Performances

Performances

          Janet bit into her lip to taste the sweet strawberry gloss as her younger brother Justin yelled from his room again. She didn’t feel like dealing with him right now. Everything with him was a crisis, and she had more important worries of her own. Will, her live-in boyfriend of almost five months, had been coming home late from his shift at Dunkin Donuts, and Janet knew he was spending time with that high school slut he worked with, who wouldn’t even look at her when she stopped in to see him. “He’d better not be doing anything with that Aguilera skank,” Janet thought. “She’s short, fat, and she’s got piercings all over the place. Who knows where else she’s hooked that you can’t even see? And you can bet they’re infected.” When she had finished earlier that night at Wal-Mart, Janet had resigned to come home and sit on the couch until Will walked through the door, and then she’d get it out of him. She thought of trying him on his cell phone, but he only answered it half the time. If he took much longer tonight, Janet knew she would end it, no matter what he said. She was done putting up with his crap.
Justin yelped from his room like a wounded pup, and Janet glared at the television and turned up the volume in response.

         "Where is it?” Justin whined, rummaging through swollen piles of pastel and greasy-slick sequins. He threw a thin red dress over his shoulder and spread the pile open with his shaking hands. His heart reverberated through his collarbone, and, gulping air in short breaths, he felt a wave of dizziness bleed through him. “Jesus, is anyone listening to me?” He thought he heard someone hollering from the living room and ran out to the hallway. Baggy, low-rise jeans hung from the hooks of his pelvic bone, the gray CK band of his boxers poking out above the denim beltline. His chest was bare except for a golden chain as thick as his thumbnail that dragged around his neck. His bleached yellow hair, shorn tight against his skull, and a porcelain complexion made Justin’s deep green eyes reach beyond themselves like briars at the edge of a thicket. His lips blazed bright red, mortared with his mother’s discarded lipstick.

         Justin glanced around the living room. Janet sat on the musty floral couch watching Hollywood Squares, her eyes flitting from the TV to the front door, quickly as if she kept pulling them away from one and toward the other. Nothing in her body language seemed to acknowledge Justin’s presence, which could only mean that she had seen and discarded it. Justin decided to play along. He looked from the dim, orange light of the living room to the darkness of the kitchen. “Mom?” he called into the shadows.

         “Will you shut up tweak?” Janet bit her lip, chewing off her words. “God, mom’s sleeping. What the hell is your problem?”

         “Well who shouted? You?”

         “No one. I just told you to shut up. I’m trying to watch TV.” After straying back to the front door for an instant, Janet fastened her attention on the X’s and O’s on the television screen. She usually wasn’t so short with her little brother, but she was distracted with thoughts of dumping Will. Justin’s own state of near-panic kept him from asking her what was going on. He thought that maybe she had found out about Will, and he felt an incriminating heat crawl up his neck, but he shook the idea apart before he might give anything away. She couldn’t have discovered anything unless Will had told her, and he would never do that. It was best to just leave her alone right now. “I can’t find my wig,” Justin almost whispered. “The red one.”

         Janet sighed and looked up at her brother. Beads of sweat sprouted on his forehead, and his eyes hovered large on his face, his pupils wide and dilated. “Justin,” she surrendered slowly, “I don’t know where it is.” She pictured him wearing the dirty wig, it perched atop his shorn head like a shaggy animal carcass. She didn’t like any of the wigs he wore; they were all cheap and unkempt, no matter how hard he worked with them, and their look reflected on him. They hid his cheekbones, his high ears that stuck out when he was little and rounded his smile. Some day Janet would help him bring everything together. She had already done his eyes a couple of times, but he was so intense and demanding about his appearance. Curling one eyelash could take fifteen minutes. He always seemed to drown himself in makeup, until he lost himself beneath tar-caked lashes and grinned through red-stained teeth. And he reeked of chalky cover-up, smeared on the sides of his face like clay, always a shade or two darker than his natural skin color. Tonight Janet couldn’t help him, and seeing him done up as he was only broadened her anger.

         “Well, can you help me find it?” Justin asked.

         Janet shifted on the couch, a tightening knot of bone and muscle. She was about to let it all out, to tell her brother what a complete freak he looked like, when she heard the shuffle and scrape of her mother’s slippers along the floor. She emerged slowly from her bedroom, a squat mass covered in a flannel nightgown. It clung to her like a coat of blue fur, pulling her low breasts away from her chest. “What the hell is going on out here?” she barked. She paused, waiting for the living room to come into focus, and squinted at the TV through a fog of lingering sleep. She snorted and bent forward, coughing like a mongrel dog with a chicken bone tickling its throat. Sniffing again, she straightened her back and stretched her plushy shoulder blades together. Her hair stuck out of her head like a bird’s nest that had been ravaged by squirrels, and one could almost see a twig jutting slantwise from amidst the frizzle.

