by Sheba Karim
“Nothing. He left and sent up my mother. And then I got signed up for karate lessons.”
“You learned karate?”
“I kept making myself puke before class until my mom convinced my dad to let me withdraw. But I’ve never worn high heels since.”
“So Tabitha is going to be, like, a hairy-legged Birkenstock queen?” Ghaz said.
“Birkenstocks! No way. More like gold strappy gladiators. Wide width, please.”
Ghaz snapped her fingers. “Rise, ladies! It’s time to go shopping! Tabitha Generous is stepping out tonight!”
Fifteen
TABITHA GENEROUS WAS a good-looking broad, from the waist up. She was dressed in one of my black bras stuffed with socks, my black cotton skirt, Ghaz’s sparkly gold tank top, a long gold-and-black beaded necklace, and gold gladiator sandals purchased from a discount shoe store on Chestnut Street. Her head was crowned with a cheap wig of long, straight black hair we’d found in a beauty supply store tucked inside a subway concourse.
Ghaz had done Umar’s makeup to accentuate his lovely bone structure. She concealed his five o’clock shadow with foundation, shaded his cheekbones a dusky rose, emphasized his chocolate eyes with eyeliner, mascara, and glittery eye shadow, and dabbed his pulse points with Chanel.
“Well, bitches,” he said, shaking his hair and thrusting out his hip. “Am I glamazon for the runway?”
“If glamazons can be hairy with back fat, then yes,” Ghaz replied.
“Oh, she threw so much shade the lights went out!” Umar exclaimed in a falsetto.
“I’m not a she,” Ghaz corrected him. “I’m Sukhinder Singh.”
For her drag outfit, Ghaz had traversed the city. She’d bought a men’s shalwar kurta and a dark yellow turban for her head from an Indian store, a long black beard from a costume store, added an eyeliner mustache, and voilà! A Sikh uncle.
“Hopefully no one will mistake you for a Muslim and try to kill you,” Umar said.
“Ha-ha.”
“By the way, Mars’s mustache is lopsided,” he pointed out.
As usual, I’d put the least effort into my clothes. I was wearing my own jeans and one of Umar’s shirts and a baseball hat I’d found that had a photo of the Liberty Bell and said Come to Philly for the Crack!
“I should just hold a photo of me from sixth grade in front of my face,” I said. “I had a great mustache then.”
Ghaz evened out my mustache with blunt black pencil eyeliner. “Much better,” she said, squinting at my upper lip. “Okay, let’s take pics!”
After making us swear that these photos would stay between the three of us, Umar held up his phone. “Everyone say, the family that drags together stays together!” he exclaimed.
Our photos began tastefully and quickly deteriorated, like one with each of us holding one of Umar’s boobs, which then turned into five minutes of readjusting the socks until they were more or less even.
It took forever to walk the few blocks to the Market Street SEPTA stop because we kept posing for pictures, even taking photos inside random stores we passed. We went into a store called Asia Supermarket and Ghaz posed lewdly with long, packaged strips of seasoned squid that said Big Squid in large letters. We went into Burlington Coat Factory and made Umar strike serious poses dressed in faux furs and trenches. We went into CVS and Ghaz bought a bag of lollipops, which she handed out to people on the street, to their great amusement and confusion, welcoming them to the City of Brotherly Love.
It was Umar, though, who got the most attention—catcalls and “hey, babys” and comments about his breasts and hairy legs and his ass, which, yet again, looked really good in my clothes.
As they descended into the subway station, Ghaz linked arms with him and started to sing in a desi accent, “Do you knoooow what it feels like for a girl.”
“Your singing voice sounds better in Indian,” I told her.
Umar’s phone rang.
“Shit,” he said, stopping in the middle of the stairway. “It’s my parents.”
“Ignore.”
“They’re calling from Pakistan; I have to get it.”
“Hello?” he answered, running back up the steps. “Salaam alaikum. I’m fine. Yes, I’m in Philly. You guys okay? Achha. Don’t worry. I like driving by myself. Huh? I listen to audiobooks. Which ones am I listening to?” He frowned, brushing his wig from his eyes and picking at a clump in his mascara. “Uh, all the Harry Potters. Tonight? Nothing, I might go see a movie. I told you why, I’ve always wanted to do a road trip alone. So, I have to time to think, and see our great country. No, it’s not weird. Listen, I’m stopped at a red light. I will. I will. Allah hafiz.”
