Jesse A. Gall is currently a professional student and a new writer (The Legendary has his first publication!). Completing his Bachelor's in Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin, he now continues his coursework at Western Kentucky University, where he is pursuing his Master's Degree in Creative Writing. Most of his time is spent worrying about his thesis, writing short stories he shouldn't be writing because he needs to finish his thesis, dabbling in poetry, eating (he loves food), and expanding his knowledge of film (AKA...he watches a lot of movies). 

I'm Not Going, I'm Staying (October 20, 2009. Issue 10.)

The mirror is staring back at Effie with a scornful glare of accusation, condemning him an ugly interloper. Who do you think you are really? the mirror coaxed. If he knew the answer to that question he might not be sitting at a cluttered vanity in the overcrowded backstage dressing room at Rhythms gay club on a Tuesday afternoon wishing for just a few more crumpled up dollar bills to fill his empty and yearning pockets. Then again, what else would he be doing?

Effie bends over towards the mirror and begins gathering the painfully necessary tools of his mask: foundation, concealer, lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, more eyeliner, eye shadow, more eye shadow. He picks up a small jar of pomade to control his hair (it’s one of those days) and rubs it into his hands the way his mother used to when she would get him ready for school.

“There’s no reason not to look presentable,” she would say while preening each and every stray hair into a helmet of sharp cleanliness. He always thought he looked brutish when she did this, but the warm smile his appearance coaxed out of his mother would always relax his features just enough to bring a certain sense of ironic femininity to his face. It was this jagged softness that lead him to a career in drag. That, and Joseph of course.

He had picked Effie as his stage name after his mother —seeing that her son might be more inclined to performing arts than athletics — took him to a matinee of Dreamgirls on Broadway when he was 12. He didn’t know yet that loving that particular play had become a sort of in-fashion gay cliché, so he loved it as if he was the only one who knew how. Especially “Effie.” Her character was the character to him. In fact, he often thought of the other characters on the stage as a form of intermission. Light entertainment between the real stuff. Effie was the only character to which he felt personally and rigorously bound. There was something about the obviousness of her pain that made her so entreating to him, and kept him sneaking into the show as regularly as he could (often resorting to slipping in unnoticed with the smokers after intermission). By 14, anyone that truly cared about him knew to call him Effie.

Finally taming his coiled hair to that familiar uniform flatness, he plops down on his small three-legged stool with a downward glance of scorn. I just want a fucking real chair for fuck’s sake. The stool had been there for his entire career like the phantom pain of an amputee.

“Gurl, you know how to fit three gay men on top of that stool?”

Independence had just gotten off stage and was stripping off her Mariah Carey wig with a flippant exhaustion. She always noticed Effie’s ongoing hatred for his three-legged stool and found it perpetually entertaining to try to turn the sore subject into a humorous one, or at least a less annoying one. She didn’t like seeing Effie like this.

“I said, how do you fit three gay men on that stool? Turn it upside down!”

The joke fell on uninterested ears. Effie chuckled a bit to assuage Independence so she didn’t feel so bad. Effie could see it in her eyes every time Independence looked at him, the pity that coated each of her glares. He hated her for it, but somehow still remained firmly attached to her as his sole companion. It was not a romantic relationship; Effie had never seen Independence that way, though he knew that she hoped he would. He wished he could. It would be so easy to give up the indefinite struggle for companionship and settle for someone dependable, but he couldn’t. You see, with his penchant for sharp presentation, his mother had also bred into him a sense of cursed entitlement; he would never allow himself anything but the best, even if he never found it.

“Ugh! You are so gloooooomy boo! Pick it up, hooker! Look, there’s a lumberjack of a hot daddy sitting out in the front with your name on him if you want. He is so much! Tight denim and chest hair! Gurl, take me home!”

