Snake Girl VS the KKK
Peter Joseph Swanson
Copyright 2014
More PJS novels at http://peterjosephswanson.weebly.com/
Chapter one
Michael blindly breezed into Jacquelyn’s Cabaret and then his eyes adjusted to the dark. He smeared on the last of his purple lip-gloss. The Culture Club’s latest hit was playing, “Karma Chameleon.” It was 1984.
“My song!” He glanced around the room, flipped his long hair behind his wide angular shoulders in absent gestures, then he hailed the few happy-hour patrons. “Drink up, girrrrls! Drink up before the bomb drops!”
A man raised his glass and then blew a kiss.
The bartender asked Michael, “Are you helping me out behind the bar tonight? Or are you just getting drunk?”
“Getting drunk and doing drag. I’m now a drag queen. If the bomb doesn’t drop by then.” Michael stopped at the dance floor. “Ey, you ugly bloke, what in the bloody ‘ell aaa you doing now?”
Burt, a man with bleach-blond hair cut off at his shoulders, and three candy-colored watches on his wrist, said, “Cut the bad accent. I don’t care how cool you think it is. You’re only cute when you keep your mouth shut.”
Michael stopped the affect and tried talking again. “Burp, Whatcha doing?”
Burt was dancing slow circles, holding out a smoking twig of bitter incense. “Hi, Miss Snake Girl. That’s your new drag name, right?”
“I’ve always had that name. I really was a snake girl in the carnival. And they believed it. That’s the real test of being real. No other drag queen can boast they passed like that. No makeup, no wig, no boobs, and I still totally passed.” Michael struck a pose and grandly waved his arms out like snakes.
“Yeah yeah that old story.” Burt didn’t look like he believed it.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a new blessing I’ve worked up for before the shows. The shows should have a blessing, too.”
“Another blessing?” Michael fanned the air with his palm. “I’ll be right on the money up there on stage tonight, don’t worry…I’ll be rubber tits. So why don’t you cast a spell to get me a man?”
Burt asked, “Did you dye your hair black?”
Michael grabbed a lock of it and looked at it. “It must be the light. No. I don’t think I’ve been in the sun all summer.”
“You look like Uncle Fester.”
Michael glared. “He was bald.”
“I mean, I mean… Mrs. Addams Family.”
Michael smiled. “Cool! Or gypsies tramps and thieves!” He ran up the steep narrow staircase behind the small stage and barreled through a door to the dressing room. Michael breathed in the smell of old rotting wood then lit a proper stick of nice incense—a spicy Scottish lavender to get Burt’s smell of burning weed out of his nose. “I’m getting old.” He looked at himself hard in the mirror, especially the area under his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m twenty-nine years old. Or am I? Twenty-eight? I lost count on purpose. I don’t want to know! Old and alone. Old and alone.” He poked at his stomach to make sure it was still slim. He thought of the science fiction movie Logan’s Run: At thirty you reported to Carousel and were reborn as the crowd shouted “renew, renew.” You were killed for being too old. Nobody wants to see an old person hanging around the Love Shop.
He looked straight up at the water-stained ceiling painted like a swirly night sky, like van Gogh. To the yellow six-pointed star of Aphrodite in the center, he entreated, “Star light, star bright, bring me true love, tonight.”
Without knocking, Burt popped his head in the door. “Decent?”
Michael looked down at his black jeans comically as if he needed to make sure they were still on. “Burp, I don’t know!”
Burt regarded Michael’s incense and sniffed loudly. “Hey, Tinker Bell, what’d you do? Fart?”
“No, lavender clears my mind. I always have too much stuff to think about.”
“Like what.”
“Renew, renew! Hey…you have 85 dollars you could lend me?”
“For what. Damn that’s a fortune! Rent again?”
Michael shrugged. “I’m not so superficial. I need lady stuff. I’m a drag queen now. I can’t believe it’s all so expensive, even doing the cheap Cyndi Lauper look while everybody else is still trying to outspend Diana Ross.” He laughed as he glanced at an old Diana Ross poster on the wall. “I’ve got them all beat there! But it’s still so expensive.”
