by Peter Manus
Me: For how long?
Slenderbuns: Come again? (He’s working with a pair of tarantula-sized false eyelashes now, and it’s easy to see how this could get distracting.)
Me: For how long was Stephen designing jewelry for someone like me?
Slenderbuns: (holding one of the eyelashes with one of those metal presses that resemble a miniaturized instrument of torture) For you, hon, not for someone like you. Going to guess six months, minus maybe the past eight weeks, when he was trying to revive his Oriental thing from years and years ago. (He makes a face to let me know what he thinks of that move.)
Me: And prior to six months ago, when he was with Blondy? What was he designing then?
Slenderbuns: (small sigh) Pure art.
Me: Oh? Like what?
Slenderbuns: Wild and heavy. Outrageously expensive. (He presses the second set of false eyelashes into place. I get it—I see the Peacock’s blue ice necklace before my mind’s eye—all those fat, pearl-toned stones and the spatter of diamonds pooled around them—like a quarter-million dollar cum shot—and I realize that Slenderbuns is onto something.)
Me: (pretending to be playful) Could you tell that Blondy was all that “inspiring,” just from seeing him once or twice?
Slenderbuns: (snorting a giggle as he rummages in a bin of plastic disks of lip gloss) Guys like him realize what they’ve got and, well, it just naturally shows in their way of carrying themselves.
Me: So what was he like? I mean Blondy. Good-looking?
Slenderbuns: (taking a moment from applying a plummy shade of gloss to his lips so he can smirk at me through the mirror) You just want to know who you stole him from.
Me: I’m just curious. I picture him as good looking with maybe tattoos?
Slenderbuns: (swiveling around to face me. I’m amazed at the lack of transformation of his face. Essentially, he looks like a man with makeup on. From the way he looked sans goop, I’d have thought he’d feminize up pretty good.) Blondy wasn’t your type, sugar.
Me: (thinking “here we go again” as I feign interest) Oh? What’s my type, then?
Slenderbuns: Educated, artsy-fartsy, (he looks me up and down) with a Sancerre fetish. Maybe wears an ascot, occasionally, making everyone look at you with pity smirks.
Me: (coloring) And how can you know that? You think that everything’s right on the surface?
Slenderbuns: (reaches out to lift a wig off a styrofoam head and drop on his own. It’s a white-girl wig, the ultra-synthetic hair, chestnut and long with heavy bangs. The transformation from passable drag queen to runway model is so instantaneous that I blink in amazement. I think Slenderbuns must see my appreciation in my face—I can sense him tucking away something snide he’d had on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he snaps open a bright paper fan and flutters it.) Well, that was Stephen, honey-pot, was it not?
Me: (a little sharply) I’m afraid I wouldn’t…
Slenderbuns: (He snaps the fan closed and raises it in a warning gesture.) Honey, all this denial is beginning to wear on me. I know who you are and I know what you were to Stephen, and I have no intention of actually talking to that silly detective or of otherwise doing you any harm, so if you don’t like hearing that I know, don’t come here and talk to me and go back to your little fantasy that you and Stephen were a deep dark secret. If it’s his suicide that’s troubling you, well, then let me assure you, it wasn’t you who caused it even if you were a total cunt when he dumped you. Stephen was seeking, honey; he was seeking and he wasn’t finding. He got to the bottom of his Pandora’s box and, well, I guess that left it empty. And that’s sad. Sad enough to make you want to die. (He gives me a look.) You were just one of the little horribles that came out of that box, and the fact that you happened to pop out last doesn’t give you any more credit for his death than any of the others.
Me: (kind of amazed at this outburst) How would you know so much about any of this?
Slenderbuns cuts me off with an answer of sorts. He raises his hands so that the insides of his wrists are displayed in my face. I see his cherry-painted fingernails, their half moons left naked in a classic French manicure, and then, below them, the two vertical scars, running from the base of his palms, down his wrist veins and maybe ten inches up each arm toward his elbows, the tissue thick and beige against his dark skin. The scars look old and well healed. Still, whenever it was that Slenderbuns had decided to check out, he’d meant business.
