“Yeah,” he sighs absently. A splotch of blood begins to leak softly through his bandana as chuckles to himself. “You were right, after all, Ma; you were right after all.”
Still propped against the wall, he stares distantly at his hands for several minutes. His shaky legs make their own effort to stand; his sneakers flop around ineffectually as they plead with the gawking, pitted tar.
“For me?” he jokes to himself in a childish voice, feet still rolling pathetically. He sees how large his hands have grown, how they’ve hardened and scarred and cracked; he wonders how they got that way, all on their own. “Well, ok,” he grumbles, “but they’ll take some getting used to.” His hands lower, then, and his eyes lose focus for a moment.
A sudden, gagging cough bends him over—the strain of it draws out the cords in his neck and pushes a thick gob blood out from under the bandana. In one sticky strand, it swings and drools from his eyebrow down to the pavement. He wipes at it distractedly, noticing how the sun is swallowed by the decaying skyline at the end of the lot. He’s taken by the way all the stucco and the dirty glass, all the rusted dumpsters and the glinting pipes interact with its fleeting light. The air is dusty, and each ray is described individually by the particles that lie, forgotten, along its path—each one incinerated minutely, voiceless and surprised, as the retreating beams refuse to turn, refuse to acknowledge the nearness of the impending night.
Yes, this is nature—in its glory and its brutality. If a bird’s nest can be nature, how could this place not be?
And he did feel rather nested, then, as the dimming sky began to silhouette each of the squat tenement buildings that pushed in around him. They cupped him like a palm, a bowl, a nest, a cage; he leaned his head all the way back and stared straight up, bemusedly, at the one against which he sat. They gathered around him like a protective herd, leered over their spectacles like disapproving relatives, or tipped back their heads like bullies. He rose slowly to his feet and straightened his back, one hand pushing off a knee and the other pressing into the wall for balance.
He swayed for a moment, allowed the head-rush to clear, and began stitching together a clumsy gait. He swayed with each step and another line of blood was shaken loose, messily joining the last on the back of his forearm. As he dragged his fingers tenderly along the wall, his mind centuries away and unconcerned, one of the bricks handed him a chip of clay in apology. He stopped for a moment, surprised, and considered the way that it fit in the palm of his hand.
“It’s ok,” he said, “I never blamed you.”
Friday, December 11, 2009
French Queens by Kenneth Decker
On seeing me naked
waxed poetic the photographer:
“Beauty celebrated,
I envision you
naked
running through an aspen forest
outside Montreal
lean animal, long streaming hair,
and chased, yes, chased
by sixty mad French Queens”
To screams of freedom and equality
desecrated were their sacred tombs,
their bones cast to the sunlight,
and their crowns torn
from their dead, anointed heads
for cut stones, metals,
the idea to violate
the persons of the Queens:
they awoke their spirit souls
to haunt the earth
the modern age.
…ancient ermine robes shot gold,
the embroidery of silver stars
and golden suns, the virgin lilies
of the garden gowns of paradise…
…and the blackened tarnish
of their silver laces
filigrees their powdered faces.
Tiny shoes of calf and gold,
the tiny heels of Chinese red,
structured to a Mozart tempo
and a corset choking etiquette…
golden shoes familiar with Savonneries
and fine parquet, the marble stairs
ambassadors ascended, bended kneed…
enchanted suddenly and violently
to new world mad terrain,
New France, New Earth,
New Age, liberated
from the dual prisons: life and death
to chase the naked god-man
through the golden aspen glen…
oh…
not those Queens?
Black leather. I see.
waxed poetic the photographer:
“Beauty celebrated,
I envision you
naked
running through an aspen forest
outside Montreal
lean animal, long streaming hair,
and chased, yes, chased
by sixty mad French Queens”
To screams of freedom and equality
desecrated were their sacred tombs,
their bones cast to the sunlight,
and their crowns torn
from their dead, anointed heads
for cut stones, metals,
the idea to violate
the persons of the Queens:
they awoke their spirit souls
to haunt the earth
the modern age.
…ancient ermine robes shot gold,
the embroidery of silver stars
and golden suns, the virgin lilies
of the garden gowns of paradise…
…and the blackened tarnish
of their silver laces
filigrees their powdered faces.
Tiny shoes of calf and gold,
the tiny heels of Chinese red,
structured to a Mozart tempo
and a corset choking etiquette…
golden shoes familiar with Savonneries
and fine parquet, the marble stairs
ambassadors ascended, bended kneed…
enchanted suddenly and violently
to new world mad terrain,
New France, New Earth,
New Age, liberated
from the dual prisons: life and death
to chase the naked god-man
through the golden aspen glen…
oh…
not those Queens?
