AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eventually, I made my way to the drag venue where Emory was a featured performer. It was fairly early, so I knew he’d still be working. I found a table at the back of the bar to wait until he was done.
When a waiter in full drag came by to take my order, I asked for a Coke. That earned me a big grin and the question, “You sure you don’t want something stronger, honey?”
I actually did, and that was so depressing. I’d prided myself on how well I managed my cravings these past few years. I was never even really tempted, until that night. But I said, “I’m sure. Just the soda.”
There was no way I was going to throw away four years of sobriety for a few hours of oblivion. Actually, I didn’t want to dull what I was feeling anyway. Yes, it hurt like hell to be without Gabriel, and I was terrified he wouldn’t forgive me. But I’d brought this pain on myself when I went behind his back, and I didn’t want an easy way out. I just wanted a chance to make it right.
A few minutes after I arrived at the club, Emory took the stage in all his Polly Swallows glory. He was known for his comedy and his style was retro glam, so he lip-synced to ‘Chapel of Love’ by the Dixie Cups while wearing an enormous white beehive wig, a very short bell-shaped wedding dress, and platform go-go boots. While he sang, he pantomimed a disastrous wedding with a go-go boy as the groom and several drag queens as bridesmaids. When he finished, he left the stage to thunderous applause and a deluge of tips.
He worked the crowd, bantering and flirting as he made his way through the club. The transformation in him always astonished me. It wasn’t just the change in his physical appearance, even though that was truly remarkable. His entire personality changed. While Emory would have been sitting in the corner hoping no one noticed him, Polly lived for attention and exuded charisma and confidence.
When Emory/Polly spotted me, he (she?) hurried over and loudly exclaimed, “Well, hey there, handsome! Fancy meeting you here!” When he drew me into a hug, he whispered in my ear, “Are you okay, Riley? You look like you want to cry.”
“I’ve been better. It’s been a rough night.”
“Come backstage and tell me what’s going on.”
As soon as he straightened up from our hug, he was back in character. He grabbed my hand and started to tow me through the crowd as he announced, “Coming through! Look what I caught, isn’t he cute? I think I’ll let him ring my bell!” He swung his hips as he said that, which made his bell-shaped minidress sway.
Once we were backstage, he took off that big beehive and his clip-on chandelier earrings as I said, “I know you’re busy, and I didn’t mean to interrupt you while you’re working. We can just talk later if you’re free.”
He ushered me down a long hallway to the dressing room, which was crowded with drag queens in various stages of costume changes, and he said, “I have fifteen minutes until my next number. What’s going on?”
I told him a short version of what had happened with Gabriel and left out the part about Simeck, because that last bit was too much to try to explain right now. Emory chewed his lip for a few moments before saying, “Okay. But like, if someone tried to help me launch a business and sugar daddied me a shop in the heart of the Castro, I think I’d marry him, not break up with him. What am I missing here?”
“You just have to know Gabriel and what he’s been through in his life. He has the hardest time trusting people, and I kept secrets and went behind his back. Also, keep in mind it wasn’t me who leased that shop. I could never afford something like that. It was his ex-boyfriend, and he’s probably the last person Gabriel wants to feel indebted to.”
“Okay, I definitely get that part,” Emory said. “I would never want to feel like I owed something to any of my exes.” While we were talking, he took off his boots and wriggled out of the dress, which he tossed onto an overstuffed clothing rack. That left him in a tight bodysuit, a stuffed bra, a hell of a lot of pads to give his body a voluptuous shape, and several pairs of tights layered one over the other.
He sat down at a makeup table, wiped off his pink lipstick, and applied a deep red lip liner as a blond drag queen at the neighboring table quipped, “What exes? From what I’ve heard, no man has ever stuffed little Polly’s pocket.” Emory sighed dramatically, and the blond leaned over and asked me, “So like, could I just go ahead and get the name of that sugar daddy? Because I’ve got no problem with men buying me buildings or whatnot.”
