Killer Queen: A Painted Faces Novel (4 page)

The problem was, I was
still me. Still broken and seeking a perfect place somewhere on a continent
that didn’t exist.

There was a group of
women in the club who appeared to be celebrating a hen night. I’d set my sights
on a buxom redhead, eyeing her from my place on the stage. I’m a breast man,
there’s no denying it, and this young lady was sporting a fine pair. I think
she might have been a little confused by my attention. I was, after all,
wearing a tight red cocktail dress and matching lipstick, my dark hair slicked
back away from my face. I wasn’t full-on Vivica Blue tonight. I was a little
bit of Viv and a little bit of Nicholas. When I was half and half, you always
knew something was wrong in my noggin. Self-destruction was usually on my
agenda. It was all thanks to the news of Kelvin’s conviction, obviously. It
should have made me deliriously happy. I’d wanted this for so long, and yet now
that it was happening, the aspirational disappointment was almost too much to
bear.

I was going to fuck
away that disappointment, and Little Miss Big Boobs was my number-one choice.
If all went according to plan, she’d be amenable to my proposition. I winked at
her from the stage, and she blinked in confusion, looking behind herself to see
if it was somebody else I was winking at. I shook my head at her, smirked, and
crooked my finger in the universal gesture for “come hither.”

The song had just
ended, so I stepped off the stage and began making my way toward her. She
swallowed down a gulp of her drink and turned to me. When I reached her, I slid
a hand down her arm, laced my fingers with hers, and lowered my mouth to her ear,
murmuring in German, “Want to have a drink with me, Red?”

She gulped, but her
pupils were dilated as she took in the sight of me. Thank God I was a man who
liked to dress like a woman who liked women, rather than a woman who dressed
like a man who liked men. Women were far more open-minded about these things,
I’d come to learn. And Red here liked what she saw, even if she was hesitant to
admit it.

“Okay,” she said
finally. I grinned wide and led her by the hand to my dressing room backstage.
I’d been sharing it with Dave (Linda Lovely), who was currently in the process
of packing up his stuff.

“Linda, you wouldn’t
mind giving us the room, would you?” I asked him.

“Not a problem,
Nicholas. I was just about to go and get a drink.”

He winked at me and quickly
left us alone. I turned to Red and began taking off my dress. She stood by the
wall, watching me and clutching her fruity cocktail in her hand. Her eyes ate
me up as I revealed my body. I possessed just enough vanity to know that as a
guy I was pretty hot stuff, and women appreciated what they saw.

“You like girls?” Red
asked curiously.

I slipped off my heels
and let my dress fall to the floor. I was down to my boxer shorts now and went
to grab a makeup wipe, staring at her hotly as I removed the mascara and
lipstick from my face, my transformation back into a man complete.

“I like everything
about them, Red. So much so that I want to fuck them, and I want to be them.
Strange, isn’t it?”

“It’s interesting. My
name is Karla, by the way.”

“Beautiful name to
match that beautiful hair, Karla,” I said, and moved toward her until I had her
backed up against the wall and her breathing grew ragged. “Shall we fuck?”

I found that being
straightforward like this turned a lot of women on, and I was sensing that Karla
was one of those women. She said nothing, simply nodded, and I lowered my mouth
to her neck. My hands gripped her hips and moved upward, eager to fondle her
breasts. I could feel her nipples tightening beneath her thin blouse, which I
quickly unbuttoned. Within the next few seconds, I had her topless. I picked
her up easily and carried her to the dressing table, setting her down on it and
taking one hard nipple into my mouth. She moaned loudly and slid her hands into
my hair, gripping tightly.

Yes, this was a good
distraction from the hole inside, a wonderful distraction. I was already
thinking about nothing but sex and coming inside her hot, wet core. Quickly, I
located a condom in the first drawer, shoving down my boxers to free my cock.
Karla grabbed for it, her small hand squeezing. She was sloppy and it hurt a
little, but I was hard and incredibly turned on, so I didn’t care.

Seconds later I had the
condom on, and I was thrusting into her quick and deep. Her gasps filled the
room, and I took gratification from the fact that she liked it. I pinched her
nipple and licked her neck, then took her mouth as I fucked her.

It was over no more
than ten minutes later. I could go all night if I wanted to, but Karla was
simply the entrée. Next on my agenda was more alcohol, perhaps a line of
cocaine, and then I would find another woman.

This is what I’d been
talking about earlier when I’d mentioned my depraved behaviour.

I had periods of
stability and periods of crazy-town.

This was a crazy-town
period.

Often, I had fuck
buddies who I saw on the regular, but what with Kelvin’s conviction sending me
over the edge, I was currently in the worst possible place. This meant I had no
interest in having sex with the same woman more than once. It just held no
appeal, and that was probably because sex more than once brought on feelings,
and I had too many feelings to contend with as it was.

“That was incredible,”
said Karla, all breathy and satisfied.

I located a cigarette
and lit up. There was a lot of truth in the movie cliché of enjoying a smoke
after a shag. It was the cherry on top of the “I just came” cake.

“That it was, Karla,
that it was,” I replied, taking a drag. She came toward me as she set her
clothing back to rights and began kissing my neck. Clearly, she wanted another
round. It was a pity about my current state of mind. A real pity, because she
had my favourite body type, all tits and arse.

I stood and moved away
from her, stubbing out my smoke. I shouldn’t have been smoking in the club
anyway. The manager would have my guts for garters if he found out. “I’m going
to the bar,” I said. “You should probably get back to your friends. I’m sure
they’re wondering where you’ve gotten to.”

She stared at me for a
second, and then her mouth drew into a thin line. She was getting it. Slowly
but surely, she was getting it. Putting my hand to her lower back, I led her
from the dressing room.