Independence knew that Effie wasn’t into that type of guy, the ones that obviously put their pants back on after they cum and walk out the door, but she would periodically mention these potential suitors for Effie in the hopes of creating a common ground between the two. Independence never slept with the same man twice, or hadn’t for years at least. She had several rules with her tricks (Never call me “man”) that she expected to be followed, and when the night’s boy/man would inevitably violate one of them, he would be tossed to the curb of her shabby over decorated lounge of a studio apartment.

“It’s fine, little lady, you take him. I’m not much in the mood for extracurricular activity this evening.”

“Fine by me bitch, I’ll take him home and show him my tool belt. I’m sure he’ll love it.”

She said this last statement with an air of confidence that did not betray her sense of self. Effie had seen Independence execute the same routine for the last year now. She would saunter her hips over to the “target” (as she called them), and monopolize their attention with a never-ending barrage of surface-level questions and flirty arm embraces. She always won, eventually talking even the most skeptical of men into her bed with the promise of a mythic exploration (You ever fucked a drag queen baby?). There was something about her that reminded Effie of Joseph. That peculiar way her bones and muscles seemed to work together as a factory of sensual movement? The way that her gaze made you feel important? The way she walked away? He could never be sure.

“Well then girly girl, best of luck to the main queen! Kill it tonight. Drinks on me afterwards.”

“Thanks, Indie.”

Effie was the only person who ever got away with nicknaming Independence. It was one of the things that made Effie feel more important than her other friends. Independence flitted out of the dressing room (now in a sequin red dress and Marylyn Monroe wig), leaving Effie to her own preparations. Shit I’m running out of time.

In a hurried rush, Effie applied the final details of her mask and looked into the mirror at a completely different face. He had been slowly getting ready over the last two hours.

“It takes serious work, it’s not just going to happen. You have to make it happen,” Joseph used to say to him when Effie complained too much about laboring in the details of eye shadow and the like. Effie hated that he now knew Joseph was right when he said that. It was always the details that people noticed (Oh I love your lip liner! Baby, that beret is maybe the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!), and now every time an admiring guest comments on a brooch or bracelet, Effie has to remember the days when he, drowning in innocent naivety, whined, proving himself to be a child to the only person who treated him like an adult.

But those are thoughts for another day, another time. Right now, it’s time for eye shadow. Today it’s a blend of blue, silver, and orange, a palate he had labeled “Maudlin Mermaid.” Next, lashes. The extending mascara and fake eye lashes made them almost twice their normal length. He liked that though. Like they were reaching out. In the mirror he no longer saw the 12 year old being preened by his mother, or the impossibly lonely man that inhabited his body when he was out of costume. He saw Effie from Dreamgirls. And when he would walk out onto the stage to entertain the club with his fabulously expected lip-synched version of “And I’m Telling You,” he would no longer be that petulant annoying child. He would no longer think about regret. He could be a different person. He could be someone else. Anyone else.

The mirror usually stopped accusing Effie of identity fraud when his “armor” (as Effie called it) was complete, but today something was different. Today, the mirror continued to stare and mock, pointing out all the little flaws and inaccuracies of his feminine visage, all the while maintaining a staunch expression of judgment. Who do you think you’re kidding?’ the mirror said in a voice that painfully reminded him of Joseph. Effie’s eyes began to well and his perfectly crafted stage face no longer covered the foreground of sadness and weight that exists buried under the surface. His misery was no simple blemish. Nothing could conceal it. What am I going to do?

“Effie! What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re up bitch!” barked Indie, popping her head in through the slightly opened door, before disappearing with the same speed with which she arrived.

Effie shakes off his sadness and throws it over his shoulder like an accessory. Maybe the audience will find it intriguing. Maybe they will hate him for bringing a sliver of reality into their desperate plea for escape. But Effie knows the horrifying truth: no one will see it at all.

Show time.

