Swan Songs

by Swan, Tarn

  We must have looked like a scene from Little Britain. There was he in his fancy get up and spiky heels, racing down the garden path towards the car parked on the street. I was in hot pursuit, barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and handcuffed to a lump of wood. I grabbed his wrist to stop him opening the car door and he went for me, viciously lashing at me with his handbag. It was one of those heavily beaded affairs and it was like being battered with a medieval mace. I finally got under his defences and heaved him over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift holding his ankles to stop his furiously kicking heels from taking my eye out. They can be lethal weapons can stilettos. I carried him back to the house before his screeches alerted the neighbours that street theatre was taking place and resulted in an audience.

  Slamming the front door behind us I pulled off his shoes and hurled them down the hall out of harms way before setting him back on his feet. He had another go at me with his feminine flail. Anchoring him firmly against my side with my left arm I wrestled the handbag from him, tipping the contents onto the hall table and rummaging around until I found the key to the cuff. He made a break for it as I released myself from the remains of the bedpost. I caught him before he could open the front door again, hustling him, kicking and screeching, into the sitting room. Dragging off his wig, because its hard to cuddle someone with really big hair, I sat on the couch and pulled him onto my lap holding him hard against me to try and stop him lashing out. He was hysterical, yelling and swearing, trying to twist loose. He managed to free a hand and rake his fingernails down my face breaking the skin. It stung like hell and my eyes watered harder still as he then tried to separate my hair from my scalp.

  Enough was enough. I had to act. Swiftly turning him over my lap I flipped up his dress pulled down his knickers and began smacking his bottom hard. He struggled, trying to reach a hand behind to block mine while shrieking a torrent of abuse. I told him he was being spanked for disobeying my order not to leave the house, for trying to drive when he was legally banned from driving (now there’s a tale and a half) and also for scratching me and pulling my hair. I also made clear that if he ever bloody well handcuffed me to anything without my permission again, he’d be one very sorry man, at which point he burst into a storm of tears. I immediately turned him right side up and held him. The spanking was cathartic, a much needed gateway to his grief. He clung to me sobbing out the mixture of emotions that were tumbling around inside him; sorrow tinged with bitterness for his father and hurt, confusion and anger at the way his family had treated him. Once he’d calmed down I helped him to disrobe and clean off his war paint and then we went back to bed for a while so I could comfort him properly.

  9th January 2005:

  Stardust Twinkles Is Dead

  I think we’ll have to have a new headboard for the bed. I tried fixing it back together with wood glue, but it doesn’t look very attractive and it certainly won’t stand up to being banged against during the throes of passion. I suppose I ought to be grateful that he didn’t decide to secure me by both wrists and both ankles and stick a ball gag in my mouth. I’d still be there while he languished in prison or in a psychiatric unit awaiting assessment for harassment and driving under the influence of heavy makeup while banned.

  I didn’t let him out of my sight yesterday. I also unplugged the phone, partly to stop him calling his mother and partly to stop all the calls I knew would come asking why Twinkles had been missing from the Pink Parrot on Friday night. Friday is a big night, it’s the start of the drag weekend and Twinkles never misses, not if he can help it. He’d just been too upset this time.

  We talked things over. He said he hadn’t told me what he was planning to do because he knew I’d forbid it. I’d give all the right reasons as to why it was a shit idea, and he didn’t want the right reasons and besides, he knew them anyway. All he’d wanted to do was to hit back at his family in a way guaranteed to cause them maximum upset and embarrassment-by confronting them as the thing they despised so much. He’d wanted to try and force them to acknowledge him. My heart ached for him. I was at a loss as how best to help him. I could telephone his mother and ask for details about what had happened to his father, but I knew she’d hang up the moment I said who I was. Besides, I had no real desire to talk to a woman who could disown her son so completely, nor had I any desire to speak with her father, the family patriarch who had imposed his savage view of how the world should be upon them all. I’d had one confrontation with him and frankly it was enough. The man repelled me. Instead, while Twinkles was having a nap, I phoned Lulu and asked if he’d do me a favour by going to the library and going through the back copies of the local district newspapers to see if a notice of death had been posted for a Richard Lane.

  Lu came up trumps. Twinkles’ father had died the weekend before Christmas after a short illness. The notice stated that he’d left a wife and two daughters, but no mention was made of a son. I grew hot with anger at this cruel snub. It was something I’d have to try and keep from him. He’d been hurt enough. The funeral had taken place on the 21st December, a church service followed by burial. That was something anyway. We could find the grave and at least then Twinkles could pay his respects. Rituals are important, no matter what faith you claim or don’t claim.

  We spent the remainder of Saturday quietly cuddled in front of the television watching old videos, including ‘Priscilla Queen Of The Desert,’ and ‘To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.’ At the appropriate moment in the latter film I took Twinks hand and quoted his favourite line to him just as Carol Ann said it to Vida Boheme, ‘I don’t think of you as a man and I don’t think of you as a woman. I think of you as an angel.’ Twinkles once read an elaborate and lavish review of the film that described the leads, three drag queens, as celestial messengers who transcend individual differences in a quest for a shared humanity. It was a notion he adored and took on board wholesale. Personally I thought it was something of a grandiose concept for a comedy film featuring Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze in drag, not that I said so of course. He wondered if sending his grandfather and mother copies of the films might change the way they viewed him. I said that sadly, some people would never be able to see beyond their own rigid ideas of acceptable normality. He set off crying again, saying that the only ideas of normality his mother had ever had were the ones imposed on her by her vile father. Why hadn’t that old bastard been the one to die? There are some questions that just can’t be answered.

