Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  She lied. “All the time.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  He pulled a napkin out of the dispenser for her. “Wipe that damn lipstick off. Then we’ll go and kiss for awhile and then you can tell me what you thought about it all.”

  Lizzi went to the bathroom. When she returned without lipstick she glanced at him and then walked to the parking lot. Then he escorted her to his car and the time flew as they kissed.

  * * * * *

  That night in his apartment Michael made himself up in drag while blasting The Book of Love and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Then he carefully put his records away, arranged by his idea of theme, and sat quietly in a purple caftan against a pile of pillows on his couch.

  He applauded his mirror. “Laddies and gentlemen, welcome to the circus,” he announced in a clumsy brogue. “It’ll be a good one tonight, full of glamour and pink elephants… if we can find any laddies and gentlemen.”

  He batted his tremendous false eyelashes and tugged down at his wildly coifed wig. “I’m Diana Ross and you’re not! I’m coming out!”

  With long plastic nails he deftly rolled a cigarette and smashed it into a long black and red macabre cigarette older. “What a divine and pure ritual!” he thought aloud. “Cigarettes are the best ritual… a libation simply condensed into practical magic. Did not every basic ritual from forest torches to church candles have purifying fires? Mine’s a box of stove top matches.”

  A few of his nail tips started to melt so he quickly lit up the cigarette, watching the swelling ember of the ash glow mystically with his inhale. He took a gulp of jug wine. “I take my troubles and my thoughts and I tightly roll them willfully into a fragile piece of volatile paper, then strike a match, consume those anxieties… and partake of holy communion, which is yet another magic trick about God that involves digestion.”

  He looked at the end of his cigarette as if he could see angels dancing there in the glow. “Hello in there! The real hook is the chemicals. To think people do this all the time without even really thinking about it. So, a true ritual doesn’t even need to have conscious understanding, does it? Not really. It merely needs to exist and that’s it… exist in the reality of mass culture, or the collective consciousness of all humanity. Yes. Eureka!”

  He decided to write all this new-honed, mind-blasting profundity down for a future song or poem. He pulled a blank piece of paper from the coffee table, spun it around a few times, but instead wrote:

  Dear Mom,

  I need to confess to you that Lizzi is not my girlfriend. She has never been nor will she ever be nor will she ever think she is—nor will she ever think. I have never had a girlfriend. I don’t think I will ever have a girlfriend in the usual sense of the word, although I often use the word “girlfriend” to describe male friends. You see, I am gay. I am very gay. I’m very very very gay. I have always been gay and I will always be gay—because that’s just what happens when one is gay.

  Michael looked at what he’d written. He read it aloud several times and couldn’t believe how hokey it sounded. He remembered when he was a kid he used to skip along instead of walk and everybody told him it looked funny… funny in a bad way.

  You see, I am gay. I am very gay. I am so gay that I think the Wizard of Oz is my church and Joan Crawford is my guardian angel and Bette Davis is to help us talk when we’re drunk! I am so gay that my favorite sandwich is swish cheese. I am so gay that I am now Diana Ross! I am so gay! I will not be ashamed! I will NOT be ashamed! I will not!

  He ripped up the piece of paper. He wiped a tear then pulled his wig off and threw it across the room. It looked like curled up road-kill where it lay.

  “Die!” He stepped on it with his purple heels on his way to the kitchen, switched on the light and went to the sink to do dishes. When he unlocked the faucet to full blast, half his nails popped and swirled down the drain. “Choke on it!” he screamed as he chased it with dish soap. He laughed at all the bubbles, then began to cry again.

  “Screw them all!” He wondered why he just couldn’t tell the folks at home that their son wasn’t always dressed like this but usually did the dishes in heels and a pink thong.

  He couldn’t tell them anything because he was not that rude, or more likely, always had been told to keep his opinions to himself. If he didn’t obey instantly, or keep his emotions to himself, he won a slap to his face. Then Mother would pry his lips apart to see if she’d made his gums bleed. If they were bleeding then they both felt worse.