“I’m never going to see
you again, am I?” she asked, all sad.

It made me feel bad for
a second…just a second.

“Ah, my dear, I’m
afraid that might be so, but now you have a lovely memory. As do I.” I bent
down and whispered in her ear, “I loved fucking that sexy little pussy of
yours.”

Goose pimples broke out
over her skin. “You can have it again if you want, you know?”

I gave her a consoling
look. “I’m not the one for you, gorgeous.” I paused and pointed to myself. “I’m
a train wreck, and you do not want to find yourself becoming collateral
damage.”

She stared at me for a
long time, then went up on her tippy toes to give me a quick peck on the cheek.
“I’m sorry to hear that. You’re a beautiful man. I hope you find happiness one
day soon.”

And with that, she
walked away. I was a little dumbstruck and upset by what she had said. I wasn’t
sure I could handle the women I rejected being nice to me. It brought on guilt.
I much preferred it when they threw a tantrum and gave me shit. Didn’t enjoy
it, but certainly I preferred it.

It made me feel like
less of a prick.

The thing that upset me
most about what she said was the sad fact that I would never find the kind of
happiness she was referring to. Most things and people in life were a dull grey
to me. I needed that little extra something to light them up, colour them in.

It wasn’t their fault.
It was my own broken mind that turned them grey.

At the bar I joined
Dave, and we did our best to put a dent in two bottles of top-notch whiskey.
The next morning I found myself lying face down on somebody’s carpet, my hand
around a bottle of beer and stinking of cigarette smoke and sex. My nose stung a
little, a result of the two lines of cocaine I’d snorted off the back of a
toilet seat. Classy. I’d taken a little onto the tip of my tongue, then went
down on the sexy but completely vacuous brunette I’d picked up.

I was at her place now,
and there had obviously been some sort of a hootenanny, because the apartment
looked like a bomb had hit it. I’d blacked out after the cocaine-enhanced
cunnilingus, so I couldn’t tell you for sure what exactly occurred following
that. Dragging myself up off the floor, I made sure I had my wallet and my
phone on me, and swiftly made my exit. There were half-dressed people
everywhere.

Images of fucking the
brunette while high as a kite were resurfacing in my head, bringing forth a
feeling of nausea. I should have stuck with Karla, the redhead. At least she
was nice. I couldn’t even remember the brunette’s name, but she definitely was
not nice. There was a lack of animation in her eyes that I had been attracted
to because I knew the sex would be entirely emotionless. Still, I hoped never
to possess that lack of animation myself.

The world might have
been grey to me, but there was still a flickering of life that I tried my
hardest to hold onto. I wasn’t completely empty yet. When I arrived back at the
small open-plan studio apartment I was renting, I studiously counted how much
alcohol I had in my cupboards and tried to calculate how long it would last me.
Without even realising it, I was preparing to go into hermit mode.

I wanted the world to
go away.

I estimated I had
enough to get me through at least a couple of days. I had hardly any food, but
it would be easy enough to order in. Firing up the old VCR player that I
brought with me to each new dwelling I inhabited, I selected one of my mother’s
old videotapes and put it on. Stripping down to my boxers, I got into bed with
a bottle of wine and pressed “play.”

Her pretty face, which
possessed so many features similar to my own, came on the screen. She was
onstage at the venue she used to perform in. Whoever had been filming this video
wasn’t so great at working a camera, because they’d zoomed in way too close.
Although I kind of liked how close it was. It helped me recall exactly what she
looked like. Every line, freckle, and pore.

Sometimes, when sitting
in my dressing room, fully immersed in my Vivica Blue persona, I would spot
myself in the mirror out of the corner of my eye and almost believe I was
staring at Mum.

Fucked up, yes. But
what was even more fucked up was how happy it made me to know how much I
resembled her. One of the driving forces behind my career as a drag performer
was a deeply seated need to emulate my mother.

She represented a time
before my life got dark. A time before Kelvin. She also represented the epitome
of femininity, and Kelvin never wanted the feminine side of me. He wanted the
boy. Every time I became a woman, I was desperately trying to erase what I was
with him. Every time I fucked a woman, I was rubbing out the stains he’d left
behind.

I lay there in my bed,
watching her sing into the microphone, and wondered, as I so often did, if she
had survived, would Kelvin ever have gotten his claws into me? A solitary tear
ran down my cheek. It was ridiculous. It had been a decade since I’d left his
abuse behind me, and yet the pain was still so fresh, the anger so visceral.
Swallowing a long gulp of wine, I settled in, closed my eyes, and listened to
her voice.

If I tried really hard,
I could almost believe she was in the room, singing just for me.

June
6th, 2012.

Soundtrack: “Feeling Good” by Muse (note
my sarcasm)

It had been almost a week since I’d left
my apartment. The place was beginning to reek and I really needed to put the
rubbish bins out, but there was no desire inside me to improve my current state
of affairs. I was imprisoned in my own head, and I didn’t have it in me to care
about the bad smell, or the fact that I hadn’t washed since I’d gotten back
from the party six days ago. The dark thoughts had latched onto me, and, like
any virus, they spread like wildfire.

All things considered,
I was feeling pretty good about myself, and when I say that, I mean I was
feeling like a long bath and a bottle of benzodiazepines were calling my name.

I apologise for such
morbidity.

I always thought that
Kelvin finally getting punished would set me free, and now that it hadn’t, life
was losing its appeal by the day. I was startled out of my morose thoughts by a
loud banging on the door. A couple of my friends from the club had called over
throughout the week, but I hadn’t let them in. I didn’t show up for several of
the performances I was booked to do, and my phone had been ringing off the
hook. In the end, the battery had died, and I was finally given some peace from
the persistent pestering.

Now it seemed someone
had gone out of their way to find me again.