Chapter 4
Will watched the car turn off Hurst Street and took a moment to collect himself.
Patrick Lake and Audra Kelly. He couldn’t wait to tell Margo. And April, his shift bestie at the bookshop, would simply die. An encounter with a celebrity felt auspicious. But an encounter with two? He wondered idly whether it was a full moon, or if Mercury was in whatever the opposite of retrograde might be.
He took a long drag on his vape, tucked the pen back into his bra, and went inside, emerging from the door next to the DJ booth just as Kylie Minogue’s “On a Night Like This” began to play. Will grinned and didn’t even stop when Jordan appeared to place a tray of shots on his outstretched, upturned hand.
“Skittle bombs, three quid each or four for a tenner,” Jordan instructed. Usually, the task of hawking these vile things would make Will dry heave: Neither Cointreau nor Red Bull had passed his lips since an emetic house party several years ago, and already the sickly aroma threatened to turn his stomach. But tonight, he decided, was different.
“Three quid each, four for a tenner,” he repeated, and now that official business was dispensed with, he and Jordan shared an agog look at what had just transpired.
“Patrick Lake!” Jordan squealed. “In my bar!”
“Doing poppers?”
“I know! I know.” Jordan waved his phone in the air, shaman-like. “It’s already on our socials. Just think. The Village Inn, Patrick Lake’s local pub.” His eyes misted over. “This could be great for us.”
The Village, like lots of gay bars up and down the country, was under near-constant threat of closure. COVID shutdowns had almost been the death of the place, and then there were the ever-encroaching property developers in shiny suits who wanted to bulldoze all of Hurst Street and build luxury apartments and coworking spaces. Each time the vultures swooped in, the Village managed to beat them back, but the incursions were becoming more frequent.
Jordan had taken it upon himself to make a case for the cultural significance of queer spaces, which so far had consisted largely of him ranting to camera on TikTok wearing a tank top and smoky eye. A photo of movie star Patrick Lake enjoying himself in the venue would certainly help their cause, but Will was surprised by how uneasy the thought made him. People came here to have fun, to shed their self-consciousness and truly be themselves, without fear of being surveilled or harassed. Shouldn’t that right extend to all their patrons, even the straight ones?
The clamor caused by Patrick Lake and Audra Kelly’s appearance rapidly subsided into the usual buzz of the hive, tonight’s punters already seeking new entertainment. Up onstage, Tammy introduced Gaia, and in between peddling his pungent wares, Will watched longingly as she undulated her way through a lip-sync to “Whip My Hair,” by Willow Smith, intercut with a seamless lip-sync to Reese Witherspoon’s perm monologue from the climactic courtroom scene in Legally Blonde. It was stupid, and genius, and Will yearned to be up there with her.
He wasn’t the kind of person who considered himself above slinging shots. There were rules here, a hierarchy, and dues to be paid. Drag queens had been eating shit since the days of Divine. It was just that Will had finally thought he was beginning to make progress with his stage presence. The last couple times he had been up there, he understood fully that the transcendent sensation he got from performing was being experienced by the crowd, too. This is it, he had told himself. This is where I am supposed to be.
And then he actually ate shit. He’d decided not to lip-sync but to sing live, like the greatest dames did. It had started so well; gay audiences loved a power ballad, and an expertly executed rendition of “Alone,” by Heart, lit up the pleasure centers in their drama-loving brains. But then came that big note in the final chorus, the moment when Ann Wilson channeled every ounce of euphoric longing into her voice.
Maybe he hadn’t warmed up properly. Maybe it was simply out of his range. Either way, even Will had been shocked by the flat caterwaul coming from his own mouth. Not since the crowning of Camilla had sentiment so rapidly turned against a queen, and Will plummeted back to the bottom of the pyramid.
Will sold another round of stomachaches to a trio of twinks—who insisted on showing him the selfie they had taken with their new bestie, Audra Kelly—and willed himself to not dwell on defeat. Onward and upward and all that. Tonight was auspicious, he reminded himself. There were portents.
