hidden

by Tomas Mournian

  Pony’s in my spot, curled up, dead, or asleep. Drool dribbles out his pink, bow-tie-shaped mouth. A tin sits next to his head. I pick it up, unscrew the top and sniff. Tobacco. Gross. That explains the dribbling drool. I climb off the bed. Tonight, I’ll sleep on the floor.

  INVISIBLE

  Chapter 68

  Halloween.

  Sixty minutes to freedom. Everyone runs around the safe house, laughing and screaming. We spent the day getting dressed. A few hours ago, we started putting on makeup.

  J.D.’s costume is simple: sky blue midi (tiny tee cut off right below his breastbone), plastic vampire fangs and white face. His lips are dark red with temple-to-temple black slashes across his face. His mohawk’s dyed magenta. Spiked, his ’do looks like an underworld security fence tipped with purple razor blades. A cross between Dracula and Futuristic The Last of the Mohicans. I’m running a Best Costume Contest in my head: J.D. wins First Place.

  The closet door opens. Hammer steps out. Boberella bends over and zips up knee-high boots. Hammer’s costume isn’t much more than a tiny, rhinestone-covered thong and iridescent paint smeared over his body-by-Michelangelo.

  The closet door’s open. I peek through the crack. Peanuts. Topless, she turns and sees me. Whomp! The door slams shut.

  Hammer slips a CD into the old boom box, jacks the volume on a generic house track (“Alice / Nadya / Sell me …”) and dances, turning the safe house into a strip club. I’d guess he’s going as a go-go boy (or, working as one?). He grabs a sparkly cowboy hat and white gloves lined with fringe, Madonna (circa, a while ago). Moving, grooving, his body shimmers and shines, a human rainbow. The glam body makeup catching the light.

  I wear tight pants, identical to J.D.’s, except mine are white. Anita wanted me to go shirtless but (a) I’ve got a dork chest, and (b) I get cold easily. Anita made a sheer (see-through) shirt thing. It’s not really warm, modest (or, my style), but it’s better than naked.

  Earlier, she nudged my shoulder and motioned to the bathroom. “Time to dye.” She calls my new hair color “dead movie star blond.” My hair was barely dry when she switched on the clippers and buzzed my scalp. Chop-chop, five minutes later, I was mohawked.

  “What the hell are you?” Kidd cracked.

  “Angel-A,” I said. “My costume’s more of a look.”

  “Yeah, if you’re in seventh grade and that’s your idea of sexy.”

  “If you’re gonna mop my look,” J.D. said. “You need product.” He whipped out a giant tub of green gel and styled my ’do into a proper homo’hawk.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, setting it all in place with a rainfall of toxic hairspray. “Look at us, bro’. We’re ebony and ivory.”

  “Or, alterniverse twins,” I said, referring to the Xena Warrior Princess Twins, Crazy Sandy and Elena, those crazy-beautiful dykes who rescued me.

  “Done?”

  “Almost. Makeup.” Careful, he drew lines across my face.

  “Accessories.” Alice / Nadya drapes a fake pearl necklace around my head, a minicrown. Marci slips wings over my shoulders. Kidd tried to wear the wings, but they didn’t fit. Watching him struggle to pull them on over his broad shoulders, I think, “Evil Stepsister.”

  When everyone’s done tarting me up, I look in the mirror. I’m more like Angel-A than Punk Rock Jailbait.

  Done and dressed, I sit back and watch. Alice / Nadya works on her costume: layers of blue, chiffon material, matching veil and crown. She sticks twelve candles in the crown. Using Anita’s fish bowl makeup mirrors, Alice / Nadya fills in her pursed lips with bright red lipstick.

  “What’s that thing on your head?”

  “A minora.”

  “A wha’nora?”

  “You’ll see,” she says, tracing her lids with kohl and blue eyeliner.

  “What are you?” Kidd jokes. “The angel with a birth defect?”

  “Remember Joey?” Alice / Nadya says, daintily adding three tiny lines just outside her left lid. Marilyn Monroe did that, too.

  “I do,” J.D. says. He sits, perched on the kitchen’s windowsill, smoking a joint. He’s getting high. Preparing to take flight. He holds out the roach. I shake my head.

  “Hell, ya, gimme some’a that,” Pony says, and takes the Mary J. He’s a cross-dressed Daisy Mae: blue-and-white gingham print dress, ruffled cocktail waitress top and wig—blond pigtails. Anita painted red circles on his cheeks and dotted his face with mascara. It looks like he has really bad combination skin: blackheads and chicken pox. His fire engine red lips shine, hard and beautiful, dipped in shellac.