  “Child abuse! Oh my God! I’m just like a goddamn made-for-TV movie!” He could imagine the pitch in the TV Guide: ‘Mom slaps effeminate boy until gums bleed. Starring Melissa Gilbert. Her Diana Ross impersonations suck.’ He laughed for a brief moment then cried again, not realizing he’d gotten so drunk. “Oh my god! You raised me to be straight and I wasn’t straight! Do you know how that twists a person’s brain up?”

  When the glass he’d been holding slipped from his grip and shattered in the sink he grabbed for it too late and cut two fingers. Dumbfounded, he reverently watched his blood swirl down the drain. The red was a fantastically vibrant hue and seemed fantastically beautiful against the freshly bleached porcelain. He watched the gorgeous vortex until he realized that he shouldn’t be giving up good blood for art’s sake so he turned the water off and went looking for toilet paper.

  “Shit. Get it together, girl. You got important things yet to do in life. You have yet to find love, money… or anything! You need something! And time is running out!”

  With his two fingers wrapped in toilet paper, Michael went to the other room and picked up his phone and screamed into it, “Alex, damn you, why did you have to die your way to an early grave? Answer me! Why did you die? I’ve been beat up a hundred times and I didn’t die!” Then he looked at the receiver, blankly, realizing he’d just done something that might be interpreted as completely nuts. He dried his tears and slowly hung up and glared at the phone, wanting it to ring and Alex to be on the other end. The phone didn’t ring so Michael talked to Alex, anyway, just into the room. He talked to his ghost.

  “Dear, just to update you about things around down here, your sister’s boyfriend left her. So Annie Bea from the trailer by the river moved in with her, leaving her husband. But Annie Bea is on a diet because she now thinks the world is neato and you can’t do her hair anymore because she doesn’t like dead people touching her head. She wants to write for the newspaper and maybe she’ll do a story about all of us. You were right—we shouldn’t have waited to go to the cemetery because now it is cold and rainy. Too bad you couldn’t afford to rest in peace in the nice cemetery—then you could lie under goose poop. Oooh, screw you. You died just to get back at me for something, I know it. Of course, I’m going to make this all about me! Me! Me! I’m the one sitting here feeling stupid. Me! Look who’s left behind feeling bad—missing you real bad! Me! The loser! You are free and I am me!” He got up and danced around singing that for a while. When he got tired, Michael gave his scarecrow poster a kiss and then looked out his window onto the street below and when he saw a person walking by he wondered what they could possibly be thinking. He wondered how they made money. He wondered if they were married.

  Michael turned back to the room and thought for a second that he saw Alex’s ghost but he couldn’t be sure. “Alex?” He felt like he was being watched. “Alex? I know you’re here. I know you’re looking down on me.” He lay on his back and tried to stare past the ceiling. “You see me but I don’t see you… I’m left here all alone feeling just awful about everything… I want my mama… my real mama who gave me hugs… Gina!”

  Gina was the Mexican ticket lady at the carnival and he soon felt like she became his real mama. She quickly decided he was a “good boy” so she doted on him and gave him advice and even nagged him as if she had the right.

  “You stink!” Gina shamed him after hugging him. “You smell like a dirty carnie bastard!”
>
  He’d smile at her in chagrin then go back and spray his body and clothes down. Since showers and washing machines were nowhere in sight she taught him to put baking soda in water in an old Windex spray bottle and deodorized himself with that everyday. It was so dirt cheap nobody would think to steal it away from him. Gina also made him save money and she became his bank. Since she kept the cashbox, being the ticket lady, nobody could steal his money from him while she had it.

  And she taught him how to shoplift like any carnie worth his salt. He hadn’t thought about her in awhile, he wondered if she was okay, so he started to feel guilty about that, too.

  * * * * *

  The next rainy day, Halloween, in gym class, Tony sat on the bleachers and watched the basketball game. He noticed Steve Hammer but tried not to though it was impossible to ignore someone who was acting like the game actually meant something. And he wondered about his dirty jockstrap in his gym bag.

