Fabulous
I’ll confess to a certain skepticism when it comes to musical theater. Perhaps I’m not wired for it; perhaps I’m just too heterosexual. Whatever my problem is, song-n-dance routines usually put me to sleep. Derek was in town, however, and Emma was kind enough to get us all tickets to a late night performance of the Kiki & Herb show at Joe’s Pub. I figured a couple hours of camp and circumstance wouldn’t kill me.
A funny thing happened though. As the stage lit up and Kiki strutted into the audience, growling into her microphone, I found myself immediately entranced by the spectacle. The performance—a postmodern mélange of Rock-n-Roll, cabaret and spoken word—was so raw and energetic it felt as if the whole production would come flying apart at any moment. I laughed. I cried. I clapped.
“Rome was more interesting as a crumbling empire,” intoned Kiki in her gravelly voice, “and we, ladies and gentlemen, are living in a crumbling empire.”
In a word, the show was fabulous.
After the show Emma introduced me to Justin, Kiki’s surprisingly soft-spoken and very male alter-ego. He and Emma embraced before Justin strolled off into the night. I peered into my not-quite-second-girlfriend’s dark eyes. “I swear Emma—you’re a gay man trapped in a woman’s body.”
Because it was only 2AM on a Tuesday night, we of course decided to go clubbing. Happy Valley was the place. The bouncer let the girls in free but shook Derek and me down for a ten-spot each. The place was packed with boys who looked like girls and girls who looked like boys and, well, people who looked like neither. On the way in I ran into Mort, who sported a stylish Boy George chapeau—appropriate, I suppose, for a club where everyone looked like they’d been cryogenically preserved in the Eighties and thawed out, like, yesterday.
As I chatted with Mort on a spacious balcony overlooking the nearly-empty dance floor, I turned to see Leslie walking toward me with a tall and comely Indian girl on her arm. I cocked an eyebrow. My fiancée smiled. “She told me she wanted to meet you.”
I was flattered. And stunned. My eyes traversed the girl’s slight frame from head to toe. “Damn you’re tall,” I finally blurted out, upon which the raven-haired beauty beamed at me.
Leslie wrapped her arm around the girl’s waist. “Have you ever kissed a woman before?”
She laughed. It was an infectious laugh, the kind that makes you want to come up with a silly joke so you might hear it erupt once more. “Oh no. But I’ve always been curious.”
When Leslie turned to face her companion I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing. The women’s lips met momentarily; then the tall girl grew shy and freed herself from Leslie’s embrace. She still held Leslie’s hand as she stood at arm’s length, smiling yet uncertain. When the woman left us I finally exhaled. Les and I joined our friends in another section of the balcony, and after a little while I’d forgotten about our encounter.
And then, miraculously, the beautiful stranger returned, gliding across the balcony into my fiancée’s arms, cradling Leslie’s head in her hands and pressing their faces together in what can only be described as a cinematic kiss. Time stood still, the way it does in the movies. I nearly choked on my drink. After they’d exchanged numbers, when the Indian girl had gone downstairs to gather her friends and leave, she kept stealing glances at us from below.
“Care to explain what just happened here?” I asked Les.
She shrugged. “I really don’t know. That was—”
“Fabulous.”
And the moral of the story, ladies and gentlemen? Give musical theater a chance.
More: Kiki and Herb | Music | Emma | Voyeurism