Black leather. I see.
Lesbian Tea Party by Christine Stoddard
Prim Carolyn never claimed 'bellehood' in this beauty imbued neighborhood where all
the pretty girls steal away to lewdly kiss their select cutie boys in deep gardens after school.
She, the bull (with hair that tufts out like horns, and cool lips, and nostrils unsuitable for ringing)
prefers to remain unknown, despite her penchant for quietly singing to herself, as she walks
to the corner store, where she always steps in, nearly chiming, "Back for more of that Earl Gray!"
And the shopkeeper pushes up his eyeglasses and sniffs, "Oh, you're back again today, Carolyn?"
Five minutes later, Carolyn is brewing tea in the shade of her cramped little kitchen, still singing.
She does not pretend to spend her afternoons holed up in azalea bushes, bitty breasts bouncing
at the hurried hands of masculine fervency that never distinguishes between whispers and whooshes.
Carolyn awaits the lacquered nails tapping at the window, the ones so undeniably feminine in grooming.
Carolyn awaits her chance at swooning and spooning, her chance for the quivering flower within her
to begin blooming at the sight of--not sunlight--but fingers tipped with rhinestones and magenta polish.
Never does she imagine her desires for love and romance being demolished--not now, not anymore,
not after a thousand-and-one girls have denied her India ink letters and pressed dandelions before.
Rejection could not blossom in an eternity, not between a lace-and-pigtails hungry teacher and a
shy and willing child just beginning to analyze the black mystique of womanhood, in any case.
"Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me now and forever and--"
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first spoke to her about Toni Morrison and Sula or the lovely Princesse de Cleves.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first sipped her tea and exclaimed at its deliciousness instead of calling it a joke
or complaining about the latest laddy who broke her heart before Christmas or Valentine's Day.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who promised her that their lesbian tea parties were really, oh, really more than okay.
the pretty girls steal away to lewdly kiss their select cutie boys in deep gardens after school.
She, the bull (with hair that tufts out like horns, and cool lips, and nostrils unsuitable for ringing)
prefers to remain unknown, despite her penchant for quietly singing to herself, as she walks
to the corner store, where she always steps in, nearly chiming, "Back for more of that Earl Gray!"
And the shopkeeper pushes up his eyeglasses and sniffs, "Oh, you're back again today, Carolyn?"
Five minutes later, Carolyn is brewing tea in the shade of her cramped little kitchen, still singing.
She does not pretend to spend her afternoons holed up in azalea bushes, bitty breasts bouncing
at the hurried hands of masculine fervency that never distinguishes between whispers and whooshes.
Carolyn awaits the lacquered nails tapping at the window, the ones so undeniably feminine in grooming.
Carolyn awaits her chance at swooning and spooning, her chance for the quivering flower within her
to begin blooming at the sight of--not sunlight--but fingers tipped with rhinestones and magenta polish.
Never does she imagine her desires for love and romance being demolished--not now, not anymore,
not after a thousand-and-one girls have denied her India ink letters and pressed dandelions before.
Rejection could not blossom in an eternity, not between a lace-and-pigtails hungry teacher and a
shy and willing child just beginning to analyze the black mystique of womanhood, in any case.
"Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me now and forever and--"
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first spoke to her about Toni Morrison and Sula or the lovely Princesse de Cleves.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first sipped her tea and exclaimed at its deliciousness instead of calling it a joke
or complaining about the latest laddy who broke her heart before Christmas or Valentine's Day.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who promised her that their lesbian tea parties were really, oh, really more than okay.
Our Little Johnny by Christine Stoddard
I am staring at the porcelain doll, the one with a paper moon face,
the one bound in gaffer tape and strands of black, black lace that
Johnny collected from his dead grandmother's dress during one of
his Saturday corpse raids, the ones that cause his auntie distress.
We never say that Johnny is 'sick,' despite his penchant for peeling
roadkill off cement or giving small creatures a blood-drawing prick
with one of the hundreds of needles he stores in his desk drawer,
things other people would hide behind bolted and locked doors so
as not to stir suspicion within the curious mind and even curiouser
heart of the suburban housewife, the kind of wife and mother that
Johnny's own mother once was--that is, before Johnny became
the boy who scooped marrow from the bone for an art project.
We never say that Johnny is 'mental' or 'morbid' or 'plain wrong.'
We never question that chilling song he wrote and always sings,
the one about murdering the neighbor child and splattering his
red, red blood across his room's walls, the walls he, the wild one,
painted in celebration of finally cracking a sparrow's neck in a
single twist, one flick of his pasty wrist, while dancing on the deck.
