The Year of Yes (12 page)

“You didn’t get dressed up,” Taylor said, eyeing me with distinct annoyance.

I took off my sweatshirt. His eyes widened.

“What? You don’t think they’ll let me in?” He’d made me nervous.

Taylor grinned and slapped me on the back.

“That works,” he said.

And it did. The breasts were like a secret password. The bouncer took one look, raised his eyebrows, and waved me through. Even in this crowd full of people ranging from guys in black leather harnesses to a trio of women dressed
as geek-sirens (fishnets, thigh-high boots, Scotch-taped horn-rim glasses, tiny white shirts with pocket protectors), it seemed I’d gone off the deep end. Luckily for me, the deep end was where everyone wanted to swim. I got more compliments in ten minutes than I’d gotten in my entire life.

“Can I just say that your tits are completely subversive?” one man in leather chaps and sideburns told me.

“Because they’re real!” his companion chimed in, from behind the unzipped mouth of his/her full-body black latex suit. “Nothing’s real anymore!”

“Come dance with us,” said Taylor, dragging me away from a transvestite who wanted to compare bra sizes.

The dance floor was a sauna of grinding, twisting, gorgeous people. Sweat hung in a mist over the room. Taylor, doing his own peculiar brand of the robot, shook us into the fray. Dancing with Taylor was never really dancing
with
him. You danced in the vicinity of Taylor, being careful to avoid his high-stepping knees. He always danced with his eyes shut, but he was also very kind in that he opened them every five minutes or so, to verify the safety of his female companions.

Marilyn Manson’s song “The Beautiful People,” a paean to freakiness, was inspiring everyone in the room to shout along. I wasn’t that familiar with his music and I didn’t know the words, but I shouted anyway. Someone danced up behind me and grabbed me around the waist. Long, silver fake fingernails on slender, pale hands. A wrist corsage. Pink roses and baby’s breath. I had to turn around to see what the hell I was dancing with.

And it was shocking. At least, shocking for a girl from Idaho. Long, stick-straight black hair. Bicolored eyes, one
ice blue, one dark. Skin pale as Wite-Out. A 1950s pink tulle strapless prom dress. Dark red lipstick. Six feet tall, rail thin, and definitely male.

“Hi,” I said, taking a step back. “What’s your name? I’m Maria. I’ve never been here before. Have you? It’s kind of dark, don’t you think? I like the music! I hate house music! But this isn’t really house, is it? More, what would you say? Goth?” I had an unfortunate tendency to talk too much when I felt awkward. Also, when I felt comfortable. In fact, I talked too much all the time.

He said nothing. He just smiled. Vampire fangs. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but since I didn’t recall ever meeting anyone so weird before, I decided that maybe it was just that he reminded me of the villainous stepmother, Maleficent, from Disney’s
Sleeping Beauty.
The Prom Queen extended his hand to me and curtsied an invitation to dance. Well. Okay. Year of Yes. I gave him a bow, and then I danced with the man. Why the hell not? I was getting to twirl with the belle of the ball. I wasn’t just lost in a fantasy. I speedily discovered that everyone else in the room wanted to dance with this guy, too. Taylor opened his eyes and squinted at me from behind the Prom Queen’s shoulder. He mouthed “Are you okay?”

I nodded and shrugged. Taylor shut his eyes again. “The Beautiful People” continued to play. The entire room raised its fists in the air and rapturously tossed their heads.

I liked the song. I’d heard it before, but apparently never in the right context. The silver fingernails were groping my breasts. I let them. I’d put them on display, after all. I was trying to be liberated. Besides, when else was I going to be groped by a guy in a cotillion gown? It hadn’t been on my
list of life goals, admittedly, but it was the kind of thing that you didn’t know you’d kind of like until you kind of did.

A neon redhead in black tulle came up beside us just then and shoved me. She’d been dancing next to us for a while, staring adoringly at the Prom Queen and jealously at me. In fact, there were several people who seemed to want to cut in. We were in the middle of the floor, and we were being circled by a bunch of dance club werewolves. I tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t exactly easy, particularly as the woman had, by then, come up behind me, and was dancing with her arms reaching around my waist to grab my partner. For a while, the three of us danced uncomfortably in a mass of knees, tits, and netting.

