Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  “Holy shit!” he cried as he looked about in horror. He nearly fainted from the sight. His entire apartment had been trashed and what must have amounted to several buckets of runny pig manure had been slopped here and there over strewn clothes, books, furniture, and art. The guitar was completely smashed. He saw some of his records cracked in two.

  He began to cry as he kicked at a soiled wig. If anything was salvageable he wasn’t about to dig through the globs of reeking crap to find it. Marlene Dietrich’s cool face of withdrawal stared up at him from the glossy pages that had been torn out of his pricey Hollywood Portraits book. He noticed the gold jawbone of a plastic skull in a pile of dirt and broken plants. His heart jolted at the sight of his top-secret guilty pleasure lying out, exposed and spattered with shit—his secret Nancy Reagan scrapbook was ripped open and ruined.

  Eventually he realized that maybe he should fear for his life. He wasn’t about to stand around wiping up poop to find out. He fought back tears then ran out of the apartment in a blind panic, running to the comfort of the Cabaret.

  He slammed open the narrow door to the dressing room and caught two bouncers sharing a thin little joint. “Get out, you two,” Michael ordered, “or I’ll spray you with lady perfume.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Michael snapped. “Out! Your friggin’ oregano stinks!”

  They clomped down the stairs.

  Michael shivered and looked hard at the painted star of Aphrodite above him. Even though he’d already decided what he was going to do, he prayed, “What do I do? There’s only one thing to do… get out of this bad movie!”

  He realized how he’d let himself become so tied down by petty obligations. He had an apartment full of fancy clutter. He had a friendship full of petty chatter. Those things were now gone. He’d have to leave Alex’s ghost behind.

  “I’m getting out! Out. Out.” He listened carefully to how it sounded. “Out!” He slowly spun around in the chair to take memory snapshots of the room. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” he said to it all. The gowns and wigs before him now seemed so completely garish and trivial. “Worthless shit.” The observation made him sad. He looked up at the painted constellations. “Star light, star bright, let the time fly by tonight.”

  There was a knock on the door and Michael nearly flew out of his chair. “What, already?”

  “Phone call, Michael,” a woman’s voice yelled impatiently through the door. “I know you’re in there! Come answer the damn phone!”

  He opened the door and there was a bartender before him. “What’cha been doing up here, sniffing gasoline? Stinks in here.”

  He didn’t hear her. He ran down the narrow steep stairs, his palm sweeping the wall for balance, wondering if the call was going to be threatening though it didn’t matter because he was safe in his clubhouse. He picked up the Mickey Mouse phone at the far end of the bar and took a deep pained breath. “Hello?”

  “Michael?”

  “Oh shit,” he responded to Lizzi’s shrill voice, having forgotten all about their show.

  “What?” Lizzi howled, taken off guard by Michael’s agitated huff.

  “I’d forgotten all about you, but…”

  “Forgotten? How could you?”

  “Listen! I’ve just been trashed—or my apartment has, rather. All my stuff is ruined. Even my adorable scarecrow poster is ripped up. Nothing is sacred! I’m scared, I’m paranoid and wondering who is in the KKK waiting to drag me off to the woods to finish me off.”

  “Oh, shit! I’m so really very sorry! I only called because Tony’s gone.”

  Her tone scared him. He asked, “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “He was supposed to come over and he didn’t! He didn’t even come home from school and he just isn’t anywhere!”

  “He’s somewhere,” Michael assured her. “He didn’t just sprout wings and fly away. Wait for him to show up and then come over. I’ve got colossal news.”

  “Yeah, it’s a bummer being ripped off.”

  “No, more news than that. I need to talk to you about something important.”

  There was a pause and then Lizzi asked, “Yeah, our show is off tonight. I figured that.”

  “Yeah. I’m too much of a wreck to do it.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Fuck it.”

  Michael said, “Find Tony, or don’t, but get over here tonight!”

