Manic Panic Blue

  
A party was thrown in our honor for actually making it through high school at the Hyatt or Marriot or some other mid-priced hotel in Minneapolis. It included music, giant Subway subs, and a numerologist. It also included a number of us who didn't really care about/for graduating or our high school or too many of our classmates. Graduation made us feel rebellious. Luckily, we planned ours ahead of time.

Two of my girlfriends and I were determined to change on this night of celebration and transition. We went through a large list of possibilities ruling out most. Piercings were painful and potentially unsanitary. Tattoos were a little too permanent let alone needing to find an artist available for graduation parties. Mutilation was untidy and included blood -- yuck. Goth make up would've resulted in a beating. So all three of us decided semi-permanent hair color was the easiest and least potentially lethal thing to try. It required only dye, a sink, and a little time.

We snuck into the ladies' room with a jar of Manic Panic blue. There was nothing unusual about me being in the bathroom. I was already considered a fag without coming out, so none of the other girls said a thing. We opened the jar and began painting our hair. After the allotted twenty minutes of setting in, we rinsed in the hand sink splashing royal bluish water everywhere. Blue ended up on the mirror, faucet, hands, counter tops, stalls, floor, scalps, faces, and toilet seats. Little color actually took to our hair. Seeing our mess and reflections that looked no different than before we entered minus the new blue sheen to our hair, we quickly exited excited by the change that no one else would ever really notice. It was lucky no one noticed because the bathroom was a gigantic disaster and there was no way we were going to clean it up. (Oh high school rebellion and egocentrism.)

The rest of the night ended pretty uneventfully. I was told by the numerologist that I would leave Minnesota to travel starting in my early twenties. (Check.) I watched a hypnotist make the jocks and cheerleaders do really embarrassing things -- things that surely would have resulted in  a black eye or broken nose had I done them. I did my best karaoke to "Love Shack".

My mother picked me up and actually noticed the bluish tint to my almost black hair. She was mortified. You would have thought I actually did hire that tattoo artist to carve permanent goth make-up to my face. She couldn't wait to scrub it out of my hair.

The next week I found hair bleach and Claire's and fell in  love with the color "auburn" and stainless steel studs.

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Risk Exposed

  
There were moments of extreme clarity amidst the swirling confusion of drugs, booze, and exposed cocks, but the moments weren't enough to actually snap him back into safety. They actually made the swirling and risk even more fun because it meant he was really loaded. He needed to be trashed. A black eye from a fight he broke up earlier ached as a reminder of the risks of his job. He reached out and grabbed the man next to him. All he wanted was to not be protected.

They walked to a back corner away from the prying eyes and heavy panting. Flashes of the flash mob descending on the cafeteria played like slides in his head. Mixed between the fists violently raised, screaming taut faces, and black and white uniforms were stills from skinhead bareback porn filled with bashings and rape fantasies. He pushed his companion against the wall and removed his pants. The man shocked by force hoped for more and pushed back. A young man, tears streaming down his face, in the middle of the mob screamed, and as he ran to his aid a kneed connected with his eye. He fell to his knees and opened his mouth.

There was more tossing and punches and flashes and anonymity. There were riskier risks and blacker blackness. He left crying and sticky.

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Eighth Grade Limo

 
There were only about 20-something of us that graduated eighth grade together from our Catholic school. Less than half were boys. It was a day of expectation and celebration. I wanted some candy as a reward for making it through, so I walked to the drug store only a few blocks away.

As I walked home, a loud scream reached my ears, and I looked up from my Lick-A-Maid. An extended limousine passed by and hanging out of the windows hurling insults at me were all the other eighth grade boys. They secretly planned their celebration without me.

I ran home without looking behind me tears streaming down my face. My father forced the story out of me. He scoured the neighborhood for the limousine and boys and chewed them out for not even attempting to invite me. Their excuse: we were poor and probably couldn't've afforded it. Really, they all just hated the fag.