Finally, just after the Prom Queen wrapped his pale hands around my neck and stuck his serpentine tongue down my throat, I retreated. It was one thing to dance with the devil. It was another thing to make out with him. The guy had bared his vampire teeth at me a few too many times, and, from the bumping and grinding he’d done against me, I could tell that he wasn’t wearing underwear under his dress. I couldn’t get into cross-dressers. I had visions of trying to make a life with a person like that, sharing a closet, finding my shoes stretched out and my clothing looking better on him. I didn’t think I could take the competition. The girl behind me could have him. They matched, after all. All they needed was a vat of pig’s blood, readily available in the neighborhood, and they could reenact
Carrie.

The last I saw of the duo, the redhead was dragging him by his corsaged wrist onto one of the couches lining the walls and straddling him. His silver talons waved a vague good-bye, and then he stuck them up her skirt.

Someone nudged me. I turned to see a glitter-painted face and a gold Lurex wig.

“Do you know who that guy is?” yelled the glittered man, over the music.

“Random vampire in a pink dress,” I said. Not a sentence I’d ever have imagined coming out of my mouth.

“You’re kidding.” He looked at me like I’d just arrived from a voyage with Shackleton.

“Is he famous or something?”

“Hello?” said the guy, and walked away, appalled by my ignorance. I racked my brain as to who I could have been dancing with, but I was clueless. (It wasn’t until I saw a recent photo of Marilyn Manson, a few months later, that I understood what the ruckus had been about. My vampire was either Mr. Manson, or a very good look-alike.)

DISCONCERTED, I WENT TOWARD the bathroom. There was a line. A long line. Apparently, the bathroom cam was on. This meant that one of the stalls was broadcasting live to a room in the club. The rest of the stalls were normal. The line was equal parts people who wanted to be filmed and people hopping with desperation to get out of their leotards.

After a while, I focused on the fact that the person in front of me was wearing a very credible Marie Antoinette costume. He was also about six foot five and shaped like a linebacker. The powdered wig gave him another foot of height. His skirts were silk brocade and crinolined. I’d worked for a summer in a Shakespeare festival costume shop, and I had to compliment him.

“I love your dress,” I said.

“You wouldn’t, if you had to pee,” he said grimly. His voice was deep, booming, and weirdly, perfectly suited to his costume. “I’ve been waiting in this line for
years.
Fucking exhibitionists. Let me tell you, we’ve all seen enough ass to last us.”

Marie Antoinette and I watched an obviously coked-up guy in three peacock feathers and a vinyl jockstrap shaking his skinny white rump at the door of the bathroom, and yelling out, “Don’t wait for me! I’m going to be in there for
evah
!”

I didn’t want to think about how those peacock feathers were staying in place.

“That’s it,” said Marie Antoinette. “That is just
the end.
” He grabbed my hand, and pulled me through the line. People complained, but when they saw what they were being trampled by, they gave up. Marie Antoinette was a force of nature. As we reached the bathroom door, someone whined, halfheartedly, “Why does
she
get to go with you?”

I’d been wondering the same thing.

“SHE’S MY DRESSER, YOU IMBECILE,” Marie Antoinette yelled. There was a collective nod of understanding. Apparently having a dresser, or an undresser, was completely normal. Marie maneuvered us into the stall with the bathroom cam.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d never have gotten in.”

“Peons out there. Literally. Let them eat cake. Or let them snort coke, darling. Help me lift this motherfucking skirt.”

Later, I ran into Taylor and Janet. Taylor’s red paint was running. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I saw you on the bathroom cam,” he said. “Underneath a transvestite’s skirt.”

“Really?” I asked, as though I had no idea what he was referencing.

“Yes, really,” he said. “But I’m not even going to ask you to explain. I don’t know if I wanna know. It’s six in the morning. We’re going to go eat.”

The whole restaurant was full of people like us, looking somewhat the worse for the wear, but happy anyway. There were uniformed cops sitting at the counter, having the same breakfast we were. Looking around the room, at all of us glittering under the neon lights, I felt an unexpected rush of tenderness. It wasn’t for anyone in particular, but for the whole insane, spectacular city.

“I think I might love everyone,” I announced.

“Drink your coffee,” said Taylor, but he was smiling, too.

“WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?” mumbled Zak a couple hours later, after I tiptoed over the sleeping bodies of our guests, kicked off my shoes, and crawled into bed with him.