*   *   *

Effie leans into the closest wall with his forehead, looking for any support. The tip of his nose gets just a little crushed into the wall as his head rests into it in a downward dissociated way. His eyes are flitting opened and closed, never all the way opened or all the way closed. His lips tremble into each other. His breathing is sharp, exhaling spurts of air that only exist for an inch, before they crash into the vibrant red paint of the holding room’s wall and back into Effie’s face. He can taste his own breath.

“My entrance. My entrance must be flawless. It must impress. It must astound. It must. It must. There is no other logical way to succeed tonight, so there is no substance in your fear. There is no substance. It has no substance. It doesn’t matter. It can’t.”

For almost eight months now, Effie has been repeating the same mantra on every performance night. He didn’t used to need anything like that. He didn’t need to scare his fears away with necessity before Joseph left. It just wasn’t something he thought about. Whenever he got worried, or nervous, or insecure, he had the one person to whom he had given the most undying loyal kind of trust standing right there, telling him that he was just being stupid. It was that simple.

Of course, nothing was ever just simple between Effie and Joseph. They had met at a party of a mutual friend’s once, and Effie was drunk enough to be flirty and outgoing, eventually gathering up enough courage to actually go talk to Joseph, a short cute man of immeasurable confidence. They talked all night, and the next day, and the next week, and month, and so on, manipulating each other into revealing one dark secret after another, learning the childhood traumas and father issues that made each of them the person they were in a far too hurried fashion. They absorbed eachother rapidly. They binged on each other, like addicts, and neither of them mentioned the strange bond growing between them. They never had sex. Joseph was never willing. Effie was Joseph’s Independence it seemed.

He never concemated the relationship beyond the cautious and weak label of “friendship," though Joseph certainly had a tendency for breaking the boundaries of conventional platonic intimacy. Sometimes he would kiss Effie when he was the right kind of intoxicated, and they would connect in an impenetrable way, like they were sending the world away, forcing all the insecurities and denied truths out of their peripheree for a few thoughtless glorious seconds. Of course, Joseph also had a habit of quickly and resolutely reestablishing the very conventions he had just broken just as soon as he was given any time to reflect on his actions. (“You know that can never happen again”) . Effie convinced himself he wasn’t hurt by this at the time, unknowingly subjecting himself to the worst kind of torture, which was typical, since Effie never even considered blaming Joseph for his unhappiness. It was Effie’s fault that he was unhappy. If only he could do a little more for Joseph, then maybe he would finally be acknowledged for what he really was: much more than a friend. Joseph was undeniable from the moment that Effie met him. Which of course proved to be dangerous in the end, all that power.

“…My entrance. My entrance must be…” Effie is speaking with dangerous urgency now, enchanting himself into belief, combing his mind for the self-doubt, self-hatred, and all the other self-‘s, plucking them out one by one until his repression is stronger than his damage, and he can finally emerge, one disconnected leg at a time, from the left side of the stage, believable and beautiful.

And so he did, emerge. But now, he does so as a she. The light hits her like it's been wanting to the entire night, like it needed her. Like it's been waiting. Her smile is wider than it ever gets, the crowd urging her swelling pride upwards with floods of drunken applause. With the light from the stage illuminating so little of the audience, their forearms have disappeared, and only their clapping hands are dimly lit. They look disconnected. Like wings, all flapping at once, frantically fleeing from the wrists that have enslaved them for years.

Effie poses in the center of the stage and begins her song. She wails and emotes, forcing as much of her 12 year-old passion into this performance as she can. The beginning of the song feels more like dialogue than anything else ("That's a lie. That's a lie. It's just I haven't been feeling that well. "), and it is Effie's time to be defineable. She plays every part in the song, five different characters, and creates such an illusion of mistrust, betrayal, and pain that the audience slowly begins to lean forward towards the performer, like they're young boys seeing their first broadway show. It was never just drag to Effie. It was theater. It was art.

