12. The Christmas Spirits
The Christmas Spirits
AIDAN
Through a square window in the top of a maroon swinging door, colored lights beamed across the room beyond.
Music shook the floor, even out there. I faintly made out the silhouette of bodies wriggling in time to the beat.
The people came together and swung apart as if everyone was connected by some unseen thread.
Instantly, I wanted to be a part of whatever that was.
One large man stood between me and the rainbow-swathed promised land beyond. He had a round face and tattoos climbing up his neck. He was wearing all black and sitting on a tall stool.
“IDs?” he asked.
“Be cool,” Henry whispered as he handed over his real ID and my fake one.
The fake ID he’d secured me said I was twenty-eight, plenty old enough to be allowed in, but Henry said it all depended on one thing: a tiny scanner.
If the bouncer doubted our identities, he’d slide our IDs through the scanner, and mine would most certainly come back invalid. Red light, harsh buzz, no entry.
I held my breath as the bouncer did several double takes.
Henry gripped my forearm tightly. I relished the contact even through the netted sleeve of my mesh shirt.
It was not a top from the mall haul Henry had purchased for me.
Instead, it arrived via the postman in a blue bubble mailer along with a form-fitting tank top for underneath.
Clothes, I learned, were all meant for different times and places.
This top—along with the faux leather pants—“served club.”
The bouncer flicked his finger against my ID. “Where were you born?” he asked.
“Red Bank, New Jersey,” I recited.
“Birthday?”
“November 29, 1997.” I’d memorized every line of that ID.
“Happy belated, handsome. Phone number?”
“732—” Henry clutched my arm tighter, which I took as a sign to stop.
“Okay. You’re together. You’re monogamous. My bad, my bad,” the bouncer said. “Have a great night.” He handed the IDs back and pushed the second door open as if it were a portal to another realm.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened. “That was close. What does ‘monogamous’ mean?”
“That you’re exclusively dating one person,” Henry said.
“As opposed to…?”
“Open relationships or polyamory, where you’re dating or having sex with more than one person,” he said.
“How does that work?” I asked.
“Good question. You’d be better off asking Cam.”
“But I don’t know Cam.”
“Lucky you…” Henry pulled us deeper into the room.
“I still don’t get why that mattered to the security man,” I said.
“He thought we were dating,” Henry said.
“Oh, okay,” I said with a high, tight smile. If others saw us as a couple, maybe Henry could as well. “So he didn’t think my ID was fake?” I shouted over the music.
“Shh. No. He was flirting with you,” he said. “And good thing he was. Pretty privilege.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I got the impression it was both a good and a bad thing.
“See that guy over there at the bar wearing a harness and no shirt?” To my left, there was a bustling bar.
The man Henry referenced had a build similar to mine and wavy hair that trickled down to the tops of his mountainous shoulders.
Henry pulled me closer. “Just watch this. Stay close but… not too close.”
“Thad, hey! Two Jack and Diet Cokes, please,” the harnessed man said to the stocky, hairy bartender with the cropped beard.
The bartender worked quickly and when he finished the guy wearing the harness flashed a credit card. “Can you keep the tab open?”
“This round’s on the house, Muscles,” the bartender said.
“Thanks, stud,” Muscles said, slipping a few dollar bills across the counter and wandering back into the pulsating crowd.
Several minutes passed before the bartender even noticed Henry, who kept getting jostled back by bigger or taller men in a rowdy throng of laughing and cheering. “What can I get you?” the bartender asked Henry after the others had cleared away.
“Um, vodka cran, if you have it,” he said.
“We’re a bar, bud. ’Course we have it.” Once again, the bartender whizzed through the work of making it. Then, he ran Henry’s credit card. “Tab open or closed?”
“… Closed, please,” Henry said, sounding sheepish. He signed his name on a bill, pushed it back across the bar, and returned to me. “See? Pretty privilege. You’re either born with it or you’re inducted into it with a Barry’s Bootcamp membership. You were… magicked into it, I guess.”
“I don’t know. The guy in the harness called the bartender by name. Maybe they know each other,” I said. I didn’t want to believe what Henry was saying. People couldn’t be that judgmental of each other.
Though I’d seen firsthand how judgmental Henry could be of himself, so maybe I was too ignorant.
“Try it for yourself…” Henry challenged, sipping from a tiny red plastic straw bobbing in his syrupy-looking drink and passing me his card.
I checked myself out in the mirror over the bar, brushing my hair back into place. Within seconds, the bartender was leaning on his furry forearms in front of me. “Whatcha drinkin’, pretty eyes?”
