would never have done this before. I realize he means before me.
“Close your eyes,” I tell him. He closes them. I feel like his big sister. I dust the puff ball with translucent powder and hold it in front of his face. I take a big breath and blow it toward him. A cloud surrounds him and settles lightly across his skin. The sheen of the base is gone, replaced by powder smoothness. He giggles.
John pulls the wig down from behind him and twists it into place. He comes around beside me and we look at Fred carefully for fixable flaws. There are none. Fred opens his eyes. “Well?”
“Definitely the smart sister. Kate Jackson,” John says and turns toward me, smiling. “I’m the pretty one, the femmy one. Farrah. Which one are you, girl?”
I shake my head and pull the lapels of my leather trench coat. I don’t feel like any of Charlie’s Angels and I know I don’t look like one. I look more like a lost member of the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! gang. Like if Tura Satana had a child with the blond sidekick. Or just took her hair out for a ride one day.
“You’re the mean sister,” John says, with a laugh. “The one that makes you cry and breaks all your dolls.”
Outside John’s apartment Eighteenth Street is full of cars, their headlights like footlights for the sidewalk stage in the early night. I can see my hair flashing around me in the dark as it catches the light. Doing drag on Halloween night in the Castro is an amateur, but high-level, competitive sport. Participating means doing drag in front of people who do drag on just about every other day of the year, and some of these people are my friends. I am most nervous at the thought of seeing them. I want to measure up.
According to the paper the next day, 400,000 people will come into the Castro tonight to see us. They will all try to drive down this street, and many will succeed. Some will have baseball bats, beer bottles, guns. Some of them hate drag queens, trans women, gender queers. They will tell you they want their girls to be girls. If they pick you up and find out the truth they will beat and maybe kill you. Being good at a blow job is a survival skill for some of my friends for this very reason—though men are unpredictable at best.
“Most men, when they find out you have a dick, well, hon, they roll right over.” This is something a drag-queen friend tells me early on in my life here. “Turns out their whole lives, all they ever wanted was to get fucked and they never had the nerve to ask for it.”
I think about this a lot. I find I think about it right now, on the street, in my new look.
John, Fred, and I walk out in front of the stopped cars. They are full of people I will never see again. John swivels on his heels, pivoting as he walks, smiling and waving. He knows he is why they are here from the suburbs, that he is what they have come to see. I smile at a boy behind a steering wheel who catches my eye. He honks and yells, all excitement. I twirl my hair and keep walking, strutting. In the second grade, the boys would stop me in the hall to tell me I walked like a girl, my hips switching, and as I cross this street and feel the cars full of people watching me, for the first time I really let myself walk as I have always felt my hips want to. I have always walked this way, but I have never walked this way like this.
The yelling continues from the car, and the boy’s friends lean out the window, shouting for me. John is laughing. “Shit, girl, you better be careful. I’m going to keep my eye on you.” Fred is walking quietly ahead of us. From behind, in his camouflage jacket, he looks like a man with long hair. His legs move from his thin hips in straight lines, he bobs as he steps, and the wig hair bounces gently at his shoulders. He has always walked like this also, I can see this, and here is a difference between us. I don’t want him to be hurt tonight, however that happens—either for not being enough of a girl or for
“Close your eyes,” I tell him. He closes them. I feel like his big sister. I dust the puff ball with translucent powder and hold it in front of his face. I take a big breath and blow it toward him. A cloud surrounds him and settles lightly across his skin. The sheen of the base is gone, replaced by powder smoothness. He giggles.
John pulls the wig down from behind him and twists it into place. He comes around beside me and we look at Fred carefully for fixable flaws. There are none. Fred opens his eyes. “Well?”
“Definitely the smart sister. Kate Jackson,” John says and turns toward me, smiling. “I’m the pretty one, the femmy one. Farrah. Which one are you, girl?”
I shake my head and pull the lapels of my leather trench coat. I don’t feel like any of Charlie’s Angels and I know I don’t look like one. I look more like a lost member of the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! gang. Like if Tura Satana had a child with the blond sidekick. Or just took her hair out for a ride one day.
“You’re the mean sister,” John says, with a laugh. “The one that makes you cry and breaks all your dolls.”
Outside John’s apartment Eighteenth Street is full of cars, their headlights like footlights for the sidewalk stage in the early night. I can see my hair flashing around me in the dark as it catches the light. Doing drag on Halloween night in the Castro is an amateur, but high-level, competitive sport. Participating means doing drag in front of people who do drag on just about every other day of the year, and some of these people are my friends. I am most nervous at the thought of seeing them. I want to measure up.
According to the paper the next day, 400,000 people will come into the Castro tonight to see us. They will all try to drive down this street, and many will succeed. Some will have baseball bats, beer bottles, guns. Some of them hate drag queens, trans women, gender queers. They will tell you they want their girls to be girls. If they pick you up and find out the truth they will beat and maybe kill you. Being good at a blow job is a survival skill for some of my friends for this very reason—though men are unpredictable at best.
“Most men, when they find out you have a dick, well, hon, they roll right over.” This is something a drag-queen friend tells me early on in my life here. “Turns out their whole lives, all they ever wanted was to get fucked and they never had the nerve to ask for it.”
I think about this a lot. I find I think about it right now, on the street, in my new look.
John, Fred, and I walk out in front of the stopped cars. They are full of people I will never see again. John swivels on his heels, pivoting as he walks, smiling and waving. He knows he is why they are here from the suburbs, that he is what they have come to see. I smile at a boy behind a steering wheel who catches my eye. He honks and yells, all excitement. I twirl my hair and keep walking, strutting. In the second grade, the boys would stop me in the hall to tell me I walked like a girl, my hips switching, and as I cross this street and feel the cars full of people watching me, for the first time I really let myself walk as I have always felt my hips want to. I have always walked this way, but I have never walked this way like this.
The yelling continues from the car, and the boy’s friends lean out the window, shouting for me. John is laughing. “Shit, girl, you better be careful. I’m going to keep my eye on you.” Fred is walking quietly ahead of us. From behind, in his camouflage jacket, he looks like a man with long hair. His legs move from his thin hips in straight lines, he bobs as he steps, and the wig hair bounces gently at his shoulders. He has always walked like this also, I can see this, and here is a difference between us. I don’t want him to be hurt tonight, however that happens—either for not being enough of a girl or for
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