“It sounded dramatic,” I admitted. “I needed it for reasons. What’s your middle name? Is it something awesome like Vince’s? Like Olga? Or Leslie?”
“It’s Matthew.”
“Oh. That’s… disappointing.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah. Well. You should be.”
I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “What’s yours?”
“Patrick.”
He tried to muffle his laughter. “Sanford Patrick Stewart. Like, Patrick Stewart. The Star Trek cap—”
“I know.”
“He was also Professor X in the—”
“I know!” I snapped at him.
“Just making sure.”
“It’s not like I haven’t heard that before. I mean, it’s always been—why the hell are we talking about this? You told your father you have a what now?”
“Dammit,” he said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t have remembered that.”
“It literally happened two minutes ago.”
“Well, yeah. But you’re easily distracted.”
“I am not.”
“I can list at least seven times I’ve distracted you.”
“Really? Fine. Go ahead. I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Okay. Number one. Right now.”
“You bastard!”
“I’m hysterical,” he said, obviously pleased with himself.
“How the hell did you end up telling your father you had a girlfriend?”
“I don’t know! It just… slipped… out? Maybe. He was talking about how he was glad we were finally having a conversation again and said something that reminded me of you and I don’t know, okay? It just happened.”
“Your evil father said something that reminded you of me? I’m offended.”
“Not the point.”
“It kind of is the point, really.”
“Fine. Yes. It’s completely the point.”
“And now he wants to meet said girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Oh my god.”
“Look, I know it’s not ideal.”
“Oh my god.”
“We’ll figure something out, okay? I can tell him we’re not at the meet-the-parents stage in our—”
“What am I going to wear?”
“—relation… ship… wait. What?”
“I’ve never been to a country club,” I said, jumping up from the couch and heading toward the spare room that housed Helena’s walk-in closet. “That sounds so fancy. Like, you walk in and the first thing they do is hand you a hot towel for your face and champagne. Ooh, I bet they have good champagne. Like, not the kind that you get in a plastic cup, but in a crystal flute that just bubbles in your throat and they’ll say, ‘Welcome, Ms. Handbasket. You look lovely today. Would you like a complimentary Lexus Hybrid SUV?’ Of course, I’ll have to accept because otherwise, it would just be rude. So what on earth could I wear to say that yes, I am a fierce and classy woman who takes no fucking shit from anyone, but that I am still a sexual creature who moves with a fluidity not seen since Marilyn Monroe?”
“I don’t… know what to say to any of that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I said, throwing open the closet door. “You usually dress like you’re on your way to your next kegger, bro. With your frat bros. Who you have bromances with. You sit around and drink broskis.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Where is it?” I demanded as I flipped through the hangers. “Which country club is it at? It better not be one of the shitty ones, I swear to god, Darren. I will not go to some crapshack that pretends it’s something it’s not. I am a beautiful and fragile creature. I expect to be treated as such.”
He sighed as if he couldn’t believe this was his life. “Ventana Canyon.”
I gasped into the phone. “That’s where all the celebrities go!”
“I know.”
“You know? And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now. What do you think the point of this entire conversation has been about? It’s like you’re not even listening—”
“Really? Because I seem to remember you trying to tell me secrets about yourself while you were sitting on this like it meant nothing.”
“You asked me to tell you a secret about myself!”
“You told the wrong one!” I shouted into the phone. “I don’t care about your pedophile teacher that you wanted to have sex with!”
“Could you really not say it like that?” He sounded grumpy. “That makes it sound so… illegal.”
“It would have been illegal!”
“I didn’t fuck my teacher!”
“You thought about it.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I did.”
“I can’t believe I’m fake dating you.”
“Trust me, the feeling is completely mutual.”
“You can’t do that,” I snapped at him. “You’re not allowed to be funny right now. Or ever. There’s only so much my heart can take.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Tim Curry goes to Ventana Canyon,” I said, tossing all the trashy fucking clothes over my shoulder. “Darren, let me repeat that. Tim Curry goes to Ventana Canyon.”
“I don’t know who that is,” he said.
I shrieked into the phone.
“Ow,” he said. “Why do you have to be so—”
“Dr. Frank-N-Furter! Rocky Horror Picture Show!”
“Never saw it.”
“I don’t… understand. You never… saw… it? What does that even mean?”
“Oh boy.”
“How does one not see it? What kind of self-respecting gay are you?”
“The kind who’s about to introduce you as his girlfriend to his Republican father,” he said drily.
“I have nothing to wear!” I wailed. “Why the fuck do I have a pantsuit? I am not a businesswoman in a stock photo from the early nineties talking on her cell phone that’s as big as her head!”
“And that’s an image I’ll never unsee,” Darren said. “Wait, what color is the pantsuit?”
“Are you mocking me right now?”
“I wouldn’t even dream of it.”
“Good. Because I can’t believe I’m going to stand in the same place as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and all I have to wear is a pantsuit.”
“It’s really unfair.”
