Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  “It’ll be a totally rad adventure!”

  “I’ll have to think about it. A person could burn in hell for this kind of thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that that idea is going to fly about as well as a paper airplane that everybody has just peed on.”

  “You’re so gross.”

  He nodded.

  * * * * *

  When Lizzi walked away from the park and passed the downtown library she saw the man with the mustache and mullet hair she’d met at the roller rink. He held open a suitcase filled with perfume bottles.

  “Chuck? Up Chuck?”

  He smiled. “That’s me. Buy a bottle of perfume!”

  “No money. And I still have a bottle from last Christmas of something very department-store-la-tee-dah!” She held out her wrist as if he should smell it. “Diva by Ungaro. Beat that smell!”

  He snapped his suitcase shut. “Damn business is bad. Maybe if I called this fag juice I could sell it. And sell it for twice what I’m asking. The fags love this smell, I’m sure. But I wouldn’t want to be near enough to them to do that kind of business.”

  Lizzi started to walk away. “Whatever.”

  “Hey wait, don’t go.”

  She stopped and turned. “Why would I want to talk to you about anything? You’re a dick!”

  “I have one.”

  “You’re way rude and totally stupid and if you didn’t look so old I’d think you were, like, twelve years old!”

  He put the suitcase down on the sidewalk and put his hands up.” Don’t shoot. I’ll be good.”

  “Too late. If you haven’t learned manners by now then you aren’t ever going to learn them.”

  “What did I ever do to you?”

  “It’s how you talk about other people!”

  He smirked. “Who cares about other people?”

  “If you’re going to be a businessman then you should at least pretend to like all kinds of other people—even other people you don’t like—you want people to think you’re nice so they want to give you their money for your stupid shit.”

  “This perfume is great.”

  Lizzi put her hand on her hip. “As if. People won’t drop dead without it.”

  “I knew I should have just stuck with selling flags. This fag juice is hard to move.”

  Lizzi smirked. “You’re totally impossible.”

  “I’m not evil. I just know right from wrong. Blame Mom for that. She told me. And blame Dad, too. He beat it into me. I think how they think and why shouldn’t I? They got it all from their folks—good people. It’s all tried and true… wisdom of the ages! I don’t want to burn in hell. Someday we’ll all live together in glory, all of us who lived the right way. Now you tell me how bad I am, now, after I just told you this nice bit about religion and my own Mom and Dad. Would a bad person talk to you like that?”

  “I… dunno.”

  Chuck added, “And I hope you aren’t going to hell. I hope I see you in all eternity in God’s glory, too! Maybe we’ll be man and wife for all eternity?”

  “What?”

  “If we get married here on earth then it’s for all time.”

  Lizzi frowned. “But, like, hello… we aren’t married.”

  “I said but if we get married.”

  “That was a big if.”

  Chuck gave a nod. “Yes it is!”

  “This isn’t a proposal, I hope. I don’t expect your mama to teach you to propose but certainly you’ve seen some TV shows and picked up some pointers from them.”

  “No, I’m not getting on my knee. I’m not proposing now. If I’m going to really ask you to marry me then we need to go on dates first so I can know we’re right for each other. I’m just saying what if it happened later. Why not? Maybe we can go on a date first and see how it goes from there… like our last one at the roller rink.”

  “That was a date?”

  “We skated the blue light special. You know what a good skater I am. I think you skate real good too.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice to skate with somebody who knows what they’re doing, especially at the turns.”

  He smiled. “Did you notice my feet went into the same pattern as yours… all the way around?”

  Lizzi tried not to smile. “Yes I did.”

  “I know what I’m doing. Meet me at the roller rink Sunday night if you want to see me again, if you want to be with a pro. If you don’t come then I’ll get the hint.”

  “I’ll have to see what I’m doing.”

  “And don’t come with that fag.”

  “Fag?”

  “That fag I’ve seen you there with before.”

