Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
DRAG AND KARAOKE.
Most people see drag as playing dress-up. Being something that you’re not. Similarly, people think that karaoke is just singing someone else’s song. A sad attempt at re-creating the original.
But they’re wrong.
Karaoke is taking something familiar and making it your own. You don’t have to sound like anyone else. You can sing to the music however you want. It doesn’t matter how you sound, or even how good you sound. All that matters is how good you feel when you do it.
And drag is more than just wigs and makeup. It’s an escape from the restrictions that other people put on you. It’s a way of telling the world what you feel inside, of sharing your truth.
I’ve loved both these things for as long as I can remember. But they’d been out of my life for years.
Until the Pink Unicorn gave me back both.
And now it’s time to give back to it.
During the next three weeks we organize and get the word out. Eva starts up the GiveFunds campaign immediately, and thanks to the social media promotions she’s had me do with Beaucoup and Ujima, we make a good chunk of our goal. But not quite enough. The live event needs to make up for the deficit. So the performers in our group—Kat and Nine Tails, Beaucoup Buko, Ujima, and me and my mom plan special numbers for the show, strategically programmed to motivate people to donate as much cash as possible.
Paolo, happy to not have to wear drag for the event, focuses on the tech aspects. He learns how to link our GiveFunds page to SYNGX and project it on the large screen behind the stage for everyone to see as they come in. During the event, we’ll be able to follow along as the total amount goes up and can even see who donates and how much, as long as they allow their profile names to be seen.
And speaking of being seen, in the spirit of continuing to be open with our loved ones, Paolo and I have told everyone that we’re together. Although it’s not really a surprise to anyone. Almost everybody had pretty much figured it out from the Mulan lip-synch performance onstage together.
My mother and Eva are ecstatic, of course. As is my dad when they tell him that Paolo is Sonny Sazon’s son.
“Perfect, anak!” he said, slapping me on the back and almost making me choke on Eva’s shrimp sinigang when I told them all at a family dinner. “Now it’s okay if you don’t make any money in drag! Paolo will be the one to support you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, catching Eva’s glance and knowing how hard we both wanted to roll our eyes.
Kat wasn’t surprised, of course, since I’d told her about my feelings for Paolo at Susan’s party. There’s a reason Kat’s my best friend. She knows me better than anyone else. She’d sensed something was going on between Paolo and me from the beginning. And she was right.
But Tito Melboy was more than happy to not have been right.
“I was wrong what I told you about men. How they can only love you one way,” he said, clutching the garment he was helping me to sew together at his place—a design of my own for the event. “Most of them are closed-minded. Afraid. But not all. Not the good ones.”
“It’s like you said, Uncle,” I say. “How people used to respect baklas because they were beyond the gender binary. We don’t have to be either masculine or feminine. We can be both. And being both can be beautiful. I think people are starting to understand this. I know I finally am.”
“And Paolo certainly does.”
“Yes,” I say, smiling. “He does.”
“And so does your dad now.”
“Are you guys finally talking again?” I ask.
“Yes! All thanks to your mom. She tried to convince your dad to talk to me for years, but she gave up after a while. It was really your return as Regina Moon Dee that made her try again. You made her remember what joy we drag queens bring to the world. She wanted to make your dad understand what that means to you and me.”
“My moms are amazing,” I say as Tito Melboy grins, handing me my finished garment. It’s exactly what I wanted. It’s all exactly what I’ve wanted.
ON THE FRIDAY EVENING OF THE LIVE EVENT , my dad is by my mom’s side as we arrive at the Pink Unicorn, wearing his nicest suit. We’ve all decided to get dressed up for the night, treating it like a red-carpet event.
“Ninety-five thousand dollars so far!” my mom says, looking at the large screen behind the karaoke stage. She’s dressed in a black velvet halter gown with a long string of pearls. “That’s wonderful, anak!”
“But not good enough yet,” I say. “We need more.”
“We’ll get there, pamangkin,” Beaucoup says, patting my hand. She’s in one of her own custom-made gowns, a high-slit number that flatters her curvy figure.
Ujima, not to be outdone by Beaucoup, has on a skintight red vinyl dress that renders me and everyone else in the Pink Unicorn speechless. “Manny’s told me he’s already collected close to a thousand dollars in volunteer entrance fees at the door! And we haven’t even come close to capacity yet,” they say. “By the way, I feel like he’s been eyeing me a lot lately.”
“Oh, he definitely is,” Eva says. “Manny’s really into you.”