I go to apologize, but he shoos me rather curtly and turns away, an actress shaking off one emotion so as to envelope herself in another. I leave.
Thrown by the end of our conversation and still woozed-out by the cocktail, I stop at the bar for some water. The place has filled up and the clientele is more eclectic—more overtly gay, to my eye, which could be due to the fact that I’m still the only woman and no one’s looking around as if something’s missing. I feel invisible, not a completely unpleasant sensation. Some music starts up—a slushy Asian sound—and someone hits the stage with a hand-held spot. People half turn toward the entertainment with an air of polite amusement while others ignore it—they’re not here for this stuff, but they’re happy to view it before going back to the business of living a secret life of “normalcy” in a world defined by homophobia. Slenderbuns and his bony backup duo come walk-dancing out on the stage in time to the music, wearing silky costumery that shows a lot of leg. They fall into a languorous-limbed dance, complete with geisha fans, Slenderbuns in the middle. The effect is “drugged-out sex slave.” Weirdly, I like it, and I move over to sit at one of the black-draped tables near the rear of the audience. Slenderbuns notices me at some point and aims an ironic smile in my direction, as if to say that if I watch carefully I might pick up some pointers on moving like a woman. I give a finger twiddle, then point at my table. He nods, then ignores me for the rest of his little taxi dancer routine.
After the smatter of applause fades, the two white-boy dancers stroll off the stage and into the audience, B-girl style. Slenderbuns seats himself on the edge of the stage and chats, seemingly having forgotten my existence. Nevertheless, he eventually says his goodbyes and heads my way, his pace languid, the fingers of one hand twiddling a lock of his wig.
I don’t know if he’s going to nail me to the floor or play it palsy now that we’ve had our little cat fight. All I want out of him is whatever I can get about this “detective” he sprang on me before giving my ass the boot. Burly-Bear? Escroto? Someone else?
I never get to ask. Slenderbuns is about eight feet from me and I’m leaning over to push out a chair for him when something explodes next to me so loud I instinctively throw myself across the little table, taking it to the floor. All I can think is that some sort of ceiling fixture has crashed down practically on me and so I scramble away from it, attempting to protect my head. People are hurrying over and a big bald man with a handlebar moustache—the bouncer, I realize later—helps me to my feet. Deaf from the explosion, I hold onto him, almost clawing him as he attempts to soothe me. I’m rather amazed that he isn’t hustling everyone to safety, and I blink up into his face, then around at the room. The place is intact except for the table I toppled. I look at faces. Very few look back at me, fewer still at the place where I’d crashed to the floor.
Me: (up at the bouncer) What? What was it?
I follow the man’s gaze and see Slenderbuns. His foot, anyway, with the high heel twisted half off in spite of the ankle strap. The bouncer is holding me protectively but I crane my neck and my eye travels up the prone body, up the stockings, up the splayed red satin robe and his smooth wet torso to the smallish falsies, the long neck, the painted face. The wig’s fallen back and the illusion of femininity is somehow destroyed more by that than by the blunt fact of his male body parts. Finally my mind allows me to absorb what I’m seeing—the wet torso, the hole at about sternum level, the puddle spreading from below his back like a shadow. He’s still smiling, still playing peek-a-boo through the synthetic hair strewn across his face, but t
here’s no doubt about the fact that he’s dead.
People are moving fast, some of them seem to be shouting instructions—911 has been called!—Don’t touch the body!—obvious stuff. I alone seem to be on the brink of panic, although I hear some hysterical shrieking that seems to be from far off, and am vaguely comforted by the fact that some guys are freaking. I cower against the bouncer, knowing he’ll understand. He seems to be asking me something and I look up at his carnival-strong-man moustache and figure out that he’s asking what I know, what I saw. I burble through uncooperative lips, vaguely, that Slenderbuns had been coming over to talk. He asks if we were friends and I nod my head, then shake it, then explain that we’d only met once before but I’d come to see the performance. The bouncer nods comfortingly, but he seems to want to extract himself—maybe he’s got a lot to do, or maybe he thinks I should be able to pull myself together, being as I barely knew this person murdered directly in front of me. Then he asks me a weird question, which is whether anyone else, like a boyfriend of mine, knew that I was coming here tonight.
