The first contestant in the talent show did a passable tap dance. One of the baby drag queens did a fun Patsy Cline. She was followed by Zombie Barbra Streisand. A gentleman who was the size of Uncle George wore a very tight silver lamé jumpsuit and did an amazing display of baton twirling. Danny surprised me by doing a countertenor rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” and then he blew me a kiss from the stage. Hunter did a professional-level performance of “Ol’ Man River” in his astonishing bass. Then Lady Teasedale led a parade of established and baby drag queens across the stage to the loudest applause of all. Everyone got an award. Mr. Baton Twirler got the first-place trophy, Zombie Barbra took second place, and Danny took third. Hunter won a special award. Then two decorated sheet cakes and trays of cookies were wheeled out. The sweets looked good, but all I could think about was chiseling my makeup off.
I said good night to Kookie and headed back to my cabin to grab a towel, shampoo, and a change of clothes. I stepped into the shower stall area I shared with the other cabins. It was such a relief to start scrubbing myself clean. I didn’t know how people who normally wore makeup managed it, and now I knew I’d never understand how drag queens did it. Not to mention the tucking. I preferred to only understand that part as an abstract process. I hummed one of the tunes from 1776, then froze as I felt someone’s hands on my back.
“Let me help, sugar,” Karl said. He drew closer, and I could feel his cock brush against the back of my thighs. But I was so much taller, he’d need to stand on a footstool to make that sensation feel more erotic. Or we could try spooning again, but this time while we were nude. The erotic massage workshop had taught me to be more comfortable in my own body. I’d felt empowered by the nudity, which had surprised me.
“So, regular me doesn’t turn you on, but you can’t keep your hands off drag me?” I turned around to face him. His eye makeup was running down his cheeks in black trails, and I could barely keep from laughing. His slender body reminded me of Danny. I’d wondered how he’d look without his clothes. Now I knew.
“To be precise,” he said, “you turn me on whatever you’re wearing.” He looked me up and down slowly. “Or not wearing.” He stood on his tiptoes to kiss me. By his doing so and pressing against me, I was instantly hard.
“I’m getting mixed signals here,” I said. “Last night you were gentle in telling me not now. Is it now, now? What happened to the take it slow—or is this just another baby step, where I get as much experience with you as I did in the erotic massage workshop, but I’ll still be a virgin when the sun rises?”
He pulled back. His makeup had been washed away. He seemed so young. I looked down at his slender body, and he looked vulnerable. I noticed he was also aroused. And unlike Danny, he was circumcised.
“Do you want to still be a virgin when the sun comes up?” he asked. “And what’s different to me is that you seem more confident. Like your body is finally starting to fit you. I don’t feel like I need to protect you now.”
I pulled him close and put my chin on the top of his head. I wondered how it would feel to hold Zach like this. “I don’t know,” I said. “I was both terribly disappointed and very relieved when you told me to wait last night. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to find you gone. I spent a lot of time thinking that you were right. That I didn’t need to rush into things just for the sake of doing it.”
“No,” he agreed, and he put his slick face against my chest as the water continued to pour down on us. “You shouldn’t do it for the sake of doing it. It needs to be because it’s something we both want.” He pulled back again to look up at me. “If I’m really the one you want to do it with.” He looked down and touched my stiff cock. “There may be evidence you do.” I touched his stiff dick and laughed. “Well,” he continued, “apparently there is additional evidence that I might have some interest as well.”
“One step at a time? Baby or otherwise? I suggest we go back to my cabin. This time let’s spoon together naked. We’ll see what we want after that happens. I’ll still have another night in the cabin if we want to do more. And then I have a full week in your hometown. I feel more relaxed. I know it doesn’t have to be decided tonight or even tomorrow. And when I do lose my virginity, when I think about the experience a year from now, or when I’m ready to retire, what difference does it make if that happens this week or another?”
He nodded, looking a little confused. “What made you change your mind?”
I went once again with being honest. “Your words gave me a lot to think about. On my flight here, I met an older guy who is also from Salt Lake. I was ashamed of the fact I had never even had a date, let alone been really intimate with someone. He told me to consider the fact that we were sharing a drink to be my first date so I didn’t have to be nervous about it. That made a big difference for me. It was like opening a door that I could finally walk through. It helped me feel better about coming here. He said our second date could be when we were both back in Utah, or when I return to Boston after I leave here.” I took a deep breath. “When I think about him, I think about what it would be like to be with a man. When I look at you—I think about what it means to be with a boy, even though you’re closer to my age than I am to his.”
Karl’s face looked empty. I tried again. “I get confused when I think about these things. When I’m with you on a physical level, I feel like I’m back with Jimmy—in that station wagon when we were both sixteen. You’re so much like he was when he was that age. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like going back and fixing something that had been left broken. And it’s such a physical thing. I’ve never known anyone who seems as mature, wise, and thoughtful as you are. You blow me away.”
“Thanks,” he said. His expression hadn’t changed.
“On a physical level, when I think about being with Zach, I feel like I’m the boy being with the man. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with a dad. It feels good to imagine being with a man—someone who’s my size. Someone thoughtful and kind like you.”
