FICTION

The Bunny and the Diva

One of life’s grander moments occurred in one of the grottier places, New Year’s Eve, 1988

(Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.)

New Year’s Eve in a backwater

It was 11:50 New Year’s Eve, 1988. I sat alone in a backwater bar, the only gay bar in backwater Fayetteville in backwater, Arkansas in the backwater Deep South.

I was in Fayetteville because my brother had dragooned me into his law firm as its chief litigator. We represented farmers against agricultural lenders foreclosing on thousands across the country. It was my job to take those cases to trial. We were headquartered in Fayetteville because it was where my brother lived.

The region was home to some of the most conservative, right-wing, Republican religiosity I have ever had to endure. I am an atheist, a liberal Democrat, an urban-centric Northerner, a cosmopolitan Washingtonian, a veteran of 1970s San Francisco, and a gay man. I have never felt so out of place.

It wasn’t a bar but a private club. The state controlled alcohol distribution and sales. Liquor could be bought only from state-owned stores. It could not be sold in public places, but private clubs could serve it.

So, the bar was a private club. The annual membership fee was $5. The entry price was a two-drink minimum.

An old, water-stained oaken table sat inside the entrance. Seated behind it, a fresh-faced, blond door boy monitored the arriving patrons, collected their $1, and waived them in.

I stood before him, reaching for my wallet. I saw a look of longing in his smoky hazel eyes. The expression on his boyish face that had not yet known the touch of a razor said, “Ah, new meat in town.”

He relieved me of my $6 and handed me the club register to sign. I signed as Baxendale, Hadley V. That name should wake up you lawyers. Hadley v Baxendale is a landmark English Common Law contracts case taught to every first-year student.

I signed that way more out of contrariness than any desire for confidentiality.

The door boy asked to see ID. Without pause, I whipped it out and handed it over. He checked my birthday. He read the name, looked at the photo, and looked at me. He looked back at my ID and the register to compare signatures.

I could see in his face that “Tyson Bruce” and “Baxendale, Hadley V.” did not quite compute. He looked back up at me. I winked. A curious, quizzical expression moved across his face. I saw enlightenment follow. He smiled broadly and, winking back, nodded his head toward the room.

“Well,” I thought uncharitably as I walked in, “they might be a bit slow in Arkansas, but they understand winking in context.”

Le Dépôt

The bar was called le Dépôt. It was in the long-disused and rumpty train depot of the first railroad to come to Fayetteville in 1901, the Ozark and Cherokee Central. The owner, an aging, gay retired hairdresser, affected the French name because he had always wanted to own a gay bar in Paris. Le Dépôt was the closest he would get.

A stage and in front of it a dance floor took up half of the main room. Tall, circular bijou tables dotted the space around the dance floor. Tall metal chairs with foot rails ringed the tables, accommodating three or five if the occupants were particularly chummy seated thigh to thigh.

The DJ’s station stood on a small, elevated platform in the far left corner. From its height, he surveyed the whole stage and dance floor, gauging the crowd’s mood. In the corner to his left, two postage-stamp-sized closets served as dressing rooms.

There were two lesser rooms beyond the main one. The bar was in the first. Two pool tables occupied the second.

Le Dépôt was a drag bar. On Friday and Saturday nights, two drag queens performed to audiences seated at the circular tables. I thought them sad little affairs, but the locals lapped them up, energetically applauding after every lip-synced song.

One of the drag queens was a dumpy, older man. He had the soft, ill-defined body running to flab one has come to expect of late fifty-ish American males. He had a heavy beard that nonetheless showed through the pancake makeup he slathered on before each performance. He wore a corset under a high-necked, ankle-length gown when performing. Coiffed in a black, Marie-Antoinette wig, he moved about the stage with an air of diffidence that ill-suited his gaudy, sequined costume shimmering in the stage lights.

Her stage name was Madame la Délicate —Madame, the delicate one. When performing, her lip-syncs lagged a syllable behind the recorded lyrics as if there was a delay between hearing the words and funneling them through her brain to her tongue.

The other was a tall, slender boy of 21. A beard had yet to grace his baby face. She wore a blond wig when she performed. She looked so like the door boy they could have been siblings. She wore a light-rose-colored, ruffled, mid-thigh-length skirt and a short bodice that showed a sexy, six-inch, bare midriff. Her legs were well-shaped atop red pumps.

Her stage name was Mathilde, a French word deriving from the Old High German “maht” (“might”) and “hild” (“battle”). Mathilde — Battle Might.

When not in drag, he was Rex Benson. He was handsome in his boyish way. He was well defined. Everyone could see that through the black, skin-tight, mesh-knit T-shirts he wore to the bar no matter the cold outside. He wore Levi 501 button-down jeans that fit so snugly they left no doubt about the sizeable package he sported. He had a bubble-butt at which one leered when he walked away.