“It is,” I said. “I don’t know if you could even begin to comprehend the extent of this travesty.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’d let me get away with that.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t. I’m glad we’re on the same page with that. I’ll need at least three weeks to prepare for the role of a lifetime. I’m assuming you at least were smart enough to tell your father that we’d be happy to meet with him after the holidays.”
“Uh.”
I stopped my mad riffling of the closet to glare at the phone. “Darren.”
“Yeah,” he said. “About that. It’s. Uh. This Saturday?”
“Are you asking me or are you telling me?” I said, voice low and dangerous.
“Telling,” he said. “Definitely telling. Er. Um. Asking? You?”
“So what you’re saying is that in four days, I will be standing in front of your father who you have somehow convinced that you’re not only straight, but have managed to land a hot chick like me?”
“I… don’t… there are so many things wrong with what you just said.”
“Name two!”
“One, you’re not a hot chick.”
“Hey! I am the hottest chick!”
“Two, it’s not that hard to convince someone that I’m straight.”
“Oh please,” I said. “I’ve seen how you get when you’ve had one too many drinks in you. You’re practically on fire, you’re so flaming.”
“Says the drag queen. And I’m not flaming when I’m drunk!”
“So that wasn’t you last summer at my K
araoke Sunday drunk off margaritas singing Kesha?”
“That was one time.”
“Yeah, one time that you sang seven songs for. How the hell do you know the words to seven Ke$ha songs?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Yeah, definitely grumpy. “She’s like my spirit animal. Or something.”
“Why are you giving me all this ammo against you when I don’t have time to do anything about it? What kind of bastard are you? Your spirit animal? You big freaking homo!”
“She is fresh and exciting!”
“She doesn’t look like she bathes regularly,” I said. “Like, if you touched her, she’d probably be sticky.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Hey. I’m not the one that gets a musical boner for Ke$ha. Because that’s just weird.”
“It’s not weird.”
“It’s totally weird.”
He sighed heavily into the phone. “You were right about one thing, though, I guess.”
“Of course I was. I’m right about most things. What was I right about this time?”
“It would be hard to convince anyone, much less my father, that I could get someone like you,” he muttered.
“Meep,” I squeaked.
“Did you just step on a cat?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what happened. Stupid cat. I stepped on it and it made that weird noise you just heard. Good job.” Because I didn’t want to tell him that I’d instantly gotten a partial erection from him inferring that I was something he could never have. One does not tell their fake boyfriends that one has been given half a chub while standing in a drag queen’s closet holding a lavender pantsuit that looks like it came from the set of Designing Women.
“When did you get a cat?”
Why was everyone asking me that? I didn’t sound like—“Last week”—and I was lying, I was such a liar because this fake relationship was built on lies. “From the pound. His name is Kitten Von Whiskersnap De Martinez. He’s of German-Mexican descent.” Everything was a lie.
“I don’t even want to know,” he said.
“Good. Because you just dropped a hetero bomb on me and now in addition to being your fake boyfriend, I also have to be your fake girlfriend and somehow meet with your father to convince him you are in a stable, heteronormative relationship while trying to get him to agree to save a gay bar without actually telling him about the gay bar. Good! Fine! This will be just fucking perfect!”
“Hey, boo. You sound stressed.”
“I will literally castrate you, Darren. I really will.”
“If you wanted to touch my junk, all you had to do was ask.”
I sputtered quite magnificently into the phone, finally finishing with “I am not that easy” because it seemed like the only thing to say.
“Okay,” he said. “I believe you. Mostly. So, now would probably be a bad time to mention that Matty somehow wrangled my mother’s phone number out of me earlier this week, only to call her and invite her and I to Nana’s house for Thanksgiving this year because she told my mother we’re dating and that we’re sort of family now?”
“She did what!”
“Wow. I was wrong. You can get louder. That’s impressive. I’m impressed.”
“Your mother!”
“Yeah, so. I guess it’ll just be this whole family experience because my mom says she can’t wait to meet you. Great, right? Ha-ha. Lucky you. I’m sure everything will be just fine. Oh look at the time. I suddenly remembered I have to go do something and not be on the phone with you anymore. I’ll see you tomorrow night at your show. Bye, boo.”
“Darren! Darren!”
But he’d already hung up the phone.
And you know what?
The weirdest thing hit me then.
I stood there staring at my phone in the middle of a destroyed closet, surrounded by enough sequins and spandex to make it look like I’d murdered RuPaul’s Drag Race, wondering how I’d found myself in the position to meet Darren’s father as his girlfriend and to meet his mother as his boyfriend, knowing that everything around me was spiraling out of control, but the only thing that I could focus on was the little blinking number that let me know I’d been talking to Darren for over an hour on the phone. An hour where’d he’d pissed me off, turned me on, made me laugh, and made me sad. An hour that let me see the man behind the façade of a Homo Jock King, at least for a little bit.
And it hit me that maybe it was the best hour I’d had in a very long time.
And if I just happened to sigh happily a little, well.
No one heard it but me.
