Chapter 14
“And I thought the Captain Kismet costume was tight,” Patrick wheezed. He had no regrets about the second serving of lasagna he’d eaten at Margo’s the night before, but even with an extra forty minutes of cardio this morning, he was feeling it. And being squeezed into drag—drag!—only made him more aware of his own body’s every last bulge and bump.
“Don’t be such a baby,” said Will, before signaling to the taxi driver that he could drop them off just here, thank you. “Pain is beauty, and you look great.”
“Thank you,” said Patrick. He tried batting his eyes coyly, still growing accustomed to the heavy false lashes, and was rewarded with a burst of laughter.
He still couldn’t believe how quickly he had agreed to the idea, why he had agreed at all: to let Will dress him in Grace’s clothes, to disguise himself beyond all recognition, so that it wasn’t Patrick Lake going to a gay bar, but someone else entirely.
“Nervous?” Will asked.
“Terrified.” An understatement. He was risking everything. If he was found out, it would be game over. The star of Kismetcaught in full drag in a gay bar. What the hell was he thinking? How had he allowed Will to talk him into this?
Except Will hadn’t needed to. Patrick had jumped at the suggestion, enticed by the prospect of being able to go out incognito, but also by something else: the way Will’s closet had beckoned like a kid’s dressing-up box, promising that same sense of magic and possibility that had made him want to be an actor in the first place. The chance to step into a character, to be someone else entirely, even if just for a little while. To step into Will’s world and see life through his eyes.
Damn, those eyes.
Patrick took a deep breath, and then, before he could change his mind, threw the car door open. “Come on, then. Take me to church.”
Will led him through the pub and toward the packed garden, where at least fifty people sat on benches drinking and smoking, facing a small stage that had been set up against the back wall. A twink in a crop top went from table to table selling bright pink shots from a tray, while a young woman with a high ponytail stalked through the rabble holding a bucket for cash donations to a local LGBTQ+ charity.
He followed Will slowly, unsteadily into the crowd, ankles trembling in the uncomfortable, precarious heels, keenly aware that a single wrong move would send him sprawling across the floor like Bambi.
“Racy Gracie!” a queen called out to Will, even though he wasn’t presently in drag. Patrick was still unclear on the etiquette.
“Faye!” Will air-kissed the queen, then turned to introduce her to Patrick. “This is Faye Runaway.”
“Charmed,” said Faye. “And you must be Gracie’s drag daughter. I’d recognize that shoddy contouring anywhere.”
“I’m far too young to be a mother,” said Will. “Unlike some of us.”
“I took Gracie under my wing when she first started out,” Faye told Patrick. “She’d been doing god-awful drag on Instagram and needed a guiding hand. I’m like her drag stepmother. Which would make you my granddaughter, after a fashion. Do you have a name, love? Do you speak at all?”
Patrick cleared his throat, about to respond, then paused. One word out of his mouth would surely give him away, his American drawl easily attributed to his trademark superhero role No. If he was going to do this, he needed to go full Stanislavski.
“Infamy,” he said breathily, barely above a whisper, drawing deep on his dialect training from that short-lived tour of An Inspector Calls eight years ago.
Faye howled. “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me! That’s a good one.”
Patrick let out a silent sigh of relief. Maybe he would get away with this after all.
Faye tottered away, and Will turned to Patrick.
“Infamy?” he said.
Patrick waggled his eyebrows provocatively. The fact that they were currently drawn a full inch and a half above their usual position probably made him look ridiculous, but he was thrilled to realize he didn’t care. Was this what Will loved about drag, he wondered? This feeling of absolute freedom from yourself?
“Not bad, right?” he said, in what he thought was a passable English accent.
“You’re a better actor than I gave you credit for,” said Will.
“Ouch,” said Patrick, then adding with a snigger: “You cow!”
Will threw back his head and cackled. “I should watch my back!” he said. “You’ll be coming for my gig next.”
“I don’t know about all that,” said Patrick. “I mean, obviously I look stunning, but I think you probably make a better lady than me.”
Patrick’s drag was a little on the butch side. Will had remarked earlier, while picking out clothes for him, that there was no getting away from those shoulders, those arms, that chest, although he had done an admirable job of trying. Patrick’s waist was cinched under a loose black playsuit, Will had draped a biker jacket over his shoulders, and he’d squeezed his size tens into a red pair of what Will lovingly called his “fuck-me pumps.” He had felt absurd, clown-like, while Will did his makeup—a lengthy and intimate process during which Patrick had observed that Will had a slight bump on the bridge of his nose and bit his bottom lip when he was concentrating—but the moment he’d put on the blown-out blond wig, it was like somebody somewhere had waved a wand. The overall effect was a little like Sandy at the end of Grease, if she happened to be a powerlifter.
“I can’t believe people aren’t staring more,” said Patrick.
“Look around, love. There are flashier sights in tonight.”
“Still. I thought for sure I’d have been clocked by now.”
Will smirked, and Patrick knew he’d used the term wrong.