Remember what he built on that deck, that Halloween eve two years
past, the year he dressed as "what Steve will look like after I kill him"?
After stowing away mouse skeletons since he was just four years old,
Johnny rubbed his pale hands together and decided to be really bold
by constructing a giant mouse skeleton out of all the ones he scraped
from his attic, where he draped traps with the same flair that one pulls
a dark, dark cloth over the cold face and hair of the recently deceased.
No, no, no, despite Johnny's obsession with life after death and despite
his habit of mentioning the ways he'd like to rupture someone's breath;
despite the fact that he has never even picked up a crayon that was not
crimson or ebony to lay on one of his brusque, devil-worshipping drawings,
Johnny--oh, our tender, impressionable, angel of a boy Johhny--is not sick.
the one bound in gaffer tape and strands of black, black lace that
Johnny collected from his dead grandmother's dress during one of
his Saturday corpse raids, the ones that cause his auntie distress.
We never say that Johnny is 'sick,' despite his penchant for peeling
roadkill off cement or giving small creatures a blood-drawing prick
with one of the hundreds of needles he stores in his desk drawer,
things other people would hide behind bolted and locked doors so
as not to stir suspicion within the curious mind and even curiouser
heart of the suburban housewife, the kind of wife and mother that
Johnny's own mother once was--that is, before Johnny became
the boy who scooped marrow from the bone for an art project.
We never say that Johnny is 'mental' or 'morbid' or 'plain wrong.'
We never question that chilling song he wrote and always sings,
the one about murdering the neighbor child and splattering his
red, red blood across his room's walls, the walls he, the wild one,
painted in celebration of finally cracking a sparrow's neck in a
single twist, one flick of his pasty wrist, while dancing on the deck.
Remember what he built on that deck, that Halloween eve two years
past, the year he dressed as "what Steve will look like after I kill him"?
After stowing away mouse skeletons since he was just four years old,
Johnny rubbed his pale hands together and decided to be really bold
by constructing a giant mouse skeleton out of all the ones he scraped
from his attic, where he draped traps with the same flair that one pulls
a dark, dark cloth over the cold face and hair of the recently deceased.
No, no, no, despite Johnny's obsession with life after death and despite
his habit of mentioning the ways he'd like to rupture someone's breath;
despite the fact that he has never even picked up a crayon that was not
crimson or ebony to lay on one of his brusque, devil-worshipping drawings,
Johnny--oh, our tender, impressionable, angel of a boy Johhny--is not sick.
Blue Shadow by Christine Stoddard
Southern city streets are silent on Sundays. Churches shake with the sounds of heaving organs, fervent clapping, and tearful screams of praise, but the roads remain deserted. Even the squirrels rest from collecting their acorns. Sunday, the Bible reminds Virginia through Texas, is sacred. Only atheists, Jews, and Candy Loo ignore this.
Candy Loo parked himself on a rickety bench just facing Sacred Heart Cathedral. The final bell rang as a five-member family scrambled inside, the mother dragging the smallest and most reluctant child by the hand. The father held the door open for them all. Then the five of them disappeared into the house of wafers and wine. Candy Loo popped an unsalted peanut into his mouth. The salted kind cost too many pennies extra. He would rather spend that money on the outside of his mouth.
The mouth boasted full lips, the kind that even saltiest peanuts could only slightly deflate. The lips looked soft and smooth. And for all the time Candy Loo spent exfoliating and applying strange, European creams to them, it was no surprise. Candy Loo colored his lips the most tempting shade of red—not vampishly red or red light district red. It was a lush red, like fresh fruit syrup. His lips deserved to be kissed. And you wanted to kiss them.
You did not, however, want to kiss the rest of the face. The small eyes gleamed black and nasty, even when Candy Loo smiled the sincerest of smiles. Nobody could trust those eyes under any circumstances. The large, crooked nose craned over the fruity lips. A blue shadow darkened the cheeks and chin. Shaggy, bleach blonde hair hung straight down the sides of Candy Loo’s face, making it appear even longer and thinner. It was a witch’s face, minus the unfortunate warts.
As one’s eyes traveled downward, they noted the thick neck that also bore a blue shadow of stubble. Nothing about it alluded to the white and slender neck of a swan. The Adam’s apple protruded as if Candy Loo himself had gagged on a bite from the Tree of Knowledge. The broad, bony shoulders nearly burst out of the women’s extra-large blouse the man usually wore. A stray hair or two poked out from the holes in the blouse’s delicate lace. The chest was a man’s, the hands were a man’s. The invisible waist, the narrow hips…they all belonged to a man.