I still had to go to graduation that night. The pictures make me look happy, and I was somewhat happy. I was happy to finally be done with them. Only we weren't done. My father forced them to apologize.

Seeing his display of authority, I smiled. And the picture snapped.

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Lightning Inside

  
Thunderstorms rolled in from all directions causing anticipation and hiding in basements. He wasn't scared. He loved electricity, so he dashed upstairs, out the back door, and into the lightning. He wanted to be struck. It would make him special. And anything to make the physical pain as real as the emotional pain was welcome.

Lightning didn't strike him. Instead, he was forced in doors.

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Cream Cheese Puffs

  
We went to a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant that served cream cheese wontons for dinner. He stared at me from a table behind my parents the entire evening. I flirted back. He was in his 50s. I was 15.

Our meals ended at the same time, and we found ourselves at the cashier together. My father paid the bill as I excused myself to the bathroom after batting my lashes at the person the authorities would label a pedophile. He followed slowly behind me.

The bathroom door had a lock, which he swiftly locked behind him. Pants unzipped. Our cocks were hard and in each others' hands. Nerves caused gagging, and I left.

"You were in there quite a while," my dad said.

"I had to go number two."

"I hope you washed your hands."

I hadn't.

I masturbated to the lingering smell of old man cock on my hand until my mother forced me to shower a few days later.

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Indulgences and Drag Queen Divinity

  
She went on a crusade when I was in the fourth of fifth grade to ban all the Halloween books from the library. They were my favorite books and included the How to Draw...Monsters book that I checked out and tucked in my drawer. They were as Satanic as Aerosmith, which she also banned me from listening to.

I was stuck with the Disney records and Alvin and the Chipmunks spinning round on the Playmobile record player. Those and anything Charlie Brown. They were wholesome and innocent and weren't tainted with sexuality of non-conformity. Monsters and Halloween were just too scary.

It confused me because all the years previous Halloween was a celebration. It was the time I could finally put on a costume and make-up. I think that's what did it: I enjoyed it.

The effort failed. The Halloween Party was a money maker (although a small one) for the church and that overruled Satan. It is kind of the same thing as indulgences: pay and the church will overlook or forgive anything (except homosexuality).

She moved on to R-rated movies, rock and roll, and anything sci-fi or horror related. So many things were Satanic: Buddhism, the bastards who made fun of me at school and sent me home in tears, not playing sports, cigarettes. Candy-coated, rose-colored innocence was the only thing I was allowed to experience. I was not that. And counter to all her protection, I still found 1-976 numbers, Playgirls, Hellraiser, much older men. No matter how many boundaries and borders were constructed, I found a way around and between them. Nothing worked.

Time passed. I came out. She turned progressive. Sin evolved. It was no longer the black and white of righteous childhood. It became the murky gray of Daedalian adulthood.

Now, she's working as an administrative assistant at an AIDS hospice in Minneapolis. Spirituality is more than Catholicism. Drag queens are divine. And her most recent concern was her costume for Sci Fi Bingo starring Miss Richfield 1981. (I suggested 1950s sci fi chic.)

Times and people change. I just hope we don't burn our new found wings.

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Fucking Faggot

    
The three of us packed ourselves into the white Chevy and drove to Las Vegas for New Year's Eve. We were excited to spend the night among the throngs of  revelers in the City of Sin for we carrier ours like badges upon a Girl Scout sash. We met our other friends at the time share we shared on the strip. It was somewhere among Caesars and MGM and New York, New York. We were in the heart of it all and ready to ride the veins and arteries out into the meat and muscle.

I threw a little eye liner and shadow celebrating the freedom promised in billboards and commercials: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". My friends put on their New Year's best, and we departed. 

We ended up at Barbary Coast hoping for a piece of San Francisco. The light spun and the clank of the slot machines echoed. My friends grabbed a table and I rushed to the bar wanting something to dull the excessiveness. 

