Page 1 of Come As You Are
Vee
I washed up onthe shores of San Francisco like so many other young men before me, arriving in the iconic gay city by the bay after being disowned by my family after coming out as gay. The promise of building a found family of like-minded brothers to replace the one I’d lost in Idaho shone like a homing beacon, and I fell in love with the city almost as soon as I arrived. I quickly learned the cruel truth, though: San Francisco was a cold bitch even on a sunny day in the middle of summer.
Within a month, the meager savings I’d arrived with had dwindled to just over a hundred dollars which wasn’t anywhere close enough to cover my share of the rent in the squalid apartment I shared with four other guys in the Tenderloin, not if I wanted to eat anything other than a twenty-five-cent ramen packet stretched over for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’d beenbusing tables at a coffeeshop where working girls and alcoholics waited out the daytime hours in our booths.
The pay was shit and the tips were non-existent, but at twenty-one, I didn’t have any marketable skills for city life. My family owned a small ranch about fifty miles outside of Twin Falls, and I knew how to work cattle, ride a horse, and irrigate a field of alfalfa, but not much else.
One of the guys I lived with tricked out to make rent, while another supplemented his shifts at a dodgy restaurant on Eddy Street by selling drugs. Neither of those appealed to me, but my third roommate suggested I try some of the clubs in the Castro. Seems my parents’ genes had given me a six-foot-tall body to which ranch life had added some good muscles. My diet of ramen had thinned me down enough that I had, according to him, “cheekbones to die for.”
“Might as well use those country boy good looks, dude,” he said. “At least you’ll be making better tips. Those gay boys will fall all over themselves once they get a look at that ass.”
All of which is how I ended up standing outside Orsino’s Grotto looking at a “Now Hiring” sign. There was no indication of what they were hiring, but I assumed there might be a busboy or waiter position. I got lucky enough that someone was coming into work at the same moment I was standing there and let me inside even though it was a couple of hours until the club officially opened.
We passed the bar, and the guy led me up some stairs to the second floor where there was a dance floor and a stage. As soon as we entered this part of the club, I would have turned around and walked out if the guy who’d let me in hadn’t led me over to another guy with thinning hair and a protruding belly, and introduced me to Orsino himself. The man sat in a red leather booth watching the scantily clad women on the stage half-heartedly work through their routine in sky-high stiletto heels.It was like a scene out of some Hollywood movie with low lights, the smell of stale smoke and booze, and a cheap sound system that pumped up the bass and distorted the music.
The guy who’d brought me in told Orsino I was looking for a job then left me standing awkwardly not knowing where to look. I’d never been in a strip club before, never seen that amount of skin on a woman in real life, and decided the safest place to look was at the floor. But then the performers finished their rehearsal and left the stage, at the same time a heavy-set woman with a huge bouffant hairdo and…was that? It was. The woman had a beard. Which was when I realized I was seeing my first drag queen.
I couldn’t stop myself from staring as…she? He? I knew the convention was to call a drag queen in persona by her stage name and female pronouns, but this…person was wearing jeans and a zip-up hoodie with full makeup and hair. So? Half? I didn’t know. In any event, this person came over to Orsino to tell him that the toilet in the dressing room was stopped up again and could hepleasebring in a plumber?
“If you girls would stop using that crapper as a garbage can, it wouldn’t stuff up so often,” Orsino said, but he picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“And who mightthisbe?” The drag queen sauntered my way, then extended a hand as they reached me. “Stormy Cs at your service. HowcanI serve you?”
I felt the blush heat my cheeks, but I reached out and shook hands because it was polite. “I’m waiting for Mr. Orsino,” I said.
Stormy laughed. “Oh,MisterOrsino, is it? Orsi, dear, this delicious young man is here to see you.”
Orsino waved in our direction without looking up.
“And what is it you want with my other half?”
The blush turned blazing hot and rushed up to my hairline. Other half? That meant spouse, right? I looked between the two of them. “I’m looking for a job,” I said. “But I don’t think—”
Stormy grabbed my hand and pulled me in front of Orsino. “Orsi, put down that phone this instant. You’re being very rude making this young man wait.”
“Hold on for a sec,” Orsino said, then glared at Stormy. “Just what is it you want woman? First, I need to call the plumber since you girls all have bladders the size of peas, then I’ve got to hang up on the guy because you want me to pay attention to some bozo who just wants a free peek.” He turned his attention back to his phone as the person on the other end of the line started speaking. “Yeah? Great. Thanks a lot.” He hung up and looked at Stormy. “Plumber will be here before the show starts. Happy?”
“Delirious, darling.”
Stormy still had a firm grip on my hand or else I would have run that moment. “Orsi.”
The man sighed and finally turned to look at me. One glance. “We don’t have anything for you, kid, sorry.”
“Be nice,” Stormy said and turned to me. “What kind of work are you looking for?”
I shrugged. “Anything, really. I can bus tables, run drinks, do maintenance and clean.”
Orsino looked at me over his shoulder as a group of drag queens took the stage. “Don’t need any of those,” he said. “And you’re not what we put up on the stage.” He waved a hand. “Chicks and trannies, that’s what we give the people, and you’re neither of those things.”
“Forgive him,” Stormy said with a scowl at the man. “What he means is that we do drag shows and all our dancers are trans. You don’t look like you’re either, dear.”
With a shake of my head, I disengaged my hand from Stormy’s. “I’m not. Sorry to have taken up your time.” I turned to go, but as I did, I suddenly felt lightheaded. My vision turned black, and I barely had time to register that I was falling before I passed out.
“There he is,” Stormysaid as I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by dancers and drag queens as well as one impatient-looking Orsino.
Someone helped me sit up, and someone else handed me a glass of water, urging me to sip it slowly.
“Low blood sugar,” someone said. “When’s the last time you ate, sweetheart?”