         “Justin can’t find his wig,” Janet said.

         Their mother turned to look at her son, her eyes two slits beneath a tide of wrinkled skin. He looked back through clouds of mascara and eye-liner. “Wig?” she said, “you got tons of wigs. You got five or six of the damned things.”

         “No,” Justin rolled his eyes. “The red one, I can’t find the red one.”

         His mother snorted in thought. “Well how the hell should I know where it is?” She licked her chapped lips. “Was it with that pile from last weekend? I brought all that down to the basement for the wash.”

         Justin’s entire face rose, brightening like a lit fuse, and his mother pulled her eyes a little tighter together. He then bent over the couch and kissed her forehead before running for the basement. She smelled stale and unwashed, as if she had been wandering around the house in her nightgown for far longer than just the past two days. The day before, Justin had come home from his shift at CVS to the sound of thick coughing emanating from her bedroom. He pushed her door open and felt around in the dark for the light switch to see what was going on. “Justin? Leave them lights off!” his mother had said. “My head feels heavy as a jug of milk. Woke up this morning and could barely open my eyes. I know I caught it from Laurie; she’s been coming in with the flu or something all week. Just close the door and let your mom rest. Tell Janet and that Will to stay quiet when they come in too.” Since then, she would either float around the house sniffing and squinting, or cough and blow her nose in bed. She dragged her feet through the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Justin!” She wheezed at the carton of orange juice in her face. “You want any dinner?”

         A reply emanated from the basement doorway, which Janet then pitched toward the kitchen. “No mom, says he’s good,” she said, twirling a long gelled curl with her index finger.

         “Alright, ‘cause I’m not hanging around here to wait. I’m sick you know.”

         “I know mom.”

         “Where’s Will?”

         Janet caught herself just before her eyes shot at the door, and she concentrated on a commercial about a laundry detergent that claimed to remove left-in stains like magic. “I dunno,” she replied shortly. “Should be coming back from work any time.”

         Her mother cleared her throat. She knew something was up between her daughter and that Will. She just didn’t have the energy or the focus to get into it right now. From where she stood, all that Will did was lie on the couch, drink her beer, and eat all the leftovers. She could see him sitting at the kitchen table, shoveling tuna casserole out of the dish and into his mouth like coal to the furnace. He smacked his lips and guzzled beer between bites, finishing off the casserole with nothing to show for it but bony shoulders and a concave stomach. But he did have a job, brought in some money, and that was all she could really ask for.

         Footsteps pounded from the darkness of the basement. Justin jumped out of the doorway wearing a snarled red wig, perched askew on his head like he’d grabbed a dead opossum from the pavement and wore it as a joke. Janet glanced at him and rolled her eyes. “Hey,” she said. “Come here. Sit down.” She moved over on the couch. “You look like an escaped mental patient.” Justin’s face contorted into an angry glare. “I didn’t even look in the mirror yet,” he snarled. Before Janet could say anything else, he ran into his room and slammed the door. Bass throbbed behind the door like the house’s lost heartbeat, calling Justin to the club. He set about straightening his wig and applied the final touches to his face. He tried on the cream lace teddy and wire stilettos he was going to wear on the runway and walked back and forth in front of his mirror. Each footfall thudded as Justin struggled to maintain his balance atop the heels, and he kicked them off as soon as he felt he’d fallen into an easy rhythm. He didn’t want to jinx himself by appearing too cocksure now and waste his confidence before the performance.

         Once he’d gotten everything together, Justin strut into the living room in his baggy jeans and oversized sweatshirt, his runway outfit tucked in the duffle bag that hung from his shoulder. He wore a chalky mask of concealer and powder, his lips still streaked scarlet and his lashes weighted by thick coatings of mascara. He had applied his makeup at home since his first performance; the club’s dressing room had bad lighting, and the thought of applying his cosmetics in front of the seasoned performers made Justin flush with embarrassment. They did it all so smoothly, and still managed to joke and gossip; he needed time alone, and silence, to prepare properly.

         “Don’t want anything to eat?” his mother called as he headed for the front door.

         “Nope.”

         “When you gonna be back? Not too late, your sister might need to use the car.” Janet gave her mother an annoyed look; she didn’t need the car for anything. She wasn’t going anywhere until Will came home, and if she wanted to go out later she would take his truck. No, she would have him drive her. She would have him drive her to Dunkin Donuts so she could tell off that spherical midget with the inflamed piercings and the frosted bangs. “Yeah,” Janet said. “I might go out later.”

