Cowboy Jacqueline’s is, indeed, the last good queer bar on the whole-ass planet, if you don’t count every other queer bar on the whole-ass planet—all of them are good for the people who they are good for. This one is lightly saloon flavored. Lightly, thank goodness, because it is in Brooklyn, and anything more cowboy-seasoned would be disingenuous. The proprietor, who is (obviously) named Jacqueline, had no great love for the Wild West aesthetic but wanted to open a queer bar and, when she rented the space, had to contend with a pair of saloon doors. Jacqueline is queer classic—older, silver in the high-and-tight haircut—and she eventually bought the place, which is why it’s still a queer bar in a city of luxury dog hotels and whole apartment buildings that landlords keep empty on purpose. At that point, she could’ve torn out the doors and rebranded, but she was already in too far.
Instead, the doors are just the beginning, the literal entry point. On the first Wednesday of every month, there is queer square-dancing night. The glory holes in the gender-neutral bathrooms have tiny cowboy hats painted above them and tiny mustaches painted below (it would be too much to call it “tongue in cheek,” would it not?). One wall—neon cacti of different heights and suggestive shapes, real neon with the zzzzz sound and everything, extremely expensive, or they would’ve been if they weren’t bent by a nonbinary artist who gave Jacqueline the family discount as long as they could write up an artist statement and call it an installation, as long as their business cards were always available up front. The air inside is always hazy even though smoking isn’t allowed, something about the pheromones that mimics cigarettes. Invariably there is a table in the corner, round, at which queers sit playing cards. A picture of a cowboy good time until you look closely and realize they’re playing cribbage rather than poker. And at the bar, a patron in a crop top and low jeans demos a vibrator that she plays like a theremin—it vibrates faster and harder the closer her fingers get to the receiver. She made it herself and imp-grins while someone writes their phone number on her exposed hip bone in Sharpie.
Behind the bar stands Jacqueline. She is wearing a cowboy hat with the word HOLE embroidered on the brim (a custom job). She is also wearing an N95 mask, one of the real sturdy ones, because “I’m not getting sick at work. If I get COVID, it’ll be at an orgy.”
And on the bar, by the register, a sign. In big letters at the top: “Cowboy as in Assless* Chaps, Not Cowboy as in Manifest Destiny: this queer space occupies Lenapehoking, in particular the ancestral home of the Minsi clan. Most of the Lenape live in Oklahoma and Canada now, which is fucked up and private property is a total scam, I just can’t figure out how to exist in this burning hellscape without it. I welcome any suggestions. —Jacqueline *PS, all chaps are assless.”
Quibble and Artemis are—well, not always here. But good money says they’re here during hours that one might reasonably be at a bar. They’re here enough that when Jacqueline was thinking about putting in a pool table, Artemis begged her not to. Literally anything else, which is how the bar wound up with darts, giant Jenga, and crokinole, all off-theme for sure, but who cares, really, when Jacqueline is always in a pair of the loudest cowboy boots she can find?
Besides, the queers don’t come primarily for the theme, though it is true that queers do love a theme. They come for the burlesque drag.
Technically, Artemis and Quibble come for the drag, too, or for one really specific drag king.
Rico.
Rico, who tried to pick a drag name and failed, just uses his name; he had enough naming energy in him for exactly one renaming, he jokes, and it was too important to waste on coming up with some clever smart-ass-ness like David Bro-y or Juan Nightstand. When pressed, he uses Rico Ricardo, but he resists, preferring to be known by one name and one name only, like Madonna. He has, however, done a whole Lucille Ball(s) act and he pulls that one out (pun intended) for special occasions.
Rico, who Artemis is in love with but she never says so.
Rico, who is in love with Artemis and he says so often.
