Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
PAOLO’S LIP-SYNCH is an utter disaster.
THREE HOURS EARLIER
In other circumstances, applying my makeup to Paolo’s face could be an intimate act. Something we’d share. Something private. Sexy.
But there’s nothing sexy about having your mother and drag mom looking over your shoulder and critiquing you while your sister runs around the room trying to prep your clothes.
“More contouring on the nose, Rex,” Tito Melboy says, pointing. Paolo stares at the tip of Tito Melboy’s finger hovering right between his eyes.
“And more red on the lips, anak,” Mom says.
“Dude, this dress is so wrinkled!” Eva shouts. “Why did you store it like this? I’m never going to get this ironed right.”
“Hay naku!” my mother says. “That’s so easy. Let me show you.”
I sigh. Yes, it takes a family to prep a novice drag queen. And this particular family is driving me nuts.
To save my sanity, I try to ignore them all and just focus on the face in front of me. Luckily, it’s a face I can easily get lost in.
“You all set with the plan?” I ask Paolo.
“Mm-hmm,” he hums. “A cold open lip-synch. No intro. Afterward, I pretend to get a headache, and you ask Tito Melboy’s friend to host.”
“Ujima Jones!” Tito Melboy adds. “They’re a star. Everyone’s going to love them. No one will even miss Regina Moon Dee.”
“Thanks, Uncle,” I say.
Tito Melboy pinches my cheek. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll hide in the office,” Paolo continues. “And then you’ll come get me when it’s time to do the second song. I leave right after, letting Ujima explain that I’m going home to get some rest. Then they’ll close out the show.”
I brush excess powder from Paolo’s nose contour. “Good. Bryan and everyone else will get their Regina Moon Dee fix, and Dad won’t know that I’m back in drag.”
Our plan is to get to the Pink Unicorn an hour early so Paolo can hide in the office before most of the audience gets there. Mom will plan to arrive with Dad right when the show starts. He, and most everyone else, will only really get to see Regina while she’s performing her two songs onstage.
Tito Melboy bows out early to get ready for his own show at Dreamland. “Break both of those beautiful legs of yours,” he says to Paolo before leaving.
Later, at seven o’clock, when we arrive at the bar, things are still fairly quiet. The few people already there stare at us as we escort Paolo in. Not a surprise because he looks absolutely stunning. His face is properly beat, his long, wavy hair cascades over his back, and his dress, a custom-made Beaucoup Buko special of draped pi?a fabric studded with lapiz shells, sparkles in the light. He makes Eva and me—in jeans and T-shirts—look like slobs.
Bryan sees us when we enter and heads over from his seat at the bar. “You’re here so early,” he says. “Can I get you all anything?”
“Just a club soda for Regina,” Eva says. “She feels a headache coming on.”
“Actually,” I say, “can she just rest in the back office until it’s time to go on, Bryan?”
“Sure. I’ll bring your drink there.”
“Thank you, Bryan,” I say. “Oh, and just FYI, Paolo can’t make it tonight, so Eva will be filling in on tech.”
Bryan briefly gives Paolo-as-Regina an odd look but shrugs and says, “Fine with me.”
Eva and I accompany Paolo to the back office and breathe a little sigh of relief once we close the door behind us.
“Okay. We can relax a bit now,” I say.
A knock at the door makes us all jump.
A bald, brown head pushes its way through the door opening. “Am I interrupting?” it asks.
“Manny!” Eva says. She runs to the door and pulls someone in. I recognize him as a friend of hers from grad school. Someone she met in a Philippine folk dance class. “I asked Bryan if he needed help with crowd control, and he said yes. So I asked Manny to come. I figure he could help manny the door. Haha! Get it?”
“Don’t quit your day job, sis,” I say.