  “Tony?” She said mockingly, “He’s a fag?”

  Chuck winced and wiped at his moustache as if it pained him. “You can just tell.”

  She walked away, “We’ll see…”

  Chapter six

  The next afternoon, Lizzi jittered about in Michael’s apartment. She had been learning her part, Michael giving her acting lessons which amounted to little more than how to impersonate a female impersonator. After nearly an hour she gave up for the day, her head hurting from having to remember several things at once. As she rummaged through his things on top of his coffee table, she asked, “Do you like to kiss men with moustaches?”

  “Stubble is best. A good rug burn all over the face from somebody else’s stubble is just wonderful.”

  “Ouch.”

  Michael said, “That’s the point. You have to kiss for so long in such abandon that you realize after it’s too late that you’ve got a terrible rug burn all over. It’s great.”

  She rubbed her lips. “A moustache is annoying, I bet.” She looked at the lipstick she just rubbed on her fingertip.

  “Who did you kiss? What else did you do? When’s the baby?”

  “I can’t get pregnant from just kissing. I know that much. And I didn’t even do that.”

  “Tony doesn’t have a moustache… so who is it? Who’s the man in your life?”

  “No man in my life. Maybe. I won’t ever be kissed by him, I bet. But stranger things have happened. I hope.”

  “You think he’ll be a lousy kisser—this stranger?”

  “He probably knows how to kiss. He’s old. He’s probably your age.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But he’s just a jerk. So I might just use him and then tossed him back.” She tried to give a worldly laugh.

  Michael looked at her in worry. “Oh no.”

  She shrugged. “I won’t be back to him, if I do.”

  “Yes you will. The call of the wild is a terrible thing. You hate him because he’s awful. You hate him because he’s course and… poor. He’s a dreadful hick that you’d never want to admit knowing. You’ll never introduce him to me. You’re ashamed of knowing a man like that.”

  Lizzi looked shocked. “How did you know?”

  “Hee hee. In this town? What else is there? And you’re not a lesbian so you’re doomed to this fate of being pulled to… to… un-fabulous men.”

  “I think I need to move. After school I’m definitely getting out of town.”

  Michael looked at the windows. “I wonder why I’m here too. I have no excuse. I need to get out too.”

  The conversation suddenly made Lizzi feel doomed so she changed the topic. “Why, why do you buy such cheap makeup? This doesn’t hold up.”

  “I don’t need it to hold up. Where you need your makeup to hold up through a nine-to-five hell and errands in hundred-degree humidity then a few dips in the pool, I just need mine to last as long as one song up on a stage. You just know I’m going to totally retouch my lipstick and nose between numbers whether it needs it or not.”

  “Drag queens are so lucky.” She went to one of his red-painted wood stepladders that served as shelves for bric-a-brac and took electric blue fingernail polish from it. She started to paint her nails. “If you won a million dollars in the lottery would you have a sex change?”

  “You ignorant brazen bitch.”
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  “I’m way serious.”

  “I don’t believe in genital mutilation in general or particular. And nobody is going to tell me I can’t wear a dress and lipstick—no matter what’s quivering in my panty hose.”

  “You seem rather sure of that,” Lizzi said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t have rather been born a girl? Then it would be so easy… you just wake up in the morning, like me, and you’re already a girl! Then the big debate is: do I look tough today like Anne Lennox or is today a goofy Cyndi Lauper day?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want. I was born a boy and surgery is not a magic wand. You can’t just switch bodies like a carnival sideshow trick. That always looks cool but it’s not real. I’ll just have to try and be real about my real body now that I’m not Snake Girl anymore.”

  “But what if surgery becomes perfect in a few years with laser beams and cloning and bionic living rubber parts and things?”

  “Then I’ll have them surgically change me into a bird so I can completely fly out of everywhere.”

  “Birds don’t wear dresses.”

  He rubbed his arms. “I’ll make sure the feathers are really very pretty… like something Marlene Dietrich would have put on her head.”