Rico, Rico, Rico, who isn’t a witch and who makes it in, somehow, to the coven when all is said and done (though Artemis continues to hold him at arm’s length). Rico, who isn’t performing this evening but is having a meeting with the troupe (called the Smoking Guns, run by Bootleg Jean the Cowboy Queen) in the back-room performance space, which is massive for a bar but small for a stage. The group has gotten popular, with a write-up in Time Out and a low-budget but beautiful documentary making the film circuit; they are trying to figure out how to fit more chairs on the floor while Jacqueline warns them about fire codes, says that unlike a good many regulations, these ones do, actually, matter in a community safety sense and therefore she does, actually, want to follow them. They are also trying to figure out how to discourage the straight people from showing up (and they have been showing up). Jacqueline is agreeing to post homo-aggressive signage about the glory holes.
And of course, with an increase in positive attention, there is the occasional threat that has become rather less occasional. There are threats about groomers, drag queen story hour (which this is not, this is extremely for adults), faggots and dykes and trannies and takeovers and corrupting teens and corrupting traditional family values and corrupting religion and corrupting woman’s exalted place in the world. Through all of this, Rico wonders, if he’s so corrosive, why can’t he properly de-scale his shower? Artemis is too practical for such cutesy worrying. And Quibble has money so he’s more or less untouched, but he’s mad anyhow, and offering to hire Jacqueline some security, which she will not do, because “no cops.”
“I’m not suggesting cops,” Quibble says. “I’m suggesting you pay, like, two mama bears to stand out front in lipstick and muscle tanks.”
“I am not turning my precious mama bears into cops,” Jacqueline replies, wiping a spill off the bar and high-fiving theremin-vibrator-girl when she comes up for air, as she’s now making out with Sharpie-wielder.
Rico comes out of his meeting, a wig to rival Marie Antoinette’s piled on top of his head, a pouf of pink rococo cotton candy skyscrapering him into Artemis’s height bracket (he’s usually a head and a half shorter). His shirt is unbuttoned deep into his chest hair, his single top surgery scar stretching through the V like a smile. He carries a stack of large felt fig leaves and sits down at the bar, picks the top one up, and squints at where his last stitched veins left off. The adorable foliage is for the Smoking Guns’ “Adam and Steve” show, which is an exploration and intentional perversion of Christian myth. They haven’t made an antagonistic choice on purpose; they’ve been cooking up this show for a while and have just made the decision not to pivot, regardless of threats. Bootleg Jean, Polly Amorous, Rico, Miss Ree Markable, Glamazon Package Delivery, Boy Howdy, and Johnny Whoops all look each other in their determined faces and agree to take the risk.
“I wish I could know the future,” Rico grumbles over his sour as he sticks his tiny wire glasses on his nose and unclicks his multilevel toolbox, which contains lipstick, several compartments full to the top of rhinestones, an awl and a hammer, a hot glue gun, pepper spray disguised as Zicam nasal spray, and, finally, embroidery thread and a needle, carefully wound around a sweet wooden bobbin and labeled with its color-number. And then it occurs to him. “Wait, can I know the future?”
Artemis snorts. “I don’t know, can you?” She sips her pink wine.
Rather than feeling any way about it, Rico grins stupid under his mask—he loves when Artemis gets prickly, which is nearly always. He loves her difficult. “You know what I mean,” he says. “Can you tell me? If that conversation we all just had about emergency scenarios was for something? If we’re actually going to have to use anything we came up with? I would love to be able to breathe.”
Artemis sets a wineglass on the bar and swivels toward him, laying her hand on his knee before she thinks better of it. She is already in a shit mood—the tech is winking light here, too. Jacqueline’s point-of-sale iPad. Rico’s jacked-up Android with the very cracked screen. Even the theremin vibrator (nothing is sacred). But his grin is so stupid and good even if it’s presently obscured and he looks like a sweet bespectacled badger in a fairy tale, so she lets herself have this small touch. “I see what’s in front of me,” she tells him. “All in the present. But extra. I don’t do the future. Most folks don’t. It’s too chaotic.”
“Is there anyone who does the future?” Rico asks.
Quibble is about to answer, to say, Yes there is, and point Rico to exactly where. In the world where Quibble gets this information out quick, Rico takes a bus there the next day. But they aren’t in that version of events. Artemis cuts Quibble off with “You don’t want their help, trust me.” If Quibble were a slightly different person, he would roll his eyes. Instead, he turns his head to sip his beer and laughs a bubble directly into it.
