thought came to me, my heart started to pound with fear.
Don’t you dare speak to my girlfriend that way. Certainty slipped away like fine dust between my fingers.
La Tata is nothing better than a working girl, you already knew that, Mama.
Damaris didn’t need them to tell her. She already knew what I was. No wonder she didn’t want to kiss me in public.
I was jolted out of my thoughts by the train coming to a jerky halt, and then a commotion as Oh My Darla traipsed past arm in arm with two shirtless butlers, performing a little two-step as she went, and she and her entourage do-si-do’d out of the carriage and up the escalator.
They did this every week, alighting the train at 6:30pm for the 7pm show, Sunday Split, at House of Cosmosis.
I heard Damaris sigh as the doors closed behind them, leaving the carriage quiet and half-empty.
I stared at the dented metal doors of the subway train and realized I had let out a sigh, too.
Sushi and Ice Tea
“You have a doorman,” Damaris remarked as we got into the elevator to go up to my floor. My stomach dropped.
“Um, yeah,” I said with a half-hearted attempt at casual laughter, which came out sounding idiotic. “He’s really nice.”
“He must be the only other black person in this building besides you,” she commented.
I rolled the hem of my leather jacket between my fingers. I had been feeling increasingly anxious since we had gotten off the subway, and her questions were sending my heart rate through the roof.
“Um,” I said. “There’s a Ghanaian family on the seventh floor.” They were with the embassy, I believed, but I didn’t say that.
“Oh,” Damaris said, and left it at that.
I expected to feel excited that she was staying the night with me, but as I watched the numbers ticking upward in the display above the elevator doors, I felt nothing but dread.
“Would he have let me in if I wasn’t with you?” She said suddenly.
“Um,” I said again, feeling stupid.
The doors opened and I stepped out. I was still carrying the shopping bags and my shoulder was starting to ache from the weight. “I guess so. Sometimes they buzz up to check on guests.”
“You don’t think he would have moved me on?” She said.
I didn’t like the tone of her voice. There was some kind of threat in it
that I didn’t want to come face to face with. I hurried toward the door of the apartment. “Why would he do that?” I said in as airy a tone as possible.
“He would think I was looking for trade.”
“Trade?” I could hear my voice going higher, not because I understood what she was talking about but because of the flat, dead tension in her voice.
I put my key in the lock and turned, and with a sense of relief opened it. The familiar scent of home washed over me.
I’m safe now.
I stepped inside and started putting the bags down as she followed. I closed the door behind her.
“Prostitution,” Damaris said. “He would think I was a prostitute.”
I winced and I walked deeper into the apartment.
“This is the kitchen,” I said. “And that’s the formal living room, or the pit as I call it. There’s a den as well. It’s cozier. We can go there. Do you want something to drink?”
After a few seconds of silence I turned and saw Damaris standing there with her arms crossed across her chest.
She shook her head as if to clear it and muttered, “Forget it.” She looked at me, but not warmly. “Sure. Thanks. What do you have?”
I realized the answer to that question was not very much. My grand plans for iced tea and popcorn evaporated as it hit me that the fridge would be as empty as it had been the other day when Marcus was here.
Marcus.
The name hit me with another bolt of shame. I had made out with Marcus in that kitchen. And against the wall, there by the foyer, a few feet from where Damaris was standing.
“I, uh. I don’t really have anything,” I admitted. “Do you want to order take out?”
She sighed heavily. “I guess,” she said. Then, “I’m pretty hungry, yeah,” she said.
“Um,” my mind seemed to snap into gear, and I came back to reality.
I grabbed reality, clung to it, hoping it would banish the terrible fears tormenting me like demons pricking my skin with hot pokers.
“I’ll order the food. I brought you some clothes from your room. And your phone and charger.”
She looked at me in mild surprise. “Thanks,” she said. “I could use a shower.”
“You can, um—” my instinct was to give her the guest bedroom, which had its own bathroom.
Was she going to be offended if I offered her the guest bedroom? Would it seem like a slight? Or should she be using my bedroom and bathroom?
I imagined her in my bedroom and felt a strange pain in my chest, and then the return of the anxiety. I had no idea what was going on.
“There’s a guest bedroom,” I said. “You can use the bathroom in there. And, um. Put your stuff in there and everything.”
Damaris quirked an eyebrow. “Can I sleep there too?”
My heart rate exploded into a gallop. She didn’t want to sleep with me? What did this mean?
Or was she being facetious and pointing out how rude I was being by suggesting she sleep in a different bedroom?
Did she think I had just rejected her and was she actually hurt?
“Uh—” I stuttered, at a complete loss. “Uh—um, I—”
She smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take a shower now. I feel like sushi, if you want input on dinner.” She went and got the shopping bags from the foyer.
“It’s just there—” I said, then figured I should show her.
I led her down the hall and opened the second door after mine. The room smelled clean and fragrant. Mama liked the white linen scented candles for the guest bedroom.
I turned on the light just inside the door. The room was old fashioned like the rest of the place, but it was comfortable and the bed was made.
“Wow,” Damaris said. “Bougie.”
“Oh, it’s…” I trailed off, wanting to dismiss it, but then feeling it might make me look like a snob, so I shut up. “Just let me know if you need anything,” I said, and ducked out and closed the door on her.
