The Queen & the Homo Jock King

by T. J. Klune

  You know you have a homo jock when several things occur.

  First, there will be muscles on display. They won’t be bad as the Muscle Marys (no one is as bad as the Muscle Marys), because they aren’t juicing themselves up. Chances are they will have exposed biceps and use phrases like I just had the best kale smoothie and Look how vascular I am today, isn’t it grand?

  Second, they will most likely be wearing tight clothing that accentuates said muscles. A homo jock tends to be proud that they go to the gym sixty-eight times a week, and therefore wants the fruits of their labor to be on display. If they haven’t forgotten leg day, most likely the homo jock will be wearing pants just as tight so one can gaze upon the glory that is their thigh muscles.

  Third, homo jocks tend to be of a cocky sort. In fact, it could be said that one could not be a homo jock without having an inflated sense of self. Typically, a homo jock will look good and he’ll know he looks good. Yes, it was certainly possible to have a humble homo jock, but they tend to be a rarity in the homosexual hierarchy. Homo jocks often get most everything they want, be it people or possessions, and have no scruples in crushing others to get to them. They also have a hard time understanding words like no and you’re not my type and fuck off, Darren, you fucking sack of shit.

  Fourth, a homo jock doesn’t necessarily need to be a jock to become a homo jock. More often than not, a homo jock will participate in activities such as basketball or Ultimate Frisbee or homoerotic wrestling that leads to confused feelings and boners. However, if one just goes to the gym and wears tight clothing and acts like a cocky jerk, then one can still be a homo jock. Organized sports are not indicative of a homo jock, but more often than not, the jock will be there, rubbing up against other sweating homo jocks and thinking about how nice they smell and—

  Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

  Fifth, as past experiences dictate, a homo jock asshole will most likely eat twinks for breakfast and stand in the shadows of your drag show and watch you every fucking time for no goddamn reason whatsoever with his other homo jock friends, and sometimes, you wonder why he’s even there when he obviously hates your guts, which is fine, by the way, because you hate his guts too and are not afraid to admit it.

  Well. This is all very hypothetical, mind you.

  So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I left the Land of Lesbians and entered homo jock territory.

  There were three of the underlings tonight, and I was sure their names were something ridiculous like Biff or Chet or Xerxes. They grinned at me with perfect teeth and perfect dimples as if they knew some great secret that I wasn’t privy to. I wanted to smack the smug looks right off their faces, but there were hundreds of witnesses around me. Maybe later I could jump them in a dark alley and scratch their eyes out.

  And because that’s the way my life went, the twenty-dollar bill was in the hand that was attached to the muscular arm belonging to none other than the Homo Jock King himself.

  My most mortal of enemies.

  Darren Mayne.

  Britney was shrieking about how she did it again, that she played with your heart, and I was caught completely by surprise.

  He was unfairly pretty, almost like he was manufactured specifically to cause as much emotional devastation as humanly possible. He wouldn’t look out of place walking off the set of SeanCody or Corbin Fisher, posting videos with ridiculous titles like Darren’s Triple Load with Micah. He’d recently gotten a haircut (and I despised the fact that I could tell that), his short, blond hair looking messy, but entirely on purpose. He had blue eyes and a strong jaw and a wicked fucking grin on his face, the barest hint of teeth underneath, flashing as the black light lit upon them.

  He was big, too, because of course he was, even more so than Vince, though you could see they were cut from the same cloth. Big arms and big legs and everything was big, though I sometimes wished he was making up for the fact that he had a small dick, but life didn’t work that way. Not that I knew anything about the size of his dick. Nor did I care to know anything about it. I didn’t even think about it. It was a nonissue for me.

  Ahem.

  He was walking perfection and was the type of person that knew it. Drag queens aren’t humble people. It goes against the very nature of being a drag queen. However, it was usually all an act, and when I wasn’t Helena, when I was nothing but plain old Sanford Stewart, I wasn’t cocky or self-sure and only carried the barest residuals of arrogance that was the Helena bleed-through.

  Darren never turned it off. I didn’t think he even knew how to turn it off. He always had that knowing smirk on his face, that little smile that said he knew he was hot shit, that everyone knew he was hot shit, and there really wasn’t any point in trying to deny it. He was twenty-eight years old, and it was obvious that every single one of those years had been handed to him on a silver platter, because whatever Darren Mayne wanted, Darren Mayne got.

  In other words, physically, he was hot like burning.

  Mentally, however, left a lot to be desired.

  Not that I ever thought about such things, mind you. I didn’t have time for the Darren Maynes of the world, no matter what other people thought.

  Which brought me back to the present, given that Vince, Kori, and Paul were standing on the other side of the homo jocks like the traitorous bastards they were.

  I thought about bypassing them all completely, but that twenty-dollar bill felt good in my hands, and hey, a girl’s gotta eat. A girl also gotta get flaming knee boots.

  But it was Darren Mayne.

  I’d taken his money before, sure. But it’d been fives and tens. For some reason, this felt more like charity than it’d ever felt before. Like he was better than me.

  No. I didn’t need it that bad.

  I started to move on because fuck him.