“Artemis,” he says, and he nudges her ankle with his heel.
“Mmm?” Artemis’s eyes reluctantly leave Rico’s pretty, dumb face and land on Quibble’s, who gestures with both his beer and his chin toward the saloon doors. Above the harp curves, Quibble can see a pair of eyes and some troll-esque red curls. Someone else pushes the door open and Quibble laughs harder at the complete image: Wilder’s anger mouth in a thin line, the intense stare that they are trying to pretend isn’t happening even though it’s on their own face, their hands jammed into their peacoat pockets. An Allie Brosh cartoon made manifest. Everyone stares at each other for the duration of a door swing.
Quibble’s eyebrows are the smiling kind, the laughing kind, but he keeps his face mostly steady. “Wanna come in, bud?”
“Don’t call me bud,” Wilder says as they push the door open.
“Okay, pal.”
“I’m not here with you,” Wilder says, and they don’t take their coat off at the bar even as they slip their own mask on. They stand a good three feet from Artemis, Quibble, and Rico. “I’m just here. And you are also here. And that’s it.”
Rico’s eyebrows are raised well above his glasses. “Can I still talk m-a-g—”
“They can spell, Rico. They’re an adult.” Artemis takes another sip and blinks, her eyes watering because the recently Awakened are so fucking bright. “Also yes.”
Rico laughs at himself as he stitches. It’s one of the things Artemis (privately) loves about him. When he does something himbo-y, he delights in both himself and the witness of it. He never feels stupid. He’s so loose and free.
“You must be Wilder,” Artemis says as she stands up and holds her hand out. Wilder is, of course, still mad and they don’t want to shake her hand. But they also don’t want to be rude and are also slightly terrified as Artemis looms over them. These three impulses dance-battling within them result in the weirdest, limpest handshake that’s ever existed. Artemis smirks as she sits back down.
Jacqueline, meanwhile, serves Wilder, who, recovering from the horrible handshake, grunts and points at the Pabst Blue Ribbon, which is three dollars. Quibble catches Jacqueline’s eye and, as quietly as anyone can gesture, points at himself. Jacqueline barely nods, so used to this is she. Quibble always pays. Sometimes for people he doesn’t know. Most of the time they do not notice and just think that Jacqueline is either kind or forgetful. This time, though, Wilder notices because they are in a state of hypervigilance. They turn their head so fast that actual whiplash seems possible.
“No,” they say, even though they’d considered free drink a plus in the “come” column. In the moment, it makes them uncomfortable.
“Okay,” Quibble says.
And Wilder immediately wishes they hadn’t noticed, even though it is only three dollars. Four, when they count the tip. But they do not wish they hadn’t said no. Saying no feels good, powerful. Especially as they are starting to get a little nauseous: a couple at the table closest to the window is speaking Portuguese. Their mouths bend bows, lips smile long to the corners, each word is bitten and chewed and swallowed and takes up wider space in the cheeks than Wilder is used to. Everything twangs and they can hear both-and, the words they know and the words they don’t and they wonder how their nose isn’t bleeding yet, how the bartender can’t smell burning as their gray matter catches fire.
They turn their head away, trying to limit their perception to the one language they are used to speaking and catch sight of three people signing to each other by the bathroom. It is very spicy, what they are saying they are about to do in that bathroom, and as each finger grasps a concept, fluid and slang and slut-hot, Wilder hears—hears? What is the word for a voice inside a person, rattling around in their head’s hollow spaces, bouncing on their eardrums from the inside out? Because that is where they “hear” the words. Overwhelmed, they clamp down. Clench teeth. Grip diaphragm, stomach tight. Their eyes water from the overstimulation and they put the kibosh on it because if they don’t control this dam break, it might give way to actual crying.
Rico barely looks up from his stitching when he says, “I actually do want to talk to the person who can tell the future.”
