Drag Queen Beauty Pageant

by Malachite Splinters

  Her head was bowed and I really hoped she wasn’t going to cry again.

  I had tried to do things to make her happy and clearly it hadn’t worked.

  The shopping, getting her stuff from the apartment, the guest bedroom, ordering sushi. It was all a wasted effort.

  Well, I wasn’t perfect, I had never claimed to be. I felt a flash of anger and clenched my fists.

  “Nothing,” she said. I could see the muscle working in her jaw. She turned to me, and I saw her force her mouth into a smile and her eyebrows up her forehead. She said in a bright fake voice, “That’s the sushi, right? Let’s eat!”

  I didn’t even say anything in response, just walked toward the den with the delivery bag of food and she followed.

  “Wow,” Damaris said again as she took in the den.

  “It’s nothing,” I muttered. “It’s not a real cinema room or anything.”

  I had managed to persuade mama to upgrade the TVs a couple of years ago which was why we actually had decent sized flat screens in the apartment.

  When we moved in the landlord had provided, I kid you not, those actual old TVs that are about two feet deep with glass screens.

  “Looks good to me,” Damaris said, flopping down in one of the recliners and sighing appreciatively.

  I sat down in the other one and started putting the sushi on the small table between the chairs.

  I glanced at her as I took the covers off the plastic platters and doled out the disposable chopsticks and packets of soy sauce, ginger and wasabi.

  She hadn’t said what she said to Machyl just to defend me. That was my initial reaction, but now that I thought about it, that didn’t seem to explain everything she had said.

  I don’t want to talk to you right now.

  And she had slammed the door in his face. It definitely wasn’t just to defend me.

  In fact, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t be sure she had heard anything that Machyl had said to me prior to when I heard her voice. She might have just come out of the bedroom and caught sight of Machyl standing in the open door.

  So what was going on? She’d had an argument with Machyl? But then how to explain Machyl last night at the Ethiopian restaurant? He wouldn’t have been defending her like that to me if they were fighting, would he? If Machyl and Damaris had had a fight, when had that happened?

  Now if I could get my hands on his real eyes and squeeze them til they pop! I bit my lip hard to suppress the waves of terror lapping at me like waves of blood after a lakeside massacre.

  I took the drinks out of the bag and set them on the table.

  I don’t want you to be thinking there’s space under my roof for no two-dollar whore.

  I winced at the memory of his words. I had never heard Duane Tyrone even so much as scold Damaris.

  Had Machyl, Damaris and Duane Tyrone somehow had a fight about something? But when? Everything had seemed fine at the house meeting on Thursday.

  “It’s ready,” I said weakly.

  “Mmm,” Damaris said, eyeing the enormous sushi platter and ripping open the paper chopstick packet.

  I looked at the food doubtfully. I didn’t feel hungry. I couldn’t possibly eat when I was this scared and uncomfortable.

  Damaris snapped the wooden chopsticks and picked up a piece of salmon sushi and popped it in her mouth. “Mm,” she made a face. “So good,” she said with her mouth full, then grinned at me goofily.

  I smiled wanly. She reached over and poked me with her chopsticks. I batted them away, and when I met her eyes she winked. She seemed to be trying to cheer me up.

  “Eat,” she said. “If you lose any weight, you’re going to disappear.”

  I pursed my lips. The last thing I needed right now was a reminder of how small and weak I was. I crossed my arms, feeling terrible.

  “Oh, don’t take it like that,” she said. “You want to be this way, don’t you?”

  She opened the soy sauce and poured it into a little plastic pot seemingly provided for the purpose, then opened the ginger and wasabi, dumped them in as well and started mixing the whole thing together.

  “I love Japanese food,” she breathed, holding the mixture to her nose.

  “What do you mean, I want to be this way?” I said, my voice tight.

  “I mean…” she said, looking at me. “You like the way you look. Don’t you?”

  I picked up the chopstick packet and slowly tore it open.

  “My cousin Rodrigo…” I took the chopsticks out and snapped them apart, rubbed them against each other, which was what I had seen people doing in Japanese restaurants. “He’s back in Santo Domingo after graduating. He went to college in Toronto. He’s the same height as me. When we were little they always said I looked identical to him when he was my age. I’ve seen pictures and it’s true. He was a weedy little kid.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But that changed when he hit puberty, whereas my build didn’t. And he’s all sporty, and…”

  “Is he straight?” Damaris asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, and for some reason the thought that flashed across my mind was, Is she asking that because she wants a straight version of me?

  “Anyway, he’s into weightlifting and stuff. He’s not huge. He never will be. But he’s in pretty good shape. He must weigh twice what I do.”

  “And you’re saying you… want to look like him, or you don’t?”

  “No,” I said, staring at the couch. “I don’t want to look like that.”

  “Well,” Damaris said. “That’s fine, isn’t it?”

  I frowned and didn’t look at her.

  What I wanted was irrelevant if it brought me nothing but misery and shame.

  Didn’t she see that?

  It might be in my nature to be the way I was, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t keenly aware of the negative consequences.

  “I’ve tried to be different,” I said. “Well. I’ve thought about it. But I can’t do it. It feels wrong.”