Eva’s made a good call, though. The Pink Unicorn risked getting cited by the fire department last week for having too many people inside the bar at one time. We don’t want to chance it again. At six foot two, Manny towers over all of us. That, plus his shaved head, the indigenous tattoos that cover his arms, and his bulky frame make him the perfect doorman, which—if I recall correctly—he’s done before for some high-end lounge in SoMa.
“Dang, who’s the sexy lady?” Manny asks.
“Regina Moon Dee,” Paolo says, holding out his hand. “The pleasure is all yours.”
Manny kisses the top of Paolo’s hand, and a little surge of jealousy runs through me.
“Okay, we’re all going to give Regina her space now,” I say, opening the door and waving Eva and Manny out ahead of me.
Paolo frowns as they exit. “You’re not going to stay here with me?”
“I can’t. I need to get Eva set up and keep an eye out for my dad, in case he arrives early.” Which is true. But mostly, it would be a bad idea for me to be all alone with Paolo in the room. I don’t know if I’d be able to control myself, even when he’s dressed as Regina Moon Dee. Actually, the fact that he looks so stunning in drag makes him even sexier. Best to not think about it at all and hang out in the bar. “I’ll be back to escort you to the stage when it’s time to go on.”
“Wait!” Paolo reaches for my face. He touches my cheek with his press-on nails and pulls them back. In between his fingers is a single, long lash. He puts it in the palm of his hand. “Make a wish and blow.”
I puff the lash out of his hand. “There you go. A drag queen just earned her first pair of Spanx.”
“What did you wish for?” Paolo asks.
“I can’t tell you. That would ruin it,” I say, giving Paolo a quick peck on the cheek before leaving him alone in the office.
On the stage, I go over the SYNGX system with Eva. We check the audio, video, and request system. It takes us at least half an hour, but between the two of us, we’re able to figure out most of the controls.
“This SYNGX program is not the most user-friendly,” Eva says. “No wonder Paolo took so long to figure it out. Like, why are these light and sound buttons so close together? You would think this is the volume, but…” She presses it, and the disco ball turns on.
“You don’t have to get fancy, Eva. Just keep us on track. Literally. Remember that the most crucial thing is to make sure my vocal tracks for both of Paolo’s songs are uploaded and synced up to the karaoke tracks.”
After she seems comfortable with that key detail, I leave her to it. She pumps EDM music through the speakers as I slowly make my way back to the bar. I scan the entire place to see if my parents have arrived early and spot someone familiar sitting alone at a table in the corner of the main room. The mysterious person from last week. His hood is pulled tight over his head again, and his face shrouded in shadows because of how he’s positioned himself under the lights. Something about him makes my pulse race.
But I don’t dwell on it long because I’m distracted by Manny at the front entrance. He’s almost tripping over himself to usher someone inside—a statuesque Black woman in a sleeveless bodycon dress and a Kente African print head wrap, radiating so much regalness that I half wonder if she is actually royalty of some kind.
Manny offers his arm to the woman and escorts her over to me. “Rex, I think this is the guest you’ve been waiting for?”
“The one and only Ujima Decadence Fabricant Jones. She/they,” the woman says, smiling affably.
I try not to stare, but it’s hard not to gawk. “So happy you could be here. I’m Rex, Beaucoup Buko’s nephew.”
I lean in for a polite air-kiss, but Ujima says, “Girl, come here,” and wraps their long arms around me. They smell so sweet and their skin is so soft that it feels as if I’ve been wrapped in rose petals.
“BB’s told me so much about you. I feel like I already know your sensational sissy-singing, style-challenged self!”
Strangely, even though I’ve just met Ujima, it feels like I already know them, too. “Did you two meet at Dreamland?”
