Freak Show

You there! Hands off the book! Put your reading glasses on the ground where I can see them!

I’ve been living a lie. IT’S TRUE! Everything I’ve told you has been a lie. EVERYTHING! Well, not everything. Just the foundation. JUST THE FOUNDATION? Don’t you see, then? Don’t you get it? What I’m trying to tell you is this whole book has been based on a lie.

Remember back on page . . . ten . . . when I told you I had no idea why mother threw me out? That she just lost her mind for no reason and couldn’t deal with me, and I COULDN’T FIGURE IT OUT FOR THE LIFE OF ME?

And then again, when I was in the coma and remembering bits and pieces about my life with Muv . . . but I couldn’t quite remember that last little part?

It was blatantly false. Patently untrue. Nothing but complete and utter nonsense.

Yes, yes. I looked you straight in your collective eyes and just out-and-out lied. Lied like the dog I am. I’m such a sociopath sometimes. Bad Billy!

I can give you a second-by-second account, in fact, of that afternoon, complete with flow charts and graphs and annotated footnotes and full bibliography. I could tap it out in goddamn Morse code if you’d like. Backward.

My God, how could I ever forget something like that? It’s seared into my soul. My brand of shame. And yet in light of recent developments, it seems a minor thing to keep from you.

When we last left the story, Muv had just lost her mind and started dressing like a deranged bag lady, remember?

Yes, she was an eccentric dresser. And she certainly piled on the crap. But she never wore the cat as a stole. That was Elinor Glyn, a lady writer from the twenties, who invented the phrase “It Girl.” I must have gotten them confused.

And the Christmas lights in her hair? That would be me. I do it all the time, and it’s FABULOUS, not crazy at all.

IT WAS A DREAM! I WAS DREAMING! IN MY COMA! YOU WEREN’T WATCHING A DOCUMENTARY!

Everything from here on out is unequivocally, undeniably, 100 percent true. Polygraph-proof. May I spend an eternity in Evan-Picone casuals if I’m lying.

You have to remember that growing up, I was mother’s own little “mini-Muv,” parroting her every outrage. Aping her every gesture. Trundling along behind her, echoing her thoughts, repeating her grander-than-thou pronouncements on life and how to live it.

“That’s Horace, darling! You, alone, have the power to forgive yourself! You have only to answer to yourself!”

But of course, I wasn’t just mindlessly imitating her—monkey see, monkey do. I was learning, processing, absorbing it all—oh yes, I was quite the little sponge. Yes, yes, I was always busy editing, reformatting, and refiguring everything she said and did.

Whenever I was alone, I would try on my own variations of her outfits. Tweak it a little. Take it down a notch. Or up the glam factor.

Adding my own unique touches. Butt pads, sequined skullcaps, ears painted gold, clown noses. Bits of whimsy.

I was finding my own style, my own individual way of expressing myself through clothes. The outfit might be Muv’s, but the look was pure Billy. I was big, bold, cutting-edge, like her. But cleaner lines. Simpler. Not as fussy.

Let’s not send out announcements just yet. Let’s not alert the media of my newfound penchant for drag.

I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I was uneasy with her finding out. I just doubted she would be overjoyed.

I know it seems odd that I would worry about the reaction of a woman like Muv—an artist! Who’s educated! Worldly! A staunch nonconformist! Who looks down on the provincial rubes that cross our paths! And yet, a child knows. . . .

I knew she’d been at the bottom of a bad cycle for a while—months!—so moody and erratic that I’d never seen her this bad. She seemed lost, paranoid, muddled, defensive. Prone to anger and hysteria, easily threatened, thinking everyone was out to get her.

I was walking on eggshells, ANYWAY; I just knew she was not in a warm and fuzzy place for any major lifestyle shake-ups.

When she finally turned on me, it was such a major blowup over such a minor misunderstanding!

It all went down over a dress—a silly, bias-cut Ungaro number of the floatiest beaded chiffon—that belonged to my mother.

