Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
THE SUNDAY BEFORE LABOR DAY was Baby Buko’s final performance before heading to New York. Beaucoup Buko had planned a big going-away celebration for her at Drag Brunch, going all out with food and drink specials, plus American flag cake for the kids. Mom and Eva wouldn’t be able to join because they’d be with my dad at a church barbeque. But Beaucoup and I would be there to see Baby off.
Tito Melboy created a special outfit for me, a modernized version of the Filipiniana dress with humongous butterfly shoulders. Underneath the diaphanous pi?a fabric, I’d wear a red, white, and blue body suit. The layering of the traditional Filipino on top of the modern American was a statement of what it meant to me to be a drag queen. I was two things at the same time, one just under the other.
I had suggested doing a duet with Beaucoup as a joint parting gift to Baby. She loved this idea and scheduled us to perform last.
What I didn’t tell my uncle was that I was also planning on finally asking Ivan to come see me perform that day.
As we drove into the parking garage, my heart sank. An older man sat in the parking attendant booth instead of Ivan.
“I see your friend’s not here,” Tito Melboy said as we parked, not even attempting to suppress the sound of relief in his voice.
“Maybe he’s on a break?” I said, hoping.
Through the large office windows, I watched as Ivan appeared from the bathroom at the back, dressed in regular street clothes.
I rushed over to him from the car. “Hey! Are you not working today?”
“I’m off this weekend. Just came by to get my paycheck.”
“Do you want to come see a show?” I asked him quickly, while Tito Melboy was still wrestling with our suitcases.
“What kind of show?”
I had underestimated my uncle—he could move that hefty body of his quickly when he needed to. Before I knew it, he was at my side, tugging at my sleeve. “Rex, don’t,” he said.
I ignored him. “It’s at Dreamland,” I told Ivan. “Just two blocks down from here on Folsom.”
“You mean the one with the red door?”
“That’s the one.”
“I thought that was just a Chinese restaurant or something.”
“It’s more than that. They have performances there.”
My uncle pulled at me again, harder, forcing me so off-balance that I nearly fell. “Huwag na, Rex,” he hissed. “Tara na. We’re going to be late.”
Before I could argue with him, a group of rough-looking guys around Ivan’s age came in from the street.
Ivan straightened up. “These are my homies,” he said to me.
His friends stared at us, sneering. Their eyes filled with something thick and venomous.
Thankfully, Ivan seemed to sense the hostility building up in his buddies. “Don’t want to keep you, man. You should probably get going.”
“See you,” I said, grabbing both rolling suitcases and nudging Tito Melboy ahead of me out of the garage.
The dressing room at Dreamland bubbled with excited chatter, but Tito and I got ready in silence. I was forcing myself to forget what had just happened and focus on getting prepared for the brunch. I assumed my uncle was, too.
The restaurant was crowded, full of people who had come out to send Baby Buko off. As a result, the brunch was even more festive than usual with all the girls lip-synching their favorite performances for Baby. Ever the professional, Beaucoup Buko showed no signs of unease as she co-emceed Drag Brunch with her drag daughter. Baby and Beaucoup’s improvised dialogue between the acts seemed easy and relaxed, as if they’d rehearsed for weeks.
As the show came to an end, Baby Buko got up a final time to announce our closing number. Beaucoup and I waited by the side of the stage for our cue to go on.
“For our last song, we’re going to hear our two emcees from Friday’s Karaoke Happy Hour. Regina Moon Dee and Beaucoup Buko, her drag mother. Who is also my drag mother! Family is important to us here at Dreamland.” Baby Buko waved at some of the children at a nearby table, who giggled in response, covering their mouths with their hands.
Baby’s face beamed at the children and then went slack. Her gaze was drawn toward the sound of some raised voices on the side. There was a disturbance at the hostess stand. A group of young men was arguing with Benta Box.
Ivan and his friends.
They looked as if they were trying to get a table, but Benta seemed to be refusing to let them in for some reason. They seemed inebriated, and Ivan looked dazed, as if he couldn’t figure out where he was. He kept looking at different spots in the restaurant. First at the hostess, at the girls waiting tables, and at Baby onstage.
And then at Beaucoup and me.
All the blood in my body went straight to my head. I held on to the handrail on the steps, feeling perilously close to passing out.
Baby Buko excused herself from the stage and rushed to the hostess stand. Beaucoup showed her experience as a live host and quickly went up to continue the show.
“Regina Moon Dee, why don’t you come up here and join me?” she said, seemingly unperturbed. As I stood close to her, though, I could see that her hands were shaking.
Baby managed to quiet Ivan and his friends down and moved them toward seats at the bar. They grabbed their stools and turned them around, where they sat and watched us, simmering. Ivan must have told them about my invitation to the show, which I completely regretted now.
I mustered as much positive energy as I could, plastered a huge grin on my face, and said, “Bon voyage, Baby Buko!”
The karaoke music for the Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston duet “When You Believe” started playing. And although Beaucoup was clearly a baritone, she sang with a clear, dulcet tone that matched my high alto voice nicely.