  I could feel her eyes on me. “You’ve tried to be… uh… butch, you mean?”

  I nodded silently.

  “Well, that’s—that’s exactly how it is for me, too,” she said. “I know who I am inside and I can’t live any other way. That’s a good thing, Anthony. You should be proud.”

  Why would I be proud? Everyone knew that there was nothing worse than a sissy.

  It was far, far better to be a trans woman like Damaris. She actually was a woman.

  I just had everything and nothing a woman had, and it made me not a man, nor a woman, which I wasn’t anyway, but then most people didn’t think I was a man either.

  Not to mention that it meant Damaris didn’t find me attractive. And that knowledge alone was enough to make me wish I could be someone else entirely.

  I hate myself.

  “Buck up,” Damaris said, reaching across and brushing my cheek with the back of two fingers. “Plenty of people would give an arm and a leg to look like you, you know. I wish I was your size instead of being a giant.”

  I looked up at her with a surge of feeling in my chest. “I think you’re perfect,” I said.

  When my eyes met hers, I suddenly regretted saying it and wished I could go back in time and undo it all.

  I wished I could go back to Friday afternoon when I walked into that dressing room with that cold sweating Coke in my hand, and instead of overhearing Damaris and Marcus I would march straight back out again and none of this would have happened.

  I would never have gone to Marcus’ place, he would never have kissed me, I would never have tried to force myself to go out with him and forget about Damaris. That had been a terrible idea. It ended up just making my feelings for her stronger.

  I would never have fought with Damaris over Marcus on Friday and I would never have lied to Duane Tyrone and faked sick.

  Machyl would never have found out about me and Marcus so he could torment me at the Ethiopian restaurant, and Damaris would never have found out about Marcus and as
ked me to go to the club on Saturday night.

  And I would never have slept with Damaris on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

  Damaris doesn’t want to go out with you, a voice said in the back of my mind. She won’t even kiss you. Not just in public. She won’t kiss you, point blank. She only properly kissed you that one time this afternoon.

  I tried to stamp the voice out, crush it into pulp.

  If I could just go back in time and un-hear Damaris’ moans in that storage closet, none of this would have happened and life would be normal and we would all be a happy family like we had been on Thursday at the meeting.

  Right?

  I felt so sick to my stomach at what that voice had said about Damaris that I couldn’t bear to eat a bite. I put the chopsticks down.

  “You’re so sweet,” she said, smiling at me and picking up another piece of sushi. “Ooh, octopus,” she said, and sank her teeth into it. “Are you really not going to eat?” She asked me after a few seconds of chewing.

  I shook my head and just opened the one of the cans of iced tea I’d ordered. I was just missing popcorn, but it was too late now.

  Oh well.

  I sat there and drank the iced tea while Damaris ate. I had ordered the biggest sushi platter and she seemed to be hungry enough to eat most of it by herself.

  Eventually she put her chopsticks down and cracked open her can of iced tea and I watched her throat muscles contract as she tipped her head back to take a long drink.

  She put the can down and patted her lips primly with a napkin. She noticed me watching her and looked away, putting the napkin down.

  “Thanks for dinner,” she said. “That was good.” She turned toward the TV and gestured at the screen. “You already loaded up the Vivesse.”

  “I thought you were watching season 12,” I said.

  She smiled tightly. “Ep eight. Have you seen it? With Monte Carla and the watermelon challenge?”

  I shook my head no. I had watched quite a lot of Vivesse, but I hadn’t made my way through all the seasons yet.

  “It’s funny,” she said.

  Her tone of voice was at odds with her words. She sounded sad somehow. She sighed and laid her head back in the chair.

  “Should I start the episode?” I asked, feeling nervous.

  She sighed again. “You’re being considerate,” she said. “Not talking about what just happened. Thanks. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I blinked at her. Anxiousness surged through me, followed by relief.

  I didn’t want to think about it, she didn't want to think about it. We were on the same page.

  If only I could get back that feeling we had last night in her bedroom, when it seemed like we could shut out the world and everyone else in it.

  Oh, you mean the feeling you had when you were about to have sex? I frowned. It was the voice again. I really needed to get rid of that voice.

  For some reason, I remembered when she had made me come last night.

  How she had stoked my love and pulled it out of me with her hand. The tenderness inside me at that time was terrifying but unbearably good.

  Now all I felt was a raw spot inside me. It was raw and it hurt with the bright, itchy pain of skin scraped off by skidding over tarmac.

  I felt my heart rate increasing again, panicky and distracting. Why did I feel like this? What was wrong?

  I felt so confused that I missed Damaris’ reply.

  “What?” I said.

  “I just said, ‘Yeah’,” she said.

  I looked at her, blinking back tears suddenly, and I quickly dropped my gaze to my lap.

  Doesn’t she love me?

  Tears slipped down my cheeks to my mortification. I wiped them away as quickly as I could, but more followed. There was no way to hide.

  “Anthony,” Damaris said, sounding concerned.

  I sniffed, and a sob cracked my chest. I put my face in my hands, shame overwhelming me as irresistibly as the tears.