That’s really what got him to agree to try drag in the first place back then: the drama of it. It occurred to him, one afternoon while Joseph was pleading with him to try it just once (“You would be perfect! Why don’t you trust me?), that it was, in fact, incredibly rare to be given a forum of expression where a sickeningly large expulsion of emotion can be seen as praiseworthy, as long as it happens to the right Celine Dion song (“I Surrender”). Why shouldn’t he take advantage of the obvious benefits that would come from such therapy? Didn’t he often complain to Joseph that the world valued sequestering emotion far too much? That we needed that much more of it? At the time, he had wondered why Joseph hadn’t tried to convince him to try drag with that appeal. He must not have thought of it yet, he told himself then. Now, of course, he knows that Joseph just didn’t know him as well as he thought he did.

Her song ends and her feet stop moving for the first time since she’s come on stage. The music dies down and as the audience relaxes into the backs of their chairs, something strange begins to occur in the crowd. The on lookers that had previoulsy been so bold with their outgoing cheers and complimentary cat calls (Get it girl!) have suddenly been hushed, like someone put a lid on their reactions. They all turn stiff, anxious. Like they're nervous, or scared.

This moment is The Trap. That's what Joseph called it, at least. It's the most important moment of every drag production. It's the moment the drag queen has complete power over an audience, complete control. It is in this moment, that the performing drag queen will survey the audience, and very quickly locate her "Ridicules" (another Joseph term). A Ridicule is a sore thumb in the crowd. Anyone uncomfortable. Straight men very often find themselves titled Ridicules in gay bars because it's never too hard to notice the stiff overmasculinized shoulders of a confused straight man in a crowd of gay men all applauding another gay man dressed as a woman lip-synching Christina. Anyone who blushes easily is also probably a good Ridicule, like prudish waspy women out for a "crazy night."

"It's called The Trap because it is a trap. It is, in a way, a punishment for the audience," Joseph had explained this to Efffie on one of those slow late nights filled with cigarettes and care.  "It's the queen's retribution for being forced to fetishize himself in the name of entertainment.  For being forced to glamously beg from the community that supposedly idolizes him. The audience is trapped there, and must wait for your next move. If they try to leave, you call them out. Pick them. Mock them, make a joke out of that person. So no one ever leaves; they’re too afraid. Then you have a successful Trap, when everyone stays because they don't want you to fucking ridicule them. That's the power a queen must win back, otherwise you're just a slave court jester. They want to see something more monstrous than themselves in the end. They want to laugh, yes. They want to be entertained, yes. But most of all they want to see themselves as just a little less freakish. So you pick out the ones that don't belong, The Ridicules, the ones that make us feel freakish in the first place, and you give the people what they want. Someone to say what they can't. Because if you don't, they'll all go after the next most freakish thing in the room, which is almost always the tragic drag queen standing on stage."

The phrase "tragic drag queen" always stuck with Effie after that, like it had become one of those terrifying places parents threaten to send their children off to in order to keep them behaving properly. It was supreme punishment. The way Joseph let the name seep from his mouth made Effie take notice, like Joseph hated nothing more.

Unfortunately, for some reason or another, Effie could never execute a successful Trap when Joseph was around. He never felt comfortable yelling at those stuffy scared people that left during the speaking section of the show. It eventually lead to Joseph letting the whole thing go in as supportive of a way as possible (It's okay, you can't do everything right can you?) , but Effie knew that Joseph never stopped hating that particular failure. Effie felt it.

Strangely though, it was only after Joseph's abandoment, that Effie had made it a point to achieve a sucessful Trap every show, and had actually succeeded in doing so, as if he was proving himself stronger than Joseph thought he could be. It was the one moment that Effie could say, without a doubt, that Joseph was completely wrong about him, and Effie liked that.

As she choses her three Ridicules — a drunk woman on her Bachelorette party, a straight-laced button-down shirt business type, and the loud one in the front — and continues the comedy section of the show, Effie can't help but realize that The Trap is  not just a trap for the audience. It has, in some way, become a trap for himself now. He's become dependent on the feeling of strength he illicits from the experience, like it’s a high, and wonders if he could even quit if he wanted to, like it's an addictive high. He needs that power. That stability. And it never lasts long enough. It seems that Effie has grown a tolerance.

