Big Chicago

Big Chicago Part 5…..by Samayel


I can’t leave here without knowing. I can’t. If I go, I can’t come back, but if I stay…there’s no way to know what might happen. Killing time is essential to maintaining my sanity. Not that different from prison really, but given a choice, I’d choose this.

Therese made crepes for breakfast. Maybe my choices are limited, but at least I’m fed like a king. I think she actually smiled when she watched me eat. Or maybe she just had a nervous tic that made her lip twitch. I couldn’t tell…I was face down in crepes and unrepentantly stuffing myself.

I can’t get a manicurist or a pedicurist until he gets here, but his bathroom is stocked with supplies for personal hygiene. Maria explained with a mixture of Spanish and English that, in this suite, only people pre-approved by Harry are allowed to enter. It wasn’t easy, but between the leftover bits in my old purse and the things available in his medicine cabinet, I cobbled together the things I need to make myself a little more presentable. Nail files, razor, scissors etc. You can’t stay pretty behind bars without learning to improvise a little. I thank the random genetic selections that decided I was to be nearly hairless below my neck. A little time with shaving cream and a razor, and I’m feeling a little more like the pampered bitch goddess I used to be…and for the record…this time…I wasn’t shaving my face.

Filing and properly polishing and painting my fingernails and toenails keeps me busy for awhile, and it’s oddly comforting. I feel ridiculous in a huge puddle of silk pajamas that clearly don’t fit, but it’s nice to just sit on plush carpet and do something so patently sybarite without any pressure or scrutiny. I don’t dare snip too much away from my hair, since despite the pathetic presumptions about queens, being a stylist is something that takes an education I haven’t had, and I’m not risking any mistakes that will make me look more pitiful than I already do. At least I was able to trim away most of the split ends and ratty sections. That and some careful tweezing of the eyebrows gets me looking more like someone I remember.

The silence is eerie. I don’t know how long it will take to get used to being alone or in the company of just a few people. I have privacy! The one thing prison steals from you is privacy, and any sense of it. You’re constantly surrounded, observed, monitored, and handled like a cheap package, which I may have been, but it’s still dehumanizing and just plain rude. Now I’m in open, spacious rooms with no one else, and I find myself willing to clean things with Maria or do dishes for Therese just to be near someone else. Will this ever go away? Thank God there’s satellite radio piped into every room. I can tune into pop channels in the bathroom and try to pretend that I’m a carefree, brain dead sixteen year old again.

Intellectually speaking, I know that almost all pop music is hyper-produced garbage that preys on the emotional immaturity of its audiences, selling a culture of glamour and wealth and sex that isn‘t realistic or attainable or even healthy…but it’s still so goddamned fun to shake my ass to it that I just…don’t…care!

Killer be damned…the man has product. Not the kinds I prefer, but good enough to work with. The leftover make up from my purse is just enough to finish the job, and with the one outfit I still have, I look fairly decent…but outdated. It’s a tiny boost to an ego that’s fairly badly battered, but it’s all I’ve got. At least I know I can greet Harry Black looking a little like someone he wouldn’t cringe at the sight of.

Most people woefully misunderstand drag queens. They keep mixing us up with transvestites and transsexuals. The definitions are specific for the last two, but drag queens are a little harder to explain. Genuine transvestites actually receive a sexual thrill from dressing as a woman, even if they’re nominally straight and only date women. It’s a fetish behavior, rooted in the actual act of donning and wearing women’s clothes. The clothes or the waering of them actually turns them on…and I don’t meet the criteria for this definition.

Transsexuals are a little more obvious. These are people who whole heartedly wish they were the opposite sex. Men who feel that they would truly be happier as women, and women who are certain that they would be truly well adjusted as a man. Nature has lots of little quirks, and sometimes these surgeries can make a huge difference in the way a transsexual lives their life and interacts with society. I’ve gotta respect those who make the choice to embrace such an overwhelming change, and endure every kind of hassle along the way. They have incredible nerve and determination. Once again…I don’t meet the criteria.

I like being a boy. I like having the option to use my penis, even if it’s usually just in the way. Would I have been happier if I’d been born a girl? I don’t know. I doubt it. Do I get a sexual thrill from looking like one? Not really. So why on earth would anyone ever put up with the things that I have, just to look this way? Here is your answer…

I like the way other people look at me, when I’ve done my best and I feel beautiful. In real life, I’m a very pretty, very skinny, naturally blond boy, and that ought to be enough. It isn’t. I walk down the street and men see a scrawny faggot they’d sooner shoot than look at. Women see a boy who isn’t even manly enough to be worth looking at. Not that I care what the women think, but it’s the contempt that stings. Drake Malfoy was just a skinny faggot, but Dee is beautiful the way models are beautiful. The same men that wouldn’t bother to spit if I was on fire now look at me in awe, wishing they were the ones who could take me home and fuck me senseless. They open the doors or hold elevators for me. Heads turn and cruder men whistle or shout. Women feel envy when I walk into the room, and they unconsciously grab their husbands’ hands to remind them who they should be staring at. That’s power. That’s beauty. Drag sets me free. High heels may hurt, and getting this pretty before going out is a bitch, but being admired and desired is better than being hated and ignored any day. That’s my fetish. That’s my reason.

