Freak Show

It is almost midnight when I make my entrance.

My gown is glimmering, shimmering. A gorgeous piece of craftsmanship. One hundred thousand Japanese silkworms pooped it up, and twenty-seven blind nuns beaded it while locked in a castle tower somewhere in Tuscany. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Under different lights, at different angles, it moves, it undulates—it SINGS THE BODY ELECTRIC! Is it real? A mirage? Perhaps a holy vision? If so, then it’s, quite literally, TOO DIVINE.

My wig is enormous, at least two feet high. It has a nautical theme tonight: “Under the Sea.” It’s blue and white, like foam on waves. It’s swirled up here and curled down there and then piled into a glamorous, cascading topknot. It is pinned with pearls and tiny shells and even starfish. . . . But the pièce de résistance—are you sitting down? Look! There! From a circular swirl at the center of the topknot, BUBBLES EMERGING! Yes! From a hollow hole deep within the mound of curls, my hair is blowing out a continuous stream of bubbles! I call this my GLUG GLUG wig. I see your mouth visibly drop. “Am I underwater?” you ask.

No! I rigged a bubble machine to the base of the wig! I’M A GENIUS!

“You look awesome, Billy,” Flip shouts when he sees me. He leaps to his feet and gives my outfit a standing ovation.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

Eventually he stopped clapping.

Then he looked at me.

And I looked at him.

We looked at each other for a few moments.

Then.

I . . . um . . . got nothing.

That’s when—TOTALLY OUT OF THE BLUE—Flip raises his hand like he’s asking a question at school, and blurts out: “So . . . um . . . then . . . tell me: Are you gay? Or what? Bisexual? DON’T WORRY. You can tell me. I can take it. I have an uncle who’s a stewardess.”

I was thrown. Clearly, this was something he’d been thinking about. And possibly worried about? What if I scared him off? What if this was a test? What if he wanted me to say yes so he could come out, too? Um . . . maybe not. But I needed time.

So I stood there—in my beaded dress; my bubbling blue wig; and six-inch heels—looked him straight in the eyes, and said, “Me? Oh. Um. Sort of, kind of, maybe a little bit bisexual. Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. You know.”

He wasn’t buying it. “So you’re saying you’re NOT gay, then?”

I laughed and punched him in the arm, real manlike. “Nooooo, silly goose!”

He arched a brow. “Hmmm.” And he shuffled through my CD pile. “A LOT of straight guys collect Kylie Minogue B sides and bootlegs, huh?”

Not such a dim bulb after all! “Um . . . I don’t know what you could mean by that.”

“So, if you’re so straight,” he continued, “who’s your ideal girl? If you could have hot monkey sex with any GIRL in the world, who would it be?”

“Um . . . um . . .” (Don’t say Liza! Don’t say Liza!) “Um . . . um . . .” (Don’t say Martha Stewart! Don’t say Martha Stewart!)

I hemmed and hawed for a solid three minutes until I came up with: “Beyoncé!”

He made the sound of a buzzer. “Yeah. Um. No. You want to BE Beyoncé, Billy, not bone her. Nice try. And besides, according to you, she’s already technically a drag queen, anyway, so she double doesn’t count!”

Wow. He’s a quick study.

Then, innocently, as a simple matter of course:

“So, what kind of BOY do you like?” and “Who’s your ideal boy?”

DANGER! DANGER! Uncharted territory! Potential land mines all around! All previous experience useless! Emotional compass going hay-wire! Turn around now!

How to answer?

The truth?

Be honest?

Tell him you like impossibly blond superboys? Heartbreakingly pretty quarterbacks? Power-pouting teenage saints? Emo-eyed Bambiboys?

What about: Guys named Flip?

What about: YOU! YOU IDIOT!

KA-BOOM!

But no. I went with: “Donnie Darko.”

Flip chewed on that for a moment. “Yeah. Hmm. Donnie’s dope. Hey, but what about Captain Jack Sparrow? That nizzle is off the hook, right? He’s gotta be up there, huh? Pirates are the shit! And Johnny Depp is the MAN!”

Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!—I had to pinch myself. Was this really happening? Were Flip and I really gossiping about cute boys? And was Flip just totally crushing on Johnny Depp? We were! He was! Oh my God—we’re not boyfriends, WE’RE GIRLFRIENDS! This is SO tween slumber party. All that’s missing is the popcorn, headgear, and a new pom-pom routine.

The next question, then. “How far have you gotten with a guy?”

This could be potentially creepy. Luckily, I’m a teenage spinster, so there’s no icky reveal. “Nowhere. Nothing. No one. Ever. Really. I am so totally homo-challenged, I might as well be straight. I mean, I am clueless. What’s a bottom? What’s a bear? What’s a chicken? I may never find out. I’ll probably die a virgin. I’m just going to hermetically seal my ass now and save future archaeologists the problem.”

“No one? Ever?” He was silent about that for a very long while.

Then we continued on.

Like so, you know.

Ha-ha-ha.

La-la-la.

Things took a sinister turn, though, when Flip introduced a new game—Who Would You Rather Do?

The rules were simple enough. He would list two options—A or B? This one or that one? Tom or Dick?—and I chose the one I’d rather “do.” (“Dick.”)

Well, that was easy enough!

Sounded like good fun.

But wait! Not so fast! It wasn’t as simple as that! There was a hitch! A glitch! A bump in the road. A blackfly in the chardonnay!

For some reason Flip’s choices almost always consisted of “Bib” and someone else. And that someone else was almost always someone like Gary Shandling, Comic Book Guy, Stephen Hawking, Carrot top, Chris Farley’s corpse . . . you get the picture. It was all very strange, and I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with it.

“Who Would You Rather Do? Bib or Jar Jar Binks?” he asked.

“Bib or Richard Simmons?”

“Bib or Mini-Me?”

So it went. Until . . .

“Bib Oberman or . . . Michael Moore,” he said. He paused, then added, “And Michael Moore has advanced flesh-eating disease. . . . And he’s only wearing spandex hot shorts and a sports bra. . . . And while you’re deciding, he’s hard-core krumping, and as he pops and spins, large, crusty, infected chunks of rotting flesh are flying everywhere, pelting you in the eyes and mouth.”

Oh my God. This was so retarded. I said nothing.

“Well? Who? Come on?”

“Bib!” I finally groaned. “I’ll do Bib!”

He LEAPED into the air, eyes blazing, finger pointed to God: “AGAIN! AHA! I KNEW IT! Five Bibs in a row! You have a thing for Bib, don’t you?”

This shit was bananas. Where was it coming from? I never knew he was so jealous of Bib!

“Okay, Flip,” I said. “You’re so smart. You got me. It’s true. I love Bib Oberman. TLA. True Love Always. We didn’t want to tell you, so we concocted the whole months of torment and coma thing to throw you off the track.” I started making out with my hand, “Kiss, kiss. Slurp, slurp. Oh Bib! Bib! You’re so hot!” I stopped and turned to him, and here’s where I forgot about the potential land mines.

“Now, I have a question for YOU! Okay—who would you rather do? ME? Or STAR JONES? And Star Jones has a nasty-smelling yeast infection. And humongous hammertoes, which she insists you suck. Oh! Oh! And she likes to use her old liposuction fat as . . .”

Well, that shut him up.

“That’s different,” he said, sulking. “I’m straight. You have to give me two females.”

“Oh? Oh? Is that THE RULE? Is that how they’ve been playing it for GENERATIONS now? Is that written in the bylaws of the charter of the HICK RETARD IDIOT GAME LOVERS CLUB? Well, tough crap, straight boy. So? Well? Who’s it going to be? Me or Star Jones’s hammertoes?”

“I’m outta here,” he barked, and slammed down the stairs.

“Yeah! Well, FUCK YOU! GET OUT!” I screamed. “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!” I was angry and hurt. He couldn’t have just been polite? He couldn’t have been a gentleman? Who knew I was somewhere beneath yeast infections, hammertoes, and recycled body fat on the Table of Sexual Desirability. I felt rejected and monstrously, hideously ugly. I’m grotesque!