“Sweetie,” said Will. “Nobody here thinks you’re a real woman. I doubt there are many who’d even call you a decent drag queen, not with the way you’re tottering around in those shoes.”
“They hurt my feet.”
“Welcome to the club. The point is, though…nobody cares. You’re not the first fledgling to come through here, and you won’t be the last.” He pointed to the stage. “I’ve seen some truly shit performance art go on there. Properly abominable stuff. And the weakest lip-syncs you can imagine. But I’ve also seen kings and queens and in-betweens step up there and blow everyone away. Real queer genius. And the beauty of a place like this is there’s room for all of it.”
“So which one were you?” Patrick asked.
Will laughed. “Somewhere in the middle. Come on, let’s find a seat. Looks like the show is about to begin.”
What followed was a carousel of some of the most bizarre visuals Patrick had ever seen. A nonbinary performer decked out in a jumpsuit and bubble perm like Sigourney Weaver in Alien performed a lip-sync to “E.T.,” by Katy Perry, tearing open their coveralls at the first chorus to reveal a creature bursting forth from their chest, a puppet cleverly operated by their left arm under the clothes. A queen in a bright yellow raincoat sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” while shooting the audience with a water pistol from waist height (“Golden showers are a running theme with her,” Will informed him). But his favorite performance of the night, not that he could ever be biased, was the artist who had transformed themselves into Captain Kismet on one half of their body and Princess Sura on the other, flipping back and forth between personas like Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria while miming along to “Holding Out for a Hero.”
I can’t wait to tell Audra, Patrick thought. She’ll get such a kick out of this. A second later he remembered he couldn’t tell anyone he’d been here—that this was the whole point of his disguise. What did the teleporting bank robber Jumpin’ Jacques always say right before he vanished from the scene of his latest crime in the Kismet comics? J’étais jamais ici. I was never here.
Secret or no, though, Patrick wouldn’t have changed a thing. He sat in a dazed silence in the car back from the pub, thinking of the people he’d seen not just on the stage but also in the audience—trans kids who couldn’t be older than nineteen or twenty laughing and woo-hooing along to the cabaret next to gay men in their fifties, safe and at ease in this tiny garden with its high walls and glittering priestesses. He hadn’t fully grasped what he had been distancing himself from, until now. Not just the tans, traps, and tank tops he’d come to associate with the WeHo bars he’d frequented when he first moved to LA, but that feeling of belonging. Of being entirely, unquestionably at home among strangers.
Patrick removed the red shoes before exiting the taxi, walking barefoot to Will’s front door with a heel dangling from either hand, reveling in the way the cool night air and rough pavement felt on his tender feet. Pain, pleasure, when was the last time he had been so present in his own body?
Will helped him out of the wig, Patrick unaware of just how much weight he had been carrying on top of his head until the very moment it was lifted, and unzipped the jumpsuit. His touch was precise and impersonal, like a doctor giving an exam, his focus on removing the clothes without bunching or tearing them. Patrick was used to standing still, mentally detached while costumers dressed and undressed him like a mannequin, and had long since shed any notion of modesty. And yet he felt exposed now, stripped to his underwear, face still painted for the gods, a mermaid caught between sea and land.
He pulled his pants and T-shirt back on, then followed Will into the bathroom, where he was handed a packet of wipes and set about removing the last traces of his new alter ego, Infamy.
“Thank you,” he said, once he could begin to see himself again. “Tonight was…I’ll never forget it.” Will smiled at him in the bathroom mirror.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “I’m of the opinion that everybody should do drag at least once in their life.”
“I don’t just mean that. Although it was incredible. But also, just…letting me into your world. Meeting your friends, your sister. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this…” He tried to think of how to put it. “Connected, I guess.”
He pulled Will into a hug, his body acting on instinct to fill the gap where his words seemed to be failing him. I am so grateful for this, he wanted to say. I am grateful for you.
“That lot?” Will tutted. “Oh, you’re welcome to them.” But he said it gently, and Patrick could hear the smile in his voice. He drew away and saw that he’d left a trace of makeup on Will’s cheek. Without thinking, he reached out and wiped it off with his thumb. He let himself pause like that just for a second, cupping Will’s jaw in his hand, then dropped it.
“I should go,” he said.
“OK,” Will said instantly, nodding rapidly, and Patrick realized just how exhausted he must be after putting him in and out of drag and taking him out for the night, how ready for his needy new American acquaintance to leave so he could get some sleep. He remembered the way Will had tensed when he had put his arm around him earlier tonight and decided he had definitely misread things.
It was enough, he told himself, to have this funny, strange, kind person as a friend in this unfamiliar place. It had to be enough.
Will walked him to the door, and they paused there on the threshold. Patrick didn’t want this night to end, wanted more than anything to stay here, to go back inside, to grab Will’s hand and do what a braver man might.
“Good night,” he said, instead. “I’ll…call you tomorrow.”
“OK,” Will repeated, and Patrick watched as he closed the door, seemingly nothing left to say now that they were both men again.