Some do drag for money, on stages in bars, lip-syncing songs for tips, because we can’t all make it to Broadway, but you can feel houselights and hear applause in your own town if you apply a little effort. I did that too, because it was extra income and it beat the hell out of hooking full time. That’s how I met Blaise. We all wish we were famous, and had a slice of the American Dream, but very, very few ever get that slice.

The American Dream used to be a nice house in the suburbs, a decent car, a job you could count on to be there for awhile, and someone to share a good life with. Now the dream is a winning lottery ticket, so that the crap we see on TV can be ours and we can be free of the debts we rack up just by trying to live the way our media tells us we should. I’ve seen just enough of both worlds to know that it’s better to be rich than dirt poor, but I also know that money only looks like the solution…it’s also the problem. Money is like coke. The more you have, the more you want, until you run into trouble. When you have it, it’s never enough, and when you don’t, it’s the only thing you think of until you have it again.

I had all the money in the world. I was one of the teenagers who carried credit cards and drove to school in vehicles worth more than some people’s houses. I lost it all because I wanted to be the one everybody looked at. I wanted to be beautiful, and famous, and unique in all the world. Daddy had no patience when it came to the way I wanted to live my life. Of course, anyone with an ounce of sense would be frustrated with a son who was a teenage cokehead and a raging slut…and my being a drag queen was really just the icing on the shit-cake of his opinion of me. Admittedly, I wound up making a very unique whore, but that was about it. That’s as close as I came to my dreams. All this aside, here I am…in front of a mirror…trying to be all those wonderful things again, because I want a little of the good life, and I want someone to look at me and want me. God, I hope it’s worth it, even if it’s just for a short while.

In the absence of cocaine and/or cock, I need distraction desperately. The study and the den have a pastime waiting that I haven’t indulged in a long time. I haven’t read anything more stimulating than the articles from dog-eared and spunk-stained copies of Playboy that got smuggled into the prison thanks to bribery. People would be astonished to learn how much illegal contraband gets into prisons. You try hiring security and corrections officers for rock bottom wages and see how secure you can stay. A smart guard can straddle the line, letting harmless goods pass and still keeping his job while picking up a few extra dollars or some small perks. The bad ones don’t care what gets in…drugs, small weapons, booze etc. I used to read a lot…in high school…then I discovered boys and drugs, and reading was the last thing on my mind.

Books. Row after row of books. Not crappy ones either. The man has taste. How can a man who has practically everything ever written by W.B. Yeats be a homicidal goon? The comedies of Moliere. The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mark Twain. Ugh…Charles Dickens…I never did see the appeal. The man had all the subtlety of a freight train. Hobbes, Voltaire, Rimbaud, Jean Genet, Andre Gide, Rousseau, Wittgenstein, Jung, Freud, and more. On and on. Harry Black is clearly a very literate man.

Oops. Fuck. I know I shouldn’t read too much into this. If I think about it too much, I’ll wind up fainting or hiding when he gets here. Maybe I shouldn’t even be looking around in here. Most men, even wealthy ones who collect books, don’t keep old CIA assassination and counter-espionage manuals from the Cold War and Latin America. There are three different versions of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, the infamous how-to manual for committing illegal acts. There are weapons manuals for more than two dozen different types of firearms, and a handful of engineering texts on gunsmithing and field repair. What kind of man needs the manuals for these kinds of things? One thing is certain…Harry Black terrifies me as much as he fascinates me, and I need to find somewhere else to kill time. I head for one of the rooms I haven’t even explored yet.

There’s a piano here. There’s a piano here. I’m repeating myself. There is a fucking piano up in here! It’s just a baby grand, but it looks about a minute from new. Shit! The tag is still on it. It was shipped here a week ago. It can’t fucking be. He didn’t. Why would he do that? All I said was that I’d had lessons for nine years. I didn’t say I missed it. I didn’t say I wished I could play again. Nothing. He just got a message out and had this delivered. For me. Before I even got here! He didn’t…did he? I hated those lessons, but I do love music, and I always got frustrated to tears when I couldn’t make it sound as good as my idols did. Honestly, I wasn’t all that bad, but if you have an ear for it, it’s hard to ignore hearing your own small mistakes.

