My Fairy Godmother is a Drag Queen

by David Clawson

  “What’s going on?” I asked finally.

  Iris tossed her clutch to the couch, just barely missing me with it. “Your stepsister was the belle of the ball! All of those other little jealous bitches were just drooling with envy! It was fantastic!”

  Although it was still odd to see Iris looking so happy, this definitely sounded more like her.

  “Now, Mom,” Kimberly said with less than convincing modesty, “it was just one night of dancing. We don’t know that it means anything.”

  “Yeah,” Buck said. “I mean, he had to dance with somebody, right? Maybe he figured it was easier to keep riding the same horse.”

  Kimberly turned on him. “Just because you couldn’t even get laid by a hunchbacked hooker if you tried!”

  Buck languidly lowered himself onto the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “Ha! Shows what you know. I nailed one of the waitresses.” Noticing the eyes Iris slashed at him, he added, “I used a condom.”

  “Buck,” Iris said, “if you do anything to screw this up for her, for all of us, I’m sending you to your father.”

  Buck briefly lost the cavalier attitude he generally wore as his look darkened and he mumbled, “Like you know where he is.”

  “Buck,” Iris said, then crossed over to the bar and poured herself a healthy shot of bourbon. It was rare that she drank anything other than wine, but there were moments when she’d take whatever was closest at hand. Mentions of their father were high on that list.

  “Fine,” Buck said, pretending to wipe lint off of his trousers. “But I’m just saying it was a bunch of dances, that’s all. She may never hear from him again.” Then, a little cruelly to his mother, “Guys do that, you know?”

  Iris threw back a long swig before answering, “It was over two hours, and he never danced with another girl.”

  “And they did ask,” Kimberly said with a tone of fond reminiscing.

  Now maybe you have figured out everything that they were talking about, but I had not. I mean, clearly Kimberly had met someone at the ball who Iris thought she could sink her hopes of redemption into, but there were a lot of really rich people there, and more than a few single men who would be plenty happy to screw their courage to Kimberly’s sticking place. So, I said, “I take it Kimberly met someone?”

  Iris smiled with a cool pride. “No, she met the only one.”

  Iris and Kimberly shared a giggle, then Kimberly actually waltzed around the room with an imaginary suitor as she said, “I met the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful boy ever. He’s smart, and funny, and the only thing better than the way he looked at me was the way all of those bitches looked when he turned them down because he wanted to dance more with me.”

  “Bitches,” Iris said.

  “So who was it?” I asked.

  Kimberly and Iris smiled at each other, enjoying the suspense of keeping me waiting. So Buck stole their thunder by saying in a derisive tone, “The most eligible bachelor alive.”

  “Who?” I asked, still not getting it.

  Buck rolled his eyes. “J.J. Kennerly, you butt pirate.”

  Obviously, I knew that wasn’t possible, so I said, “But that’s not possible.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’s not possible?’” Iris said. “He’s lucky to find a girl like Kimberly.”

  “No, I didn’t mean—It’s just that—I, he, we—I thought. …”

  “Easy for you to say,” Buck said.

  Kimberly turned to face me, putting her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  As reality slowly sank in, I couldn’t exactly tell her that, no, I was not happy for her, because she had just ruined my life, broken my heart, proven once again that I was a stupid idiot, and, worse yet, that I was evidently one of those gay guys I hated who thought that any man they wanted was secretly gay. Instead I quietly offered my congratulations and excused myself, saying it was late and I had a lot of homework to get done when I woke up.

  As I returned to the privacy of my own room to lick my wounds, I was honestly angrier with myself than anything. How had I let myself believe such a ridiculous fantasy? Because that’s what it had all been. A stupid, silly fantasy taking place in my silly, stupid head. You’d think a kid who’d never really known his mother and had lost his father to suicide little more than a week before his fourteenth birthday would have learned that life was bitter, and cruel, and hard, but evidently I was too idiotic to even learn a lesson spelled out that clearly.

  Perhaps I’d picked up a little drama queen bug in my night out with the drag queens. It took almost an hour of lying in bed beating myself up over my foolhardiness before I managed to fall asleep.

  Since it was Sunday, at least I didn’t have to deal with school when I woke up still smarting from my self-inflicted folly of the night before. So I would be single and alone for the rest of my life. Big deal. No surprise there. Who needs love anyway?! (I’m not the only one who has these moods, right?)

  As I threw off the covers and got out of bed, I resolved to be cheerful throughout a day I would make sure was productive and busy. If you can’t beat ‘em, distract the hell out of yourself, that’s my mantra. I’d pretty much always been the first person in the house to arise, and now that Kimberly only had one afternoon class at NYU and Buck wasn’t matriculating anywhere, I usually had time to myself even during the school week. But given the mood I was fighting against, I decided that sitting alone with a pile of homework might not be the best way to begin, so I decided to get some fresh bagels and then pick up some produce at the corner bodega.

  As I looked for bananas with just the right amount of ripeness, a voice behind me said, “Yo, homey, where’d you disappear to?”