  We went to the cemetery this morning. It took a while, but we did manage to locate the grave. There’s no headstone as yet, just the simple plot marker cross bearing a name and dates. Most of the tributes on the grave were withered and worn ragged by winter wind and rain. Twinkles gathered them up and binned them before placing the spray of fresh flowers he’d bought on top of the raw burial mound. He then knelt down, heedless of the damp earth. He knelt for a long time, not moving, not speaking and not crying. The rain came, light at first, then heavier, pattering musically against the cellophane wrapped flowers and still he knelt with bowed head. I was soaked to the skin and frozen so I had no doubt that he was. I decided that he’d had enough and gently told him it was time to go, and that’s when he started to cry. It was awful. He said it was bad enough his father dying without ever saying he was proud of him, but what hurt most was knowing that even if he’d lived, he would never have said it anyway. He hadn’t been proud of him. He had been ashamed, embarrassed and disgusted to have a son like him. I almost cried then, not because I believed what he was saying was true, but simply because Twinkles thought it was and seeing him hurting so much was unbearable.

  When we got home I insisted that we got out of our wet clothes and into a hot shower. As I washed his hair and body he started to cry again and I wrapped my arms about him holding him, as the hot water cascaded over us. Afterwards, I left him in bed while I went down to the kitchen to make us some tea. By the time I returned he was no longer in bed, but it wasn’t empty. It was piled high w
ith all his dresses, shoes, and lingerie, everything in fact that transformed him from Jonathan Lane into Stardust Twinkles. I asked what he was doing and he said he was having a clean out and getting rid of the trash from his life. Stardust Twinkles was dead. From now on he was plain Jonathan Lane.

  January 10th 2005:

  Real Homo’s Don’t Wear Frocks

  I didn’t sleep much last night. Twinkles lay snoring by my side, not so much asleep as borderline unconscious. He’d downed the best part of a bottle of Vodka under the guise of drinking orange juice, a fact I only cottoned onto when he tried to get up to go to the toilet and promptly keeled over, taking the kitchen chair he’d been sitting on with him. I would have swatted him if I thought he could feel it, but he was so drunk I doubt he’d have felt me extract his teeth never mind swat his backside. After helping him up to the bathroom and hearing him barf a symphony of regret into the loo I put him to bed. At three a.m. conceding that sleep had evaded me I got up and went downstairs. I intended to make a cup of tea, but ended up sitting on the couch nursing a generous shot of Glenomrangie while sorting through the thoughts crowding my mind, as you do at that hour of the morning.

  I had pleaded with him to put everything back in the wardrobe saying that now wasn’t the time to be making sweeping decisions about anything, let alone about something as fundamental as self-identity. He refused to listen to me, carrying on with the task of emptying his closet and shoving clothes and accessories into plastic bags. Afterwards he shut himself in the kitchen saying he was going to put in an hours work on the gemstone diploma he’s studying for. I kept looking in on him to make sure he was alright, fondly believing that the orange juice he was drinking was just, well, orange juice.

  Whatever way you look at it, Twinkles or Jonathan, and I, are not quite your average householders. We’re a homosexual couple, one half of whom is a cross-dresser, which in itself classifies us as a subgroup within a subgroup and as such means we’ve frequently found ourselves facing hostility not just from heterosexual sources, but from other homosexuals who along with their straight brethren view any transgressions in gender-appropriate behaviour and image as deviant…so much for gay solidarity. Add to that the fact our relationship also incorporates consensual discipline elements, and what you have is a couple who belong to a subgroup within a subgroup within a subgroup. I also quite like to nibble Twinkles’ toes from time to time, which probably classifies us a subgroup too far. Not that I care. I’ve got a toe fetish, so what. I’d never nibble anyone’s toes without their consent, not that I’d want to nibble anyone else’s toes anyway. He has nice toes and attractive feet. He looks after them, not like some men I’ve slept with in the past who had rasps for feet and fungus farms for toes. It’s very un-sexy to be awoken on a morning by someone grating the hair and skin off your lower limbs with the hard skin on their feet.

  I don’t give a dam about not being average, whatever average means. I’m not even certain that average really exists except possibly in the minds of Statisticians. Scratch the surface of your average straight businessman and chances are you’ll find a bloke who likes to encase his prick in ladies knickers, so much for average. Basically, I’m a man with an imposed funny name who loves another man who just happens to have an alter ego called Stardust Twinkles. I don’t and I won’t pretend to fully understand the impetus that drives him to want to wear feminine attire, same as I don’t understand the impetus that drives an average businessman to want to wear ladies underwear under his suit, or wear his wife’s clothing when she’s out at the shops.