         “I won’t be there too late,” Justin said. “I think I might be catching what mom’s got.”

         “Alright,” his mother said. “I’ll be asleep, so be quiet anyway. I gotta get rest.” A coughing fit boiled up from deep in her chest, as if to assert that, however Justin might be feeling, or anyone else who might claim illness in her presence. Her sickness trumped all others, and completely justified the time she’d taken off work. With a cough that severe, and phlegm gurgling from the waddle of her throat, there was no way she would go into work tomorrow either.

         Justin tossed his bag onto the passenger seat and settled himself in front of the steering wheel. The old Chevy rattled as he turned the key and pumped the gas with his boot. He forced the key over a second time, the flat metal pinched tighter in his fingertips, and held it there as the engine shook to life. Janet had bought the car when she was a senior in high school, over four years ago. Back then it had almost 90,000 miles on it and no one expected it to last one winter. Now, every time it started felt like a small miracle. Janet didn’t use it as much anymore, since Will taxied her to and from work in his pickup, so the car had become Justin’s responsibility. On the rare occasion that Janet actually needed it, Justin would toss her the keys with little resistance. Usually, he was left to drive it to and from work, the club, or on the odd errand for eyeliner and toothpaste.

         The small car sputtered its way across town toward the club and bar district. Although it was so labeled by the townspeople, the district was in fact only a stretch of road leading out of the downtown center. Justin passed the two and three story town buildings - the high school he’d been so glad to leave just last May, the grocery store where he’d worked as a stock boy, and the CVS that had recently hired him as a pharmacist’s assistant. CVS paid better than the grocery store, and the position allowed Justin to interact with more people. Being a pharmacist’s assistant also opened doors to those long halls of controlled substances, but Justin had only worked there for a couple of months so far, and the pharmacist always had one eye in his direction. He would try to snatch some soon though. Adderall, Ritalin, Percocet, whatever names he heard tossed around in the clubs that meant there was some kind of market. Justin knew that true scenesters chewed down pills like candy, and not only the behind-the-counter variety. He hadn’t tried it yet, but he knew that meth was out there, reflected in the wide glassy stares on the runway and the dance floor. Justin couldn’t even toss back a drink before he went onstage for fear that someone might slip something in it, which happened frequently enough to be worth the worry, and he was still too green to play with anything that might adversely affect his routine.

         Red and blue lights flickered in the club’s open doorway as Justin pulled into the parking lot. Groups of three or four would-be patrons stood by their cars, waiting for the club to officially open. “Hey sweetie!” A thin man with a receding hairline waved flippantly toward Justin before continuing his conversation with the two men at his sides. “Hi there!” another one called out. Justin didn’t know either of the men, middle-aged club regulars that hid behind the spotlights and imagined him in their beds while he hypnotized them from the stage. He pursed his lips in his rearview mirror and tilted his head to one side, trying to get a sense for what they saw – too much of Justin stared back at him. He needed to go inside and change. He grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and stomped his Lugs to the club entrance, nodding and smiling reluctantly at the men who offered up limp gestures of greeting between drags on their cigarettes.

         The doorman insisted that Justin put on a neon paper bracelet (he was obviously underage), and before Justin could protest, a full-figured woman in a black skirt and jacket took the pile of bracelets from the doorman’s hand and shook her head. Joyce, who had answered to the name of Jim in a past lifetime of overbearing parents and an unforgiving ex-wife, was now East Exotic Nightclub’s official Mistress of Ceremonies. The squat blond helmet of teased hair atop her head was in fact her own; Joyce had put all of her wigs in a box for storage when she stopped performing and had decided to begin the long, winding road to becoming a woman. The hormones had covered her in violent tides of emotional sensitivity, but eventually settled like a sandy bay. She had a welcoming smile and club-goers thought of her as a favorite aunt, who offered all of her new-found maternal love to the family that East Exotic had created. She brought a feeling of community to the sometimes seedy club atmosphere, a feeling that she fostered both through open arms of affection and tight, closed grip on all club operations.

         “Leo! This boy doesn’t need one of those stupid things. This is Justin, he’s performing tonight.” Joyce wrapped her arm around Justin’s narrow shoulders like a mother bear to a threatened cub. She squeezed Justin in greeting. “How are you sweetie? Don’t mind Leo, it’s his first night at the door. Do you feel good about tonight?”

