Of Drag Kings & The Wheel of Fate.

by Susan Smith.

Chapter One.

It was in the cemetery that Rosalind Olchawski first received the word on love. She was walking in Forest Lawn, seeking beauty where it was rumored to be found. There weren't many places in Buffalo she'd found to be beautiful, but she'd only been a resident for a month. It was Rosalind's nature to try to be generous, with places and with people, and to find pleasing what was presented as pleasing. So she walked, and her accepting nature found the cemetery agreeable, the monuments somber and interesting, the trees stubbornly green against an early September sky.

Rosalind drew a hand through her hair, the strands mingling red and gold, the pale white of bleached bone, the yellow of saffron in a riot of color. Her eyes were a similar mingling-brown and gray and green-agate, like the edge of a mountain lake reflecting the changing leaves of autumn. Her face was that of an eternal youth, despite the fine lines that stress had started to carve near her mouth, around her eyes. At thirty-three, Rosalind Olchawski had the look of a perpetual teenager, with the weariness of the aged.

Walking was an addiction, a time to put her seething brain on hold and let her body move without direction, a Zen exercise for a woman who lived too long and often in her head. In her own estimation, walking had saved her sanity during the writing of her dissertation. Having completed a doctorate, she was now convinced that no one went through the process and remained sane. She'd seen friends and colleagues succ.u.mb to their own brands of madness-fits of temper, drunken bouts, marriages thrown up on the rocks. Rosalind smiled, just a little, at that.

Her marriage had already been shredded by the time she'd started writing and over before she was halfway done. Poor Paul, he didn't even get the satisfaction of suffering grandly through her dissertation, claiming all the neglected spouse's privileges and sympathy. He'd been neglected long before and taken his privileges elsewhere.

Rosalind sighed and put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. It was an ungenerous memory, one that she didn't like to revisit. There was too much unfinished, too much inexplicable about the unraveling of her marriage for her to be settled with how it happened. Maybe no memory was easy until it was digested and reformed.

A car pa.s.sed her on the cemetery path, moving at a stately pace. She stepped aside, wondering if they were visiting relatives or were tourists. Rosalind ducked her head, to acknowledge their potential grief and hide her inappropriate thoughts. She didn't know anyone who was buried here, but she could try to maintain a respectful air. A cemetery was a place for reflection, for communing with the divine. Her mind refused to get caught up in the rhythm of celestial time and churned out thoughts that had no impression of eternity. She held on to a hope that the beauty of the setting might change that.

An arrow of black tore across her vision, low and to the left. It took her a moment to recognize the shape. Rosalind watched as the crow backwinged and landed on a headstone some fifteen feet off the path. It arranged its feathers with a full body shake and turned, feet shuffling on the blue stone. One bright black marble of an eye found her. She had the oddest sensation that the crow was about to speak when it opened its sooty beak, but no sound came out. The silence was unnerving, as if she couldn't hear what was being said to her. The crow c.o.c.ked its head, glanced away, then was gone. The blue stone drew her eye. She walked off the path to get a better look.

It was unfinished. On the front was a patch smooth as gla.s.s, with writing inscribed. Not the name and date that Rosalind expected, but a quote.

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.

She reached in her pocket for a sc.r.a.p of paper to copy it down. It was the kind of thing she'd love to recite, later, to a friend, to try to capture the moment of the crow and the gravestone. She wondered who slept under the stone, why they'd left no record of who they'd been and when they had lived. A feeling of ineffable sadness gripped her, the weight of a grief she didn't possess.

She interpreted the feeling as a stab of loneliness for Ithaca, for a familiar setting and familiar people. She was gentle with herself, letting the feeling pa.s.s. Loneliness was perfectly normal in a new town. She was starting a new job, which she had to admit she loved. She'd already made a friend.