“You’re so beautiful, self indulgent and superficial. You’ll do great.”
“Superficial! Bitch! I studied ballet once! I have art! Art!”
Burt glared. “You got a book on it from the library.”
Michael nodded ardently. “Sure. Of course. That’s how we study in modern times. Free.”
Burt loudly smirked and left.
Michael waved him off, “Love you, Burp.” Then he stripped, admired his dick in the mirror, then slipped on an old faded stained kimono and sat, keeping it open in the front. He combed out his long hair with his fingers some more. Nobody came in for another half hour.
Fay Runaway finally walked in. “Oh, good god go put some clothes on before you make baby Jesus cry!”
Michael flapped his robe. “I’m wearing something fabulous.”
“Close your robe. You’re spilling out all over the place and you could put an eye out.”
Michael put his nose in the air. “It’s a private room. And the robe has no belt, anyway.”
Fay Runaway finally averted his eyes.
Michael shut his robe. “Why are you so crabby? Don’t tell me the KKK put a brick through your window again? Why are you so hated? I would move if I was you.”
Fay Runaway looked suspiciously at Michael. “Moving is expensive… but if anything happens again I’ll move no matter what. And you say that like you don’t really believe it happened.”
“The KKK in these modern times, the actual real KKK? They probably wrote KKK on your brick because the rednecks couldn’t spell I hate you.”
Fay Runaway shuddered. “A brick through the window is very scary and loud…even if the brick says nothing at all!”
“And the last thing you need is more drama.”
Fay Runaway pulled a blond wig out of a bag. “You’re just jealous that drama happened to somebody else. Real drama. You just make stuff up for attention because your life is so boring outside of your great interest with your own looks. And why are you up here in that porno robe anyway. This is the dressing room for the divas. If you want to be a dick go somewhere else.”
Michael pouted his lips and looked about for lipstick. “I’m a drag queen now. Miss Snake Girl. Or Diana Gloss. Or… Dark Lady Dance and Sing.”
“Since when have you been a drag queen? I’ve had a hangover. I missed a few hours.”
Michael looked off, embarrassed. “Since… the other day when you said I was nothing but a hotdog stand.”
Fay Runaway glared at Michael’s lap. “That all up on our stage?”
“I’ve been on stage before. I used to be the cutest gogo boy in Chicago. I really stuffed my tiny little shorts with me myself and I. I even did better than Mighty Muscle Man until he got so jealous one night he came out and picked me up and twirled me around.”
“And dropped you on your head.”
Michael frowned. “But there’s no work for anything like that here. So I’m doing drag and getting back to my roots. I really was a carnival sideshow. I really was Snake Girl. They said I was the most beautiful they’d ever had.”
“Yeah right. And I once led the Rose Bowl parade.”
“I’m not dressed yet, just wait and see how fabulous I’ll look tonight. I don’t go on for hou
rs yet. I was hoping to transcendental dementiate for a while first.”
Fay Runaway frowned. “Dementiate? You just made that up.”
“It’s something I learned at summer camp. But there they just called it ‘R&R’.” Michael turned to the mirror and put a ripped wedding veil on his head, and started to sing in his impersonation of an Indian, “Camp Shoshini, land of bed so stony, let me ride my pony, to the macaroni!” He looked around and asked, “What’s the matter. Didn’t you ever go to camp as a kid?”
Fay Runaway looked alarmed.
Michael fussed with the veil. “Since this won’t go black on me unless you have some spray paint with you, I’ll just have to be Miss Havisham Snake Girl. Maybe I can be Miss Haveashit. How’s that for a name that means you really care?”
“You can tell who the new drag queens are. They change their names every two minutes.”
Michael glowered at Fay Runaway. “I once passed as a real girl in the real world at a carnival so don’t lecture me on who is or isn’t a real drag queen!”
As a few other queens entered to prepare for the show, Michael dropped his kimono and walked around the room naked for a while, pretending to fuss with the taffeta on his head.
