Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 19 Read online

  Q: If all politics are local how come my mayor is a democrat?

  A: Mayor McCheese, stop asking this question. You'll never get reelected in that city.

  Q: When I brush my teeth using the electric toothbrush that my mom gave me because she thinks my breath stinks, sometimes I walk into my bedroom and look at the digital clocks, one on either side of the bed. When I look at the one on my side of the bed, it's nothing special. But when I look at the one on my girlfriend's side of the bed, the pieces of the numbers disconnect from each other and wiggle around. Their antics change depending on where I put the toothbrush in my mouth and how much pressure I apply. Only the numbers act this way, the rest of the clock and everything else I'm looking at look normal. Do you think this is cool?

  A: Another victim of the Temporal Disassociation Electric Toothbrush Phenomenon (Bond, Nature: May 1998), I see. Do not look at that clock ever again. Also, you have to disown your mother. She's trying to kill you with a lightly-ricined toothbrush.

  Q: My best friend is getting divorced and intends to move to California and I'm broken hearted. I love her little dog and often walk it for her when she is too busy. My husband is allergic to dogs so I can't have one but if my friend asks me to take her puppy I know I won't be able to say no. What should I do?

  A: I can tell just by the tone of your question that you've already made a decision. You want a dog more than you want a husband. This is controversial. Who've you been talking to, Caitlin Flanagan? Really, you can have both. Is your husband too sissy for the allergen tests? Can he not take a pill for your happiness? If not, ricin is the answer. If you do get the little dog, be on the lookout for Wicked Witches. (Also, do not be friends with the gay divorcee—no one worth being friends with abandons their dog just because of marital upheaval and a cross-country move. Trust me.)

  Q: Dear Aunt Gwenda, how are you? Please advise me:

  There is a woman who i used to be friends with but im not so sure anymore. She moved away a year or two ago and since then we have had infrequent heart-to-hearts, i.e. meaningful conversations, on the phone or via email, which is lovely and fine.

  Last july fourth i emailed her, “What are you doing this weekend?"

  She emailed me back, “I am having a giant party up here on the 3rd—fireworks over the water near my house and I live right on the ocean, so I am cleaning and mowing my yard and going to get supplies—"

  So i said,"I would like to come to your party. mabbe I'll show up. Can i crash there?"

  She wrote, “Oh man—sorry babe but I am full up with house guest for the next 7 days!"

  So i wrote, “Ok, so i don't sleep over. Can i still come to your party?"

  And then she wrote, “Another time would be better, Sally, Thanks for understanding."

  This hurt my feelings. Her house is about 2 hours away. I've done daytrips that are farther. i'm a big girl, i can handle the drive. should i count her out of my circle of friends since she obviously doesn't want my company at her party? thanks for your help.

  Sincerely, Sally Left-Out

  A: Hey Sally, I'm fine, but you're not. Nobody likes someone who doesn't capitalize their Is and who punctuates like a full-blown, full-moon lunatic. Buy a Chicago Manual of Style. Memorize it. And, just so you know, if you show up at the party she's totally going to throw a bucket of ricin and pig's blood on you, ruining your life. So stop stressing and distressing over your (ex)friend, who is clearly a rude loser, and go find someone to hang with who's nice, or at least interesting. Alternately, take up sewing and make a disguise.

  Q: Having discovered some rather unsavoury cracks in the ceiling, I took it upon myself to venture forth into the attic to assess the damage. To my surprise, I found that our roof has been constructed from a papier-mâché-like substance; either that or porridge.

  A: Oh my god, you're turning into a prom! You need to either get the hell out of there or buy some nice disposable cameras for the drunken young people who will be showing up any second now. With ricin.

  Q: Dear Aunt Gwenda: If there are 700 trash cans, and 37 of them contain oranges, how would you know when to stop singing on the lawn outside a second story window?

  A: You people honestly don't care about anyone who lives on the first story of a building. Do you? Do you think people with the foresight to know they might not always want or be able to climb stairs don't also long for a romantic serenade? Worse—do you really think you can get Aunt Gwenda to do math? What is wrong with you? Oranges. Yeah, right.

