*

Benny and I have been together for so long now but he hasn't seen me as Marjan yet. All he knows is that I used to sing in drag on weekends in my twenties, but I didn't elaborate much. There was no time in either of our lives for it, and the more time passed, the more dated my wardrobe became anyway. And how to update a drag wardrobe when you're as visible as I am? All I could imagine were sheepish pictures of me running out of a department store, dresses or dress fabrics draped over my arm, plastered in People Magazine or whatever; or cameras flashing through the blinds of my windows while I'm in face. I spent so many years punished in so many ways for being the way I am that the idea of being humiliated in the present deeply sickens me. Some more activist sorts seem to believe that this is the equivalent of being ashamed of myself and there was that in the past, especially last year, but I'm not nearly so curled up in a fetal position these days. Now, really, it's simple self-preservation. Not everyone can afford to blow their entire life up simply on principle. Being "out" used to mean accepting yourself and literally going out to your local scene and participating in it. Now it seems to be about shocking straight people. If you can do that, more power to you. I have too many important things to do for the people I know and know of, funded by money that would dry up if I threw ALL caution to the wind. Caution isn't always cowardice. Hell, the album I'm getting closer and closer to releasing is risk enough for me, and that IS a risk I'm proud of.

Anyway, wanting to see Cryssie and planning the (unnoficial) party for said album's release finally gave me a perfect excuse to figure everything out, and it really was so fun pouring over upscale clothing catalogues, the excitement of being able to afford even SOME of it, the rush of lavishing Miss Marjan in a luxury she'd always dreamed of. So much of drag is about creation, and I know throwing on some luxury dress isn't quite the same thing-- I'll certainly try and shake as much rust off my sewing skills as I can even if I can't use them as much for this-- but where'll I get the inspiration for shaking off that rust otherwise (and maybe I just want a nice dress. Can’t a guy want a nice dress?)? Looking at dresses in a catalogue or magazine is one thing; knowing how they fit me, how I want them to fit me, how the dress wants to fit me, how much padding and/or cinching'll be necessary-- all that is far easier when you have the real thing to take notes from, so to speak.

So I ended up ordering an update on the gold dress (long sleeved, metallic, very open-chested, short, draped), a padded-shouldered, sleeved, kind of shapely-yet-drapish mid-length red dress and some pumps and sandals, some real pearls, gold, and diamonds to replace the costume jewelry (just a necklace and earrings!), a watch for Benny-- the most he'd allow for himself. Linda was a darling and picked it all up for me. Washed, threw on some quick makeup, stripped down n' shaved my legs to try on the new gold dress, had it in my hands, and so many anxieties flooded me at once-- what if I looked completely stupid in it? What if it didn't look nearly as good in person as it did in the catalogue? What if I was too old now for my old looks to translate? What if I had forgotten how to walk in heels after all this time? What if Benny didn't get it? Swallowed all those thoughts down, shimmied carefully as I could into the dress, looked in the mirror, and almost cried from sheer relief. Hello, Marjan, my dear. Long time no see.

PS: Shann hasn't seen me in full dress, and I'm not sure if I want her to before Benny does, but I might not have a choice. You'd think I'd know what she sounds like walking around the house by now... ugh, it's just so easy for me to get wrapped up in things right now.

*

Ugh, so the album will be self-titled after all. Or my almost joke compromise I thought about earlier is truly the compromise I'll have to use (stage name as artist, real name as title). Walter says I never make anything easy for him but it's not like he often makes anything easy for ME. All this hemming and hawing over how "regular" people won't be able to pronounce my last name, and how much less memorable it'll be because of that, and what was so wrong with Jules Riley, I thought that was a perfectly fine stage name, it was fine for years, why are you making things difficult, etc etc. Just kept standing my ground, even though it was nervewracking to do so. He's done so much to me already and threatened more in the past. Trying to think of him like a paper tiger but it's not quite working because of that. I just need to trust Lou'll be enough. Such a strange line to walk-- nervewracking yes, but also thrilling. I've gotten so much farther than my first attempts. I didn't let Walter simply laugh me off his boat. Outside of that one... incident while camping, I've been pretty damn stable through it all, able to do everything, not worry Benny any extra.

The advertising for it should be easy enough, too, at least. I suppose that's the plus side. It's my first album on my own so it's like an introduction AND a reintroduction. Oh, I'm absolutely sneaking in a profile-shot portrait somewhere. Front cover would be ideal, but Walter'd axe it immediately. Nose-ring side? Back cover?

