by Kyle Rea
Andrew can never get these second-rate drugstore lashes to stay put. He knows better than to buy individual sets of Wispies from the Duane-Reade across the street by now, but he can’t find a fresh pair in his cacophony of makeup supplies. He’d planned on stopping at Sephora on his subway ride home from his shift at Grumpy’s Cafe until someone threw themselves on the tracks, cutting him short on time. He sucks his teeth, a pinky finger’s length away from his bathroom mirror as he places his final lash under his right eye for the third time, careful not to smudge the pink and blue ombre of the cotton candy scented eyeshadow he’d so delicately brushed on moments before. His body is as stiff as it usually is when he has to deal with his father for any longer than a five-minute phone call. He struggles to avoid the insatiable urge to gyrate his body to the mystical melody of the Stevie Nicks song playing from his phone on the miniscule windowsill.
“Shit!” Andrew’s lash falls from the grasp of his tweezers and circles the drain of the sink. His hands rush to cover his mouth, remembering his boyfriend Kit is asleep down the hall in anticipation for an early morning flight home to Cleveland. Kit’s usually getting ready to go to the club with him.
He puts the tweezers down on the toilet’s water tank, next to his taser and his favorite Corgi statuette that reminds him of his childhood pet, Twizzler. He notices a chip in the nail polish on his right ring finger and groans knowing he has no time to fix it now. He gets back to business, fighting the urge to pick the nail clean of its paint and grabbing his lash out of the sink. As soon as he gets this lash to stick in place the illusion of Jenna Ration will be calling the shots for the remainder of the evening. He re-centers his energy, taking a deep breath.
“The bitch still got it,” Jenna says in a whisper, leaping from the ground as the fantasy washes over her now fully lashed and feminine face.
The commute to Jenna’s resident club, Conrad Station, is only a brisk two-minute walk to the subway station on Myrtle Avenue followed by a fifteen minute ride on the L train. She knows it as well as a “Mary Tyler Moore Show” rerun. Jenna leaves the apartment with her favorite caviar quilted Rainbow Boy Chanel purse thrown over her right shoulder, careful not to bog down her the gown’s built-in padding with its chain-link metal straps. Jenna can’t help but smile as she trots down the dimly lit Brooklyn street with her stilettos click-clacking with every boisterous step she takes. She looks back at her gown’s six-inch train as it flows gracefully in the wind and bursts into a fit of snort-laced laughter, bringing to mind a Katy Perry lyric about a plastic bag that drives her close to suicide whenever she thinks about it.
Her smile washes away when she turns to look ahead again, replaced instead with an entirely emotionless expression. Three men stand in front of her in different variations of New York Knicks and Giants apparel and gaudy golden chains. Jenna towers over them in her sasquatch-sized stilettos, yet she feels as small as a subway roach ready to be squashed beneath one of their second-hand high-top sneakers.
“What the fuck is that?” one of them asks, eliciting a choir of cackles from the group uglier than any Jenna has ever heard before.
“I could ask you the same thing with that knock off Ginuwine get-up you have going on,” Jenna says, gripping her Chanel close to her body with an anxiety-fueled chokehold. She knows this isn’t the time for her otherwise widely celebrated wry sense of humor, but it seems to be her only line of defense.
“What the fuck did you just say to him, faggot?”
Jenna looks the one in the middle dead in the eyes as he addresses her. He smells like her Papa George’s alpine slope scented aftershave and looks like he hasn’t brushed his hair in weeks. She feels her throat expand to try and ease down the lump of hesitation that’s formed just behind her nonexistent tonsils. She can’t let them sense any fear even though she feels it bubbling up just beneath her skin, warm to the touch and eager to ooze its petrified stench into the open air. She’s telling herself not to cry over and over again in her head, silently reassuring herself that she will get through this.
She won’t let Andrew be the next Ryan Skipper.
“Original,” Jenna says.
