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An Unspectacular Life, Part 14
08/12/09

Of all of my albums, only one was suitable for a drag doll cat walk. This
wasn't a job for The Cure or Depeche Mode or New Order. Souxie and the
Banshees wouldn't do. Neither would Soft Cell, Tin Tin, Blancmange, ABC, Kate
Bush or even the Flashdance soundtrack. Only one singer could deliver the
goods. I put Madonna on the turntable, filled up our glasses with more
sparkling rose and joined Kevin back in Lily's room. He was putting
everything back where it belonged, save what we were wearing. When I went
into the room, I saw the back of Kevin which was all man except for the wig
which I couldn't see because he was bent over picking up a floral print
halter dress (one of his earlier options) off of the floor. He then stood up
and spun around and he was Dolly. I began to laugh uncontrollably which sent
Kevin off as well. We were experiencing pure joy. This was the first time in
my life that I had laughed with such fervor. There was nothing more happening
in this moment of my young life, in Lily's bedroom, in the back of a wicker
store other than feeling completely, totally overjoyed. The happiness that
had instantaneously welled up inside of us had no choice but to manifest
itself through hysterical laughter. Kevin told me that the only other time
that he felt like he had felt that night was when his daughter was born.

By the time that we had stopped squealing and fixed the mascara that had run
down our faces with tears, Lucky Star and Borderline had already played
through and Burning Up was just starting. I grabbed my glass, strapped myself
into the heels as best I could and positioned myself at the end of the
hallway waiting for the perfect music cue to start my walk down the hallway.
I was all business now. The song had a long intro and when Madonna began to
sing, I began to walk. Walking in heels was much more difficult than I had
anticipated and before I got to the end of the hallway, I fell off of one of
the barely strapped on heels and twisted my ankle spilling the glass of
sparkling rose that I took with me on my inaugural drag walk all over Lily's
yellow jump suit. This set back would not stop me. My ankle was slightly sore
but like an Olympic athlete who must compete regardless of pain, I got up and
resumed my mission, this time without the heels. The hallway was only about
fifteen foot long so it only took a few seconds to walk it's length. After
twenty laps, I was getting dizzy. It was Kevin's turn. I had to change the
music and breaking our rules of music etiquette, I put on the Dolly Parton
cassette that he had brought. Kevin would walk to Dolly's hit, Nine to Five.

Twisting my ankle and ending up on my ass was still more graceful than
Kevin's attempt at walking like a woman. He was barefoot. His feet were too
big for any of Lily’s footwear. Even with the advantage of not having to wear
heels, Kevin lumbered down the hallway as Dolly far more awkwardly than he
normally walked as Kevin. He was trying so hard to be a girl but was actually
a little unsettling. As he approached me from the other end of the hallway,
shoulders slouched because of the pull of the safety pins across his chest,
arms jolting from side to side and knees slightly bent, I could only think
that if there were such a thing as a Dolly Parton serial killer, I was
looking at it. I shuddered inside but hollered and clapped and held out a
dollar bill that I had snatched off of my dresser when I was changing the
music. I tucked the bill inside of the blouse which caused Kevin to proudly
throw his shoulders back resulting in the shredding of the blouse. All of the
safety pins that were holding the top of the blouse tautly to Kevin’s shirt
remained where they were and Lily's white frilly blouse folded over,
releasing itself from the paisley scarf tied around Kevin's neck and revealed
a dozen small tears. The show was over. The blouse was ruined and the
jumpsuit was wet with sparkling rose wine.

A sense of urgency overtook us. It was as if Lily were pulling into the
driveway and we had to get everything back in a hurry. Destroying the blouse
seemed to bring home the fact that we were doing something that, even though
felt so good, was terribly wrong. Dressing up like women wasn't the problem.
That had been dictated by fate and once the wigs had been discovered,
momentum took us and we really didn't have any choice but to follow the
trajectory that we had followed. We did what any drunk gay man would have
done if he found himself alone in a room full of wigs and four decades of
women's apparel. What was so wrong and that we had completely disregarded as
we let gay fate take us was that we had even discovered the wigs in the first
place. We had snooped through someone's private things and worse than that,
had used and destroyed someone's possessions. If someone had gone into my
room, played and scratched one of my albums, I would have been so pissed. The
big difference was that a scratched album could have been easily replaced. I
had no way to replace the white blouse and wasn't sure if the wine stains
would come out of the jumpsuit, though I thought that they would and was very
relieved that Kevin had brought over a magnum of rose and not red. I almost
let myself believe that the clothing misfortune was an instant Karma spanking
but the experience had been way too much fun. If there had been cosmic
retribution, it would have been much graver like a wig catching on fire. That
would have been a much fairer tit for tat. The ruined clothing was really
more of an inconvenience. Kevin would take the blouse when he left and I'd
have to wash the jumpsuit by hand and sneak it back into her closet. Lily's
closet was so packed with clothes that I was certain that she wouldn't miss
one white blouse. By snooping through her things, we had done something that
was far more inexcusable than stealing clothing from charity drop boxes but
we had the most fun that we had ever had together. It was just such a drag
that the night had to end on a downer.

Kevin started to unfasten the safety pins and I peeled myself out of the
jumpsuit. We returned everything to the closet except the ruined blouse and
the jumpsuit which I shoved into a drawer until I washed it later that night.
In my underwear and made up face, I gave the room one final inspection then
turned off the light, closed the door and walked across the hallway to my
room. Kevin was in the washroom washing his make-up off. I threw on a pair of
old secondhand pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and joined Kevin in the washroom
to clean my face. We were silent, laughed out, almost solemn.

As I stood there beside Kevin stripping off my blue eye shadow with Lily’s
cold cream, I was feeling a sense of awe and reverence for the gay milestone
that I had just hurdled, in heels. I had, by dressing up in drag, gained a
deeper understanding of the social world that I inhabited. Even though I went
to Whispers often, there was so much about what went on there that I didn't
understand, although I accepted these oddities because I was sure that they
were going on long before I had made my uneventful debut. I didn't get why
leather was considered sexy or why everyone called each other, "girl". I
didn't understand why old men who would have been grandfathers in another
life were still going to bars, getting drunk and dancing with Asian paper
hand fans and up until now, I didn't know why some men dressed up like women.
I could take drag queens off of my mysterious gay phenomena list. Drag queens
existed because they could. It was such a social taboo for a boy to express
femininity. My sister’s Barbies were always snatched from my hands by my
parents and I never knew why. I liked playing with Barbies as I'm sure every
drag queen at Whispers did as a child. These sensitive boys were now adults
and no one could take away their toys. Barbies and E-Z Bake Ovens were
replaced with lipstick and falsies. Drag queens represented for all of us the
liberation of what, deep down inside, we thought we should have been. On an
almost cellular level, drag queens freed gay men of their shame. Where I
before enjoyed watching the drag shows simply for the entertainment factor, I
would now watch them with respect. I now understood their motivation and
every time that one put on a pair of heels and strutted out under the
spotlight, I would clap louder and tip more. Even though they tucked them out
of sight, drag queens had the balls to take centuries of programmed behavior
and say, “Fuck it!” and because of it, we were all stronger.

That night in Lily's apartment in the back of her wicker store would always
be remembered fondly for two reasons. It was the only time that I dressed in
drag and it would also be one of the last times that Kevin and I spent any
real time together.