Also have to plan the OFFICIAL release party, of course... and I'll obviously have to invite the guys. Including Nathan. Which... ugh. I'd rather not. But Nate would cause more of a scene uninvited; I know how he is. He'd crash the thing with zero hesitation, and be half-drunk already besides. ...Ugh, I'm already imagining how he'll be fully drunk. I don't want to imagine that. --Speaking of which, I'm relievedly smelling Kouros less in clubs now. Less new, so it's on to the next thing, maybe. It's still around, though. Lingers like an M-F, so even if there's not a lot of it around, I catch a whiff of it and part of me still wants to catch onto the trail of it like a dog. Ugh. At some point I'll be fully over it. I'm... half-over it, I'd say, at this point. It's all just awkward and annoying.

Dance practice is including Shann more, now, as we figure things out for all the video crap. I don't want anything too melodramatic or bombastic; nothing to distract from the music itself. And I don't want to give Shann too hard of a time (she's been more stressed lately... it's close to her mother's birthday, and she hasn't seen her in quite awhile, but it still comes up for her, there's still a lot of pain there). So finding directors has been a bit of a challenge. They all have their big ideas already planned out, y'know?? it's not really a collaboration, and that's actually what I want.

So busy! Not using that much more to cope, though. Finally feels almost good that I can never get a good night's sleep.

*

Benny and Cryssie have both seen me as Marjan, now, and both moments-- within the same day!-- were beautiful.

Shann was out that day for awhile, so Ben was visiting. I'd told Ben earlier that I was planning on revisiting my singing-in-drag days for the release party, though was shy about details. I wasn't sure if he'd find any of it interesting. Both of my recently-bought dresses were draped across my couch, though, and he pointed to them-- "So which one of those you gonna wear for me?" I told him I'd like him to choose for me, and after a brief look-over, he picked the red. "You always slay that color, baby." Aww! He sat in on me doing my makeup, too, despite me warning him that it could get tedious-- but he wanted all the behind-the-scenes action.

I was shy when I was finished-- told Benny that this was just for fun, really, a long-standing silliness of mine. "I'd kiss you to shut you up but I don't wanna fuck up your lipstick." It was easier to slip into Marjan, then. Said, well aren't you a thoughtful, handsome gentleman!, gave him a cartoonishly exaggerated lookover. Slipped back towards Julie again, admitted that I really had missed this, how it was the perfect creative outlet for expressing the extremes of my queenish tendencies, the most feminine aspects of my voice-- another type of performance, a non-Jules Riley performance, something extremely refreshing nowadays. Also said that I used to hate that I even had these tendencies and aspects at all, that they'd given me nothing but trouble when I was a boy, and if it weren't for Cryssie I might've still had that part of me shoved in the closet. That he'd been really nice about it, and how much I appreciated that-- that I didn't necessarily need him to understand it, just to respect it (and my heart was still beating out of my chest from nerves...).

He told me about using gay clubs and bars in Detroit as shelter when he was a teenager, how fascinated he was with the queens that hung around them-- how confidently they carried themselves, how they didn't get frightened out of being themselves, and how those selves were so colorful, so vibrant. They helped him feel less alone, less like he was in the wrong, even if he wasn't feminine like they were. I told him that Mom was a dancer when she was younger, sometimes employed as a sort of club showgirl after the divorce-- not quite an ~exotic dancer~, but closer to that sort of burlesque than not. She was ashamed of it and embarrassed by some of her costumes, but I loved ALL of them, and I'd try to stay awake long enough or wake up early enough to see her come home, long coat over sparkles and spangles and feathers, high heels in one of her hands, trails of perfume (Shalimar) following her, sneaking to the bathroom barefoot, a secret kind of beauty. Whenever I was alone at home I'd try on as many parts as could fit me-- feathered headdresses, boas and fans and the like-- and do little poses n' dances in front of her standing mirror.

When I was very young I wanted to be a singer like my father. When I was a little older I wanted to be a beautiful dancer like my mother. My mother and my grandfather very much did not want me to be a beautiful dancer like my mother. I guess she wanted to hide me in her coat the way she hid her costumes, tried to get me my own coats to hide myself in, but just like her own hiding, it could never be perfect. And-- the biggest crime of all, one I was ashamed of for so long-- I understand the utility of our hiding, but I hate it all the same. I throw my coat off now as soon as I get the fucking chance.