  “Sure. We’ll be over soon.” Lizzi’s tone was completely downhearted.

  To keep from hyperventilating, he slowly sang, “There is a place we’ll go where there is mostly quiet. Flowers and butterflies… a rainbow lives beside it.”

  * * * * *

  Hours later, Lizzi entered the crowded bar without Tony. She was shocked by all the noise and flash. The big hit of the year, “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr., was blasting. She grew irritated. She didn’t know how she’d ever find Michael in the crowd. A mustached Tinkerbell, drag queens, biker boys, and a sparkly monster blocked her view and path—all while Annie Lennox began to sing “Sex Crime” in overwhelming amplification. Lizzi charged forward, pushing a sexy jockstrap cowboy, a green elf, and a monstrous Queen of Hearts, to see Michael sitting at the bar. “Michael!” He couldn’t hear her. “Michael!”

  He turned to her and smiled in great relief.

  Burt had been sitting next to him but jumped up as she pushed towards them. “Sit! I was saving this spot for you and Snake Girl.”

  “Thanks,” she said to Burt.

  “I’d love to stay and dish with the best but my wife is up in the dressing room getting poofed by the queens and god knows what they’re telling her about me. I’d better get up there.”

  Lizzi look at him confused as Burt bolted away. She plopped down at Michael’s side. “You’re not drinking?”

  “Not in the mood.” He was smoking, though, and the ashtray before him was filling up.

  “I am!”

  “A mineral water and a cherry wine cooler!” Michael shouted, not to be rude but to be heard. Then he turned back to Lizzi. “You didn’t find Tony?”

  “He agreed to go out with me but then he just blew me off to get out of this. I’ll kill him! Something’s not quite right.”

  “Maybe Tony doesn’t feel comfortable here right now. Maybe right now he’s doing something not so gay.”

  “What in the hell’s that supposed to mean? He’s comfortable anywhere I drag him.”

  Michael said, “Maybe Tony needs to work out some feelings about his own sexuality before he hangs out in a gay bar.”

  Lizzi raised her eyebrows. “What? What’s the bar have to do with anything?”

  “Did you ever stop to think for a minute that Tony could be gay?”

  Lizzi impatiently exhaled. “Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean that everyone else is.”

  “It’s rather rude to make the assumption that one is straight.”

  Lizzi shrugged. She looked defeated.

  Their drinks arrived and Michael paid for them.

  Lizzi took her frosty red bottle. “Thanks.”

  “A toast… to our last night together.”

  Lizzi frowned. “Last? What do you mean?”

  “I’m moving away from this one-horse town. Tomorrow, first thing.”

  “You can’t do that! You can’t just leave!”

  “Hell, why not? As Burt says… another witch’s circle.”

  “What?”

  Michael explained, “Witch’s circle. Going in circles in life.”

  “Did you tell the people here that you’re leaving?”

  “Shhh! Not so loud or they’ll hear. Only you and Burt know my plans.”

  Lizzi folded her hands before her and pouted. “Did the break-in cause all this?”

  “Yep. They didn’t steal anything that I can tell but they smashed the place up and doused it in pig shit.”

  “Pig shit?”

  “Yeah. Everything.”

  “Oh, how nasty!”

  “I’m not even going to clean it up
. I’m just leaving it as I found it. I’m not going back. I’m out of here.”

  Lizzi protested, “But that’s no reason to leave town! You can’t let people shove you around.”

  “They did and it was a true favor.”

  “Huh?”

  Michael took a drink from his water. “There’d be nothing wrong with growing old in this quaint old place if the people here weren’t so dirt dumb and backward! Hateful! I can’t hide in this bar for the rest of my life. I want to start over. I can do it; I’ve got the energy for it again. I’ve lived off my wits in sticky situations before and I’m sure I can do it again and again and again for as long as I need to. I can find a nice place to settle in where I’m treated like a human. I once thought this was it… but it isn’t. It’s too close to home and I hated it there. I want better.” He stood up and twirled his cigarette like Bette Davis. “I’m bigger than all of this!” He smiled at himself and became Michael again.

