‘My parents are coming over.’ High Jinx sighs. ‘Now they’re good parents, they want the best for me but they’re a product of their culture, their upbringing and they only had the one son. We’re all the sum of our experiences and I can’t blame them for who they are. But as much as they love Kevin very much and will always want the best for him, I’m not sure they’re going to extend High Jinx the same level of understanding.’
‘You’re not out to them?’ I ask and Jinx just replies with a high-pitched screech of laughter. She sounds a little possessed.
‘Four minutes,’ Dan says. Cold.
‘I can’t. I just can’t. They’d be devastated. Trust me, They still send photos of suitable brides from all over the world. Literally all over the world. I didn’t realise quite how many friends of friends with single daughters there were out there. You have no idea how many times I have had to listen to the find a nice bride speech, they’re getting so desperate that they’ve stopped listing ethnic or professional requirements among their demands for my bride-to-be. They haven’t quite said anyone will do at this point, but that’s what they mean.’
‘I’m sorry about that, I just assumed...’ and I had. I had assumed Jinx was roughly my age, Lily’s age – she said she had gone to uni with Kevin – and had come out years ago.
‘Sure, I should have told them by now, and if I was white and middle-class and had beautifully progressive parents then I would have done. If I had parents like she has...’ She waggles a finger at Doris Day on stage, who is almost at the end of singing ‘Just Blew in from the Windy City’complete with a ukulele, crazed facial expressions and fart jokes. ‘But trust me, being this fabulous isn’t easy. I know we live in the 2020s and I know the world accepts how hard it was coming out in the Eighties and beforehand when homophobia was at its height and people thought you’d drop down dead if you risked talking to a gay man, but believe me coming out in the late Nineties was also hard, and for someone with parents like mine, with such rigid cultural beliefs, it’s still next to impossible even in the twenty-first century, even with Ru Paul makingDrag Racean international phenomenon. And what’s worse is they’re coming to the UK in July and I have been waiting for this July all my life! This was going to be my month to make my mark, to make High Jinx famous across the nation.’ She flops her head on the table and emits a sigh so loud and forceful that it’s in danger of flapping the minuscule skirt of a drag queen who has just walked by, dressed all in white and with a veil on her head that is longer than the dress she’s wearing. A sigh loud enough to clear mountain tops, and I work with teenage girls, I know about sighing.
‘All my life.’ Jinx lifts her head a fraction from the table to repeat this and lets out another sigh.
‘One minute,’ Dan observes. He hasn’t looked up from the phone that he whisked out once Jinx started to talk.
‘I have been rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing... and I have such a special routine lined up. I know exactly how I’m going to style myself and now they’re going to ruin it. Ruin it and there will be posters of my face all over the city, how am I going to explain that, huh? How am I going to explain that their son’s face is plastered over every siding, every lamppost, in everyWhat’s Onmagazine for the month of July, but the face itself is looking distinctly feminine and plastered in make-up, damn fine make-up, probably the best make-up....’
‘They might not recognise you., I say in an attempt to reassure her. ‘After all if they don’t know you do drag...’
High Jinx gives me a look. ‘I look just like my mum in drag....but you know, hotter. They’ll recognise me.’
‘And time’s up!’ Lily returns to the table with even more cocktails and as she says this she looks down at her friend still splayed upon the table and smiles gently, but her eyes are steely. She means it. I wouldn’t cross her.
Jinx looks up at her through her eyelashes and then her eyes catch something else and she sits bolt upright.
‘Oh no. Oh no. Not tonight. That’s not happening. Do not dare do your usual stuff tonight. I’m telling you, if you’re not doing something new, Phyllis is going to go loopy...’ She is directing her words at the latest drag queen to take to the stage. She is the one who was walking past earlier dressed as a bride. High Jinx turns around, shouting over her shoulder, ‘Phyllis!’
I watch the tiny woman stand and bring a metal-tipped cane down hard on the floor. Despite the noise at the bar and the low talk from the tables, there is no doubting her intent or authority. The club pauses, silence hangs in the air and everyone waits for her to speak.
‘No “All By Myself”. No “It’s My Party”. No “Everybody Hurts”. Change it up or I’ll throw you out,’ she states, loudly and clearly, her voice possessing a strength you wouldn’t expect to emanate from her elderly body. The two men sat with her nod to reinforce her message.
‘I know. I promised you. Have faith.’ The bride nods to the sound man and Etta James’s “Stop the Wedding”’ floods out. Jinx groans loudly. Dan shrieks with laughter and stands up and throws his arms up in the air and starts to sing along, swaying as he does so. It’s the most reserved dance move I have seen him make so far this evening.
‘Right,’ Lily says as she passes me a glass, her eyes meeting mine with mischief and intent dancing in them.
As she pauses, all I can think of is what I wouldn’t give not to have made that promise to Cassie right now. What I wouldn’t give to be able to see if I could take Lily up on exploring the attraction between us. Just the way she looks at me is enough to send a frisson of sexual attraction through me.
It’s not even just the way she looks at me, it’s the way she holds herself, the way her hair bounces by her shoulders, highlighting the curve of her neck. It’s the way every step she takes has a fluidity to it that summons to mind the thought of the movements she would make if we undressed each other, as we stroked and kissed and explored.
Then there’s the smell of her, the pitch of her voice, the way her laugh warms the whole of me, makes me feel that I’ve achieved and want to carry on doing so. Every little bit of her appeals to all my senses and brings them into flux, makes me wish we could be together. Makes me wish that my sister and this new project didn’t stand in our way.
When I look at her, I am not measuring her up for the future. I am not considering if she has the qualities that would make her the perfect partner for my life going forward, all I am thinking about is far more elemental, far less logical, it’s compelling and immediate, right of this moment. I swear I haven’t felt desire like this since I was a teen and I’m not entirely sure what to do with it.
I know I can’t act on it, but I don’t know how to dampen it down, to relegate it to the back of my mind, to rationalise all the ways this won’t work, how it would throw a bomb into my life that would cast everything that has been my priority for the last two decades high into the air.
Even if I wasn’t as worried about Cass as I am, as determined to show her change is possible and that I’m not some kind of mad dog that can’t keep his dick in his pants or cope without a woman by his side, I have spent years building up my skillset in the workplace, and getting to know these girls, getting them to respect me and who I am, and then to shag the famous Love Doctor whom I have brought in to City Youth to help the girls out would be the quickest, surest way to lose that trust and respect.
But as she hands me my drink, our fingers touch, just for a millisecond, and the jolt that shoots up my arm, across my shoulders and through my whole body is so forceful I wonder how she cannot have felt it too. I am half surprised we are not shooting out blue jaggy lightning as we make eye contact and the whole world around us recedes, leaving only us two.
‘Wanna get out of here for a minute?’ she asks me, not taking her eyes from mine, and I find myself nodding as if under some sort of spell.
Chapter Eighteen
Lily
Ireturn from the bar with a drink for Jay and can see that Jinxy is in full flow and that Havoc is about to take the stage.
Jay joined us this evening because he wants to talk about the practicalities of implementing our plans now that they have been agreed on by City Youth. Instead, he has witnessed a whole lot of Jinx drama and some drag acts, yet not a word has been mentioned about work.
