Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  Michael belligerently applauded the oracle. “What would we be without our party clown? Wait until you see his balloon sculptures!”

  Tony felt nausea. What he’d done with Michael in the woods seemed as natural as the woods itself, at the time. Now he didn’t feel horny anymore and he didn’t like himself. He looked at Michael as if he weren’t even human. He saw a comic book vampire.

  Burt bowed ruefully to them and excused himself. “See you.”

  Michael waved. “We’ll talk shop later when I’m not so terribly distracted. Give my regards to that lousy wench, your better half.” He turned to Tony and snickered. “Would you believe he’s married to a woman?”

  Tony drew wet circles on the table with his glass, deciding he wasn’t going to take another sip until his nausea subsided. “Sure, why not?”

  “Well, it’s so damn… damn phony!”

  “Maybe they like each other.”

  “He’s queer!”

  “Who are you to say what a marriage is? Must we all act as sissies just because we’ve kissed each other?”

  They sat quietly for a while until Michael said, “No. Actually, I do know what you mean and all I can assure you is that you’re going to have to get used to us queers being queers, or else you’ll be getting your sex anonymously from the East Park toilets from now on.”

  Tony frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let me explain ourselves. You don’t have to love what I’m trying to justify but please hear me out and try to understand. This place and these people are my home, unconditionally and for better or worse, like bratty siblings. I call this bar a womb for the wounded.”

  “Womb? What?”

  “Well, yeah.” Michael forced a chuckle. “I know it sounds dumb now but for some reason it made sense to me the time I first said it. All it means is that when I start to feel like I hate myself for being different, I come here. Then I’m not different because I can see so many others like myself. I’m not a freak between these walls. In fact… I’m a star. We all come here when we feel alone, which is a lot of the time, and we drink and dance and laugh at life. This is a clubhouse, a place to feel safe. The straight jerks don’t come here to ruin it for us because it takes a hell of a lot of courage to walk through those doors—you admit you’re an outcast just by walking in here. I like the way I feel when I’m here. I like being a big fish in a small pond. I’ve been to bigger places but I just felt invisible, insignificant, and stupid. This is the best gay bar in the world.” Michael took a gulp of his beer. He saw that Tony was now wide-eyed and introspective, nodding cautiously. Michael thought about how horrible it felt to presume that you don’t belong to the rest of humanity.

  “This music’s cool,” Tony finally commented.

  Grace Jones was singing her cover of “Nightclubbing.”

  “Nancy comes by all the time to borrow my wigs. Ronnie nuked her and she’s going bald so fast she smells like burnt feathers.”

  “Okay. What time is it?”

  Michael slammed the rest of his beer. “Let’s hit the road. I’ll walk you home.”

  Tony stood up. He left his beer half-full. Michael eyed it and couldn’t resist the temptation so he picked it up and downed it. “Waste not want not.”

  On the way out the door a bouncy Culture Club song played and Michael wished he was dancing. They walked away, gravely, watching the dark sidewalk pass below their measured strides like a clock. Five blocks later, Michael paused. “Hey, I’ve gotta take a whiz. Wait for me.” He disappeared behind a tree.

  When Michael returned, Tony asked, “What took you so long?”

  “Oh, you know, beer piss. Really douches you out.”

  “It’s a diuretic.”

  Michael put his fingertips to his cheekbones. “Oh, so that’s why I’m so gorgeous.”

  “It’ll dry you up.”

  “Yep, I need another beer. You want to come to my place? You want to spend the night? I have a phone. You can call your dad and tell him you’re not dead in a ditch.”

  “No, I want to go home.”

  “It’s nice to get a little drunk and make out some, then get off, if you want… but you don’t have to, whatever you want… then wake up the next morning and go out for potato chips to try and kill the hangover. It’s great.”

  “Sounds like you do it all the time.”

  “Are you kidding? Hell no. I’m just trying to be fancy for you!”

  “I need to go home. Dad will worry. He’s a dork. But anybody would worry. He’d think I fell into quicksand or something. He’s such a dork.”