  “Was Joey the crazy guy who let you spit in his mouth at parties?” J.D. exhales. I don’t partake, but I like the scent: incense with an edge.

  “Joey’s the one who let you spit in his mouth?”

  “Help.” Peanuts steps out the closet, pointing to s / his head. “They won’t stay on.”

  “He’s the one,” Alice / Nadya says, mid-eyelid, reaching over and adjusting Peanuts’s headpiece, a dozen green, rubber snakes. “You could put anything in his mouth.”

  Peanuts nods. The snakes shimmy. “The boy who swallowed the spider the size of a cellie?”

  “Yeah,” Alice / Nadya says, returning to lining her eyes. Costume plus makeup, I’m guessing Scheherazade. Or, Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra (the real Egyptian monarchess being many, many shades darker than these two). “And remember how he had that extra nipple?”

  “—really good at crank phone calls.”

  “—triple back flips.”

  “And could suck his own cock.”

  “Ready?” J.D. says, stands and looks at me.

  “Boys,” Marci says. “We’re not ready.”

  J.D. grabs my hand and walks us to the front door.

  “Hey! Guys!” Marci calls out. “I told you, wait up!”

  “Shouldn’t we—”

  “Hell, no,” J.D. says, opens the front door and steps out. I follow. He pauses and lights a cigarette. “We ‘wait’ for them, we’ll be there all night.”

  I don’t tell him, but I’m a little worried about going outside-outside. Everybody’s nervous. We were ready to leave hours ago. He propels down stairs, taking two, three, four steps at a time.

  “Dude, you ever seen Marci wait for us to eat?”

  Chapter 69

  We step down off the stairs into the lobby. I look at the floor-to-ceiling mirror. It takes me a second before I realize the two boys in the reflection are … us. The two cutest bois in all of San Francisco. We’re destined to get more looks than Louisiana food stamps.

  “Fuck prom,” I say, parting the front door’s dirty lace curtains and peering out at the street. It’s packed. (Surfing the Web, I read Burning Man started here, at Land’s End.) People shout, laugh, dance. Bare flesh flashes under barely there costumes. I reach for the doorknob. I want to dive into this beautiful, moving tide of humanity.

  “Hey,” J.D. says. “Let’s wait a few.”

  It’s been a while. Anxious, I look at the stairs.

  “Does everyone think Halloween lasts three nights?”

  “People!” Marci marches downstairs. The kids follow. She installs herself, guard style, at the front door. “We leave the building in pairs, one pair every five minutes.” We surge toward the front door. Marci blocks it. “Wait! Where’s Anita?”

  “Fuck that,” Peanuts grumbles. “We’re not livin’ on drag time!”

  But s / he doesn’t move, and I know why. We want to see Anita’s getup. Sewing it was a top secret project, the Area 51 of Halloween costume manufacture.

  Kidd glares at me. No mystery why he’s mad: His costume’s lame, a brown papoose (really, a stuffed backpack), corn husks and feathers sticking up, out his head. He’s shirtless—and hot (yawn, Hammer’s way hotter)—and wears moccasins with his loincloth. He’s a post-op, she-to-he Pocahontas.

  A stethoscope’s draped over Marci’s Doctor Marvelous white overcoat. A tiny digital camera hangs on the cord. She holds it up. “Before
you leave, disclose your psychosis.”

  “Punk Rock Jailbait,” I say. A flash pops and bathes me in white light. I feel famous for a second.

  “Next.”

  “Dwaculaaaaa!” J.D. hisses, bares his fangs, lifts his arms and turns his black cape into giant wings.

  “Pocahantas!” Kidd steps out, twirls, left hand in the air, right foot out, bouncing down into a lap dancer squat.

  “Or,” I think, “the Skanky Squaw.”

  “Squirtle,” Peanuts says. “The stuff dreams are made of!”

  “Or nightmares?” Kidd says. “Anyway, who gives a fuck about Squirtle? Star-Belly Sneetches’d be all over him, beating—”

  “Girrrlll!” Marci says, staring at the stairs. I look at J.D. and mouth, “Let’s go?” He doesn’t see me. He and everyone else are transfixed.

  A shadow darkens the wall. A foot wrapped in a green high heel steps down.

  Pauses.

  “Work it, girl!” Hammer shouts. “Woooorrrrkkk!”