  She chuckled. “Do you ever want to commit suicide?”

  “You stupid dingbat bitch.”

  “Seriously!”

  “To want to kill yourself means your brain isn’t working right. A healthy brain will rise to any occasion to slug it out against anything. I know that for a fact; I’ve seen a few nature shows on TV. That goes for all living things.” Michael grabbed his own wrist to feel his pulse as if he wasn’t sure, then he went on, “Even your damn lawn tries to live. Everything that’s alive tries to hold on for as long as it can… unless the brain got sick. Or the heart? I don’t know.”

  “Funny. Another question. When you go on a gay date who decides who will be the boy and who will be the girl?”

  “Jane you ignorant slut.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Michael looked away. “It’s none of your business.”

  Lizzi wrinkled up her nose. “I want to know how things work. I swear I’ve never figured out how people work. I just know that there’s people out there somewhere in the world, in this town, who are doing cool things and sexy things and I want to be a part of it! I want to be cool too!” She went to the front window to look out, looking down on the street. A shiny new brown 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI drove by. “Oh, isn’t that car cute. Do you ever want a car? Everybody has a car. They go places.”

  “If I want a car I borrow Joanie’s old station wagon. She’s my best friend’s sister. But… he’s…”

  “Do you ever want to have children?”

  “You cheeky sick monster.”

  “What’s wrong with asking that? Everybody talks about babies.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just, no.”

  “No reason?”

  He insisted, “Just, no!”

  “Okay, be that way. Another question: do you think gay people started AIDS?”

  “Lizzi, I don’t know all these cosmic things. Look at me. Do I look like I know anything?”

  “What do you think? Is it the Pentagon trying to kill all gay people? Is it God trying to kill all gay people? Haven’t you ever thought about it?”

  Michael rolled his eyes. “If it’s God then He’s rather sloppy. But then God always killed a lot of babies along the way with his bad aim. And from knowing its own military guys the Pentagon should realize too many married men go bi-sexualing around when they get that itch, so the Pentagon would be just as sloppy. So no I can’t imagine the government or God releasing something so big or microscopic that they can’t control it in the least, not on purpose.”

  “Well then why do gay people have AIDS?”

  “It came from wherever. And gay people are walking Petri dishes no better than anybody else and luck just happened to land it in the gay pool. Straight people have it, too. Viruses have no manners.”

  “Are you afraid of it?” Lizzi asked. “You sound so flippant.”

  “I’m scared to holy shit. That’s why I’m so flippant. It keeps me from running screaming down the street like my top hairpiece is on fire. I’m careful about it now, of course, but who knows if I got it before anybody knew about it and it’s just waiting like a time bomb in me to explode with puss just shooting out of my ears.”

  “Grodie.”

  “Nobody really knows anything about it, really, but I think science will figure it out. I bet Carl Sagan will do it, maybe soon. In ten years this nightmare will be all a bad dream and we’ll wonder how we coped with it and the new generation will have no concept.”

  “Ten years?” Lizzi made a face. “That’s 1994! Nobody can wait that long. That’s an impossibly far far time away. I’ll be so old by then! I’ll have bags under my eyes.”

  “So I was being conservative. And don’t talk about baggy eyes or I’ll have to kill you.”

  “You don’t have any bags. How old are you really?”

  “You ask a lot of stupid pointless questions that have no reality on this planet.”

  Liz raised her hand. “One more big important question and I promise I’ll shut up for a few minutes.”

  “What? Don’t make it personal, please.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe you’re totally crazy, but… but why in the fucking hell do you put water in your nail polish bottles? That is so eccentric! Aren’t you going to ruin it?”

  “The water will never mix with the polish but it keeps the air away. So it will now last a million years. It’s a secret the cosmetic industry doesn’t want you to know. They want you to have to throw away half-used, gunked-up bottles all the time to buy new stuff.”