  When the match ended, shirtless Steve walked up to Tony, wiping sweat from his chest onto the sides of his shorts. Tony calmly waited for some comment that was sure to come.

  Steve gave a kind smile. “Some of us are playing basketball after school. Care to join us?”

  Tony blinked in disbelief. “You know how I hate basketball. Besides, I’m doing Mr. Nelson a favor after school.”

  “The theatre teacher? A favor?” He made it sound dirty as he scanned Tony’s body with narrowing eyes. Tony put his knees together.

  “I’m going to put some lights away in the theatre,” Tony said as he wished he could make his legs go away. Steve wouldn’t take his eyes off them.

  “Eh, that’s cool.” Steve absently picked at his own ear. Then he smiled strangely. He briefly picked at his own crotch then turned and walked away. Gossip said that Steve once got a full boner in the school shower. Tony wondered what that had looked like.

  * * * * *

  After his final class, Tony crossed paths with Lizzi in the hall outside the cafeteria. He asked her, “What’s on the plate for Halloween?”

  “You’ll love it! You’ll way love it! You’ll just die! You’ll just flip over backwards! You. Will. Die!”

  He wondered what could be more exciting than what they’d done last year. With a few other friends they’d driven out to the country to explore an old abandoned farmhouse that was said to be haunted. They didn’t see any apparitions but it was great fun to walk together through the rooms with one flashlight so that the real thrill was all the darkness. “Well, what?”

  “We’re going to the Cabaret!”

  Tony’s heart sank. “No way! I’m not going!”

  “But we must! We are going dancing!”

  Tony sang in her face, “You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind!”

  “But we must!”

  Tony squinted in angst. “Of all nights... a queer bar will be the worst place to be. It’ll be a homo madhouse.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I can just imagine how crowded it’ll be with... homos!”

  “It’ll be festive!”

  “Festive?”

  She nodded. “Yes! Oh, you’re forcing me to ruin the most awesome surprise! You see, Michael and I are going to do a show there.”

  Tony looked at her in astonishment. “What?”

  “Yes! He says they have a fabulous stage. We’ve already practiced the song. You have to come, dork!”

  “A show?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you two doing?”

  “That’s a surprise but it’ll be great. But I’ll give you a hint. I’m doing the boy part and he’s doing the girl part.”

  “Okay.” Tony clenched his teeth. “I’m sure it’ll be a hoot. I’m sure you two will look just bananas.” He didn’t look excited.

  “I’ll give you a hint of what we’re going to do. I’m going to stick my hair straight out so it looks like straw! I’m going to be a scarecrow. He’s wearing pigtails. We’re singing ‘Be a Lion’ from The Wiz, you can’t miss it!”

  He looked at how her hair was now held up with big plastic clamps for reclosing chip bags. “And that’s unusual?”

  “It’ll be so much fun tonight!”

  Tony frowned. “That was such a stupid movie. Why is Michael always so obsessed with such stupid stuff?”

  “He knows how to have fun!”

  “Why is he singing ‘Be a Lion’ to a scarecrow?”

  “That’s the really funny part, for a bar. Dorothy is so blind drunk she’s got everybody all mixed up. He can turn anything into a drinking song. The scarecrow has no brain, so mixed up Dorothy really gets me thinking I’m a lion by the end of the song!”

  “When did you all think this crazy stunt up?”

  Lizzi answered, “When we planned it all in the car on the way back from the farm we couldn’t stop laughing.” She grabbed him and stole a hug. He bristled so she backed away. He finally forced a smile. “Oh, thank you, Tony! You’ll die laughing.”

  “Stop this gushing or I’ll change my mind.”

  “Oh, sure.” She backed away embarrassed by her outburst of affection.

  “See you later.” Tony waved as he walked away.

  Tony walked to the far corner of the school and entered the shop door into the dark theatre. He soon felt a religious serenity. The backstage greeted him with friendly smells of sawdust and latex paint. He stepped out onto the dark proscenium stage and felt that something was breathing. He turned. The ghost light shone from a simple stand in the middle of the stage floor, the theatre’s only illumination, pushing back the many shadows. He didn’t know the tradition of the ghost light but now that it was Halloween he appreciated it being there.