“So,” Karl said, his voice flat. “With me you feel you’d be a boy with a boy. I’d be stepping in for Jimmy. In your imagination, we’d be equals. With—what’s his name—Zach? With Zach you fantasize it would be more normal. The older man showing the younger man how to be who he’s meant to be. But in real life—not the fantasy—I’d be the more experienced one who was showing you what you need to learn.”
Karl stepped back so he was no longer touching me. “I’m trying to walk it through. I think I’m starting to understand what this all means to you. But I’m trying to figure out what it means to me. Why should I go ahead and do this if you really just see me as a boy from your past and not who I really know myself to be?”
“No,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “It’s important you’re hearing me. I’m not saying I just see you as a boy. I’m saying that I see you as you really are. Mature. A caring adult. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that seeing you like you are now keeps sparking the memory of unfinished business with Jimmy. Who would I be now if I could go back in time and be more like Jimmy?”
“I don’t know,” he said, walking away to reach for the towel he had hung up next to mine. “I told you yesterday you only get messed up if you’re running a script in your mind that you think is real and the script isn’t the one your partner is using. I didn’t freeze my emotions and my sexuality when I was a teenager the way you did. Where’s Jimmy now?”
“After he returned from his Mission in South America, he married a Latino, and they’re living in Nevada.”
“Then maybe that’s your answer,” he said as he used the towel to rub his hair dry. “If you hadn’t worked so hard to not be who you were meant to be, you’d be married to a guy you loved. And who loved you.”
I turned off the water. Everything sounded deadly quiet other than the angry sounds Karl was making as he finished drying himself off and threw on his clothes.
“Why are you so pissed off?” I asked
.
“I’m angry at myself. Do you know what triage means?”
“Um—it has something to do with prioritizing. I’ll sometimes see it in a medical file.”
“It means when your resources are limited and there are patients in need, you make hard decisions. You figure out this one might recover if you give them immediate treatment. You decide which one will most likely die even if you treat them. I only have so much I’m capable of giving, Brett. I don’t really know if what I can offer you will make enough of a difference. There’s a part of you that’s broken. At this point, I don’t believe that I’m the one who can fix it. Go sow your wild oats. That’s what I was told, remember? I care about you. I wish you the best, but I’m not your Jimmy, and I’m obviously not your Zach or another father substitute.”
I heard the door slam. The only sounds now were the soft slow drip from the showerhead and my heart beating. I sank down with my back to the shower wall and cried.
Chapter Twelve
I WALKED back to my cabin, hating the way the water trickling from my hair felt on my back and the way it was soaking through my shirt. Before I walked through my door, I turned around and looked toward the tree the fireflies seemed to enjoy. Not a single sparkle. How appropriate. I went inside, tossed the things I had bundled in my towel on the floor, and threw myself on my bed. I thought about calling Zach. It was like he kept walking into my head.
Chapter Thirteen
I SKIPPED breakfast. I hadn’t slept well at all. I felt like I had never left Utah, that I was back in the headspace I lived in before Eddie had e-mailed me the details of the retreat. I dressed as slowly as a little kid who didn’t want to go to Temple. Or to school. I realized if I had remained home, I would have probably stayed the same. On the plus side, I had met Zach. Even if, as Karl was so quick to point out, Zach was mostly a fantasy at this point, even if he was a few hours of welcome reality. I got to explore the body of a cute guy. I found out how great it was to be touched by someone who was thrilled to touch me. Major plus. One broken heart. Then I stopped doing the mental bookkeeping. Maybe I had invested as much in the fantasy of Karl’s potential as I had in the fantasy of Zach. But they both seemed so real when I was in the middle of things. I guess Karl just proved my life definitely wasn’t a porn flick or a rom-com. Nobody died, so I guess that meant my life wasn’t a tragedy. I concluded feeling as though my grandparents might have been as accepting of me as they were toward their own difficult children—well, that was worth the price of the registration and airfare. Figuring I was as cheered up as I was going to get on my own, I set off for the body painting workshop.
“My name is Sam,” the facilitator said. “I teach art at Concordia University, and I’ve been conducting this workshop here for the past five years. They keep asking me back.” He grinned. “I was dating a visiting professor of anthropology, and one day over drinks we talked about the human history of using the body as a canvas. Some of you are already doing that.” He walked over to an older man with a buzz cut and touched the tattoo of an anchor on his large bicep. “Some body art is like a totem symbol—a public display of your clan, your religion, or your military affiliation.” He pointed to someone who had been in the erotic massage workshop. He was a shirtless twink. Sam spun him around, and on his back was an elaborate interweaving of vines and mysteriously menacing flowers. For some reason the tattoo made me think of Karl—beautiful, inviting, an entrapment with the promise of things I didn’t understand but that frightened me.
