Drag Teen (4 page)

“I MIGHT REGRET THIS, BUT I want to do it.”

I stood, trembling ever so slightly, on Seth’s doorstep. His perfectly angular face immediately lit up like a Christmas tree.

“I’ve got to do something. I can’t get stuck here. I can’t work at a gas station for the rest of my life. Maybe they’ll laugh and boo all over again, maybe I’ll fall on my face and disgrace the entire legacy of John Denton, but I’m not in the position to turn down any opportunity. I just have to do it.”

Seth grabbed my hands and pulled me into the foyer of his house. Seth’s house was the kind of house that was always cozy and clean, with the walls covered by smiling family vacation photos from fancy exotic places like Charleston, South Carolina.

“This is wonderful. This is one of those moments where your life is on the verge of immense change, JT!”

Seth was being a bit overdramatic, but overdramatic or not, it felt really nice to see somebody excited for me. He bounced across the living room to his phone just as his mom walked in.

“We need to call Heather and tell her too,” he said to me.

“Tell Heather what?” Seth’s mom asked with her warm smile. Seth’s mom was the kind of mom that you see on old sitcoms: pretty, sweet, slightly naive, and with a heart the size of Texas for her only son.

“About spring break.”

“Oh! Are you boys going down to Daytona with the kids from school?” Seth’s mom seemed genuinely excited for us to be planning something fun.

“We sure are!”

“Huh?” I wondered aloud. Seth squeezed my hand, shutting me up.

“Can we borrow your car?” he asked.

Seth’s mom didn’t even stop to think about it; she just maintained the same sweet mom smile she always had. This was either because she was genuinely a good-hearted person or because she had more Botox pumped in her face than the entire audience at the Golden Globes. Seth’s dad was a local plastic surgeon and Seth’s mom was his eerie masterpiece.

“Of course!” she chirped. “You guys hungry? I’m making guacamole!”

She went back to the kitchen, humming some kind of old jazz song under her breath. It was hard not to envy Seth’s family. Their nice house, his always-perky mom, his wealthy dad who actually believed in college being something that wasn’t just for, as my dad always called them, “snooty glasses-wearing types.”

“What are you talking about?!” I whispered to Seth once his mom was out of earshot.

“My parents have been hounding me about going to spring break in Daytona with the rest of the school. They’re all about the ‘full high school experience.’ Which, if you grow up in Florida, is supposed to mean beer bashes and wet T-shirt contests in Daytona. They told me they’d even pay for it. That’ll cover our gas up to New York.”

Seth picked up his phone and texted Heather the news, with the newly added detail of having a car, while I tried to process the fact that this was actually going to happen. I was going to New York for a competition that could possibly win me a full college scholarship. It all sounded too good to be true, and deep in my heart I knew it probably was.

Seth finished his text with a flourish of emojis, and spun around to kiss me.

“Now. We have got
a lot
of work to do!”

While Seth’s parents were always encouraging Seth to have a good time, my parents were the complete opposite. Spring break was only a week away, and if I didn’t turn in my application to do the pageant within the next twenty-four hours, I could kiss the whole opportunity good-bye.

I sat in my room, staring at the application form on the pageant website, listening to the ongoing drone of some detective TV show my parents were watching in the living room. Sometimes I wondered if the only reason people loved watching all those shows about horrible crimes is because it made them feel like slightly less terrible people.

I was scared to come right out and ask my parents for permission to go on the trip, even though the trip I was going to tell them about wasn’t even the real trip itself. Daytona Beach was something my parents could understand. Daytona Beach was the kind of place people like my parents consider paradise. I was sure they’d gone there for
their
spring break. All I had to do was get them to say okay to that and then I’d have the entire week to myself to do the pageant, to breathe, to go nowhere near their dumpy gas station. But how could I even begin to ask them? Their inability to ever actually understand me made any conversation with them nearly impossible. It was as if they always knew exactly what I didn’t want to hear, which meant that in the moments of attempting to stand up for myself, I felt so small. One
no
from them and I cowered down into the little-kid version of myself that had been so scared of ever crossing them.

The more time I spent thinking about the pageant, the more excited I allowed myself to get. Imagining myself in a great wig was about as exciting a thought as my mind could muster.

When I was little, before I saw
To Wong Foo
, I didn’t know what a drag queen was, or what the term
drag
even meant … but I had this wig. It was slightly shorter than shoulder length, a brown, wavy wig my nana had worn during chemo. Nana had fought lung cancer for as long as I could remember, but she was stubborn as you could get, so she lived with it for way longer than they expected. Nana lived about twenty minutes away from us, and every couple weekends or so my parents would let me stay over with her for a few nights. She lived alone—my grandpa had died when I was a baby—and she liked having the company. Especially if the company was me.