I went and turned on the heat in the den, then sat down in one of the big easy chairs and ordered sushi on my laptop because my phone was still dead.
Once that was done, I sat there uneasily, fiddling with my phone. I decided to be responsible and got up and plugged it in to charge.
There.
I felt better.
I could start it up later. There would be notifications waiting for me. I hadn’t looked at my phone since last night. I pushed the thought from my mind.
I sat back down on the recliner, but the anxiety hadn’t gone away. I tried to figure out what was wrong.
So, there was overhearing DT and Machyl say awful things about me.
That was—that was not good.
Then there was Oh My Darla’s bear and the question of whether Damaris was attracted to him. None of these things were pleasant, but…
He would think I was a prostitute.
Damaris’ tone of voice, the way she looked at me when she said it.
She had been criticizing my building from the moment we walked in. And it wasn’t just the building. She’d been unsmiling on the subway, and that had made me nervous. She had been like this ever since we walked out of the House of Ellegrandé…
Damaris was still mad at me. I scrunched up my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.
I had told myself she was angry because I hadn’t given her oral sex properly. I wanted to believe she was mad at me because I didn’t know how to suck her dick. But oral sex was something I could practice and get better at, if she let me. If she wanted me to.
I would do anything, whatever it took, to get good enough to make her happy.
She’s mad at you for calling her your girlfriend in front of everyone like that, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.
I dug my fingers into the thick velvety plush upholstery of the recliner.
These chairs were so big and comfy, you could practically live in them. I slept in them all the time, when I fell asleep watching TV shows.
I didn’t want to think about all of this. I just wanted to be safely at home, where nothing could bother me.
You interrupted her argument with Duane Tyrone, the voice said. And called her your girlfriend, which she never agreed to. I frowned.
Shut up, I said to the voice. That was ridiculous. I was just defending her after DT called her a whore. Why would she be mad at me for that?
Because she planned this, the voice said. She did it on purpose, she wanted them to hear her. She had a plan, and you messed it up.
I opened my eyes. That was absurd. The voice in my head was a fucking idiot and I wished I knew how to shut it up. I always did my best to ignore it, anyway.
I curled up on the recliner with my head on the armrest. I couldn’t deal with all of that drama right now. I was at home and I just wanted to feel safe.
Marcus, Machyl, Duane Tyrone…
I banged my fists on my head, trying to knock the names out of it. No, no, no.
Damaris…
I started to feel so anxious that my heart hurt as it pounded. I couldn't breathe properly and I hoped I wasn’t going to have a panic attack.
I stood up and walked around the den a bit, focusing my attention on gathering all of the remotes, turning on the various devices and flicking through the streaming options until I found the full Vivesse archive.
Hadn’t Damaris said she was watching season 12? That was pretty old school, early 90s. There would be some wild fashion to admire.
The doorbell rang. It must be the sushi delivery. I heaved a sigh of relief and got up to answer the door. Normalcy was returning. We had TV, we had dinner.
I would apologize to Damaris for whatever I had done wrong and hopefully she would forgive me, and that would be okay. She would agree to sleep in my bed tonight. And later on, before going to sleep…
I took a deep breath as I opened the door. The delivery guy was holding a big bag, which I took, and then got out my credit card to pay.
“Hola, princess.�
�
I almost jumped out of my skin at the voice, and then I saw that the sushi guy was not alone.
Machyl Mostroso Lyons was standing behind him, arms folded, staring at me. The delivery guy looked over his shoulder and started a little when he saw Machyl standing there.
“Delivery,” Machyl drawled, quirking one eyebrow.
I frowned. “What do you want?” I went through the motions of paying for the food and the delivery guy quickly left after giving me my receipt.
Machyl stood there, his eyes taking in the empty space between us.
“Depends on what you’re up for,” he breathed, raising his eyes to mine insolently. “After all, you’ve fucked your way through the entire house already. I was starting to feel a little left out.”
I gaped at him. “What—?”
He let out a high-pitched giggle and waved me away. “Please, bitch. As if I was being serious. You flatter yourself, queen. Not only am I taken by one of the biggest studs in the five boroughs but you know I don’t do that incest thing we talked about, right?”
I shook my head. “What are you doing here?”
“Machyl,” Damaris’ voice echoed through the apartment and I glanced back to find her approaching. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Aw,” Machyl simpered, pressing one finger into the dimple in his cheek and twisting it. “Look at the happy couple.”
“Go wash your mouth out with drain de-clogger,” Damaris spat, reaching around me to close the door. “That’s the only thing that can cut through all the shit you talk. Now get out of my sight.” She slammed the door in his face, and then started fumbling with the deadbolts, trying to lock them. I helped her.
She turned and walked back the way she had come, muttering to herself. She smelled damp and the artificial vanilla scent of the shower gel trailed behind her. She came to a stop, her arms folded, tension radiating from every line of her body.
I frowned.
Something was wrong.
Something has been wrong this entire time, the voice said in my mind. And you, like the worthless moron that you are, have not been seeing it.
I decided to resolutely ignore the voice.
“What’s wrong?” I said, for what felt like the millionth time.
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