Anyway, Benny and I kept talking awhile before he asked me if there was enough time between now and my visit with Cryssie to ruin my makeup. Which I obliged to, albeit out of the dress-- had to keep that clean for later (and it's so classy, and I just got it...!). He sucked me off, fucked me against my master bathroom's sink front and behind (behind was nostalgic-- like the first time we fucked, me bent over a hotel bathroom counter in front of a mirror), I came in his mouth after a little switch of positions (his idea; he asked me to save it for him, wow), we washed up together. Had a little jacuzzi time. It feels so damn good sharing that sort of thing with him-- we both grew up poor, both lived on the streets for a time or rough otherwise, and there we were in a bathroom big enough to comfortably fuck in, and then there we were having a glass of pinot grigio each in a fucking jacuzzi. Anyway, it was all a lovely, relaxing time, and it was nice to have before having to head out to see Cryssie.

I was still satisfied with the overall look I tested for Benny enough to replicate it for Cryssie, at the apartment she was living in (with my old costume jewelry-- complete decadence would've been an insult). So we had our first little brunch together in nearly a decade, complete with her lemon-blueberry scones and cups of espresso. She's thin-- not skeletal like Dave, but frail. Even her hair looked nearly as wispy as smoke; it was carefully tied in a bun, but some hair still escaped it, flew about softly like that. As soon as I stepped out of her bathroom all done up she smiled in that formerly familiar warm, kind way of hers. "It's so good to see you again, honey." I sat down at her kitchen table, smiled back at her, and the smile immediately wavered, a sob caught itself in my throat. Tried to hide it behind my little espresso cup, but Cryssie sees everything. She laughed as warmly as her smile, told me that she remembered the first time she made my face for me I cried it all off. Twice. "You were so afraid of yourself... and then I got to see you blossom, and see Ricky help you blossom even more. I was so proud of you."

She said she was so afraid that being in the band would kill the spark LR helped me find, that I'd go back to being afraid of myself, so afraid of myself that I'd get completely swallowed up by it. I told her that some of my bosses would certainly love for that to happen, and that they'd done their best to make me miserable, but I've clawed my way back every time (even if some times were more difficult than others). That she and the rest of LR showed me the possibility of a better world, a better way of being, and I couldn't so easily forget that. And regardless, I was used to carrying secrets in hostile territory. I don't want to be a bitch, but I truly think you underestimated me, I said. "HA! Maybe I did. But I'm used to part-time queens becoming ~real men~ n' shoving girls like me under the rug like we're trash too embarrassing to even pick up and take to the dump." Well, that's the thing, isn't it? I could never quite be a “real” man that way. I thought that I could become some sort of approximate, and even that was miserable. It's not so easy for me to escape into that as it is for some. I can only convince straight people for so long before the cracks show, or before I start to crack.

So we kept talking, and for a couple hours we could both pretend she wasn't sick, that we'd eaten more than a couple bites of our scones, that the little she ate wouldn't probably come out of her in some painful violent way later. We were just two ladies having our brunch like old times. She'll be as skeletal as Dave was before he died, eventually, but I don't want to think about that; don't want imaginings of her future living corpse spoiling the present. She reminds me of Mom just a couple years ago-- physically frail but dignified, afraid but defiant in whatever ways she can manage. I was able to make it back to my car before the tears came. I'm trying to keep in the present, now, but I couldn't at the time. All I could think of was her-- the person who first helped me fully see the good in myself, who loved and nurtured what so many others hated and tried to snuff out or hide in shame, who gave me an anchor within myself to hold onto and trust-- looking like Dave, dying and suffering so much before dying.

--And what the fuck did she do to deserve that? " 'He' went against nature", Jesus freaks would say, "God made 'him' a 'man' and 'he' defied god, and that's what you get when you defy god." I want to tell them that obeying god never got me anywhere nicer, but I know they wouldn't care. People like me, people like Cryssie, could simply exist neutrally and that existence would be seen as a defiance of god. Well, did god make us wrong on purpose? As some sick cosmic joke? What's the endpoint here? I ask, but I know the answer. God's an excuse, that's all. It's a nice reasoning to dress up personal revulsion in. Hatred's wrong, killing's wrong, but what if it's an unnatural freak? What if the things I do with my disgust are god's work on earth? Really, god's an excuse for anything people want to do or think, not just that.

Ugh, now I'm rambling. And the way Cryssie sees everything? She said: "You're using again, aren't you, honey?" when I was packing my things up to leave. And I obviously couldn't lie to her, because she already knew. I said I was clean for five years after Ricky died, before the weight of everything started to crush me again. And it was pills anyway. Not snorted anything. She didn't give me a hard time about it, at least, even if she was understandably disappointed. A little sigh, a brief grip on my hand, a "Good luck, sweetheart".

She's well enough still that she can come to the party, at least. I couldn't put on a show for Dave (who's holding on, still, and I can't say if it's a miracle or not because it's such a painful holding on...), but I'll be able to sing for Cryssie.

*