It's the only thing that keeps him coming back anymore.

*   *   *

Effie wished the night would finish as decidedly as her songs, but that was never the case. Her songs always ended sharply, with flourish. See, after a few months practice on the stage, Effie had learned the art of song selection, choosing to perform only those songs that build with a crashing tension, rising towards a memorable and explosive climax. Watch me now! she would say to herself, feeling the audience squirm in her palm as she flexed her control over them.

“You have to demand it!” Joseph had said one late night, two years ago, in their poorly kept studio apartment, after a particularly embarrassing performance on Effie’s part. They were roommates at the time. “They don’t pay attention to you because you don’t demand it!”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do. I feel like I’m begging for scraps, and I look fucking ridiculous—“

“This is what I’m talking about! How can any audience every find you worthy if you wouldn’t even watch you!”

Effie now stares into the mirror and wonders if anything has changed since then. Sure he had learned to demand attention, and it had helped him build a little acclaim, but what for? Now he just sits on his miserable stool and stares into the mirror, preparing himself to remove the fame off of his face and return to the lonely life of hidden mediocrity that he had become so used to.

Untwisting the cap to a bottle of Cold Cream, Effie gags a little bit. He hates Cold Cream, mostly for its stubborn insistence to be neither liquid nor solid, existing only as a mutated gunk that lives somewhere in between the two states. It was for the same reason that Effie hated papier-mâché as a child.

He lops a large scoop of the jelly into his palm, and winces as he rubs it into hands. He takes a moment to breathe sharply inward before rushing his hands towards his face and smearing the cursed cream all over. He feels like a child when he does this, and can’t help but remember the smell of his mother’s closet, where he would spend hours lying on his back, playing with the dangling hems of her perfectly ironed dresses.

Effie had long ago learned that you shouldn’t open your eyes when you’re covered in Cold Cream, it tends to seep in and settle for the remainder of the night, annoyingly greasing the eyeball with every blink. It was for this reason, that Effie did not hear the cautious entrance of her quiet admirer.

“He…hello…”

“Fucking shit! Who’s there?!” Effie is mortified. It's rare for a fan to come back stage, they don’t usually like to risk seeing the monster behind the mask. Effie thought it was bitterly hilarious that the first fan to approach him backstage in some time should arrive when he was covered in Cold Cream. “Don’t you knock? This is a dressing room, as in, people are getting dressed, and don’t appreciate being walked in on.”

Effie said this with a wavering annoyance. He hated that he looked so deformed, but at least when this man inevitably leaves for someone more deserving of the attention, he can say that he wasn't rejected, the Cold Cream was, and that made sense to Effie.

"Sorry, I know how you hate people seeing you covered in that shit."

It might have been the familiar way that he said "that shit" that made Effie curl up inside like a wriggling tortured worm. It could have been the way his visitor's voice always raised a little bit when he thought he was being cute. Maybe it was the insincere "Sorry." Either way, Effie knew that Joseph was standing at his door. He was just standing there, like he hadn't been missing from that very spot for the last year.

"What the fuck." It wasn't a question. Effie didn't want to ask questions. He just wanted to go home and leave this for a less depressing time. Whenever that might be. "What are you doing here?" This was a question, obviously. As always, Joseph remains undeniable.

"You were great tonight."

"Thank you."

The silence sort of pulsed through the room, passing through the two confused boys, taking their words with them. They just stood there and swayed slowly back and forth, never really moving, but never standing still. This sort of stillness had only ever happened one other night. The night that Joseph left.

It was warm the day that he left, and Effie only really remembers fragments of what really happened, parts were missing. There were holes. Everywhere around him there were holes. He only remembers the dreadful feeling of recognition that Effie's life had very dramatically shifted, and that things would have to be rebuilt. He remembers being torn down.

