Our Local Reigning Symbol of Excellence

The door buzzed.  I was beginning to notice that many times when someone buzzed that door whether they were coming or going, there would be a shift in the evening: sometimes good and sometimes bad.  It kind of showed me the importance of every person we allow in our lives. A single person could take our lives in a completely different direction just like that door buzzer changed our experience with each  person who walked through it or out of it on a smaller scale at Our House.  This time the buzzer produced a drag queen in a cafeteria smock.........?  My idea of ethereal creatures mimicking movie stars of days gone by had been completely flushed that night.  There were drag queens of varying kinds in this town.  Prior to that evening, I'd only met the show girls, and earlier that night I'd met a street girl.  I didn't know what this one was in front of us now, but I was about to find out.

"Gurl, you look like your in half drag.  What are you doing showing your face looking like that?" Mother asked this new queen.

"You need to get used to it.  This is how you will see me from now on, unless I am on stage.  I have chosen to start living my life as a woman and I have to have day-wear make-up on, not show make-up," she said solemnly in a nasal voice.

"Mitzi Tootsie, have you lost your mind?" Mother asked in a semi-outraged way, but, at least, I knew this new drag queen's name.

"You know that I have talked about this for a long time, and it's time I started doing it.  I need the support of my friends, not their criticism." Mitzi said very seriously as she took the bar stool next to me. 

Our little group was not alone in the bar;  we were factioned off into clusters of similar -- yet different -- sodomites and saphists. Several lesbians played pool, drank beer and generally teased the kitty in the pool area.  Some country-boy gays ( Very Huck Finn in appearance with overalls and straw hats ) sipped from their own individual pitcher of Bud and  played quarters  ( an adult version of Tiddly-Winks ) at a table behind us.  A snippy, pretentious couple sat at the end of the bar and kept checking their appearance in the mirror behind Cherry.  These "lovers" were  on the lookout for a third party to liven their evening  -- and early morning, (( and sagging relationship)).  A table full of black gay boys chatted loudly at a four-top table next to the juke box and got up and danced when the spirit moved them (( They even "moved around the room in a locomotion" a couple of times )).

There were many people there, but we were all submerged in our own little groups, and we didn't really notice any of the other groups unless happenstance made it necessary.  No one was a snob and no one overtly disliked anyone ( on this particular night ), we just didn't co-mingle...........Cliques abounded, but we were all bound by one simple chord:  we were all gay.  For some reason, I'd fallen in with the drag queens when I moved to town.  Even though they were the most outrageous, they also seemed to be the most real.  The only fake thing about them was their drag. When they took it off, they were more real than anyone in the whole bar -- or most of Arkansas.  In this instant, Mitzi was being real even though she was in half drag, and she was speaking from her heart..........but I got the feeling that Mother wasn't hearing that.

"Shit girl, you can't go to work like that," Mother advised.

"I did, today.  I just left work." Mitzi said defiantly.

"And you still have a job, Miss Thang?" Mother inquired and cocked her eyebrow. "I've known Belinda for years, and she don't go for that shit."  Mother had risen up in her barstool, and I was caught in her cross-fire as she berated Mitzi Tootsie.  I assumed Mitzi had got her last name from the Dustin Hoffman movie of the same title, and eventually I'd find out that I was correct.........almost.

"Miss Belinda told me that I'd have to work in the dishroom if I wanted to come to work in drag, but that I was a good worker and she loved me, and she'd never fire me for following my heart and dreams." Mitiz said proudly and puffed up a little..but only a little.

"That explains why your wig looks like shit.  It's all that humidity in the damn dishroom," Mother observed rather insensitively.

"Gurl, this ain't my good wig, anyway. And I heard that once I started on hormones that my real hair might grow back," Mitzi said quietly and a little sadly....and instantly lost her puff.

"Queen, your boy hair is not going to grow back if you went bald because of Male Pattern Baldness, no matter how many hormones you pop," Cora sounded as if she spoke from experience.

"It doesn't surprise me.  You've always been crazy as bat shit," Mother said as she threw up her hands.  Truthfully, I was a little shocked by the way she talked to Mitzi, and I was more suprised that Mitzi tolerated it.

"Please....after I found out I was sick, I decided that I was going to live my life the way I wanted to live it.  I need the support of my drag sisters, and my drag Mother, " she said with tears in her eyes.  Compassion overtook me, and I reached over and patted her hand.  I'd heard about enough of Mother's meanness, and I could not understand why she was so condescending to Mitzi.  (( In fact, I never understood it.  Mother always talked down to Mitzi, but Mitzi had a non-confrontational personality, and she allowed it.  Mother's domineering personality tended to  intimidate some people.  She was smart enough to know whom she could bull-doze.))

"Honey, we only live once, and even though I don't know you.  You should do what makes you happy," I tried to console her, then cast an evil glance in Mother's direction.

