Eww. To my right are two gentlemen geriatrics sharing a boiled hot dog in meet-you-in-the-middle style while staring down at their own exposed droopy members. Flatulence, I dare say, is delivered as due. Overhead, in some videotaped pimp-and-ho party situation, a white-powdered/dark-skinned stripper is grinding on the dance floor, pouring chocolate on her frontal girl-lobes and milk on those that bulge in the back, hoping, perhaps, for a little Nestle magic in the middle crevice.
All of this while, in my own frontal lobe, 16 tiny scorpions are snapping at my synapses and stinging my resolve to the point that I'm thinking again.
And I was just supposed to be drinking.
It's happy hour at the Parliament House – and there's nothing wrong with that. It could be any bar, really, straight or gay, old or young. Just everyday folk imbibing, staring and occasionally cavorting at the expense of anything else to do, and marking these sorts of awkward moments in their calendars as something, well, done.
For me, the natural result of public-liquored stagnation is akin to that of an overly foundationed face against the glassy eyes of a soap opera coma. I just lie there, pretty, waiting for the little red light to go off on the camera so I can run to the craft service table for another nip of gin. Why not just put on a lot of makeup and stay home? It's cheaper.
But these types of ruminations are nothing short of my downfall. I have to go out.
Besides, who am I to wonder why Frank and Frank do what they do with their meats, processed and otherwise? Maybe they're having a good time, as much as there is a good time to be had in a bar during the holiday season. And as for televised chocolate milk? She could just like the flavor. Why am I always the Negative Nancy?
"Are we embarrassing ourselves or you?" one of the Franks leans into the bartender, sheepishly, like your kind, gay grandfather might.
"With what?" Taylor gleams back, smiling a big tooth of tolerance. It is happy hour, after all. Not for long. Taylor and I have plans to shoot out early so that we might enjoy another night of absurd love for ourselves – and nobody else – to the ironic soundtracking of the Scissor Sisters at the House of Blues. I'm still nursing a little winter death in my head, popping antibiotics and snorting steroids (this year's coke), and am, as you might have noticed already, not the best company.
I'll need some plying. But only if plying means liquor.
Once seated upstairs in the loge, we're off to our standard rattle of sociological profiling, scanning the floor crowd for both boyfriends and disasters – sometimes both. In the boyfriend game, it's a couple of bleach-blond burnouts for me (funny, that), and some dark-haired bits of science fiction and darkwave for him. His chocolate rarely touches my milk, so we remain at peace.
As for the rest, there are a couple of feathered boas (one of which I know), some uneven hair, a couple of desperate jackets (like my fancy yellow pleather one) and a general style sense that mutters "outsider."
Remarkably, there are two Kylie shirts in attendance: one rhinestoned big-girl on a big-guy one on the floor, and one right behind me that reads "Kylie Says: Slow." Oh.
Cue Kylie's "Slow" from the DJ on the stage.
And here's where things go a bit nutty, and my steroids presumably mix with my tequila. Like a showgirl, or perhaps (in my head) like Kylie herself, I start throwing my legs in the air and climbing the pillar to the sinewy beats of the great Minogue electroclash. I think I'm fabulous. Everybody else thinks I'm embarrassing.
"The woman up there has something to say to you," the HOB security guy taps me on the shoulder, when he can find it under my ass. "I can either tell you what I think she means or what she actually said."
"Oh, tell me both," I masturbate.
"Well, I think she's secretly totally in love with you," he fence-straddles. "But what she's saying is, 'You're a fuckin' slut!'"
I squint to recognize downtown daisy Amy Stanton.
"I know, right!" I stick a finger in my hole and make tiny circles. This is fun.
Meanwhile, tending our liquid needs tonight is none other than Jamie, my long lost seventh-grade classmate from Boca. She's depressed tonight and enthuses that she needed us to be here, which of course we hear as, "How exactly can we make things worse?"
"My dog died," she tells us, retrieving the dropped gay jaws of "awww" expected from two people who have dogs. We can't have kids, after all. But as she walks away, we turn into nasty twin Francises, tag-teaming with equal insensitivities.
"Should I ask her its name?" I smirk, taking my columnist pen out.
"Well, all I have to say," understates Taylor, "is that it's not like it's a Skinny Puppy concert or anything!"
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" Taste shatters in the dark.
I clear it with Jamie that I absolutely have to use her canine misfortune for my gain, and she gives me a placid look suggesting that she wouldn't expect anything less from me before slicing my throat with an eyebrow furrow.
"You're very pretty!" I deflate.
"Fuck you," she implies by walking away.
And as the Scissor Sisters go through their sequined motions of Sonny-and-Cher cabaret, hating Messrs. Disney and Bush with songs in between, Taylor and I blurt insensitive things like "backfat!" at singer Ana Matronic's corseted shoulder-blade bulge. Everything goes all insanely chipper in my head and the pesky head scorpions can only snap along in unison.
Are we embarrassing ourselves or you? Who cares?