“No.” Ujima snags an empty barstool and sits. She’s so tall that she doesn’t even have to hoist herself up on it, merely needing to rest gracefully on its upholstered surface. “I was in LA on the last leg of my Strange Loop bus and truck. Beaucoup was doing a show at Hamburger Mary’s, and one of the girls got sick at the last minute, so I got pulled in to sub. She didn’t know me from Eve, but she still offered me a bag of her homemade lumpia,” she says, tilting her head at Beaucoup. “You’ve tasted her cooking, right? I was hooked, baby. Shablam! Instant sis! And we’ve been good friends ever since. In fact, your mama reminds me a lot of my bestie—another fabulous Filipino. Who isn’t quite as round as Beaucoup, but still.”
“Well, thank you so much for coming,” I say.
“Of course,” Ujima says, leaning in close to speak more softly. “You’re BB’s daughter, so you’re basically my niece. And I’ll always help family.”
“So you know what you need to do tonight?”
Ujima nods. “I’ve got you, girl.”
We continue to chat and gossip. The bar fills up steadily as Manny slowly lets in more and more people, many of whom I recognize as returning customers and loyal Regina Moon Dee fans.
And then, finally, my parents arrive.
I motion for them to come join Ujima and me at the bar. They take their sweet time getting to us. Mom keeps greeting the new karaoke friends she’s already made while my dad cautiously takes in his surroundings.
“Mom, Dad, this is Ujima. They’re a friend of Tito Melboy.”
Both my parents’ eyes widen—my mom’s from obvious delight and my dad’s from apparent shock.
“So nice to meet you both,” Ujima says.
“Wow, I’ve never seen anyone so impressive in my life!” my mom says. “Don’t you agree, honey?”
My dad continues to stare. “Uh, sure.”
Ujima leans over and whispers in my ear, “I can see why you decided to keep your identity a secret from this one. He looks easily disturbed.”
I wish Ujima wasn’t right. But even as my father eases out of his initial apprehension and shakes Ujima’s hand, I know that he’s only okay with Ujima because they’re a stranger to him, free to do whatever they want with their life. That same open-mindedness doesn’t extend to Uncle Melboy or me.
Now that my parents are here, though, we’re ready to proceed with the plan. I lead all three of them to a table Bryan’s reserved for them at the front, where my dad can have an unobstructed view of Paolo as Regina Moon Dee.
It’s eight p.m. Time for the true test: Paolo’s opening performance.
I head to the office to retrieve him.
“Are you ready?” I ask, poking my head in.
He’s seated at the desk with his hands on his lap and his eyes closed. “Mm-hmm.” He nods, smiles subtly, and opens his eyes to look at me. There’s an unease there that I empathize with. We’ve prepared as best we can, but things could still go wrong. Seeing him vulnerable and feeling exactly the same makes me want to shut the office door behind me, pull him in close, and hold him until we both feel better. But there’s no time for that.
“Come,” I say, holding out my hand to him.
Once we get to the back of the stage, Eva fades the background music and turns the house lights down. Paolo emerges from the darkness at the back of the stage and steps into a semi-hazy spotlight (Tito Melboy’s idea, for more drama and to keep him partly shadowed). So far, so good.
After the karaoke track for “Gravity” begins and my vocal track successfully kicks in, I begin to breathe easier. Paolo nails the accompanying lip-synch. He blends his body movements with my vocals so seamlessly that he almost makes me believe he’s actually singing. I check the audience. Their pleased expressions tell me he’s fooled everyone else, too. Including my dad, who looks rapt, as if discovering for the first time what a drag queen can do.
I keep watching my father, checking for any glimmers of recognition on his face, to see if he’s able to identify my voice on the track. Thankfully, he doesn’t. It’s been years since I’ve sung in my upper range in front of him, so he’s hopefully forgotten the sound of my natural singing voice. Mostly, though, it’s due to Paolo’s perfect execution of the lip-synch.
After Paolo’s song is over, instead of making any introductory remarks into the mic, he brings a hand to his temple and walks off the stage as planned. I rush up to him to see if he’s okay and then make a big show about talking to Ujima, ensuring that everyone can see me asking them to take over.
Shortly after, I escort a clearly declining Regina Moon Dee back to the office.