"We don't serve your kind here," the bartender barked. 

"What" was all I could muster.

"You're kind. We don't serve it," he replied without even looking at me. 

An argument or a fight wasn't in me. I turned around and returned to my friends asking them to please leave. They pressed me for what happened. 

"Not right now," I said. "Once we're outside."

They kept pressing so I finally told them what happened. They were ready for a fight. I begged them just to leave. Finally, we were out in the snow among the other revelers.

As we walked through the streets "Fucking faggot" kept anonymously reaching my ears whispered by people we passed.

"I'm going back to the room. Can I grab someone's key?" I asked after some back and fort with my friends, all straight, about how I should have stood up for myself.

"We can all go back," one of them replied.

"No. I'm fine. I just want to be away from everyone." My depression settling in.

"No. We'll come with you," another said.

We pressed our way through the crowd and midnight struck.

A few years later one of my friends on the trip asked me why I didn't do anything.

"Honey," I retorted. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

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The 100th Post

  

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A Good Clean Towel

  
I was drunk and desperate leading to impaired judgment and lowered expectations. He had been cruising me for years. Alarm bells rung every other time thanks to his standing-in-shadows staring. All I wanted was some rough, throw-me-around sex. The kind with bruises, bites, and pulled hair. My alarms ringing meant potential violence. Tonight, I stalked him.

The back ally of Powerhouse with its dim lights and smoke-laden air provided enough cover to try him out. He threw me against the wall and bit my neck. I moaned excited by the prospect of unintended consequences. He unzipped my pants assuming permission freely given. The tequila swirled in my head. Permission was gone that night replaced instead with instinct, need, and power. Momentarily, it was exactly what I wanted: escape beyond the boundaries of borders and control.

I followed him out of the bar to his car parked in the alley. He threw me against the rust and continued his forceful passion. I succumbed letting him push me into the messy car strewn with used napkins, bits of food, and stacks of text books. The smell inside was the first moment of recognition that something might be amiss. I opened the window, and we drove to his Alamo Square apartment.

The stench of rotting meals reached my nostrils as he opened his apartment door. I pretended it was the smell of stale tequila on my breath and entered dreaming only of the bed and hopeful for fisticuffs. I found both. The sex was disruptive-to-neighbors hard and loud and messy. The kind that requires a shower and clean towel. I only got the shower.

I stumbled towards the bathroom guided by a small path of empty floor. Magazines, journals, more scientific text books, clothes, empty chip bags were strewn beside the path. The dizziness of booze and sexual release made navigation amongst these obstacles nearly impossible. He grabbed my hand and pulled me into the grimy bathroom and turned on the shower. The glaring florescent light amplified the dirt and mess and specks of toothpaste on the mirror and walls. More alarm bells were silenced by the pitter patter of water hitting my scalp and running down my back. He joined me in the shower for more sex and bruises.

The water turned off, it was time for the clean towel. Instead, he rummaged through the crisp, crunchy, crusty towels on the floor.

"This is the best I have," he said as he handed me a towel that once was white and now was a leopard print of coffee, cum, and piss-yellow stains. It was molded into the shape of discarded hope. I tried to dry myself, but the towel was so hard I only spread filth over my clean body.

The sheets crunched as I laid down. I put everything - the smells, the textures, the ache from the bruise on my arm, the dreams of more - from my head and fell asleep to him sitting up staring at me. I was woken up by his loud snoring and put my clothes back on. Quietly, I tried to exit. The alcohol worn off, the place was even a bigger mess. This night of uncontrolled, violent release was the only night we'd share. While not a neat freak, I needed a clean towel.

He woke up as I was opening the door. He wanted to see me again, to be animalistic again, to share a relationship. I only smiled and left.