  Lizzi slumped against the bar and watched him blow smoke. “We all are. We’re all better than this.”

  He smashed out his cigarette and began to roll another. “I was selling myself short hanging around here. When I left home the first time I should’ve stayed far away… Paris, London, Rome… that would’ve spared me a few tailspins. I should not have gone home the last time. I’ve nothing there. I got my own life. I need a life!”

  “I suppose you have better things to do around here than coach high school theatre nerds.”

  “What?”

  She grinned. “I mean, when you coached me for the variety show and for The Wiz song.”

  “Hey, that was fun.” Michael playfully poked her. “But the variety show is over. High school will soon be over. And I have to stop thinking about The Wizard of Oz so much. It’s all somebody’s gay hallucination put on film. I need to live my own gay hallucination as if it will someday be put on film!”

  “Where will you go?”

  He quickly shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Saint Louis first, perhaps. It’s close. I’ve lived there before and I know it up and down. Then maybe to Chicago. If that doesn’t work then I’ll just shuffle along to somewhere else. Paris, London, Rome? Somewhere over the rainbow!” He laughed at that.

  “Oh, my.”

  “There’s lots of places for stars such as myself. In a big city I can get a straight job without even having to cut my hair!”

  “So this is it?” Lizzi looked around at the party.

  “Yeah. I’m holing up in the dressing room for the night and then I’m off in the morning.”

  “Just like that?”

  He nodded. “Just like a cowboy on his horse when the music swells and the credits roll across the sunset. Technicolor!”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Nope. I’m too riled up. I like that feeling. It’s like I can do anything. I haven’t felt that way in a long while. I feel young!” He turned and yelled at the crowd, “Drink up, girrrrls! Drink up before the bomb drops!”

  Lizzi flashed her sinister little teeth as she forced an unhappy china-doll smile.

  Tina Turner began to sing “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

  * * * * *

  In June, Michael helped Tony carry his suitcases as they waited for one of the Saint Louis city busses.

  Tony looked up, amazed. “Such tall buildings. I hope this is okay.”

  “It’s too late now.” Michael smiled. “You’re here, you can’t live with anybody else. Unless you know somebody else in Saint Louis.”

  “I just hope I don’t take up too much room.”

  “My futon is big enough. It may take you awhile to find a job and save money. Even then, who says you’ll want to move out?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I don’t…”

  Michael said, “You may want to move when you can. Who says you’ll want to live with somebody old like me? At your age you shouldn’t be stuck with anybody.”

  “I sure hope I can find a job.”

  “The shit jobs are plentiful,” Michael assured him. “Don’t worry. If you’d like I can try to get you on at the dinner theater where I know some people. They always have a turn-over of prep-cooks, bussers, and waiters.”

  “I could be a waiter?”

  “Sure, hell, why not? They’ll train you. It’s easy once you know the system. It’s all just a matter of system—of procedure and organization. All you have to learn is a bit of protocol—no big deal.”

  “How’ve your shows been going?”

  “Well, drag queens are dime a dozen in a big city like they are in a small city. But in the big city there are strippers. Strippers are dime a dozen but actually make money. So I’m now a stripper. The acting ain’t much. I don’t think I can put it on my resume with any boasting when I audition for Shakespeare, but hey.”

  “You were a stripper before, right?”

  “Oh yeah. I was the best so why not be the best again, as long as I keep my tummy tiny. I used to be the cutest gogo boy in Chicago. I really stuffed my tiny little shorts. 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 then I licked the front of his shorts right on stage. The bar went insane. I became notorious.”

  “Money is money.” Tony shrugged.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame it doesn’t last. Say, I haven’t heard from Lizzi in a rabid coon’s age. What’s she up to these days besides scaring all the horses in the street?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  Michael looked alarmed. “Nope.”