“Dancing.”

“You smell like hellfire and brimstone.”

“Lots of smokers there,” I said. “And vampires, dead French queens, debutantes…”

Zak smiled blurrily at me.

“I think I’m dreaming,” he said.

“Me, too.” He put his arm around me, and we were out.

I GOT UP AROUND NOON to do my laundry. It was a hundred degrees again, but I was happy enough that I actually danced my way down India Street, balancing my pink laundry sack on my head. My neighborhood Laundromat was called Lavadero Limpio, or Clean Laundry. The first syllable of the second Spanish word usually seemed more appropriate to me: limp. The night of dancing had made my thighs feel like jelly. I adjusted my bag and started to sing. The only way I’d actually make it to the Laundromat was if I wrote revisionist movie musicals in my head, and sang the lyrics out loud. Today, it was “Singing Through the Pain.” It had been unwise to jiggle braless for seven hours. Everything hurt.

That was when I heard someone else singing, and snapping his fingers, too. Every once in a while there was a little shuffling sound, like someone practicing a soft-shoe.

“Chupa, chupa,”
sang the voice.

I was not sure what that meant.

“Chupa la paleta, chupa la, chupa la paleta, chupa la…”

I turned around. My serenader was five foot zero, whitehaired, and Latino. He looked like a doll, costumed in a fancy pleated-and-embroidered guayabera shirt, pressed slacks, and a dapper straw hat. He twirled on his polished heel.

“
Chupa, chupa!
” he sang. I recognized the lyrics now. This was a song that had been broadcasting through Brooklyn for months, piercing my night with a tune akin to that of an ice-cream truck’s solicitation. Though I was unclear on the translation, my impression was that it had a sexy
connotation, given that I had seen a herd of fourteen-year-old girls singing it a few days before, sucking lollipops and swinging their hips suggestively. The old man did a little solo salsa in the middle of the sidewalk. He grinned from ear to ear, like a demented, ancient child. I’d been told that my smile was demented, too. Maybe he was enjoying his day as much as I was enjoying mine. I smiled, and hoisted the laundry back onto my head.

“
Lavadero,
” I told him, shrugging. He tailed me the three blocks to the Laundromat. Unless he was planning on stripping, he was not carrying any laundry that needed to be done.

“
Chupa, chupa,
” he sang under his breath. He seemed harmless enough, grandfatherly even, and soon I’d almost forgotten him. He sat down in a chair, and quietly drank a bottle of juice, while watching the Spanish-channel soap operas that the Laundromat played all day. It wasn’t until I was unloading my underwear from the dryer that my attention was drawn to the old man again. He came up next to me, and said, in English:

“You are pretty. Marry me, Louie.”

“I don’t actually want to get married, but thanks for the compliment,” I responded, smiling politely at him.

“
Qué
?” he said. “
Un momento.
” He dashed from the Laundromat.

I tried, with little success, to stuff all my remaining laundry into one machine. This was a period of time during which I often ended up with strangely colored lumps of clothing. I hated spending my whole afternoon waiting for the dryer to beep, but if you didn’t stay there, people would steal your clothes. I usually read three or four
New Yorkers,
or stared stupidly at the soap operas I didn’t understand. Not that there was much to understand. They were the same in every language. I was deeply involved in a doctor/nurse drama when the bell on the door jingled, and Señor Chupa reappeared, dragging another old man by the arm.

“Marco,” he said, and made a Vanna White-esque gesture of presentation. Marco was about the same age as Señor Chupa, but not as well turned out. His skin was lined with deep furrows and he was missing some teeth. He had a brown paper bag in his hand, with a straw protruding from it. His tie was loosened. I’d seen him before, hanging out at the neighborhood bodega, but he’d never spoken to me.

“Louie asks will you go to a dance with him,” Marco said, and sighed deeply.

Señor Chupa gave a little hop and stuck his hand out toward me for a shake. Amused, I gave him my hand, and he kissed it. Anything was possible, I reminded myself. Okay. Maybe not anything. This man was clearly too old for me, and he also seemed to be mildly mentally retarded, but what the hell, maybe he had a grandson.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

Marco looked flabbergasted. He conferred with Señor Chupa.

“Louie will pick you up here, tonight, at seven-thirty,” said Marco, his voice wavering, clearly giving me an opportunity to say that I had misunderstood.