He continued stalking me, but this time it was no longer kept to the shadows and alleys and back rooms. It was open and hostile filled with longing stares that lasted past the point of comfort and to the point of invasion and uninvited touches all over my body. At first I was polite smiling and accepting his advances but clearly defining boundaries by stepping backwards and pushing hands away. He didn't understand these subtle signals, so I moved to a more direct approach: telling him to "fuck off", my default phrase for assholes.  That didn't work either. He heard it more as a challenge, so his advances became even more intense.

Finally, one Sunday afternoon at The Eagle, I had enough. He had been following me for hours, and the packed Beer Bust provided cover and excuses for his staring and "accidental" fondling as he tried to squeeze by me. On one pass, he tried to start a conversation. It was my opening.

"Stop fucking stalking me. I will never sleep with you again. You couldn't even offer me a clean towel. Go away and leave me alone! You have no chance in hell. You're filthy!"

He finally moved on.

And I still have a very deep appreciation for clean towels.

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Concrete Cube

  
He hid in the small cube of a storm shelter tucked behind a closet in the basement. The cold concrete cooled his raging temper. The six walls confined his violent outbursts. The gray replaced his red. He only emerged when he was finally calm.

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A Warming Stillness

  
They posed for pictures grins wide and kisses puckered with their dying grandmother who looked in her nineties but was in her sixties. The cancer wilted her hair and sunk her skin. The drugs killed the little sanity that remained after the stroke. Grandma was as unresponsive as the static photo. I stood aside preferring a quiet moment away from flashing lights and captured death.

I just held her hand. It was all I knew or could muster. I didn't really know her even though we lived less than a hundred miles apart. I sat there feeling her soft loose skin warming with each passing moment tuning out the conversations about haring San Francisco and football games behind me. This was my quiet moment with my aunt before she passed.

She snapped awake and pulled her hand out of mine. A flash of confusion turned to clarity which brought a deeper sleep. I kissed her forehead and we left.

She left the hospital the next day and returned home. She died about two hours later. I don't have a photo to remember her. I have my memory and that moment of warming stillness, and it makes my own mortality a little less scary.

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My Dad's Tears

    
His temper exploded and threw me against the wall. I was pinned there staring into his red ready-to-burst-with-tears eyes. He wasn't himself any longer, but he looked like my dad. I hated him not for the explosion but because I still felt small and childish. I was small and childish.

He let go and turned away embarrassed by the outburst and anger. He promised himself no more, but biology and upbringing got in the way sometimes. I cried partly because I was scared and partly because guilt was stronger than anger. A couple seconds of violently kinetic silence, and we returned to our supper. The meal passed and so did the silence.

He cam to me crying one night, or I found him upstairs crying. He had spoken to his mother, and she revealed the true nature of his conception: to keep his alcoholic father around. He looked just like I had, and I hated him then too because it was easier than empathy. He was a small child.

He visited California because his sister was sick and dying. My husband and I took the train to San Jose to meet him for the afternoon. We exchanged hugs, and I saw those same tears behind those same brown eyes. We both stayed silent, but this time it was the silence of empathy and understanding -- the kind of silence that is needed in times of death and decay by are rarely given. Then, we ate lunch, visited my aunt, and watched a crappy movie. He dropped us at the train station amidst more silence and contemplation.

"I love you, Jason," he said as I exited. I've heard those words many times before, but this time I understood them.

I love you too, dad.

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Wonderlette Guy

 
It was sick and wrong and quite possibly the grossest thing I have been a part of recently, and I absolutely loved it. From the infected stocking cock to the rotting plastic buck teeth to the incongruous Rogers and Hammerstein music and the 50's glamour of the back-up dancers (that included moi!), I was among those outcasts, degenerates, and freaks that are San Francisco's drag scene. I have intersected this scene for more than 12 years. I have not been a part of it. Saturday night changed everything. I found home.



You can check out another performance of "Wonderlette Guy", Saturday, February 13th, 2010 at Bootie at the DNA Lounge.

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