  How many of us can honestly say we understand the forces that drive us? We are who we are. Only, as I sat there in the early hours sipping whisky, I realised that Jonathan Lane was trying to kill off a part of who he was, not because he really wanted to but because he felt he had to. Maybe a part of me ought to have been relieved. It isn’t always comfortable or easy being partner to a transvestite, not least because of the amount of wardrobe space they demand, but I wasn’t relieved. The persona of Stardust Twinkles was an aspect of the person I love in their entirety and she now lay shrouded in plastic bags stacked along the landing. It was a death I was not prepared to accept. Setting my drink aside I went back upstairs and began to unpack the bags, re-hanging the dresses, jackets etc and returning them to the wardrobe.

  11th January 2005:

  Multi-Facets

  Twinkles’ boss gave him a few days compassionate leave, which was just as well because not surprisingly Twinkles was not at his best when he woke up on Monday morning. He spent some long moments begging God to allow him to die before staggering to the bathroom and noisily heaving his guts up into the toilet bowl. He then staggered back to bed where he laid whimpering pitiably and exhorting God to allow him to live, that’s my boy…contrary. Of course it was my entire fault. I should have stopped him. What kind of incompetent Top (another term for Dominant, he tends to alternate between the two depending on mood) let his partner drink that much? I gave him a couple of painkillers, made him drink several large glasses of water and told him we’d apportion blame when he was feeling better. I called my office and asked my secretary to fax me some stuff over so that I could work from home. I didn’t want to leave Twinkles alone all day not in the unsettled mood he was in.

  I heard him moving around in the middle of the afternoon and went up to ask if he could face some tea and toast. He was in process of taking all his frocks out of the wardrobe once again. I asked whether he was truly that determined to give up being Stardust Twinkles and he said yes. I then asked what the next step was going to be? Was he going to put himself in the space left vacant by the clothes, was he going to re-closet himself, deny that he was gay, maybe even put me out with his frocks? He began to cry and I gathered him into my arms telling him that he couldn’t just throw away an aspect of himself, especially not in order to appease the dead, because death was an appeasement in itself and one that required no further sacrifice from the living. I talked automatically letting words tumble from my mouth in the hope that they would form sentences that made some kind of sense for him. I said that I knew he had loved his dad, in between hating him, and that I was also sure his dad had loved him, in between not being able to understand him, and of being frightened of the unique child he’d sired. I also told him I loved him, all of him whether in male or female guise.

  We’re all multifaceted, but sadly the majority of us don’t have the courage to show more than one surface for fear of disapproval. Jonathan Lane, aka, Stardust Twinkles, is a person of great courage because, despite the obstacles, he dares to show more than one aspect of his personality. He challenges the so-called norms of society and in my eyes wins every time.

  12th January 2005:

  Lady Stardust Is Back In Town

  I had to go into the office on Tuesday. I had a meeting, though I was loath to leave Twinkles who was still very down and unnaturally quiet. He insisted that he was fine and that he wouldn’t do anything silly or rash like listening to classical radio three while sharpening a carving knife.

  He phoned me at lunchtime and I was pleased to hear a touch of excited pleasure in his voice, as he told me that a huge basket of flowers had just arrived for him. It was from all the girls and boys at the Pink Parrot who were sorry to hear about his bereavement and had missed him over the weekend. Even the rat bag Natalie had signed the card.

  To my delight I came home from work to find him hoovering the sitting room wearing nothing but a long straight Cher wig and his beloved pink fluffy mules while singing along to the score from Blood Brothers, one of his favourite musicals. In my opinion the role of Mrs Johnstone has never been more originally interpreted, it had real balls and I should know because I felt them. I asked if this meant that Miss Stardust Twinkles was back in town and he said yes, after all it was a lady’s prerogative to change her mind. I was right (makes a nice change) and there was nothing to be gained from trying to be an ideal son for a dead father when he’d never been an ideal son for
the living one. He also said that maybe his dad had loved him a little bit, or at least wanted to, because despite all differences and all obstacles he had made an effort to stay in touch, if only from time to time, which is more than his mother had ever done.

  Anyway, he held his head high. It wouldn’t be right to deprive the Pink Parrot of his unique glamour, and he couldn’t have that bitch Natalie parading around like cock of the walk, or in her case cock of the frock. I said that wasn’t very kind seeing as Natalie had contributed to the flowers. He snorted and said she’d have done it to prevent the dirt queens dishing it behind her back. I told him that he was very naughty and it was time he made an effort to bury the hatchet, which was the wrong choice of words if I rightly heard what he muttered under his breath as he put the hoover away.

  The upturn was short lived. I opened the front door this morning to discover that the flowers that Twinkles had laid on his father’s grave had been dumped on our doorstep with the message ‘surplus to requirements’ scrawled across the dedication card. They must have been put there some time the previous evening because there was a touch of frost on the wrapping, but none underneath on the step when I picked them up, so they’d lain for a while. I felt sick with disgust and quickly got rid of them before Twinks could see them. Maybe I was being over protective, but I didn’t want him being upset all over again. He didn’t need or deserve that kind of savage slap in the face. I brooded on it all day at work, which led to me being irascible. My co-workers were probably mightily relieved when it was going home time.