Come Down: II.9

Damn Yankees was good -- funny mostly in the ways the script intended, but with lots of the expected extra jokes and double-takes afforded by having an all-transgender cast -- and Élouan was rushed and gracious when they met us in front of the theatre (a sweltering black box inside a larger ex-warehouse community space in Dorchester). Madonna, chancing it on her Chelsea resident permit, got lucky and received a ticket neither in the time we spent watching the show nor the time we spent, giggly and scheming as a bunch of teenagers, in the liquor store across the street combing the shelves for every bottle we thought Élouan, or really we, might be excited to try. Paris rode shotgun, and Dolly, Shea, and I sat in the back, one of them on either side of me like pastel-skirted bodyguards, and despite Madonna’s complaints about his outmoded taste Paris played nothing but Donna Summer and Chaka Khan the whole way to the house. We unloaded ourselves and our cargo and discovered, in the living room, three ancient cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations: tinsel, multicolored lights, fake icicles, ornaments, several uncanny-valley toy Santas in various states of disrepair, strings of lacquered popcorn.

“We found these,” one of the other housemates told us when we arrived, “in the basement.”

“They’re perfect,” Dolly declared, and so they were.

By the time the setting sun was tinting the living room orange, the house had the carbonated backstage energy of an opening night: all of us already tipsy (we took care not to finish anything, but the peach soju and the canned Midori sours and the mead had a few swallows left apiece), the living room and entryway and even the bathroom sundogged with Christmas lights refracting through dangling crystalline ornaments, people struggling their way into the puffy pants the costumer had brought with her in a gigantic blue IKEA bag, everyone changing in front of each other like it was nothing, like we’d all known each other for years, which I’m sure many of them had, but although I hadn’t, being amidst so much casual intimacy still has a way of making one feel part of it, held by it, absorbing everyone else’s shared history through one’s pores like a frog. Dolly, the mastermind, every inch the Lady Olivia in a flower-embroidered corset and a floor-length pleated skirt that I recognized as Élouan’s, had receded to the edges of the room to watch the pre-party as it Tilt-a-Whirled before her, leaving me at its center to offer last-minute insight into the others’ characters (“Antonio is, and I do not say this lightly, one hundred percent gay for Sebastian”) and to pour drinks from yet-unopened bottles to keep our supplies fresh. Someone, maybe one of the housemates, connected to a Bluetooth speaker with an early-2000s girlpop mix, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson and Shakira, and while nobody entirely abandoned their drinks or their scripts or their conversations to dance, there was still an overall suggestion of dancing, head-nodding and hip-wiggling and mouthing along to “Whenever, Wherever,” and the only thing on Earth that could possibly have improved the party was Élouan’s arrival, which, according to a frantic text Dolly received from Alder, had been half an hour away half an hour prior but the initial message hadn’t sent, and he and October were dragging their feet as much as they could to slow Élouan but they were due to walk in the door any minute.

I pulled Dolly aside into the entryway, near the bathroom, just as the overhead lights were being dimmed so that Élouan would receive the full effect of the décor when they walked in, and said, “I’m a little drunk but I think I could do this forever. You plan a wonderful party.”

“We plan a wonderful party,” she corrected, arching an eyebrow. “You’re a natural.”

“A natural what?”

“Whatever you want, Marco.” She darted her eyes toward the staircase. “I checked on the bedroom, by the way. We’re in good shape.”

“Great, yes, amazing,” I said, swimmy-headed, thrilling with anticipation but, too, struggling to imagine that a night already soaked in liquor and theatre could get any better.

Then there was the distinct sound out front of feet crunching on the concrete steps that led to the porch and thence to the front door, and Dolly thrust a second script into my hand and darted back into the living room, leaving me alone in the entryway. I shifted both scripts into one hand and ran my free fingers through my hair once more to ensure it was still mussed the way I wanted it. My tights were itchy. I had forgotten, I was fairly sure, to reapply my deodorant since changing into my costume, or else the summer and the drinks had worked upon my armpits more thoroughly than I’d anticipated. My pulse was quick and irregular. Pre-show jitters.

But the doorknob turned, and I took a deep breath, and, for the first time since Faustus -- and for the first time before that since college -- I was on.

“If music be the food of love, play on,” I announced, melancholic yet commanding, as Élouan entered, flanked by a giggling Alder and October. I thrust a script into their hand as their eyes went as round as I had ever seen them, a grin splitting their face like a dagger slash, stretching and widening as they came further into the house and saw the Christmas lights, the dozen different bottles, the merry band of audience-turned-actors waiting with puppy eagerness to perform both their roles, listening and speaking, watching and performing, all with Élouan, all for Élouan. “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die.”