As the song went on, I was able to lose myself in the hopefulness of the lyrics, letting the happy faces of the diners make me forget about Ivan and his friends at the bar. Everything was going great.
Until one of Ivan’s friends yelled something out loud.
“Hey!” he said. “I see kids here! At some of the tables. What are you all doing letting kids in here? At this freak show?”
Even over the music, I knew everyone had heard him. Beaucoup and I stopped singing.
Within seconds, Baby and some of the girls gathered to try to boot them out. They refused to move, laughing in their faces. Ivan did nothing. It looked like he still wasn’t even sure where he was.
I was about to go back to help get them when three of the cooks emerged from the kitchen—tall, built, and more than capable of kicking the guys’ asses.
Ivan’s friends threw up their hands and exited the restaurant at last.
The patrons clapped and whistled their appreciation. Beaucoup and I smiled with relief and started our song over again from the top, managing to end the show on a positive note.
As the patrons started paying their checks, Baby Buko took Beaucoup and me aside. “Who were those people?” she asked both of us, but I could tell she was addressing me primarily.
My heart was still racing—not in the usual intoxicating way it did after a performance, but in a way that made me feel terrified, as if it might not ever come back down again. “One of them is a friend. Sort of.”
Baby clucked her tongue at me. “Regina, none of those men are your friends.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell her,” Beaucoup said. “You’re courting danger when you befriend rough trade like that. But if you do, and they know you as a boy, then you stay that way with them. Don’t confuse them. Otherwise they can turn on you and get violent. Trust me. I know from personal experience.”
Beaucoup and Baby looked at each other, something dark passing between them.
Baby took my hands. “You must be careful in this business. You need to know where it’s safe to be who you are. And with whom. Not everyone will understand or accept you.”
I couldn’t look at either of them and just nodded at the floor.
“Good.” Baby patted my head. “Now, go help your sisters bus the tables.”
I helped close out brunch. My uncle and I changed, cleaned up, and packed our things. Feeling remorseful, I offered to take care of both our stuffed suitcases while Tito Melboy held a plate of American flag cake. He happily scooped spoonfuls of it into his mouth as we walked back to the parking garage.
But we didn’t make it all the way there.
As we neared the entrance of the garage, we were blocked. By Ivan’s friends. Ivan, though, was nowhere in sight.
They pushed us sideways into a nearby alley. My uncle dropped his plate of cake. The porcelain plate shattered onto the sidewalk with a clatter that no one paid any attention to. We were alone on the street.
We tripped through the alley as they shoved us, splashing through puddles slick with gasoline. It was dimly lit, secluded. Everything smelled like urine and trash.
“What the hell?” I said. I looked over at my uncle to make sure he was okay but also for guidance.
Unfortunately, Tito Melboy had curled into himself with his head bowed. I wouldn’t be getting any help from him.
I looked around for a way to escape, but the guys blocked our exit from the alley. One took a suitcase and was rifling through its contents.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Leave that alone!”
A red shock of pain burst across my face. Tito Melboy screamed into his hands, making a muffled, high-pitched strangle of a sound. One of the guys had slapped me hard with the back of his hand. I grabbed my cheek. Heat and wetness. My fingers were colored with a small, bright splotch of blood.
I stared at the man who had slapped me. He wasn’t a man at all. Just a boy. Not more than a year or two older than me. None of them were.
“What the hell do you want with us?” I said.
“That was some show you did back there,” one of the other boys said.
“That wasn’t us. Please,” Melboy said, begging. His voice was wobbly.
“Bullshit,” another boy said. “We watched you. We followed you. We wanted to make sure Ivan wasn’t getting himself into some faggot shit.”
“Don’t call us faggots,” I said.
The guy who had been sorting through my suitcase lifted up my wig. It looked ghastly in the air, like a wraith loosed from a grave.
“We can call you anything we want,” he said, throwing it at me. The loose hairs whipped across my face.
“Fuck you,” I said.
Another burst of pain, this time in the stomach. A punch to the gut. I bent over and gasped for air, retching and coughing. It felt, for an endless time, as if I were drowning. The boys’ laughter made it harder for me to catch my breath somehow, as if they were sucking the oxygen right out of me. I fell to my knees beside my uncle, who looked like he couldn’t bear to watch what was happening. He’d shrunk in on himself even further.
My scalp exploded. One of the boys gripped my hair and yanked my head upright. “Listen,” he spat at me. “Don’t ever talk to Ivan again. Don’t park in his garage. Don’t go inviting him to your ladyboy club. We see you anywhere near him again, you’ll end up looking worse than all your shit over there.” He nodded over to the boy with both our now-open suitcases, who was pouring some sort of liquid onto their contents. I blinked, trying to see through the pain searing through me.
A spark of light. A blaze of fire. The smell of smoke.
The boy threw my face toward the ground. My forehead hit the cement with a wet thump. As my eyes closed, I watched four sets of feet walk away from us, out of the alley and into the light of the street, while two suitcases of clothes burned, and my uncle kneeled and bent over, separate and away from me, crying and crying and crying.