  His eyes caught mine, and I struggled to do anything but stare at him like he was something special, but it was almost as if I didn’t really have a choice.

  His grin faltered slightly.

  My eyes narrowed.

  His mouth moved.

  I couldn’t hear a single word he said above the music.

  He leaned forward.

  I smiled at the people behind him, people completely unaware that if I had a switchblade, I’d try and stab Darren right in the stomach. Maybe. Probably. I’d at least think about it in a very threatening and angry manner.

  I glanced over to Paul, who was grinning at me. I mentally said good-bye to my best friend because there would be nothing left of him but bone and gristle before the night was over.

  Darren’s cheek scraped against mine. I could feel his breath on my neck. He pressed the cash into my hand and I tightened my fingers around his.

  When he spoke, his words crawled along my skin and I fought the shiver that wanted to crawl through me.

  “Take the money.” His voice was low and honey-sweet. “You’ve done it before.”

  “Go fuck yourself, sunshine.” My voice was sharp and brittle. The smile never left my face. I was a performer, after all. None of them would see me crack.

  He said, “Now, now. No need to be crass.”

  I said, “If I had a switchblade, I would give very serious consideration to stabbing you.”

  He said, “Remind me never to tip you in switchblades, then.”

  “Pity, that.”

  “Take the money, Helena.”

  “I don’t want your goddamn money.”

  “You’ve never had a problem with it before.”

  “Now I do.”

  “My money is just as good as anyone else’s.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”

  “I hear there’s brunch tomorrow.”

  “You’re not invited.”

  “That’s not what Paul said.”

  “Paul doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

  “So, same time as usual?”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” I bared my teeth, pressing them against the side of his n
eck.

  Darren chuckled, tugging on my hand, pulling me closer. I could feel the heat of him through the vinyl. “You wouldn’t believe the things I dare to do,” he whispered in my ear, and I hated him.

  “If you show up, I’ll poison you.”

  I thought I felt his lips near my ear. “So there is an invitation, then.”

  “I would not be sad if you fell off a cliff,” I said.

  “So violent.” His grip tightened on my hand. “Take the fucking money.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  I chuckled. “Because that’s an incentive if I ever heard one.” I took the money from where he’d pressed it against my palm. His fingers trailed against my wrist as I pulled away. I grinned at him as I stepped back. His eyes looked hooded and darker than normal. His tongue darted out along his bottom lip.

  It did nothing for me.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Making sure I had his attention, I wadded up the twenty-dollar bill and tossed it at his feet.

  His eyes hardened.

  His jaw twitched.

  I winked at him and moved on.

  Paul, Vince, and Kori were watching me with wide eyes, and only then did I realize that the remix was starting to wrap up, which meant I’d been standing cheek to cheek with Darren for at least three minutes. My smile turned razor sharp as I leaned over to kiss Paul on the cheek. “Remember your thirtieth birthday when I pulled you up on stage without you knowing?” I murmured in his ear. “I asked you how pissed you were on a scale of one to ten. Do you remember what you said?”

  “Seventy-two,” Paul said.

  “That’s right. Good boy. This is worse.”

  “Just remember how much I love you,” he said.

  “I’ll try to remember that when I’m bathing in your blood.”

  “Vicious and descriptive. I like it.”

  “This isn’t finished.”

  “And now it’s ominous.”

  I kissed him again, because even if I wanted him dead, he was my best friend and I loved him so.

  I made my way back toward the stage, one of the barbacks handing me a microphone. The music flourished as I posed on stage, a statuesque paragon of sin and majesty. The crowd loved it, as I knew they would. I flipped a switch on the microphone and welcomed everyone to Helena Handbasket’s Debauched and Delicious Revue. I glanced back to where Darren had been standing. His homo jocks were there, but he was gone.

  I smiled on.

  THE OTHERS were waiting for me on the back patio after I’d completed my wardrobe change, seated in the ridiculous wicker furniture Mike had insisted on getting. I had argued against it. He’d reminded me it was his bar. I had rolled my eyes and told him people most certainly didn’t come to see him. He bought the furniture anyway. He counted it as a victory. I’d told him that nobody won with wicker furniture.

  Paul and Vince were gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes when I made my way through the crowd. Kori was staring at them, looking slightly ill, which meant that they were being even more disgustingly cute than normal. I’d tried to warn her when she first came to Tucson, and even regaling her with the tale that was the Love Ballad of Paul and Vince hadn’t really prepared her for the sheer level of sugary fluff that was shoved down her throat.

  But that was okay. If anyone deserved something shoved down their throat, it was Paul.

  I was happy for him.

  Most of the time.

  Now was not one of those times.

  “You vile betrayer,” I hissed at him, looming over them. I was pretty sure I looked absolutely amazing and intimidating, like an Amazonian drag princess warrior. Or something.

  “Helena.” Paul smiled up at me. “You look amazing as always and your show was as perfect as it’s ever been. There was absolutely nothing I would change about it. Also? Your ass looks amazing in that skirt. Is it new?”

  Paul knew that a drag queen’s greatest weakness was sincere compliments from the heart. He fought dirty.

