Every gig outside Palm Springs that Patty does is Vegas-adjacent. Which means Reno.
Which means her audience will consist of inebriated cowboys who just lost their last dime at the blackjack table and women sporting breast implants and oxygen machines.
“Just be back—and sober!—by next Saturday night forourgig,” I say. “I have enough to worry about without adding ‘find old, drunk drag queen’ to my list.”
Patty puts a hand over her mouth and feigns indignation at my insult.
“I’ll give you drunk, but old?” she gasps. “And drag queen? I’m a professional.”
“A professional what?” I quip.
She laughs and then hacks.
I stride toward the door.
“You’re still wearing a wig, by the way,” Patty calls.
“I feel like being Lucy today,” I say.
“Red doesn’t suit you,” Patty says. “That color turns your skin pink and makes you look like an alcoholic.” She stops. “Which you are, by the way.”
“No,” I say. “I’m a professional, too.” I look at Patty before I exit. “Professional drinker.”
I march toward my car—not a soul in Palm Springs giving me a second glance for wearing a wig in the middle of the afternoon—and see my own reflection in the window of my store. I survey my appearance and take stock of the situation I’m in.
“How would Lucy get herself out of this mess?” I ask myself, smoothing the loose ends of the wig. “There’s not a chocolate anywhere in sight to shove in my mouth nor a grape to stomp in Palm Springs.”
My doctor looks like Doogie Howser, MD.
If you don’t know who that is, google it.
We didn’t have Google when I was young. We researched subjects using things called dictionaries and microfiche. We carted heavy books around and had to turn pages and scour lines to discover truths.
We found locations—like the hospital I’m currently seated in wearing a paper robe with my flabby behind hanging out for Doogie to probe—using folded maps, directions written on napkins and our own internal compasses.
We didn’t even have a hint Doogie might be gay—much less Boy George—until years later because no one even uttered that word out loud. I mean, my father thought Liberace was just a showman. Paul Lynde was simply the hilarious “center square” onHollywood Squares.
What I’m trying to say is, if you don’t know Doogie, it means I’m too damn old.
I watch Doogie’s mouth move.
To me right now, his voice sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher from thePeanutsholiday specials.
Wah-wah.
Again, google it, my dears.
I’m being “staged,” and not in the glamorous Broadway, Tony Award–winning way.
I have cancer.
Stage T3a to be exact, meaning my tumor has extended outside the prostate on one side but has not spread to my lymph nodes or distant organs, my PSA is under 20, and I have a Gleason score of 7.
I should play the lotto today with those numbers.
So many numbers, so little time.
“In other words,” my doctor says to me, “after all our tests, this is the best possible outcome of a bad situation.”