  I turned around to see a slightly thuggish-looking black guy in oversized hip-hop clothes looking at me expectantly. I scanned my memory for a scenario where I might have met him, but I really couldn’t think of anything, so I said, “Um, I think maybe you have me confused with someone else?”

  He tilted his head. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  I tried, I really did, but still I drew a blank. Even after he pushed his face closer to mine. Uncomfortably close. Still nothing.

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s me. Coco.”

  I pulled my head back, taking in this entirely masculine, short-haired black guy, dressed in a way that would have made me question if I was being racist or just reasonably cautious if I tried to avoid crossing his path too closely, and I just couldn’t see it.

  He sucked his tongue, tch, leaned in closer and started sarcastically mumbling, “Baby, baby, baby, where did those clothes go,” to the tune of “Where Did Our Love Go?”

  I would like to state for the record that I did not gasp at this moment. But I was still pretty shocked. “Coco? Really?”

  He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “Shit, you probably think RuPaul is a natural blonde.”

  “Is that really you?”

  “As real as a drag queen can be.”

  “You … you look so different.”

  “If I walked around like that all day where I live, my ass would be raped and dead. Trust.” Then he looked down at the crisp white tennis shoes on his feet. “Besides, these are much more comfortable.”

  “I’ll bet.” I lifted the produce in my hands and said, “I need to pay for these.”

  He walked with me to the cash register, and as we approached he gave a curt nod to the cashier, saying, “‘Sup.” The cashier nodded back, and I suppressed the desire to laugh. It was just so hard to wrap myself around the idea that this tough-guy pseudo-thug was Coco.

  Once we got outside and were headed back to my place, I immediately began to apologize for my disappearance. “Coco, I am so sorry—”

  “Duane.”

  “What?”

  “My name. It’s Duane.”

  “Duane?

  “Yeah, Duane.”

  “Not Coco?”

  “Not when I’m dressed like this. Not mos
t of the time, really. I’m only Coco when … well, when I’m Coco.”

  “So how do I know which one I’m supposed to call you?”

  “Dawg, you didn’t even know I was Coco until I made your bitch-ass believe me. Is it really that unclear? When I’m like this, I’m me. When I’m like that, I’m Coco. Clear enough?”

  And, actually, it was. The only hard part was wrapping my head around the fact that both extremely different personas existed in the same person. There was just one more thing I wanted to know. “But which one is the real you?”

  Duane shrugged. “They both are.”

  I nodded, accepting this, then asked, “Does this mean you’re bi?”

  The right side of his mouth curled up in a smile he was trying to restrain, and giving just a bit of Coco-tude, he leaned in and said, “Child, the only fish I eat is at Red Lobster. Can I get an amen?”

  It took me a couple seconds to realize that it hadn’t been a rhetorical question. “Oh, uh, amen?” I said.

  He shook his head. “So what happened to you?”

  I was still too embarrassed to tell anyone about what I’d mistakenly thought had gone on between J.J. Kennerly and me, so I just told him I’d freaked out when I heard my stepsister coming while I was waiting for them after the show—and trying to put a little guilt on him by asking what had kept them so long, especially when I knew that eventually in the narrative I was going to have to let him know that I was missing one of those very expensive shoes—and I apologized if he’d left the ball early because of me.

  He looked at me confused when I said that, and I said that since he was here with me so early I figured he must not have gone to bed too late, and he laughed. “I haven’t been to bed yet. But Kevin—that’s Special Kaye’s real name—borrowed those shoes from work and needs them back before ten.”

  I looked at my cell phone and saw that it was 8:32. Ugh.

  “You know,” I said trying to deflect, “if you hadn’t thrown my shoes away, I could have worn them home. But since you did just toss them into that trash can—”

  “Kevin has a motto. Two things should be used once and then thrown away or given to charity—shoes and men.”

  “That seems kind of wasteful.”

  “I know. Good shoes are so hard to find.”

  We’d reached the brownstone, and once we walked up the front steps and through the front door, I was surprised by the sight of Kimberly, Iris, and Buck all sitting in the living room in their pajamas and bathrobes. And they were surprised by the sight of me with company.

  “Uh, hi, this is Co—Duane. This is my friend Duane.”

  Kimberly and Buck exchanged a significant big-eyed, knowing look. Iris just looked terrified.

  “What are you guys even doing up so early?” I asked.

  “We couldn’t sleep,” Kimberly said, motioning at Iris.

  “They woke me up,” Buck said. “I was sleeping fine.” Then he brightened up. “But I’m sure glad I didn’t miss this.” He looked at Duane, tilted his chin and said, “‘Sup.”

  “‘Sup,” Duane said.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, we just have to get something from my room. We’ll be right back.” After tossing the bags of food to Buck, I pushed Duane up the staircase, but we hadn’t even made it one flight when Iris called in a voice straining with absolutely no success at sounding nonchalant. “Chris, could we see you down here for a second?”

  I stopped, desperately wanting to simply ignore her, flee upwards to my room, and slam the door shut. But when I remembered that only one of two expected shoes was up there, I told Duane I’d just be a moment.

  Trying for casualness, I leaned my head through the doorway to the living room. “Yes?”

  “Come on in,” Iris said, taking a long sip from a glass of orange juice which was almost certainly actually a mimosa or a screwdriver.

