Ride the Wreck (Stonewall Investigations Blue Creek 2)

It was a necessary reminder, considering how close I’d been to quitting drag over the last few weeks. Drag brought me life—brought me to life—but recently, it seemed to be doing the opposite.

And it wasn’t just because my knees felt like they were about to start a picket line and ask to be unionized after every single one of my shows. I could handle my body giving out on me because of my sickening dance moves; I’d adapt to that.

What I couldn’t adapt to were the increasingly weird and threatening messages and letters I’d been receiving after my shows. They started a few months ago and had really sucked every ounce of fun and freedom I gained from throwing on a wig and dancing my ass off. Drag used to be my escape, my one way to find a spark of pure joy in my life.

Yet lately, I had found myself wanting to run from my escape.

Not tonight, though. Tonight I wanted to drink this up, even after my brief and entirely unplanned intermission. So I twirled and I dipped and I grabbed an older gentleman’s face and stuffed him between my breasts, draping him in the blond wig that smelled faintly of lavender, patchouli, with a tinge of ball sweat.

“Yaaaas!”

“That’s it, slay it, Blue.”

“Queen! Queen!”

Every cheer and chant was the equivalent of taking another sip from the fountain of youth. I smiled as I twirled, a bundle of green crumpled in both of my fists, my dark blue nails clutching onto my spoils like a dragon hoarding her treasure. I wove through the tables, making sure I put on a show for everyone, soaking in all the attention and using it to fuel me into the transition to my last song.

That was when I spotted him. Somehow, I’d missed him during my first scan. He was sitting in the corner, at a crammed table, surrounded by a grinning group of mostly strangers. He sat somewhat in the shadows, and yet, unexplainably, his aquamarine-blue eyes and overflowing smile lit up his little corner as if an entire sky full of stars had flicked on and been aimed directly at him. His arms were casually thrown on the back of the chair, and his rich evergreen button-up dipped open to show off a hypnotizing slice of chest, dark hair peeking through.

I danced toward his table like a bass with a hook through the roof of its dazed mouth.

I’d seen the guy around Blue Creek before, but never at one of my shows, never like this. The way he sat—legs open, blue eyes transfixed on me, that damn infectious smile somehow growing brighter—I just had to get a closer look. I couldn’t let him slip past like I’d done at the grocery store or the gas station or wherever the hell it was that I faintly remembered him from.

The dollar bills waving in my periphery became easy to ignore. I used all the confidence Blue Divine instilled in me every time I painted my face. I decided I’d perform my last minute of the song directly to him.

Why the fuck not?

He looked even brighter up close. His thick, dark brown head of hair shone under the scattered lights of the disco ball spinning above us, and his smile cocked, becoming more restrained while still offering a sun flare’s worth of light. He reached for the stack of bills on the table and offered them to me, a little too politely for my tastes. I winked at him and bent over, right as the song reached its climax. His friends hooted and hollered as the smiling torch of a man stuffed the stack into my tights.

I turned back to face him.

Rarely did a guy ever leave me breathless. I’d never gotten that “butterfly farm in your chest” feeling over someone, never felt my heart skip a beat or flutter or fart. None of that, never felt any of it.

First time for everything, I guessed…

The song began to fade. I started walking backward, still lip-syncing to the song even though my brain felt as fried as a cracked egg on a desert road. I planned on doing one last dip once I got back onstage, hopefully timed perfectly with the end of the song. That would rea—

My heel cracked. Snapped in half like a twink with a popper’s addiction lost on the sandy sidewalks of Venice’s Muscle Beach. My ankle wobbled and my leg gave out, and I went down as if someone had shot a couple of tranquilizer darts straight into my ass. Ace Ventura style.

Natural instincts kicked in. And they weren’t the kind that would have allowed me to fall graciously into a dainty little pose on the ground. These were the kind of instincts that made me flail like an electrocuted jellyfish as I tried to grab onto anything that would stop the fall, which meant me grabbing onto the tablecloth, which immediately wrapped around my wrist and got dragged down to the floor with me.