Yet Candy Loo never identified himself as a man. At least not anymore. Ever since high school, he shaved his legs, pulled on pantyhose, and wore the biggest stilettos you ever saw. So desperately did he want to shed his birth given sex and shine at his senior prom in a taffeta gown. He dreamed of a shimmering silver dress with a luxurious train. And in his dreams that gown remained. His parents said he would either go in a tux with a nice neighborhood girl or not at all. Candy Loo made his choice and, thus, did not attend his prom.
Then, the day of graduation, he dropped his birth name and became Candy Loo, the most pathetic drag queen in all of Richmond. When the school principal called out “Harvey Lomax, Salutatorian” during the ceremony, Candy Loo remained seated. The auditorium’s mood fell from celebratory to horrified. The Valedictorian extended his speech on the whim as a quick cover-up but nobody listened. They only peered over at Harvey, with their confusion slowly evolving into pure disgust.
His father never forgave him. His mother skipped the graduation reception afterward and walked to the car, crying. Candy Loo’s parents revoked his college tuition and told him to pay his own way. So Candy Loo decided not to go at all. Instead, he hitchhiked across the country for a few years, supporting himself as a dancer for gay bars and a waiter for straight ones. Every drag queen he saw surpass him in their glorious femininity. Fatigued and thoroughly jealous of all the she-men stars that outshone him, Candy Loo eventually returned to Virginia. No one asked where he had been because no one remembered him. Only Harvey Lomax existed in their minds.
But Candy Loo was no longer Harvey Lomax. Harvey Lomax wore cool Levi’s jeans and impeccable polos, with his hair gelled back, just as his mother expected. Harvey Lomax made out with tittering girls to convince his father that he had a libido. Harvey Lomax was a track star and Honor Roll student because that’s what his older brother had been. Harvey Lomax was a liar and a huge disappointment only to himself.
Candy Loo abandoned polos and girls and conventional education and organized sports. Rather, Candy Loo embraced thrift store duds, sloppy men, his public library card, and walking around city streets for exercise. That may have worked for him in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, but it would not work for him in Richmond. Not if he wanted a roof over his head.
“I’ve had a roof over my head long enough,” Candy Loo hissed when the twelfth potential landlord with whom he had scheduled an apartment tour slammed the door in his face.
Two facts existed: 1) No respectful Christian Southerner would tolerate a drag queen in his building. 2) Candy Loo would not change.
So Candy Loo begged during the day and slept in the park at night. He carried around a coffee can he had painted pink, shaking it at all passersby and putting on his best falsetto:
“Ma’am, mister—ya got some change ta spare? Anythin’! Anythin’ will do!”
People either responded with pity at his crooked fake eyelashes and overwhelming perfume, or they condemned him for pretending to be what they believed he was not.
“Such a sick man.”
“Look at him. He think he a woman.”
“Couldn’t he at least shave the hair off his face?”
“Faggot. Fucking faggot.”
Sometimes, after a long day of begging, Candy Loo would walk past his childhood home and wonder about his family. Had his father finally retired from the university? Had his mother started up that catering business like she always hoped? Was his brother married, living out in the suburbs somewhere? Maybe they had all died and Candy Loo was the only surviving member of the Lomax clan. Yet he was no longer a Lomax.
On this gray Sunday, Candy Loo had already been awake for hours as pious Richmonders scrambled into church. He had already surveyed all of the empty stores with their richly adorned windows, reapplied his lipstick sixteen times, and gone through two bags of plain peanuts. Since the public library was closed, the only thing left to do was beg. People, he knew, usually exhibited vain generosity on the Sabbath.
At noon, the congregation scuttled out of Sacred Heart, filling the street like James River crabs in the summertime. Candy Loo threw his empty peanut bag on the ground and picked up his pink can. Time to go crabbing.
“Ma’am!” he called out in his high-pitched drawl. A short, middle-aged woman sporting a garish lavender hat spun around.
“Can I help you?” she asked through tightly pursed lips.
“Got any change to spare, please?”
The woman instinctively clutched her purse. “I just gave to the church.”
“The church doesn’t help me, ma’am.”
“If they don’t help people like you, who do they help?” The implication being, of course, that people like her did not require help of any kind.
Before Candy Loo could respond, the woman’s bald, sharply suited husband put his arm around her. “Is this…creature…bothering you, Coretta?”
“It asked for money.”
The bald man snorted. “It thinks money can help it?” Then he paused and looked directly at Candy Loo as he spoke. “Let’s go, dear. We have to get to the country club.”
The couple turned away from Candy Loo just as he turned from them. Globs of mascara streamed down the drag queen’s powder-caked cheeks. He walked back to his bench and pulled out another bag of peanuts. It was not the first time such a nasty episode had transpired, nor would it be the last.