Rosalind had had the impression, before she'd moved there, that Buffalo was a dying rust-belt town, forlorn after the close of the steel mills, known only for chicken wings and bad football. She'd expected to find many sports bars, the truth behind all those snow jokes, and a monochrome city against a monochrome sky on the edge of a Great Lake. She'd consoled herself with thoughts of the two-hour drive to Toronto and all the theater to be had in that splendid Canadian metropolis. Ellie had shown her the way.

It was one of those getting-to-know-you departmental functions, the kind with name tags and plastic cups of juice. A chance, Rosalind thought very privately, for her to start practicing kissing a.s.s. She remembered the very moment she met Ellie.

She had to be from the theater department. Her entrance was too perfect, and too loud, for her to be in English. The woman who entered wore black in celebration of mortuary finery. Black silk shirt, black leather jacket, black jeans over narrow black boots, all set against a curling array of ash blond hair. She sashayed into the room blowing kisses, just adoring everyone she came near in a manner too exaggerated to be real. Suddenly everyone else in the room was beige and wan. The woman poured herself a gla.s.s of juice, laughing with a mouth scarlet and brilliant.

Rosalind felt like she was back in high school. She wanted this woman to come talk to her, to laugh at her jokes, to turn the light of her attention her way. When the woman glanced at her and smiled, she nearly dropped her cup of juice. When the woman excused herself from an unfinished conversation and strolled over to her, Rosalind struggled to keep herself from looking over her shoulder to see who she was approaching.

The woman stopped right next to her and leaned in as if they were the oldest of friends, sharing a secret. "You look like you have a sense of humor. It's my duty to preserve that." There was such amus.e.m.e.nt in her tone that Rosalind found herself smiling in return.

"I like to think that I do," she said. It was the start of a conversation that hadn't ended for hours.

Ellie would like the quote, she decided. The weight of grief she called loneliness shifted, she started walking faster. Maybe it was time to start unpacking her office.

"Dr. Olchawski?" The voice called from the partially open door, half shielding the office of the newest addition to the English department at the University at Buffalo. The doctor in question, looking more like one of her students in faded jeans and a red T-shirt with a Shakespeare in Delaware Park logo, was lost behind a mountain of papers threatening to swamp her desk. She bravely held the suicidal ma.s.s at bay, bracing an arm against it as she reached out with her foot, edging the door open. "Incredible. I didn't think you were tall enough for that move, let alone limber enough. How can you have this much junk? The semester just started."

Ellie's voice was rimmed and threaded with amus.e.m.e.nt. She sank into the empty chair at the corner of the desk, watching as the stack of papers started to teeter. The papers were given a firm shove back onto the desk, then a warning look.

"I'm still moving in," Rosalind commented to her reclining friend.

Ellie looked up at the picture over the desk, of Rosalind in Renaissance Festival wench's garb, a tankard in each hand, bosom straining against the low-cut gown. "You should put that thing away, before your students start palpitating."

"This, from an actress. I thought you'd appreciate period costume," Rosalind said, sinking into her chair.

"Oh, I do. But you're lovely enough in your street drag. Put you in something low cut, and you're lethal," Ellie said, with an appreciative look. Rosalind turned her agate eyes on her friend and narrowed them shrewdly.

"Thou dost protest too much. What's all the flattery for?"

Ellie's mobile face became the picture of innocence, a cherub out of Caravaggio. "Can't I just appreciate my dear friend?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, Dr. Olchawski, I was wondering if I could trade s.e.xual favors to get an A," Ellie said brightly.

"Well, sure. I haven't had a date in months," Rosalind said immediately, putting her gla.s.ses on.

Ellie proceeded to look shocked and saddened. "Not my favors, unfortunately. I only wish I were gay. There are no heteros.e.xual men in theater. More's the pity. Ros, you're a catch. No, I was thinking of a double date. Bill has a friend in poetics. He'd be perfect for you."

Rosalind took her gla.s.ses back off, rubbing a hand across her eyes. "Oh, Ellie. No. School just started, I don't want to-"

"Ros. It's been nine months. You can stop mourning. It's the twenty-first century. People do get divorced," Ellie said, taking the gla.s.ses away from her friend.