"That's right.  You don't know her.  This one," Mother said as she pointed at Mitzi. " Is crazier than I am.  The week after she found out she was sick, she had to test drive a coffin."

Mitzi sat up in her seat proudly and said, "I sure did.  I figured if I was going to lay in it for eternity that I was going to see if it was comfortable.  I wasn't going to sign that funeral plan without laying in them coffins.  How would I know which one to pick?"

"They let you do that?" I asked shocked.

"Hell yeah, he did.  I got the best damn funeral plan they had.  If he hadn't let me lay in it, I would have left." Mitzi made perfectly clear to me (( and to the people sitting behind us, too....who, I could tell, had decided that our conversation was a tad bit more interesting than tiddly-winking quarters into a Budweiser pitcher.))

"If you had told him you had AIDS, he wouldn't have sold you the plan, either, Queen, " Cora interjected with little sensitivity to Mitzi's plight.

"Or let you lay in the coffin, either." Mother completed the interjection.

"Hell, he probably wouldn't have shook my hand either," Mitzi said quietly....and then we all got quiet...and sat there...and didn't say anything for awhile, which was a true feat for Mother cuz I don't think I'd ever heard her just be quiet.  I didn't really know what to say, but I had to say something, and I looked down and saw the Duro-Bond bottle on the bar.

"Do you use Duro-bond to keep your wig on, honey?" I asked as I held the bottle up and handed it to her.

"Hell no, she don't.  She pins it to what little hair she has left.  You should get some of that Duro-Bond, bitch.  It's water proof.  You won't have to worry about your hair coming off in that humid dishroom." Mother laughed. We all laughed not because it was necessarily funny, but it made us feel better.

"You can have that bottle of Duro-Bond, queen.  I think you'll like it, " Cora said generously (( but I think she was just trying to make up for Mother being so mean to Mitzi and her own previous insensitive comment)) and then she asked, "Are you planning on getting the surgery, Queen, cuz it's expensive."

"No.  I like my dick, but I want titties.  My true fantasy is to doggy a straight boy and flop my tits on his back while I'm doing it," Mitzi volunteered a little too much information, and she hadn't had a thing to drink.

"Gurl, don't go there." Mother looked at Mitzi in disgust. "You young queens would not be talking this trash in drag if Tuna was alive. Don't disrespect the drag, bitch" and she waved her fore-finger at her just like a true Mama.  (( I thought Mother's statement was a tad-bit hypocritical since she'd just told me about her Olympian-sized sexual escapades and deviant behavior just a couple hours prior at the restaurant.  I guess she thought it was okay to tell me all that nastiness if she was Garanimally attired and drinking a virgin Pina Colada with a splash of Dr. Pepper, but it was vulgar to divulge sexual fantasies while wearing day-wear cosmetics and a cafeteria smock....Most people's rules for other people never apply to themselves, and you know that's true...............just look at the priests who like those little boys.....))

"Are you going to do Talent Night tomorrow night?" Cherry suddenly interjected.  He'd been listening to the conversation the whole time, but he hadn't said a word until now.  I think he was trying to change the subject too, because Mother was just being unreasonably unkind to someone who was obviously in pain.

"I guess so...............since I can't get a booking.  I guess the reigning Miss City should represent her town in some way -- even if it is an upaid talent night," Mitzi said bitterly.

"Now, gurl, if you hadn't run off with that Piano salesman the night you got crowned ,and by the way,  no one heard hide nor hair of you for four months, you'd have plenty of bookings...........so don't you go there either." Mother said like  a true Mother would  (( who loved to rub noses in past mistakes  )), and she also symbollically waved around Mitzi's drawers for all of us to see, too.....but I didn't notice Mother's panties being any cleaner than Mitzi's.

"I know..I know..and I wouldn't be buying no funeral plan, either If I hadn't run off with him......" Mitzi said with broken resolve...and we all got quiet again. Then after a few uncomfortable moments Mitzi said like a shattering person, "I wasn't no slut.  I thought I loved him.  I don't want people thinking I was a slut...It only takes one time, you know," and she looked at me with tears hanging on the edge of her eyelids.  Cherry casually walked away at this and began wiping down liquor bottles.  I reached over and patted her hand again, but I didn't know what to say to make her feel better.  I don't really think there are words in the English language to do that.  If there were, I didn't know any.   Mitzi was like the nice girl in high school who decided to sleep with her boyfriend -- and all the other girls were doing it, too -- but she got pregnant.  Everyone jumped on the bandwagon and pointed fingers at her, but they were all guilty of the same thing.  They just hadn't been caught with their drawers around their ankles. Unfortunately, Mitzi's mistake wouldn't bring a new life into the world, it would end one............her own.

"Well, honey," Mother said in a semi-consoling voice. "You are still our local reigning symbol of excellence."  ( which made me think of the pregnant homecoming queen ).