Beau, Lee, The Bomb Read online

  So we do. Sylvester walks over and smells The Bomb’s new collar and she shows her teeth like, “Don’t try anything, buster!” which cracks us up.

  She ain’t got time for that mess anymore, either!

  Finally, we give the present to the uncles. They love the tricky wrapping and keep unwrapping and unwrapping till finally they get to the flier and the tickets.

  “What?” They both look a little dazed, as they read. We can’t wait anymore.

  “Ahahahahahaha! It’s a balloon ride! Are you surprised?! It’s a hot air balloon and then at the end you bungee jump! It’s awesome! And they take a picture and a video on the way down! Are you surprised? We looked everywhere for something you wouldn’t guess!”

  Now we are the ones bouncing.

  “Well, darlings, you succeeded admirably! Never in a thousand years . . .” Oscar looks horrified.

  They look at each other. Frankie makes a “sounds cool” face and shrugs. Oscar goes on.

  “You funny bugs! Just the idea is enough to take my breath away! Even looking at the brochure might stop my heart!”

  We look at him. He looks a little pale.

  “Uncle Oscar, you don’t have to unless you want to,” I reassure him. He sort of looks like he might not.

  “Oh, darlings, would you be too disappointed? I love hot air balloon rides, I just don’t see the point of jumping out of one! Could I just go up and then come gently back down to the earth somehow, preferably on a red carpet?”

  “Dude!” says Beau. “So funny! I thought the jumping out part would be the best! But sure, I bet you can do whatever you want.”

  Frankie has been reading the brochure, and he looks up with a flushed face and sparkling eyes. “This is great! How did you guys get this idea? This looks amazing!”

  I answer.

  “Beau saw these guys in a kiosk as we were walking around trying to think up something.”

  “This is too expensive for you guys to give us though.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. They had this big sign saying ‘seventy-five percent discount’ because it was, like, late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and they were looking for some last-minute bank. And there we were!”

  I love the look on his face. The money is not important. This is fun.

  Frankie looks at Oscar, who does not appear as enthused.

  “Oh, come on, honey. It’ll be amazing! You know I’ve always wanted to bungee, and you love balloon rides. You’ve said so before.”

  “I do! They are my favorite way to travel, but I want to stay in them, not jump out! It’s a perfectly good balloon!” Oscar looks askance at the shiny prospect of a dude hurtling off a basket ledge in the brochure. “That just looks worrisome to me!”

  We aren’t sure if our present is a success or not. I’d say it was 50 percent epic and 50 percent fail. We all look at each other furtively and let our eyes ask the question “Was this a good present?”

  Oscar sees us and changes the mode.

  “Well, it’s not till March anyway, so I’ll have lots of time to get braver! This is a wonderful idea, kids, and you are the best! I’m just so violently old.” He winks at Beau when he says that.

  Beau makes a face like “I have a big mouth.” Oscar laughs and makes more coffee.

  We cook eggs and toast. Oscar puts a little cream cheese in the scrambled eggs. I love it. So does Leo. Beau scrapes it out covertly and hides it under his toast crust.

  Whatever. To each their own.

  We spend Christmas evening with Oscar and Frank’s friends, all of whom are “out” and none of whom are in touch with their families. The uncles call it the Annie-you-all Orphan’s Christmas. Everyone brings something, and they have a giant turkey and everything is just like Norman Rockwell, if Norman Rockwell painted a Christmas dinner of drag queens. The uncles are dressed up. Frankie has an awesome tuxedo with tails and a white tie, and he has drawn a pencil mustache on his lip, but Uncle Oscar has a frothy pink gown and high heels and a scepter. (I know! But it’s so awesome! He’s even wearing a tiara! It’s killing us!)

  We don’t bat an eye, though. When we first saw him in drag, we turned and walked quickly back into our room, closed the door, then went completely mental—hysterically laughing into our pillows, but silently, till our guts ached and we cried and peed a little. Then we wiped our noses, sedately collected ourselves, and still carefully not looking at each other, followed the uncles down the stairs and outside the short distance to the apartment building where the party is in full swing.