The truth was that Rosalind was not mourning, at least not her failed marriage. That she had expected, from the moment Paul had proposed to her. There had been a warning voice in the back of her mind, saying, Not a good idea. She could never quite put her finger on why. He was a good man, pleasant to look at, good company, gentle in a fashion. They'd known one another forever, finally dating in their late twenties because everyone seemed to think they should. It wasn't regret she felt when he finally turned elsewhere to seek companionship, after she'd stopped sleeping with him. It was relief.

She hadn't even minded when he came home and told her about his affair. She'd accepted it with only a twinge of guilty pleasure, as if to say, Finally. We can admit that this was a mistake all along. She hadn't chastised him for his infidelity or turned down his offer of divorce.

It reduced him to tears that she didn't think enough of him to rage at him, strike out at him. Why would I? Rosalind wondered. She'd never hated him. That would require an intensity of emotion that didn't exist in her. She was a warm person, everyone said so, but hot, no. Not given to the fires of jealousy or rage, anger or revenge. Or, a small part of her admitted, love.

Paul had been good to her. She felt affection for his good heart, his simple masculine virtues and vanities, his dreams that seemed so manageable. She also felt a sense of superiority, a distance from the possessiveness he seemed to feel about her person. She really didn't care if he found someone else to make him happy; she just knew that she couldn't. It had broken his heart finally that she didn't love him enough to hate him.

"You're not normal, Ros. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were frigid. Or a d.y.k.e, but you never show any interest in girls either. You just don't get worked up over anybody."

She wanted to. In her heart, Rosalind yearned to be driven to distraction, to make every mistake a lover could, to lose herself in courtship's dance and retreat. To be out of control, to feel like there was nothing she wouldn't fight, wouldn't overcome to have...whoever.

That's where her imagination failed her. At thirty-three, nine months after her divorce from her old friend and erstwhile husband, she despaired of it ever happening. I must be missing a piece of my heart, damaged in some way, because I've never felt it. The poet, the lover, the madman are of imagination all compact...I'm not so sure.

"Oh, Ellie. A poet. A blind date with a poet. Just what I need," Rosalind finally said.

"Look, I promise you it'll be fun. There's a drag show downtown at Club Marcella. I want to go check it out before I send my students to review it. You love that stuff. Fits right in with that Gender in Shakespeare seminar you were telling me about. You look like you need to have some fun, baby. Come out and play."

Hours later, in Rosalind's car on the way to the club, Ellie was still exclaiming that it would be a grand evening. Rosalind had insisted on taking her car as an escape valve. If the date went awry, Ellie could go home with Bill, and she could slip away on her own.

"You remember my signal if he's boring the devil out of me?" she asked Ellie, not for the first time.

"You start choking on the little umbrella in your drink and fall off the chair. When you turn blue, I yell 'Man overboard!' and drag you clear." She turned the rearview mirror so she could regard herself. Rosalind turned the mirror back.

"That's for driving, not looking at yourself. No, if I go like this, you meet me at the pay phone and we invent a sick relative."

Ellie nodded in a parody of comprehension. "The eagle flies at midnight. The crow is on the gravestone."

Rosalind looked sharply at her friend. After Ellie had surprised her with news of the double date, she'd forgotten about the quote from the cemetery. "Did I tell you about the crow?"

"You make this gesture-" Ellie said, demonstrating.

"No, not that. I spent the afternoon in Forest Lawn. I found this quote I wanted to read to you, something carved on one of the stones. I only noticed it because a crow flew down and landed on the stone." Rosalind left one hand on the wheel and reached in her pocket for the sc.r.a.p of paper. She pulled it out, feeling a small thrill of triumph. "Read that."

Ellie did, squinting over Rosalind's handwriting. "How very Gothic and morbid. It's gorgeous. I didn't know you liked Madame de Stael. What had you haunting the cemetery this afternoon?"