“What?” Artemis replies, her narrowed eyes snapping quick to her—lover’s? No, Artemis would rather shit in her own hands and clap than use the word lover. Boyfriend? Absolutely not, that stinks of commitment—her Rico, then, whatever he is.
“You said I didn’t want their help. I actually do want their help. Jean is practically laying an egg over whether to perform—one of the threats seems pretty specific, and I would do nearly anything to give her the guidance she wants. So I just want to be clear, I do want their help and it’s you who doesn’t.” The words in any other mouth could sound so aggressive. In Rico’s, they sound gentle, matter-of-fact. This is the only person in Artemis’s life who can talk to her like this.
Artemis sips her wine slow. Now that she’s gotten over Wilder’s brightness, the twinkling has returned. She’s nearly as twitchy as Wilder is. The truth is she’s been wishing to see the future herself, and then squashing the thought dead with her Doc Marten. “If we talk to a future teller—”
“The future teller,” Quibble mutters into his own beer, so quietly Wilder is the only one who can hear him. Is it just that they’re on alert, or is their hearing getting more acute? It’s so much harder to block out language. Whispered purrs in Spanish at the giant Jenga; cussing in French by the neon; loud moans coming from the bathroom in three distinct pitches.
“—it won’t actually be help,” Artemis continues. “Not the kind you’re looking for, not the sure kind. Because they will tell you, ah, yes, nothing happens. But they might See Jean choosing to cancel the show and not tell you that part.”
Quibble’s brow furrows because he knows that this is not exactly true. It might be what Artemis believes to be true, he thinks (and it is; she isn’t lying; she just has a different experience of the future teller than Quibble does). But the person she’s talking about—they’re generally quite specific. Sometimes painfully so.
Rico sighs. “Ah, well. That makes sense.” And the look on his face is such that when Jacqueline passes by him, she reaches out and grabs his wrist, gives it a squeeze. Without thinking, Artemis slides one finger into one of his back belt loops, her thumb on his hip. He smiles small, wrinkles his nose up, and Artemis bursts with love that she still will not talk about. Everyone sits in long enough silence for Wilder to hear that there are now four different registers of sex noise emanating from the bathroom.
Rico, who wants to kiss Artemis and doesn’t, speaks first. “Can you—you know—” He wiggles three of his fingers a little bit, being careful to keep the embroidery needle caught between his forefinger and thumb.
Artemis pulls her hand from Rico’s belt loop. “You can say ‘cast a spell.’ Let’s be perfectly real here—no one in this bar is going to think anything of it. Every one of these girlies got crystals. And yes, I can. But I’m not—I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for me to do. I’m a Seer, of a sort. I can’t, like, put a force field up around you or Jean.”
“The threat isn’t about Jean,” Rico says, “or about me. Not the very specific one, at least.” His eyes flick to Polly, who is playing darts and drinking, perhaps more than she otherwise would be.
Artemis doesn’t touch Rico this time; she wishes he would touch her, because what he means is obvious—it’s about the trans women. “I can’t stop a bullet,” she says, quiet. “I don’t know anyone who can.” Rico’s eyebrows furrow again, confused about what magic is for and what it isn’t.
“There are things we can just—do,” Quibble pipes in to explain, seeing an opportunity to offer not just some information to Rico, but to Wilder as well. And Quibble can see Wilder is clearly struggling. Cowboy Jaqueline’s has gotten louder, more crowded. “For Artemis, it’s Seeing magic, all kinds. For me, I can, uh—”
“Teleport?” Rico offers. “When Artemis talks about it, it sounds like teleportation.”
“Not—exactly.” Quibble sips his beer. “But, uh. Close, yeah. And Wilder—”
“Don’t talk about me,” Wilder interjects, snappy and more than a bit nauseously.