  And the party! Their friends are fabulous! And extremely nice. We walk up to their friends’ building where the Christmas party is happening, and the apartment we enter is huge and cool and has a big balcony. Everyone is stoked and dressed in their finest, and the drag queens have on makeup and their favorite outfits, which are different from the things they wear onstage. These are clothes from their moms and grandmas, elegant and tasteful and seriously retro. A little glitter and mostly silk.

  They, of course, love us because we are young and ask questions that crack them up.

  Leo asks one drag queen (who says to call her—him?—Auntie Mary) if her eyelashes were real. They stuck out like a foot and a half. Turns out they were not.

  After that hysterical laughter dies down, she’s the darling of the evening. The queens all love her hair and her beauty and take pictures with her. She is suddenly surrounded by any number of adoring mommies and aunties. They were so open and welcoming we totally forget they’re even in drag and just settle down to the most astonishing Christmas ever.

  And, omg, queens can sing! They seriously wail! Especially after the Christmas spirits go around they are a mighty chorus! It’s like drag Glee.

  One after another, impromptu, they just go up and sing. The night gets later and more lights outside go on and the lighting inside becomes glamorous, and there they are, still singing away! It’s cool. It’s not a performance exactly because everybody keeps talking and moving around and partying, but the people who want to hear move closer and listen.

  Everyone gets a little gift bag as they come through the door. It turned out to be a sample of hair mousse and a little tube of under-eye cream left over from the Gay Pride Parade last summer. Bands of drag angels go around handing out the little bags to make sure no one is left out. Some are holding wands, which, strictly speaking, I don’t think angels use. Most of the queens sashay around like they live in high heels. One of the queens cannot quite manage her heels and then goes sideways—literally. Leonie and I look away and do not notice (on purpose). We know what it’s like to be laughed at.

  Oscar totally works his heels, however. He walks like he wears them every day, though he doesn’t. He reminds me of the guy who played Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Google Tim Curry. Kind of like that. Oscar looks awesome both ways!

  Everyone is very loving to him. He’s very popular, more so than Frankie, even though he too has a ton of friends around him. They get separated from each other for most of the early evening, I notice.

  As do we. After a while I see Beau talking to some people with Frank, but I don’t know where Leo has gone, and when I finally go look, I find her getting her makeup done by some queens as she sits very still at the big vanity in the guest room. She’s paying attention.

  “See, sweetheart? This is a much better way to do your eyelashes. Also, let’s try this color lip gloss . . . lucky strawberry blond! You don’t even need makeup! So beautiful. Okay, now blink . . . now, blot. Oh! Look, Pansy, she’s just perfect!”

  Leonie sees herself in the mirror and beams. Her makeup is stellar and she looks lovely.

  She sees me come in. I give her the thumbs-up in admiration.

  The queens see me.

  “Hi, darling, are you next? By the way, since we haven’t met, tomorrow I’ll be Patrick, but tonight I’m Auntie Nancy, and I’m very pleased to meet you! This is Aunt Pansy, but tomorrow she’ll just be Doug.”

  “Hi. Nice to mee
t you. Both.”

  “Shall we do you next? Just a little eyeliner and a touch of blush? Here, sit, okay?”

  “Do it, Rylee!” Leonie pipes in. “You’ll look amazing!”

  I give in and sit in the chair.

  I have never had anyone do my makeup before, and the sweet, sleepy sensation of having your face brushed and your lips polished is very pleasing, I must say. You should try it, my friends. I think it might cure insomnia. Maybe even depression.

  When they’re done, Leonie looks at me in the mirror. We both look at me.

  In amazement.

  “Wow, Ry! You’re hot!”

  I’m so not hot. But my smoky eyes do look gigantic.

  “Shut up,” I say, but I’m pleased.

  “You shut up!” she says approvingly. I grin. And can’t stop. I beam at the mirror.

  Beau walks in and hears her. Then he sees me.

  “Shut up!” he says to me admiringly.

  “No, you shut up!” I tell him so he’ll shut up. We cackle.

  The drag queens look worried.

  “Does that mean you all like it?” Auntie Pansy asks.