Ujima glances at Manny at the front entrance and winks at him. He sees this and turns so red it looks as if he might faint.
“We’ll make our goal,” Beaucoup says. “I have faith.”
“Me too!” Kat says. She’s just arrived, ready to rock the house.
Eva says to me, “Just try to have fun. In a lot of ways, you’ve already won.”
She’s right about that. My dad is here, seeing me as Regina Moon Dee in public for the first time in my entire life. He even complimented me on my outfit. Though, to be honest, I don’t think he quite understands it—a strapless gown that transitions from red on the bottom to orange at my chest, topped off with a green fascinator. I call it my “mango dress.” Since it’s a look I’ve done completely on my own, it’s more kitsch than high-fashion. But I still love it.
My father squinted at me when I first arrived, as if my dress were too bright. “It looks… tasty?” he said.
“Awkward, Dad.”
“Okay. Getting a drink now,” he said, hurrying off to the bar.
He’s there, chatting with Bryan and Aaron, who have also reached a new understanding in their own relationship. Over the past few days, checking in with them about the fundraising campaign, it definitely feels as if they’ve gotten closer, as committed to working on their new father-son dynamic as they’ve been with the financial plan for the bar. I catch Aaron’s gaze. He sees me, smiles, and gives a friendly upturn of his chin before going back to making drinks for people.
And then there’s Paolo.
Paolo and his spotlight shining on me. Paolo with my smeared lipstick on his face. Paolo with his insistence that everything about me is beautiful and worthy of love. Especially his love.
I go to him onstage, to the same spot I met him that first night, lost at the KJ controls.
But he’s not lost anymore. He’s figured things out, found the things he was meant to find. Including me.
“Hey, you.” I lean down and give him a kiss on the cheek. He smiles, pulls my face to his, and kisses me on the lips. When I pull away, I see the imprint of my bright orange lipstick on him and laugh. “Here.” I pull a tissue out of my mango-shaped bag and hand it to him. “You got a little something there.”
He smirks. “Oh yeah? Why don’t you clean it off me?”
I roll my eyes. But I still raise the tissue to my tongue, moisten it, and wipe his lips with it. “There. All better.”
“Yep,” he says, his voice low. “Much better.”
“Mmkay,” I say, giving him a lighter, non-stain-leaving kiss on his lips. “Before you decimate my tuck, let’s get ready for the top of the show, shall we?”
It’s eight p.m. The place is packed. Eva’s done a fantastic job getting out the word for both the GiveFunds online campaign and tonight’s fundraising event. I wave for her to come closer to the front of the stage and signal to start operating the phone that she’s set up on a tripod for the livestream. Paolo hits the lights and mics.
“Hello, darlings,” I say to the audience in the bar and to the livestream camera. “It’s me, your host, the one and only Regina Moon Dee. Now, are you all ready? Because tonight the category is ‘Purse First,’ hunties! Put your money where your mouth is and come together to save this historic, fabulous Oakland bar that we all know and love.”
The crowd roars, and behind me, the total surges ahead several hundred dollars more.
“The rules are simple,” I say. “We’ve connected the SYNGX app to the GiveFunds campaign. So if you want to sing, make a donation. You want one of us to sing something special? Make a donation. You like what you hear? Make a donation. No amount is too small—or too big! Now let’s ka-ka-ka-karaokaayrrrt!” I say, ending with a lip trill.
Paolo organizes the queue to begin with some of the Pink Unicorn regulars. José starts with a Bruno Mars song, raising the total up a few hundred dollars. Jenny surprisingly donates a staggering five hundred dollars all by herself when she goes up to do an encore of “Anaconda.” Her enthusiastic butt-slapping must get someone online named Bootylicious in a very good mood because they donate two hundred more after she’s done.
The night goes on. Mom doesn’t let the shock and disappointment of no one requesting her to sing get her down and donates money herself to sing “Like a Prayer,” finally scratching the itch to perform it that the church choir denied her. The total reaches a hundred thousand dollars, and she attributes the entire amount to her performance. “Oh, see? I got us to one hundred thousand! You’re very welcome,” she sings into the mic as she walks off. I’m surprised she doesn’t drop it before she goes.
After Mom, we start bringing in the big guns.
Beaucoup Buko performs a moving rendition of “I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles . Ujima goes up after her. They have Paolo queue up a Mary J. Blige song, but the video screen lights up behind them with a special online request. A donation of five thousand dollars from… Emmett Aoki? The Hollywood hunk Emmett Aoki? He wants Ujima to sing “I’m Here,” from The Color Purple . And not only does Emmett’s huge donation move up the total that much closer to our goal, so does his song request. Ujima’s heartfelt performance gets everyone on their feet at the end with a standing ovation.