They were dazzling, of course. Viola does not appear in the first scene of Twelfth Night, so as I moped and sighed in the direction of my attendants (the costumer herself as Valentine and Shea, who had specifically requested bit parts, as Curio), Élouan had time to pour themself the last of the mead, make the rounds of hello hugs, grab a few extra costume pieces from the IKEA bag (a frilly white ruff for their neck, a spare jerkin) and saunter to the center of the living room, where everyone else had already sunk into armchairs and beanbags or perched like birds on the arms of sofas, leaving the middle -- a pillow-lined expanse that came as close to a conversation pit as no budget can allow -- free for the evening’s star. And when the first scene had ended, Élouan cast a mischievous look around at all of us, their magnificent hair still gelled into Lola’s ladylike swoop, and asked, “What country, friends, is this?” and there was so much cheering and toasting and calling out (“you’re in Boston, bitch!”) that it was a full minute before one of the housemates was at last able to inform us that it was Illyria, actually.

Orsino, for being Twelfth Night’s technical male lead, appears in comparatively few scenes, which left me free to drink in the others’ performances and quite a bit of ouzo, whose licorice burn made me feel hollow-boned and dizzy. Madonna’s scheming Maria to one of the actors’ self-important Malvolio left us all cackling; Paris’ hapless but handsome Sebastian got half-joking swoons out of more than one of us as he stumbled into flirting with Dolly; Alder’s cracks as Feste the fool were surprisingly sly, running under the radar in ways that reminded me fondly of Angus’ humor at the ECE desk. But when I was on, I was on entirely, meeting Élouan in the center of the room, professing my affection for their partner but letting them woo me despite myself, watching with my gaze softened by alcohol and love -- for Viola, for Olivia, for Élouan, for Dolly, for the party, for the night -- as they told me, voice breaking, that they were all the daughters of their father’s house. And when, in the scenes between Viola and Olivia, Dolly fell over herself to flirt with Élouan, it occurred to me, though we were indeed playing Shakespeare’s greatest love triangle, that we were slightly miscast, that we were actually inhabiting each other’s roles: me as Élouan, most likely, being wooed while having my heart set on another, and Dolly as me, taking aim at a strange, charismatic, androgynous object of affection and not letting up until they were won, or perhaps Élouan was me, going back and forth between two nobles whose stations and affections ought to have promised them to one another and getting caught up with them both instead. This incongruity in casting didn’t bother me, not least because every actor longs for the chance to play against type on occasion, but also because -- Dolly in Élouan’s skirt, Élouan finding roundabout ways to profess their love to me without coming on too strong -- it felt like we were playing dress-up as each other, heightening the best parts of our relationships, our dynamics, ourselves, in playacting them. It was, I imagined, the appeal of doing drag.

At last we were all huddled on the ground among the pillows for the play’s final scene, Élouan at our center, admitting to having been an actor all along, one of their hands on Dolly’s thigh even as Paris laid his head on her shoulder, their other hand in mine, gripping tight enough that their knuckles dug into me, and I told them they and I would be together forever, and they nodded, their pale eyes sparkling in the Christmas lights, lovestruck, awestruck, and as I leaned in Alder began singing the Fool’s final song about the wind and the rain and Élouan kissed me and the room dissolved into applause and I dissolved with it. I was delirious.

Élouan stood, rising over the rest of us like a statue, like a scarecrow, and at once we took up a chant of speech! speech! speech! that they quelled with both hands held up, palms flat, and a smile so wide I couldn’t imagine how it didn’t hurt their cheeks.

“Friends,” they said, and paused.

“Romans!” I called out.

“Countrymen,” said one of their old costars.

“Lend me your ears,” Élouan finished. “I come to bury you all, not to praise you. Of course, if I were to praise you, I would tell you that this was one heck of a party. I won’t go so far as to call it the best birthday ever, but that’s only because it’s still my birthday for another couple of hours. You have time to top yourselves yet. Who planned this thing?”

Dolly rose and took me with her, pulling me up by the arms, neither of us fully balanced between the pillows and the drinks, so we tipped into each other and had to right ourselves breathlessly against each other’s bodies as Élouan watched, that grin relaxing into something a little less wide, a little more knowing, a little more like the Élouan I’d seen last time we were onstage together.

“We did,” she said. “Happy birthday, Lou.”

“That’s what you needed his number for?”