“To be a peanut,” Candy Loo sighed, “To grow up with only one path and no options. But at least it’s a path nobody objects to. After all, there’s a whole industry that supports what you grow up to be.”
He sucked on the peanut until all he could taste was the fleshiness of his tongue. Then he crunched through the nut, scraped the sticky skin off of his teeth, and swallowed it. He shoved another in his mouth, grew bored with it, and resorted to pouring an entire handful into that black hole of teeth and gums.
The peanuts now gone, Candy Loo scooped up his can and delved into the Fan District, the nearest residential neighborhood. Victorian era townhouses lined the narrow roads. Flowers sprouted from the contained gardens. Trees appeared eloquently reserved. Cars were perfectly parked. Paint did not shed and grass did not fade in the Fan.
Candy Loo rapped on the first door he came to. An art student answered and jammed a few $1 bills into Candy Loo’s can.
“Don’t get drunk,” the skinny man muttered. He had on some hip band T-shirt and balanced a cigarette on his bottom lip. Billows of smoke partially obscured his chiseled chin and flapping ears.
Candy Loo cleared his throat. “I don’t drink, but thank you.”
The man nodded and closed the door, shutting Candy Loo out of the house that smelled of a dozen cats and cookie dough.
Candy Loo proceeded to the next house and then the next one, and the one after that. Most of the houses he tried were occupied. People came to the door, often gave him change to appease him, and possibly made a disapproving remark. That constituted the extent of their interactions. Nobody asked Candy Loo for his life story or even a tiny explanation. They did not care about the human behind the gaudy clothes and make-up. All they saw was tacky glitter and bad nails.
This did not particularly offend Candy Loo. He accepted it as part of his lifestyle. Only the most golden of souls would inquire about his health or happiness and perhaps invite him in for a warm cup of tea, perhaps even dinner. If Candy Loo shed a tear or two, it was involuntarily. His body reacted when his heart felt nothing. No one could offend him after all these years, he reasoned.
The drag queen adjusted his velvet skirt. The top button kept popping open. Once certain that he looked his most presentable, he continued knocking on doors. He had to compensate for his lackluster earnings outside of Sacred Heart, after all.
Hours passed before Candy Loo found himself strutting around Jackson Ward, one of the scariest neighborhoods in that part of the city by all too many accounts. Yet reputation does not deter a truly hungry man.
Weaving in and out of streets renowned for sins both archaic and modern, Candy Loo fixed his black eyes to the ground. It was safer than catching a gangster’s gaze. When a pimp greeted Candy Loo, he mumbled hello but kept going.
“Wait!” the pimp cried.
Candy Loo froze, prepared to say he would not sell his body at any price. He bit his red lower lip.
“You need a buck?”
Candy Loo hesitated but pivoted around to face the pimp. The pimp reached his ringed fingers into his deep pockets.
“I don’t like carrying around change,” the pimp said. “Too heavy.” He dumped a clump of quarters into the can. Like rain on a tin roof, the quarters plinked.
Candy Loo half-grinned. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Have a nice day, ya hear?”
The pimp rounded the corner and vanished. Candy Loo shook his can just to hear the coins jingle. The sound pleased him, as did the thought that even a pimp could be kind. Suddenly the drag queen’s blouse did not feel so tight.
Candy Loo stood slightly taller. He thrust out his chest, in his mind a buxom D-cup. He would buy a beautiful dinner at a stylish restaurant in Carytown, one of the fanciest parts of Richmond.
“No peanuts tonight,” he whispered to himself. The corners of his lips curled up.
Renewed, Candy Loo knocked on the next house along the street. It was a naked brick, single-family home with a porch. Two wicker chairs and a table displaying pots full of ferns adorned the porch. A dirty Welcome mat was situated before the door. The stench of mothballs hovered in the air.
Nobody answered when Candy Loo knocked so he rang the doorbell. A dog began to bark. Candy Loo waited a beat before he heard the keys on the inside of the house dance around. Someone was attempting to unlock the door.
Finally, that someone cracked the door open.
“Git!” a man’s voice shouted at the jumping dog. The dog whined and scampered away. The man opened the door full, completely exposing himself to Candy Loo.
“Afternoon,” the man said. He was heavy-set and missing a finger or two.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“What you need?”
“Could you spare any change, please? I need some—“
“No, I got it,” the man murmured as he looked Candy Loo up in down with a voracious curiosity. “I got it. I mean, I have a daughter.”
Candy Loo raised his eyebrow.
“I know what you pretty things like and need.”
Candy Loo laughed a nervous laugh, still perplexed.