Chapter 13: Helena Van Der Beek of the Dawson’s Creek Van Der Beeks
“WHAT DO you mean, you can’t meet up for lunch?” Paul asked Saturday morning. He was on speakerphone while I sat in front of the mirror at the vanity in my bedroom, experimenting with lipstick to see which better said that I was a woman with a mission who would still probably leave lipstick rings on your cock. It was hard to strike the balance between the two. Well, hard for a drag queen. I needed Andrew Taylor to see me as a force to be reckoned with while also making him slightly uncomfortable. Not that Darren needed to know anything about that.
I had a plan, after all.
And if past experience dictated anything, it was that every plan I’d ever had had been executed flawlessly.
“I’m busy.” I pouted at the mirror, wondering if my lips should be fuller. I thought maybe about doing the whole Kardashian shot glass lip plumping thing, but then I realized I was not an idiot and also had a modicum of sense, so I decided against it.
“Doing what?”
“Darren.”
Paul gagged. “Oh sweat balls. Say no more. I really don’t want to know anything about that. But I’m glad you and he are done fighting.”
I paused in my ministrations in the mirror and looked back down at the phone. “Who says we were fighting?”
“Please. You were glaring at him the entire time at your show on Wednesday. I’ve never seen you angrily perform Beyoncé before. It was almost a religious experience. And Darren looked like a kicked puppy the entire time. Seriously. That family’s genetics are totally unfair. They get to be hot and muscular, and when they’re pouting, all I want to do is give them a hug and a hand job or something.”
“You want to give Darren a hand job?”
“Oh god no,” Paul said. “I was just speaking generally. I don’t speak asshole like you and Darren do. It’s why you’re made for each other.”
“You say the sweetest things, baby doll.”
“I try. Why were you pissed off?”
“Your mother is meddling.”
Paul sighed. “What did she do now?”
“She got Dare to give her his mom’s phone number, called her up out of the blue, and invited her down for Thanksgiving to meet Darren’s new boyfriend.”
“Okay,” Paul said. “Then what happened?”
Well, since I really couldn’t tell him about meeting Andrew Taylor under the guise of a heterosexual relationship, I had nothing else. But that should have been enough. “That’s it,” I said.
“I don’t understand what the problem is. Why wouldn’t you want him there?”
And no, he wouldn’t, because Paul was a paragon of virtue who didn’t lie about his relationship in order to help a man named Mike who sometimes smelled like frozen taquitos from Costco. Paul would never understand that I was meeting Darren’s mother under the guise of a fabricated relationship. This poor, sweet woman was probably thinking her slutty son had finally found someone to settle down with, never knowing that I was essentially just a butt plug on his sexual appetite, keeping it all inside until one day, the plug would be removed and all that was trapped inside will come gushing out in a flood of shame and remorse.
“I just don’t know if I’m ready for that,” I said instead to Paul. Because, maybe, if Darren and I were in a real relationship, I’d be worried that it’d be too soon to meet his mother. That sounded
plausible and something I would say. Or at least I thought it would be. “What if she comes down here and hates me because she thinks her son deserves better? Or worse, what if she loves me and then Darren and I break up like, two weeks later? Who would get to keep his mother in the divorce? I would hope it would be me, because I’m an amazing son.”
“She’s not going to think that Darren deserves better than you,” Paul said.
“I know that,” I said. “I’m wonderful and the best that Darren could possibly do. I was just practicing being humble for when she gets here. Did you believe me?”
Paul sighed. “I almost did.”
“Good. I’m good. I’m fantastic at being humble.”
“You put the moron in oxymoron.”
“Ooh,” I moaned. “Your wordplay makes me horny.”
“And you’re not going to break up.”
“You don’t know that. He could cheat on me with a twink named Duke or Mateo or whatever those SeanCody boys are called these days. Or Jake Gyllenhaal will finally respond to the fan letter I wrote him ten years ago and agree that we’re meant to be together. So no, you don’t know that at all.”
“I kind of do. Whether you wanted to admit it or not, you’ve pretty much always wanted Darren.”
I almost smashed my fist down on the phone. “That’s not even remotely true!”
“Sure it isn’t. I don’t know what happened between you two to make you pretend to hate him all this time, but you’ve obviously moved past that. Which is a good thing for everyone involved. Trust me. If I had to hear either one of you bitch about the other again, I was going to kick one of you in the balls.”
“So specific,” I said, rather proud of him. “I like the cut of your cloth, kid.”
“Why did you pretend to hate him? For a while there, years ago, I thought maybe you had a crush on him.”
And that was the real problem. I’d had a crush on him. And after that, I didn’t really have to pretend to hate him. I genuinely despised the very ground Darren Mayne walked on. It was a combination of pettiness and me protecting myself, sure. But those feelings were very, very real.
But it wasn’t like I felt that anymore, right? I mean, I couldn’t really remember when I’d switched from hating him to begrudgingly accepting his existence. It’d happened without me noticing. Granted, he was on my shit list right now for this whole girlfriend debacle, but like any role I’d played before, I was going to commit to it completely and fully. I was going to be the best girlfriend that ever existed.