  “They look awesome!” Beau announces, beaming. “Seriously. Epically. Awesome!”

  I think I’m going to start wearing a little eye makeup.

  We go back out to the living room near where the singing is, where Oscar and Frank are finally sitting together on a sofa. We go sit beside them and listen. They are mostly through with Christmas carols and are now working on all-time gay favorites. They are not singing at the moment because they are arguing if one can or cannot sing “Small Town Boy” by Bronski Beat a capella. Turns out, whether one can or not, somebody will. Whether or not one should. Two queens start to sing it at each other, like school each other on how it should be done. We go into politely quiet hysterics, all of us, even the uncles. It sounds like when we all started howling.

  After quite a few more (and less divisive) song choices, everyone starts saying Oscar should sing. Apparently our uncle Oscar is a great singing talent. He just smiles and shakes his head, and no one insists for about an hour, but then, as the party starts to grow quieter and everyone is sitting around talking in little groups, they all start asking him again and giving him requests.

  “Come on, sugar! It won’t be Christmas if you don’t!”

  “Ooo, sing it like Odetta do, darlin’!” a voice calls. “Someone grab a guitar!”

  Finally, after they dim the lights real low and turn a gooseneck lamp into a spotlight for him, he gets up, dressed as Glinda the Good Witch or the Sugar Plum Fairy or whoever he’s being, and walks to the impromptu stage floor beside the piano. He then proceeds to introduce an old Celtic song, which he tells us is called “She Moved Through the Fair.” The guitar slowly stumbles and dissolves into discordant sobbing harmonies, kind of like Nirvana Unplugged. When Oscar starts to sing, his voice is so beautiful it stops conversation. It’s a contralto or a high tenor or something; it is such an odd glory that it does sound like angels on high.

  The party pauses to listen and is quiet when he finishes. It’s a love song to dear ones, long lost but not forgotten. It’s a love song and an anthem. It’s stellar.

  After that they get him to sing and play “Silent Night” and they sing a bunch of other carols again. Then he says he’s tired and we have to go, and everyone says, “Oscar, you know you have to sing it before you can leave.”

  Someone else adds, “In fact, I’m not sure we can even be gay if you don’t!”

  They laugh. Someone comes to accompany him on the piano. He stands up again.

  And in his crazy pink frothy dress and makeup, with his wig and his tiara, he sings us “Over the Rainbow,” which is the song I suspected he’d sing, but in a way so evocative and poignant, his voice so fraught with loss and tender nostalgia, that I’m beginning to understand; that it’s as if I’d never heard it before.

  I look around at all the friends, sitting on the various sofas and ottomans, listening with their hearts, their eyes all shining and soft, and I see them clearly—not as the damned, not as outsiders abandoned and despised by their own kin and huddled together by necessity, but as survivors, maybe even the vanguard of the kinder, gentler future we were promised once, long ago, obviously imperfect but so often kindhearted and still striving, against great odds, to become the shining city on the hill.

  I think we’ve put that city off long enough. I think it’s a good time to build.

  Oscar sings full out, his voice soaring effortlessly over the notes, over the rainbow, his eyes closed in the transcendence that is music, in the sublime, heady joy of song flight.

  When it’s over, we are all silent for a second, because it’s too beautiful a spell to break too soon, and then we clap for him, and he curtsies and bows and holds out his arms in the long white gloves and throws us kisses.

  Not much later we walk home in the cold foggy night. It’s a short stroll.

  Much later, after we are all in bed, I wake up and see the light of the TV.

  Oscar has insomnia again. I go to investigate.

  He’s watching some old movie that I don’t know. It’s in black and white.

  He sees me and signals me to come in. We sit and watch the movie with the sound almost off. I’ve noticed in the old movies how they just sing their fool heads off—really loud, right in each other’s faces. The person not singing has no comment like, “Hello—I’m right here,” but just looks longingly at them or off camera. All the while they’re being hugged and having their ears directly yelled in.

  It cracks me up. Thank gawd times change, right? Wow.

  Oscar looks at me as we sit on the couch.

  “Did you have a good Christmas?”