And then who should emerge from the throng, as if summoned by the universe in that very instant to challenge his resolve, but his all-too-recent ex, Ry? And who should be clinging on to Ry’s arm but a new beau, a handsome specimen seemingly acquired sometime in the last two and a half weeks? It appeared that the early bird had caught the worm and feelings.
“Oh. Will. Hi,” Ry said, even though at that moment, Will looked nothing like his usual self at all, and was in fact doing his best to embody a flame-haired femme fatale from the golden age of Hollywood.
“Hello, Ry.” Will broke out a smile that he hoped was dazzling but casual. “Who’s your friend?”
“Hi, I’m—” said Ry’s companion, his name lost to the noise of the crowd. He looked strikingly similar to Ry, which was to say not unlike Will himself—tall, dark, and on the verge of aging out of twinkdom; never let it be said Ry didn’t have a type—but with a thicker neck and deeper voice.
“So…” said Ry. “I see you’re still doing this.” He tilted his chin toward Will’s frock.
“Doing drag? Oh, yes. Our Lady Grace is still very much at large.” Will adopted a carefree tone, as if his penchant for putting on ladies’ clothes and dancing for homosexuals had not been a leading cause of his breakup with Ry.
Ry had seemed to find it amusing at first, as if Will had a silly but ultimately harmless hobby, like coloring books for adults. But it didn’t take long for that amusement to sour, for Will to get the distinct impression that Ry was tired of humoring him. And so, two months into the relationship, Will stopped talking about it in front of him, refrained from showing Ry sketches for his latest outfit or lip-sync ideas. His boyfriend seemed to like drag queens just fine when they were lined up on a stage being judged on TV. In his own life, though? Not so much.
Ry worked in financial law and spent every other weekend visiting his parents at their farmhouse in Kent, where he would post photos in his wellies with the family dog, Luna. Will was never invited to accompany Ry on those weekends, of course. So he hadn’t even been very surprised when Jordan forwarded him a screen grab of one such picture—a handsome, wholesome shot of Ry and Luna out for a Sunday walk—that he had found on Tinder.
Ry had denied it for all of five minutes.
“Can you blame me?” he’d asked. “I mean, I want to buy a house and build a life with somebody, maybe even start a family. I can’t do that with someone who’s out every night on the scene.”
“Out every night?” Will’s voice had reached a pitch never achieved onstage before. “I’m working!”
“No, Will. I work,” Ry had said, shaking his head like a disappointed teacher. “You play dress-up and call it work, and frankly it’s not funny anymore. It’s just…too much.”
Those words, Will liked to believe, were chosen in haste, in anger. Because while he and Ry had only dated for a short time, it was long enough for Ry to know how that would hurt him. It’s too much. You’re too much.
Margo, needless to say, had never liked Ry. She didn’t like many people, admittedly, but it had still eased the sting a little when Will called her post-breakup and her response had been: “He looks like a thumb. Pick up ice on your way over.”
And here Ry stood now, less than a month later, holding hands with a less effeminate facsimile. Will glanced downward and blanched at the sight of their matching pairs of New Balance trainers. Things must be getting serious.
“How’ve you been?” Will asked Ry over the din of the bar. “Bought a house yet?” Then, with a dash of sarcasm, “Had any kids in the last month?”
Ry’s smile faltered. Shit. They had split because Ry thought Will wasn’t enough of a grown-up, and here he was, proving him right.
“Nice to meet you,” said his replacement as Ry led him away. “By the way, your boobs are wonky.”
Will pretended not to have heard him; then, as soon as they were both out of sight, he turned on his chunky heel, barged through the crowd, dumped the tray of Skittle bombs at the bar, and hurried upstairs to the queens’ dressing room, where Raina was still primping.
“Blast, bollocks, and buggeration,” he hissed when he saw his lopsided chest in the mirror.
“Oh, honey,” Raina intoned, but the sympathy in her voice, Will knew, was just a top note. Right underneath it, like the flavor profile of a complex wine, was the tannin of mockery.
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” he said, fiddling with his breastplate.
So much for his auspicious night. The planets really needed to get their act together.