“Among other things.”

Élouan raised an eyebrow and, after a moment’s pause, kissed her on the cheek. “Well, thank you, beloved. I am, as always, in awe. We’ve got to make this a regular thing.” They turned back to the crowd. “What do we think? Timon of Athens next?”

Cheers, boos, suggestions of better plays, the joy, joy! that we might get to do this again and again, and then people were finishing off the last of the drinks and changing back into their street clothes, piling their costume pieces into the IKEA bag as they did so, and wishing Élouan happy birthday and inviting them out to other parties all over town, and Dolly caught me by the elbow and whispered, “Go on upstairs. We’ll meet you up there in a minute.”

I snuck my messenger bag into the bathroom first, admiring the glassy shine of my eyes in the Christmas lights, reapplying deodorant and eyebrow gel, ruffling my hair in the mirror, biting my lips until they were pink and tingling. Then, as the party trickled out the door, I slipped upstairs to the empty bedroom, leaving the door just barely ajar behind me.

It was probably intended by the builders of the duplex to be a study, maybe a nursery, but it awaited its next subletter, cramped and patient, with one dark, uncurtained window and a small lamp that I turned on, bathing the space in weak yellow light, and queen mattress atop an unadorned metal frame, no head or foot, that took up much of the room. The bed had no sheets, but it was piled high with a mismatched assortment of blankets -- a fuzzy lesbian flag, a lavender quilt, an unzipped sleeping bag -- that made it look vaguely royal, a nest of rich textiles for the princess of some long-faded empire. I unpiled them, stretching the quilt out and tucking in the ends so it would cover the bare mattress, then placed all the other blankets back on top in a way that I hoped looked equally haphazard and intriguing. Then, of course, came the issue of how to position myself within the room. There was nowhere to sit but the bed -- or the floor, I supposed, but it was wood, deeply scratched and gouged by years of furniture being dragged in and out, meaning it would be uncomfortable and possibly splinter-inducing from the moment I sat, and I had no idea how long Élouan and Dolly would be -- but whether to sit on the mattress’ edge or lay down or curl up or pull out my phone and pretend I had no idea I was about to become the birthday gift of a lifetime was unclear to me. I approached the bed, misjudging the distance slightly, and pitched myself sideways onto the blankets in an abortive effort to recover my balance. I had intended to rearrange myself into a more attractive pose, but in my newly horizontal position the ceiling above me began to twirl and the pitted wooden floor rocked beneath the bed, swaying me gently back and forth like a sailor in a hammock, and I closed my eyes to better appreciate these sensations and drifted so quickly towards sleep that I couldn’t tell whether or not the sound of the door creaking open and clicking shut again was an invention of my subconscious.

“He’s asleep, love,” Élouan murmured a few moments later, much closer to my face than I’d been expecting.

I had yet to work up the energy to move any part of me, including my eyelids, but, enjoying the waves, I managed to say, “Not quite.”

“Shame.” The mattress dipped beside me, and long, cool fingers cupped my cheek. “We could have had our way with you.”

“You still could. If you want.” With great effort, I opened my eyes -- the room was still spinning, but the anchor of Élouan sitting beside me diminished the effect somewhat -- and pushed myself up into almost a seated position. “I am here entirely at the discretion of the birthday celebrant.”

“You don’t slur when you’re drunk,” Dolly observed from the door, where she was watching Élouan stroke my cheek with something like amusement.

“I don’t,” I confirmed. “I’ve done too many diction drills for that. It would be embarrassing.”

“Actors,” Dolly said, shaking her head in mock disappointment as she made her way over to the bed with us. Élouan had stripped down to their t-shirt, magenta with a white-striped breast pocket, and wide linen pants, but she hadn’t changed out of her Olivia outfit, the corset of which emphasized her chest even more up close. Though it was dim, the glow of the little lamp painted the tops of her breasts with buttery highlights. I cut my eyes over to Élouan, who was also staring at her chest, their bottom lip caught between their teeth.

“Well?” I said, watching Élouan watch Dolly, who I believed, though I could not tell without looking away to check, and the last thing I wanted to do was look away, was watching me. Shakespeare’s greatest love triangle.

“Lay back down,” Élouan said, tipping their head toward me without taking their eyes off of Dolly, and I did.