“A cosmo,” I said, throwing my shoulders back.
“Coming right up.” And sure enough, Thad refused to take payment for the strong drink in the chilled triangular glass, even when I insisted.
Considerable guilt crept up my neck like a tiny spider. Henry looked satisfied. “It doesn’t seem fair,” I said.
“That’s life,” Henry said. “It’s not fair. But, hey, your symmetrical face and big pecs saved me fourteen dollars, so it’s fine by me. Come on, the show is going to start soon. I want to get a good spot.”
HENRY
In most ways, Aidan was the Ken doll my parents never bought me as a kid.
Every outfit I’d ever wanted to wear but wasn’t confident enough to go out in, I dressed Aidan in.
Every line I’d heard in movies that I thought nobody would ever say to me, Aidan said.
Every task that needed doing that I couldn’t do myself—dusting the top shelf of the pantry or hanging a new shelving unit in the closet—Aidan completed without question or hesitation.
In other ways, Aidan was more. He was vibrantly alive, peering out at the dance floor of the Groove Grotto like it was one of the Seven Wonders. Giving him these experiences was fast becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
Aidan stared like a wildlife photographer scoping out his subject from the bush.
Two men kissing in the middle of the dance floor.
A grind train running from one end of the bar to the other.
Three older queens clacking their fans and laughing as they took photos of one another.
The working-overtime disco ball twirling above the whole scene.
Crowded places like this usually made my social anxiety skyrocket, but with Aidan on my arm, that pesky menace took the night off. A small confidence blossomed in my chest. I smiled up at my companion even though he wasn’t looking back at me.
The music cut out. “Hes, shes, theys, and thems, tonight is the night. The Holy Trinity of trouble graces the Groove Grotto stage. Shout out your love for the Virgin Who Can’t Drive, Mary; Frosty the Snow Bitch; and Mariah Hairy!”
A sound bite of eternal chanteuse Mariah Carey shouting, “It’s tiiiiiiiiiiime” played.
Two drag queens—one dressed as Mother Mary and the other as a slutty Frosty the Snowman—came out pushing a prop iceberg with a third drag queen dolled up as Mrs. Claus stuck inside.
During the first two verses and choruses of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Mary and Frosty went at the prop ice block with sledgehammers and pickaxes and massive, neon dildos before finally getting a bright idea.
Right before the bridge, they rammed a replica of the Titanic into the iceberg.
Aidan laughed as the block of ice burst away and Mariah stepped out.
The song switched to a short clip of “My Heart Will Go On,” the part that goes you’re here, there’s nothing I fear…
before flipping right back to the rousing conclusion of the holiday classic.
Mariah Hairy lip-synced for her life while a group of shirtless, oiled-up men in red velvet jockstraps ran out to dance and thrust behind her.
As the applause rang out, Aidan turned to me with a huge grin on his face. “Whoa! This is like TV but only better, because it’s real!”
“This is a drag show. People dress up as women or men and do tricks and dance and lip-sync for entertainment. It’s a queer tradition that goes back to the seventies, starting mostly in Black and Brown communities.
Now it’s all over the world,” I explained.
I glanced at the empty glass in Aidan’s hand.
“Did you drink your whole cosmo already?”
“I did. It was sweet. Can I get another one?” he asked.
“Let’s wait and see how this one affects you first,” I said, slightly worried. “It’s all good. I’m here. I’m looking out for you. Nothing bad is going to happen, okay?”
“For our next act,” Mariah Hairy said into a microphone, “we’ll need victims—I mean, volunteers—from the audience.”
Aidan, ever the enthusiast, raised his hand high and proud. He and a Black guy with a bald head were selected. I nearly pulled Aidan back, but they were friendly drag artists up there. What was the worst that could happen?
When the light slapped him, Aidan received a ton of whistles and catcalls from the audience.
He took it all in stride. Surrounded by three drag queens, he couldn’t have looked more at ease.
I’d have been a sweaty wreck up there, all those eyes on me.
I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d been here.
It had to have been with Cam and it was almost certainly his idea to come, not mine.
“Tell us your name, darling,” said Mariah Hairy.
“Aidan.”
“Aidan the Macho Man. Give us a quick flex of those biceps, sweetheart.” He raised his arms and welcomed everyone to the gun show. I wasn’t immune and swooned along with the other gays in the crowd. “Fabulous. Would you say you’re a bit of a show-off?”