“The chode-licker in a dress is trying to get smart with you, B,” the middle one says. He can’t hold eye contact with Jenna longer than a millisecond, which gives her a swelling sense of satisfaction.
“It doesn’t seem like I have to try too hard there, honey.”
The middle one takes a step toward Jenna. B stretches his right arm in front of him to hold him back, his bicep bulging to the point of obscenity. Jenna tosses her pin-straight black synthetic hair over her shoulder and stands tall, holding her ground.
“Look, I don’t know if you’re a man or a dyke or a fag or what the fuck, but I don’t like it.” B lowers his arm and steps closer to Jenna.
Jenna picks at the chipping polish on her ring finger. She suddenly remembers the taser in her bathroom. Kit had given it to her before going to bed, afraid for her going to her gig alone, as he usually accompanies her from their apartment to the club. She reaches for the flap of her bag in one swift motion and pops it open.
She won’t let Andrew be the next Matthew Shepard.
“B, it’s grabbing something!”
“Shit,” Jenna says.
She forgot the taser in the bathroom.
“You trying to get fresh with me?” B grabs the frills of Jenna’s neckline and draws her nose-to-nose with himself.
“No.” It’s the only word that Jenna can reach. Her eyes are blank as she tries her best to avoid them coming in direct contact with B’s, but all that she can see out of her peripheral vision at this point are the jagged hairs sprouting haphazardly out of B’s disdainful pores.
“You think you can fuck with me, faggot?”
Jenna feels metal jam into her hip. The barrel of a gun.
“What the fuck do you pussies think you’re doing?”
Jenna struggles to figure out who’s talking, but she knows the voice from somewhere. Her train of thought is brought to an abrupt halt as she sees B lift the pistol from his hip. He raises it above her head. The frigid metal connects with the perfectly contoured edge of her right cheek with a tender thud, blurring her vision. B runs, sliding the gun back into the waistband of his athletic shorts as his henchmen follow suit. The world is a whirlwind of streetlights and constellations as Jenna crumples in a heap on the cracking concrete. She watches three figures disperse into the distance before they’re completely out of her sight and feels her face burn with the threat of tears.
“Jesus Christ, Jenna.”
Jenna’s brain struggles to regain control over her optic nerves, but the world slowly becomes clear again. She sees a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-fifty pound man with a garment bag over one shoulder and a duffle over the other standing above her with his right hand outstretched to her. She takes the hand and clumsily gets back to her feet.
“Mateo?”
“Oh, no, honey. It’s a show night.”
“Sorry. Kenya.”
“What in the name of our lord and savior, Judy Garland, are you doing walking to the club alone at night, sis? Where’s Kit?” Kenya Doubledutch is the MC at Conrad Station, basically making a fool of herself between queens’ acts before calling the next one up to perform night after night. She’s known for her myriad of lip sync performances choreographed with impeccable jump rope hijinks, hence her name. Kenya took Jenna under her wing when she was just breaking into the scene and helped get Jenna her first ever gig. Jenna liked to think of Kenya as her drag-mom, but Kenya would tell you she’s much too young to even begin to entertain the idea of raising any baby queens.
“He’s flying home in the morning. I didn’t want to make him come out so late.”
“You know better than to flounce about in full geesh once the sun goes down, baby. There are dressing rooms at the club for a reason.” Kenya smacks the duffle bag she’s carrying with her to make her point. “You don’t see me parading down Myrtle Avenue looking like a depressed cross-dressing hooker, do you?”
“I wouldn’t really notice, that’s how you always look,” Jenna says. Kenya gives her a loving smack on the chest and takes her into her arms. Jenna feels afraid to let go.
“Let me see the damage.” Kenya holds Jenna at arm’s length, examining her face with a careful eye. “It’s swollen, but no broken skin. We can get you taken care of with a touch up at the club. A little bit of Wet N’ Wild and a powder pouf and you’ll be fashion-week-runway-ready again. You’re coming with me.”