  I nod. “Awesome. Did you?”

  He nods. “Yep . . . best ever, maybe.”

  We smile at each other and watch TV for a little while longer.

  “And how did you like the girls?” It takes me a second to figure out he means the drag queens.

  “A lot! They’re cool! And hilarious! I like your friends. They were really nice to Leo. And me.” I blink my eyes shut to show him my makeup.

  “They certainly were! You’re both a hit! I’m glad you like them.” He pats my hand.

  “They were nice. They put makeup on me, and it was amazing. No one ever has before.”

  “You look lovely. Your mom never showed you?”

  “Nah. My mom’s not glam at all. She doesn’t even wear makeup. She’s a nurse.”

  Oscar snorts. “I’m sure it’s not mutually exclusive.”

  “Well, with her it is.” I shake my head judgmentally. “When she started to get gray hair, she felt so awful I said, ‘Let’s dye it. I’ll help,’ but she wouldn’t.”

  Oscar shrugs and smiles. “Some people just don’t work their fab!”

  That makes me laugh, thinking about my mom. So does not work her fab.

  I can hardly wait to see her. Even though I’m sure I’m in all kinds of trouble.

  We watch an old-time actress named Jeanette MacDonald get her nose screamed into for a while. I imagine it would be like standing in a fine, hopefully minty, mist. She looks like she doesn’t even mind. Acting!

  We talk about the party, what everyone wore, who does drag shows and who doesn’t, and how good the food was, and then he said he saw us getting giggly after we got into the punch, but since no one was driving and we didn’t go hog wild he looked the other way.

  I leaned my head against his shoulder in gratitude for a second when he said that. I appreciated him letting us have some punch on Christmas without giving us a bunch of grief.

  I also appreciate the advice. He has a nice way of giving it.

  His main thing is never drink and drive, which I deeply agree with and never will.

  We go back to watching the old movie. The dude singing with her is one of the Canadian Mounties, with that hat like old Dudley Do-Right cartoons. He just leans right in for a nose scream on screen. I’m fe
eling goofy, so I dive into Uncle Oscar and fake sing directly up his nose, like one inch away, mirroring the movie, just screeching up a storm, but silently.

  He totally jumps, startled, and puts his hands up to ward off my über expressive face.

  “Ahhh!” He accidentally kind of yells. “Ahhh!” I accidentally kind of yell as well because I didn’t expect him to jump twenty feet.

  “Dang, girl, you got up in my grill!” he whispers, but loudly because he starts snort-laughing. Which makes me go off and I blast like a boat horn—even as I try to stifle myself. I cover my mouth with my hands. He covers my mouth with his hands too, which cracks us up harder, the only result being horrible mouth-fart sounds. Uncle Oscar shushes me, though quacking like a maniac himself. I shush him. We lol. We snuffle convulsively. We shake. We struggle to squelch ourselves, which only makes it worse. We fail. We flail. We flop. We bray.

  It’s not pretty.

  We have almost quieted down, though still snort-grunting like truffle hogs, as we lean against the sofa backrest in a belated attempt to be chill, when Uncle Frankie staggers out of the bedroom. He has industrial bedhead.

  “Could you guys keep it down? It’s like five in the morning. . . . What are you even doing?”

  Which we realize is the funniest thing we’ve ever been exposed to. We just lose it again and start flapping our little flippers and clutching each other on the couch. As he eyeballs us in squinty outrage, we honk and snorkel and cannot look at him, just trying extremely to pull our act together. It’s useless. It’s lost. We can’t. He glares at us beadily as we weep and drool and our noses run, and then he shakes his head with deep, sleep-deprived disgust.

  “Seriously, you guys have issues.” He lurches back into the bedroom and closes the door.

  After a minute Uncle Oscar wipes his eyes and turns to me. He whispers, “I’m wide awake.”

  “Same here.”

  “We should do something before we get in more trouble. I have an idea.”

  “Okay!” I have no idea what his idea is, but I have trust it will be awesome. We bundle up and let ourselves out of the apartment quietly. The dogs think they should go too, but we tell them no this time. We start off in a different direction than I’ve gone before.