"Just walking. I wanted to see Red Jacket's monument and the pond with the swans." Rosalind took the sc.r.a.p of paper back and folded it neatly in half. "Do you believe in it?" she asked, glancing at Ellie.

Ellie was fixing her lipstick, making obscene faces at herself in the mirror. "Red Jacket or the swans? I believe in swans, but they are a little suspect."

"Love." When Rosalind spoke the word, it took on the grandeur of Paris, the strangeness of Byzantium. She had added, without knowing it, a level of reverence that only those who had never visited could add to the name of a destination. "Love like that, that erases time."

Ellie stopped applying her makeup. "It's the blind date, isn't it? Look, I think he'll be a nice guy. Bill said he'd be perfect for you-"

"Bill said? You mean you haven't even met this guy?" Rosalind demanded, taking the corner sharply.

"I'm looking out for your best interests! Sweetie, you may not have noticed, but you are moping. I'm trying to get you out into the world."

"Ellie, I just moved here. I'm starting a new job, getting to know the area. I don't have to start dating immediately."

"Great excuse. I might even buy it, if I were an idiot," Ellie returned, smiling broadly.

It deflated Rosalind's small store of anger. She parked where Ellie indicated, sheepish. She picked up her purse, took a quick look at herself in the mirror, and saw the wary mix of despair and hope in her own eyes. She looked away, unable to face it. Life was much more bearable without the apparition of hope, whispering its sugared promises of paradise. That sort of thing happened to other people, people who were larger than life. Like Ellie. She could see Ellie getting consumed with pa.s.sion.

Rosalind knew it was different for her. She'd been married to a man she'd known most of her life. And wasn't friendship what all women's magazines recommended as the basis for a lasting relationship? She and Paul had been great friends. There hadn't been the bodice-ripping l.u.s.t, but surely that was fiction. Warm affection was the reality. "It's a crime that women grow up reading romance novels," Rosalind said, halfway to herself.

"It's a crime that love does exist, and we are reminded of its absence. If anybody ever told the truth about love, the pages would curl and burn."

"I should be so lucky."

Ellie linked her arm though Rosalind's.

"Your luck is changing. Trust me, I'm an actress. We're superst.i.tious about these things. I see great change coming your way, starting tonight."

Ellie had included Marcella's on her tour of small theaters, coffeehouses, and gay bars. Rosalind knew that Marcella's was a drag bar downtown in the Theater District, firmly planted between the two largest regional houses, Studio Area and Shea's Buffalo.

Both theaters Ellie advised her to take in small doses. "They cater to the white suburban tourists from Orchard Park and Williamsville. They'll get touring companies doing Phantom, Grease, and, for a real big thrill, Rent. If you like your musicals white bread, go to Shea's. If you want to find some good stuff being done, hit the Ujima Company, Buffalo Ensemble, Paul Robeson. Any of the small houses. The tourists would drop dead of fright to see what's really being done in Buffalo," Ellie proclaimed like a priestess giving the mystery to an initiate.

The Theater District was largely a marketing ploy on behalf of a dying downtown, trying to lure new blood and money in from the suburbs. Businesses were expiring by the day, residents had long fled, but a small strip of bars and clubs aimed at young people was thriving on Chippewa Street. The Irish Cla.s.sical Theater on Chippewa drew a mixed crowd-suits and hipsters, students and old guard, suburbanites who wanted to feel very adventuresome. The bars on Chippewa had started a minirevival, supporting a few restaurants, coffee shops, and fast-food joints, mingled with the older businesses. The old shoe store was still there, next to the new Atomic Cafe. The pizzeria still sat across from the p.o.r.n shop that always had two huge cats sleeping in the window. Chippewa was alive with college students and yuppies.