Paolo flumps onto the sofa, slips his shoes off, and nudges them aside. “How did I do?”
“You were incredible,” I say, sitting beside him and soaking in the post-performance heat coming off him. “I don’t think anyone had a clue that you were lip-synching.”
“Good! Now can I take off this dress for a while? I am melting in these outfit layers.”
“Yeah, you can relax for a while. Kat will help you put it back on before you need to perform again.”
Paolo pulls his long hair over the front of his shoulder and turns his back toward me. “Can you help me with this?”
I unzip the dress, but the zipper gets stuck close to the bottom. “Hold on a sec.”
“That should be enough for me to take it off,” Paolo says.
“I know, but we won’t be able to zip it back up if it’s jammed like this.” I scoot in closer to him, trying to move the slider in either direction. “It won’t budge. Can you stand? I think it snagged on some of the bunched-up fabric.”
We get up off the couch and I try again, grunting as I pull. After a couple more attempts, I’m finally successful.
“Got it,” I say. “Except…”
“What?”
“I think I just made it worse.”
The zipper slider has moved, but I’ve jammed it up with so much force that it’s gotten caught on the fly of my pants.
My crotch is now attached to Paolo’s rear end.
He tries to turn around and look. “What did you—”
“No, don’t move.” I hold his hips and bring his backside even closer to me. “You’ll ruin the dress.”
“Well, this is an interesting position to be in,” Paolo says.
A knock on the door. “Hello?”
It’s my dad.
“Crap!” I whisper.
“Rex? Are you in there?”
“Um, yes?” I call out.
“Ujima said Regina wasn’t feeling well,” Dad says. “Does she need any help? Do you want me to get some medicine for her?”
The door handle jiggles. I realize I didn’t lock it or put the dead bolt in. It starts to open.
Paolo and I throw our bodies against the door, slamming it shut. “Don’t come in!” I shout through the door. “I mean, Regina’s resting and needs some quiet time alone.”
“You sure she’s okay?” Dad asks.
“Yes!” we both yell.
And then we hear someone say, “Stop worrying, honey.”
Thank god. Mom to the rescue.
“Rex has it handled,” she says. “Just come back to the table.”
Paolo and I stand there, his body pressed to mine. I feel the rapid pace of his breathing as his back expands into my chest. In any other situation, the area down below where he’s pushing up against me would become a bit more… crowded as a result. But right now, being stimulated is the furthest thing from my mind.
Finally, we hear my dad say to my mom, “Okey dokey.”
A few seconds pass. A minute.
I crack the door open and take a look. They’re gone.
I close the door again.
Another knock.
“Shit!” Paolo and I whisper.
“Guys? It’s me, Kat. Can I come in?”
Paolo and I let out a sigh of relief. I open the door to let her in. “I’m so glad you’re here. We could use your help.”
She stares at us for a few moments. Her eyes travel downward slowly, eventually landing on Paolo’s butt. “I don’t think adding another person to whatever’s happening here is going to help. But I’m open to trying new things.”
“Kat, please,” I say, exasperated.
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Let me take a closer look. Paolo, could you lean over so I can have a better view of what’s going on?”
Paolo bends over at the waist.
Kat bursts out laughing. “Ohmigod, I didn’t think you’d fall for that. Hold on, I need to take a picture of this.”
“Kat!” Paolo and I shout.
“Okay! Okay,” she says, giggling.
After about five minutes of tugging, Kat finally manages to coerce the dress’s zipper all the way open, freeing us from our compromising position. “Et voilà,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say, finally able to step away from Paolo. “Let’s not do that again.”
“At least not in public,” Paolo says, grinning at me.
I smile and shake my head. “Okay, you guys hang out here while I head back out to be with my parents. I’ll come get you both when it’s time for the second song. And, Kat, don’t forget to lock the door behind me.”
“Will do,” Kat says.