I was her favorite, and she didn’t mind telling anybody that, even her own son. She’d let me stay up way past my bedtime watching old movies, with fabulous songs, glamorous dresses, epic scenery. As we watched together she’d regale me with stories about the first time she’d seen each movie, and how she’d only paid a nickel to see it. Nana claimed so many things only cost a nickel
in my day
that I wondered how anyone had ever made any money at all.

She always let me sleep in her bed because my bedroom was in the back of the house, overlooking her big, dark, spooky backyard. An owl lived there, hooting and glaring with its glowing eyes every night, for as long as I could remember. It was terrifying the way it ominously glowed in the darkness. She always told me, though, that it was a good thing that the owl was watching over the two of us. Eventually I believed her. Nana had that kind of power about her; she made you believe in magic.

As the cancer got worse and the chemo more frequent, she always wore a turban to cover up her hair loss. It made her look like a really old genie. She also had a wig she’d purchased when she first started the chemo, but she didn’t like wearing it because it was too itchy and, as she said, “I’ve got cancer, I’m not in a school play, for God’s sake!”

I became obsessed with this wig. She kept it in a cabinet right by the vanity in her room, on one of those Styrofoam heads—this one with a face hand-drawn by yours truly. Every time I’d go over to her house she’d let me take the wig out, brush it, and wear it. I loved the feeling of this gorgeous hair on my head. I loved looking at myself in the mirror as I was wearing it. I loved the feeling of looking like someone else.

Nana’s cancer got real bad right around my eleventh birthday, and it became clearer and clearer to all of us, including to her, that she was going to die. We went over to her house one day and she had a birthday present wrapped up for me. My parents said something about how she shouldn’t be buying me presents when she was so sick, and she told them to screw off. Inside the package was a Levi’s denim jacket she must have ordered from a catalog. It was nice, and I was thankful, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until we were leaving that Nana whispered to me to look under the tissue paper inside the box. In the backseat of my parents’ car, I looked—and there, underneath the tissue paper, was the wig and a note from Nana that said,
For when you’re feeling blue
.

I kept the wig in that same box underneath my bed from that day on, and whenever I felt blue or nervous or mad or just needed a moment to smile, I’d pull out the box, put on the wig, look at myself in the mirror, and for the first time all day, I’d feel capable of anything. This was probably why I understood why the characters in
To Wong Foo
were doing what they were doing, because any time I put on that wig I felt like a star.

Maybe it was just something in my blood. Maybe it was Nana’s spirit looking down on me and telling me I was going to be okay. Or maybe it was a combination. Either way, that afternoon, as I waited to tell my parents about spring break, I put it on. I looked at myself in the mirror and reminded myself that I had nothing to be afraid of. I’d always have Nana on my side. I could feel her cheering me on to take the first step toward my dreams.

“And I’m sure you both understand that spring break is a rite of passage for somebody my age, and you don’t have to worry about it costing you money because Seth’s offered to take care of it,” I said, halfway through my plea to get the week off from the gas station.

My parents hadn’t looked up from the TV once, except to tell me to move because I was blocking Mariska Hargitay.

“So … may I?”

“I don’t care—ask your father,” my mother said, focusing on the TV and not actually looking at my father, who was sitting directly next to her.

When the show went to a commercial, my father stood up and walked to the kitchen to get another beer. Then he cracked open the can as he walked back to his seat, as if he liked to leave me hanging.

Finally, he said, “If I say yes, you gotta work double time all next month.”

My voice cracked with excitement as I promised that I’d work triple time if that’s what it would take. They didn’t put up too much of an argument—not because they cared but because the show was starting back and they wanted me to shut up. I ran back to my room, thanking the spirit of Nana. Then I lay down on my bed and texted Seth:

New York, here we come
.

WITH THE ISSUE OF MY parents behind me and the first day of spring break being four nights away, I sent in my application for the pageant, which made the whole thing feel real, official, and utterly intimidating. The application itself was pretty minimal and standard; they wouldn’t expect me to really explain myself until I was standing in front of hundreds of strangers onstage. The minute I sent it off and got the email confirmation that I was officially a contestant, I broke into a panic-fueled sweat. In the confirmation, they repeated the segment requirements: talent, interview, evening gown, and that incredibly intimidating speech about what drag means to you.

