“I’m still going to be fighting this legally,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to try and get the contract renewed. But Darren is connected to the mayor and I know he’s the one pushing this.”
“Uh, flaw, buddy. He doesn’t know Darren’s gay. And as far as I know, Darren doesn’t even really speak to him. Or work for him. Which means Taylor won’t give a shit about what Darren thinks.”
“Semantics,” Mike said with a wave of his hand. “Darren’s an actuary for the city. His boss is friends with Taylor. There’s no nepotism there, at least none that I could see, but Darren has a direct line to his father even if he doesn’t really use it.”
“Why me?” I asked, feeling slightly ill. “Why not Vince?”
“Vince can’t really seduce Darren, now can he?” Well, he could since I’d dreamt about it, but Mike didn’t need to know that. “And there’s the simple fact that Vince wants nothing to do with Taylor.”
“And Darren does?”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that for all the shit he’s talked about his dad, he still works for him? Maybe not him directly, but still. There are plenty of financial firms in Tucson that would salivate over him. Insurance companies, healthcare companies. And yet he still works for the county. You know what that says to me, princess?”
“Not a clue, but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you.”
Mike leaned forward on his desk. “It tells me that Darren still cares about what Daddy thinks about him. That he’s still searching for some kind of approval.”
“That’s reaching, even for you,” I said. “Psychoanalyzing was never your strong suit, Mike. You don’t even know him.”
“And you do, don’t you?”
No, I didn’t. For the most part. I knew of him. I knew about him. I knew the type of person he was. But that didn’t mean I knew him. But here I was sounding like I was defending him to Mike. I needed to back this shit right the fuck up before it spiraled out of control. “Everything I know about Darren Mayne does nothing to endear him to me,” I said.
He cocked his head at me. “Why do you hate him so much? It can’t be that bad.”
“Let me tell you why,” I said. “Seven years ago, there was a cocky little drag queen who saw a homo jock and was slightly smitten. This cocky little drag queen thought that this homo jock was just her type and she wanted to have him. Maybe for fucking. Maybe to keep. So she flirted with him and he smiled at her and she thought maybe good things could happen. He’d told her she was beautiful. She told him he was too. He’d laughed and the sound alone had made the little drag queen’s heart beat faster. And since she wasn’t always a little drag queen, she tried to talk to him when she was the little boy instead. Because surely if he could accept the side of the queen, he’d be okay with the boy too, right?”
I had been happy. Nervous. It’d been a long time since I’d been that enamored by someone. He was new and exciting and maybe he just wanted to fuck, but I was okay with that. I told myself that was just fine. I could work with that. And maybe I could convince him of more. So I took Helena off and was just Sandy, just plain Sandy. And I went back downstairs and he was there with his friends, those nameless and cookie-cutter homo jocks.
“Hey,” I’d said. “Hi, Darren.”
And the look of such derision I’d been given almost caused me to take a step back. But I thought maybe there was a mistake since he’d smiled at me before. And so I’d tried to talk to him, tried to act like I could be someone he could see (because he had seen me, he had smiled at me and acted like I was something).
But his friends had laughed and he had laughed at me and there was a bit of a sneer on his face when he’d asked if I’d needed something because why else would I even be approaching him?
“Trust me,” he’d said, “you have absolutely nothing that I want. I don’t know if you’re someone anyone would want.”
I hated the fucking Homo Jock King.
“And maybe it’s petty,” I said to Mike, “and maybe I should just forgive or, at the very least, forget, but I still remember the shit I got being a skinny little faggot in high school, that queer who liked to wear makeup who swished his hips too much when he walked. Whose locker got vandalized with homophobic slurs. Who had people walk all over him and look at him like he was nothing but trash. So I know a bully when I see one, okay? Some people grow up and change. Some don’t. The Darren Maynes of the world don’t. He goes through his little twinks and spits them out like they’re nothing, all the while showing everyone else he’s better than them.”
Mike was quiet for a while, letting me get my breathing back under control. I tried not to think about Darren from all those years before, even if it colored my perception of him as to who he was now. Maybe he’d grown up and become a different person. Or maybe he was still a bag of assholes. It was obvious which seemed more likely.
Mike said, “And yet he’s here, isn’t he? For every single show you’ve done. He hasn’t missed one, not really. Not even Paul can say that.”
“That’s not—” And I had to stop myself because it was true. Maybe my memory was a little bit fuzzy and maybe I couldn’t really think clearly, but I couldn’t remember a time when Darren wasn’t at my show. Wednesdays and Saturdays. He was always there. Without fail. Either by himself slinking off in the shadows or surrounded by the homo jocks, their T-shirts tight and their grins cocky. “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said finally. Because it didn’t.
“Sure it doesn’t, princess,” he said. “But just think, this is the perfect opportunity for you to get revenge against the Homo Jock King. You seduce him. Get him to talk this place up to those who have the ear of his father. Best-case scenario, we get to keep the bar open and you get to see the look on his face when you break up with him. Worst case, you get laid and this place still closes.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said flatly. I might have disliked Darren, but I didn’t know if even I was that big of an asshole.
And then Mike said, “Think of Vaguyna, princess. She would have done everything she possibly could have to keep this place open. Think about what would have happened to you had she not taken you under her wing. Think about whatever other little gay boy is out there that wants to sneak in here with a shitty fake ID just so he can be around people like him, people that will accept him.”
“That’s low,” I said. “You can’t just….” But he could. Because it was the truth. Without this place, I wouldn’t be who I was today. Helena was a part of me, and the only reason she was anything was because Vaguyna had let me in. Tucson was big, just under a million people, but aside from Jack It, there was a lesbian bar on the other side of town and a couple of hole-in-the-wall places that were extremely low-key. Nothing like Jack It unless it was the straight bars, the college bars where frat boys drank beer and women wore short skirts. At least here, women could throw back the beer while the men wore the skirts. “So basically, you want me to fuck my mortal enemy and convince him to convince his father to somehow keep this bar open by telling me to think of the children?”
“That about sums it up.”