And the last message, the one just received.
Caleb: You sure know how to make a boy feel special ;)
Chapter 18: Continental Airport Breakfasts and Piss-Pigs
THE DAYS leading up to the drag bachelor auction were busier than I’d been in a long while. Between helping Paul pick out flowers for the wedding (“You have to have flowers, Paul! We’re not some kind of uncultured swine who can’t fucking class up a joint!” “But Sandy, what if the horses eat them?”), meeting with my ten bachelors while studiously ignoring the strange looks Darren kept shooting me (“Yes, I understand you’re all men, but for one night, you are all go
ing to be men dressed like ladies, so you will learn to walk in heels, so help me god!”), and making sure Darren understood I was far too busy to even sit still and have a conversation with him (“Sandy—” “Not right now!” “I need to—” “So busy!” “Can you just—” “Doing things!”).
I led a hard life, full of trials and tribulations.
Given that I was obviously not making any baseless assumptions about anything (there were texts that could not be misconstrued) and that Darren was planning on fucking the hipster twink, it seemed wise that I go back to the start, where Darren Mayne was an asshole and I was using him solely to save Jack It without the detriment of feelings being involved. (If I was being honest with myself, I no longer really understood why the fake relationship thing still needed to happen. Who exactly were we trying to fool? Wasn’t the whole point of this to try and trick the mayor? Or Darren. Or someone. I wasn’t really sure anymore, if I’d ever been at all. While I was good at pretty much everything else, I was certain the evidence pointed to the fact that I was the worst fake boyfriend to ever fake boyfriend. It can be disheartening to find your life can’t be an eighties movie, no matter how hard you try. And since I no longer understood why I was doing what I was doing, I decided to just let it fall as it may. It seemed easier that way.)
And since feelings were no longer involved (it was preposterous that they’d even been there to begin with!), my life became extraordinarily simplified now that I had a specific goal in mind. Jack It would be saved, and I, Helena Handbasket, would be its savior. There would be parades in my honor with fireworks and hunky firemen, and in his concession speech to my victory, Andrew Taylor would announce that December would forever be known as Helena Handbasket Appreciation month and everyone would be required to buy me something and lay it at my feet while nearly nude musclemen cooled me with palm fronds and fed me peeled frozen grapes while occasionally begging to choke on my dick. And really, what else would the month of December need to be known for other than me?
I kept up appearances as best I could. Whenever we were surrounded by people at Jack It on Wednesdays or Saturdays, I smiled and stood close to Darren. His arm would go around my waist and he would cling to me more so than usual, muttering that I wasn’t fooling him and what the hell was wrong with me? We were going to talk about this, he said, even if he had to force it out of me. I laughed and told him I was busy.
Caleb was there, usually, having successfully insinuated himself into the homo jocks. Biff, Chet, and Xerxes often looked confused, the poor boys, at whether or not the hipster twink was one of them or if he was trying to become their queen. Brian, for his part, just smiled goofily and made sure he didn’t stand too close to me lest I grab him to make him a pawn in my evil scheme yet again.
I also made sure to give Caleb and Darren plenty of space whenever they were near each other so that their blossoming love could stoke the flames of passion. Darren looked confused anytime I made myself scarce without a word, but I couldn’t stand in the way of what was obviously a fated romance. It helped that I didn’t have a single fuck left to give, otherwise, that might have hurt just a little. But if Meryl Streep could smile even when she lost twelve straight Academy Awards to underserving mediocrity, then I could certainly Meryl Streep my way through Darren Mayne.
“Haven’t seen Darren around,” Corey said one evening as he poured over notes for his finals.
“Holidays,” I said. “Drag shows. Work. Schedules.”
Corey frowned at me. “Are you just… listing… things?”
“I love you,” I said.
“I… love you too?”
“Thanks. You should finish up there and I’ll bake you muffins.”
“What.”
“Exactly. I bought you your Christmas present. I hope you like fuzzy mittens.”
I pretended to ignore the whispered phone conversation Corey had with Paul later that night when words like “going crazy” and “twitchy meltdown” were used. Obviously they didn’t know that I was in the performance of my career, one that people would refer to as revelatory (if anyone could ever know about it, that was). I thought about bending him over my knee to spank the shit out of him for the twitchy meltdown comment, but abstained. Barely.
And since Paul and Corey were attempting to break me down, they could no longer be trusted in the Queen’s Lair. In fact, I refused to allow anyone at all to come up, aside from Charlie. I would have banned him too, but we needed him to record the shows so the queens could critique themselves later. Paul wasn’t too suspicious, as I sometimes wanted to be alone before my shows, but I knew he was getting there and I wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.
“Do I even want to know what’s going on in that head of yours?” Charlie asked as he set up the tripod for the camera.
“Probably not,” I said. “I’m in a dark and mysterious place right now. The queen’s journey is often a lonely one. One foot in front of the other. Hold your head up high. Make love, not war. I want to take a ride on your discostick.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I didn’t get any of that, except for the part at the end where you quoted Lady Gaga.”
“You’re so gay for knowing that,” I said.
THE DAY of the drag bachelor auction came quicker than I thought it would. My alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. I shot up out of bed, opened the door, and bellowed for Corey to fucking rise and shine, because we had work to do. There was a low groan from somewhere in his room that I took as assent, given that he knew as well as I did what would happen if he didn’t get his ass out of bed. He’d tried to use the argument that he was a college student and deserved to sleep in. I’d laughed in his face and told him he shouldn’t have moved into a house with a drag queen when she was putting on a drag bachelor auction. He’d retorted and said that he wasn’t even aware there were such things as drag bachelor auctions, much less that I would have one. I’d reminded him that as a drag queen, I was spontaneous and that I might have him do things he never thought he’d do at the drop of a hat, up to and including midget fisting and watersports if the situation called for it. He’d mused out loud that he never wanted to know what situation called for midget fisting and watersports. I told him it was probably more common than he thought. We then had to go look it up on the Internet. Neither of us were ever going to be the same after that.
So it was with threats of peeing on fisted little people that he didn’t fight me and made his way to the kitchen to start the coffee. Paul and Vince were scheduled to be at my house no later than five thirty (Paul, at the very least, knowing he couldn’t fuck with me on the time, given that he’d had years of my demands to be conditioned to just say Yes, Sandy, of course, Sandy). And since Vince did whatever Paul did, we were golden there.
By the time Corey was out of the shower, I was dressed and sitting in the living room, a color-coded spreadsheet pulled up on my laptop and on a conference call with Mike, who was still struggling to wake up. Across the spreadsheet, there were the names of ten homo jocks, including Darren and Brian. I had four other queens to assist me, each of us taking two homo jocks to dress and apply the makeup. Each of the homo jocks had been told to come as they were, no need to shave their faces or anywhere else. If Conchita could win Eurovision in a dress and a beard, then I could pimp out a homo jock in a leotard. And I meant that lovingly.
“Mike,” I snapped at the phone as I heard him start to snore again.
“Hrmph,” he said.