“Tonight,” Ely says, “we’re going to a drag version of Lilith Fair.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. Except for the “drag” part. Which is enough to put me on edge.
We’re in his room. He’s putting on a pink shirt and a pink tie. He’s putting on mascara. The closest I’ve ever come to wearing makeup is when my grandmothers kissed me on the cheek and left lipstick there.
“It’ll be great,” he goes on. “There’s this one drag queen who does Aimee Mann and calls herself—well, she calls herself Aimee Man, with one n. And then there’s Fiona Adam’s-Apple and Sheryl Crowbar and Natalie Merchant-of-Penis. Pronounced so it rhymes with Venice. Of course.”
Of course.
The truth? And I can’t believe I’m thinking it, but it is the truth: We should be making out right now. His moms are at their book club. The apartment’s all ours; it’s not like my dorm room, where you can hear all the people in the hall and wonder if one of them is about to knock, like it was last night before Ely left me to my “study sleep.” I’m still tired tonight, but certainly willing. It looked promising when he kissed me hello and it lasted for fifteen minutes. Then, when it started to get grabby and unzippy, he got skittish. And while I know it’s because we have plans, and I know it’s because he probably spent an hour putting his outfit together, and I know it’s because I’m spending the night and there will be plenty of time later, I still can’t help but feel a little unsexy. I mean, I’m supposed to be the anxious, hesitant, newly gay one here, right? And then he starts talking about drag queens like they’re all personal friends of his, and I feel not only unsexy, but also completely uncool. And unprepared. And inept. And insecure. Really, all it takes is one unword for all the other unwords and inwords to break through.
“It’ll be fun,” Ely says. This is his phrase for c’mon, try it. I hear it a lot, whether he’s compelling me to have Indian food for the first time (verdict: fun), see a black-and-white-and-subtitled movie about the very, very, verrrrry slow breakup of a marriage (not fun), or lick whipped cream off his chest (tasty).
He’s so predictable with his “It’ll be fun.” And I’m just as predictable, because just like every other time, I go right along.
“What’s a Lilith Fair?” I ask. “It sounds like a place where lesbians run around in Renaissance costumes.”
“You’re not that far off,” Ely tells me. “It was an all-female tour in the 1990s that Sarah McLachlan started after she was told that nobody would ever pay to see more than one female performer on the same bill. It made millions.”
“Is what I’m wearing okay?” my unsexy, uncool, unprepared, inept insecurity asks.
I know that most boyfriends would shrug it off and say I look fine. Or even, on a good day, good. But the plus and minus of any transaction with Ely is the direct truth. So instead of a “Yes, dear, you’re ready to go,” I get a “Do you want to borrow my penguin shirt? It would look great on you.”
God help me, I think he’s going to give me a black shirt with a white bib, which on my body would look just about . . . penguin. But apparently, Penguin is a brand, because the shirt he gives me is five shades of green, sort of like a preppy test pattern. Green is usually a color I like, but I’m not sure about so many of them at once.
Ely chuckles. “You look scared,” he says. “Let’s stick with black.”
I love how casual he is with his clothes. I’m an only child; I’ve never really worn other people’s clothes. And nobody’s ever really wanted to wear mine.
“When in doubt, go with black”—that’s what Naomi would tell me. And now Ely’s saying the same exact thing. I wonder which one learned it from the other. Or if they learned it at the same time, at the NYC Cool Kid orientation I missed.
His shirt is way too tight on me, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“I feel naked,” I say. I can see the shape of my nipples.
“Here,” Ely says, coming close to me with the mascara pencil, “this’ll help.”
I step back.
“I think I’ll pass on the mascara,” I say.
Ely smiles. “Eyeliner,” he tells me. “Not mascara. Eyeliner.”
“I like my natural lines,” I say.
“I like your natural lines, too.”
He makes a show of putting the pencil down, then comes over and wraps his arms around me.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask. Maybe he has some lipstick in his pocket.
“Nothing,” he says. “Trust me.”
I close my eyes. I feel him stepping back. Then I feel closeness again. A little brushing on my cheeks.
Eyelashes. His eyelashes. Working their way to mine.
“Be careful,” he whispers. “I might rub off on you.”
And I whisper, “Bollocks.”
The Lilith Fair is on the Lower East Side, at a club that I’m not sure I can get into.
“I don’t have an ID,” I remind Ely.
“If the doorman gives you trouble, I’ll just show him my dick,” Ely replies.
I don’t feel much better.
I feel even worse when we get there and find a line full of hipless hipsters, drag queens holding court, go-go boy aspirants, and flavas of the week.