         Justin stared at the strips of paper in Joyce’s hand. Her nails glistened red in the club’s changing light; she would file them while her girls performed on the runway, complaining to no one in particular that they always got in the way of her typing at the office – she daylighted as a temporary administrative assistant. “Fine,” Justin said. “I think I’ll duck out after the show is over. My mom’s sick and –” Joyce flexed her bicep and caused Justin to choke on his words. “See that?” She bent her boy toward Leo. “What a good boy, going home for his sick mom.” Leo grumbled in assent. “So,” Justin continued, “I need to go home after.”

         “Well that’s fine, you know that honey,” Joyce said. “You have to do what you have to do. Now go back and get ready, I can’t wait to see you out there.” Joyce kissed Justin hard on the cheek and rustled his bristly hair. He grinned sheepishly and headed toward the dressing room, worried that Joyce might further mess up his makeup.

         The dressing room smelled like the top drawer of Justin’s bathroom cabinet, where the cosmetics of his sister, his mother, and himself mingled with one another and spilled open onto the toothbrushes and cotton swabs. Three performers, ranging in age and stature, but all older and more muscular than Justin, sat on cushioned stools before dimly lit mirrors. They brushed at their faces with the tips of their nails, tracing lines along their lips and eyes. A small, dark-skinned man with thick arms stared at his figure in the mirror, his nose an inch from the glass, as if a face he’d never seen before puzzled and fascinated him from the other side. He sniffed, flaring his nostrils, and shook his head. A square compact lay open on the table before him, covered in white dust and the partial imprint of his lips, the oily color of dried blood.

         The three looked dazedly up at Justin as he tossed his bag on the floor by the fourth, unoccupied, stool and began to rummage through it for his teddy, shoes, and wig. “Hi Justyne,” said the dark-skinned man, his eyes darting from one corner of the room to another, as if following a small bird flying frantically between them. “Hi Gemini,” Justin said. He didn’t know the man’s real name, and couldn’t say that the man knew his either. Those names didn’t belong in the club, and neither did the bony boy with the pallor and complexion of a winter’s full moon. It all drowned in thick makeup throbbing music. Justin glanced around the room a second time as he kicked off his boots and his baggy pants fell to expose his smooth, knobby legs. “Where’s Diabolique?” he asked. Diabolique was the night’s headlining performer, and currently held the local “Ms. Gay” title. Justin remembered seeing her the first time he came to the club, a white flare of energy that seemed to command the thunderous music around her, only just contained by the thin runway. He had almost expected her to leap off of it at any moment, into the crowd, to inject it with her electric pulse. “Oh you know,” the small man clicked his tongue, nodding toward the back door that led to the bathrooms. “She’s working out her pre-show nerves.” All three men then labored a low giggle, a sound that clattered up from their Adam’s apples and evaporated in a hum from their tongues. Justin mimicked their response, which floated out of his mouth more like a short titter, and he quickly shut it again. The three men finished getting ready, straightening one another’s wigs and zipping one another’s backs, shimmering with sequins and sweat of cocaine and nerves, and left Justin alone as they clip-clopped into the club to mingle before the show.

         Finally alone in the yellow air of the dressing room, breathing the heavy fog of musk and sharp feminine perfume, Justin took his time changing his clothes and touching up his makeup. He shook off his boxers and stood naked before the dust-coated mirrors, studying his stick-like frame with a casual distain – a hollow-eyed scarecrow with no straw stuffing. His hipbones pinched the skin at his waist, and his ribcage jutted out as he pulled his belly inward. Pale skin clung like rubber to the dips and eddies between his bones, the shrunken canvas on which he would now paint Justyne. He stepped into the white teddy and pulled it up until it fit across him like a second skin, luminous and frilled. The stilettos wound up past his ankles like tiny bleached serpents, the heels clicking the hard floor as he fretted over his wig. After ten minutes of poking and tilting his head at various angles, Justyne stared out through the mirror. She was nervous before the performance, as always, still unsure on her feet. The best way for her to loosen her constricting stomach was to walk around the room slowly, suppressing her desire to run in her heels, and take deep, meditated breaths. She couldn’t mingle like the other girls, the experienced performers who trotted up and down the runway, as familiar to them as a stroll down the street. Justyne pet her hair with long fingers as she paced between the stools and mirrors. She didn’t feel well either, something deeper than simple nerves, behind her tangled stomach. She would go out for her performance, touch the audience as Diabolique had first touched her, and then make a quick exit, becoming Justin once more as Cinderella faded from princess to peasant maid.