Kenya takes Jenna’s hand and continues on toward the subway station the next block over. A million different thoughts are swirling around in Jenna’s brain, which now feels like a bowl of soggy, leftover mashed potatoes. And she hates mashed potatoes.
“Kenya, stop.” Jenna’s looking down at her stilettos as she says this, planting herself firmly in place. She struggles to find her words, but Kenya provides nothing but pristine patience. She feels Kenya gazing upon her gender-bending beauty with the ever-loving eye of a lifelong sister and swallows her pride. “I… I think you just saved my life.”
“And you’re about to give me life at this show.” Kenya takes Jenna’s hands in hers and strokes her palms with her thumbs. “Don’t you ever walk by yourself alone at night like that again, do you hear me? There’s only one Jenna Ration in this shit-stain of a city and I don’t plan on losing her anytime soon.”
“Okay,” Jenna says.
“Okay.”
The duo disappears underground for their train ride and reemerge at the Metropolitan Avenue station after time-killing discussions over everything from Kenya’s latest boy toys to how many times Kim Novak has gone under the knife. Jenna is in the dressing room with a new face of makeup and the thumping sounds of debauchery from the club pervading the air before she knows it, as if B and his gang had never existed.
But they did exist. She was attacked. She was afraid.
He’s always going to be afraid.
Terrifying thoughts collect in Jenna’s subconscious at an alarming rate as she thinks back on her assailants’ degrading words, but they all seem to up and vanish as her moment of glory has finally come. The knots known as her intestines finally unravel into their natural state the second she hears Kenya Doubledutch call out for Jenna Ration to take the stage. She smiles at herself in her dressing room mirror, which is covered in lipstick swatches and magazine cutouts of every iconic ingénue in herstory from Gwen Verdon to Britney Spears. The show must go on.
Jenna chugs down what’s left of the gin and ginger ale that Kenya grabbed her when they walked in and straps her favorite pair of size thirteen dusty rose pumps back onto her stockinged feet. The crowd is up in arms as the lights lower and a single spot beckons for her to find it. She emerges from the DJ booth at the back of the stage and walks into the light with her signature saucy saunter that seamlessly becomes her natural gait the second the low lighting of the club surrounds her. Familiar faces and first-time club gaybies litter the crowd that’s now suffocating the floor before the stage as the opening lines to Lady Gaga’s underrated pop anthem “Sexxx Dreams” begin to pervade the blackened stuffy air.
Jenna steps forward as the light follows her every move. She leans down to grab the shoulders of a scrawny boy in a lavender bobbed wig, centered at the front of the crowd. A coy smile shatters the illusion of Jenna’s previously deadpan expression as she mouths the lines while holding unwavering eye contact with the boy who’s full-on screaming them right back to her. She feels a palpable electrical shock of red-hot charisma run through her palms into the boy’s very being, plastering a shit-eating grin across his face that will stay firmly planted for the whole of the number.
Dollar bills start to pop up throughout the crowd and Jenna grabs them whenever her choreography allows. Her eyes are aglow, soaking up the exuberant energy as she collects her tips bill by bill. The room is surging with the intoxicating stink of love. Jenna circles back to the center of the stage, her eyes surveying the crowd as she drinks in the moment. She tosses her handfuls of Washingtons and Lincolns into the air and unsnaps the train of her gown from her hips, taking its skirt with it to transform the gown into a collared bodysuit. The fabric of the skirt billows in the air as she twirls it above her head and tosses it behind her. She kicks her right leg into the air, its sheer tights sparkling with Swarovski crystals from hip to toe, sliding right into a split to begin one of her borough-famous floor routines.
Money is falling all around her while she animalistically whips her inches of synthetic hair this way and that. She loves to show the crowd that her wig is glued down, bobby-pinned in, and going absolutely nowhere. Hairography is always the catalyst for unwavering fanfare. She finishes dancing through the number, collecting tips the entire time. She’s learned not to bother counting the money. It’s not what matters.