An enterprising businessman from neighboring Rochester saw the market and found it good. He'd purchased the s.p.a.ce next to Shea's box office, a club s.p.a.ce that he transformed into Marcella's. He'd named the bar for his own drag queen persona and set about making a success of it. Local gay papers carried ads of buff, nearly naked men holding up text detailing drink specials. He held contests, special parties, events, and, finally, the first regular drag nights in Buffalo. Model searches encouraged the young to show off their a.s.sets for the chance at a calendar or poster of their own.

The front room of Marcella's had a long curved aluminum and gla.s.s bar, a dance floor with a DJ booth, and an impressive light system. Handsome young men with soap-star smiles and lifetime memberships to health clubs gyrated and enticed one another. Shined, oiled, sleek, and s.e.xy dancers hired for their looks performed on the bar, on the dance floor, as bar backs and bouncers. Marcella had an eye for beautiful young men and included them in the decor.

The bar was quickly adopted by a contingent of straight girls in full makeup and tight dresses, enjoying the display of splendid male flesh, enjoying the chance to dance and flirt with the boys in an atmosphere oddly safe. They could dance salaciously with gorgeous men, who then went home with each other. When the crowd from Chippewa started drifting in, Marcella's became a gold mine.

Everyone had thought that Marcella's wouldn't last. A gay club, in the middle of the straightest, most touristy part of downtown? Madness. Yet a strange synergy took over. The Theater District embraced Marcella's; the crowds from Amherst and Williamsville, some of them at least, loved it. It was like visiting a foreign country, where friendly, colorful natives are eager to perform their folk dances for you, take your money, then disparage you behind your back.

Straight people brought cash, so Marcella's catered to them. The drag shows proved to be immensely popular and became a fixture. Ellie had told her about the drag shows, told her that the level of performance could be exceptional. She wanted to send her first-year acting students to see the show. "I'd send them to St. Catherine's to see the lap dancing if I could get away with it. Now that takes energy, working with enthusiasm night after night, but I don't think they're ready for that yet," Ellie said, breezing past the bouncer, a three-hundred-pound man in a security guard's uniform.

He nodded to Ellie affably, then held his arm up, blocking Rosalind from entering. Ellie turned around and frowned at the guard. "Tony, come on. You know me. Would I bring the unworthy here?"

"She with you? Okay, Ellie, but keep an eye on that one. She looks like trouble." He pointed to Rosalind, who promptly blushed.

Ellie led them past the dance floor, past the gorgeous men displaying themselves for one another. Rosalind did her best not to stare like a tourist on her first trip to a gay bar. Ellie was a performance in herself-moving across the floor, greeting other regulars, blowing air kisses to the dancing men. One of the men turned, saw Ellie pa.s.s by, and threw a smile of appreciation at Rosalind.

She realized that she was being congratulated and felt a flush of warmth at the a.s.sumption. That someone would think she could land Ellie was flattering. Rosalind stood up a little straighter and smiled back, enjoying the moment of notoriety. She was still smiling as she followed Ellie into the back room. She started looking around, checking to see if anyone else made the same a.s.sumption. It was like trying on another ident.i.ty for the night. Her mind skipped off, picturing what the night might be like if it were just her and Ellie there to see the show. People would see them sitting together, alone, laughing. They'd a.s.sume they were lovers. Rosalind pictured Ellie ordering wine, narrating the finer points of the drag show...

The appearance of Ellie's boyfriend shattered her fantasy. Bill was almost colorless next to her-sandy hair receding, face as smooth as a boy's. He was quiet where Ellie was flamboyant, but Ellie found his presence comforting. He kissed Ellie demurely on the cheek and held out his hand to Rosalind. "I'd like you to meet Greg, my friend from the department. Greg, this is Rosalind." He stepped aside, and Rosalind got her first look at her date for the evening.

Whatever perverse hope that had lingered in the secret chambers of her heart died on the spot. He wasn't a bad-looking man, with his longish hair and his goatee and his gla.s.ses. It was the way he turned to Bill with a self-congratulatory smirk, as if she couldn't see the exchange. He'd been expecting the worst and seemed pleased with the sight of her. He stroked his goatee with one hand, a gesture she promptly hated. He took her hand, but managed not to say h.e.l.lo. Rosalind smiled graciously and silently promised to get back at Ellie.