         A second pair of heels echoed from the back entrance to the dressing room, which connected to the dance floor through a common bathroom. The footfalls pounded louder against the ground and Justyne paused to see a short, voluptuous woman with muscular legs step into the room. Diabolique. Her long-lashed eyes swelled in surprise at finding this skinny young thing standing in the room alone. They flapped around the room, from one dark, dusty corner to another, hunting for Joyce as Diabolique braced to deny any accusations of misbehavior in the men’s room. Joyce usually loomed somewhere close by her little protégé to ensure that no one slipped any pills in her Pepsi, but Justyne seemed to be entirely alone.

         Well hello there sweetie,” Diabolique purred. She used one finger to wipe a sticky translucence from her lower lip, which she then used to trace the edge of a stool. She had performed at East Exotic before Justyne had been a pile of clothes and wigs on Justin’s bedroom floor. Tonight, as on most other nights, Diabolique would perform last, the finale of the entire show. She bragged that this pedestal prohibited her from getting involved in any of the petty dramas that swallowed the conversations of the lesser performers and club-goers, but she’d flung more than a few sour words about Justyne after witnessing the whistles and applause that followed her first few performances. “Look at her makeup,” Diabolique hissed, “what is that, clown-slut paint-by-number?” “Of course she has a great energy, she was popping pills like Skittles backstage.” In fact, Diabolique often indulged in pre-performance pick-me-ups, even thought them a necessity; she wasn’t as young or as thin as she once had been, wished she still was. But she did have experience, and despite Justyne’s natural youthful energy, she was still unsteady when it came to her routine, and kept it simple, with few quick turns or high kicks.

         Excited?” Diabolique asked.

         “Sure,” said Justyne. “I’m not feeling too well though, I think I’ll leave after the show is over.”

         Diabolique raised her eyebrows to hide a twitching smirk. “Oh that’s too bad. Wait, I have something that might make you feel better.” The diva felt through her small velvet purse. She pulled a thin medicine bottle from her bag and shook it between her thumb and index finger, shaking the tiny pills inside like a threatened rattler shakes its tail.

         Justyne stared at the bottle for a moment, debating whether or not to reach toward the strike. She had seen Diabolique take them, some pill or other, always a couple before the show, so that when she went to the runway she could twist and strut from one side to the other in time with the quick pace of the music. She always exited the stage gasping for air and covered in a glistening film of sweat, but she managed to then move to the bar to flirt and mingle, hand-pick an adoring fan to take home for the night, without sparing a moment to rest. Justyne always had to sit in the dressing room after a performance to settle her shaking limbs. Sometimes, she would close her eyes and picture Justin, sitting calmly on the couch at home, watching TV with his sister and Will. The pills peaked Justyne’s interest, but she decided that she would go home right after the show anyway, and Diabolique’s eyes were red with venom. “No thanks, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Suit yourself,” Diabolique said, pulling her arm back as if she had rest it on a hot kitchen burner and dropping the bottle into her purse. “The show should be starting in a few minutes. I’m going to go out by the stage.”

         The deep hum of bass boomed through the doorway as Diabolique walked out of the dressing room. Justyne heard Joyce’s jovial voice welcoming everyone to East Exotic with as much warmth as a small town mayor thanking his fellow townspeople for attending the annual summer picnic. She picked faces out of the audience and asked newcomers for their names. “Richard!” she exclaimed. “So is it fair to say that you’re a ‘Tricky Dick’?” Laughter and applause spread through the crowd like a heavy breeze. Joyce paused until the air settled again, standing expectantly amidst the spinning lights and pulsing backbeat, before getting on with the show. “One more welcome to everyone tonight, and a special welcome to our Wednesday night stage show! These ladies have spent countless hours preparing – oh they work hard for the money – and of course we’re especially lucky to still have with us, after almost three years, East Exotic’s own – Diabolique!” Applause rose up once more from the crowd, again fighting to rise over the fast house music. The lights went down, leaving only a bright circle in front of the runway, and the DJ cued the music for the first performance.

         Although Diabolique took the stage last, the other performers switched the order of their routines regularly. Each show had at least one performer who hadn’t taken the stage the previous night, so there was always a feeling of freshness and vitality in the show at large. Tonight Justyne would perform fourth, right before Diabolique, which caused her to chew her lip like her sister Janet as she paced backstage. Justyne reminded herself that it was far better to go on before Diabolique than to try and follow her, and, as she conjured a fickle wick of confidence inside her chest, Justyne’s steps around the dressing room fell more flatly than they had a moment before.