He had thick, curly hair the color of cold steel and bright, sky-blue eyes set beneath perfectly proportioned, heavy black eyebrows. When he wanted to, he would cock his head slightly to the right and flash such a smile as melted my soul down to the place where it longed to be.

Wherever I was in the bar, he sought me out to flirt. I flirted back but nothing more, to his disappointment. I wanted to take him home, languidly strip him naked, put him face-down on the bed, a position I knew he craved, and fuck him silly. But he was an innocent 21-year-old boy, a Fayetteville native who’d never been outside the county. I was a worldly-wise man 17 years his senior. It would have been lopsided, an abuse of power and trust I did not care to commit.

Everyone knew Rex was sweet on me. Many in the university set thought me arrogant and teasing for leading him on but never fulfilling his desire. Several elderly patrons let me know that they admired my restraint by buying me a drink from time to time.

I told Rex what I wanted to do with him and why I would not. He acquiesced. He still came to me every time I was at the bar. He still flirted shamelessly, then pretended to pout when all I did was flirt back. We talked at length. We enjoyed each other in that way even after he found a boyfriend his age.

Madame la Délicate and Mathilde were at war, contending over which drag queen would reign at le Dépôt. Madame la Délicate was the incumbent but aging diva. Mathilde was the feisty upstart battling to dethrone the queen.

Sitting alone at my pocket-sized table, I was in a dour mood. I had other ideas of how a horny, single gay man should spend New Years’ Eve, but, alas, none was likely to mature, especially not the one I truly wanted, which was to be drinking champaign and plotting a night in bed with my lover who was working the ten to six shift as an Emergency Room nurse at the hospital.

Two contingents split what there was of a gay community. The 50- to 60-ish, clannish local gays occupied one side of the bar. The 21- and 22-year-olds from the university occupied the other. There were no contemporary gay locals for me. All had fled Fayetteville for brighter, friendlier gay ghettos in San Francisco, West Hollywood, D.C., and New York.

The time had advanced to 11:57. Madame la Délicate took the stage and began her performance, lip-syncing to Aretha’s Auld Lang Syne. She had it timed to end at the stroke of midnight.

At precisely 11:59, Mathilde’s dressing room door flew open, crashing like a thunder crack against the wall. Madame la Délicate stopped in mid-syllable even though Aretha sang on. Everyone, including Madame, turned to stare in the dressing room’s direction.

One-upmanship

Mathilde glided as if on air out of the dressing-room darkness, a perfect copy of the Energizer Bunny, replete with drum and drum sticks. Emblazoned on the drum head in big, bold caps, the letters E N E R G I Z E R dispelled any doubt about who this cartoonish bunny was. It had large bunny-rabbit ears, pink around the edges and white in the center, pointed straight up. It had oversized bunny feet in giant, blue flip-flops that pumped up and down as it moved. The drum was strung over its shoulders and bounced against its belly. Red, green, and blue miniature Christmas lights ran in a string around its circumference. Powered by a battery pack lodged somewhere on Mathilde’s person, they flashed their cheery colors in sequence.

Forgetting poor Madame la Délicate, the audience let out a hoot in appreciation. Banging the drum in a vibrant staccato, the Energizer Bunny glided around the tables and across the dance floor. It just kept going, and going, and going.

After a full tour, it stopped directly in front of Madame.

The flashing lights weren’t the only green in the room. Madame la Délicate had turned three successively darker shades of green with envy and jealousy. She stared trillion-kilowatt lightning bolts at Mathilde. A look of utter hatred contorted her lips.

Mathilde defiantly struck the drum four times in a rhythm reminiscent of the four opening notes to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. That was too much for Madame la Délicate. In a temper, she spat at the bunny’s furry face. Swiveling sharply left, she stomped off stage as well as she could in 3-inch platform heels and an ankle-length gown so narrow at the hem that it cut her stride in half.

Not at all nonplussed. Mathilde whirled the bunny around 180 degrees to face the audience. She pumped her bunny feet up and down and again struck the Beethoven notes. The crowd laughed and clapped, whistled, and whooped approval.

I couldn’t help myself. I gave a shrill, thumb-and-forefinger whistle and applauded with the rest. That did not go unnoticed. Gliding around and among the tables, banging the drum all the while, Mathilde made her way to me. She stopped at my side. I could see Rex’s laughing, blue eyes, and black eyebrows through the holes in the costume where bunny-eyes should have been. He gave me a look that pleaded for some sign of approval. I rubbed my thigh against him and scratched his bunny nose. Happy, Mathilde moved off to conquer yet another patron.

Gliding around the room, visiting first one then another table, she took the place by storm.

Long live the queen

Mathilde had decidedly bested diva Madame la Délicate. The reigning queen at le Dépôt was deposed. La Reine était morte. Longue vie à la reine.

More From the Desk Of