  “Why thank you,” I said. “The energy just felt good in there tonight, and this old thing? Nah, I just pulled this out of my closet and threw it on. It really isn’t anything special—wait a goddamn minute.”

  “Shit,” Paul said. “I thought that would work.”

  “Has it ever worked?” Kori asked, sounding amused.

  “In the years that I’ve known Sandy? Seventeen times.”

  “Stand up and face me like a man!”

  “Said the drag queen,” Vince said. “Which is awesome.”

  Paul stood up, which I gave him credit for. Most people don’t want to come face to face with a raging queen. It usually ended in running mascara, torn acrylic nails, and glitter in odd places. “Why are you pissed?” he asked.

  “Because!” I said shrilly.

  “Because….”

  “You were standing next to that… that… man.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “And you invited him to brunch. Paul, brunch is a sacred institution with limited invites, as you are well aware. The fact that I already allowed this mistake to happen once with no repercussions is obviously as much my fault as it is yours. I have failed you as a best friend, and I’m sorry. I should have been quicker to punish you so such things would never happen again.”

  “I literally have no idea where you’re going with this,” Paul said.

  “I think this is how her sex dream started,” Vince whispered to Kori. “Because Helena had a sex dream about me.”

  “I know, Vince,” Kori said. “I was there, remember?”

  Vince shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember much about that night because I’d been asleep and then Paul gave me a really sloppy blow job afterward.”

  “Vince!” Paul snapped. “Oversharing!”

  Vince pouted and crossed his arms over his chest. “It was sloppy. And awesome.”

  “Thank you, baby.”

  Vince grinned.

  “Does he have a gag reflex?” Kori whispered.

  “Used to.” Vince waggled his eyebrows.

  “Huh,” I said begrudgingly. “Impressive.”

  Paul shrugged. “I’m good like that.”

  “You know what else you’re good for?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I snarled at him.

  “Ooh.” He rolled his eyes. “Well played.”

  “Paul!”

  “Helena!”

  “I don’t want him there!”

  “You made that pretty clear when you threw his money back at his feet,” Paul said. “Which, honestly, was bitchy. Even for you.”

  Yeah. And maybe I felt slightly bad about that. For fuck’s sake. “He was playing me.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know! I’m not one to understand the deviousness of the mind of a homo jock, much less their king. But he was up to something, I just know it. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it, mark my words.”

  “He would have gotten away with it too,” Vince said, “if it hadn’t been for you meddling queens.”

  “I’m teaching him sarcasm,” Paul said as I gaped at Vince.

  “I’m learning to be a bitch,” Vince said proudly.

  “You’re definitely learning from the right people.” Kori patted his hand.

  “And it’s just brunch,” Paul said. “He’s Vince’s brother and he doesn’t have family here aside from him. Well, not that counts, anyway.” And I had to give Paul credit for that. And Vince too. Because Vince and Darren came from the loins of evil that was the Republican mayor of Tucson, Andrew Taylor. Andrew Taylor, who had backed the anti-immigration bill SB1070 and was one of the architects of a LGBTQ-phobic bill disguised as a religious freedom act that got all the way up to the governor before being vetoed last year. Mike, the owner of Jack It, had told me there’d even been some rumblings about a revitalization project of downtown Tucson where the club was located that didn’t seem to include Jack It at all. He already had his attorneys looking
into it just in case the city council tried to fuck him over or worse. Since Jack It was part of the historic district, the lease was owned by the county. Mike had to tread a very thin line between backing his community and kissing red-taped ass.

  And Darren, while disagreeing with his father completely, wasn’t out to him and wasn’t a recognized member of Taylor’s family, given that he was the product of an affair. And to make matters worse, Darren worked for his father, though not in any official capacity. He was employed by the city as an actuary, and even though he didn’t report to Taylor directly, just the fact that he worked for the government and knew the same people his father knew was enough to make me despise him just a little bit more.

  And feel slightly bad for him too. Whatever.

  But I didn’t see what that had to do with brunch. I told Paul as much.

  Paul shrugged. “I just thought it’d be nice, is all. You know, you could stand being nicer too.”

  “I’m the nicest person you know,” I retorted. “And when have I ever needed to be nice?”

  “Drag queens are contradictions,” Vince told Kori.

  “It’s just in their nature,” Kori said.

  “Just brunch,” Paul said.

  I growled at him. “Fine. But he’s not getting any of my frittata.”

  “Heh,” Kori said. “That sounded dirty.”

  “Darren wants all of Helena’s frittata,” Vince said.

  “Control your boyfriend,” I barked at Paul.

  “Yeah,” Vince said. “Control me, Paul.”

  “Not in front of Helena,” Paul said. “We don’t want her to get confused when her sex dream starts coming to life.”

  “It’s not the first time someone has had a sex dream about me,” Vince said. “When I was in my senior year of high school, my Spanish teacher, Señora Gomez, told me that she’d had dreams about my thighs in Spanish.”

  “Wait,” Kori frowned. “The dreams were in Spanish or she told you this while speaking Spanish?”

  “Both,” Vince said. “It was very uncomfortable.”

  “Did you sleep with her?” Paul asked, sounding scandalized.