  Tony heard a soft infinitesimal clang from the catwalk high above in the fly system and was startled as if jarred from a light sleep. A canvas backdrop of purple mountains rippled slightly so he walked upstage to look behind it. The catwalk metal creaked again.

  He ran from the stage through the dark workshop and down a flight of metal steps to the basement dressing room. He turned on all the lights and sat at the row of makeup mirrors. Tony wasn’t alone. Behind him, six mannequins were dressed in bright ball gowns. For a moment he imagined the entire room filled with an excited cast. Lizzi would certainly have made herself the center of attention regardless of how small her part. Tony leaned forward into the mirror and studied the pores on the tip of his nose. He saw a pimple threatening there and also just above his eyebrow. He looked close at his eyebrow hairs.

  “Who are you?”

  He almost expected an answer. Instead, he heard the hollow clang of footsteps on the outside stairs. Someone was coming down to the dressing room. The footsteps were too hesitant to be Mr. Nelson or the janitor. He wondered if maybe a curious student had found the open door and knew the way as they passed through the dark workshop. Tony turned to face the door. It opened with caution and Steve Hammer stepped in still dressed for basketball. He pretended nonchalance as he looked at hatboxes buried in ribbons.

  “What a bunch of shit.”

  Tony asked, “What the hell are you doing down here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  Tony pretended that he hadn’t heard that. “Go play basketball.”

  “Is this where you… you know…?”

  “What?”

  “I wanna see.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “I wanna see!” Steve lowered his voice like a lover.

  Tony wondered if Steve had been waiting up on the catwalk to throw him off. “Get the hell out of here! You don’t belong down here!”

  Steve pulled off his T-shirt and wiped the back of his neck, stretching his chest. “Isn’t that nice?”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  Steve stretched out his arms and flexed his chest, watching himself in the mirror. “Like my muscles? I do.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “You always look at them.”

  Tony insisted
, “I do not.”

  Steve nodded. “All gym class long you watch me. You can’t take your eyes off me.”

  Tony wondered how he could make a quick escape. There was only one door but an insane jock was blocking it. As Steve began to walk slowly towards him Tony watched his eyes. Tony thought his eyes made him seem like a wolf. Steve stood before Tony and placed his hands firmly on Tony’s shoulders. Tony shrugged them off, getting a good whiff of sweat.

  “Get away from me!”

  Steve laughed as Tony tried to bolt up from his seat but Steve pushed him back down. “Where you going?” Steve shoved Tony’s face into his gym shorts. Tony tried to run off but Steve pushed him against a wall of metal cabinets and then pushed him to his knees. Tony felt repulsed but gradually ceased to resist. He pushed Tony’s face into his crotch again. Finally, Tony grabbed Steve’s buttocks and pulled him tight to his mouth.

  * * * * *

  That same hour, under a big broken umbrella, Michael entered 7th Street, the final home stretch to his apartment. He was carrying a big skirt for the night’s performance.

  He practiced his part of the duet from The Wiz he’d sing with Lizzi, he playing Dorothy and she playing the lion. He sang, “There is a place we’ll go where there is mostly quiet.

  Flowers and butterflies… a rainbow lives beside it.”

  He paused, noticing that the shop below his apartment had closed for the day. He cursed aloud. That meant he’d been gone longer than he’d intended. He still had so much to do before the big show. He had to spray paint some shoes to make them red and then while the paint was still wet and sticky sprinkle on some glitter. He had to call Lizzi. He had to eat something. He had to shave. As he approached the store he noticed the country smell of pig shit. He thought that was a very odd smell for the city. It grew stronger as he came to his own door. He didn’t know what to think until he realized the stench was wafting down the stairs from his apartment. He raced up them, two at a time, and saw that his lock-jam had been kicked out of his doorframe. He gagged, covering his mouth as he entered his pungent apartment.