Public speaking aside (I’d passed out during my fifth-grade spelling bee on the word
altogether
, for goodness’ sake!), the biggest problem with this speech would be the fact that I wasn’t sure why I should be crowned the Drag Teen over anyone else. Sure, I needed the money—but that didn’t mean I deserved it. Convincing a panel of judges you’re worthy of first place is tough when you yourself think you’re a loser.

I didn’t tell Seth and Heather any of this. After agreeing to go, I tried to keep all my fears to myself. They were giving up their spring break to go on this adventure with me. All they should be getting back from me was gratitude, not angst.

Because he didn’t have to worry about my mental health, Seth focused on other, more mundane road-trip matters.

“We’ll definitely need a playlist,” he said to me and Heather at lunch on the Friday before we were leaving. As he did, he marked the word
playlist
into the notebook where he was creating a list of things to bring with us on the road. “I should probably handle that since you both have bad taste in music.”

“How dare you!” Heather said, slamming her miniature carton of fat-free milk onto her lunch tray and spilling a little white puddle onto her Salisbury steak. “I have great taste in music. I pride myself on having no understanding of Katy Perry whatsoever!”

“How about you both make playlists?” I interrupted. “We’re driving from Florida to New York. Something tells me we’ll have time for both.”

“Now. I did the math and we’re going to need roughly four hundred dollars in gas. I’ve got that covered—”

“No!” I protested. “That makes me feel bad. The only reason we’re doing this is because of me. You shouldn’t have to spend your own money to get me to New York to be in some dumb pageant.”

Seth threw his hand in the air. “First of all, the pageant isn’t dumb, and you really need to stop saying that or you’re going to create that as the narrative in your head and not try hard enough.” (Seth read WAY too much
O
magazine.) “Second of all, it’s my parents’ money. They have a lot of it, too much of it, and it’s from cutting into people’s faces in an attempt to make them look younger but ultimately just turning them into people who look like forgotten Muppets that got thrown out for being too strange-looking. So, if I’m not spending it on getting my boyfriend to a drag pageant and his future, then I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.”

Seth’s adorable grin could have convinced me to do anything. But accepting his money was still hard, even if it was his parents’ money. It was like he was Robin Hood, Heather was Maid Marian, and I was one of the beggar children they robbed the rich for.

But you can’t expect Robin Hood to understand that even good deeds lead to a feeling of indebtedness. He continued to grin, saying, “So. We’re doing this? Like, for real? This Sunday, we’re going to drive to New York City?”

He looked across the table at me. I looked at Heather. Heather looked back to Seth. As if on cue, slowly, we all nodded yes.

Two days later, Seth’s car was packed to the brim with luggage. We carefully avoided his mom’s curiosity about why we’d need so much stuff in Daytona Beach by blaming Heather’s indecisiveness about what to wear. Seth’s mom had every right to raise an eyebrow, but the bottom line was that because of all her plastic surgery, she literally couldn’t.

We’d
all
way overpacked, but that was the thing about drag—it wasn’t about to allow us to travel lightly. I had two suitcases of clothes I’d borrowed from Heather, the wig from Nana, every pair of heels I could squeeze my feet into from the local thrift shop, and a major suitcase for my makeup. I had packed so much stuff for drag that I’d barely had enough room for my civilian clothes.

I called shotgun and Heather took the backseat. The agreement was that we’d drive in shifts—or rather that Seth and I would drive in shifts, while Heather would rest in the backseat. Heather was fine if she was just driving around Florida, but interstate freeways were a different matter altogether. Heather had failed her driver’s test four times and the only reason she’d passed it the fifth time was because the lady at the DMV was tired of having to talk to her.

We were breaking up the trip over the course of three days because that’s what we’d seen people do on road trips in movies. We’d drive until we got too tired, we’d stay at a motel near the interstate, then we’d get up the next morning to do it again. Our goal for the first day was to get to South Carolina before dark.

We hit the road, Seth’s mix of pop music as our soundtrack as we pulled onto the interstate, leaving Clearwater behind us. I could barely believe it was really happening.

We passed the time with car trip games; we played Résumé, which was a game I claimed to have made up but that I’m sure I didn’t. You named an actress and every time it was your turn you had to name one of that actress’s movies. The game lasted until no one could name another movie. I was essentially unstoppable at this game because I had seen pretty much every movie any famous actress had ever made. It didn’t occur to me until I had beaten everyone through Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Lawrence that none of us had ever, ever considered playing the game with a man’s name.

“Why would we do that?” Heather scoffed at my question, and she had a valid point. One of the uniting bonds between Heather and me was that we refused to see movies without a strong female lead. Heather argued it was our feminism, but in reality I think it was just that Nana had instilled me with good taste when it came to movies.