Despite that little hiccup, everything else continues to go according to plan. Ujima is a natural host, telling stories and jokes in between songs and singing one of their own, too. I’m stunned by their voice—hot, sweet, and golden, like melting honey.
And my parents seem to be enjoying themselves. My mother gets her chance on the mic with “Say a Little Prayer”—I wonder if it’s another one of her potential church solos—and my dad even sings along with her from his seat.
An hour later, it’s time for Paolo to do his second and final lip-synch. At the bar, Bryan stays busy fulfilling drink orders next to Loretta, and the crowd adores Ujima. I guess my uncle was right after all. They don’t even miss Regina Moon Dee. Do we even need Paolo to do the second lip-synch at this point?
We rehearsed the second song so much, though. It would be a shame for Paolo not to show his stuff. Plus, he and Kat must be so bored being stuck together in the room. I should go rescue them.
But there was no reason to be worried.
Kat holds up her phone when she lets me back into the office. “I’ve been showing him old Kat and Nine Tails performances!”
“And I’ve shown her a few clips from Eats Meets West ,” Paolo says.
“You were an adorable kid,” Kat says.
“Aw, thanks!”
“And your dad is smoking hot,” she adds.
“Uh, thanks?”
“It’s showtime,” I say. “Paolo, you set?”
“Yes,” he says. “Good to go.”
We wait for the current karaoke singer to end her number, and then Kat and I take Paolo back to the stage. Eva sets up the cues for Paolo’s last song.
Ujima outros the last singer and intros Regina Moon Dee. “Look who seems to be feeling a bit better!” they say. “Our fierce Filipina phenom is back for a very special song.”
Paolo gets into place by the KJ console. I see Eva say something to him. He bends down and looks at the laptop screen, squinting—apparently unable to see well enough without his glasses—and points at something. Eva checks the screen. Her face crumples. She’s about to say something back to him, but Ujima has left the stage and Paolo has already moved into place.
Eva shrugs and hits the cues.
The lights onstage dim except for one odd one in the back that doesn’t want to come down. I see Eva pout, shake her head, and press a few buttons, though the light still doesn’t change.
It doesn’t matter, though. All eyes are focused on Paolo, still looking gorgeous in my lapiz-shell-studded dress.
The music track starts. A familiar flute and plucked instrument intro begins.
And then, right before the vocal starts, Paolo tears away the lapiz shell dress, revealing a familiar pink and purple hanfu underneath. People in the crowd gasp. He begins his lip-synch to my rendition of “Reflection” from Mulan .
And it’s even better than his first performance.
His lips move in perfect sync with my voice. The inhalation and exhalations, the ever-so-slight signs of more exertion on higher notes. His throat even slightly vibrates to mimic my vibrato. It’s as if I can feel my own voice being taken out of me and being put into him.
Everything is going to be okay.
Eva starts pressing at a few more buttons on her KJ control screen, probably still trying to turn off that one last light. Instead, a second spotlight gets turned on and starts wandering around the room. At one point it shines on the hooded figure in the back corner, who reels back as if being singed by it. The light crawls on, making people shield their eyes from the sudden glare. I give Eva a WTF? look. She shakes her head and pokes at more controls.
The spotlight doesn’t turn off, but it at least finally stops moving. It ends up focused at the front of the bar, where it lights up a very annoyed-looking person standing next to Manny at the door.
Aaron.
He’s back in town already. Sooner than I expected. Sooner than Bryan expected, too, from the look on his face. He almost drops the drink he’s holding when the spotlight lands on Aaron.
And at that moment, just as Paolo-as-Regina gets to the beginning of the first refrain of “Reflection”—where she asks the mirror to tell her who the girl is that she sees there—my vocal track shuts off completely. Eva must have turned it off by mistake while trying to turn the roaming spotlight off.
And Paolo, unaware that he’s been left alone with just the instrumental track, keeps on going.
Mouthing absolute nothingness into the air.