Jenna waves to the crowd graciously afterwards, blowing kisses imbued with grateful appreciation before resigning to her station in the dressing room once more. She takes a seat on the cracked leather of her favorite vanity stool and stares at herself in the mirror. Her mind is barren as she grabs a cucumber scented makeup wipe from her bag and begins to wipe her face away. One wipe of her cheek and she can see the purplish-blue welt that’s beginning to form from the impact of B’s gun.
She laughs.
Kenya catches Andrew at the bar after the show. She taps his right shoulder playfully to get his attention, taking note of his masculine appearance.
“Can I buy you a drink, handsome?”
“I’m good, ma’am,” Andrew says, laughing as he holds up his final gin and ginger of the night.
“Oh, shove it, pretty boy.” Kenya orders herself an IPA and tosses her crimped blonde locks out of her face, leaning on the bar to throw back peanuts from the communal bowl in front of her. “You were incredible tonight. Electric. You owned that stage, Ms. Streisand.”
“Yeah. It was a solid night,” Andrew says.
“Okay, gross. I hate modesty.”
“Ohio seems to breed it.”
“Never talk about Ohio, I hate it even more.” Kenya grabs her drink from the bartender and blows him a kiss that lacks any illusion of subtlety. “He’s on call.”
“You’re such a slut,” Andrew says.
“I’m not the one performing 2014 Lady Gaga.” Andrew shoves Kenya and she laughs, stopping herself to take a long sip from her beer. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?” Andrew asks. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t be afraid of who you are,” Kenya says.
“I’m not.”
“Seriously. You’re stronger than they’ll ever dream of being every single time you walk out of the house with your Sally Hansen nail polish on.”
“Fuck off. I’m fine.”
“I mean it.”
Andrew is drawn to make eye contact with Kenya, noticing she looks like she could be on the brink of crying. Andrew’s never seen Kenya cry before. His eyes water up, too.
“The world can’t afford to lose you, Andrew.”
Kenya walks Andrew to the subway station after they finish their drinks. She doesn’t bother getting out of drag since the station’s right across the street and she can finish off anyone who tries to cross her with her pinky finger alone. Andrew thinks about their conversation at the bar the entire walk over. He thinks about it the whole time Kenya scans her MetroCard, wasting a subway ride, to sit and wait at the station for his train with him even though she’s not leaving the club yet. He doesn’t even remember what B looked like. He never even knew his real name. He was nothing other than another casual delay in his night.
Kenya hugs Andrew goodbye as he gets on the train. Andrew assures her that he’ll be fine walking home now that he’s changed out of his gown and wig and wiped his face as clean of its makeup as he could possibly get it, but Kenya mouths to him through the window of the subway car as it pulls away, asking him if he’s sure. She disappears into utter darkness as the train burrows through the tunnels, leaving Andrew with nothing but the cadence of Kenya’s words of love and reassurance reverberating around his skull. He pulls out his phone to see that he has a new text from Kit asking him how his night went. It’s a quarter past four in the morning.
“Nice nail polish.”
Andrew’s head snaps forward, threatening whiplash. He grabs his purse with one hand but remembers the taser isn’t there. He sighs.
“Are you okay?”
Andrew looks to his right to find a young boy, about ten years old, and what he can only assume to be the boy’s mother. The boy sits with his book bag strapped securely on his back and his mother is still dressed in her waitressing apron. The mother smiles at Andrew.
The boy wears a black and white polka-dotted dress and a pair of Chuck Taylors.
Andrew chips away at the last of the polish on his right ring finger.
“I like your dress,” he says.
Kyle Rea is a writer in his senior year at Youngstown State University. He lives in Boardman with his dog, Flynn. He writes works of prose fiction, poetry, and screenplays. He enjoys informing his work with his own personal experiences as a queer identifying individual. Kyle is the recipient of the Anne Bernard Schafer scholarship and has previously been published in Dirty Girls magazine.