The Fruit Loop, Las Vegas

If this was Babylon, she was Jezebel, a painted Queen in regal jewels. Head high, making her way through a crowd refusing to bow to her, who relished in her destruction. Any sign of a misstep would have her lose her place. Her coiffed hair a tower of tall feathers mimicking peacock plumage, their goddess given eyes all seeing, yet a wall that seemed to shield her from their accusations.

Piranha was not a place for the light hearted. It was an aquamarine tinted underbelly of a custom made shark tank. It was all show, no substance, lined with the slick, wet bodies of people who wouldn’t look at her, not closely anyway, yet found herself going to the club every week with the promise of only one drink. The music filled her body, dulling the hum that preceded every thought; the worry that her tips wouldn’t cover her rent next week; her car going back into the shop; or how she was going to get enough groceries now that Emmanuel was leaving. It was all starting to fall to her, once again.

Once the armor started to fall, the earrings being pulled from each ear, the wig tenderly removed from his head, the transformation suddenly transparent, Sweeney had not only time to think, but room. He didn’t know if it was escapism that kept him coming back or the respite that the pounding of the bass mixed with his gin and tonic that created the dulling of his senses. It was a freedom to be, yet constricting into the confines he found himself. It was another level of shackles written for someone else’s key.

Life was too short to be unhappy, yet here Sweeny found himself tunnelling the drain again, hardhat, pickaxe filled with dynamite, and all. It was a familiar friend, one to play catch up with after too long of a time spent apart, only to feel that no time had passed at all. Only, it was a scar that laid plain its wounds over and over again, the map to pain obvious to those that paid attention more than he did. It itched, but did not hurt. A reminder when those that loved him left, for whatever the reasons were at the time, a thing that would never go away, a lesson learned, and never gone. Forgiven, but not forgotten.

It should not have picked at him so. He was healthy, a feat he would never stop appreciating after a missed dose of Prep and a night spent in a white haze; a sister, a constant if not a friend in his life; a distant relationship with parents who pretended he existed when it was the holidays. He was poor, sure, but wasn’t everyone these days when rent was higher than a mortgage payment? It felt like he had nothing but the desk where he got to pretend to be someone better, someone stronger, someone whittier, someone that could be everything he was instead.

The Fruit Loop was wild that night, already an area known for its loose definition of calm being so close to the college in the city dedicated to sin. Its two blocks of gay bars gave it its name; the edge provided by the not so good part of town and the Double Down, the punk rock bar on the outskirts of the next street. The idle tourist would occasionally saunter in with their lederhosen from the nearby Hofbrauhaus biergarten having too many liters of beer, not knowing their limit or what they were walking into. Tonight was different. Halloween always gave the Fruit Loop that effect; pudgy bumble bees, queer peers, and twinks dressed as the aptly named fairy making their way to the next bar, clogging up the streets that twinkled themselves with lights that seemed to evaporate into the night air.

Honey was in full form, a divine being to behold with cheekbones that could cut glass. Her butterscotch skin seemed to glimmer under the lights as her six foot two inch frame shimmied in her jeweled jumpsuit. Maybe tonight would be the night she would perform. There seemed to be enough of a crowd at Piranha that “one more Queen lip syncing wouldn’t be a problem,” she thought to herself. As she wandered through the alley that entered into the parking lot that opened into the back of the club, staring at the empty lot of the desert, a locked, little, black book tumbled through the air onto her feet.

The tinted black Mercedes it once belonged to continued on its journey. To where, she didn’t know. With whom, she wondered, but would never know. All she could know was what she didn’t know, and that was voluminous as the library she imagined belonged to her as a child, pretending to be Belle on the staircase. To say she could even know of a world where the kindness of a stranger would change her life was unfathomable.

The little black book was perfectly pocket sized, a library of pages for a Polly Pocket. Only, it was filled. Not with words, letters lining those crisp ivory pages begging to jump from thought to thought. No, there were oodles of $100 dollar bills sliding out. In the front page where the last $100 laid the only ink in the notebook in teacher red read vividly, “Write your story.”

Honey couldn’t believe it. Who was the person in the car? Did they think she was working like those in Naked City, the once glorious home of the showgirl now transformed into projects? It was that type of neighborhood and yet, the car was gone by the time she looked over again. The money started to pool in her hands, the thoughts of what she could do with it barely out of reach. Maybe tonight was a night to stay in instead.

That morning, a hangover of its own volition from the night before spiralling through his bones, Sweeny looked at the book with such suspicion. Its bloody penmanship the only clue to its purpose. “Write your story.” Something about that made him feel the boldness of the wig sitting three feet away on the desk, the underlinings of confidence starting to form around shoulders, straightening himself up before he became Honey, before he became the epitome of what he thought was beautiful, before he could blend into androgyny, dancing in the confines of what a boy was meant to look like. The money helped, certainly. Twenty-thousand dollars could do a lot of good. That would pay for a down payment on a house that could cut down rent, so he could support him and his sister as he figured out what to do, who to be finally, instead of who to be for the next check. The ticking of the past started to break through his thoughts, hammering in idle anticipation of which part of the wall it would next destroy.

Journals haunted Sweeny his entire childhood; their empty pages his primordial ghosts, a judgement of his lack of original thought. They would become lists upon lists, excel spreadsheets and adding columns instead of the great novel he had no intention of writing. Collecting those clean, pressed, stark, white pages of the black notebook became a calling card to his identity. Their binders a reminder of who he wanted to be rather than who he really was. It was as if by not writing in them, it didn’t make him whole, hiding a part of himself he dared not breathe. The dresses he wanted to wear would be too real, if he put his thoughts to paper. The feeling of being something else other than who he was was so present, he could never get out of his thoughts. So, his journals sat. They remained unopened. But never unloved.

So, he wrote. The words started to come to life in Sweeny’s mind; the images a snapshot into each pivotal moment. He scribbled about the first time he discovered Marlene Dietrich with the image of her captivating femininity laid plain with her curly blonde hair, bold red lipstick despite the black and white picture, and androgenous zoot suit, dancing between lines created for anyone but her. The first time he snuck out and watched an episode of “Queer as Folk,” only starting his journey into accepting his gayness through a white lens even when it didn’t match the fingers that put pen to paper. He wrote about the first time he learned about RuPaul, the two halves within him laid bare, both exceptionally male with a bald head and female with wigs handcrafted. The words that came were music on a bar, tinkling away into a minor chord on a major key. He wrote about the loneliness that permeated through his every breath, never allowing either side that made Sweeny or Honey into one that could touch.

The little black book stared back, full of the things never allowed to be said out loud. These words were sacred to Sweeny’s very being, similar to the giant, white bible with golden pages of his youth. It was time someone else read them; give those so similar to Sweeny a chance to be themselves fully. The twenty thousand dollars could become a blessing, could help with its new found mission, give Sweeny the room to make mistakes, try to write for people figuring out who they really were and give them a name, that their lines could be as fluid as they were, waves instead of sharp cuts.

So, Sweeney merged the she and he mirrors of their being into themselves, an everlasting loop to match where they felt their truest self, and found joy.