“I guess word got out,” Ely mumbles.
It’s almost sweet to see Ely in a crowd that’s never heard of him. It means he has to wait on line like everyone else.
“This one time?” Ely says, and I almost expect him to continue with “At band camp?” But instead he says the quarantined name—“Naomi and I decided to go to the Night of a Thousand Stevies. Just to see all the girls and guys dressed like Stevie Nicks. And Naomi? She thought it would be really funny if she went as Stevie Wonder. This one drag queen nearly suffocated her in muslin. It was a time.”
He’s not only said her name, but he’s tied it to a good memory. It makes me hopeful, but I don’t want to jinx it by pointing it out.
The line is moving slowly, and some people who were ahead of us are actually walking back the way they came— meaning: The bouncer is actually bouncing.
There is no way I’m going to make the cut.
I don’t know this as an objective fact; I’ve never actually been bounced in my entire life, for the simple reason that I’ve never put myself in a position where there was any risk of being bounced. I mean, you can get through life pretty easily if you avoid places guarded by bouncers. It’s not like they’re at supermarkets or libraries.
“What’s the name of this place, anyway?” I ask.
“I dunno,” Ely replies. “It changes every night.”
Odds are the name’s a pretentious singular noun— bouncered hipster establishments are usually named with a pretentious singular noun. Not unlike perfumes. I put on a little Enchantress in order to go downtown to Fugue. Or I sprayed my wrist with some Mannerism, and we hopped from Heathen to Backwash to Striation and then ended the night at End.
Personally, if I ever open a club, I’m naming it Inquisition.
The bouncer tonight is certainly a sight I’ve never seen in econ class. It’s this ginormous guy dressed in what looks like an inflatable pouch of parachute fabric. Ely laughs when he sees the guy, but it’s a joke I don’t get. Which is made even worse when we get to the front of the line and the bouncer looks at me and asks, “Who am I?”
I’m stuck on Do I know you? when Ely jumps in and says, “You’re Missy Elliot! Lilith Fair’s token black girl from year two!”
This is clearly the right answer, but the bouncer isn’t about to give me the prize.
“I wasn’t asking you,” he says to Ely. “Now you get to go in, but he stays out.”
This is nothing short of humiliating. I know Ely’s getting in because he’s hot, and I’m being bounced because I’m not— musical trivia aside.
“C’mon . . . pleeeeeeease?” Ely says, batting his eyelashes.
The bouncer shakes his head and starts to look at the guy behind me, who has done his hair in braids.
“I’ll show you my dick!” Ely playfully offers.
This makes the bouncer smile and raise his eyebrow.
“Here,” Ely says, and before I can stop him, he’s unbuttoned his fly and pulled out the waistband of his underwear so the bouncer can take a look.
“Not bad,” the bouncer says to Ely. “You’re a lucky guy.” Then he looks at me and says, “You are, too.”
As I walk by, the bouncer spanks me on the ass.
I am so not in the mood.
Ely’s beaming, like the winning contestant on a reality show.
“You really didn’t have to do that,” I have to say.
“No worries. All in a day’s work.”
And I guess what I should’ve said is: You really shouldn’t have done that. Not that there’s anything wrong with what he did—it’s his dick, and he can show it to whoever he wants. In passing. But it’s like he’s given me a new definition of himself for me to consider and feel inadequate about. I am not the kind of guy who has a boyfriend who shows his dick to a stranger. I know this. And he has just proved himself to be a guy who shows his dick to a stranger. And he’s not even drunk.
Therefore.
Ergo.
Erg.
Argh.
Ugh.
We’re on completely different tracks now, our evening splitting in two directions. His is up. Mine is down. The club is packed, and the DJ is blasting beat-heavy remixes of ordinarily mellow Liliths. Ely’s loving it, loving it— I know this because he’s calling out, “I’m loving this—loving this!” He gets a Fiona Appletini at the bar, and I get one, too, but for a different reason—his is to enhance and mine is to deny.
My boyfriend’s a hit. Other boys are coming over to flirt. Some are clearly repeat flirters, and Ely clearly doesn’t remember any of their names. As he talks to them, he holds my hand. Ordinarily this would make me feel giddy with mine-mine-mine-ness, but now I feel like I should say to him, Oh no no no, don’t mind me, you go ahead and have a good time. I’ll just go home and watch PBS.
It’s funny, because I think about how Naomi must’ve known what this was like. Although she, at least, could hold her own. My version of flirting bears a striking resemblance to mime.