It was beginning to get dark out, the sun setting behind a McDonald’s golden arches. We’d been driving for a while, maybe seven hours, long enough that we’d listened to “Firework” thirty-three times and Heather had told us the story about the time her parents left her at the grocery store, twice. A sign advertised forty-dollar rooms three miles ahead, and we decided we’d gotten far enough for one day. Plus, forty dollars was our exact budget for a room that night, so we pulled off onto the exit and into the parking lot for the Bel Air Inn.

Seth checked us in while Heather and I waited in the car. We figured a group of three teenagers paying for one room in cash might look a bit suspect. Our plan was that Seth would break down crying and tell them he was in town for a funeral if they asked why a seventeen-year-old was traveling alone. They didn’t, though—the Bel Air Inn didn’t seem like the kind of place where people paid a lot of attention to who was coming or going. The two-floor building looked like something out of a horror movie, surrounding a pool that was a color I’d never seen before—not blue, not green, not yellow, but something in between all three. There was nothing else within eyeshot except for a diner and a gas station; only a few cars and Mack trucks were parked in the motel parking lot, and the snack machine outside our first-floor room was out of everything but gum that looked like it had been in there since before I was born.

Our room was even rougher than the rest of the place. The two double beds advertised ended up being one double bed and the headboard of a second one. Which left us to speculate where the other mattress and bed frame had gone and why anyone would have wanted them.

“Bedbug farmer?” Heather guessed.

“Maybe they put it into the Smithsonian as part of an exhibit on crime scenes,” Seth theorized.

“Maybe it just went for a walk,” I reasoned. “I mean, if you were a bed, would you want to stay here?”

“Well, until it comes back, we have a problem. We can’t all fit in a double bed,” Heather complained. “Call the front desk and ask for a rollaway or something.”

Seth shook his head. “We can’t. I told them it was just me, remember? They’ll probably charge more if I ask.” Riskily, he plopped his suitcase onto the filthy carpet.

“Just to play devil’s advocate,” I argued, “I don’t think this is the kind of place that will ask that many questions. It feels like the kind of place you could kill someone and housekeeping would simply vacuum around the body. Or incorporate it into the decor. That lamp looks like a salesman after his third coronary, no?”

“Do
you
want to be the one to talk to the guy behind the front desk?” Seth challenged. “I think his name was Snarly Deathbringer. Any takers?”

Heather and I decided it was best to just suck it up and share the bed with one another both out of fear but mainly because of general teenage laziness. It would be a tight squeeze, but it was just the one night. Besides, something told me we didn’t want to see what was rolled away inside a rollaway bed at this place.

“What are we going to do with our night?” Heather dug a sweater out of her suitcase, since the AC in the room was on some kind of arctic setting and the on/off switch must have joined the missing bed on its moonlit stroll.

“Um. Sleep, right?” I asked. “Isn’t that the point?”

“No, Heather’s right. We should do something! This is the first night of our adventure. Let’s explore!” Seth was way too energetic for someone who had just spent seven hours in a car. They both were, actually. Then again, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to squeeze into the double bed with the two of them either.

“Where exactly do you plan to explore?” I pointed out the window at the barren fields and interstate outside. “That diner? Or the gas station? How can you choose between such scintillating options?”

Heather and Seth, ready for adventure, ignored my sarcasm. Heather tossed the car keys to Seth.

“You’re right. We ought to eat first.”

The diner across the street was almost as disgusting as our motel room, but only almost. It was set up like your typical diner, with a long counter going through the center of the room and a few tables in the corner. Someone must have put in at least twenty dollars’ worth of quarters before we got there because the jukebox never stopped playing Christian rock music. We sat down at a table near the front, my hands sticking to the table the minute I touched it.

“You guys, why do I feel like everybody is staring at us?” Heather asked, surveying the room. I turned and saw that her feeling was correct: Every single eye in the place was focused on us.

“I suppose they’ve never seen a guy on the verge of being crowned Miss Drag Teen before,” Seth said, waving his hand in dismissal and peeling the menu off the linoleum tabletop. “Now. Do you think this place has any vegan options?”

We were all so far from vegan that we’d had KFC for lunch earlier, but we always liked to joke about snobby city-people things like that. One time we’d dared Heather to ask Mrs. Irene, our school lunch lady, for something gluten-free, and Mrs. Irene had almost thrown a chicken-fried steak at her. Joking about things like that was our way of feeling a little bit closer to life in a big city where people would get us.