“Tens, tens, tens across the board!” I say into the mic when the total moves up to one hundred ten thousand dollars.
Kat goes up next. The Nine Tails gals don’t follow her, though. “Where’s your band?” I ask.
“There,” she says, pointing. I see them in the back, drinking and having a great time. “Too much of a logistical headache to bring all our equipment, so we recorded something ahead of time.” She hands Paolo a thumb drive and gives me a big kiss on the cheek. “It’s karaoke, after all.”
And though the song is an original and unfamiliar to the audience, the crowd eats it up. It helps that the Nine Tails gals in the back are screaming their heads off in support, but Kat doesn’t need it. She kills it like always and gets the total to one hundred twenty thousand dollars.
I’m about to step in and announce the next singer when everything stops. Or at least, I do.
I see the hooded figure from the past few karaoke nights. He’s here. Standing right at the foot of the stage. He takes his hood off. I can finally see who it is.
“Ivan?” The spotlight shines on me. It feels so hot I swear I can smell smoke.
Paolo gets up from the KJ desk to stand beside me. “That’s Ivan?”
Kat, who’s just left the stage, rushes up again, pulling back her hair. “Oh, I will fuck up this motherfucker right now!”
“Wait!” I say, waving at them to stand down. I take a deep, cleansing breath to dispel the burning sensation inside me and force myself to face Ivan. He’s just standing there, not moving, barely able to meet my eyes.
He gives a weak wave. “Hi.”
My cold hands clench into fists by my side, long, French-tipped nails digging into my palms.
“I’ve seen you here before,” I say as calmly as I can. “You came a few times the past couple of weeks. Why? And why are you back now?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Eva has repositioned the phone camera to film both Ivan and me.
“I’ve been trying to do it,” Ivan replies. “But I couldn’t get up the courage.”
“To do what?”
His mouth quivers. “To apologize for what my friends did to you.”
An uncomfortable silence falls over the bar. I feel Paolo and Kat at my side. I can see my parents, my sister, and my uncle. Beaucoup is being held back by Ujima, ready to rush the stage if Ujima loosens their grip for even a second.
And while I appreciate them all being there for me, I know I won’t be needing them. Ivan’s not a threat to me. Not anymore.
“Your friends?” I say.
“Not my friends. Not for a long time.”
“Why did you wait until now to apologize?”
“I didn’t! I went back to Dreamland the day after those fuckups told me they’d beat you up. Your uncle told me to keep the hell away. I came back the next week, kept trying, but you never returned. You disappeared. Until now. That’s why I’m here. Well, and also because of one other reason.”
He turns around and waves for someone at one of the tables in the back corner to stand up. A woman who, up until now, has been sitting in one of the room’s dark spots.
“Hi, girl!” she yells out.
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Benta Box?”
Beaucoup stops struggling against Ujima when she sees our Dreamland sister.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“I didn’t, either, that day,” Ivan says. “I didn’t understand what I saw onstage at Dreamland. But it doesn’t mean that I was afraid of it. Not like my friends—my former friends. It wasn’t until I kept going back to Dreamland to find you and kept getting turned away by your uncle that Benta saw me and started talking to me. She helped me make sense out of so many things. Not just what was going on at Dreamland but in my life. Because of Benta, I ditched those idiots. She even encouraged me to get sober. That’s what love can do, I guess. Help someone be a better version of themselves.”
He turns to Benta and blows her a kiss. She wraps her arms around herself and sways, as if giving Ivan a hug in return.
Just then, a pinging sound behind me means that the donation total on the screen has gone up. By twenty dollars. Ping, another fifty. Ping, a hundred. Ping, two.
“So,” Ivan says, cowering, “apology accepted?”
I could say no. Decide to kick Ivan out of the Pink Unicorn. After all, he was the one who brought a bunch of thugs to see my uncle and me perform. A gang who tried to take away a part of me and almost succeeded.
But they didn’t. I’m here now. Surrounded by people who love me. Here in this room and out there in the world, watching. What I do here, now, matters. I could either resist and fight back—or show forgiveness.
The pinging of the total continues, going up and up.
I decide to forgive.
Mostly.
“I’ll accept your apology,” I say with a wry smile. “But only if you do something for us.”
Ivan’s face starts to pale.