Umar returned his phone to the back pocket of his skirt, took a deep breath, wiped the sweat off his upper lip.
“Are your parents okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, they’re fine. They still don’t get why I’m on a road trip alone. My mother told me not to talk to strangers, like I’m twelve years old.”
“You’ll always be her darling Umar,” Ghaz said. “At least they’re worried about you. My mother wrote me two lines: ‘Please don’t do anything stupid, and don’t think you can come home if you get into trouble.’”
“What?” I gasped. “You didn’t tell us that.”
Ghaz shrugged. “My mother’s been wanting to write me off completely, and now she finally can.”
I didn’t understand how she could say something so unnerving with such nonchalance.
Umar had barely opened his mouth when Ghaz put her hand up. “Seriously, guys, it’s cool. What I need to do now is to not talk about it. What I really need to do now is dance. Capiche?”
I didn’t see how it could be cool, but I knew any attempt to force Ghaz to talk when she was desperate to dance would probably result in her storming off into the Philly night. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go dance.”
We got off at 40th Street Station. As we approached the Penn campus, the fried chicken and cheap Chinese joints and ramshackle storefronts began to give way to recently constructed buildings adorned with glass, trendy eateries with floor-to-ceiling windows, with the occasional odd juxtaposition that happens during gentrification, like a fancy fresh grocer across from an old, slightly decrepit McDonald’s.
The party was at a house a few blocks west of campus, on a residential street lined with tall brick row houses that may once have been stately but had been subject to years of student neglect. It was easy to tell which house: a guy wearing a blond beehive wig, pink prom dress, gold lamé sneakers, and a sash that said Queer Every Day stood at the top of the steps.
“Hi,” Ghaz said. “We’re here for the party.”
“And here I was hoping you always dressed this way,” he joked. “You guys got five bucks for the punch fund?”
“Anything for punch,” Ghaz said. “What’s your name?”
“Constance,” he replied. “Constance Lee Cumming.”
Ghaz laughed so hard she snorted. “That’s terrible!”
“I know. And it’s not even original—I stole it off an actual queen, but don’t tell anyone.” He winked.
“Your real name doesn’t happen to be Tyler Morris, does it?” Ghaz asked.
“It does—do I know you?”
“I’m friends with Emory!” Ghaz cried, immediately hugging him. “We have to take a photo and send it to her!”
After another brief photo shoot, we entered a narrow hallway crowded with people. A black guy was posing for photos on the stairwell, rocking a tight leather minidress and four-inch heels. As he leaned seductively over the rickety banister, one knee bent, his pink wig fell off, landing on Ghaz’s turban.
“What are you going to give me for this, honey?” she yelled up, waving the wig.
“Hey!” someone shouted. “Bin Laden’s back from the dead!”
Ghaz frowned.
Like some Bond girl, the black guy slid down the banister and jumped off, executing a perfect landing in his stilettos.
“Ignore whoever that was, and dance with me,” he said, reaching for Ghaz’s hand and leading her into the living-room-turned-dance-floor, where an androgynous DJ was playing Robyn. Ghaz replaced his wig and they began frenetically dancing.
“I’m starvation nation,” Umar told me. “Let’s find the kitchen.”
We headed down the hallway, through a doorway decorated with sparkling streamers, and into the kitchen, where a pale red punch was being served from a whale-shaped plastic baby tub, a rubber duckie floating in it.
“Do you think that’s hygienic?” Umar said.
“Maybe,” Ghaz said, coming up behind us, a drink already in her hand, “but it’s definitely not halal.”
Umar stuck his tongue out as she toasted him and drank. Meanwhile, I was trying not to stare at the couple engaging in an intense make-out session next to the fridge, hands, legs, everywhere.
“Look at them,” Ghaz whispered. “Hot.”