  Michael said his goodbyes. As he watched Tony walk away he began to weep fearing he’d never see him again.

  * * * * *

  The next evening, Michael and Alex drove Alex’s sister’s pale blue station wagon out to visit Annie Bea. Annie Bea was Alex’s sister’s best friend. Michael was irrationally snobby against obese women who lived in old trailer homes at the river, but Annie Bea cajoled Michael on the phone with the promise that her boneheaded husband would be away and cocktails would “pour like Niagara.”

  After Alex cut her hair, the real reason she wanted them over, they sat enjoying whiskey and cheese puffs. “Yum! They’re so orange!” Michael exclaimed so sarcastically that Alex jabbed him. Michael didn’t start to feel good until his second cocktail.

  Alex had resumed his tired running gag of looking at Annie Bea in utter astonishment then exclaiming, “Annie Bea! Who did your hair? It’s flawless!”

  “You like it?” she played along again. “You think this looks better than a perm?”

  “Flawless!” Alex repeated.

  “I don’t look like Madonna?” Annie Bea said in a way that meant she didn’t want to. “She always looks like such a skank.”

  “I have a joke!” Alex yelled.

  “Not so loud,” Michael said. “My ear’s right here!”

  Alex ignored his sensitive friend and proceeded by dramatically limping his wrist. “Why do queers do this?”

  “Why?” Annie Bea keenly waited for the punch line.

  “Because sometimes there just isn’t enough room to do this!” he squealed with his arms fluttering joyously high in the air.

  Annie Bea laughed and then said, “I’ve got a terrible joke. You’ll all just hate it. I heard it from my husband.”

  Michael perked. “Goody, I just adore terrible jokes.”

  “Why do they call AIDS the modern medical miracle?”

  Michael was disappointed since he’d heard that one long ago. “Why?”

  “Because it turns fruits into vegetables.”

  Alex howled, “Ooooh! That is nasty. You win the Nasty Girl Award!”

  Michael also pretended to laugh. He’d found the joke funny when he first heard it but since then he’d seen too much of the plague, first hand, and it’s not very funny when it takes on faces.

  Annie Bea wasn’t dumb and could see the mistake. “You said you liked terrible jokes.” She raised the bottle. “Fuck it. That calls for more booze!”

  Michael slammed what he had and raised his hand. “Me, please!”

  “No,” Alex cut him short. “We’ve got to get home.”

  “We do?”

  Annie Bea looked sad. “Oh, you party pooper. Okay, I have a fat lady joke. What do fat ladies and mopeds have in common? They’re both great rides until somebody sees you on one. There. I made fun of myself, too. And at the same time I made fun of the world. Aren’t I clever, there?” She sarcastically slapped her knee.

  Alex said, “Don’t put yourself down.”

  Annie Bea gave an angry smile. “I can do it. Just don’t you try.”

  Alex looked confused. “But is that fair?”

  Annie Bea nodded. “We always get to laugh at ourselves, at least.”

  The men stood and said polite goodbyes then carefully climbed out onto the metal stairs.

  Annie Bea called out after them, “Watch yourselves.”

  “Where’s the dog?�
� Michael asked.

  “The damn thing should be around here somewhere but I wasn’t talking about him when I said to watch yourself. I’m serious!”

  Michael winked. “We know.”

  Annie Bea continued, “I hear my husband talking like he wants to kill a fag or two in his life and he and the boys sound so serious about it.”

  Michael winced. “What else does the KKK have to say?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if they’re as organized as all that. If they were, god help you.”

  “See yah!” Alex said, then pricked up his ears. “Hey, Michael, listen!”

  There were dogs barking far off in the woods.

  “Creepy.” Michael shuddered. “I hope they’re not wild and headed this way. I hope this car starts. I just couldn’t deal with a whole bunch of crazed dogs peeing on our tires right now.” Michael opened the driver’s door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m horny. I want to drive.”

  “Hell if I care. Get over!”