“Matter of fact, my daughter—Forrest, that’s her name—was just cleanin’ out her room today. Found a bunch of stuff she didn’t need or want anymore. Let me go and see what I can bring you.” He pointed to the inside of his house and softly closed the door.
The breeze rustled Candy Loo’s stiff hair. He tapped his foot and hummed a tune his mother used to sing. Never did she imagine her son singing the same song while dressed in drag, though. She must have imagined him singing it to his newborn child as he crouched over the baby’s crib, no doubt holding his wife’s hand. Harvey Lomax would have a comely wife and a flawless son or daughter.
“Okay,” the man of the house said as he opened the front door again. “I got just what you need.” He extended his arm and gave Candy Loo an envelope.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” he said as he took the envelope. He was too shy to open it right there.
“Not at all. God be with you.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Candy Loo thanked the man again and left the porch.
Once Candy Loo made it off the street, he sat down at a bus stop. The envelope was new, the whitest of whites. Candy Loo dug his index finger into the back flap to tear it open and revealed a piece of pastel-colored paper. It brandished elaborate curlicue script that Candy Loo had trouble deciphering. He squinted his eyes.
It was a gift certificate to a local beauty salon.
Candy Loo crumbled up the paper, tossed it to the ground, and spat on it. Then he waved down the approaching bus and headed to Carytown. He would order something French and expensive, even if he could not pronounce its name. Better than the greasy cheeseburger Harvey Lomax always fell back on in times of stress or disillusionment.
Candy Loo parked himself on a rickety bench just facing Sacred Heart Cathedral. The final bell rang as a five-member family scrambled inside, the mother dragging the smallest and most reluctant child by the hand. The father held the door open for them all. Then the five of them disappeared into the house of wafers and wine. Candy Loo popped an unsalted peanut into his mouth. The salted kind cost too many pennies extra. He would rather spend that money on the outside of his mouth.
The mouth boasted full lips, the kind that even saltiest peanuts could only slightly deflate. The lips looked soft and smooth. And for all the time Candy Loo spent exfoliating and applying strange, European creams to them, it was no surprise. Candy Loo colored his lips the most tempting shade of red—not vampishly red or red light district red. It was a lush red, like fresh fruit syrup. His lips deserved to be kissed. And you wanted to kiss them.
You did not, however, want to kiss the rest of the face. The small eyes gleamed black and nasty, even when Candy Loo smiled the sincerest of smiles. Nobody could trust those eyes under any circumstances. The large, crooked nose craned over the fruity lips. A blue shadow darkened the cheeks and chin. Shaggy, bleach blonde hair hung straight down the sides of Candy Loo’s face, making it appear even longer and thinner. It was a witch’s face, minus the unfortunate warts.
As one’s eyes traveled downward, they noted the thick neck that also bore a blue shadow of stubble. Nothing about it alluded to the white and slender neck of a swan. The Adam’s apple protruded as if Candy Loo himself had gagged on a bite from the Tree of Knowledge. The broad, bony shoulders nearly burst out of the women’s extra-large blouse the man usually wore. A stray hair or two poked out from the holes in the blouse’s delicate lace. The chest was a man’s, the hands were a man’s. The invisible waist, the narrow hips…they all belonged to a man.
Yet Candy Loo never identified himself as a man. At least not anymore. Ever since high school, he shaved his legs, pulled on pantyhose, and wore the biggest stilettos you ever saw. So desperately did he want to shed his birth given sex and shine at his senior prom in a taffeta gown. He dreamed of a shimmering silver dress with a luxurious train. And in his dreams that gown remained. His parents said he would either go in a tux with a nice neighborhood girl or not at all. Candy Loo made his choice and, thus, did not attend his prom.
Then, the day of graduation, he dropped his birth name and became Candy Loo, the most pathetic drag queen in all of Richmond. When the school principal called out “Harvey Lomax, Salutatorian” during the ceremony, Candy Loo remained seated. The auditorium’s mood fell from celebratory to horrified. The Valedictorian extended his speech on the whim as a quick cover-up but nobody listened. They only peered over at Harvey, with their confusion slowly evolving into pure disgust.
His father never forgave him. His mother skipped the graduation reception afterward and walked to the car, crying. Candy Loo’s parents revoked his college tuition and told him to pay his own way. So Candy Loo decided not to go at all. Instead, he hitchhiked across the country for a few years, supporting himself as a dancer for gay bars and a waiter for straight ones. Every drag queen he saw surpass him in their glorious femininity. Fatigued and thoroughly jealous of all the she-men stars that outshone him, Candy Loo eventually returned to Virginia. No one asked where he had been because no one remembered him. Only Harvey Lomax existed in their minds.