When I turned sixteen, my mother asked if I wanted a vibrator for my birthday. Though I liked that she was sex-positive, the idea of my mother giving me a vibrator horrified me so I said no. I still hadn’t bought one for myself. I’d only achieved orgasm four times. The first two times were on my own, and required a lot of labor; the others were with Doug. The second time I came with him, I almost told him I loved him. A few days later, I had my freak-out.
I couldn’t think of sex without thinking of Doug.
“Brownies!” Umar exclaimed, zeroing in on a plastic-covered plate of brownies sitting on the laminate counter next to the stove. “There’s exactly three left!” he said, handing them out. We insisted he eat the biggest piece, since he was so hungry.
Umar took a bite. “Mmmm . . . chocolate chips,” he said happily.
I nudged Ghaz. “Look.”
An actual Sikh guy had walked into the kitchen. His beard was several inches long, he wore a powder blue turban, and was in drag from the neck down, his sari so sheer you could make out the dark oval of his stomach hair. He’d tied the sari so it hit above his ankles, and was wearing embroidered leather sandals. His cheeks were hot pink from blush, and he’d pinned a gold and rhinestone brooch to his turban.
“He’s kinda hot,” Ghaz muttered.
He saw Ghaz, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.
“Sat sri akal,” he greeted her.
“Sat sri akal, behen ji,” she replied. “A sweet girl from the pind at a party like this?”
“Are you actually Sikh?” he asked. “Because you tied your turban terribly.”
“I know,” she apologized. “I’m Punjabi, but Muslim.”
“Can’t take you home to my parents then,” he demurred.
Ghaz took a step closer. “Who said anything about parents?”
“Love marriage?” he said.
“Who said anything about marriage?”
The guy’s eyes lit up, as most men’s did when Ghaz started flirting with them. “Christmas for their balls,” she called it.
“Let me get this straight,” Umar said to me. “Our friend who is dressed like a Sikh guy is flirting with a guy who is Sikh but dressed like a girl.”
“Yup,” I said.
Ghaz brought him over to introduce us. “Meet my friends: Umar, though you can call her Tabitha, and Mars. This is Jug, short for Jugdeep, except tonight he’s Jugni.”
“You go to school here, Jugni?” Umar asked.
“Yeah. I go to Wharton, but I promise I’m not an asshole,” Jug said.
We laughed.
“Lemme guess? You plan on saving the world’s poor through microfinance,” Ghaz declared.
Jug’s eyes were practically shining now. “Actually . . . ,” he began, and started laughing.
As Ghaz and Jug amped up their flirting, Umar enlisted me to help him hunt for food. As I opened a high cabinet, my hand began to tingle. Frowning, I lowered it.
“Do my hands seem okay to you?” I asked Umar, who was on his tiptoes, reaching for a bag of Doritos. “My fingers are all tingly.”
“They seem fine,” Umar said, holding my hands in his, his thumbs rubbing my palms. The tingling stopped. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, though I do feel a little weird.”
“Here, have some Doritos. They’re expired, but they’re Cool Ranch.”
“Mars! Umar!” Ghaz exclaimed. “Guess what? Jug is captain of a bhangra team!”
“Respect,” Umar said.
“Oh, it’s on now,” Ghaz said, pulling Jug’s hand.
“What is?” he replied.
“Dance-off.”
Ghaz borrowed Umar’s phone and led Jug to the dance floor, the rest of us following, where it took her approximately forty-five seconds of flirting to convince the DJ to play a Bollywood bhangra song called “Sadi Gali,” which I knew because Umar had played it a few times. Jug and Ghaz quickly cleared the floor with their dancing, Ghaz bouncing in a low squat, occasionally kicking her feet out as she moved in a circle around Jug, who was playing the female role, bouncing on one foot, head tilted, gesturing with sweeping hand movements. Then Ghaz leapt up and they began mimicking each other’s steps, jumps, twirls, arm movements. Everyone was clapping and cheering on Jug and Ghaz’s effortless bhangra synergy. I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed by their moves or how well Jug’s sari was staying on.