The next moments happen in stopgap motion. I turn to look at the table where I’d been sitting, maybe a yard in front of a swaying “wall” of gold chunks of glassy plastic, which sets off a kind of overflow area stocked with bare tables and a haphazard collection of chairs—I hadn’t even registered that this area was there, earlier. I see myself in my mind’s eye, anticipating Slenderbuns’ arrival at my table, a little nervous that he might tell me off theatrically and, seeking to avoid that, leaning forward suddenly to push out a chair for him to signal that I want to be friends—and at that very moment hearing the explosion directly behind my head. I think about the gun, about where whoever it was must have been holding it at the time he shot it so as to hit Slenderbuns around mid-torso.
AND I GET IT.
The bouncer is wrapping me like a child with a chill. I feel the clamminess come over me from forehead to face to chest. I slump against him. What a pussy I am.
In my defense, I recover quickly after they gargle me whiskey. I’m at the bar now, not far from where I’d perched on first arriving. I push the glass away, not crazy about the image of myself sputtering booze down my chin, my clothes and hair a mess. Everyone is sympathetic—I thank the bouncer but shake my head at his offer of further assistance. There’s a tragedy to attend to and it isn’t me. I’m just some woman who doesn’t belong there in the first place and can’t keep it together enough to allow them to deal with what’s happening. Somehow I get this across and they seem grateful. They move off, everyone talking, the bartender going back to someone on the phone. Some patrons appear to be sticking it out but others are escaping, walking quickly past me in that self-possessed way men have—that way of walking that just presumes that they’ve got somewhere to be and no one will stop them from getting there. And no one does; it seems understood that it’s every man’s choice whether he’ll deal with the cops, who you can only presume will add a heavy dose of homophobia to the scene upon arrival. I’m reminded of the Hynes T station after Mr. Suicide jumped, how I sat where someone parked me while others raced for the exits. I remember how righteous I felt, even while in some mild form of shock, that I was doing the proper thing.
“Doing the right thing” sucks. I look around. No one is paying attention as I teeter on that barstool. Three men are passing by me, buttoning up their coats, faces ashen, eyes pinched, refusing to look at one another and acknowledge that they’re fleeing the scene because of the crime they’ve committed in simply being who they are.
Well, I know how that feels. I slip off my stool and climb the stairs to the street. I hurry, like they do. We scatter down the sidewalk, hunching our shoulders secretively, like the countless private perversities blowing through the wee hours.
GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT
36-D @ February 3 08:18 am
I am, like, palpitating over my coffee. Are you SAFE right now?
webmaggot @ February 3 08:20 am
Chill, Lady D. I mean, she made it home, otherwise we wouldn’t be reading this.
36-D @ February 3 08:21 am
Yeah I get that, but I’ve never been where someone gets shot right in front of me.
wazzup! @ February 3 08:25 am
Yes, I too offer high praise for this tale you are constructing! Please count me in as major fan of the site. THIS BLOG ROCKS TO THE ROOT, MAN! TO THE ROOT!!!!
proudblacktrannie @ February 3 09:02 am
yezz, well, rock on, lovelies. I just wanna comment like I know a thing or two that maybe I don’t know, if it comes down to it: I’m seeing a LOT that’s interesting in that poor dead sister’s comment about Mr. S. I mean, first things first and rest in peace to a murdered sister and all, but also I went to respect some of her last words, and there was something TO that line about Mr. S looking and seeking and not finding and finally givin in. I mean, honey, I would bet on this poor deluded suckah having killed himself on this evidence alone, if it weren’t for…
36-D @ February 3 09:05 am
IF IT WASN’T FOR WHAT?
roadrage @ February 3 09:07 am
Slenderbuns’ murder, I’m thinking. It adds, like, a weird dimension. We’ve either got a farkin lot of coincidences glomming together, or there’s connections we aren’t seeing.