“Some body art expresses one’s unique individuality. Tattoos and body painting are like piercing or brandings. Or haircuts, or hair coloring. They’re all along the continuum of what’s called body modification. It’s just some are temporary and some can be permanent. Bodybuilders do a type of body modification. For some bodybuilders, the motivation is a type of body armor. Some had been bullied as the sissy kid, and that inspired them to turn a body they felt had betrayed them into a hulking giant form of protection and intimidation. There’s a segment of the gay community that consists of gainers and encouragers, who find it erotic to engage in the body modification of deliberately getting fatter.”
“Oh, sorry I’m late.” Whasname rushed into the clearing where we were. “I misread the schedule! Did I miss much?”
I hadn’t seen him without the wig and makeup. He cleaned up well. Without the attitude and cosmetics, he seemed younger than I had assumed at Drag 101. Pushing thirty, maybe. Definitely had pushed past 30 BMI. My fitness trainer taught all of her charges about Body Mass Index, calculated by dividing weight by height. I had been keeping mine at the 7 percent she recommended. It guaranteed my abs were always on display. The average American male had a BMI of 26.5. That guaranteed his abs were buried. Danny had to be under 5 percent. Obesity started at a BMI of 30.
“I was introducing the idea of body modification. I enjoyed your drag performance last night. Drag in itself would not be considered a permanent body modification, since you can walk away and strip off the outfit and wig and wash off the makeup. But if you had your eyelids tattooed so you’d never need eyeliner again—that would be a more permanent body modification. Put on a padded bra, and that’s a type of drag. Using surgery to have silicone implants for breast enhancement—that would be body modification. Gaining weight to the point you grow moobs—man cans… boy tits—that would be body modification. Some men do that deliberately. Some do it without intention but as a side effect of other behaviors.”
“You talking about these?” Whasname laughed. He pulled up his T-shirt and displayed soft moobs the size of twelve-ounce packages of coffee beans. “Remember, the bigger you get, the more body canvas you have for tattoos, if tattoos are your thing.” He quickly turned around, bent over, and pulled down his sweatpants, exposing an elaborate butterfly in vivid colors that floated on top of a very wide buttcheek. The display lasted for an eyeblink, and then he was covered up once more and looking at us proudly.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Thank you for the show-and-tell. So—double body modification. A tattoo and an enlarged body canvas. But today we’re exploring temporary body modification. For some, this might be a way of testing out what could one day become a tattoo—or perhaps a design for clothing. But as….” He hesitated. “What’s your name?”
“Max,” he smiled. “As in Maximum.”
“Right. Max has shown us how a specific design can immediately pull your attention to an area of the body. This frequently happens in nature as a type of distraction or protection. There are moths, for example, that have evolved where the color patterns of their wings look remarkably like the eyes of owls. That can scare away potential predators. The angler fish has evolved a fleshy attachment on its head that mimics a wiggly worm that attracts prey—while the prey is distracted from the big fanged mouth of the angler fish, it ends up as dinner. I used to date a trans man who had had a double mastectomy as part of his transition. After his breasts had been removed, to hide the scars, he had an amazing tattoo done across his entire chest. It was a dark blue cloud of stars, and a Pegasus was emerging from it. An extraordinarily effective way of distracting an observer’s eye from the scars.” He held up a collection of photo albums.
“Here are some examples from other body painting workshops I’ve done here and other places that might inspire your own choices. I urge you to think big. As Max reminds us, your whole body is potentially a canvas. The paints can be easily washed off with soap. Use the photos to provide a starting point, but not as something to duplicate. The point of the workshop is to explore your uniqueness. I don’t want a workshop that ends full of clones. I want you to think about what colors mean to you. Some cultures assign specific meaning to certain colors. Purple is considered a royal color because, long ago, the type of dye that produced purple was so rare that only royalty could afford it. For some cultures, sky blue has a spiritual connotation. Many cultures—including the United States’ red, white, and blue—think of red as representing blood. What are your own asso
ciations of colors? I want your body paintings to use the colors that have meanings that are important to you.” He then started getting into the mechanics of things, showing us color wheels of how to mix the colors he had provided to produce colors we might want. He showed us how to use different brushes for different details. “And I’ve provided you pads of paper printed with body outlines so you can try sketching your designs before you start getting busy on bodies. Since you can’t paint your back, or some other body parts, even if you’re a contortionist, this is also a lesson about depending upon the kindness of strangers. Pick a partner who will help you make the design you’ve sketched become a reality.”
I flipped through a couple of the photo albums. The technology had advanced from the one that had fallen on my foot a few years before. Sam had also given us a URL where we could see the entire collection online. I glanced at bodies with a range of colors, and as he put it—canvases. After a few moments, they started blurring together for me, so I figured I had seen enough. I considered colors. I had spent a long time not wearing anything that would get me accused of being gay. I thought of Sam’s descriptions of moth wings and how my mothy beige, brown, and gray outfits were just as much a form of camouflage. He had explained my clothing had been meant to distract the eye so a bully wouldn’t notice the kid wearing the outfits was queer. I thought about Karl’s story of the firefly and how I had worked so hard to extinguish my light so monsters wouldn’t be able to find me. But then someone who would want to love me and not leave me wouldn’t be able to find me either.
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