  “She’s packed her stardom and joined the Army.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. A cute Army recruiter came to school just before graduation and filled her head with all sorts of tales of adventure—you know how she is. The next day, she told me she was going to Germany. She ended up in Texas.”

  “Lizzi in the Army. An interesting concept. Now we’ll not only win all our wars but have a star in it.”

  Tony laughed. “Her mother nearly had a grand mal—well, that is, as Lizzi told the story. There was lots of hysteria. I’m sure she’s lying. You know her mother was glad to be rid of her.”

  Michael frowned, “I do wish you were studying something up here in college that I was interested in… so you could tell me all about it when you get home from class and I’d be as smart as you… but only you have to pay.”

  “I’ll tell you all about computer science. I promise.”

  Michael made a sour face. “I don’t want to know anything about that. The idea of it hurts my head. Why couldn’t you do anything fun?”

  Tony answered, “I was told this was the future.”

  “Well it won’t be. When people get tired of having to punch in so many codes to use the typewriter or adding machine they’ll finally go back to just using typewriters and adding machines. And they shoot sparks and yell at you when things don’t compute—at least that’s what happens in the movies. Remember the end of Logan’s Run? The lady computer had a nervous breakdown if you didn’t tell her what she wanted and sparks shot everywhere and ruined the whole city.”

  Tony winked. “I’ll invent something better and make a fortune.”

  “It looks so cool when that happens, though.” Michael looked off in grand thought. “Make something that lets me sing into it and I come back out a pop star.”

  “Sure.”

  “Invent something that adds a dance beat to everything!”

  “Sure!”

  Michael nudged him. “You look good.”

  “You too.”

  Michael frowned again. “I suppose you’ll want to have college boyfriends at the apartment.”

  “Can I? It would only be fair since you’re not really twenty-one like you said you were when you first met me. Not even close.”

  Michael sadly nodded. “I’m too old for you, really, to keep you all mine as my sex slave. You need to spread your wings. I’d be a monster to say you can’t have anything like that. If you
live there too then it’s only fair you bring some friends home. I don’t want to force you into a life of blowjobs in the library bathroom. No need to stay in the closet from me. That’s not liberated. But expect me to get jealous and act badly. I’m giving you fair warning right back.”

  “Fair is fair. Dad is paying the rent anyway so you have to be nice.”

  Michael said, “Because I promised him I’d take care of you in the big city. I’m good for something. And I’m always nice.”

  “Fair is fair.”

  Chapter eight

  A year later, Tony opened the front door of the Saint Louis apartment and yelled, “Busted!”

  “Yowza!” Michael had been dancing in a silver thong. A silver bottle of Booby Mama Booty Lube was his pretend microphone.

  Tony was with his new college boyfriend, Kirk, and they both laughed. Tony said, through chuckles, “Smile! You’re on candid camera!”

  Michael put a tasseled throw pillow over his crotch. “Could you knock a secret code or something intelligent? Or just knock at all?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard it, bonehead.” Tony went to the record player and turned it almost all the way down.

  Grace Jones had been loudly singing “Slave to the Rhythm” to grand pagan-temple-like percussions.

  “I could hear Grace halfway down the stairs. You’re going to get us evicted. And could you put something on?”

  Michael put a red paper Chinese lantern on his head like a hat. “Tony, did you bring Kirk here to show him your picture of you in the pretty pretty dress?”

  Tony smiled wickedly. “I ripped that picture up into tiny pieces and I threw it away. I didn’t feel like it was me.”

  “I’m just trying to expand your horizons and help you be a free thinker. And I got double prints. You only ripped up one.” Michael said to Kirk in a bad Bette Davis impersonation, though he was really quoting what Tallulah Bankhead had once said to Joan Crawford, “Darling. I’ve had an affair with your husband. You’re next!” Michael lunged forward and slapped Kirk’s arm with the pillow as if he was playing tag.