  “But then if that’s so true then why didn’t I learn it in home ec?”

  Michael stood up and twirled in place. “Because it wasn’t taught by a loud queen!”

  Lizzy smiled. “I’ve been taught.”

  Michael gave a pert nod. “The School of Snake Girl!”

  “I used to think you looked like Jaclyn Smith. But now I think it’s more like Morgan Fairchild with black hair.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows as if piqued. “How bourgeois… a TV star! I think I look more like a classic movie star! Ava Gardner!”

  “Who’s she? You’re Gardner Snake?”

  He laughed.

  * * * * *

  That night was the dress rehearsal for the high school variety show and Lizzi inspected another student. “Honey, if you’re going to wear a shade of lipstick like that then you’re going to have to line it with something darker. Otherwise you’ll have no lips!”

  “Lizzi, leave me alone!”

  “Mark my words.”

  The girl ran off and reexamined herself in the mirror then dug through an open orange plastic tackle box of cosmetics for a darker pencil. Tony sat quietly next to Lizzi at the mirror. She put rouge on his cheeks. Then she spotted Mr. Nelson and went to him. “Oh, teacher!”

  “Have you learned your lines yet?” the teacher asked her.

  She answered, “I have socks in my bra. Who needs lines.”

  “What you need is a brain,” he replied.

  “What?” She slapped her hands to the sides of her face in mock surprise. “I had to learn what? I thought you were holding cue cards for us in the pit! You did make big ones, didn’t you?”

  “Lizzi, we’ll all miss you when you’re gone.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked suspiciously but only received a wide frozen grin. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Wait’ll you hear this!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been privately coached by a way-beyond professional female impersonator!”

  Mr. Nelson faltered for a moment. “What?” His eyes went wide.

  “A drag queen!”

  “I know what a drag queen is, young lady; I was once one in my silly youth when I lived in that
sin city Springfield.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t question me. It was in the Stone Age. Now tell me: where in the hell did you find a drag queen?”

  Lizzi beamed proudly. “I’m his best friend now. He lost his last one.”

  “Sloppy.”

  “No, he died. He was murdered! It’s a conspiracy! The drag queens know all about it but they won’t put that version on the news! My mom even says it’s a scandal! Everybody is still very sad.”

  Mr. Nelson didn’t want to hear about it. “Well, let’s see what you crazy kids have come up with.” He walked off.

  Tony sat solemnly before the huge mirror puzzling over other things. As he slowly blended the makeup on his cheeks he thought about the reappearance of his gym bag in the locker room earlier that day. It was sitting in a corner near the showers as if it had never been gone for a day. He didn’t expect to see it again; he assumed it had been thrown away by some jerk. He opened it and saw that only his jockstrap was there. He opened the bag again when he was back home to finally discover that the cup of his jockstrap was stained and stiff with somebody’s dried cum. He threw it in the garbage wanting to puke. He wondered who would do something like that. He wondered if it was a threat or some sort of homo love letter. It disturbed him either way.

  The only person he suspected was a fellow gym class student named Steve Hammer. Steve seemed to look at him too much and it was in a way that usually made him feel self-conscious. His main reason, though, for suddenly thinking Steve was to blame was that last week the staring got intense. He dressed next to Steve in the locker room. When Tony lifted his leg out of his jeans his dick fell out of the side of his underwear and Steve’s eyes widened. Tony put his crotch all back into order by pulling his underwear down almost to his knees and back up again, watching Steve stare. Supposedly, Steve once got a full boner in the school shower. The gossip had only been silly to him then but now Tony wondered what that had really looked like.

  Finished with his stage makeup, Tony went to the dark wings to wait for their turn in the show, sitting quietly on a wooden folding chair. He could smell the sweet talc that had fallen on his shoulders and tried to brush it off. When Lizzi approached she looked every inch the glamorous movie star trying too hard to look every inch the glamorous movie star.