A queen said, “Michael, hun, for the love of everything holy, put some panties on, at least. Or a grass skirt. How pagan are you going to get in here tonight?”
He snarled like Billy Idol. “I can get pretty punk rock pagan.” He grabbed a dress.
A queen snapped, “You’re not wearing my dress!”
Michael asked them, “Who all here has had a run-in with the KKK this summer?”
They talked about past boyfriends.
* * * * *
Lizzi pranced under the streetlight. Her bleached hair and bright green mini-dress glowed. “You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind,” she sang as she clomped her new pink slouch boots on a manhole cover. “Class of ‘85 is totally total! I can’t wait for next year…to be freeeee!”
Tony put his finger to his mouth. “Shhh!” His simple gray T-shirt and jeans dissolved him into the balmy night.
The two had left the Milldam High dance on foot as most other students filed out and away in cars to cult suburban orgy gatherings and extra fun—or so Lizzi thought.
“Tony!” Lizzi turned to him and pushed her hair up.
“What?” he asked vacantly, looking at the century-old mansions that sat far from the street behind high iron fences and uninviting immaculate lawns. Through the lace curtains of a tall dark window he could make out a dimmed crystal chandelier.
“Um, I’ve the greatest idea! Kiss me! Kiss me now!”
Tony looked around. “What?”
“You’ve never kissed me. Do you realize that? Are you…like…gay?”
“Of course not.” He walked up to her and kissed her on the cheek.
She puckered her lips.
He frowned. “Your face is so grodie. Too much lipstick. I’m not kissing that.”
She pouted and then laughed. “I have the greatest idea!”
“What?” Tony asked unenthused, not a stranger to Lizzi and her noise.
She wickedly smiled like a horny criminal. “Let’s go to Jacquelyn’s Cabaret!”
Tony bit his lower lip, looking carefully into her face for clues as to whether she was being an idiot on purpose or not. “What?”
She flashed her sinister little teeth again in a glossy china-doll smile. “Come on, dork! Come on!”
“No.”
Lizzi said, “You’re paranoid. Now come on it’ll be sooo cool! And you won’t catch the clap from any of their butts unless you fall in love.” She ran down the street ahead of him, bellowing, “You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind!”
Tony huffed as he clomped up after her. “It’s too close to the river! We’re too far away!”
“Are not!” She turned to him. As she looked at him she was distracted again by the pimple on his jaw. She wished it could be wiped off like a ketchup spot. “I want to dance! I am way awake!”
“Oh, shut up!” He didn’t want to humor her anymore than he already had. “I don’t want to go anywhere. It’s evil. It’s dangerous. It’s sick. It’s all the way down at the river. I don’t want to go there no matter what.”
“It’s way up from the river. It’s just off the park. And it’s such a nice night. And you’re no fun.” She ran ahead.
He fretfully headed after her into the downtown park. He heard a low ominous cricket dirge that seemed to sing, “Come and know pain.” He suddenly wished he was safe at home with his boring dad and not with vile viral homosexual liaisons, dirty drug deals, devil worshippers and possibly even retaliatory murders connected to all three, in the engulfing bushes.
“Oh, don’t be such a panda,” Lizzi shamed him. “Quit dragging! Come on. Maybe the dance floor will be just like Xanadu.” She tried to grab his arm but he shrugged away so she missed.
Leaving him, Lizzi stomped ahead through the tree shadows as if she could see right into them while Tony only felt wobbly from nervousness. They topped an incline and the bar loomed ahead. Tony noticed how its jutting garland cornice seemed as if it was crumbling. They entered the front door. Inside, Tony felt complete panic from the combined onslaught of blaring music and flashing dance floor lights. When he finally dared to breathe, the room did not smell like disease and poop but just cigarettes and cologne. He got a whiff of burning cloves. He clung to Lizzi as bodies bumped carelessly past them, causing him to fear he’d trip over a chair and into some man’s arms.
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham started to play.