The back room at Marcella's had cafe tables in front of a proscenium stage. It reminded Rosalind of a high school auditorium, despite the loud music from the front room. A good rigging and lighting system had been installed, and occasionally a runway would be rented for fashion shows and special events. The stage had created, in the regular Friday night shows, royalty of its own. The audience knew the performers, many of whom worked every week, and had their favorites.

Miz Understood, a buxom blonde, was the MC. Her routine had the snap of vicious stand-up, and the audience loved her. She would get them worked up between numbers, handle hecklers and intoxicated tourists, and keep the peace.

Ellie sat them down at Table 14, right in front of the stage. Bill held the chair for Ellie, and Greg sat himself, leaving Rosalind to select her own chair. Bill sat to Ellie's left; Rosalind chose the s.p.a.ce where she could keep her friend in sight. To Rosalind's left was Greg, her poet blind date. Rosalind smoothed down her skirt, wondering if she should have dressed more dramatically.

She loved simple clothes, plums and russets, deep browns and oranges. She took a quick look at Greg and tried not to sigh. He was stroking his goatee again, a gesture so reminiscent of Errol Flynn movies that she wanted to scream. What was she doing here, anyway? He looks like a poet, with his nervous eyes and his acerbic commentary on the denizens of the club. This had all the earmarks of a colossal mistake.

The warning voice in the back of her head chided her for being unkind. She hadn't dated in months; how could she reject this man out of hand? Calmly, reasonably, she told herself to engage him in conversation, get to know him, to find pleasing what was presented as pleasing. She'd had enough practice at that. So Rosalind smiled, warmly, and put on her most interested face.

A beautiful boy with a Caesar haircut, wearing only leather shorts and a chest harness, appeared at the table to take their drink order. "I'll have a Glenlivet, neat," Ellie said grandly, accepting the role of psychopomp for the night. She ordered Bill a gin and tonic without asking, and Greg ordered a Bordeaux. Ellie looked at Rosalind, knowing that she usually drank white wine.

Something, maybe the setting, maybe the look on Ellie's face, the relaxation and self-knowledge, spurred her on. She resolved to make a real adventure of the night. "Glenlivet, neat," she said in a perfect imitation of Ellie's tone.

Her friend laughed, delighted.

The waiter left, sliding off between tables filled up with men in suits, women in c.o.c.ktail dresses.

Rosalind looked around the room, at the difference in the back room crowd. Male/female pairings dominated, with an occasional table of only men. The doors to the front of the bar were shut, closing out the techno pulsing on the dance floor. "I thought this was a gay club," Rosalind said to Ellie.

"It is. This is the tourist room. Suburbanites just love coming to see the show. Makes them feel wicked."

"So, Rosalind, Bill tells me that you're from Ithaca," Greg said, looking her over very carefully.

It made Rosalind wonder what he saw. It was clear to her that he had a certain dislike for Ellie, his mouth pinched in mild discomfort when she burst forth in laughter, when she waved enthusiastically to a drag queen she knew. Ellie's spontaneous joy looked a little too brazen, seen through his eyes. Greg was smiling at her, so what did he see? Someone more acceptable, quiet, attractive in a distracted academic way, without Ellie's fire and verve. The thought of such a comparison made Rosalind feel resentful and ornery.

"I did my PhD at Cornell. But I'm originally from Poughkeepsie," Rosalind said, forcing herself to look directly at him. She noticed that he frowned when he glanced around the room and didn't bother to conceal his distaste.

"Po-what? Never heard of it. One of those made-up Indian names, right? Is that New York State?" he said, sipping at his Bordeaux. A drop of the dark red liquid spilled onto his shirt; he cursed and brushed at it with a napkin.