  I took a couple steps in.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “That’s my friend Duane. I introduced him, remember?”

  “Chris has a friend,” Buck said.

  “What kind of friend?” Kimberly said.

  Iris jerked her head at them with annoyance. “Would you two stop that?! It’s preposterous. I mean, that fellow is …” She searched her mind for the word she wanted that wouldn’t get her in trouble if the PC Police were listening. She settled on a term she still felt the need to whisper: “African-American.”

  Kimberly rolled her eyes. “Mother, even you’ve heard of jungle fever.”

  “Bow-chicka-bow-bow,” Buck said.

  “Stop it!” Iris said, putting her hands up to her ears. “I won’t even hear of it!”

  With a rare flash of irritation, I asked heatedly, “Do any of you have a legitimate question? Otherwise, I have a guest waiting for me upstairs. We’ll be right back down, I promise.”

  Suddenly Iris had an even more panicked expression on her face. “You sent him up there alone?”

  Disgusted with them, I turned around without responding and dashed up to the third floor. Duane was sitting patiently on my bed with his hands folded in his lap. “White people are so uptight,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  Embarrassed by my family, whether he’d heard any of it or not, I reached into my closet and pulled out the suit jacket, presenting it to him with overly-solicitous pride. “See, as good as when you put it on me.”

  “Great. But where are the shoes?” He took the jacket from me and lay it over one of his thighs.

  “Right. The shoes.” I turned back to the closet, bent down, picked up the one shoe I had, stayed bent down hoping lighting might strike me dead so that I wouldn’t have to admit I’d lost the other one, and then, when a deus ex machina failed to save me, finally faced up to what I’d been avoiding and turned to him with the one shoe held out.

  “Yeah, so here’s the one I have.”

  Duane took it. “The one you have?”

  “Yes, the one I have.”

  “Shoes, as you know, come in pairs.”

  “Yes, that I do know.”

  “But this is only one.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So where is the other one?”

  “Well, um, I don’t know if you’re going to believe this, but I swear it’s the truth. I mean, I really, really, really swear I am not making this up, as unbelievable as it may sound.”

  “Do you realize how much that shoe cost?”

  “Yes, I do actually know that, and believe me that knowledge does not make this any easier, but perhaps if you’ll bear with me for just a moment. You see, uh, the last time I saw that other shoe it was in the hand of … um … J.J. Kennerly, actually.”

  Duane looked down at the shoe in his hand, then around the room, then back at me. “J.J. Kennerly?” I nodded. “Jason Kennerly has the other shoe?”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know if he still has the other shoe. But the last time I saw it he did.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “As you may recall, on occasion I had just the slightest trouble keeping them on my feet.”

  “That does sound familiar.”

  “And then when you guys kept me waiting after the show—”

  “So now this is my fault?”

  “Do we really need to assign blame?” I asked with what I thought sounded like exceeding understanding and reason.

  Then Duane did something that truly shocked me. He shrugged, said, “Eh, that’ll teach the bitch to lend out shit he can’t afford,” and stood up. I didn’t know what to say, and I just stood there staring at him.

  “You going to walk me down?” he asked. “I don’t want to get frisked without my escort. Although, damn, your brother is fine.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “Who said I cared about conversation?”

  The entire way down I kept apologizing, and he kept telling me not to worry about it, and with a quick wave goodbye to the gawking trio in the living room, we were suddenly at the door, and I realiz
ed I really hated the idea of never again seeing the only person to whom I’d ever actually admitted that I was gay.

  “Um,” I said, keeping my voice low so that nosy ears in the next room wouldn’t hear, “I really had fun hanging out with you last night.”

  Duane smiled. “Me, too.”

  “I really appreciate everything you did for me.”

  “Hey, everyone needs a fairy godmother once in a while, right?”

  I nodded, starting to get the sense that maybe I was the only one who wasn’t ready for our acquaintance to end. It made me feel sad, and I guess that showed, because Duane drew his eyebrows together and asked, “Um, did you want to hang out again sometime?”

  “That’d be great!” I said, no doubt smiling too hard. It sure felt that way, at least. “I mean … well … you’re the only one who knows.”

  He looked like he was about to say something but then thought better of it. “Look me up on Facebook. Use my Coco page.”

  “Coco Chanel Jones?”

  “There’s only one.” He smiled with a wink, then turned to open the door, and just as he started to walk out, he SCREAMED at the top of his lungs, jumped back, and slammed the door shut with a THUD!

  “Wha—” I said.

  Duane, a look of confused wonder and disbelief, pointed at the door.

  “Chris, what’s going on out there?” Iris called from the living room, the urgent fear clear in her voice.

  Not feeling like I was going to get a timely answer from Duane, I quickly pushed my eye to the security hole in the door, and almost added my own scream.

  Standing on the other side was J.J. Kennerly!

  CHAPTER 5

  OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD

  If you’ve ever thought it was unlikely that someone would look better in a sweatshirt and jeans than in a tuxedo, I can tell you that they can. At least J.J. Kennerly could. But what was he doing here? I made the bold decision to crack open the door and maybe ask him.