Episode 14, Codename: Mascara: The Glamourous Rehearsal

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS:

IRRELIGIOUS, IRREVERENT, AND IRRELEVANT.

THE PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS CONTAINED IN ST MUCKYMUCK ARE COMPLETELY FICTIONAL.  ANY AND ALL RESEMBLANCES TO REAL PEOPLE, REAL PLACES, AND/OR REAL EVENTS PAST, PRESENT, OR FUTURE IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.  

IN FACT, ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANYTHING AT ALL WILL BE REMARKABLY COINCIDENTAL.

Thursday, 6:45 pm 
City Halls, Glasgow

“All right girls,” said a squat, masculine looking woman with an extremely high pitched voice. 

“Take your places please.  Quickly now…and quietly.”

The stage of the City Halls in Glasgow was packed from one side to the other with perfectly beautiful drag queens.  One was dressed as Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind wearing the gorgeous green and white crinoline worn by Vivien Leigh in the Twelve Oaks sequence: hat, umbrella, and shawl included.  Another drag queen had on a can can outfit.  Still another was dressed like Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.  When she whirled around, across her back in lovely script was written “Whore Moana.”

“Come on, ladies.  Down in the front rows in the center of the house.  You, too, Dandy.”

A drag queen dressed in cut off shorts and a tied gingham shirt like Ellie Mae Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies balked whiningly, “I’m moving, Jo, I’m moving.  But I broke a nail and it hurts.”  She turned and walked with a slight limp toward the stairs.  On the back of her shirt was written “Dandy” and on the bottom of her cut offs was printed “Lion”.

“You broke a nail and so you’re limping?” asked Jo, showing no signs whatsoever of sympathy.

“Yes…I…”

“Never mind that, sit down!” ordered Jo.

“All right.  All right,” whined Dandy Lion.

“Something happens to you every year, Dandy.  Last year you got hit in the ear with a stiletto heel,” said Jo, hotly.

“Yes.  That’s right.  Margarita over there did that.  The b…”

“Whatever, Dandy.  It’s just you…always you.  You’re the one.”

“You’re always picking on me!” said Dandy Lion, whining and sucking her finger.  “That’s it – pick on the injured one.  If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is…”

“Yeah, right,” said Jo, with a raised eyebrow and a pudgy hand on her hefty hip.  “In your dreams…”

“You should see what I have dreamed,” said Dandy Lion.  “Last night I dreamt I was Peggy Fleming sliding across the ice gracefully.”  She pantomimed ice skating and doing a Hamill camel.

“Yeah, well, last night I dreamt I won the lottery and could lie naked on the beach in Hawaii,” retorted Jo.

“Ewww…” said Dandy Lion.

“Sit down!”

“O-K…” she said, descending the stairs one at a time.  “L - A - H - O - M - A” she finished, almost mumbling.

A loud voice came from the lighting booth in the back of the house.  “Jo?”

“Yeah, Carol,” she yelled back.

“Can you come up here?  I can’t find the cues for the second half of the show,” said Carol.

“Did you search high and low?”

The response was immediate.  Dandy Lion and Whore Moana started singing, “Follow ev’ry rainbow…ev’ry path you know…” a few more joined in as though joined by an orchestra.  “Climb ev’ry mountain…Ford ev’ry stream…follow ev’ry rainbow…’Til you find your dream!”  Jo shook her head as she left the stage.  “Damned drag dames...everything leads to a song from a show!”

She was gone for only a moment and all were conversing with one another when in entered a tall drag queen, dressed top to bottom in white with a white scarf wrapped around her head.  There was an audible gasp – “She’s so beautiful.”  “Who is that?”  “I’ve never seen her before!”  were some of the comments as Big Fannie white, aka, Monsignor Black, made his way across the stage.

Emma had worked her magic.  The Monsignor was dressed in white, as befitting his drag name, but his face was shaved of neither beard nor bushy moustache.  His legs were as hairy as the rest of him but his feet were slipped into rather impressively high white stiletto heel pumps.  His walk was as swarthy and masculine as the beard and hairy legs but most conspicuously of all, he was sporting a pair of special specs identical in every respect to Emma’s, except they had white frames to match his outfit.

Monsignor Black as Big Fannie White came down the stairs and sat next to Scarlett O’Hara.  She immediately began fanning herself.  After sitting, the Monsignor crossed his hairy legs in a most masculine way at which Scarlett fanned herself even harder and exclaimed loudly,“Uncle Peter…my smelling salts!”  Everyone began asking where the new drag queen was from and who had done her make-up.  One wondered aloud where the glasses had come from.  “It’s a secret…” he said, elusively.  The others chuckled gleefully, wondering and speculating among themselves.

But the grandest entrances came at that very moment.  The door to the hall opened and in strode Mys Tery.  Her long black dress swirled in.  She was accompanied by Rafa, who had his arm extended chivalrously toward the Rosemary Clooney lookalike.  Everyone stood up at once.  They all applauded as she made her way down the aisle murmuring and praising her. 

“She still looks good.”  “Soooo beautiful.”  “I don’t know how she does it.”  

As she approached the other drag queens, they all curtsied before her.  She smiled and bowed back slightly.She stopped in front of Big Fannie White, who finally got the hint to do the same as the others.  Mys Tery’s eyes swept over the swarthy and manly visage – appraising every hairy inch.  “What an absolutely adorable creature,” she said, a judgmental smile adorning her face.  “You look…lovely.”

“Thank you, madame,” said Black and White.

Mys Tery extended a black gloved hand.  Black had the sense to take the hand, kissed the back of it.  Then, he made the most masculine curtsy imaginable.  It was more like bending on one knee than anything else.

Once again, Mys Tery’s blue eyes raked over Big Fannie White’s visage and then outfit.  She was an insect, which must be squashed quickly.  Just then, Jo reappeared and demanded everyone take their places.  “Individual acts will be rehearsed last after the orchestra are in place.  Just now, we’ll rehearse the closing and opening numbers…IN THAT ORDER!” she barked.  “Dietrich will accompany us on the piano until the orchestra arrive.  Places everyone!”

©2010 Steven Gorman.  All rights reserved.