Lizzi grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards a small elevated proscenium stage where an overflow of people danced. There, he stopped at a banister before a dance floor and stubbornly clung to it. “Come on!” she screamed into his ear, yanking at him. The music stopped and the dance floor quickly emptied.
He asked, “What’s going on?”
She shrugged.
“Ladies and ladies,” a voice boomed, “drag fans and drag hags from both sides of the Mrs. Hippie River, Jacquelyn’s is most proud to present the immortally immature and totally undone, unbathed, and unloved…Miss Snake Girl’s Grunt!”
Lizzi joined the rambunctious applause. “Oh my gawd! A show!” she screamed into Tony’s ear. “This is sooo totally way cool!”
“Hush!”
Michael, now Snake Girl the drag queen, walked down the narrow backstage steps in a white ‘50s prom dress with matching white taffeta frills jutting off the top of his head—the old wedding veil rearranged. The crowd applauded and cheered as his gargantuan eyeball gaze searched the surroundings with wildly posed disdain.
The voice boomed again, “A creeped-out star shot-up on bad drama!”
Snake Girl spotted the microphone and gasped in utter ecstasy and overwrought acting, his eyes bulging impossibly wider as his white-laced hand reached out for it. A man raced across the empty dance floor to place his plastic glass of cheap booze on the edge of the stage for him.
A simple synthesizer chord clanged and electronically echoed as he glamorously held an arm out to hail his minions. “Welcome to boring hell,” Snake Girl announced in Michael’s natural unaffected man’s voice, “which I dedicate to all you precious things who complain to management that my performances are art. So, to make further complaining all the easier we now supply tissues in the ladies and gentlemen’s room for your written comments. And by the way, it isn’t Miss Snake Girl’s Grunt. One more comment like that and I’m suing this place for a free drink. It’s the most glamorous Miss Snake Girl to you. Thank you from Snake Girl.”
As many in the crowd applauded, Lizzi gasped. “Oh, Tony, that’s a man! A man in a dress! That’s so beyond! He’s so beautiful! This is just great!” Tony ignored her to concentrate on the show since the acoustics in the room were terrible.
“This song is dedicated to our near dear musketeer and sadly departed Miss T
eeter-totter. I do understand that it’s bad to speak rudely about our dear departed. But I’m just getting even because I know that wherever she is she’s still out there trashing me as she always has, tattling to the angels about what a vain bitch I am and how I stole her lipstick and shoes. I pray to god that she’ll just shut her Mary Kay lips long enough to hear this beautiful song that I wrote just for her in a divine inspiration of cheap beer.”
“Get on with it!” a man yelled from the crowd.
Snake Girl said back, “This is Shakespeare! It’s gonna take four hours!”
“It’s already felt like six!”
The laughter was cut off by a loud amplified guitar strum from off stage. The drag queen hushed the crowd with gentle gestures of mock femininity, then solemnly folded his hands, posed into an icy cabaret songstress and crooned a little song about sex, woe and doom. When he finished, the lights swelled back up and the room erupted as if a man in drag had just been pulled out of a hat.
Lizzi turned to Tony. “Wasn’t that just too cool?”
Snake Girl smiled. “Thank you, thank you for this lovely kiss in the dream house. Now give me money. I’m thirsty.” He curtsied then breezed over to the drink waiting at the edge of the stage like a temple offering. He reached for it but kept going forward, falling headfirst off the stage and falling four feet to the dance floor below, completing a half flip so he landed on his back.
Everybody screamed.
* * * * *
The next day, Tony sat at the edge of the park fountain. It was old, dry and hadn’t shot water in almost a decade. Turning to the bar, he decided it didn’t look so evil by the light of day. Michael, barefoot and wearing black jeans and an oversized olive T-shirt, stepped out of the cabaret’s door. He was carrying a paper lunch bag. As he crossed the street, entering the park, Tony wondered where he’d seen such a striking face before.
Michael walked up, squinting. “Is it bright out here or is the bomb dropping?”
“What?”
Michael looked around. “Oh. That’s just the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Never mind. I always sit at the fountain’s edge when I eat, when it’s nice out. You mind?”
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