“Cool, okay.” Quibble drops it. “So there are things we just can do. And then there’s stuff we have to reach for. Spells we can cast. And they work, they do, it’s just—not quite a guarantee. How they work is going to be a bit of a surprise. It looks more like praying from the outside, but it’s way more than some vibes. And it’s really different from that on the inside—how do I explain this? Most spells take more Power than each of us has by ourselves. So we all kinda—You remember the kids book called Stone Soup?” It’s an abrupt topic change but Rico nods nonetheless. And Quibble’s plan is working: Wilder is listening, osmosing some things about the way the world works. Quibble continues. “A bunch of witches can cast the same spell at the same time, and they all put magic into it, put their own spin on it, like when everyone in that book puts an ingredient into the pot. But it’s also way more intimate than that.” And Quibble turns a bit red, which Rico notices and Wilder doesn’t because Wilder is on the verge of having a meltdown.
“So could you cast a protection spell?” Rico honestly does want to know; he also honestly wants to know what’s so intimate about casting spells, but safety first and also Rico is used to dealing with Artemis, who is a show-upper in every other kind of relationship and extremely avoidant in romance, so he’s used to providing an option to defuse intensity.
“We could,” Artemis says. “But—what is protection? It’s too vague. Without a clear idea of what we’re actually asking for, we might make it too psychically difficult for anyone to show up and you won’t have any audience at all, as an example. It’s a lot less predictable.”
Wilder, who looks positively green, interrupts: “Cast a love spell.”
Everyone looks at Wilder.
“What?” Artemis asks.
“A love spell, cast a love spell. Make everyone love the place.” Wilder both doesn’t know and knows how good an idea this is. For even through the fog of their acute discomfort, they can see how easy it is to love Cowboy Jacqueline’s. They yearn to be a part of it even as they stand separate. They long and they wish and it would be so easy to put those feelings in the metaphorical spell pot, to have them flavor whatever comes out. “They won’t shoot it up if they just—love it.”
“And everyone here already does love it,” Quibble jumps in. “They might not even feel a difference. And if they do, they’ll just chalk it up to a really good night. That’s brilliant, bud.” And Wilder even forgets to chastise Quibble for calling them bud; they feel the slight flip in their stomach at the compliment and a very small part of them is proud for being good at something.
Artemis sips her wine. “It’s not bad.” And that is the closest to a compliment that Artemis will give anyone.
Rico smiles with his eyes, glancing up from his half-done fig leaf. As is usual with the witch stuff, he isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking at, though he’s got the gist, but with human stuff, the queer stuff, he can see through Wilder like cellophane. And Rico wears all that knowledge face-forward, so Wilder can see they’ve been made. “So,” Rico says. “A love spell. Gonna cast it right now?”
Wilder turns red. “I—” They swallow. “I have to go.” And as quickly as they blew into Cowboy Jaqueline’s, they leave, the saloon doors nearly squealing on their hinges with the speed.
Quibble frowns deep. “Man, I thought we had them.”
Rico snorts. “I knew you didn’t.”
Artemis just shrugs and takes Wilder’s half-finished PBR from the bar. She makes to take a sip and Rico stops her. She smirks. “It’s okay, they don’t go anywhere.” This time she gets the can to her lips, sips, makes a face at the shitty beer smell. “No thank you,” she says as she pulls Rico’s mask down and holds the can to his lips. Reassured, he sips without hesitation or follow-up question. He has a cute eleven between his eyebrows, two parallel wrinkles that appear when he is concentrating—in this case, concentrating on not spilling shitty beer onto his pristine fig leaf. Artemis feels herself get hard, but only a little, and hidden enough to maintain her plausible deniability.
“It would be better if they cast it with us,” Quibble says. “It was their idea.”
Artemis shrugs again, but her attention is only half in the room for two reasons. The first is, of course, the constant aggravating light-spots. The second: she has just spotted a familiar triangle of hair passing by the window, a saunter she knows all too well, and on the arm of some guy who isn’t worth her time. On a school night, too. This concretizes her persistent headache into something far more solid, like anvil-solid, and she narrows her eyes at Mary Margaret, who is very much about to get caught. “We should cast it night of show, anyway.” She says it fast. “Stronger that way. I have to go. I have a teenager to wrangle.”