  “Anthony,” Damaris said, and I heard her get up. She came and sat on the arm of the recliner. “Move over,” she said, and came down into the seat of the recliner with me.

  It was a big recliner, easily big enough for two people. I tried not to cry or look at her as she put her arms around me.

  “My poor little baby,” she said, and she picked up an unused napkin from the table and dabbed my cheeks with it.

  I choked on a sob, and I was so embarrassed that I tried to turn away. She pulled me toward her, and I gave in.

  “There, see,” she said softly, laying my head on her shoulder.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and she encircled me, stroking my back as I squeezed my eyes shut tight into her collarbone and salt tears absorbed into the t-shirt she had changed into after her shower, the same one she had been wearing last night.

  “Just cry it out,” she said. “Get it all out. Poor little thing.”

  When I lifted my head from her shoulder, she passed me a can of iced tea.

  “Here,” she said. “You need to rehydrate.”

  I sipped it, wiping my eyes. They must be all swollen and puffy. She swiped her thumb under my other eye, and put the iced tea back on the table for me.

  When she turned back to me, I leaned forward and kissed her, my heart in my mouth. My lips touched hers and I felt her gasp of surprise take the breath from me. I looked at her briefly, then nudged my lips against hers once more.

  She turned her face away.

  I froze. Nothing could be heard in the silence except for the pounding of my heart.

  “Anthony,” she said gently.

  No. I somehow knew what was coming, and I didn’t want to hear it.

  I wanted anything other than to hear what she was going to say next.

  I take it back. I take everything back.

  I want to go back to Friday.

  I promise I’ll never listen to you while you’re getting off with Marcus again.

  I promise it will never turn me on again.

  Please. Please, just let me go back.

  “I can’t be your girlfriend, Anthony,” she said, and then she looked at me.

  I didn't meet her eyes. I tried to get up.

  She held me. “Don’t—don’t, please—”

  I tried harder, pushing myself away with my hand against the back of the recliner.

  “Please don’t go,” she said, but she had already let me go and put her hands over her face. “Please don’t get mad and go.”

  I had half-risen off the chair, kneeling on one knee with my other foot on the floor, ready to go.

  My heart was racing ahead of me, seeing the front door, the hallway and the elevator, seeing the dusk falling on the streets outside and the streetlights starting to come on, and a cold, lonely wind blowing between the buildings, scattering trash in the gutters on the edges of the sidewalks.

  I looked down at her.

  She had drawn her knees up and she looked up at me from between her fingers. I could see that she was breathing hard.

  My heart quailed and I sat back down slowly on the edge of the recliner.

  “I’ve been…” she said, then stopped. She reached for the iced tea and drank, finishing the can and crushing it in her hand, putting it back on the table where it fell over. “I’ve been so lonely,” she said.

  I could see her index finger tracing a pattern on the arm of the recliner.

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what she meant.

  She put the heel of her hand in the socket of her left eye and pressed, then released it and looked at me again.

  “Could you please come back here?” She said, holding out her hand.

  I blinked.

  But she just…

  My mortification was slightly mollified by her invitation. I pursed my lips and breathed out through my nose.

  But when I met her eyes, I felt any resistance within me melt away like butter into a hot roll.

  I scooted back up the recliner and she
put her arms around me and hugged me. I hugged her back, the warmth of her body seeping into me through her clothes.

  She let go a little, but held on to me.

  “I told myself I was going to start telling the truth,” she said, not looking at me. “But it’s hard. It’s really hard to do.”

  I felt my heart starting to get hot and tender for her again. I must have misunderstood her just now. I was too quick to jump to conclusions.

  I stroked her hair with one hand.

  We were sitting in this recliner… so close together… I wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt.

  She had her eyes squeezed tightly shut and she squeezed me closer to her.

  “I can’t be your girlfriend,” she said.

  My hot heart paused before it decided to keep beating.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” I said desperately.

  “I don’t feel that way about you,” she said.

  “What?” I said helplessly. “How do you feel about me?”

  She raised her eyes to mine. “I see you as a friend,” she said.

  “How is that possible?” I meant it literally. It seemed to me an impossible statement.

  “You’re my friend,” she said more insistently. “Aren’t you?”

  I nodded, but I was frowning in confusion.

  She was holding me, and her words seemed to be counter to everything she was doing.

  “But—” she said. “I know that you—that you like women. Right?”

  I nodded. “I like women,” I said.

  “And we’re—we’re close, aren’t we? We are close now.”

  “Do you mean that figuratively,” I said, my voice choking. “Or literally?”

  She swallowed. “Either. Both. And when I feel close to you. When I feel that closeness…” she trailed off, raising her eyes to mine. “It makes me really horny.”

  I bit my lip, hard.

  Fuck.

  She looked at my bitten lip and the next thing I knew, she had closed her lips over mine.

  Our mouths opened and our tongues rolled together. I tilted my head so far to the side it hit the back of the recliner as she worked her tongue into my mouth and stroked my palate.

  Her hands were around my neck, pulling me closer. The taste and texture of her lips, teeth and tongue made me hungry for more and I felt the spark of desire kindle deep within my groin.