  Michael scooted over. “I’ll ride shotgun on this stagecoach to protect you from the Indians.”

  “Racist. Where’re the keys?”

  Michael looked at the ground. “I dropped them somewhere.”

  “What?” Alex began to panic.

  “Well, you make me so nervous!”

  Alex’s foot crunched down on them. “Thank God you didn’t lose them in the weeds or you’d be dead. My sister wants her car back in one piece. My sister wants her car back.” He backed the station wagon around, chugged down the dirt driveway and drove along the narrow meandering gravel road of the trailer park.

  “You know,” Michael said as he sat sideways against the door, “I thought that I was going to have a dreadful time but Annie Bea’s cool. She’s really cool. And this trailer park is cool being so close to the river and in its own sleepy hollow. I just can’t get over how fat she is.”

  Alex huffed. “And now what do you have against fat people?”

  “That’s the real difference between rich people and poor people, isn’t it? The rich have the goddamn horse sense to puke it all back out, to be able to wear those clothes. I can’t understand how a person could just be so lazy as to not puke more, don’t they want to wear that stuff? Aren’t they willing to sit around feeling hungry every day? Aren’t they willing to always feel bad so they can look good?”

  “You should talk!” Alex shamed him. “You’re a drunk shallow superficial drag queen who wears black to look different. Wearing black is not a personality. And there’s more to life than men’s pants… or, er, what just lies just beneath.”

  Michael lifted his shirt and pushed at his tummy to feel for fat.

  “You need to grow up.”

  Michael added, “Growing up means getting a beer belly. You don’t fear getting a beer belly?”

  Alex asked, “How come you don’t have a beer belly? You live on beer.”

  Michael shrugged. “I think beer bellies come from all the potato chips and hot dogs that go with them, for those that can afford to go whole hog.”

  Alex said. “Fear of fat is not a personality.”

  “Yes, I think you nailed it. That was nice of you to pin it down for me. I’m afraid of fat because I’m afraid of me getting fat. Fat will make me look old. And I can’t afford to get old until I get my life started somehow. I just don’t feel like I got it started at all. Why should I care what happens to somebody else? We all commit the seven deadly sins. Gluttony is just the one that you can’t hide. I think Orson Wells said that. Mom always made snide comments about fat people—so you know that just stuck in my bones. What Mom says always sticks in your bones. Mother always puts her fears into you. Mother puts her beliefs into you. You’re taking in all her nasty comments about the world when you’re little enough to be able to sit up in the shopping cart seat. How many times did mother point out the fat people and black people, under her breath, horrified that they were there in the world, as if they needed pointed out. And then you got scolded for staring.”

  Alex agreed.

  Michael said, “That was nice of Annie Bea to pay you for that haircut and have drinks. She’s some smart cookie to steal from her husband’s friend for it. I’ve never been so wicked. I wish I was that clever to be so wicked.”

  Alex laughed. “What else are her straight friends good for but to steal money to pay me… oh, holy shit!”

  “What?” Michael turned to look out his window.

  “There!” As he pulled onto the main road Alex pointed to a red pickup truck parked on the shoulder of the road. The wagon chugged lazily as he stomped the accelerator. “Go! Go! Go!” Alex urged the car. In the rear view mirror he saw headlights flash on then the pickup truck pulled out after them. “Michael, this is like a really bad movie!”

  “And we’re in it and it’s Silkwood! Oh my god, I knew I knew too much!”

  “Don’t say that!” Alex yelled at Michael. “Now come on, baby,” Alex ordered the car.

  “I’m Cher.”

  “Fuck you! If this is Silkwood, I’m Cher!” Alex said to the speedometer, “Come on, honey, be nice. You talk nice to her and she doesn’t stall.” Then he kissed the steering wheel.

  “Why don’t I just get out and push?” Michael offered. “We’d go so much faster.”

  “There’s two men in the truck after us! I see two!”

  “I hope they’re cute, since there’s two of us and…”

  “No, they’re not cute! Don’t be stupid.”

  Michael snapped his fingers. “Damn.”