I can’t play this. Not yet, at least. I just finished my nails an hour ago, and my palms are sweating furiously when I think about what this could mean. He bought this on a whim…just because I could play it. It’s weird. And scary. Maybe…maybe just a little. To warm up.

I know what to do. I haven’t forgotten it all. It just doesn’t flow right. Too strained. Too tense. The notes are individually correct, but they all stumble out like nervous strangers. I’m still sleepy from staying up half the night. I can take a nap and try again another time…on the piano that Harry Black bought just because he knew I could play one.

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Two days. In two days I learned a lot about Harry Black just by living in his home. His personal effects are all neatly arranged…orderly, likely only touched when they’re needed. He’s given to tasteful understatement. He is intensely private…more so than anyone I’ve ever known. I’ve been through this place with a fine tooth comb, and there is only one item that shines a little light on his past. Most people have trophies, or yearbooks, or memorabilia of some kind. Not Harry Black. In the study, next to the computer, there’s a single photograph in a small frame. Not pricey like the other stuff here…just a cheap, dime-store wooden frame. It’s a man and a woman. They both look a little like him. These are Harry’s parents. They have to be. The man is tall and handsome. He looks confident and cheerful. His mother is very pretty, and if I look close enough, I can see where he got his green eyes from.

Are they alive? Do they know what their child does? My father wouldn’t admit to having a son that does the things I do. My mother is probably too drunk to care, or too stoned on Valium to remember that she has a son. How would his parents feel about him? Harry Black, the killer that brought home a whore. They look awfully young in the picture…perhaps the age I am now at the most. Probably just a bit younger. Are his parents even alive?

Maria and Therese and I get on fairly well. I’ve managed to piece together some of the non-Spanish or colloquial words that Maria uses, and it’s getting easier to talk to Therese. I think they like me well enough…like I’m ’one of the girls’. They’re all I have to talk to here. From them I’ve learned a little about Harry, but they don’t tell me anything that would be…dangerous. They probably don’t know much, especially if they haven’t peeked through his books. He moved here three months ago. He’s very polite, and very quiet. He never yells or shows anger, and he’s sometimes gone for days or weeks at a time, then he comes home for a few weeks until his work takes him elsewhere. They think he’s corporate, but I know better.

They don’t know that I came from jail, and I’m not sharing that tidbit. It turns out that Therese, the cook, just scowls like that all the time. No one here knows where I came from, only that they were told to make ready for a special guest, and to take good care of me. Therese complains that I’m too skinny, and Maria is politely jealous of my blond hair, but they both seem very serious about following Mr. Black’s orders and making sure that I’m content, no matter how much I reassure them that I’m fine.

The day after tomorrow I’ll be twenty-five years old. I thought I’d have to ignore it like the last six birthdays. They lose meaning when they become a celebration of one more year wasted forever, rotting away surrounded by stone and steel, getting fucked by people I wouldn’t voluntarily touch just to stay alive and unscarred. Now it matters again…kind of. I don’t know. Twenty-five years. My eighteenth was celebrated in grand style, with Blaise taking me everywhere I wanted to go, being seen in the clubs that most people can’t even get into, and a coke-fueled frenzy of fucking until the sun was coming up. The day after tomorrow, I’ll be twenty-five years old, and I’ll be here, in the home of a killer, drunk, with the cook and the maid.

I did practice at the piano. I’m horrible compared to the way I played at fifteen. Maybe I’m not so bad next to someone who only knows ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, but when you’ve performed at recitals and made grown men and women who know their music gush with praise, it’s a bit humbling to realize that you might as well be in elementary school all over again. On a lighter note, I discovered a gym and a sauna in this palace of dreams, and it’s hard to fret over talents that have waned when you can soak in steam and let the stink of prison ooze its way out of your pores until you feel clean again.

I watched TV until my eyes ached. I haven’t watched anything intently in years, but the distraction was nice. So much has changed in just a few short years. Including my father. That was a local news tidbit I didn’t expect. Especially the part where they called him by his title…Representative Malfoy. He’s a congressman now. He spouted off the usual prattle about how devoted he was to bringing progress to Chicago, as if in the absence of his efforts, one of the largest cities in the world would dry up and blow away. Asshole. He acted all coy and mysterious when they asked if he meant to run for the Senate, like a horny virgin on prom night flashing a little skin for attention, but never delivering the goods. In his own charming and classy way, my father is a whore on a scale I couldn’t even imagine. At least I acknowledge my sins…and I deliver the goods. In his mind, his every act is made right by the fact that he was the one taking action, and if he did it, then it must be good by default.

I got nauseous before they could continue, and I wish I had a channel changer that would make him really disappear, but the one in my hand was all I could make use of at the moment.