  Q: Dear god, don't you people ever get to just chill in your own home and watch TV?

  A: We do, we do, we do. When we are preparing the poison pens or preparing to prevent the poison pen attacks.

  Q: My question to you is simple: Would swallowing two copies of LCRW, three times a day, protect me from the elements?

  A: If by “the elements,” you are slyly asking about protection from ricin attack, the answer is: YES. In fact, this is the only known prophylaxis from the dainty world of non-bloodthirsty poisoners with castor bean fixations. (They hate a mess, except when producing their weapon of choice.) You must never miss a swallowing appointment though. Once you begin taking the cure, you must stay on a regular schedule or die a spectacularly painful death. I suggest you invest in one of LCRW's subscription packages that come with chocolate, an intern's appearance on YouTube, and a gross of issues.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Lady Perdita Espadrille

  Tells the Story

  Andrew Fort

  1989. Robert doesn't know what Gecko has gotten him into. “Girl!” Lady Perdita Espadrille shouts, when he appears. “You look like you just swallowed shit.” She is glorious in a tight-fitting fluorescent green gown with orange flounces. Her wig is the color of cinnamon red-hots.

  "His girlfriend just broke up with him,” Gecko explains.

  "Gary!” Lady P. shouts to the bartender. “Get this girl a drink. Top shelf."

  The club is like neon candy. What is grubby and corporeal during the day becomes avortinmagoric at night. Ambience is a trick of light. The club goes red, then blue. Forms appear and vanish.

  Robert takes a barstool. Gary places something dark and sweet in front of him.

  "Tell it,” Lady P. says. Her eyes flash. They are done up in glittery swirls of dark green.

  Robert is confused.

  "Tell it,” Gecko says.

  "I don't know,” Robert says. “It's an old story."

  "It is an old story,” Lady P. says. Some club song plays. There is a thudding electronic kick. Gecko is the straightest guy Robert knows, but he is up and dancing. Leslie the La La Girl gets up from her barstool. She is wearing a leather bustier. “Girl, you can have all the meaningless sex you want if you just come over to the other side,” she says.

  "He doesn't want sex, honey,” Lady P. says. “He wants understanding."

  "All the meaningless understanding, then,” Leslie the La La Girl shrugs. She watches Gecko appreciatively.

  Lady P. smiles. Her mouth is conservatively made up. It's her eyes that are wild. “Girl, you even know what understanding means?” she says.

  Leslie air-kisses Lady P. “Sure I know what understanding means,” she says. “The pizza delivery boy and me, we got an understanding."

  "Bitch, you'd do anything with a belt buckle."

  "I get my pizza for free,” Leslie says.

  Gecko collapses on a bar stool. “So,” he says. “Four-year relationship, she breaks up with him over the phone."

  "It wasn't like that,” Robert says.

  "Don't apologize for her,” Gecko says. “It was like that."

  "I don't want to think about it,” Robert says.

  "You came to the right place,” Leslie says. She dances off through the crowd.

  Lady P. shakes her head. She has the manner of your favorite elementary school teacher—the one you had a crush on because she spoke to you as an equal. “Lady P., you look amazing,” Gecko says.

  She rais
es her arms to show off her outfit. “It's Arty's favorite. Was. Is."

  "It's glorious."

  "I couldn't even presume...” Robert says. His own problems seem trivial. D.J. Sparkle puts on a skittering electronic beat.

  "Honey, in some ways it's easier. I'll never have to run into Arty on the street."

  Gecko: “And you know he loved you."

  "Mmm."

  "Chose you. Wanted to spend his last days with you."

  "Girl: did I ever tell you how the Lady was born?"

  "No."

  She fingers her necklace of chunky orange beads. “Those last days, when Arty was in hospice—I had to wear latex gloves if I wanted to touch him."

  "That's tough."

  "Honey, this was when the big A was new. 1984. No cocktail, no AZT ... before I met Arty, I was a good little fag. Teaching my Victorian Lit courses, singing in the Gay Men's Chorus."

  "Redecorating your apartment..."

  "And I hated queens. Hated them. I thought they gave fags a bad name."

  Gecko laughs.