chinkigirl @ February 3 09:10 am
I agree. So it seems to me that the thing to do is to pull it apart. fickel, I see a number of details in last night’s post that I could comment on, but the most urgent, I think, is that you imply, if I’m reading you correctly, that you might have been the intended target of the bullet that killed Slenderbuns. Am I reading into it, or could someone have shot at you from behind that curtain of beads and only missed because you ducked forward?
fickel @ February 3 09:12 am
G’morning (sort of). And no, you’re not over-reading what I wrote, chinkigirl. In fact, I’m sure that this was what the bouncer was thinking, which was what put it in my head. But, as usual, with some distance (i.e., 4 hours of sleep), I’m not certain anymore. I mean, if the bouncer thought I was the target, would he have just deposited me on a stool to hang out? And if it didn’t occur to him but I only imagined it did, could it be that I imagined everything about this possibility—the angle of the shot, the closeness of the curtain to my head, the suddenness and degree at which I ducked down. And I can’t help thinking that if someone was there to shoot me and had taken such a risk as to do it right out in the open like that, why not shoot again when he saw he’d missed?
marleybones @ February 3 09:18 am
Not to take this in an even more negative direction, but if the shooter was there for you, couldn’t he have thought that he’d actually hit you? You were there, of course, but it could be that you started to move exactly as he went to shoot, and you went forward and over the table. No murderer, no matter how bold, is going to hang around, so maybe he thought he had succeeded.
proudblacktrannie @ February 3 09:20 am
I have chills just considering this. It means that if someone attempted to kill fickel, he could be out there, discovering his mistake and making plans to make a second attempt.
36-D @ February 3 09:23 am
One word, fickel: Rottweiler. Please give the go-ahead. I have his home number?
i.went.to.harvard @ February 3 09:25 am
Wouldn’t this be more the time to call Burly-Bear? Physical protection seems like a priority, and he knows you’ve been nosing around so he’ll understand where you’re coming from.
fickel @ February 3 09:28 am
Unless, of course, I was totally wrong, and whoever shot Slenderbuns meant to shoot Slenderbuns. And, I have to say, this is the view that my gut tells me is correct, right now.
chinkigirl @ February 3 09:30 am
But not at the time. We humans have a strong tendency to deny that we are in danger, particularly where we perceive no way to avoid or control the danger. Could you be in denial right now? Wouldn’t you be prudent to call Burly-Bea
r? He’s police and it’s true that the police have not been so straight with you, but nevertheless he comes across as a decent guy who is genuinely concerned about you.
fickel @ February 3 09:32 am
I’m definitely considering doing that, chinkigirl. I’ve actually started dialing twice. I wanted to hash things out here first, however. It’s become my way of…I don’t know, thinking. And I don’t want to contact the police precipitously right now. I’m feeling vulnerable, and I don’t take as much solace in the cops as others. I’ve seen, firsthand, how mistaken they can be, how eager to reach solutions, how prejudiced. For me, Burly-Bear is just some guy I’ve met recently who happens to be a cop, which is as much a red flag as it is a consolation. I don’t even know if I trusted him as much as I did the Mysterious Hottie, based on gut reaction.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 3 09:35 am
Trust-ed the Mysterious Hottie? Is there more going on here than I’ve been picking up? Last I remember, the Mysterious Hottie never got off the train. How would your feelings have changed between then and now?
fickel @ February 3 09:42 am
He did get off, it turned out.
36-D @ February 3 10:05 am
Okay I am not liking this long silence crap one bit and am imagining all sorts of very scary stuff going on while we sit here staring at our computer screens. I’m ready to call the cops myself but what can I say—I need to talk to Sergeant Malloy about some girl I’m close with who I only know by the name of l. g. fickel?
marleybones @ February 3 10:08 am
This is a very long silence, fickel. Is something going on?
hitman @ February 3 10:12 am
She’s giving us time to review last night’s post, dum-dums. Read the title: she sees someone murdered and gets laid. You’re in deep here, fickel, so let’s get to it. The last thing you need to worry about is something like propriety.
36-D @ February 3 10:15 am
Weh-heh-hell, look who’s over his huff.
fickel @ February 3 10:18 am