More specifically, he remembers that Joseph never really gave him a reason for leaving. He remembers coming home after a performance that felt like every other performance, hollow and adequate, to find his roommate and partner, a private term Effie allowed himself to use for Joseph, gone. He had left a single note.             "Don't call me. I'll contact you."

It was the cruelest thing that he could have ever done to Effie, for Joseph knew that inside of Effie's undying attachment to him was an equally permanent sense of loyalty. Effie wouldn't call, Joseph had told him not to. Effie would wait. Even in abandonment, Effie still trusted him. It was two months before Effie realized that he was still adhering to set of rules that applied to a relationship that hadn't existed for sometime, and it was two more before he even accepted the reality of it all, let alone the emotional consequences that would unquestionably start prying their way into his life. He was ruined for quite some time, and still is for the most part.

"What are you doing here?" Effie was numb. He continued to stare into the mirror, staring into his own face, still partially covered in Cold Cream, as if nothing were happening.

"I just wanted to say good job to—"

"Jesus Christ, I meant What are you doing here!? Now?"

Joseph stopped talking when Effie interrupted him. This was something new. He didn't really know how to deal with Effie when the fault was undeniably his own. No blame could be shifted. No manipulation could really work. There were new rules. He did the only thing he knew how to do.

"Sorry, I guess I'll go."

As he turned his shoulder, Joseph realized that he had just made a monumental mistake. This occurred to him as he began to recognize the sound of something flying towards the back of his head. Something heavy and breakable. Something that would hurt. Glass collided with the wall to Joseph's right, just above the door he was attempting to exit through. The room exploded in the sounds of the shattering, a blizzard of glass filling the space around Joseph's head. He instinctually ducked and covered his head. Effie liked this. It was apparent control. Something tangible he could remember forcing Joseph to do. A victory.

 Effie had unscrewed one of the light bulbs that bordered her vanity and hurled it at the doorway. He didn't want to hit Joseph. He didn't really know why he threw it. He just did. He had leaned forward, began calmly unscrewing the light bulb from the socket, before finally turning around and launching it with all his might and unfurled repression at Joseph.

Joseph reeled around to analyze Effie. There was no anger in Joseph's face, just vigilant curiosity. His eyes were narrow with inspection and his nostrils flared, but his lips were curled into a half-comforting smile. Why had he thrown that? What had happened to Effie?

As Joseph looked into Effie's face, he immediately saw that he would never know what exactly was going on in Effie's head at the moment. He just sat on his stool and looked back at Joseph, indifferent and shielded, none of their history on his face.

"What was that?" Why did you do that?"

Effie remained still.

"What the fuck Effie!? WHAT. THE. FUCK!? Are you trying to kill me or—"

Joseph continued to ramble on with varieties of the same expression. "How could you," "What were you," "Why are you," beginning most of his sentences. He looked frustrated and stupid, like he was having a tantrum. His legs vibrated a bit at the knees, locking then releasing, and locking then releasing, making him appear to bounce. His hands balled into fists and his elbows became rigid. He began to sweat just a little bit, in that unclean sloppy sort of way, and his hair lost control of itself, his bangs clumping into little spidery blades of moisture. His muscles were tense and his eyes didn't seem to be there at all. Not how Effie knew them anyway. All the fluidity of Joseph's grace abandoned him as he devolved in front of Effie's eyes.

Effie didn't say a word. It had to be about five minutes before Joseph just stopped trying and just left, his dignity and sense of victory broken on the floor next to the crunchy glass bit of the lightbulb. He was gone. Again.

This time though, Effie didn't cry at all. He didn't feel sadness, or loss, or anything really. He just leaned back on his painfully broken down three-legged stool, reached over to press "Play" on Independence's little stereo, opened his ears to the familiar ease of the Dreamgirls sound track and smiled his mother's smile.