I want to pull Ely aside and ask Who are you? And Why haven’t we had sex yet? (Slept together? Yes. First, second, and third bases? Covered. All the way? Nope.) And Why are you with me? But I am so terrified of sounding needy. And I am so resentful that there is no want version of the word needy— And that was the point where he got all wanty on me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you have some serious wantiness issues.” And maybe I do have wantiness issues. I want to go. I want to be alone with him. I want to be the kind of person who has a boyfriend who shows his dick to a stranger—once, in order to get them into a club. I want to be cool enough. I want to erase all these thoughts—all thoughts, period—and have a good time. But Ely can’t just show his dick to my wantiness and make it go away.
I feel like the mutant among the mutants. Like the boy who showed up at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and found out that, whoops, he didn’t have any superpowers at all.
I’m so tired of being uncool. You can dress me up, give me a cool boyfriend, even laugh at one of my jokes every now and then—but the anxiety always gives it away.
The techno Lilith ends and the floor show begins. The hostess is a drag queen calling herself Sarah McLocklips, and she starts by asking for some volunteers from the audience to be the impromptu opening act—apparently, Paula Cole-Minor’s-Slaughter retired and nobody bothered to tell the organizers. The music’s all cued—they just need a Paula.
Before you can say “Where have all the cowboys gone?” Ely’s onstage.
“Because my friend Naomi has all five seasons of Dawson’s Creek, I think I know this one cold,” he says. Then, warming into it, he adds, “This one is for Pacey, for being the Jughead. And Jen, who never got the respect she deserved. And Bruce.”
(“Was Bruce the gay one?” the girl next to me asks her staple-pierced boyfriend.
“No, that was Jack,” the punk replies. “Andie’s brother.”
“Oh! I loved Andie!” the girl screams.)
Ely doesn’t even try to sound like Paula Cole—instead he belts the song out like it’s graduation, telling everyone in teh room (if not the five boroughs beyond) that he doesn’t want to wait for our lives to be over. And since neither Pacey nor Jen is in the room, he’s looking at me as he sings it. So I smile and cheer and sing along when he asks everyone to join him. But what I’m thinking is: I don’t want to wait, either. And I don’t want you to have to wait.
Everyone adores him. What can I give him besides that, besides what everyone else does?
When the song ends, he’s more popular than ever. People buy him drinks. He puts his hand on their shoulders as he says thank you. It’s not an invitation; he’s just being nice. He’d hold my hand if I offered it. But I’m off offering. I don’t just feel like the third wheel—it’s more like the twenty-sixth.
I don’t blame him. I direct it all at myself. For not being able to go along.
I finally make my excuses and shove my way to the restroom. The person in front of me is clearly Natalie Merchant-of-Penis, since her T-shirt reads I BLEW 10,000 MANIACS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT. She takes so long inside that I’m worried she’s found her 10,001st maniac, but when she emerges, she’s all alone. When she passes me, she says, “I just want to thank you,” and I don’t know what to do but nod.
Once I’ve locked the door behind me, I do my business. And then I just sit there, because I realize I don’t want to face Ely yet. In fact, I realize that I’m actually going to leave. And I’m not even going to tell Ely I’m leaving, since I don’t want to ruin his night. I want him to stay and have fun. I’ll text him once I’m safely away. I don’t want to rain on his parade. Although, yeah, I wouldn’t mind if his parade decided to follow me out the door.
I look at all the graffiti in the stall. Some of it even has pictures. I don’t understand half of it. It’s only after I’ve been reading for two minutes or so and the person waiting outside has started to pound on the door that I know what I’ve been looking for—not words of wisdom, but a blank space.
There’s one available under an inscription that says:
The Cure. For the Ex’s? I’m sorry, Nick. You know. Will you kiss me again?
I take a pen out of my pocket and write:
Ely, I want. You, me, the rest of it. I want someone to make it work, and I don’t know if it can be me. Because I’m so uncool and so afraid.
I wonder if you’re supposed to sign something like this. But I figure if he ever sees it, he’ll know it’s from me. And if he doesn’t know it’s from me . . . well, then it wasn’t meant to happen anyway.
When I leave the bathroom, the person waiting says pretty much the opposite of “I just want to thank you.” But that’s the least of my cares. I search the club for Ely, thinking maybe I’ll say good-bye in person after all. But then I see him at the bar, drinking his bright green drink and chatting with the bouncer from before and two gay boys who almost look like they could be twins. They’re all laughing. Enjoying themselves.
I feel like an outsider to that. To Ely, and to that. So I head where the outsiders belong: outside.
I’m never going to fit in with him. Never.
I know this is the wrong choice. But it feels like the only choice. So I make it.