  Anita’s legs are fantastic, all long and showgirlie, wrapped in shiny nylons. She draws it out, revealing her showgirl self very slowly.

  Peanuts was right about drag time. We’ll be leaving five hours from now. On full display, Anita stops. Dramatic. The top of the stairs being the pinnacle, forcing us all to lift our eyes. Arms up, left foot turned out, knee cocked, it’s the Tah-dah! moment. The Showgirl slowly moves, turning like she stands on an invisible, rotating pedestal.

  We hoot and holla, make catcalls and whistle. Anita merely nods, a queen barely aware of her subjects. She doesn’t smile. Glamour is grim.

  “Aiiigggt, fa-fa-fa-furrrrrrssssssttttt!” Kidd barks.

  I go, “Huh?”

  J.D. leans over. “Famous fierce.” Word.

  Anita moves among us costumed mortals. Her outfit dazzles: headdress, mini-microbikini, heels, and freaky fluorescent colored tribal makeup.

  “You are?”

  “Dahhhhling …” she says, drawing out suspense over her true-secret self. “I am The Interplanetary Brazilian Samba Zone Goddess.”

  “Rules. One, back by dawn. Two, stick together. Three—”

  Chapter 70

  We burst out the Cretan. The sidewalk’s crowded. I stop, breathless, a combination of brain-body freeze and shock.

  Freedom. I forgot. Half-alive, tiptoeing to and fro from bunk bed and bathroom and back has changed me. Half-naked in the Tenderloin, I feel free, really and truly free. Giddy, glorious, gay and glamourous, costumes don’t matter, it’s the intention.

  I dismiss all thoughts of bounty hunters. Let them lurk on side streets. Me and J.D., we’re going to go get lost. Blend into city streets overflowing with partiers, revelers, dreamers, mystics, witches, warlocks and fairies. J.D. takes my hand and pulls me into the throng of magick, mischief and mirth makers.

  “No—” I say, and hold back. “Wait.”

  I want to absorb the energy given off by these creatures. I shut my eyes, take a breath and say, “My people.” I open my eyes, a smile on my face. My gaze is immediately drawn to a cluster of faeires. Our wings light up, and twinkle. They suck drinks through straws, spitting mischievous fountains at passersby.

  “Look,” J.D. says. Alice / Nadya and Anita sweep by, larger than life. Anita reigns, the Queen of the Night. “Check it out. Alice / Nadya’s on fire.”

  The crown’s candles are lit, flames dancing in the breeze.

  “Yo, Golda Meir!” I call out.

  “Hah hah!” She laughs, stops and strikes a pose, arms thrown up into the air. The gesture splits the blue chiffon fabric down the middle. “I’m the Flaming Menorah!”

  “Wow.” J.D.’s eyes widen. “What a rack.”

  Under the blue chiffon, Alice / Nadya’s buck nekkid (except for a floss-sized G-string). Two Playboy centerfold–sized breasts sit high atop her body, bare except for gold Star of David pasties glued to her nipples.

  “C’mon!” J.D. says, tugs my hand and pulls me away. “Time to move. We’ll see them later.”

  “But—” I look back. Alice / Nadya’s gone except for the trail of Hebrew camp songs she leaves in her wake.

  “Wait. I want to look.”

  I feel like I’m missing out on seeing thousands of other insanely cool costumes and creatures.

  Maybe people see us and, right before we vanish, say, “Those beautiful boys.” Tonight, we’re blurs, captured in stolen pictures and flashes, memory.

  “We’ve got a date.”

  “With who.”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  I don’t like the sounds of this. It maybe Halloween, but I’m not into three-ways.

  Chapter 71

  “That’s it,” J.D. says, excited.

  “McDonald’s?”

  “Yes!” he says, rushing toward the puny, yellow (not golden) arches.

  “Ronald. McDonald. That’s your date?” I say, careful to make it his, not mine. “I think I wait this one out.”

  Nearby, there’s the Civic Center. I’ll go explore the wide open space and fountain.

  “Wish me luck,” J.D. says. I watch him walk away. My heart sinks. I know the reason why he’s walking into Mickey D’s: Oskar, the supposed love of his life.

  Until he leaves the fast-food fluorescent cube, I’ll wait. I remind myself, for what? The tenth? Hundredth? Thousandth? time—J.D. and I, we’re not in love.

  Fuck that.

  Denial fail.