But Candy Loo was no longer Harvey Lomax. Harvey Lomax wore cool Levi’s jeans and impeccable polos, with his hair gelled back, just as his mother expected. Harvey Lomax made out with tittering girls to convince his father that he had a libido. Harvey Lomax was a track star and Honor Roll student because that’s what his older brother had been. Harvey Lomax was a liar and a huge disappointment only to himself.
Candy Loo abandoned polos and girls and conventional education and organized sports. Rather, Candy Loo embraced thrift store duds, sloppy men, his public library card, and walking around city streets for exercise. That may have worked for him in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, but it would not work for him in Richmond. Not if he wanted a roof over his head.
“I’ve had a roof over my head long enough,” Candy Loo hissed when the twelfth potential landlord with whom he had scheduled an apartment tour slammed the door in his face.
Two facts existed: 1) No respectful Christian Southerner would tolerate a drag queen in his building. 2) Candy Loo would not change.
So Candy Loo begged during the day and slept in the park at night. He carried around a coffee can he had painted pink, shaking it at all passersby and putting on his best falsetto:
“Ma’am, mister—ya got some change ta spare? Anythin’! Anythin’ will do!”
People either responded with pity at his crooked fake eyelashes and overwhelming perfume, or they condemned him for pretending to be what they believed he was not.
“Such a sick man.”
“Look at him. He think he a woman.”
“Couldn’t he at least shave the hair off his face?”
“Faggot. Fucking faggot.”
Sometimes, after a long day of begging, Candy Loo would walk past his childhood home and wonder about his family. Had his father finally retired from the university? Had his mother started up that catering business like she always hoped? Was his brother married, living out in the suburbs somewhere? Maybe they had all died and Candy Loo was the only surviving member of the Lomax clan. Yet he was no longer a Lomax.
On this gray Sunday, Candy Loo had already been awake for hours as pious Richmonders scrambled into church. He had already surveyed all of the empty stores with their richly adorned windows, reapplied his lipstick sixteen times, and gone through two bags of plain peanuts. Since the public library was closed, the only thing left to do was beg. People, he knew, usually exhibited vain generosity on the Sabbath.
At noon, the congregation scuttled out of Sacred Heart, filling the street like James River crabs in the summertime. Candy Loo threw his empty peanut bag on the ground and picked up his pink can. Time to go crabbing.
“Ma’am!” he called out in his high-pitched drawl. A short, middle-aged woman sporting a garish lavender hat spun around.
“Can I help you?” she asked through tightly pursed lips.
“Got any change to spare, please?”
The woman instinctively clutched her purse. “I just gave to the church.”
“The church doesn’t help me, ma’am.”
“If they don’t help people like you, who do they help?” The implication being, of course, that people like her did not require help of any kind.
Before Candy Loo could respond, the woman’s bald, sharply suited husband put his arm around her. “Is this…creature…bothering you, Coretta?”
“It asked for money.”
The bald man snorted. “It thinks money can help it?” Then he paused and looked directly at Candy Loo as he spoke. “Let’s go, dear. We have to get to the country club.”
The couple turned away from Candy Loo just as he turned from them. Globs of mascara streamed down the drag queen’s powder-caked cheeks. He walked back to his bench and pulled out another bag of peanuts. It was not the first time such a nasty episode had transpired, nor would it be the last.
“To be a peanut,” Candy Loo sighed, “To grow up with only one path and no options. But at least it’s a path nobody objects to. After all, there’s a whole industry that supports what you grow up to be.”
He sucked on the peanut until all he could taste was the fleshiness of his tongue. Then he crunched through the nut, scraped the sticky skin off of his teeth, and swallowed it. He shoved another in his mouth, grew bored with it, and resorted to pouring an entire handful into that black hole of teeth and gums.
The peanuts now gone, Candy Loo scooped up his can and delved into the Fan District, the nearest residential neighborhood. Victorian era townhouses lined the narrow roads. Flowers sprouted from the contained gardens. Trees appeared eloquently reserved. Cars were perfectly parked. Paint did not shed and grass did not fade in the Fan.
Candy Loo rapped on the first door he came to. An art student answered and jammed a few $1 bills into Candy Loo’s can.
“Don’t get drunk,” the skinny man muttered. He had on some hip band T-shirt and balanced a cigarette on his bottom lip. Billows of smoke partially obscured his chiseled chin and flapping ears.
Candy Loo cleared his throat. “I don’t drink, but thank you.”
The man nodded and closed the door, shutting Candy Loo out of the house that smelled of a dozen cats and cookie dough.