My former ‘home’ is back under control now. No more riots, no more bloodshed. No mention of Harry Black. I did learn something interesting though. Five of the men killed during the riot, the first deaths, were due for release sometime in the next one to two years, and each of them was tied to a significant crime family. They weren’t the biggest fish in the pond, but they were all well-connected, and they would have gone back to the organizations they left behind when they were arrested.

Federal agents and cops don’t stage riots just to kill criminals. If they want you dead, they plant a gun on you after they shoot you and say they had no choice but to fire in self defense. If the coroner knows what’s good for him, he’ll ’forget’ that the bullets entered the body from behind, indicating a fleeing or helpless suspect, not a man fighting back. Harry Black is no cop. He’s a contract killer, and he must work for someone that doesn’t like competition. I try to distract myself from this, but I can’t ignore it. I can’t.

What if he’s like Blaise? He was kind to me…in there…but he was on the job, making things happen, and he needed a quiet accomplice. Maybe he was nice because…because he wanted me to stay quiet, and not betray him like I did Flint. He could get here and be different now that his job is done. I’m too scared to be turned on or horny anymore. The rush of freedom is still with me, but I don’t feel anything like what I felt the first night. I’m a very pretty toy, and the kind of men that want me get bored with all their toys eventually. Some hate to admit their own infidelity, and their cruelty is the way they amuse themselves in their boredom, so that, when you run from them, they can call you the coward, and absolve themselves of all blame because you left them.

This place is a beautiful dream, but I have to wake up soon. I like silk sheets and champagne. I like gourmet meals and saunas and Jacuzzis. I like the piano, and the CD collection, and the huge mirror in the clean and well lit bathroom. I like all those things, but I’d also like to not be afraid. I was too young and too stupid to fear Blaise, or I’d have seen what was coming. I’m not that young anymore, and I’ve had the stupid fucked and beaten and burned out of me since then. If Harry Black seems reasonable about it, I’m going to ask him if I can leave. If he offers money, I’ll take it, but I won’t ask for it. I just want to be alive and free, even if I never live like this again…at least I’ll live.

Maybe I’ll turn twenty-five in some shitty bar in Boystown, wearing clothes that were bought for me seven years ago, looking for a trick that will pay well and give me someplace to stay the night, but I won’t be scared shitless of a pair of green eyes that hide a soul that can kill. I won’t die here…because of him. I’ll thank him for the hospitality, show gratitude and give him what he wants, go on my way, and hope against hope that he doesn’t consider me a risk for knowing what I do about his recent activities.

Every day Maria washes my one lone outfit, and then later cleans the pajamas I’ve been borrowing. I think I’ll kind of miss those. It’s nice to feel scruffy and unkempt in the morning, but still be clean and washed and wearing something soft and comfortable. Beats feeling greasy and dirty and smelling like the misery and fear of others, with the oily residue of petroleum jelly and old spunk making the crotch of my old short shorts stained and gross. Anything beats the fishy stink of my own unwashed groin, or the peppery bite of the sweat from under my arms, occasionally relieved by a shower in water that smells like an ironworks and industrial soap that leaves me feeling like I’ve been dipped in lye. After that, wandering around in the morning in baggy silk pajamas while I soak up coffee and decide which body scrub suits me best is pure paradise.

I can walk in heels again. I knew a little practice would bring it right back. It’s like riding a bicycle…you never really forget how to do it. I’m getting fretful waiting for Harry, but the food is good, and the girls are nice, and everything is so comfortable that I can wait a little longer if I have to. I trimmed my nails back, since Maria has some press-on nails I can wear later. I hate to waste all the effort I just put into my own nails, but at least now I can play the piano a little more deftly.

I spent part of the afternoon reading Le Livre Blanc, The White Book, in the original French. Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece, opening a window into the world of what it means to look upon another man and find him beautiful, has lost none of its poignancy. That I am in a place where I can read such a thing and then play piano at my leisure is a pleasure I can’t describe. If only it weren’t underscored by the solemn knowledge that I’m in a hit man’s home, and that I have to leave here and go back to a world I barely know anymore.

Time to kick off the heels and play. Not Elgar of Liszt…the bombastic parts always annoy me. I probably ought to know better, but I try Chopin’s Minute Waltz anyway. I fuck it up royally. It’s a short enough piece that I can remember it without a sheet in front of me, but I’ve lost too much speed and reach over the last eight years to manage it. There are moments when it just soars, and I’m a flightless creature these days. When I botch the last of it, I curse out loud and just put my head in my hands and try to catch my breath.

“Fuck!” At least cursing lets a little steam off. I hate crashing into my own limitations.

“You know, traditionally, when one finishes a piece like that, you stand and bow, but you’re the maestro, so you can end it your own way if you want.”

Harry Black has come home.


TBC!!!