I was just trying it on while she was at the store. And for the love of corn, it wasn’t even REALLY a dress. More of a shapeless shift. Why, one might even go so far as a LONG BLOUSE. Okay, that’s too far.

You know how a few years ago, all those B-list starlets—like, oh, Lisa Rinna—always seemed to be photographed wearing those flirty-but-casual chiffon dress and jeans combos? And how in the beginning it brought just a funky whiff of anarchy to the red carpet? “I’ll conform to your dress code on top, but from the waist down, I’m a REBEL” is what it screamed.

Well, I thought to myself, why shouldn’t men be allowed to enjoy the same quirky mashup of casual wear and elegance?

So I tried on my mother’s Ungaro and wore it under a suit, a white satin tuxedo jacket of the sharpest order. True it was Muv’s, and nipped and fitted to a fare-thee-well, but it could totally pass as a man’s jacket. Totally. And the effect was UNBELIEVABLY FABULOUS! A WHOLE NEW LOOK! Why, I had single-handedly revolutionized the men’s suit.

As I was admiring my cunning work, who should pop back in but Mother. She had left her purse.

Now, let me reiterate: I WAS NOT IN DRAG. I was tweaking the men’s fashion silhouette, which is an ALTOGETHER different thing.

And, well, all right, I had a wig on, as well. And a little pink lipstick. Okay, maybe it was Scarlet Temptation. Who knows? It was just to pull the outfit together. BUT I WAS DEFINITELY NOT IN DRAG.

But there I was, I suppose, in my mother’s stunning, showstopping, gold, beaded Ungaro number, and I was working it better than she ever could. So perhaps she was a little jealous. . . .

There was a moment of total silence in which all the air was sucked out of the room.

“Oh, hullo, dar-LING!” I said, and struck a pose. “Quel surprise, right?”

When she finally opened her mouth, she just ERUPTED in blood and thunder. Foam and fury. Her voice was a great and terrible trumpet blast, a mighty bellow, full of misplaced rage. It was the voice of a monster, a Leviathan, a mighty pissed off Tyrannosaurus rex.

She took my cross-dressing as an act of betrayal, and completely blew her stack.

She raved and ranted, and generally acted as if I were the enemy, that I had been out to destroy her from the beginning. According to Muv, I was the cause of everything wrong in her life. I was the very embodiment of chaos, the face of random violence. I was a walking earthquake, a living disease, an epidemic that needed to be quarantined.

According to her, I steamrolled over lives, flattening everyone in my path. My greed was boundless, unending. I took and took with such great, grasping urgency, such gulping, gobbling hysteria, it was ugly and animal-like—embarrassing to witness. I was a razor-toothed succubus. A bloodthirsty jackal.

In the History of Mothers and Sons, I stood alone in the Pantheon of Ungrateful Children. She would rather have raised a 9/11 terrorist, a death camp general, or a butcher of babies—they would have been less trouble.

“And THIS!” she screamed, her voice raw. “This latest stunt!” and she ripped the dress off my body and threw it to the floor.

She kept on, her voice rising in pitch, her anger swelling, her reason slipping away:

“I don’t even want to look at you! Just go! I don’t want to see you again.” (My bowels constricted.)

I suddenly felt faint and collapsed, but only briefly. Instinct took over. A lightning quick assessment of the situation concluded that it was probably a wise idea to do as she said. Now wasn’t the time to argue or explain or apologize.

I quickly, blindly, began shoving items into a garbage bag. Anything. Everything. No time to organize. THIS and THIS and THIS and DONE. I took one last look around, then got the hell out of Dodge.

She called dad and said it was HIS turn to deal with me. That maybe he would be a better influence on me.

And honestly, after all that I had been through, I actually looked forward to the quiet life with Dad. (Although I never would have admitted it at the time.)

Flip had just abandoned me. And I was feeling lost and alone and teetering on the very brink of sanity myself.

Now, without further ado, we rejoin our gender-squashing heroine’s plight, already in progress. . . .