Candy Loo proceeded to the next house and then the next one, and the one after that. Most of the houses he tried were occupied. People came to the door, often gave him change to appease him, and possibly made a disapproving remark. That constituted the extent of their interactions. Nobody asked Candy Loo for his life story or even a tiny explanation. They did not care about the human behind the gaudy clothes and make-up. All they saw was tacky glitter and bad nails.
This did not particularly offend Candy Loo. He accepted it as part of his lifestyle. Only the most golden of souls would inquire about his health or happiness and perhaps invite him in for a warm cup of tea, perhaps even dinner. If Candy Loo shed a tear or two, it was involuntarily. His body reacted when his heart felt nothing. No one could offend him after all these years, he reasoned.
The drag queen adjusted his velvet skirt. The top button kept popping open. Once certain that he looked his most presentable, he continued knocking on doors. He had to compensate for his lackluster earnings outside of Sacred Heart, after all.
Hours passed before Candy Loo found himself strutting around Jackson Ward, one of the scariest neighborhoods in that part of the city by all too many accounts. Yet reputation does not deter a truly hungry man.
Weaving in and out of streets renowned for sins both archaic and modern, Candy Loo fixed his black eyes to the ground. It was safer than catching a gangster’s gaze. When a pimp greeted Candy Loo, he mumbled hello but kept going.
“Wait!” the pimp cried.
Candy Loo froze, prepared to say he would not sell his body at any price. He bit his red lower lip.
“You need a buck?”
Candy Loo hesitated but pivoted around to face the pimp. The pimp reached his ringed fingers into his deep pockets.
“I don’t like carrying around change,” the pimp said. “Too heavy.” He dumped a clump of quarters into the can. Like rain on a tin roof, the quarters plinked.
Candy Loo half-grinned. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Have a nice day, ya hear?”
The pimp rounded the corner and vanished. Candy Loo shook his can just to hear the coins jingle. The sound pleased him, as did the thought that even a pimp could be kind. Suddenly the drag queen’s blouse did not feel so tight.
Candy Loo stood slightly taller. He thrust out his chest, in his mind a buxom D-cup. He would buy a beautiful dinner at a stylish restaurant in Carytown, one of the fanciest parts of Richmond.
“No peanuts tonight,” he whispered to himself. The corners of his lips curled up.
Renewed, Candy Loo knocked on the next house along the street. It was a naked brick, single-family home with a porch. Two wicker chairs and a table displaying pots full of ferns adorned the porch. A dirty Welcome mat was situated before the door. The stench of mothballs hovered in the air.
Nobody answered when Candy Loo knocked so he rang the doorbell. A dog began to bark. Candy Loo waited a beat before he heard the keys on the inside of the house dance around. Someone was attempting to unlock the door.
Finally, that someone cracked the door open.
“Git!” a man’s voice shouted at the jumping dog. The dog whined and scampered away. The man opened the door full, completely exposing himself to Candy Loo.
“Afternoon,” the man said. He was heavy-set and missing a finger or two.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“What you need?”
“Could you spare any change, please? I need some—“
“No, I got it,” the man murmured as he looked Candy Loo up in down with a voracious curiosity. “I got it. I mean, I have a daughter.”
Candy Loo raised his eyebrow.
“I know what you pretty things like and need.”
Candy Loo laughed a nervous laugh, still perplexed.
“Matter of fact, my daughter—Forrest, that’s her name—was just cleanin’ out her room today. Found a bunch of stuff she didn’t need or want anymore. Let me go and see what I can bring you.” He pointed to the inside of his house and softly closed the door.
The breeze rustled Candy Loo’s stiff hair. He tapped his foot and hummed a tune his mother used to sing. Never did she imagine her son singing the same song while dressed in drag, though. She must have imagined him singing it to his newborn child as he crouched over the baby’s crib, no doubt holding his wife’s hand. Harvey Lomax would have a comely wife and a flawless son or daughter.
“Okay,” the man of the house said as he opened the front door again. “I got just what you need.” He extended his arm and gave Candy Loo an envelope.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” he said as he took the envelope. He was too shy to open it right there.
“Not at all. God be with you.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Candy Loo thanked the man again and left the porch.
Once Candy Loo made it off the street, he sat down at a bus stop. The envelope was new, the whitest of whites. Candy Loo dug his index finger into the back flap to tear it open and revealed a piece of pastel-colored paper. It brandished elaborate curlicue script that Candy Loo had trouble deciphering. He squinted his eyes.
It was a gift certificate to a local beauty salon.
Candy Loo crumbled up the paper, tossed it to the ground, and spat on it. Then he waved down the approaching bus and headed to Carytown. He would order something French and expensive, even if he could not pronounce its name. Better than the greasy cheeseburger Harvey Lomax always fell back on in times of stress or disillusionment.
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