         Joyce introduced the third performer, the impossibly tan little woman with large arms who had first greeted Justin in the dressing room. She danced to a throbbing, wordless electronic composition that Justyne didn’t recognize. The music’s pacing ensured that she could run across the stage, back and forth like a panicked dog caught on piece of sinking driftwood, but the song’s relative obscurity meant that at some point the audience would will the wood to sink, and the woman with it. Justyne’s confidence began to wither as the performance wore on – the crowd was into it - and she took one last deep breath as she walked from the dressing room to the curtain just behind the stage. The two performers who had already come and gone onstage smiled and nodded at her, each one still short of breath and glowing with an aura of perspiration. The music reached a crescendo and a small body shot back through the curtains, out of breath, marching past Justyne and toward the dressing room. “Well,” Joyce breathed over the microphone, “kicks like those don’t come from standing barefoot in the kitchen!” The crowd laughed, and Justyne clawed at the laughter and let it coarse through her. “Hey,” one of the performers whispered to Justyne. “Good luck.” She winked. Justyne stepped up to the curtain, her pulse echoing through her fingertips, running through her routine as she waited for Joyce to introduce her and the DJ to cue her music.

         Edgy pop tunes usually produced the best response from the audience, followed by catchy remixes, but Justyne wanted to break out from the common routine. Tonight, she would perform to a hard rock song with a memorable hook. The drumbeat started to The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play,”and Justyne felt a wily energy crawl through her muscles. She nodded to the rhythm, and prepared to pounce after the line “you gotta keep’em separated.” Her heels pierced the stage as the song began in full, her heart in time with the raging percussion, the guitar chords prickling like static on her skin. She strutted from the main stage to the end of the runway, a black wooden platform about a foot above the ground that cut into the crowd like a thick plank. Justyne’s eyes jumped around the sea of dark faces; trendy club kids cheered and lifted their sugary mixed drinks, celebrating her performance as a symbol of empowerment; middle-aged men with receding hairlines stood fast at the edge of the plank, holding out greasy bills in hopes of getting a wink from the attractive young performer, or perhaps even brushing their fingertips with her own. She caught herself mouthing the words of the song and bit down on her tongue to concentrate on her routine. She tossed a couple of kicks to the lyrics “come out and play,” but one kick almost caused her to lose her balance, and she fell back into strutting and pulling at the floating dollar bills to maintain her allure over the audience. At the final “come out and play” Justyne threw back her head and thrust out her chest, aching in a frozen pose and suppressing gasps for breath. She felt the wig loosen on her head and heat rushed to her face as she pictured it flying through the air and landing in a heap by the curtain. It held fast to Justin’s bleached bristles and Justyne bent her shoulders in a sigh of relief.

         Now that,” Joyce addressed the crowd, “was our very own beautiful Justyne! Give her some love! Poor girl wasn’t feeling well tonight, but she went on for all of you, and wasn’t she amazing! Just perfect!” Justyne smiled over the heads of the crowd, her eyes riding over the applause, before dashing back behind the curtain. She almost bumped into Diabolique backstage, who stood at the edge of the curtain, already breathing quickly, her mouth a tight line and her eyes open wide, focused on some picture in her head. “Good luck,” Justyne panted. Diabolique only continued her rhythmic breathing, nodding to herself as she heard her music begin to play.

         The ethereal introduction of Janet Jackson’s “If” slithered from the house speakers, and Diabolique edged forward, rocking back and forth to the beat. Justyne watched as she flung back the curtain and lurched onto the stage. Her narrow heels galloped to the edge of the runway in a fury, where she then snatched a dollar bill as she bit at the air. The crowd cheered as she twirled and kicked at the end of the runway, the toes of her heels coming dangerously close to piercing into the skulls of her bewitched balding admirers. This element of danger electrified the audience into even greater fits of cheering and hollering, and Justyne stood backstage in silent awe of Diabolique’s control over the crowd, her ever-increasing intensity. She managed this control without ever looking at the audience, or perhaps because she didn’t. Her eyes blazed with a dark fire, and she looked as though she wasn’t fully there, that she was somewhere above and outside of the runway, somewhere deep within herself that the clubgoers could not hope to reach. As the song ended, Diabolique ran to the edge of the runway and leapt like a gliding bird into a double-jump-kick. The music stopped and she used her teeth to rip one last dollar bill from an old man’s thick fingers, before running through the curtains as if they were a single sheet of glass, shattering into a million pieces as she passed. Before Justyne could say anything, Diabolique ran into the dressing room and through the back hallway to the bathroom, where at least a couple of close admirers surely waited.

         Justyne walked into the dressing room, an exhaustion suddenly enveloping her large serpent. She slowed and nearly collapsed onto her stool, proceeding to shed her wig and heels. With two of the other three performers still in the room, she changed more discretely than she had before. The other performers noticed her shyness, the atmosphere was not unlike a locker room in this respect, but they refrained from commenting on it. She didn’t feel well.