The two of them leaned into each other over me while I watched, supine, the eclipse that resulted above my face when they kissed, and I would have kept staring, trying to figure out how I felt about it -- it was tender, but not all that sexy, and it inspired in me a mild jealousy if anything -- had Dolly not, eyes still closed into the kiss, run her hand over me until she found my arm and then my wrist, wrapped her fingers around it, and placed my hand firmly in Élouan’s lap. I pressed lightly and in response they made a low noise in the back of their throat that Dolly half-swallowed, and at once I was into it, into everything happening, and I moved my palm over them in time with the swaying of the room, and soon Dolly was pulling away from Élouan and guiding my face towards theirs instead, and when they kissed me it was with far more harshness and urgency than they had kissed Dolly, biting my lower lip, yanking my head backwards -- but then both their hands were on my chest -- so it was Dolly holding me in place by my hair -- to suck what I knew would be luridly visible hickeys into my neck. They pushed the hem of my shirt up to my shoulders so they could continue breaking capillaries between their teeth all the way down my sternum to my scars, and Dolly pulled my shirt the rest of the way off, my arms over my head, and kissed the nape of my neck until all the hairs there stood on end and she reached around me, her chest pressed against my spine, to dig her fingers into Élouan’s hips. It was all very confusing. Within moments I lost track of whose hands were where, including my own, and I was always shifting my hips and bending my knees and lifting my arms to allow the three of us to remain one interconnected superentity without developing pins and needles. At some point I was laid back down on the bed and Élouan knelt over me, sharp shins in parallel on either side of my face, and brushed a finger over my lips and let their hips sink until I opened my mouth and took them in and let them fuck me, long minutes, ache at the back of my jaw, and Dolly meanwhile laying alongside me so Élouan could stroke her hair and so she could push a careful finger into me, slow, gentle, teasing, not enough in contrast to the too much of Élouan. They thrust harder and I gagged and then a hand -- Dolly’s again, I thought -- was in my hair holding me in place even as I choked and her arm was heavy and taut across my hips while Élouan moved and said yeah yeah take it yeah in that dog-trainer voice of theirs and my legs tensed and I couldn’t move and I coughed up deeply unattractive noises from the bottom of my throat that, despite my limited grasp on the situation, still embarrassed me. When Élouan came, I swallowed reflexively, but they raised themself up and out of my mouth and I closed my eyes just in time to feel the rest of it on my face, hot and sticky across my careful eyebrow gel, dripping down my cheeks in a sensation that tricked my brain, for a moment, into believing I was crying. I felt them sit down on my chest, knocking out what little wind remained in me, and Dolly shifted, her finger still moving delicately in and out, and there were for a minute or two some slick sounds between them that I did not try to identify. Then the weight on my chest lifted -- Élouan standing up -- and I could take full breaths for only as long as it took them to replace Dolly’s hand with their own and push me, rhythmically, almost impersonally, over the edge, once, then again. I was there and not there, in the bed and in my hammock on a trading vessel swaying in the sea breeze, and my muscles ached and I reminded myself that I was a birthday gift, that I was there on purpose, that these two splendid peacocks wanted me, wanted to make me part of them, and therefore I was in control of the situation, and to convince myself more fully of that final point I opened my eyes at last and rolled onto my side so that I could touch Dolly, who was flat on her back enjoying the show, while Élouan was still crouched over my legs.

She smiled lazily at me. Her lipstick was almost gone, smudged into a ghostly pink aura around her mouth, and I noticed again the tobacco stains on her teeth. They were charming -- the only thing not perfect, by a certain definition, about her. I kissed her, soft, sweet, and reached between her legs to move my fingers the way she’d shown me in her bed in her magazine apartment, muscle memory setting the pace and the positioning, thumb here, index and middle in there. She broke the kiss, head tipping back, beginning to shake, beginning, too, to make noises that escalated from high-pitched and quiet to high-pitched and decidedly audible, and wrapped her fingers like talons around my wrist to keep me exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing. The enthusiastic display felt, perhaps because I knew there were other people home, a little unseemly, and I looked to Élouan, who was staring fixedly at me, or rather at my hand, with bird-of-prey intensity.

“Well, who would’ve guessed,” they murmured. “You know exactly what you’re doing already, don’t you?”

“Élouan,” I said, and they turned the force of their pale stare to my face and I felt myself disconnect from my body entirely. Something -- I didn’t know what -- was wrong. I reached my free hand out toward them, wanting to be pulled back into myself, and they smiled, God, their hair was a mess and they were naked and covered in art and they were so hot with that smile full of knowing and mischief, but it didn’t reach their eyes, nothing did, no engagement, no playing off of each other, no scene, there was nothing at all but a pale blue mirror reflecting everything back at me.

Dolly came with a shriek.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.