And then the same voice from before cried, “Bin Laden can dance!” Thankfully Ghaz didn’t seem to hear. I scanned the room to find the douchebag, but this made me a little dizzy, so I headed to the wall, bracing my body against it. As I took a deep breath, I had a visual of oxygen as a blue musical wave flooding my nostrils, then bypassing my lungs to instead fold itself into a soft, rhythmic cushion around my heart. See? my heart said. I know you’re meeting your father’s brother tomorrow but now I’m nice and protected. Thanks, oxygen!
My organs were talking nonsense.
“I feel so light on my feet,” Umar said, dancing up to me. His wig was crooked, an empty Doritos bag in his hand. “Like this body was made to groove.”
The shadows on the opposite wall cast by the disco lights had begun swimming like minnows, in sync to the music.
“The brownies,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
Worried he might freak out, I shook my head. “Nothing. We’re all good. Everything’s good.”
Ghaz and Jug finished their dance-off, and Ghaz ran over to us. “What do you think his beard would feel like brushing against my outer labia?” she asked.
Before we could respond, the song “Chandelier” came on and Umar let out a cry of utter happiness. One moment he was beside us, the next he was on fire in the middle of the dance floor, shimmying and working it left and right, touching himself like he was his own greatest love, down to the floor and up again, one move flowing gracefully into the next, whipping his long black wig, glittery eyelids closed, lips parted as though expecting a kiss, grooving like no one else was watching, though everybody was, except for Ghaz and Jug, who had started making out. I tapped Ghaz on the shoulder because I knew she wouldn’t want to miss it; we’d seen Umar dance plenty of times, but never with such utter abandon.
Ghaz released Jug and grabbed me and we laughed and hugged each other as we marveled at Umar.
When the song ended, Ghaz and I enveloped Umar in an ecstatic hug, and I saw him.
Doug.
Red hair, pale skin, leopard print leotard. I moved toward him, having no idea what I might say, only that I had to get closer, but he turned around, and it wasn’t Doug after all. Not even close, except for the hair.
“Hey, guys,” I told Ghaz and Umar, “I’m going to go outside for a bit.”
I went back through the kitchen, where the hot-and-heavy couple were no more, down the steps into the backyard, selecting the plastic chair that seemed most stable. It was a cloudy night, no hint of stars, no glimpse of moon. I never paid much attention to the night sky until I started dating Doug. On our second date, he arranged a midnight picnic amid a grove of holl
y trees, and we lay on his New Mexican blanket and held hands and he talked to me about astronomy.
“Who died or broke your heart?”
I looked up, startled. I’d neglected to notice the drag queen presiding over the backyard from a rickety rocking chair a few feet away. She was a proper queen, a true glamazon, dressed in a low-cut, silver lamé jumpsuit, silver wedge boots, and an expensive wig of tumbling blond curls.
She smiled at me, her teeth white and shining.
“A few months ago, I ghosted on this really amazing guy,” I confessed.
“Amazing how?” she said, flicking a speck of dirt off her boot with her bloodred pinky nail.
“He used to play this game, you know, where you’d make up dance moves based on real-life activities, except he would come up with totally insane ones. I mean, inane, not insane. I guess maybe a little insane, too.” Sober Mariam would never blab like this to a stranger, but then I was far from sober.
“A queen’s always on the lookout for new moves,” she said, batting her rainbow lashes. “Show me.”
“Okay.” I lay down on the ground, my palms pressed together over my head, and began to wriggle back and forth aimlessly. “Snake in need of GPS.”
The queen snorted.
I bent my arms at the elbow and started flapping them as I jerked my body about. “Electrocuted chicken.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” she said.
I squatted down, grunted, awkwardly kicked my legs up one at a time. “Fiddler on the Roof takes a crap in the woods.”
She snickered. “Those are dumb as hell.”
“I know!” I said, standing up. “He did it because it made me laugh. I can’t believe I let him go. I’m so stupid.”
“What’s your name, stupid?”
“Mariam.”
“Enchanté. I’m Enya Buttocks.”
“Ha. Nice to meet you.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s okay then,” she said, removing a cigarette and a Zippo decorated with crystals out of her clutch. “You’re supposed to be stupid.”
Of all the things anyone had said to me about what had happened with Doug, this was among the most comforting. I felt like hugging her, except I didn’t want to mess up her outfit.