          Like the backstage area of a rock concert, it was not uncommon for one of them to unwittingly walk in on one or more performers entangled with faceless members of their adoring public. Justyne had opened the door on a few such occasions, but, either because she had only turned eighteen a couple of months ago, or her eyes reflected an innocence that could so easily crack and crumble, Joyce made sure that no one enticed her to get directly involved. Once the situation escalated, doorways and dark corners swollen with bodies, brimming with the life and vigor stirred up by the show, Joyce declared that non-performers were not allowed backstage at any time, except in cases of special circumstances that were first cleared by her. Word spread quickly of this new restriction, and Diabolique began to tour the men’s room before and after the shows.

         Justyne was tucked back into Justin’s duffle bag, her face wiped off with wet towelettes and paper towels and tossed in the metal garbage can. Justin waved good-bye to the other performers backstage and again explained that he didn’t feel very well and so had to go home early. He wished them all a fun night when Joyce walked into the dressing room, gushing with congratulations for her star performers. She noticed that Diabolique was missing, but there was no need to ask why. She looked at the bony boy standing by the mirrors; his large eyes and flushed cheeks made him look no older than fifteen. Joyce went up to Justin and put her arm around his shoulder. “Still heading out early?” “Yeah, I’m really starting to feel it. Getting pretty tired and shaky.” Joyce kissed his forehead. It was warm, but whether from his routine or sickness she couldn’t say. “Ok honey, well you get home then.” She caught him in a powerful hug that squeezed hard against his ribs. “Rest up so you can come back healthy. You did a great job out there tonight.” “Thanks,” said Justin. “Good night.” He turned to the other performers. They waved, wrists flapping, glittered lips pouted in concern, and said they hoped he felt better, their voices holding the genuine tone of older siblings or brothers bonded by a sports team: “East Exotic’s Feather Boas.” Justin walked over the stage and swam through the slick swarm of bodies now shaking and grinding on the dance floor. Some men looked at him twice, as if they mistook him for someone they knew. One bearded man, his flannel shirt tucked under a bulbous gut, eyed Justin’s entire trek from the curtain to the front door, and, when Justin disappeared into the refreshing coolness of the night, excused himself to the bathroom to relieve a stirring in his groin.

         As he turned the key and felt Janet’s Chevy shake itself awake, Justin watched the colored lights reflect off of the club’s open doorway. The music carried into the street and buzzed in his ears like an electric current. He coughed as he pulled the car out of the parking lot and felt a scratchiness in his throat as he followed the road back across the center of town towards home.

         Justin unlocked the front door of his house and heard the television mumbling faintly in the living room, its blue glow cast across the couch and onto the far wall. He had seen Will’s truck parked in the grass next to the driveway, so he knew he had finally come back from his shift at Dunkin Donuts. The room was dark except for the soft haze reflected from the TV, which Justin followed until his eyes settled on the couch, where Will sat in a tank top and faded jeans, his arms spread wide over the back of the couch, a beer bottle hanging from his right hand. He took a long drink from the bottle and turned his attention to the doorway. “Hey,” he mumbled, his eyes searching in the darkness for where he thought Justin should be standing. “Mom and Janet asleep?” Justin asked. “Yeah. You know, your sister can be a real bitch sometimes. She thinks just because I don’t come right home from my fucking shift, I’m out with some other girl.” Will moved as if to get up, but instead seemed to collapse further into the couch. “So what if I wanna go to MacIntyre’s for a couple of drinks? What’s the fucking problem with that?” MacIntyre’s was a pub near downtown center. According to Will, the pizza was greasy and the wings tasted like pre-chewed leather, but the beer was good enough as anywhere. Justin had made it a rule to stay away from greasy foods, and the few times he’d tasted beer he’d thought he might throw up.

          took another drink. “So now I’m on the couch. Fucking whatever man.” His voice slurred as he spoke, and one word butted up against another in a wet string. He looked deeper in the darkness, his eyes beginning to adjust from the brightness given off by the television. “Come sit down man,” he said to the shadow in the doorway, his tone softer than before, with any hint of anger diluted with by a flat calm. “Keep me company out here.”

         Justin lingered in the doorway for a moment, then dropped his duffle bag next to the couch and sat down. Will was spread in the center of the couch, and when Justin sat next to him, he put his free arm around Justin’s shoulders, which felt sharp enough to piece into his forearm, and knocked his leg with his knee. He watched Justin’s face as he studied the television, and smelled the pungent remains of Justyne’s makeup in his pores. “You stink like a faggot,” he slurred, anticipating a reaction. Justin narrowed his attention on Late Show to tune out Will’s comment. He studied the guest’s coffee mug and watched him laugh and sip daintily from it. Some athlete Justin didn’t recognize, basketball by the size of him. Will called him names sometimes when he was drunk, before they did anything, as if Justin’s lack of reply insured his silence afterward, toward Janet, his mother, or anyone else, and that whatever touching that followed existed in a vacuum, outside of all name-calling and label-punching. “You don’t care anyway, you wanna smell like that.” Will paused, squinting in thought. “You smell like your sister.”