  I push open the glass door. I’m the lost Charlie’s Angel. I want to see the competition.

  Inside, I search for J.D. His magenta mohawk and black cape move through the crowd.

  Two guys follow him. They look like pedophiles from that show, To Catch a Predator. The types who agree to meet a 13 y.o. for a burger and side order of diddle. (And when they’re caught say, “I just came here for something to eat!”)

  I’ve seen them before, but I don’t remember where from. Are they wearing costumes? Or, are their oversized parka jackets and combat boots real work clothes? Viewed from the rear, the duo could be the same Rent-A-Escort-A-holes who nabbed me from my bedroom, shoved me into a backseat and drove me to Serenity Ridge.

  They stop, pause and look back. I see their faces: Dave and Seth, a.k.a., the Pigfuckers!

  Maybe it’s detoxing off the tranks or being away from Sadaam “Dad” Hussein, but my intuition’s come back. Something bad’s about to go down. The little voice in my head chimes, “And you’d better do something about it!”

  Outside, Hammer poses. He’s a Market Street sidewalk show stopper.

  “Help!” I grab Hammer’s left, cantaloupe-sized bicep. “J.D.’s in trouble—”

  Hammer turns and walks toward the Mickey D’s.

  “Find a pay phone, call 911 and make a bomb threat. Now!”

  Chapter 72

  X-nay on the pay phone. Where’s AT&T when you need to make a bomb threat? I run back inside. The Pigfuckers’ big asses spill over soda-pop-sized seats. Their feet jiggle, nervous as girls on first dates.

  J.D. sits with a woman. If Oskar was the bait, Mom is the hook, Pigfuckers are the fishermen and J.D.’s the prize.

  Mamacita. Let’s just say, if Dracula’s nephew had gone in drag, he would look something like this woman’s daughter. The Addamses’ family reunion.

  “Mijo.” Her voice oozes insincerity, “This new place will help you.”

  “I’m fine! You—you and your fucked-up ideas. That’s what needs a cure!”

  Hammer walks to the table between the Addams Family and bounty hunters, plops his butt-naked ass down, go-go boots dangling off the side. I wonder if the boots are steel tipped. I’d love to see him break some Pigfucker face.

  His legs wide, Hammer’s big basket spills out onto the table. He plants his palms on the surface and pushes his chest out, pure, 100%, All-American Boi Beefcake. He moans, drops his head and gyrates his ass.

  To keep J.D. in their crosshairs, the Pigfuckers are forced to look at Hammer’s exaggerated cam whore / strip
per moves.

  “Oh, baby—” Hammer groans, bouncing his body and rapping out a Lil’ Ru ditty, “I love the way she freak with no panties on….”

  Pigfuckers shake their heads, grossed out by Hammer’s homo-porno-rap. Pigfucker #1—Dave? Seth?—hollers, “Shut up!”

  “Acting?” An alarmed voice refocuses my attention. She’s been nominated for her leading role as Most Dreadful Ma-macita. Her startled face suggests she thinks she’s on TV. “Acting like what?”

  “Acting all ‘innocent,’” J.D. says, sharp. “Don’t play games with me. I know why you sent me there. Why can’t you just be honest about that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh, come on!” J.D. says, shoulders rolled forward. I feel bad for him. He wants to fight but, facing her, he’s deflated. He sits back in his chair, arms crossed. “Yes! You do!”

  I’m tempted to jump up on the orange table and join Hammer on his makeshift go-box. Dirty dancing, I can make J.D. jealous and detonate the Pigfuckers’ heads.

  A little voice cautions me, tells me to hang back. These bounty hunters might be out to score an RTC runaway Twofer. After all, I was featured on the side of a milk carton.

  “Mami, how would you like it if someone put their hand up your ass? You know, they did that to me in there.”

  We’re surrounded by dozens of Adams and Steves who probably think we’re dumb twinks, forget about our civil rights. Fuck gay marriage. We need help. Now.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Work,” J.D. says. “But Mami, that was two—”

  “They said you left early.”

  “—years ago. What about—”

  “Night after night,” she says, tone-deaf to J.D.’s words. Their conversation sounds like one between me and my parents. Everybody’s talking, nobody’s listening.

  I move around the column to a spot where I can see “Mami’s” face. She’s a Latina version of Haifa, my stepmother. For an older lady, she’s hot. Tonight, she’s dressed to the nines: red suit, gold hoop earrings and big hair. She’s either going to a fund-raiser or dressed as Nancy Reagan.