Electra was texting so quickly and angrily she thought she would shatter her acrylic nails.
Punctuating her last sentence “ No sick call-offs on a Friday night, not evah” with 18 devil face emojis, she threw her phone on the table and began to work the combination lock on her wardrobe case.
Lana’s simple one rap knock at the dressing room door made her jump.
“Wooman! Don’t scare me! Olivia Neutron Juan just tried to call off with the sniffles and tickets to Grease at the Music Hall are the mystery prize tonight.”
Lana spit her cinnamon gum in the plastic trash bin the same way she spit chew when she had been a minor league baseball player named Don Ransfeldt. Decades of hormones later, she still had 89 MPH fastball triceps, and they tensed as she gripped the dressing room door and addressed her star drag performer.
“We have an issue. An angry email.”
Electra Light Brigade only hesitated half a second before erupting in gleeful laughter and spinning around the room, twirling her combination lock on her finger.
“This must be a masterpiece! La-la land, we are a drag show, in the suburbs, of course we got an angry email. Do tell! Are any of the words spelled right? Whose hell are we going to this week?” She cackled, starting at the Wicked Witch of the West and devolving into a rollicking nasal chuckle that ended abruptly as she realized Lana was truly unhappy.
“It’s from the university girls that were in here last week. Remember them? Big group of twentysomethings? More docile than I was in college, I’ll tell ya that. Anyway...we need to address it.”
“Address what, Sugar Plum Bobbing for Apples? What are they angry about?”
“They want you to cease and desist doing Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.”
Electra Light Brigade put her palm, dramatically to her chest. Lana knew it was either a Bette Davis move or a Vivien Leigh move, but couldn’t remember which.
“Oh, Lana, Lana, Lana, my not-so-little love muffin, master of the house, greatest boss I’ve ever had in the illustrious history of evah, I am not taking that song out of my routine for any reason child…”
“They say they’re going to boycott if you don’t. According to them, Gypsy is offensive to those of Romani origin and other nomadic peoples throughout the globe.
“My word, Lana, Cher herself is of humble, indigenous origins and the song is meant as an homage to the…”
“Further,” Lana said, now reading from the two-page email she had printed out, “Tramps is offensive to houseless persons and those who choose a transient lifestyle, and Thieves is a pejorative term for those with various kleptomania related mental illnesses, as well as an unfair assertion that the capitalist power structure is the only correct form of socioeconomic governance.’ End quote. Just skip the song tonight, okay Lec ?”
Electra whistled, spun angrily, grabbed her tepid latte from the table, slurped it noisily and said “Not a prayer, Lana. I am in the running for Cher Impersonator of the Year. That song is crucial to my performance and I don’t care what anyone says, I’m performing it with gusto and panache this evening and every evening thus forth.”
Lana pulled twenty-two more pieces of neatly folded paper from her pocket.
“They have a petition with thirty-one hundred signatures and over one hundred and twenty people who have pledged to human blockade the building if you do the song.”
Electra flopped on the dressing room sofa, covering her eyes with her forearm.
“You are Right Dead Fred serious, aren’t you, girlfriend? You do not want me to do the song.”
Lana stared at the copies of the signatures on the paper.
“I think they’re serious, Electra. Very serious. I spent three years convincing the pastor at Gobstopper Lutheran that we…
“‘Gethsemane,’ Lana, my word, don’t blaspheme.”
“Sorry, Gethsemane that we would be good for the community and help fund their outreach and food drives and once they were on board I figured we’d be ok...I just never thought that college kids…”
Lana started to jones for chewing tobacco for the first time in eons.
“Just promise me you’ll take the song out of the repertoire until we can get this figured out.”
Electra stood.
“I’ll change things up, Lana. Just for you.”
***
About forty college students were milling about in front of Eve’s Apple when Electra belted out the last notes of Turn Back Time.
“Is that just lip-syncing?” someone asked.
“No, that’s her really singing. She’s that good.”
“Especially because she is really a he.”
“Shut up, Jeff, we’re here to fight oppression, not perpetuate it.”
The crowd bantered some more about gender vagaries, the pros and cons of weed compared to alcohol, and if it was unethical to topple Confederate statues if they portrayed horses.
A thin gentleman in his mid-thirties approached.
“Is this where the blockade is taking place?”
“Well, it will be if the performer does the song we demanded be excised.”
“Hmmm…” The man looked around. “There doesn’t seem to be much solidarity here. You’re basically just...loitering. What do you say we link hands and sing our own song?”
A few of the college kids eyed him skeptically, turned their backs, did one-hitters, listened for what the emcee was saying inside.
The man spotted a woman with a bullhorn.
“Excuse me, what is your name?”
“I’m Jillalynn. And you?”
“I’m Eric. I was coordinator of the...Student Nonviolence and Social Protest Committee when I was an undergrad at Josephine & Baker.
“Never heard of it,” Jillalynn said, “but welcome.”
“My sources say the song will be performed tonight. I think we should prepare by linking hands.”
Jillalynn nodded.
“It couldn’t hurt.”
She grabbed the bullhorn. “Link up, everybody, loose wall, try to cover as much of the front and sides of the building as possible.”
The college kids began to form a human chain. Some lifted signs that had been propped against the bar.
Eric reached for Jillalynn’s hand. She hesitated, then grasped it.
The throng began to surround the entrance to the bar.
Jillalynn was reaching for the bullhorn when the building’s fire alarm went off.
Jillalynn stiffened.
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” she said.
Eric nodded dumbly as patrons began to exit the building, followed by drag performers.
Olivia Neutron Juan hiked the waistband of her black pleather pants.
“Oh my goodness!” she said in a patois of bad Australian and Puerto Rican. “There’s a whole nother party out here”.
The fire alarm ceased.
“ Ohhh the fire’s out!” Olivia yelled, “Shall we sing a song to celebrate?” Olivia winked at Eric. It was supposed to be a subtle wink, but it was a big, over-the-top, Little Rascals nod and wink.
Jillalynn looked at Eric. She noticed a faint touch of black eyeliner...and silver glitter.
Eric LaLonde, AKA Electra Light Brigade, hand in hand with forty silent college kids, backed up by Olivia, Marilyn Diamond, Jane Hustle and Barb Arella, began to sing
“I was born in the wagon of a traveling show...My mama used to dance for the money they’d throw…”
***
Photo by Rochelle Brown on Unsplash
I bet you had fun with this one. Shades of brilliance in there.
“Drag Me” is a perfectly fitting title.
Be careful what you wish for... because the sophomores will always ruin it.