  "Sweetheart, queens and fags don't mix. If you're a queen you want some well-hung young thing, but if you're a fag you want some well-hung young thing too. Nobody wants a queen, especially an old queen. What's the point of fucking a man who looks like a woman? Might as well be straight."

  Robert sips his drink. The taste is dangerous and melancholic. He is not sure if he feels less alone or more alone. Lady P. stares out at the dance floor, where Leslie the La La Girl is dancing. Someone is singing My heart is full of love and desire for you. “Girl,” she says. “Another straight boy told me once that when he came here he felt lifted right out of context."

  Gecko points with his drink hand. “Exactly,” he says. “That's why I'm here."

  "To be a queen is to have no context. To be a queen is to be a lone peacock, strutting and fretting."

  "But Arty,” Gecko says.

  "Arty wasn't a fag, honey. He was just a man who loved me."

  "Because what I see is everyone adoring you."

  "Adoring, honey, maybe. But do I see any action?"

  "Do you?"

  Lady P. recrosses her legs. Robert is watching Gecko when this happens and he follows Gecko's gaze to find that he is trying to peek up Lady P.'s dress. Lady P. is still staring out at the dance floor, which is crowded with couples. Beyond the dance floor is the Pouf, a low-lying platform covered in the kind of cushions you imagine to be in a bordello or a harem house. Beyond that still is a platform furnished with a half-dozen tables in the shape of champagne glasses. Lady P. will tell you—and it's not clear if she's joking—that they were lifted from the set of the Lawrence Welk show. They're clearly past their prime and beginning to crack. “So here I was,” Lady P. says, “this scared little fag, until Arty comes along. And it wasn't until he got sick that I even began to consider drag. I realized that he was going to die and that it was my responsibility to become glorious, because he loved me."

  Robert: “The way that someone loving you makes you what you are."

  "And the way that becoming what you are makes you less and less like other people. I started dressing up to make him laugh. To keep him entertained. I'd always done the lip-sync. And after so many months of cleaning bed-pans and changing bandages I needed to do something. I was becoming this washed-out, pale, tired little fag. And drag is the opposite of that."

  "You mean the costumes."

  "The costumes, the make-up, everything.” She sits upright and clears the air with a wave. “You know why most men don't want to fuck a drag queen? Because they don't know what it is. Is it a woman or a man? I see straight guys come in here, get turned on by the show, and run away screaming. Is it a woman or a man? It's a drag queen, honey. It's the unholy union. And it felt like I was defeating death. Girl, I look into my mirror, I get a glimpse into that other world."

  "Heaven?"

  Lady P. shrugs. “What is heaven but a promise of perfection? Don't think the Lady didn't catch you trying to peep her candy. Why are you so interested? The Lady is an impossibility ... an ideal."

  "Like heaven."

  Lady P. smiles. “You said it, honey, not I."

  Gecko finishes his drink. Robert is thoughtful. He says: “Is it easier, do you think, to believe that he still lives on somewhere?"

  Lady P. looks somewhat affectedly wistful, but under the affect is a wistful man. The music continues. Someone is singing I can make a rhyme of confusion in your mind. “Sometimes it's easier just to think that he ceases to exist with death, except maybe in memory? Girls, the hardest part is just not being able to touch..."

  Robert: “Or smell..."

  "To know that someone—the hand of God—has put that person out of reach, except in memory."

  Gecko is silent.

  Robert: “To know that the stock of replayable footage is all you have..."

  "...those loops of Arty smiling, crying, getting pissed off, making dinner..."

  "...taking a shower, talking on a telephone..."

  "...dancing ... he was a great dancer..."

  "...or smiling, again, or singing under her breath..."

  "...or just the way he walked..."

  "Why this urge to compose things, to narrow the focus down to a tiny picture...?"

  Lady P. looks sober. “So we can understand them?"

  "Or so we can pretend understanding even exists..."

  Lady P. nods. “There is another world."

  "You mean an ideal?"

  Lady P. changes her mind. “Perhaps there is not another world."

  "But you mean an ideal?"