I look straight at the camera. “Years ago, I quit being Regina Moon Dee because people Ivan knew assaulted my uncle and me in an alley for being drag queens. But I refuse to give in to fear. And hate. I choose love and forgiveness. But only if Ivan sings.”
The tension in the room breaks. I feel everyone’s delight in my demand.
“Uh, what?” Ivan says.
“What song, you ask?” I say. “Well, that’s up to all of you out there. Whoever donates the most money in the next two minutes gets to pick the song. Now’s your chance to make this guy squirm.”
The donations rush in. Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. With every sound, Ivan’s color fades more.
After the two minutes are up, I turn around to look at the screen. Someone from New York City has donated three hundred dollars.
“Baby!” Beaucoup cries out, noticing the profile name on the screen.
I make a heart sign at the camera. “So happy you could join us this late at night, Baby Buko! And what song have you chosen for Ivan?”
Three dots blink on the screen as she types her answer.
Creep. By Radiohead.
The Pink Unicorn crowd laughs at the excellent choice Baby has made. “The donor has spoken, Ivan. Now hop on up here!”
Though I have to pull him onstage, he eventually gets up. And despite his entire body shivering from stage fright, he sings. Horribly. So badly, in fact, that it makes me wonder if he’s ever heard the song before. If he’s ever heard music before, period.
But it doesn’t matter. The audience appreciates his attempt, and the donation total moves up even more. At the end, Benta Box leads the audience in clapping while a shell-shocked Ivan hands me back the mic.
“You’re forgiven,” I say, taking back the mic. “Now get your bony white ass off my stage.” I slap him on the butt as he jumps off and hurries back to Benta’s open arms.
We manage to get in a few more singers giving generous donations, taking us all the way to one hundred twenty-five thousand. At 10:50, it’s time to start bringing an end to our streaming event. I know that it’s finally time for me to sing and hope that I can carry us over to the finish line. I ask Paolo to close out the queue and program “All By Myself.”
But when the screen updates, it says: “Regina Moon Dee and Paolo—Come What May.” The total moves up by $1,000. A donation from him.
“Paolo?” I say.
He takes his mic off the KJ table and walks over to me, joining me in the light onstage. Everything about him glows.
“I know ‘All By Myself’ is your favorite song, Regina, but you’re not all by yourself anymore,” he says. “So how about a duet? With me?”
My eyes water. I nod silently.
He smiles. And the world around me just disappears. Everything he says to me next is to me, and me only.
“For so long I’ve felt lost in my life,” he says. “Like everyone else around me had things figured out while I just kept stumbling along. Until you showed up one night, looking as lost as I was. And I somehow knew that I needed to make you feel like you weren’t lost. That you’d been found. By me.”
He takes my hand and interlaces his fingers with mine.
“And then when I saw you as Regina Moon Dee and you asked me to keep your secret, that’s when I knew—you weren’t lost. You were just hiding. And everything I did with you afterward was because I wanted you to see in yourself what I saw in you. Someone who was strong and beautiful.
“But you helped me to see, too. You helped me accept that I need to find my own path. So I want you and everyone else to know that I’ve decided to open up my own restaurant. Right here, next to the Pink Unicorn. Maybe even tear down a wall and connect the two worlds, just like we’re connected now,” he says, his hand gripping mine. “So thank you, Regina Moon Dee. I want to sing this song with you because everything in it is true. The world seems perfect now. Everything is so much clearer. No matter what else happens, I’ll love you. Come what may.”
Ordinarily, I’d attempt to wipe any tears away with the tips of my fingers to avoid messing up my makeup. But there’s no point in doing that now. My face is a complete and utter mess. Mascara and eyeliner run down my face as I turn to Paolo and kiss him.
Ping.
We turn to look at the screen mid-kiss. Someone has donated… holy crap. That can’t possibly be right. One hundred thousand dollars?
The entire place erupts with cheers.
We look at the donor’s profile name as it scrolls up. TheSunnySeason.
The following words appear in the chat box: For the restaurant and bar together, okay, anak? I’m proud of you.
“Dad,” Paolo whispers, his eyes glistening.
Everyone in the Pink Unicorn is on their feet, clapping and shouting and hugging each other, but when Paolo pulls me in again to kiss me, the cacophony around us disappears.
He smiles and turns around to start the karaoke. And we sing. Everyone else joins us, but I don’t hear any of them.
All I hear is Paolo’s voice joining mine. Off-key, but still sweet, lovely, and perfect.