Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [75]
The crowd announced in raucous stereo, “Pussy Party!”
And I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into, until the spotlight appeared and the song began. Don’t ask me why I recognized it; I’ll only lie to you. But suffice it to say, it was “Pussy” by an old band called the Lords of Acid. And then, oh yes—there was Sister Rose in the spotlight. And running a little late, the DJ said, “That’s right! And leading tonight’s Pussy Party, I give you, Sister Rose!”
A brief and hearty cheer went up, and then was silenced as Rose stepped into the clearing and began to lip-sync.
Rose wasn’t wearing much, but the whole ensemble sparkled from strap to strap. It looked like the skeleton of a beauty queen’s apparel in the swimsuit competition, done up in silver, with a tiny hint of beaded fringe down south, where it counted. But fringe or no fringe, I was impressed with the tuck-job. It was a tuck-job that made me feel less odd about calling a six-foot-plus man a “she” in my interior monologue. It reinforced the very shiny illusion, but so help me God, there was nothing to be done about her legs.
Don’t get me wrong—they went for miles, and the muscle definition was absolutely to die for … but you’d never mistake them for belonging to a woman, unless we’re talking the She Hulk. Still, this observation did not prevent me from feeling a touch of envy. If Mattel ever makes a Drag Queen Barbie, they damn well ought to pattern that doll’s proportions after Sister Rose. Those were legs that could crack a horse’s ribs, and they knew how to move.
They scissored and stretched, and banged apart, dropping Rose’s crotch down to a floor-level split that I would’ve considered too painful to attempt, but she never dropped the beat or the verse. Rose grabbed the nearest rail and scaled it with the ease of the world’s most glamorous chimpanzee, slinging herself easily and gloriously in time to the music—and all the while never flashing even a hint of anything incriminating.
If I seem fixated on this point, well, I’d never seen a drag show this up close and personal before, and it fascinated me. The pageantry, the artifice, the unapologetic pretense … It was effusive and charming, albeit loud as hell. By this point in the night, I was wishing for earplugs and wondering if my unnaturally sensitive ears would ever truly recover, but I couldn’t muster any real concern about it.
Rose’s big black wig was outfitted with big faux gemstones that caught the lights and hurled them around like lasers, and her darkly painted lips contorted themselves around lyrics that only barely pretended to be a double entendre. If there was any such thing as a single entendre, this was it.
But out of the corner of my eye, I saw something I didn’t like—although it was gone as soon as it’d snagged my attention. I asked myself, “Self, what was that?” and nobody heard me, which was just as well, since it wasn’t that funny and I was actually kind of serious. The subconscious is a strange thing, the way it sorts and settles what needs our attention and what doesn’t, and mine was screaming at me that I was missing something—not that it would’ve surprised me. How could anybody take in the whole scene without missing half or it, or more? The spinning lights that changed color on the fly were enough to induce seizures all by themselves, and when added to the head-splitting volume of the music, and the spectacle of the show, and the crushing waves of inebriated late-night partiers, it was hard to think straight, much less evaluate anything.
Even danger.
And I didn’t like that.
The thought was a land mine, setting off an explosion of sudden panic. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said aloud since no one was listening. “This was a bad idea.” The room was big, but too crowded to either get away or hide effectively. I scanned quickly for the exits and saw several lighted signs with arrows, but those weren’t the exits I wanted. Those were the exits that everyone would be using.
Again, I saw something through the crowd—a snippet of suit, a swatch of hair. I struggled to