         The pressure of Will’s arm pushed down on Justin’s shoulders, and Justin tried to sit up slowly, resisting. They had done this before, each enjoying a sense of power over the other for having causing him to submit, but Justin wasn’t up for it tonight. “Nah, I don’t feel good Will,” he said. “Me neither,” Will said, under his breath. “Come on man, it only takes a minute. You’ve done it enough before, without me even asking.” Justin’s back loosened and he let Will push him toward his crotch. Justin imagined himself back at the club, performing up and down the runway. He thought of Diabolique biting dollars from men’s hands, running from the stage to the bathroom after her performance, emerging from the back hallway, wiping her lips with her fingers. The cheers echoed in Justin’s head against the buzzing in his ears and he adjusted his position so he could undo Will’s belt and unzip his pants. Will remained silent as Justin bent himself down deeper. “Yeah man, just like your sister,” he whispered. Justin began to pump faster and faster, summoning stifled moans to catch and gurgle in Will’s throat. Justin continued pumping, picturing Diabolique’s routine coming faster and faster, her kicks higher and higher until she leapt through the air at an impossible speed. “Go down man,” Will whispered through gritted teeth.

         Justin pulled Will’s squat trunk from his boxers; it stood rigid, wrapped in vine-like veins against the musky snarls of pubic hair. Justin wrapped his lips around it and moved his head up and down, with greater and greater speed until Will clutched his head tightly with his hand. Justin managed to whip his head back just has the sticky translucence flew onto Will’s chest. He took a towelette from his pocket and wiped the gobs from Will’s skin; Justin didn’t like the fluid’s heavy scent. Will laid his head back on the couch and breathed deeply, his earlier fight with Janet expelled from his mind, at least for the rest of the night. Justin got up from the couch and flicked the paper towel into the trash bin in the kitchen. He walked back into the living room to grab his duffle bag and glanced at Will, spread on the couch, his legs and arms stretched wide, exposed and flaccid. “Thanks buddy,” he slurred from somewhere far away. Justin headed toward his room.

         After closing the door behind him, shutting out the light and sound from the living room, Justin closed his eyes and floated in the silence. He inhaled it, and the dusty air tickled the tiny hairs of his nose. Without turning a light on, Justin pulled off his clothes until any observer in the near-dark would swear he was a coat rack draped in a t-shirt and boxers. He threw his jeans in the corner by his duffle bag and sat on his bed. Something rustled beneath the covers. Justin almost jumped up like a jackrabbit as he felt the mattress’s displaced stiffness from the warm body that rested next to him in the darkness. His breath caught as he thought for a moment that some old man had gotten liquored up enough to follow him home. That couldn’t have happened; he would have noticed someone tracking him on the road, not to mention someone walking into the living room while he was there with Will. No, it was Janet. He could smell her, the heavy scent of her coconut shampoo and the light fruity scent of her body lotion. It was a softness Justyne tried to emulate through makeup and perfume, but that she would never attain.

         Justin used to crawl in Janet’s bed when they were both little, until she entered middle school and said they were both too old to sleep like babies. After Justin graduated from high school, once he started going to East Exotic, he would sometimes come home to find her in his bed. He usually woke her when he came in, and she would shuffle over to give him room, but most often neither sibling said a word.

         Janet stirred and turned away from the middle of the bed as Justin rested his head on his pillow. “So how was it tonight?” she whispered into the darkness. “Good,” he replied after a brief silence. “What song did you do?” “Offspring.” “Oh.” Another pause. “Was Diabolical there?” “Diabolique.” “Whatever.” “Yeah.” “What song did she do?” “‘If,’ Janet Jackson.” “She’s a crazy bitch.” “Janet Jackson?” She laughed into her pillow. “No idiot, Diabolical. From what you said about her anyway, she sounds like a crazy bitch.” “She’s really good though.” “Whatever. Hey I’m off tomorrow. If you want, we can put some work into that look you got going, class it up some. Don’t want you ending up an old skank like her. You better not start acting like that,” Janet yawned, “it’s trash.”

         Justin stared into the blackness in front of his face, and thought he could trace the outline of the mirror over his dresser. “I won’t,” he said.