  "Perhaps only a place where ideals can be.” Lady P. claps her hands together and the music stops. She is suddenly melancholy. “Death is patient, death is kind,” she announces. “Death bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” The smile skids from her face. Everyone who knows her knows she is thinking about Arty. Boys hang on her words. She touches a hand to her hair. It is as fluffy as cotton candy. D.J. Sparkle gestures to her: should he continue? She looks thoughtful. There is a moment where you would think the party would resume. But it is quiet. A boy carries her stool over to the tiny stage. She follows him and takes a seat in front of the tattered silver streamers. Puts her glasses on. She begins to tell the story.

  "Once there was a girl named Thomasina.” She says it as if it takes her by surprise. Is it truth or fiction? She continues. Her voice is deep and resonant. “Thomasina was unaware of the fact that her name was a feminine derivative—in essence, a name in drag—” Hoots and hollers. Lady P. snaps her fingers above her head. There is silence. “A feminine derivative,” she says, “of the name which had been given to her great grandfather over a century before. She was unaware of her stature, her standing in the community which was determined solely by her sex.” More hoots, hollers. “She was unaware that her ragged clothing"—she gestures to her outfit—"contributed to this smallness of stature.” She closes her eyes and tilts her head as if listening to faraway music. “She was, however, aware of the herd of cows which every morning flooded down out of the forest and into the valley. Their bells, tinkling like the ripple of water, woke her from her sleep, and she would slip like a lisp from the bed she shared with her three brothers, leaving the cabin smelling faintly of smoke and apples."

  "Three brothers in a bed—I like that!” someone shouts. He is genially hushed. Lady P. does not seem to notice.

  "Honey, the cows swam through her sigh from the other side of a mirror lake. And Thomasina, before they had the chance to take notice of her and be frightened away, would silently shut the door and slip quietly back to the room shared with Graham, Alexander, and Ferdinand, where she would go back to sleep, not wanting the moment to end."

  "Ferdinand?” someone shouts. It is the kindest sort of heckling, but the crowd shushes him anyway.

  Lady P. puts a hand on her hip. Sparkles from her bracelet dart across the room. “She never saw them arrive,” she says
. “But she knew she woke to their bells each morning and lost no more than a moment of their grazing. And she knew also that she lost no more than that briefest moment before their departure. Girl, and for the longest time she knew this was best, not seeing where they came from or where they went. Then one day she was promised to the miller's son.

  "Now, Thomasina was plainer'n a butch dyke at a Mary Kay convention. Her parents worried, honey. They worried about the miller's son, too. He was smart and friendly enough, but wasn't he a little thin and a little fey?” She pauses for emphasis. Everyone knows what she means. “It was finally decided that he was a decent catch and would grow up, if not handsome and strong, then at least dependable and virtuous, and the two had better be promised now.

  "Girl, Thomasina had always known she would one day marry the miller's son as he was the only boy other than her brothers that she had ever spoken to. And she liked him well enough, despite the fact that he was about as masculine as Miss Candi in her Dolce & Gabbana heels. These things didn't matter. But the fact of her now being engaged to him caused her to become aware that her days in the valley were limited. The mill was on the other side of the hill and across the village, and although only a half-day's journey under the worst of circumstances, Thomasina realized she would miss the daily avorting with her brothers, the warm applewood smell of the cabin, and, most of all, the mirror lake and the early morning cows. Girl, her seemingly infinite mornings or rapt attention had now been quantified, limited. Although it would be more than seven years until her marriage, her life as it was now had an end in sight."

  "She would have to become a man!” someone shouts.

  "Mmm,” Lady P. says. She smiles as if she knows a secret. “Girl, life went on unchanged. Day after day Thomasina rose at the tinkling of bells to watch the cows from across the mirror lake, and their beauty was even greater now that she knew there was a limit to her ability to experience it. And those moments, in the breaking of the gray light, when she lay awake hearing their bodies shuffle down into the valley, became unbearable. So she began to calculate these moments, day after day, tallying them up the way Leslie lines her shot glasses along the bar. Eventually she realized that there were hours, days, even, that she was missing. Girl, she began to ache to miser up these moments, to keep them in the locked box of her heart for later cherishing in the gray mill."