  “Look at that!” Alex pointed at the rear view mirror.

  Michael turned to look out the back window to see that the truck had been keeping a respectable distance but was now slowing. It turned onto a side road that curved steeply up the bluff. “Look! It went up Quarry Lane!”

  “Good! We weren’t forced off the road by a crazy redneck truck!”

  Michael said, “I hope he farts and dies.”

  Alex let out a laugh. “And falls into the quarry!”

  “That sure was a scare!”

  “Sure was.” Alex laughed again nervously.

  “Hey, I don’t want to bring the evening down or anything—since this wasn’t Silkwood and nobody is Cher, anyway—but do you remember the story of Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Alex became indignant. “What do you mean? Cher is Cher.”

  Michael maintained, “The wolf beats the little g…”

  “I know the goddamn story. I had a sticker book of it as a kid. I don’t need to be reminded of it tonight. Shut up! The truck is not going off to cut us off. That is not a shortcut. Or is it? And what do you mean nobody is Cher?”

  Michael gasped. “The wolf takes the short cut.”

  “Where is Cher?”

  Michael snapped at Alex, “Cher is not Cher. It’s just a collection of wigs that somebody decided to give a name to. I realized it when I saw the movie Yentl. That’s all I could think about the whole movie long. It’s all done with wigs! Cher is so many wigs that she’s bigger than all of us.”

  “Cher wasn’t in that.”

  “No but they put a short wig over Babs long wig and then I just finally got it. It was a total drag queen epiphany. It’s aaall done with wigs!”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “And I have wigs!”

  “Having a wig is not a personality.”

  They drove for a while in silence. Michael looked out into the dark as if he could see the river, knowing it was out there somewhere. Not a single light reflected from it. He thought maybe he’d be able to see something. “The river is gone!”

  “What?”

  “I can’t see it! It’s been taken away!”

  “Shut up. Have you seen Jack lately?” Alex asked, turning away from the river and up the hill into town.

  “Tony?”

  “Whatever. Your latest blow. Is he gone with the wind?” Alex laughed.

  “We didn’t go that fa
r. How am I going to get him to hump me? I don’t think he’s even ever had a blowjob. I don’t think he’s ever had anything. He said I gave him wet dreams. Don’t you stop having those when you start jacking off? And he’s eighteen? He’s really very very sheltered. And I think we might have all scared him away. I realized I wasn’t even Snake Girl yet when I started all that sex stuff and everything else that I did. I might be way too old for him in every way. I am the gay ying to his gay yang. He’s probably on the cusp of learning his first blowjobs in the school locker room. Do they ever do that there? I suppose that’s the natural order of things. Gays always take longer to figure it out since our sex lives aren’t on billboards and TV. We don’t recruit. In fact we’re usually just trying to keep from feeling like we’re going to hell, and getting beat up in this life.”

  “We scared him?” Alex raised his eyebrows. “Keep me out of your failures. I have enough of my own, thank you.”

  “Yep, we: all fags, their fairies, fruits, and flowers. And little farts. All the F words. He seemed freaked out by the whole gay thing after it went so far. He needs to stew. Ripen. Flower in his own time. Even something as basic as kissing is very tricky, or at least you think it is when it’s all new. At least it is when it isn’t done like on TV, you don’t ever see two men kissing on TV to let you know it’s okay.”

  Alex said, “Maybe he isn’t really gay.”

  Michael nodded. “He’s one of those guys who’ll get married and have kids but then sit on vegetables late at night to try to find fun.”

  Michael turned to watch the road behind them. As they passed a street lamp it illuminated Michael’s face. “God, it’s dark. I wish there were more streetlights. I can’t see everything out there around us. Alex?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Michael said, “What if they’re waiting for us?”

  “What?”

  “What if that truck is waiting somewhere for us?”

  “They can’t know where I live… can they? Oh shit!”

  Michael sounded spooked. “Can I stay at your house?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight. I’ve got the jeebees!”

  Alex readily agreed and said he could.